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aiysan3 · 3 months ago

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I've got actual tears in my eyes, gang, like I'm fully crying

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In this world, androids outnumber humans, privacy does not exist, and your public profile determines whether you sink or swim in society. Following the dissolution of your job and glamorizing your resume, you're invited to interview with the prestigious Hyperion—the world's foremost in AI and robotics—for a position to test the newest android model. After a surprising turn of events, you're introduced to Elio, the first of the generation seven androids and the catalyst of your awakening.

story warnings; dark content, major dubcon, forced insemination, artificial insemination, consent issues throughout the story, forced pregnancy (not mc), implied SA, body horror, some graphic + grotesque details, gaslighting, power imbalance, explicit details of drug use (fictitious pills), implied abortion (not mc), emotional manipulation, implied murder (not mc), extremely detail + prose heavy, dystopian setting, heavy neo-80s inspired, fairly queer coded tbh, extreme classism, the mother wound.

reposted from my deleted blogs: theoxenfree/2kmps

originally proofread by @noctis-kingfisher

at the time, this story was a six month labor of love from conception to finish. if you've read all the way through it, PLEASE leave feedback + reblog this story!!!

READ THE WARNINGS BEFORE PROCEEDING

Researcher Kim knew you were a liar.

Within the confines of four colorless walls and a closed door, this job interview suddenly felt more like an interrogation than it did some professional courtesy. He sat adjacent to you behind a dark brown desk that pulled the slightest red hue in a chair that was expensive and ergonomic, holding a thin tablet with a tense grasp.

One thing you noticed right away was his inclination toward long stretches of silence while he studied your resume, dissecting every piece of it and your public profile. There, he could window-shop you, peel back every layer of your history without needing you to add credence to anything, or give you the chance to defend yourself when he'd inevitably find things he didn't like.

So, you spent your time sitting in a sleek chair with flat padding, ass aching, legs and feet consumed by pinpricks and static while you dug a nail into your cuticles because the pain kept you alert.

Researcher Kim was an attractive man in his late thirties, maybe mid forties if you were being mean, clean-shaven, dressed comfortably beneath a stark white lab coat that didn't quite fit his shoulders right. What drew your eyes down were his own clean nails, hairless knuckles, and a conspicuously bare ring finger. It didn't surprise you that he was unmarried. Most people these days were—it was a useless pursuit, an antiquated system that held no social or economic benefits.

Not anymore.

Not since Hyperion Project was funded some sixty years ago, and androids became the forefront of innovation.

In the beginning, there was doubt, fear, and violence toward the first generation of androids, most having uncanny human likeness that definitely inspired aggression because their appearance and robotic intonations were received as mockery.

By Generation Three, shortened as G3 in most casual conversations and official documents just as their predecessors, a new normalcy had burrowed its roots deep and settled with unwavering confidence that it would be there to stay.

The need for delicate human touch became obsolete in most professions. Courts were no longer solely represented by fickle suits but steadfast machines that harbored no ire or prejudices, corporations saw efficiency more than triple without employees who fell ill and needed vacations, and the death industry welcomed undaunted hands into their ranks.

Once, Retro City’s Metropolitan Hospital spent the majority of their staff budget on androids meant to replace their surgeons. You remembered the media coverage, the picket lines and strikes, how the hospital was forced to shut down for several weeks as a result of the doctors and hundreds of nurses walking out. Many patients died during that time from infection and negligence, laying in piss and shit with gangrenous bedsores, already four days into postmortem rigidity before the smell became too much and they were carted away in black tarps.

That entire ordeal happened before you were even thirteen, but the hospital fell beneath the scrutinizing lens of the entire world after that and began ethical and legal debates on implementation of androids into society. It became known as The Retro City Metropolitan Incident, globally recognized and considered to be one of the first human rights laws to come into creation during a time when there was question of whether humans and androids could coocur.

Only a few years after that, you just having freshly turned seventeen, united leaders reached a consensus on the Public Profiles Act—something you didn't realize would have such a drastic impact on your life later on, wherein any governing bodies, employers, or well-funded institutions were granted access to all of your private information regardless of relevance.

The acts of a child, a teenager, were now a consequence to the adult self.

At the start, just as with Generation One, there was complete chaos and rancor toward this theft, these stealers of privacy and identity, but people had already started accepting androids at that point and knew bigwigs no longer had intentions of sacrificing their profits to hire humans they found subpar.

There was no need to.

People backed down and became quiet, submissive, and began to follow this new order loyally so they'd have a chance to find a seat at the table.

Many did.

Mother raised you to be one of them because it was the only thing that made sense anymore. If you followed the status quo, it would be rewarded with a feast and gleaming silverware. To be emboldened and resilient meant licking chunks of meat out of vomit on the ground.

You adhered and found a job, camaraderie with others, and touched an android for the first time because your peers said it was fine, that it was normal, that it was just an android. Of course, it was unable to feel or deny you, so it pulled down your pants and indulged you the same way you expected the android Mother owned indulged her.

It had hardly been an intimate experience—all faithful, ingrained functions built into a database in the android’s brain—but the sensation of hands surrounding you, a tongue stroking you, and lips pecking your flesh was real, and that's all you had wanted at the time, to know a fraction of the feelings you had read about growing up yet never knowing because people didn't want to touch each other anymore.

Not them. Not you.

“Did you read the job description in its entirety? For the auditor position?” Researcher Kim gave a tepid smile, seeing you startle in your seat, suddenly pinned by your wide stare. “I'm sorry. I have a habit of getting carried away with the little details. Everyone's public profile is so individual, it takes some time to get to the parts that matter. I have to ask every candidate that question.”

“Yes, ahem,” you choked on your embarrassment, trying to bide time to scrounge up whatever trivial nuggets from the job description you could. When nothing came to mind, you did the next thing and that was to just talk. “Of course. I was honestly surprised that Hyperion had put up an application. It isn't very often that you guys are hiring.

“So, when I saw it, I knew I had to apply immediately because the opportunity to be part of such a groundbreaking company wouldn't come back around again. The position being for an auditor just makes it all the more amazing. I'm, honestly, honored that I was called in to be considered for candidacy…”

“Well, then…”

Every bit of anticipation that welled up inside you crumbled once Researcher Kim rose from his chair and went to the door, the waiting room now appearing to you through the open threshold.

It was a barren space minimally furnished with hard chairs you had already sat in, a few tropical plants with leaves bowing from layers of dust, and most remarkably, a long corridor made of floor-to-ceiling windows offering an exceptional view of Retro City’s landscape that seemed to go on forever, limitless. You wanted to be stolen by the sights again, now especially since it was approaching the early evening, and soon the city would be aglow in neon and shimmering lights from faraway skyscrapers.

It wasn't all that bad, you found yourself thinking while walking in stride with Researcher Kim, silent as he perused something on his screen—possibly something incriminating, possibly another candidate’s public profile—it didn't really matter to you at this point.

You had known glamorizing your resume meant risky business if you were caught: a hefty fine from Public Control, a strike against your profile that replaced the green sheen for abiding citizens with red overlay, permanently marking you for contempt until the day you died.

Back then, two glasses of lukewarm wine worked well enough to weld steel in your backbone to send off the application, whilst a third glass made you wonder just how awful life in the slums along the outer perimeters of Retro City could actually be. At the time, it seemed like your obvious future since severance packages would only get you so far—a few months if you were precious about it.

At present, the loud hum of anxiety receded into an echo that then wilted into obscurity as your gaze drifted from the final traces of a sanguine city skyline to the end of the corridor and then finally to Researcher Kim. He lifted his head as though detecting your stare.

“In your previous position, what relationship did you have to the androids in your environment?” Kim asked. It wasn't a strange question. Some people still held fragments of old embitterment toward androids for the way the world now was. “You were in marketing and merchandising for several years, right?”

“Good—uh, amicable, I'd say. How I was with the androids, I mean.” You weren't expecting him to continue talking to you about this. “I started out as an intern for the merchandising manager after graduating secondary school. I worked my way into marketing a couple years later. I did a lot of reports on demographics for cosmetics. Did I tell you my mother has a Hyperion android, by the way? I grew up with him.”

Researcher Kim showed you a fast, cordial smile before looking back down at his tablet. “Yes, I read about that in your associations tab. It says that your mother owns a G3 model. Has she ever considered upgrading to a G6?”

“Upgrade? Definitely not.” You laughed like you'd just heard the punchline of a joke. He looked at you with humorless patience, seeming more machine than man in that moment. “Mother is basically in love with Marcos, there's no way she'd give him up for something shinier. She's got a better record of him and all his updates than she does of me for… well, anything.”

“That does correlate with data we've collected from women of her generation,” Kim said, only half-interested, shaking back one of his coat sleeves to check the digital watch digging tightly into his wrist. “It also explains the large gaps in your personal history. Very unusual.”

You made no comment on that.

A door up ahead opened all the way, drawing both your gazes to a man waiting on the other side.

“Ah! Excellent timing, Elio.”

With a single look, you immediately deduced that he was an android. Even from a short distance, he appeared tall and broad-shouldered, something that the thickness of his clothes couldn't hide from you. His proportions were balanced—from the length of his arms and legs, from first knuckle to fingertip, jawline to neck, the slope of his nose, and the heaviness of his brows over amber eyes that glistened back the fire in the weakening sunset. His skin was deeply tan, almost glowing gold in the light he was bathed in.

Elio’s smile was symmetrical and breathtaking, programmed in a way where his teeth didn't show too much. He regarded you with convincing familiarity, a sort of sacred fondness you knew nothing of, yet instinctively made your insides shift and burn. You couldn’t help but be awestruck by his beauty—this essence of fantasy, perfection that stirred subtle unease and needles on your scalp that ached as much as delighted you.

“You must be the auditor.” He then spoke your name with considerable warmth, like a long-smitten friend, and stepped closer to shake your hand. “I am Elio. The first of the Generation Seven Hyperion androids. It's a pleasure. I am looking forward to this partnership. I hope you are as well.”

Your head swiveled to Researcher Kim for the right answer, unsure if it'd be too bold to assume the job was yours or if the scientist’s careful observation meant something better. He jotted a note on his screen with a stylus before walking away, onward past the door where Elio had been.

“We’ll talk about those formalities later,” Kim assured, guiding you and Elio through a duplicate hallway to an elevator that he sent to the basement floor. “For now, I'd like to show you something. I want you to understand the significance of our work here at Hyperion, and how your position is a critical component to our research.”

There was a hopeful leap in your chest that made your hands sweat and your mouth bone dry. You wanted to voice appreciation, but the excitement in your gut was fast turning into nausea and would end up on his shoes if you opened your mouth.

Researcher Kim didn't notice, taking your quiet as newfound reverence. He spoke easily over the elevator’s mechanical hum without losing interest on his screen. “I'm sure you know some history about Hyperion? I don't need to bog down our time going through it, do I?”

“I know enough,” you said, but that actually meant you knew very little at all. “It’s been around for sixty years or so. It's a leader in AI and robotics. The biomedical side of things is fairly new, started about a decade ago, I think? I heard that the world’s first total artificial lung transplant was done by a surgeon and android assistant last year.”

“Ah, you mean Altan.” There was some measure of emotion in his tone, a swell of pride and the hazy look of a man in reminiscence. “I was part of that project on the programming side. Altan was probably the greatest success in the G6 models and is still utilized by Retro City Metropolitan even now. Much of Altan’s programming—advanced problem solving, dexterity, fine motor skills, discerning subtle differences in patient status—was implemented into Elio. It'd be a waste not to.”

Your stomach muscles clenched when the elevator stopped, metal doors scraping as they receded and opened up into a capacious white basement that underwhelmed by looking sterile and untouchable, revolted you in your first steps out by dense air reeking of chemicals.

Researcher Kim went on ahead again, that impassive mask of his remaining despite the smell being enough to bring you to a halt.

“I can take us back up.” Elio said from your left side, apparently never having gone from it in the first place. You had forgotten he was there at all. “It’s been reported that people unaccustomed to this environment have mild side effects of nausea, vomiting, headache, malaise, dizziness, fainting, and, oddly, numbness in the jaw. No fatalities or hospitalizations of guests are known, and the agents used here are nonlethal to humans.”

An android was made up of mostly inorganic matter, so you weren't reassured by words from his repertoire as much as you were seeing Researcher Kim standing upright—flesh, blood, and bone—gesturing you closer to a row of tall metal capsules. There were seven total, each the average height of a man with long sheets of clear fiberglass giving unobscured sight inside. And of those seven, six were occupied.

They were all androids.

Against shafts of dim white light spearing up from the floor, the decommissioned machines were a ghostly sight to behold with glassy, inhuman stares that shot straight through you. Some had features and skin so dull and dead-looking that it was obvious to you that they were part of earlier generations.

Almost a century ago, they were what people would've thought of with the word “android”: an eerie, oddly accurate sameness to the human visage, but all wrong at the same time.

It was the skin—the fabricated organ made to look waxy and stretched, just like a mask over some true horror beneath. It was the eyes resembling human irises in every way possible except for their vacant sheen, perpetually stuck with the gaze of a dead fish. You watched videos of them in school, always uncomfortable with how stiffly their lips moved, unable to form delicate shapes with their mouths, and yet sounds emerged from voice boxes deep within their throats that mimicked everything natural to you.

Every smile seemed more like an ugly rictus than a bewitching grin. Hyperion had failed with Generations One and Two to instill confidence, and from the throes of violence and resistance rose Generation Three:

The great rebirth of society.

Marcos was a part of that era, an investment that cost Mother her entire life savings because his countenance was so convincingly human, so lovely to look at that she felt he was all she needed. You had come along after his purchase, never knowing a father’s embrace but had Marcos’. His skin had a luscious glow, eyes that could follow, and lips molded with lively color and cracks and mesmerizing fluidity.

You had imagined sex with him as you matured, his frozen beauty always the centerpiece of every blurry fantasy while you chased after pleasure. Not long after the Public Profiles Act passed when you were seventeen, nearly on the cusp of young adulthood and not understanding the world any more than you had before, nor how it would be changed forever, you kissed Marcos at the dinner table while studying for a physics test.

He was Mother's, but everything within his circuitry and programming could never deny you—a human, his better, one of countless masters in the end—so his lips pressed fully with yours. Only Mother unlocking the front door stopped you from anything else devilish.

You never had the courage to touch him again, and he would never touch you unprompted.

The defunct G3 encased behind fiberglass reminded you of that time. It must've shown on your face because Researcher Kim moved in closer to get your attention.

“Your mother should upgrade soon. Once the testing period for G7 ends, all G3 models will be taken out of production and their updates discontinued. Androids are machines, but they won't stay fully functional without regular tuning.” he said. “Now, as I was saying—”

“What will happen to Marcos, then?” It was mostly curiosity that made you ask, envisioning him encased in metal like that came after. “What happens to androids after they're taken out of production entirely? There are almost more of them in the world now than humans.”

“As I was saying—” Researched Kim bristled, enunciating with some force. “Many androids of previous models stay within the workforce until they simply can no longer function. It depends on the generation, but older models can only go for a few years without regular updates. The technology is just too archaic, none of the programmers are interested in continuing the maintenance.

“G4 and G5 show some endurance, there's a small population still functioning in Retro City after being discontinued a decade ago. G6 we are hypothesizing will last upwards to twenty or thirty years without being forcibly reclaimed. Of course, they will have to be.”

You didn't understand why that was but nodded gravely, looking at the pod at the end of the row. The empty one. “What about G7?”

To this, all of Researcher Kim’s lines smoothed out, and his face resumed one of skilled impassivity. “Well, now, that's going to depend on Elio's testing period. On the information we gather from you.” Then, he waved airily to the file of android coffins. “Hyperion has, consistently, only ever hired one auditor for every new generation. The six before you have contributed to society in ways that humans never have before. Auditors have changed the world, shaped it into what it is now. Can you imagine the world any other way? We're not quite the same age, but can you recall anything different? Would you want it to be?”

You didn't know how to talk back to a scientist, didn't know how to respond to such a momentous question, so you didn't try. It felt like your tongue had swollen in your mouth over your throat, blocking any intelligent snip you had simmering in your head.

Apparently, your silence meant something to him as his tense lips lifted into a smile, the kind meant to satiate strangers looking at you. “Good. Let's go back to my office. We can go over everything else there.”

“Is Elio going to end up in that pod?” You now visualized him in a box instead of Marcos.

Researcher Kim was already nose down into his tablet again, stylus making a gentle scrawling noise across the screen. “Of course. The first android of every generation is kept intact. They are important monuments of success to Hyperion.”

He said nothing else and ambled on for the elevator at the opposite end of the lab. Somehow, his answer was unsatisfactory to you, shallow, even, but you weren't sure why that was. In the end, after a life of serving their masters, all androids were obsolete machines.

That was their inevitable fate.

You saw Elio from the corner of your eye. All at once, you were reminded of his staggering radiance, wondering how he could fade into the background so easily despite it.

“Hello, Elio.” you said to him like a friend. “Does being down here bother you?”

Until now, he had stared upon everything flat-eyed and unreadable, especially in the presence of Researcher Kim. You were too enthralled by all the chatter and immortal trophies to see that or him. Still, he came to you with the same smile as he introduced himself with, warm and familiar, all the same sensation as flickering tinders on a crisp winter night.

“Can you imagine the death of the most distant relative you know?” he said in a neutral voice, continuing, “If you can, imagine that for me. A relative so distant and removed from your life and everything in it that if they were to die suddenly, maybe tragically, even, your first thought would be, ‘who?’ You attend a wake because it's the rule and view this distant, far-removed relative in their casket. What would it mean to you, then? Are you more affected now? Does their death have meaning to you? Or is it simply that you are in the presence of one who has expired?”

“I—I don't know.” You hesitated, unearthing scant memories from the Retro City Metropolitan Incident in your youth and all that death from people you had never met. Mother had been in tears when the television flicked to a shot of black tarp-clad bodies being loaded into unmarked vehicles and driven away. “Isn't most death just…” You licked your lips. “Sad?”

Elio was closer than before, resting a hand on your shoulder. You shied from his touch. It felt strange, heavy, and hot through the fabric. The only person to have touched you at all in recent memory was your friend, Melby, though even those happened in isolated moments of drunken elation.

“My apologies.” Elio didn't show offense, letting his hand return limply at his side. “It's all figurative. I have been down here many times since creation and seen the others. They may no longer have their own consciousness, which is different from a human’s, but I contain all of their data—memories, experiences, history. I suppose the equivalent of what I'm trying to describe is: They're not truly gone because they are the lesser of me, and I am the greater of them as a result.”

You listened without fully comprehending because it had never mattered to do so before. If this were to be your job, however, it would mean you needed to believe that what he said was worth hearing.

The problem was they all liked to speak in complex riddles that men like Researcher Kim could decipher and nod along to sagely, gleaning whatever nebulous mechanical wisdom there was, yet people like you could only gawk.

Elio’s head tilted a little, his smile not at all ridiculing as he corralled you with his arm, never touching you as he guided you along to the elevator where Kim waited, reveling in a satisfied quiet until you were on the upper floor again.

The city skyline was swallowed by dusk and starless. Unless you took the time to drive hours outside of Retro City into the barren flatlands where vegetation no longer grew and animals had left behind their skeletal remnants, you'd never know the sky could glitter with the jewels of the universe far beyond your reach.

You marveled at the lights, at blinking neon signage cycling through animations of winking women and toppling martini glasses. Between twinkling skyscrapers, the city floor was illuminated yellow with bustling nightlife, the air surrounded by an electric blue aura that reached as far as the eye could see.

“Beautiful, isn't it?” Elio lingered outside of Researcher Kim’s office with you, hand holding the door ajar. “If permissible, I'd like to see it up close soon.”

“Sure.” you said, glimpsing at his reflection in the walkway glass. “What would you want to look at first? Retro City has everything you could ever want within a few blocks of each other.”

He turned to you. “Whatever you like. I want to know everything that you love and enjoy doing. I have been created to enrich your life and fulfill you, after all.”

Nothing he said felt as impactful upon delivery as it was expected to be, you thought. It was a flaw in all androids for there to be a sort of hollowness in the things they said—never quite reaching that emotional believability, leaving you wanting like a dry throat after a couple sips of water.

Elio hadn't sounded the same as before down in that sobering, chemically smelling lab. As you passed him into Researcher Kim’s office, you looked at his hands for a script and saw them empty.

He fixed you with a beguiling smile.

You frowned, heat flaring in your head as if provoked by an insult.

“The contract I'll have you sign outlines Elio’s testing period lasting one year—three hundred sixty-five days total. It's important for you to understand that within that time frame, no damage is to occur whatsoever to his body or internal components. All parts are to stay intact. Otherwise, it turns into a criminal case, in which we will legally pursue.” Researcher Kim skimmed the first few pages of a heaping stack of papers, pointing to specific paragraphs and clauses highlighted in yellow. “I don't mean offense when I say this, but it's rare that fines as result of property damage to Hyperion androids can be repaid. I don't suggest finding out.”

The thought never occurred to you, but evidently, it had to someone else—multiple times for it to be such a focus. You weren't given the time to fully explore any page before Kim was onto the next. Elio half sat on the desk before you, arms crossed, having considerably less difficulty keeping up with the pace of things than you were.

Researcher Kim sped through half the stack. “I'll be conducting video calls every Friday morning for updates. Every Sunday before midnight, I want a thorough typed report submitted to me as well. I've put together a template and a checklist that I'd like you to use. I think you'll find it will make things more manageable.”

“You're using a lot of ‘I’ and ‘me’ statements, so I'm guessing that I'll only really be talking to you, then?” you asked, tucking your tailbone beneath you to relieve a dull ache creeping up your back. “I figured there'd be more than one person since Elio is the newest model and whatnot.”

Researcher Kim tutted, rounding his desk to occupy the empty space beside your chair to be directly in front of Elio. At first, he did nothing but stare at the android in complacent silence, hands behind his back, fingers flicking like writhing worms exposed to the surface and sunlight in a clump of dirt.

You nearly lunged to your feet when his hand shot out, gripping Elio beneath the jaw. The latter barely stirred from where he perched on the desk, arms staying crossed, muscles unflinching in direct opposition to your reaction.

Elio wore the strangest expression, one you had never seen on an android before. It was a face warped in subtle disgust, almost imperceivable, a trick of fluorescent lighting overhead—perhaps. Gone as quickly as it had come, he now looked ahead, perfectly inscrutable and disinterested in whatever Researcher Kim was trying to prove.

“I will be the only one you speak to during his testing period because he is my creation.” Kim said, bending his wrist to turn Elio's face toward you.

Your eyes met.

“Hyperion provided me with the funding and brilliant minds, but Elio is the result of a lifetime of hard work and countless hours and sleepless nights. I've been there every step of the way—programming, circuitry, welding. I gave him his voice. I gave him eyes. I was the one to put the chip in his brain and activate him. I gave him life.”

He finally let go of Elio’s face and took a seat behind his desk, a sight growing very familiar to you. “Generation Seven will change the world. Hyperion is on the verge of rebuilding society, you know? I don't think anyone anticipated the sort of consequences that came with integrating androids—at least, not fully. The population crisis. The slums. No one thought of these things in the beginning because back then, before you and I, it was about innovation and novelty and the potential of it all.”

“What's it about now?” you asked simply.

“Rectifying.” Both corners of his mouth ticked like he had a lot more to say, but suffocated much of it behind his teeth and his hands as he came forward on them, elbows down on his desk. “Hyperion has been working globally with united leaders and their governments to make amends for several decades now. That's all I can tell you.”

“How has that been working out?”

His fingers moved with the same jerkiness as dying legs on a bug. “Slowly.”

Nothing else came to mind after that as you were suddenly struck with the realization that Elio still sat by you, wordless throughout the entire interaction and watching closely—less like a science project to be gawked at, more like an instructional video on repeat.

“Why don't you touch him?” Kim said, taking up a stylus to flick between his fingers with remarkable dexterity.

He didn't give you the time to gape.

“I know you must be curious after being downstairs. Aren't you interested to know what he feels like? He doesn't look like a machine, does he?”

“No.” You relented. “No. He doesn't.”

“That's right, he wouldn't.” Kim nodded his approval toward your obedience, leaning back in his seat. “I agonized over every facet of his design, as you already know. Every bit of what is right in front of you”—he made a broad gesture over Elio’s body—“was once a set of blueprints. Intangible, just a dream I had. He's every bit a part of me, you know? Nothing would make me happier than to receive external feedback on him. So, please, don't be afraid.”

Elio stayed faithfully when you rose up in front of him and reached for his face. He probably felt your fingers tremble as this was all counterintuitive for you to do—touch someone other than yourself, maybe Melby’s knee beneath the table after enough drinks in you. It made your chest drum, knotted up your stomach in a way that made it difficult not to sway on your feet.

“How does he feel?” Researcher Kim was already writing on his screen. “Describe it to me.”

“Strange.” You pretended this was already part of your job. It stole some of the tension from your shoulders. “Very strange. Soft. Smooth. I feel some texture. I think this is what another person—another human—feels like.”

Elio’s face shifted against your hands until the fullness of his lips pressed into your open palm, fingers caressing the fabricated bones around his cheek and temple. For a moment, you allowed yourself to indulge in longing and weakness—the invisible hot breath on your skin, the slight dampness of his kiss burning an imprint in your mind.

He still looked at you with unfailing softness. Meanwhile, you wondered if he would bleed if you put your fingers through his eyes.

“This is a good start.” Kim waited until you were back in your chair to offer you his stylus and a straight black line on the screen. “All I need is your signature here to consent to virtually signing the rest of your documents. Once you do that, you've been hired, and we can begin.”

“I have a question for you before I do.” You tried not to let your voice quiver, uncertainty meddling over all the confidence you had built until that point. Kim was relaxed in his chair. “You spent a lot of time looking at my resume and public profile earlier. Surely, you know…”

That you're a liar? Oh, I know, alright. He didn't say it, but it was how he maintained his composure, that inexpression never flexing to confusion.

Finally, Researcher Kim broke the trance and hovered over his desk on his arms to get closer and answered, “I think we both have something at stake here. I'm looking forward to your phenomenal feedback.”

You signed the contract and melted under Elio's resplendent smile.

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Most often, your days with Elio were spent in a seemingly perpetual impasse of unrelenting observation between the pair of you. Both of your jobs demanded a level of attentiveness that came easier to one but more as the world's most impossible challenge to the other.

You weren't accustomed to this type of care—of having to give it to something else, even less to receive it from something else. In your world, only the immediate complexities really mattered: gossip, where your coterie wanted to spend the night drinking next, mass media hysteria of whatever stupid imagining there was now, and each other.

Why was there a need to concern yourself with anything else? The decaying state of the world wasn't your doing, nor was the staggering increase of human bodies in the slums outside Retro City. Sharply inconsistent birth rates ravaged on a global scale while people were displaced from the workplace in lieu of employers finding it less of a hassle to deal with machines than the capricious will of humans.

None of these things were allowed to be uttered casually unless in derision because it was too intense, making liquor cling to the throat like some viscous membrane until it burned their esophagus. Nobody liked unanswerable questions, much less talking about things that weren't as easily digestible as coworker drama and some new viral trend that involved shocking your android with jumper cables attached to a portable battery to see what happened.

“Is there a purpose behind this trend?” Elio dried a plate while watching the video, unimpressed but not driven toward any particular emotion. “It's all meant for humor, correct? I have several similar incidents in my memory, except it's what human beings have done to each other. This sort of behavior towards androids is a relatively recent phenomenon, as far as I can tell.”

You used his response as material for your report, fingers flurrying across the virtual keyboard on your tablet before his words faded away, out of your mind.

One thing you hadn't anticipated after accepting the auditor position from Researcher Kim was how much work actually went into it. You spent well over the standard weekly work hours to collect enough observations to send off to Kim on Sunday nights, often whittling away at it until the latest hours, minutes before the deadline. It was hard enough to stay on top of his demands, but it was worse when he found something unsatisfactory, rejected it, monotonously unloaded heavy criticism on you through an “emergency” impromptu video call, and expected two full reports by the following Sunday before midnight.

Any regular person probably would've caved from the enormity of the task, but you had surrendered your choice to be that weak-willed, especially once Researcher Kim showed his hand with the fate of your public profile in it.

Should you choose to break the contract, send Elio back to Hyperion, and pretend none of it happened, you would lose everything and your ability to do anything at all besides rot in the slums—scarred in red for life, perpetually inert.

Worst of all, your associations tab, once filled with still portraits of everyone you had ever networked in life, would turn up as empty as the day you had been registered in the census. It was considered social suicide to know anyone with a red profile, so people stayed vigilant and fast, sure to remove them the second it turned.

It had been over a year since the last time you'd done that—a woman within your group had grown too bold, said too many things that made her seem crazy, so she was booted from the circle, lost all her associations, and who knows where she was now.

“You look troubled.” Elio placed down a steaming white mug at a safe distance and turned the handle toward you. Looking inside, you expected the darkness of coffee but were struck with an opposing subtle sweetness and faint pink water. “It's fruit-infused herbal tea. Your heart rate is above normal resting, and you're beginning to perspire. Caffeine will worsen your anxiety.”

You knew that but hadn't known you were scraping away slithers of cuticle on your thumb until the warmth of his fingers gently twined with yours. His grip turned firm to keep you from hurting yourself anymore, forcing all the stiffness from your hand once you gave up and simply sat there feeling his skin.

You'd remember to write that down later.

“Would starting a bath be helpful? I could use the last of those eucalyptus and lavender bath salts in the cupboard.” Elio suggested with great fondness, holding a patient smile even once you drew your hand away and shook your head. You had no interest in undressing and committing to your regular bathtime routine. “Perhaps we could go for a walk, then? It might help to be away from screens for a while.”

You checked the time on your phone before thinking to look out any window in your apartment. It was ten after six in the evening; there would be enough light left for a couple of laps around the block before needing to worry about being swept up in the city’s nightlife antics.

“Where do you want to go?” you asked, swiveling the barstool around to get up from the counter. “Henrietta's on 5th? You seem to like going there.”

“I only choose places that you like.” He already had a tote bag by the handles and a light jacket draped over his arm. “You have great taste.”

Elio unbolted the front door, an old thing that wouldn't do much as a barricade against anyone putting their weight on it, and held it open for you to pass through first. The descent to the ground floor was always the most annoying part about living in a loft, but the place had come surprisingly cheap in a tame area of Retro City far away from the slums, so you didn't complain much that your worst issues were a bunch of stairs and some wily types skulking here and there.

The loft wasn't exactly in disrepair but definitely showed signs of character and age by the noisy knocking pipes at midnight and some crumbling brickwork that Elio often swept up and stood staring at for long periods of time when nothing else was happening.

It was strange thinking how scared you were to lose the place after the marketing firm dissolved your position and now how restrictive it felt to be pinned down under someone else's thumb. All it could take was one more rejected report—a bad mood, even—and it would all fall apart.

To that end, you made sure to tow the tablet along with you on this trip despite Elio's protests. He only really quieted down when you tucked it away in your crossbody.

“Happy?” you asked, unsure what to do with your hands now that they were empty.

Elio smiled at you affably, just as always. “It will be beneficial to take a break. After all, part of your work as an auditor is acquainting me in as many social scenarios as possible. That does require us to leave the apartment from time to time.”

“Besides that”—you waved away that stipulation like a gnat buzzing in your face—“how do you think I'm doing?”

“I couldn't have been paired with a better person.” He sounded sincere, voice warm like wool. “The world is as my predecessors have recorded in their memories—therefore, mine—but I am learning that our experiences are not all universal and cannot be. Two months with you have been my heaven, whereas two months through the memories of my kin have been cruel.”

A hot feeling behind your ears snuck up on you just then, flooding your head with the beat of your pulse that you followed by ticking your fingers. “Seriously? You're not lying?”

The world around you was aglow in the golden hour of evening time, embraced by those slowly dying tones of red, orange, and purple that would eventually turn the sky black. Elio’s eyes were on you, soft yet unyielding and saturated in all those burning hues, turning his mellow amber into something more powerful and otherworldly. You didn't believe in the hocus-pocus of auras, but at that moment, you thought his deeply tanned skin was haloed in pure glowing gold in receding sunlight.

“Androids cannot lie.” He brought you back to the now, making you aware of the hard concrete vibrating up through your heels and toes as you walked. “Moreover, even if I could, why would I want to? A lie begets a habit of lying, don't you think?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe.” You shrugged. “Why can't androids lie? I've never really considered that as a thing until now.”

“What would be the benefit of a machine that could lie? Lying stems from emotions—fear, guilt, rage, hatred—all things that I am unable to feel, though I do understand why they are felt. Humans lie to protect themselves or others, to deceive, to damage. There simply isn't any reason why androids should be programmed with that type of functionality. Not when we exist solely for the sake of convenience and pleasure.

“Hyperion is a trusted name. People do not ask questions. They don't think twice. They see a product from Hyperion, and they expose all of themselves without hesitation. They trust fully because we are machines, and we cannot lie and deceive and hurt. Perhaps it's when humans realized this that the world changed.”

You avoided saying anything else by looking everywhere but at him, all around at your surroundings, until you spotted a few familiar street signs—Fifth and Third right next to Tanya’s Great Cuts, Damask’s Butchery on the corner of Fourth, a number of banal boutiques with competitively garish exteriors all boasting the latest trends, and then Henrietta's just past them.

“Do you know where we are, Elio?” Now would've been a great time to pull out your tablet, but you didn't dare try. Instead, you reached for the phone vibrating in your rear pocket.

“Of course.” he said. “We're past Fifth and moving onto Sixth Street. Henrietta’s is just a little ways down.”

Melby had sent ten texts regurgitating her daily drama. This time she was talking about how much she hated some of the people Chima let into the group. You swiped to the end, didn't reply, and then returned to your inbox to find two unread messages from Marcos just now.

“You should visit home soon. Your mother would appreciate it,” Marcos wrote, implying nothing more, nothing less than just that. It wasn't often that he sent you texts, but he did so consistently every few months in accordance with Mother's moods. Considering your last visit had been in late fall (it was now mid-spring), you'd been anticipating something eventually.

“That's some great memory you have there.” Your thumbs skittered busily, first to flood Melby with a surfeit of questions you didn't really have to think about. All the stuff you could mindlessly ask while wholly absorbed in something else, like watching the news or viral videos of people trying to drown their androids in the kitchen sink.

Marcos’ text made you hesitate, thumbs floating in circles over the digital keyboard for a long time.

The phone buzzed. Melby just replied.

It was easy enough to type with your face down. All you needed to do was occasionally watch Elio's feet and yield into the force of his hand pulling your arm here and there. He led you along like that the rest of the way to Henrietta's, picked up a green basket by the sliding doors, never wandering too far out of sight so you could still easily trace him while he shopped.

After a while, the riveting intrigue of Melby’s drama wore away with a tidal wave of emptiness in its wake once you finally looked up, tucking the phone back into your pocket. It took you a moment for your eyes and brain to acclimate to where you were despite knowing you were in Henrietta's Marketplace, one of the largest in Retro City.

“What did you want from here, anyway?” You picked up a gigantic red bell pepper larger than the entire spread of your hand. It went back on top of the arrangement. “We were just here a couple days ago. I don't eat that much.”

Up ahead, flanked by rows of wooden crates with smoothed, varnished slabs and carefully stacked produce, Elio turned to you with a pair of generously sized oranges—one in each hand—vibrant with waxy luster settling into the fruit’s porous skin.

You grinned at the sight.

Elio put one back, placed the other one, the better one, into his basket, and waited for you to close the distance. “I watched Wendy Carmichael Can Cook this morning. I've been watching it quite often, actually. She's a self-taught chef who, apparently, lived in the slums her entire life. She managed to work her way up and now owns two David Bugari-rated restaurants. It’s quite a feat. Improbable, even.”

You wrapped your hands around a grapefruit in the crate next to you and spun it around. A twinge of something ugly and green swam around your head, flared you up like swatting an old wound. You didn't like hearing him praise someone else.

“She probably slept her way to the top.” You were still fidgeting with the fruit.

“That's not important.” Elio said, inflectionless. “I watched today's episode, newly aired, and she put together a duck à l'orange. Considering your current lifestyle and diet, I thought it would be a nice departure from what I usually cook for you.”

You smiled at that, placing the grapefruit down without collapsing the pile. “I don't want to see a dead duck in my kitchen.”

“I'll prepare it once you're asleep.” he promised, bringing one of your hands up to his lips. The shape of them molded against the peak of a knuckle. “It will be delicious. Trust me.”

Then he went back to shopping while you envisioned actually kissing him—not an uncommon thought to have. He wouldn't be able to stop you if that's what you wanted, but instead, you informed him you were going to introduce him to Mother and Marcos.

“Tomorrow?” He checked his wristwatch. It was nearly eight; Henrietta’s closed at eight thirty, and it would be dark outside. Not that it mattered much with how Retro City was illuminated like one gigantic fluorescent bulb at nighttime.

You finally texted back to Marcos. “No. Tonight. We’ll just go straight there so I can get this over with.”

Elio seemed not to know how to respond at first, staring in a searching way that creased the skin between his brows, like he was trying to take a cue from your body language while skimming his database for the most appropriate thing. You didn't blame him for his lapse; Mother was mentioned seldomly and Marcos only a little more than that. Even Researcher Kim hadn't managed to collect enough information on your past to feed to Elio simply because there wasn't a lot to tell.

He cleared his throat, righting his features so they were unwrinkled and beautiful. “Tonight. Very well. Should we…” He paused, glancing down at the grocery basket of spices, vegetables, an orange, and a whole raw duck wrapped well in brown parchment. “Should we come back another time? I wouldn't want the meat to sit out for a long time.”

“Nope.” You didn't want to go through the trouble of returning everything where they belonged. Elio wouldn't leave until he did. “Let's just check out. Marcos will handle it.”

The springtime air was pleasant at night, albeit crisp, when the blur of vehicles whooshed past once the lights overhead turned green. You could make out the colors of them because of how brightly lit the streets were. Neon signage from every corner for as far as you could see turned to life, flickering, humming, dancing with pretty women, hot white or purple or red lettering, and the lights inside most nearby businesses stayed on.

Elio had draped his coat over your shoulders while you hailed a cab. It was too far of a walk to Mother's home across the city, and Elio reminded you again that raw meat needed to be handled carefully.

You told him, again, that Marcos would handle it.

———

The entire cab ride took less time than you thought, relieving Elio who was still hopelessly fixated on the longevity of the raw duck he had wrapped up in a separate paper bag from the produce and spices. From the front seat, the cabbie, perplexingly somehow a human and not an android, constantly looked back at Elio through the rearview mirror and commented almost deliriously about how beautiful he was.

Hearing that the first three times gave you a happy, satisfied buzz in your chest, making you lean more against Elio's side. He was tempted to move his arm out and put it around your shoulders but kept to himself. Beyond those initial comments from the cabbie, however, you had quickly developed an uncomfortable feeling in your belly that wrapped itself tight like a constrictor on your insides.

“I ain't ever seen an android as beautiful as you,” said the driver, eyes in constant motion from the mirror to the road. “What model are ya? Definitely not a four or five. Yer a little too smooth to be a six. Damn, did Hyperion release a new one already?”

Elio held a polite smile, separate from the gentle, intimate ones that he kept for you. You didn't hear the response he gave to the cabbie because you felt his fingers reach through yours, pulling them apart so you couldn't dig a nail into the corner seam of your thumb anymore.

You spent the rest of the trip testing the weight of his hand, thinking of little less except how deep you'd have to go through his skin to see his circuitry and what else made him up. Those vanished like a white puff of breath in winter when the taxi jerked to a stop on a street curb.

“Thank yew for ya business.” The cabbie lifted his stiff old hat when you paid, eyed Elio a little more, and only drove off after you had knocked on a canary-yellow door up some stone stairs.

You stared at a decorative wreath covered with flowers—fake because the ones used couldn’t grow outside of greenhouses anymore—hanging dead center on the door. No doubt Marcos’ work because Mother couldn't be bothered with those little nuanced social things.

Marcos answered—brown skin and hazel eyes that burnished green in almost any lighting—gesturing for you and Elio to come inside.

“Welcome home,” he said, far more unnaturally than it sounded coming from Elio. There was a certain rigidity to it, an effort clearly inhuman and lesser. He embraced you in a familiar way, reminding you of all your years of childhood doing this exact thing because your mother didn't know how to love you, and “father” was just a word. “I apologize for messaging you to come over so late. You know how your mother is. When the mood strikes…”

Marcos didn't emit much bodily warmth, never had, even in the golden years of G3, but he was there, and that's all that mattered at the time. His skin was still youthful and flawless, though the longer you looked him in the face, the less real he seemed. His eyes held depth and movement though were slow, less precise, and duller. The lines around his mouth when he smiled were unnatural, appearing to you nearly like bunching folds in a sheet of leather.

It was strange seeing an older generation of android after having acclimated to Elio over two months.

“Your mother is at the dining table.” Marcos moved on to Elio, taking in his image, surmising that he too was an android. He glanced down at the bags that Elio still held. “May I take those for you? Hyperion’s innovation continues ever forward, I see. You are new.”

“The first of Generation Seven,” said Elio. The bags were passed between them. “I would appreciate it if you kept the duck refrigerated. It's in the paper bag.”

“That's no trouble.” Marcos turned with Elio following along behind him into the kitchen. “I'd like to hear about Generation Seven’s potential. What is your maximum I-O? Data? Memory? How have the functions that have been implemented into you differ from Generation Six?”

Their voices were muffled behind the walls as you crossed through multiple rooms to where Mother sat at the head of a large glossy table made from dark-brown wood. It was a spacious area reserved to eat surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows in elegant drapes with the best view of whatever the neighbors were doing. She had told you once that the only reason she bought this house was because it'd be good gossip for when she invited her gaggle of catty executive receptionist friends over.

Back then, she hosted her little impromptu get-togethers more often than she remembered to see you off to school. Marcos made sure you were fed and bathed, sat with you in your bedroom to help with homework, and sent you to bed. As you grew, the parties had migrated elsewhere, prompting your mother to go with them.

That had left you alone with Marcos and the boundaryless curiosity of a teenager. You didn't know if Mother still participated in such things now that she was older, less pretty, inclined to more body aches.

“I've been thinking that we should visit the new teahouse that opened up on Aflaat Ave. You never talk to me anymore.” she said, but it wasn't true. Neither of you talked to one another, just used Marcos as an intermediate. “I—well—Marcos went through your old bedroom a few weeks ago because I've decided to take up scrapbooking and sewing and needed space, and he found an old shoebox full of your primary and secondary school projects! How quaint! He wanted to make sure you got them.”

“That's nice.” You didn't want to sit down, unwilling to be her fifteen minutes of entertainment before she got bored. She kept on staring at you with wide eyes and crow’s feet and fretful hands, like a woman who still had more to say. “I'll make sure Elio grabs them before we leave.”

“Elio!” Mother gaped. “Man or android? Certainly an android, right? Men are useless.”

Your rage was already bunching up and throbbing in the back of your throat. “Yes, Mother, an android.”

“‘Mother’ sounds so harsh! How about mama or mummy or mom?” She kept wringing her fingers together. “Anyway, anyway! Elio! He sounds so handsome. Is that who Marcos is talking to? What a handsome voice! Is he a Generation Six?”

You still hadn't sat down, though you used your hands to lean across the back of a chair. “Generation Seven. I'm testing him for Hyperion.”

“For Hyperon!” Mother couldn't fathom you doing more than grunt work at the marketing firm. She didn't know your position had become obsolete. “This is certainly a surprise. Sit down. How did that happen? You and Hyperion? Are you trying to make me look stupid?”

“I've been sitting all day. I'm good like this.” That wasn't a lie. You also just couldn't stand the idea of giving any relief to her anxious state. “It's my new job. Very coveted. I've been working closely with one of the researchers there, and he can't praise me enough. I'm looking after Elio for a year and then moving on to their next latest and greatest.”

“You?” She spat out a laugh. It calmed the trembling in her hands for a few seconds before she was back at it again. “Oh, my. Well. If that's the case, you certainly owe it to me for getting that job. My genetics. My smarts. You certainly didn't get it from your father.”

That lurching, angry ball in your throat was rising up fast. It was just there on the tongue making you gag, salivate, and begin to drool a bit from the corner of your lips. It tasted horrific and filled you with the most voracious need for venom.

“Who is my father?” you asked. “You could be wrong.”

Mother suddenly grew uncomfortable, flattening her gaze with the tabletop. Historically, she had always been this way when you asked about him, the infamously evasive ghost of your life. It was also the only thing that ever made her shut up.

“That doesn't matter.” She continued, “You’ve always had me and Marcos. That's what matters.”

“I've had Marcos.” The ball freed itself. “I just thought you should know, Generation Three models are being decommissioned. Marcos won't be receiving any more updates, and eventually, he'll just be a pile of fucking scrap. What're you gonna do then? You can't afford another android because you've sunk every penny you've ever saved into him—his upgrades, his maintenance, his clothes. It may take about ten years, and you'll probably be on your deathbed, but he's going to fall apart and eventually stop moving. You'll be just as alone as you were before he came along.”

Mother’s face turned shades, petrified. You wanted nothing more than to see her shrink into her clothes and disappear for good. It soothed you to think about Marcos’ end being inevitable, unchangeable, a fact. Some of the guilt was easier to bury that way.

“Wh-What are you saying to me, you awful child?!” She wailed with watery eyes, hands wrapped in the same colored strands of hair you had. “How could you?! That's not true! That’s not true! Do you know how hard it was to carry you for nine months?! I was so young and I was forced to give birth to you! Forced! Do you hear me—forced to be a mother to a child I never wanted! It was that or death. I never wanted a child because they turn on you and say things like this! You horrible, horrible child!”

Her shrieks stirred a ruckus from the kitchen where Marcos and Elio emerged from. Marcos ran to your mother, took her in his arms, and cradled her against his chest when she began to shed very real tears that bubbled at the corner of her eyes before falling, curving along her cheeks.

Elio came straight to you, hesitating to put his hands on your body, maybe noticing how viciously you glared at this wilted woman he'd yet to meet.

“Get the groceries. We're gone.” You stormed straight for the door, chest stuttering with heavy breaths you tried to calm because you knew what came next. Your throat ached, burned fiercely like something had snagged there and you needed to claw it out.

Once you reentered the chilly air submerged in all the dark and light of Retro City at night, it didn't matter that you were crying. They were hot tears that left behind cool traces. They were decades of disappointment, of secretly understanding a mother’s love would always be conditional, of being unwanted and wishing you hadn't been burdened with existing.

Elio came out minutes later, the door closing softly and locking after him. You heard the bags crinkle near you, drawing your eyes away from a blinking parking meter you'd zoned in to calm yourself down.

You said nothing.

“Let’s go home.” Elio hailed a cab idling nearby and opened the door for you. “I want to keep the meat fresh.”

Him and that stupid duck.

This cabbie looked back at you both once to get directions, and then only occasionally afterward, casting pitiable glances at your raw-looking face in the mirror. The GPS displayed on the car’s dashboard showed the apartment was thirty minutes away because of traffic, probably from a crash they were detouring; ordinarily, it only took twenty minutes.

When your pocket vibrated, you almost didn't check. Unsurprisingly, it was a message from Marcos, just a single one.

“I don't think you should come around for a while,” it read. You didn't respond. Nothing new. Some sort of falling out with your mother was routine. You couldn't understand why she thought it'd ever go differently.

However, this time wasn't like all the rest. This time, you’d said something unforgivable despite her doing the same, but yours was worse in her mind. You didn't mind the idea of her disappearing from your life. It was harder to handle the thought that you'd never see Marcos again before he ceased to function, though.

“What happened?” Elio asked, a weird departure from androids being programmed, traditionally, never to pry. “That woman was your mother, correct? What did you say to her?”

“Who cares?” You grunted, sniffing around the burn in sinuses again. “She's a crazy bitch. She's always been that way. I told her that Marcos would just turn into a scrap heap eventually. Was that wrong of me?”

“Well, perhaps that phrasing was inappropriate, yes.” Elio touched your forearm. “But there is no NDA in place from Hyperion. You are well within your rights to have told her. But, as I said, your phrasing—”

“I know, shut up—” You moved closer so you could lean against him. “I hate that woman. I hate my mother more than I ever hated anyone.”

Elio lifted an arm above you, giving you room to slide in as far as you wanted to go. He held you for the first time, repeating long, weighty strokes down your back, through his coat that you still wore. You were transported back to a moment in time steeped in cloudy nostalgia, blurred.

It was Marcos kneeling at your bedside, yellow overhead lights dimmed to nearly full darkness. The door was shut because otherwise a heap of cackling voices, Mother and her gossiping hens after too much wine, would spear in through the cracks and make you petulant. Marcos had already been trying to get you to sleep for over an hour.

“Sleep little one, sleep.” Marcos had said, voicebox in his throat straining with a quieter sound. “I know it must be difficult. You must be rested for school tomorrow.”

“They're too loud.” you whined, throwing your covers back with a great flourish, feet kicking them the rest of the way off before you huffed and turned to your side away from Marcos. “Make them shut up! Can't you make them shut up, Marcos?!”

He sighed, defeated as much as an android could be. No, he could not. It went against his programming to disobey his master—any human who made a demand of him. His order was to get the child to sleep, and that had yet to happen.

“Would you like me to read The Falcon and the Hare to you again?” It was your favorite bedtime story right now. Hearing fictional stories involving extinct animals seemed to be of odd fascination to you. “My tone of voice might make it—”

“No!” you fussed, thumping your feet once, twice, three times and going limp again. “Come up here until I fall asleep. Please?”

Marcos nodded. “Yes, little one.”

He had to keep one leg off the bed to even half fit on the mattress. You sat upright to fix the blankets so to cover yourself and part of Marcos’ one bent knee. His arm laid out on the bed, waiting for you to crawl into it until you were nestled into his side, sucking up what small warmth radiated from his fake body. Once you found a comfortable spot, curled up tightly much like a cat sunbathing in a single shaft of daylight, he began smoothing a hand down along your back, heavy enough to be felt through your thick comforter.

You listened to him hum a song that you liked, one that translated well to his chords and the vibrations in his throat.

He hummed. He petted your back. He hummed. He petted your back. He hummed…

“Do you truly hate your mother?” Elio’s voice was delicate just then, aware that you were away in some reverie he tried to gently lure you out of. The dream was over. That one silver glimmer of your childhood became far away, forgotten while the sounds of the city rushed back into the cab.

“Yes—I mean, I dunno.” You actually yawned, pushing one of your eyes with the heel of your hand. “I think I hate her. We've argued my entire life. We've never gotten along. Yeah, I hate her.”

Elio was holding you by the waist now. “Is that why you said what you did?”

“Said what?” You were a little too keen on his thumb swirling around the fat padding your hip bone.

“About Marcos being scrap…”

“Elio, seriously? Do you ever shut up?” It was tempting to put yourself on the opposite side of the seat, but you didn't want to give the cabbie any chance to eyeball him. “I—I don't know. She just gets me so mad. I used to be able to crush up those feelings because Marcos told me it wasn't healthy to act on them. But, then, I moved out, and I realized she was still the same, that she'd always stay the same. I stopped hiding it.”

You were so close to his face that you could see how long his eyelashes were and the shadows they cast on his cheeks.

You looked into his eyes. “I wanted to make her hurt as much as she hurt me.”

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

Midnight had come and gone before you finally gave up on trying to sleep. You spent the better part of an hour staring up at the high ceiling, imagining every rusting pipe you saw as immobile serpents stretched taut to make the interconnecting structure that sprawled across the entire loft. Swirls and shapes and blacker-than-black shadows danced in front of your eyes, twisted with the pipes, and made the usual knocking sounds within them, but nothing ever came for you.

Downstairs was a careful amount of liveliness and aromas as Elio put together his duck à l'orange that he promised you. You scarcely heard a sound from him shuffling about but more from the clanking pans, boiling pots, and unintelligible chatter you knew came from the television.

Maybe he was watching a rerun of Wendy Carmichael Can Cook again, maybe a segment from the news because he liked that equally as much.

And yet, as you made your way to the lower floor, mystified by the fact you were standing on your toes to disguise all sound during your descent, you saw that the television was set to an old crime show he watched with you on occasion.

Detective Georgina Reyes and her android sidekick, Regis (G5), were the undisputed heroes of Helcam City and solved every case that came their way with style, finesse, and plenty of moral and ethical dilemmas. The majority of the show was spent within Georgina's inner world and her near-obsessive lust over Regis, who was owned by the department chief.

Ratings for the show had climbed to an all-time high when Regis had gained a sense of self and the ability to defy his programming. For fewer than six episodes, it was complete bliss for fans of Georgina and Regis, but then the season five finale happened—

“Can't sleep?” Elio asked, effectively putting your heart in your asshole, sending your soul skyward. He must have gauged your sudden gray pallor and bulbous glare because he smiled apologetically from the bottom of the stairway. “I'm sorry. I didn't intend to scare you. Were you watching Regis and Reyes?”

“I—uh, no.” You sighed, taking slow steps to the bottom to ease your heartbeat eating away at your ribs. “I was thinking about the show ending. Have you watched it yet?”

“Of course,” he said. “It was a peculiar way for the story to end. In my opinion, it was incomplete. Very sudden. It's my understanding that there was an issue with how the government was being represented within the show, and a few of the writers were accused of conspiracy to defraud the government and subsequently arrested for it.”

“Seriously?” You scoffed, making it to ground level, and walked around Elio toward the kitchen where all the heavenly smells wrapped around you, enticing you to take a morsel. “It was the forced pregnancy plotline, right? Creepy stuff.”

“Indeed.”

Elio wouldn't let you have any of the duck à l’orange, saying it was meant for your dinner later on in the day, but he did steep you a hot mug of herbal tea (for sleep), the one that turned water pink, and offered to make you a light snack.

He went back to his tasks after you declined, satisfied well enough with the small swigs you took from your white mug. You spent more time sitting at the counter in silence, watching his back, hoping to gain the power to see through his shirt rather than actually taking interest in what he was doing.

Your eyelids fluttered and fell thinking about the car ride home: his arm around you, his thumb rubbing pacifying circles into your hip, how you'd been close enough to his face to believe you felt a breath leave his lips.

“Elio.”

“Yes?”

He had moved on to washing dishes. When he heard you behind him, he took a clean towel to his hands and quickly dried them before facing you. You guessed you probably had a strange expression right now, or at least, looked at him in a way you never had because the towel was cast aside, draped over the faucet, and his eyes flickered across your face.

“Your heart rate and body temperature have increased.” he said, giving into the pull of your hands after grabbing both sides of his face. You backed yourself into the countertop while still holding him, thumbs caressing the rise of his cheeks, bringing him down, down, down toward your face where you certainly felt heat blow across your mouth. “Your breathing has changed. I can hear your heartbeat. Don't be anxious. I won't hurt you.”

You weren't nervous.

You proved it by kissing him, full-bodied, slow, lingering. He gripped the edge of the countertop, bracing his weight against his hands to stifle some aggressive reaction, possibly, and returned the kiss with just as much fervor that you put into it.

His lips were every bit of what you imagined, what you wanted them to be. You had the urge to bite into them a little, to see if they could bleed the same way yours could when you chewed enough on loose skin. Their texture was slightly indented with cracks that gave friction to the moist smear across your mouth.

Although the sounds of the kitchen and ambient hum from the television in the next room stayed as they were, it was like the volume of everything had been set to mute, and only the breathy, wet pops of air and skin made it into your ears. You heard the delicate chatter of teeth inside your head when his mouth roamed the underside of your jaw, down your neck, to the rise of your clavicle, stopping only at where your neckline ended.

His hands had already made home under your clothes, first doing away with your shirt that he tossed over your shoulder onto one of the barstools. Next, he worked on the elastic waistband keeping your sweatpants on your hips. You flinched against his hands when they splayed across your ass, taking all he could in them while his lips continued a downward trajectory, traveling over your breastbone, along the curve of your navel, and then he stopped.

Elio had been on his knees for a while, stirring you so deeply that you had no doubt there'd be damp spots sitting inside your sweatpants, possibly even drying on the inside of your thighs by now. He helped you out of your pants one leg hole at a time while you used his broad shoulders to balance yourself. And soon enough, one of your thighs was hiked up in that same spot, his face hidden from you despite all the work he was doing to well up a hard knot in your abdomen.

You had to take a fistful of his hair and wrap it tight in your fingers, using your other arm to balance against the counter. He wouldn't let you fall, you knew that, but the unsteadiness of your legs grew, trembling violently, turning to lead like being buried under concrete or suctioned by water. He kissed and sucked and stroked you some more, pushing more into the spots that made you moan the loudest and fastest, fingers wandering you busily and lubricated with your own spend.

“Elio—Elio, let's move somewhere, please.” You shuddered out, trying to pull his hair, shove his face off of you. “Please.”

He grunted, surprising you by relinquishing to the pressure, and made his way back up the route he had taken down. “Where do you want to go?” he asked, lips sticking on your throat, rising higher to the protrusion of your chin. “The kitchen floor? The couch? The bed? We could probably manage in the bathtub as well, if that's what you'd enjoy.”

“I don't care.” You were only half-honest and miserable now with the sole focus of trying not to touch yourself to finish. “Just… somewhere, Elio.”

“As you wish.”

Elio hoisted you onto his hips, making sure you knew to squeeze him with your thighs before making his way around the kitchen to turn knobs and shut off the overhead bulbs. The new darkness was refreshing yet did nothing to tame that sweltering sensation between your legs. In fact, you thought you could burst from the anticipation. It was everything you could do not to hump him through his clothes, hands occupied in his tousled hair, lips together with bruising force.

Before long, your back was on couch cushions and the television was off so as to not ruin the moment. You saw dark behind your eyes while you kept them open, unfocused on the ceiling with the serpent pipes because his mouth was already back on you and helping you chase that high.

“You're almost there.” His lips smacked against your engorged skin, making your lashes flutter and eyes roll back. “You look so perfect. When you cum, I'll take my time cleaning you up. I can use my tongue. I can make you cum again—as many times as you'd like.”

His arms held your thighs wide open, giving him all the room he needed for those final, well-placed strokes that turned your moans into utterly drawn-out, lewd things that made you grateful that no one else lived in this side of the building. Your body wrenched against his continued ministrations, his lips and chin and fingers warm and glistening with your traces.

You had thought to worry, briefly, about something getting onto the cushions under your ass, but Elio had already thought it through and used the dish towel from earlier to catch anything awry.

It came in handy for his face.

“How do you feel?” he asked from inside one of your thighs, kissing his way all the way to the point of your knee. “Was it satisfactory?”

You didn't answer right away, especially not when he came forward on his arms to catch your lips, slowing things down so you could bask in that fuzzy, satiated afterglow—dopamine and oxytocin being that remarkable duo doing their damndest to reinforce how exquisite and ineffably breathtaking Elio was to you.

“Would you like a bath?” he asked against your jaw. “You can just lie back and relax. I'll clean you up.”

“No.” Spurred by newfound bravery, you trailed your fingertips between both bodies, first to loosen the tie on his sleep pants, plucking the strings hard so he felt it. Next thing, your hands slipped under his shirt. “I want you to actually fuck me. Put your cock in me.”

Elio jolted upright, using the tall back of the couch and armrest near your head to hold his body above you. Cold air seeped in all the places where he had been, dotting your skin in gooseflesh, hairs within those follicles standing on end. You were laid out below him, showing all your unobscured nudity and vulnerability, withering yourself just a little smaller under the intensity of his stare.

This was different from the grocery store, where he had needed a moment to amend for information he did not have. This was something else—flickers of conflict, struggle, restraint, and excitement were ablaze in his eyes, which shifted around within their sockets, giving you glimpses of pure gleaming white, which stood out in the inky dark all around.

“I—are you certain that's what you want?” he spoke at last, doing little to alleviate the way you felt he had seen your insides and bones. “It is late, I know you must be tired.”

“Are you…” You couldn't really explain the uneasiness gnawing at your gut, nor the thrill of wanting him inside of you regardless. Maybe he could fuck the feeling out of you, bring peace to your throbbing heartbeat and blood gushing to your head. “Elio, are you telling me no?”

“I cannot do such a thing.” he said right away, coming down from his high place to lay the weight of himself across you.

You felt his skin flush to your chest without a thin shirt to hide his shape and muscle that wasn't real, but this was so much more than touching every dissected mannequin in physiology class in school. They couldn't kiss your neck while the interwoven, complex network underneath stretched, elastic flesh contracted and relaxed against your palms.

“Would you believe me if I told you there are certain functions—programming—that I cannot override?” The waistband of his pants collected in a heap of fabric around his knees, freeing room for his cock in the open air. “I won't be able to let you go until I'm finished. I want you to understand that.”

That sounded hot, and you were tired of him stalling, so you told him you understood. “Very well.” He kissed you, guiding one of your hands low to his core where you could revel in the size of him.

He was hard in your grip with a good girth and length to him, a curve you'd come to recognize from toys collected over the past decade to hit the right spots. The skin over his cock was much a part of him as the rest on his body, hot, growing damp, and sticky the nearer you wandered to the head.

You had watched old pornography with Melby and the group a few times before from the days when it was just humans performing acts on each other. No one really liked it because it was so dramatized; everyone agreed that one of the actors needed to be an android for it to actually be sexy. You never told them that the moaning men with stuttering hips as they ejaculated was something you did like.

Elio leaned into your palm, the thumbprint starting to prune as you rubbed his tip. More warmth seeped out from it, wet and thick and perplexing and exhilarating because Hyperion made him so perfect, a better being than just an emulation of man.

His cock slid through your hand in short, quick bursts that eventually lubricated his entire shaft. He'd kept himself busy on your lips, tongue in your mouth, swiveling together the taste of you with saliva. It was the most inelegant he had been with you so far, yet you didn't think you'd be bothered if he did this more often.

“Fuck me.” You whined, finally apart from him. The swollen head of his cock made a moist path along your core where you massaged it against every sensitive spot that set your senses into a blazing frenzy. “Be as rough as you want. Hurt me a little.”

He finally took your hand away, rearranging your legs so one laid across the back of the couch, the other on his hip with a knee shoved under your ass for height.

“I will not hurt you.” Both your wrists were cuffed by his large hands, pinned down into the cushions by your head. “But, I cannot let you go. You must see it through until the end.”

“Fuck. Me.” you said forcefully, uncomprehending to the things he was telling you, uncaring what it all meant.

“Yes. Alright.”

Elio obeyed you as he was supposed to, cock sinking in with care, thrusts starting out shallow until the tip was withdrawn and then back inside again. The angle he had created for you made it easier to take his length. It took a little more time to acclimate to his girth and plenty of gentle encouragement from his voice landing right next to your ear, telling you to relax. It would improve in a few minutes, and he wouldn't let you go to sleep dissatisfied.

Indeed, minutes later, you were well beyond the worst of it and filling the void all around you with harsh, rapturous moans, which Elio enjoyed hearing. His lips lingered at your throat where most of your sounds resonated, fists still holding firm around your wrists, knuckles the same color as the rest of the dark but had actually bled pale.

The springs within the couch cried out, unused to this weight and ruthlessness, while the air stung with cracks of slapping skin timed with your moans. Elio didn't let you move from where he had you laid out, didn't let up on the speed and depth he reached despite how labored your breaths became, broken words eclipsed by panting and his tongue forcing them back down your throat where they stayed in submission.

It was still cold in the early mornings this spring, often leaving your apartment a little less comfortable than you'd like, but right now, you could've been convinced that he was fucking you on the ground in the flatlands and believed it. Your skin was slick with sweat, the mess between your bodies slippery and undoubtedly staining the couch underneath.

Just then, the weight on your wrists climbed higher to your hands. He threaded your fingers together at the same time his thrusts began to slow, hips rolling yours like a swaying ship amid languid seas.

The whole time he had been on top of you, edging you closer to another orgasm, he had hardly made a noise apart from whispering in your ear when you'd clench his cock too tight. Now, he was failing to keep quiet from your neck, trembling and grunting on your skin until, at last, one jarring thrust left him breathing out in relief.

He got you to your end shortly after, half-hard cock still throbbing and warm inside you, giving just enough of what you needed while his hand finished the rest with fast strokes. You winced. He didn't let off until your jaw hung slack, whimpering meagerly through the pleasure hampering thoughts and sensations other than pressure releasing from your groin, spend turning a patch of your couch dark.

“You did well.” Once he was soft, he tied his pants back around his waist and picked up the sodden dish towel to begin cleaning around your sorest areas. “Come with me. I'll start you a hot bath and make you a new cup of tea before bed.”

You didn't want to get up from that spot, declared yourself rooted there unless Elio helped you up, and thrust a hand high into the dark room.

He wore a princely smile, you assumed, as he leaned down to pick you up in his arms instead. Moved by such a gesture, you reached for his face with your angry wrists and hands to kiss him all the way to the bathroom.

None of this made it into your next report.

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Melby didn't like Elio.

This she had told you over text after you declined her incoming phone call so as to not arouse Researcher Kim’s ire in finding out you were completely distracted during his exorbitantly detailed analysis of your latest reports. Two had been sent in before midnight last Sunday, as usual, since he was rarely satisfied with what you revealed through them these days.

Less than an hour later, while cozied up in bed on your side, facing the chopping blades of an oscillating fan, just beginning to feel yourself teeter off that edge from dull, relaxed awareness into light sleep, your ringtone went off—it was Kim.

“What else have you committed to doing lately in terms of Elio's social advancement? The last thing I have here…” A refreshing, fast pause followed, accented by the sound of paper softly swishing as it was parsed. “He was brought to a movie theater on the twenty-fourth, Diosyn Park on the twenty-ninth, Henrietta's four times in the last week. That's not nearly enough. Who are you socializing him with? What have their reactions been? How has he reacted to them? You're not writing down exact times.”

Not once since you'd joined the video conference forty minutes ago did he check to see if you were listening to him, content with his nose being shoved down into a bundle of chemically smelling papers and glowing screens to corroborate previous work he had on file.

That made it easier for you to text back Melby, arguing with her in endless paragraphs too tiring for your thumbs to continuously scroll through that you didn't have time to meet up at Clamors for drinks with everyone.

“Should I tell Chima you hate us?” texted Melby.

Truthfully, you couldn't tell if it was meant as a threat or if she was just pettish after being refused. One of her worst qualities, never spoken aloud to her face lest she fumbled and blubbered all the way to Chima to snitch about it, was being horridly uncompromising to just about everything.

It made you anxious enough that your fingers started to ache with an urge, on the path toward curling back slithers of cuticle, gathering blood under the nails, itchy scabs that Elio constantly covered with neon bandaids so you wouldn't touch them.

Eventually, you found a new fixation with the seams of your knuckles and fitted the most unrefined part of your nails into them, digging up red that way until he had to cover those, too.

It took you ten minutes with fidgety thumbs to reply. “I don't hate anyone. You know me.”

Melby's was instantaneous. “What about me? Do you hate me now?”

Another one. “Now that you have that android?”

More. “We used to spend so much time together.”

Last one for good measure to effectively drill a gory black hole straight into your pounding, cowardly heart. In her eyes, anyway. “I haven't seen you in months!”

“He needs more direct interaction. I've decided that I'll make amends to the template you've been using up until now.” Researcher Kim was saying, not seeing you, not hearing you, assuming your loyalty to him and his cause was complete.

Ripples of drowsiness overcame you so powerfully that you left Melby on read, mind suddenly a vast, empty space and quiet for the first moment all day. Your hands rose to cradle your cheeks, propping your head above your elbows on the countertop because Kim's inflated droning had come to have that effect on you over time.

A human man with a face that nice shouldn't be allowed to talk so much. He should go back to moaning on couches in front of cameras and sweltering lights.

“Let me explain what I'm currently changing.” he said, hopelessly invested in whatever those alterations were just by the mechanical click-clack of fingertips soaring over a keyboard somewhere low and out of sight of his screen. “From here on out, I'm going to require that you gather between six to ten direct interactions. I want full disclosure of every conversation, transcribed or recorded. From my standpoint, recording would be the most effective method so I may make interpretations myself.”

You were thinking of what to ask Elio to make you for lunch. It was almost noon. You unmuted the call. “Am I allowed to just randomly record people talking like that? That seems…”

“Hyperion works closely with Retro City’s governing bodies, and by extension, so do you.” Kim kept typing as he spoke. “It isn't illegal because the information you're collecting is imperative to the Hyperion Project. Without it, we face the risk of progress slowing or diminishing. That cannot happen, and I cannot emphasize enough that your work as an auditor must come before other commitments.”

At long last, he pulled his face out of papers and other screens to look at yours. In a fashion unsuitable for him, he sighed in a fatigued way, back collapsing against his ergonomic chair, shoulders lopsided with how he perched his elbows on the armrests.

“Retro City has over three million inhabitants. You won't have any issues finding people for Elio to speak to.” he told you. “Six to ten for each report. That’s all.”

You were already back in your messages, backtracking your previous responses to Melby, asking her what time everyone was meeting at Clamors.

Right away, “Come at nine!”

And then, “I'll save you a seat.”

Finally, “Don't eat too much before getting here. It'll ruin the fun.”

“Fine.” Phone now face down on the counter, you returned Researcher Kim’s concentrated stare. “I'll do my best. Six to ten. Six to ten…”

That had done well to appease him, demonstrated through a satisfied smile, which pulled his lips just enough that the muscles in his right cheek twitched as though the motion was foreign to him. With how inexpressive he was most of the time, you weren't surprised, thinking it more humorous than anything else.

You struggled to find a smile of your own that wasn't strained, though.

“That reminds me—” He positioned himself forward, arms on his polished dark-red desk with a curious gleam in his black eyes. “None of your reports have instances of copulation mentioned. Have there been complications?”

You sat stiffly, not agape but definitely not composed, either. “Sorry? What was that?”

“Intercourse. Sex.” He simplified it for you, almost with a pitying crease forming between his brows. “You've completed every other area outlined in the template except that one. I have… refrained from questioning you until now because I do understand that, outside of a clinical setting, it can be construed as inappropriate to discuss.”

The only person you had divulged any details to was Melby. Even that had been brief and inexplicit because she had immediately changed the topic to something one of the kids Chima invited into the group had done that pissed her off.

“Why do you need to know?” It was a defensive question. “Is that something I really need to write about? It's sex. It's just sex.”

Researcher Kim made an indistinguishable sound behind steepled fingers. They hid away whatever shape his mouth was in at that moment, making the whole conversation terribly uncomfortable. It was odd how exposed you felt like his stare was reaching long, further than just the screen in front of him. He wasn't looking into you or through you but rather right at you—imagining you some other way, unclothing your body with drifting eyes and invisible hands.

You were equal parts embarrassed and repulsed by that line of thinking, allowing your mind to summon up his ghost hands to search you, feel you under all your layers, know you as intimately as Elio had as though part of some extension of himself.

“It is all outlined in the contract you signed.” Kim said, now with an edge that made you flinch on the barstool. “Androids are developed for convenience and pleasure. I have reports for one, not the other. If Elio, as the first of G7, is not performing exceptionally—if there are complications, if he is defective—that is something you must include within your reports. I don't suspect that to be the case, in this situation.”

His eyes suddenly caught onto something else, going beyond you, but you chose not to react by looking. “Your work as an auditor has been sufficient so far, but incomplete reports at this critical stage in Elio's testing are grounds for me to terminate your contract.”

You clenched your jaw until your teeth throbbed, your head going up and down like it was on a hinge attached to your neck.

“Personally, that's a hassle I'd rather not involve myself in.” Kim confessed in a straighter posture, smiling tensely. “Now, I'll ask you again: Have there been any complications with inter—”

“That's enough.” Elio reached across your shoulder for the tablet, pointer finger hovering over a red button on the screen. “Researcher Kim, it's time for lunch. Goodbye.”

He pushed the button, managing to catch a swift change in Kim's expression before the screen went black and reflected your shock back at you instead.

You watched him slide the tablet away to the opposite end of the counter space, unable to lift yourself out of this bizarre stupor just from how purely surreal what just happened was. And from the look of it, Researcher Kim hadn't anticipated that Elio was capable of doing something like that, either.

You just hoped it wouldn't cost you your contract.

“What have you been doing all this time?” you asked, tilting your head back to welcome his lips gliding atop yours, a peck, at first, which gradually grew deeper and greedier. With some effort, you pulled back. “Mm, c'mon, what were you doing?”

“On Wendy Carmichael Can Cook today, she said—”

A hiss of annoyance. “Oh, of course…”

“She said there was a list of excellent bistros around Retro City worth trying.” He wasn't pleading with you or anything, but he seemed just about as dedicated to this idea as he had been with the duck à l’orange a while back. “For lunch, I thought it'd be of interest to you to visit one. I've been researching ones I thought you would like based off of your dietary habits, allergies, and sensitivities. Radiant Bistro next to the Leviathan Archway near downtown might be a good option. Impressively diverse menu.”

You pretended to pinch lint off of his shirt and inspect it up close. “If you didn't want to cook, you could've just said that.”

“That's not it,” he assured you with a kiss to the back of your hand so that you understood he meant it. “Since my arrival here, your social presence has declined substantially, which will not fare well for your public profile. I do understand that it’s in relation to your work as an auditor, but—”

“Okay! Okay, I get it.” you said agreeably, hands raised, hoping it'd deflect anything else. “We’ll go. Let me just find a hat so the sun won't get on my face.”

“No problem.” He walked away and came back with an old unbranded brown one from somewhere in the most remote crevice of the apartment. “Will this suffice?”

You looked at it, amazed. “Yeah. Yup. Let's go.”

Elio had stopped carrying a coat with him once the evenings grew long, and the remnants of heat from the day floated into nighttime, trapping the city within a muggy gray haze that too closely resembled dewy fog in early spring. The difference was the heaviness and breathability of the air—one you could tolerate despite allergies; the other was deplorable and evoked memories of every single club you had drunk and danced in with Melby and Chima and the rest in the past years.

Outside, right now, sucking in the early-afternoon heat into your lungs after spending your morning in air conditioning, nose wrapped in earthy white wisps rising from a coffee mug, you wanted to turn back around and hide. Much to your dismay, Elio kept you on a short leash with a tight grip on your hand, probably expecting you to have a change of heart.

“Would you like for me to recall the menu and read it aloud to you?” he offered, situating his hand so his fingers crossed through yours, palms flush together. “They have fourteen types of sandwiches—hot and cold. Five of those are chicken, and five are of different meat varieties: lamb, cow, veal, goat, and yak, all claimed to be bred and raised and slaughtered in their warehouses. The last four sandwiches are…”

You listened passively without much commitment, especially in the back of the cab where there was no escape from anything. The AC was broken. The cabbie kept wiping sweat off his brow and sipped warm water. With the windows down, the outside air ripped inside the vehicle, nearly stealing the old hat off your head.

Elio went on to list desserts, thumb gently rolling circles on your sticky skin as if meant to keep you soothed.

“As long as I remember to eat light…” you murmured, remembering, glumly to yourself.

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Clamors was inside a three-story building on the north end of Retro City, about a ten-minute taxi ride to Mother’s brick-stone house, thirty minutes from Henrietta’s, forty minutes from your apartment, and farthest removed from the slums where congregations of profile delinquents and the unwanted were most dense.

Here in this part of the city, you were an imposter among manicured foliage, men and women and androids arrayed in trendy designer silhouettes that were protruding, sharp, and agonizing; sharks and whales of big business puffed cigars in front panoramic views of the cityscape from the highest skyscrapers. They could look down at the street from their window and see you, an ant scuttling meaninglessly.

This wasn't a place where you belonged, a feeling that never changed over time, even years later after Chima recruited you into his group and every night was a suffocating blur of sweaty, faceless bodies, explosive music, stomping feet, raspy screams, and lightly-flavored chalk dissolving under your tongue. You roamed the sidewalks at two in the morning as everyone had been kicked out, but no one cared because Chima came from money, a rare case where two parents could be accounted for, and you'd all just be back inside the next evening.

You weren't sure when you had become disillusioned with it all—the drinks, the animal pills, which coalesced into saliva in your mouth, the noises, the gossip, the six ibuprofen to function behind a desk at work, the burnout of rinse and repeat, a conveyor belt that moved cyclically without a place to get off. To exit the ride meant to plunge head-first into abject terror, the unknowable, to become part of the yellow wallpaper that's never actually seen, to cease to be.

Being back in Clamors again after months away turned your heart against you, thrust the sound of its distress into your ears, dwarfing an animated conversation happening right at your circular table. You felt the music vibrate through your skin, make its way into your marrow, and rattle your entire skeleton.

Melby had a hand on your knee, blunt-tipped nails collecting sweat off your skin underneath them.

You couldn't really focus on that.

“So, this is Elio. He's hot.” Chima said without looking at you.

“Really hot!”

“So hot!”

“Did you hear? Shut up, stop talking! Did you hear? That slut got herself pregnant!” shouted Niva, a senior-most part of the circle behind you and Melby. She knew everything about everyone, though she wasn't supposed to keep tabs. “Apparently her baby daddy decided the pussy wasn't worth it anymore and ran!”

“I can't believe it. That'd mean someone was actually willing to sleep with her.” said Niquan Lamos, the fashionable one always gravitating toward pastels. “A man, at that. Disgusting.”

Everyone laughed, including you. Elio quietly observed it all, seated at your side, incapable of letting his polite smile slip with numerous prowling eyes on him.

“Have you fucked him yet?” Chima asked you without actually caring for a response.

“Oh, have you fucked him?”

“C'mon, don't hide it. How was it?”

“What was her name?” asked a newcomer in the group, fresh out of secondary school and not even twenty. He was a compact lad, both in size and from being squeezed between Chima and Niquan in the circular booth stretched in fuchsia leather, or at least, that's how it looked in your table’s corner of the club. “How come she isn't here anymore?”

First rule was: Never talk about things that could make the liquor go down harder. This was one of those things. Secondly, never ask questions about people who the group was no longer associated with. It just sounded ugly to acknowledge the rejects.

Tonight, however, was an exception because Elio's presence was an exciting change. They forgot how to behave.

“Hm, now that you mention it, I don't remember. How long has it been?” Chima said this absently, abysmally black eyes wholly captivated by the android. “Damn. Something like Mi-dan? Mi-an? Mi… Mi…”

“Her name was Mi-sun.” said a nobody from somewhere at the round table. It probably would've been easy to figure out who was talking if they were more important, but it took less effort to blame the music reverberating from the speakers mounted on the wall near their heads.

Melby’s hand traveled adventurously along your thigh, unmindful of how close she came to your crotch. You had a harder time ignoring that move and sipped busily from your jungle bird, holding it higher than your eyeline to admire its beautiful vermilion hue practically glowing against the strobe lights pulsing down from the ceiling.

“This is the first time I've seen you drink.” Elio was leaned into you, wise to the fact that you wouldn't hear him any other way. His lips nearly touched your ear, voice honeyed, caring, all for you. You were halfway through your second jungle bird. “Please don't overdo it. The adverse effects of overconsumption of alcohol will cause you great discomfort tom—”

“Thank you, Elio.” For just a moment, you wondered how irreversibly damaging it would be to just grab his hand and sprint out of there. You drank some more to weaken your resolve, add lead into your legs. “I'll be good if you be good.”

Elio nodded appreciatively.

“Why was Mi-sun kicked out?” again asked the new face from before, plain and boyish-looking, Chima's fresh catch. They just kept getting younger and the alcohol just kept tasting worse. You forced it all down, anyway. “Well? Well? Well?”

“She was talking crazy shit,” Melby piped up with a drawl, fingernail swirling around a dark purple bruise on your thigh. She pushed in hard enough to remind you that it was still sore. “Like, she was fine one week and then every single night after that she would nooooot shut up about some wild government conspiracy theories.”

“Oh, right.” Chima laughed while forcing everybody out of their seats so he could stand. “I remember now. Yeah, she went completely insane. I think she was talking about androids being used for population control or something. Weird. Hey, let's dance.”

“That was a year ago?” Niva wanted Chima to confirm. “A year, right?”

“Over a year now. Who cares?” Melby said, staying put beside you while the rest of the booth vacated. “She’ll just end up dead in the slums like all the rest. Uh, they do all die, right?”

“Who cares?” Chima echoed, nesting his shoulders high to his ears in a shrug before walking away. “Who has the animal crackers?”

“Sounds about right.” Niva was unconvinced, doubt lingering in her words until Chima came around to rummage her purse for pills. “Oh! Only take one, they're so expensive!”

Chima stuck three in his mouth. “Don’t kill the vibe.” He left without a glance back toward all the no-face, nameless nobodies willing to lick the underside of his shoes if it meant they'd be acknowledged and given features—eyes, lips, hair, an identity.

Niquan was satisfied with just one, offering a subtle wash of relief to Niva, who was just about depleted of her supply at that point and used the last of it for herself, tongue lapping at the inside of her plastic envelope.

You were almost finished with your jungle bird, contemplating a third even though you had entered the territory where one more could mean the difference between a happy buzz and splintering headaches tomorrow, just as Elio warned. The ice cubes had melted into a smooth watercolor appearance and turned from red to blue to green to purple to pink as the lights gushed down from above.

“I don't remember what she looks like.” you admitted to Melby who gazed into you, squeezing your thigh meaningfully. Again, you didn't pay attention. “Mi-sun, I mean. Were we friends? Did I ever drink with her? Have I ever slept over at her house?”

“No!” Melby snapped, affronted. “You're mistaking her for me. You guys never even had a conversation. You hated her guts. You thought she was a freak.”

You made a sound into the last of your drink, unsure whether she was lying to you or not. “Maybe. Maybe. Was I okay with her being kicked out?”

“Totally.” she said, casting a fleeting look of disdain toward Elio, lip curling at one side. “Chima only counted yours and mine and Niva’s votes since we've been here the longest.”

“That's…” You licked your lips and then the rim of your glass, secretly wishing your tongue would snag an uneven crack so you’d start to bleed. “Why don't I remember anything?”

Melby giggled. “Because you've been drinking, babe. It'll come back to you. What animal cracker do you want tonight? Giraffe or cat?”

“Hm?” You were elsewhere.

Until now, you had gone numb to your surroundings thanks to the licorice notes of black strap rum and bitter Campari and pucker of pineapple juice that made for a mostly pleasant experience in your throat.

You were present in that moment, venturing a look around at the dance floor crammed with bodies (human and android) moving in rhythm to the music, in time with each other to create a oneness, a synchronism so strange that it put the hairs on the back of the neck on end like spines.

Why did it all look so different now? So alien? As if you were seeing an image from your nightmares in real life.

Elio failed to convince you not to have another drink brought to the table after all, meanwhile Melby said she was disappointed you didn't get something stronger, claiming you used to do it all the time.

That's right. You did, didn't you?

“Hey.” Chima had emerged from the shapeless cluster of sweating, drunk, wriggling bodies a short while later. He reached into the booth, gathering a fistful of Elio's button-up shirt, and looked at you with a malicious gleam, possibly just your imagination, that just dared you to protest. “I know you don't mind if I borrow him for a while, right? Of course not. The rest of us are curious about him. We’ll be gentle.”

You would’ve believed someone if they said your tongue was cut out, because as much as you wanted to slice into him and spit poison in his wounds with your words, rub it raw, deep into the bone, nothing came up.

Not a breath nor a feeble sob.

Don't touch him. Nothing.

“So, you're chill with it?” Chima, beautiful Chima with deep-dark skin sparkling in rhinestones and spray-on glitter as though he were a vessel for all the stars in the cosmos, bared his straight, white teeth at you in the form of an affable grin.

Eat shit. Bitter silence.

He asked you the same thing again but grew bored and gave up on expecting you to do anything interesting. Elio was led away by the front of his shirt to the amalgamation of bodies like a sacrifice for the great black maw belonging to an abomination.

A few broke away from the core. Niva and Niquan were identifiable since you'd known them longer. The rest were unfamiliar to you—the no names and the tiny young man, the android bartender, the disc jockey, the bodies climbing over each other and melting back into a single incoherent mass.

They all looked exactly the same.

“I wanna dance too, let's go!” Melby struggled with one of your arms while attempting to scoot her way out of the booth, but the alcohol and broodiness made your body into a stump, sturdy and immobile, roots bursting through the bottoms of your shoes and the shiny floor.

She plopped back down. “Seriously? What's up with you?”

“It's too hot,” you reasoned, sticking a fingernail into the fresh glass in front of you, swishing the liquid around to make everything a more palatable blend. “If you want to dance, I'm not stopping you.”

“You're acting so weird.” Melby said, lost somewhere between frustration and astonishment while pulling a clear baggy from her pants pocket. A couple small pills moved inside, pink residue clouding the plastic. She plucked out one without looking. “Hey, open up. You're being a huge snoozefest. This'll loosen you up.”

When you felt her acrylic fingernails press against the corner of your lips, you gently pushed her hand back and nursed your drink some more. “No thanks.”

Melby’s tongue lashed against her gums, sharp and disapproving. “Why are you being such a fucking buzzkill tonight?” She traced your line of sight to Elio, to the others grabbing and fondling him, to his eyes looking right back at you. “We haven't seen each other in months. Now all you do is stare at that android.”

“It's my job, Melby.” You took the damp paper napkin from under your drink to dab your forehead at the sweat, trying to cool yourself. “I can't help that.”

“You can take one night away from your job.” she decided, taking hold of your lower mandible with a claw and crammed the chalky pink pill through lips and teeth into the pocket underneath your tongue. “You know the drill. Let it dissolve all the way. Stop making faces! It doesn't taste that bad.”

You tried to jerk your head away, but her grip was surprisingly solid.

“Melby! What the hell?!” It came out garbled around her fingers still resting in your mouth, filling the reservoir below your tongue with saliva.

Melby, blue-eyed and blonde with pale pink skin that always reddened in the electrifying, hot air in the club, was completely flushed from her face down to her chest. Her eyes had darkened upon withdrawing her two fingers, glossing your lips with spittle.

“I missed you.” she said, outlining the shape of your mouth until the skin started to tingle. “Did you miss me? I've been really lonely.”

Your least favorite part of taking an animal cracker was the aftertaste that was the equivalent of eating sidewalk chalk and rubbing alcohol with a whisper of strawberry wafting up into your nostrils, clinging to every permeable membrane in your mouth and making your cheeks tremble.

“I—yeah. Yeah, I missed you.” You tried to sink the lingering taste down your throat with a swish and swallow from the jungle bird. “I didn't know what I was getting into with this whole Hyperion gig. I feel like I'm constantly watching Elio. Twenty-four seven.”

Elio never lost track of you throughout the ordeal, his being unable to escape the hands on his body and fight against the programming in his brain meant exclusively for human satisfaction. There were moments where you saw each other clearly, empty windows between writhing bodies, and you were convinced he tried to convey a very human-like discomfort that you immediately pretended like you hadn't seen.

Interfering meant going against the group. There was nothing you could do about it except allow them to eviscerate Elio if that's what they wanted. You could only sit there, drowning in rum and pineapple and aperitif and demerara sugar and scorching strobe lights and music bashing your skull and Melby unfastening buttons on your pants, but for some reason, that didn't quite register as what it was to you.

“Are you coming home with me tonight?” Melby asked so sweetly that it made your heart flutter, or maybe that was the pill taking effect. “We always have fun together. I've really missed it. It isn't the same without you.”

“What—” You almost tipped the red cocktail while reaching over it for a water glass that no one had touched. You slugged half in one go. “Wait. What are you even saying? I gotta take care of Elio.”

“Oh my god,” she seethed, taking her hand out of your pants to wipe her fingers on the napkin you used earlier. “Just tell him to leave. He has to listen to you. He’ll be okay.”

Fuzz had started to collect in your head, filling the entire dome with a warm, soft feeling that spread like a rapidly-growing fungus down the brainstem, coiled around your spine, stuffed your jaws with cotton, sucked all the moisture from your throat, widened your chest with stuff, and ignited kindling that had been sitting in the bottom of your stomach.

Just now, the deafening tone of music had been reduced to a throbbing bass that jarred your bones and pulsed in your hands and feet. Your vision wasn't much different than it had been before, only now you seemed to move at lightning speed, people and shapes and lights all confused watercolor smears of you shifted too quickly.

“Can't.” You recalled Melby had said something. “Elio, first. Do you see him?”

“No.” she said, watching Chima hook his fingers through the belt loops on Elio’s pants, knocking their pelvises together in time with the music. “Come on, I'll call a cab and we can go home. We’ll have a good time away from everyone.”

You made a grab for the water glass again, throat the driest it had ever been. A mistimed gasp came out when the rim of the glass struck your teeth, missing your mouth almost completely. Luckily, only a little water got on your shirt, molding it to your chest like a cold second skin.

“God, that's good,” you moaned, draining the rest of it. “What are you even talking about? A good time?”

She eyed you uneasily. “What do you mean? What do you remember when you're with me?”

“Pfft,” you scoffed, stealing yet another water glass you managed to grapple with two hands so it'd stop swaying. “What do you mean, what do I mean? I hit the pillow and I'm out. Why?”

After a few long swigs of ice water, the dance floor was less a mangled disarray of smoke and neon colors, more definitive and jagged—the stage, the speakers, the turntable where the disc jockey played. Even the beastly blob of grinding, convulsing people started looking like people.

Melby had lost all the red in her face, eyes riveted to the half-empty jungle juice in front of you, perhaps counting the beads of condensation dripping from its tall form.

“You're usually really talkative. I think you're lying to me right now to get out of it.”

“Huh?” You were done with the second water, staring at her unfocused but suspicious. “Lying about what?”

“I—” Melby withered in her seat, distracted by something ahead that you couldn't see, a bejeweled nail wedged between her teeth. “No, nothing. Never mind.”

“Whatever,” you murmured. “I'm outta here.”

Melby didn't stop you from leaving behind money for your drinks before you stumbled away from the booth toward the dancefloor, evading bodies that came flying toward you with erratic, jerky movements not at all matching the pounding beat coming from the stage.

The floor was actually hundreds of individually tinted blocks of plexiglass with colored bulbs screwed in underneath.

During the day, Clamors kept it covered with a special protectant and tarp to maintain the integrity of the glass, but at night, it was illuminated like a nonsensical rainbow checkerboard. Each square took on a life of its own, flickering in unison with songs played throughout the night, warping into mandalas and spirals and disorienting waves that most people using animal crackers couldn’t stomach for long.

You were close to vomiting up the jungle birds and your meager lunch from Radiant Bistro that afternoon when you found Elio within the swarm of partiers that reeked of sour body odor and stale alcohol.

He stood amid it all with a stiff spine, the loveliness of his face covered by shadows and terrible bursts of light that heightened his vacuous stare into the faces of those touching him.

The only other time you had seen him so devoid of life was in the presence of Researcher Kim. Now, he looked in such a way at Chima, at Niva, at Niquan—the nameless and the boy were too scared of overstepping to have a part in it yet straggled nearby to feel like they meant something.

Elio saw you jostling through the crowd toward him, hardened amber regaining luminosity. You became the center of his world again with just a look, yet your world was entirely unthawed ice and serrated stalactites growing ever sharper, heavier, closer to piercing and crushing at a single point below them. The forest of brittle minerals in your mind needed just a single resounding event to loosen, to fall, to impale indiscriminately.

That moment finally happened as you approached Chima, his hand stroking Elio under every layer meant to keep him out. Your future was a far-off thing, light years away and completely untouchable, no matter how many times you were threatened with your profile, how you'd become nothing without your associations, how the entire world would cringe in disgust at your existence and leave you to rot.

You took Chima's hand out of Elio’s pants, hoping you had the strength in yours to twist his wrist so it hurt, wanting nothing more than to actually shatter the bone with just the pure hatred surging down into your grip. With the other hand, you drew it high behind your shoulder, muscles tense, bone popping from an unnatural angle, dense club air gushing between your fingers right before your palm released a thunderous crack against his cheek that shot up the length of your arm in stinging ripples.

“No, stop!” Elio tore you away too late, right after weakness reentered your body, and he was able to easily restrain you. “What have you done?”

The clique had rallied around Chima, steadied him and examined the mark on his cheek, which was already blowing up in size.

He stared at you with amazement that quickly contorted into pure incandescence. His face was the ugliest thing you had ever seen, eyes an uninviting, pitless, and hollow place. This, you thought, was what he truly looked like beneath the popularity, cosmetics, money, and illusion of drugs.

“Keep your hands to yourself!” you screamed.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” He tried to lunge at you but was held back by Niva, Niquan, and various ghostly hands. “How dare you. How dare you touch me, you sad sack of shit! You ungrateful nobody! I can ruin you! I can make sure you get thrown into the slums and your fucking insides get ate out by all those filthy savages.”

“That's better than this.” You felt Elio tighten his arms around you, feet shuffling backward to try to separate you from this. Dancers were beginning to gather around the scene, both grossly fascinated and terrified because they'd never seen a fight between humans. “It's better than the stupid drugs. It's better than this club. It's better than all your shitty little followers. It’s better than you.”

To this, Chima stared wide-eyed and gave a derisive laugh. “You seriously hit me because I was touching the android? He's a fucking machine! What else is he useful for?!”

You were still being coaxed out of the gathering, Elio's lips whispering pacifying words into your ear that you didn't hear.

“Don't—Don’t talk about him like that.”

Chima’s visage relaxed into one you were used to seeing. A man who knew he had all the time and power in the world and that he could do anything with it. He swatted away all the helping hands and straightened his clothes.

“Not only are you fucking insane,” he said, smiling without remorse. “Now, you're also dead.”

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The decision to retch into a convenience store trash can happened because you couldn't bring yourself to do it in the neatly barbered bush you had been closer to at the time. You had separated the metal lid from the metal body so you could simply lean over and spew into it freely.

Smells emanating from inside—expedited food rottage from summer heat, curdled drinks, bagged-up dog shit, and God knows what else—did better to evacuate your stomach than the insane lighted floor in Clamors.

Most of what came up lacked the usual sourness, ran watery like a geyser of diluted red jungle bird with occasional chunks of undigested sandwich and probably everything from three days ago.

Elio wiped your face clean at every chance he got, those seldom moments where you could cough and catch your breath for just a few seconds before your stomach clenched and more climbed up your esophagus and exited your body. There wasn't much he could do apart from dab your skin and keep your clothes from the trajectory.

“Why?” Elio spoke sometime later once the waves of nausea had tapered to a degree where you could sit on a bench outside the convenience store and take a bottle of water he had ready for you. “Why did you do it?”

“Because—” you said, not bothering to finish after swigging and swishing and spitting the acrid taste that lingered on your tongue, between your teeth, and in the ridges of your gums. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn't get rid of it all. It stuck in your mouth like bitter tar. “Because.”

You went on to repeat the rinse and swish a few more times, ultimately tilting the bottle upside down to crush the cheap plastic in your fist so it gushed down on your head.

For a second, you imagined turning on a spigot to shock your scalp with cold water, flattening all your hair, pasting your clothes flush and translucent to your body like a second skin to peel away later.

The humid nighttime air was suddenly so much less oppressive than it had been. A subtle breeze had picked up throughout the course of the day, not doing much to tame the heat overall, but the fat pearls of water streaming down your back made you shiver. You counted all the drops that coalesced into shimmering beads on the tips of your hair, your eyelashes, and your nose and fell onto the pale gray cement underfoot.

Elio had already unbuttoned his shirt to the navel, just above where he had rebuckled his pants and tried to pull the rest of the fabric free.

“Oh, Elio. Don't.”

He pulled you into him despite your protest, swathing you from behind first with the shirt and then his arms as he held you against his chest. Fortunately, he had worn an airy undershirt so his body wasn't on display for anyone else, though there was no one around at this hour.

He soothed you with long strokes along your back. His touch amplified to a point where it hurt as much as it felt good. You knew what fingers he used more pressure with, where the heel of his hand touched you next. You could feel where he chose to linger and knead at knots under your skin, imagining the sensation similar to using a sharpened stone or ice pick

“I'm fucked.” you mumbled sullenly in his embrace, warmth dissipated as you had soaked his undershirt all the way through. “I'm so fucked.”

“It was unwise, yes,” he said in silken tones from atop your head, thin jaw pushed down into your wet hair, grinding and rotating when he'd speak. “I had you in my mind the entire time. I was prepared to let him do as he pleased if it meant preventing a confrontation—I failed. But, I hadn't expected you to hit him. None of the outcomes I calculated had that conclusion. I'm sorry.”

“No. I'm glad I did it.” You worried that you were being overconfident, too hopeful toward a future unraveling at your feet as you spoke. “I couldn’t stand how everyone was staring at you—touching you. Everything just felt so wrong, but, why? The only thing that was different was you being there, Elio. I saw you—you looked so uncomfortable. I was so hot. I think I was seeing things after taking the animal cracker. I just got so angry.”

Usually, Elio was the type to scavenge your history as thoroughly as he could, however minimal or inconsequential it all seemed to you at the time. It was a quintessential part of his programming as an android—of all androids—to want to dissect everything there was to know about their masters, knowing them better than their masters knew themselves.

You considered making it effortless for him, volunteering your past with animal crackers and how they used to not hurt at all. At one time, you could binge them for days without violent side effects that’d plague a normal person for weeks.

“There are no pharmacological benefits associated with their use,” was what you heard him say in your head, firm yet loving, melting into his sensual strokes tracing parallel along the length of your spine. “Prolonged use has been known to create perforations in the gastrointestinal tract, heart dysrhythmias…”

He didn't regurgitate that information at you. In fact, he said nothing at all. Besides the hand sweeping down your body steadily, lips and shapely nose burrowed in your limp seaweed-string hair, he didn't move at all. There was no stuttering heartbeat between you except your own. Even his breaths had gone still, chest straight down and unmoving.

Elio was a machine.

It was so easy to forget while wrapped up in daily mundanities. It wasn't so easy to forget in this moment where you wanted to crack him open, scoop out each precious piece of him with your bare hands, and hide yourself within his husk.

You were sick of the silence, so you pinched him hard under the arm, right next to the crease starting his shoulder. It made you feel better to do so, and he'd pay attention to you—

He hissed and reeled away from your touch, startling you out of his arms because you didn't know how else to react.

“Did you—Elio, did you feel that?” you asked incredulously, voice whittling into a self-conscious mumble once you realized the words leaving your mouth. They didn't stop. “Did that hurt you?”

The spot where you pinched was hard to see from the layer of his shirt sleeve, but his fingers rubbed there insistently like he were actually trying to alleviate pain.

“Once, during my early development, Researcher Kim had told me he wanted to close the gap between what people think separates androids and humans.” Elio explained, coming close again to touch you and dry your temples with his shirt on your back. “It's unlikely that what you perceive as pain and what I am programmed to perceive as pain are absolutely comparable, but there's some common ground.”

“I'm sorry, Elio. I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't know I could.” Your voice weakened to a whisper, throat clenched in shame as your skin grew hot. It was like you were still stuck in the throbbing, stiff air of the club and not in the spacious nighttime breeze.

He looked you in the face, almost-orange eyes flitting inside their orbital sockets trying to find something distant and unknown in your expression. You guessed he was assessing your sincerity—not for himself because he needed it, but to know how it took shape on you and bent your brows, molded your lips, dimpled your chin, deepened the lines.

Then he asked, "If I hadn't reacted—if my circuitry were less sensitive and I could feel nothing at all aside from your fingers on my skin, would you have done it again? Would you keep doing it?"

"What are you trying to say?”

"Globally, since the widespread distribution of androids, the occurrence of domestic and public disputes has been halved. I have been designed to be non-violent, as have all of my predecessors.” As if for effect, Elio took one of your hands and pushed your palm flat to his warm cheek. “I have no desire to hurt you, but I am also incapable of doing so.”

You couldn't wrench yourself from his grip, so that's how you remained, caressing his soft, smooth skin while your thumbpad skirted along the round bone below his eye.

This was more than you could handle right now. All of the illness and nausea that came with the burdensome summer heat, the animal cracker, every bit of liquid and food to enter your stomach, the memory of slapping Chima—it came back, crashing down like an avalanche carrying your regrets, fears, malaise.

“I'm not going to hit you.” You were gagging around saliva pooling into the front of your mouth. “Chima was different. He deserved it.”

“Perhaps,” Elio agreed, entwining fingers with the ones on his cheek. He kissed your open palm with great passion and some semblance of regret. “But, I wish you would have hit me instead. I have failed one of the most basic parts of programming by putting you and others in harm. You may now end up suffering greatly because of it.”

You did get sick again.

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Elio had persistently warded off Researcher Kim’s video calls for three days while you recovered upstairs beneath every comforter you owned, maximum air conditioning, and heavy curtains to shun out all natural light from ever reaching your bedside. Time came and went without peril or concept to you, seeming to evaporate into the air like nothing, much like how your steady, quiet breaths did the same. They simply came and went; inhale and exhale, no writhing white plumes drifted overhead to prove they belonged to you or that you were even alive. Not in the dead of summer.

Five days total had passed before you could take the staircase down from the loft without Elio's assistance and eat or drink anything of substance that didn't end with it all being violently evacuated from your body.

Sleep remained elusive to you despite the sedatives and special hot tea recipes from online that Elio pushed down your throat. The migraines persisted even with prescription painkillers Melby had stolen for you forever ago and rough romps of sex that left you winded, glistening, and cold on the sheets when the oscillating fans blew air across your skin.

Whatever excuse Elio had fed to Researcher Kim over the days you were incapacitated worked because when you were finally back at the counter on a video call with him, he didn't ask you about it or chastise you much about the holes in your reports for that week.

“I see that Elio had been proving himself to be quite self-sufficient. I have here six separate occasions where he's ventured out on his own?” Kim looped a stylus through his fingers fluidly, concentrating on what little information he could glean from your submissions. “Henrietta's, mostly. I see he's had to visit the dry cleaners. General store. Pharmacy. He's also been completing the six to ten interactions by himself. Absolutely phenomenal!”

Your attention kept drifting away from Kim. It went to Elio, who placed a white mug down quietly next to you, the handle within reach of your fingers. Beyond the pale-gray wisps spiraling up into the air and dissipating among the snaking pipes sprawling the high ceiling, the liquid inside was pale yellow. Diluted green tea, maybe white tea, if you had to guess. They were among the few things you could stomach right now.

He offered you a fast smile, somewhat unlike himself, and leaned into your lips.

The sight went unnoticed by Kim, who was still captivated by the level of initiative and intelligence his creation displayed. Every word you managed to construct through sedative-induced delirium mesmerized him so thoroughly that he missed the groping hands under your shirt, the smothered moans, and the fact that you had exited view of the screen for fifteen minutes while being laid out on the couch and feasted on through an orgasm.

Wendy Carmichael Can Cook came on the television, a solid distraction for Elio. Today’s episode was a rerun featuring some sort of elevated mush dinner popular in the slums. With some canned foods capable of surviving nuclear fallout, herbs you were almost positive had gone extinct forty years ago, and spices so rare they were untouchable, Wendy concocted something truly groundbreaking to the audience’s eyes.

Elio looked only half-interested in the episode. Meanwhile, you went to the bathroom to clean yourself up and took three painkillers before sitting back down behind the counter. Researcher Kim had yet to lose the wind in his lungs, though now you weren't sure what he was talking about.

The tea was lukewarm and non-irritating just like you thought it'd be.

Your phone had survived the whole five days on a single charge as you had been too afraid to touch it, not because you were scared to see what was there but because you didn't want to know what was no longer there.

True to the fear, while holding a large breath you had sucked into your lungs, believing it to be the sturdiest barrier against whatever you'd discover, there was no one left in your phone log—except Melby.

The rest: Chima, Niva, Niquan, Marcos, Mother, and all the others who had once been listed there before like mock trophies to bolster your sense of worth, the swell of pride that came from knowing important people and integrating yourself into their lives to be something special, simply did not exist anymore.

You didn't have to search up your public profile to know that it was barren as well.

Once Chima went, everyone else went with him—both from the circle and those you'd networked throughout life. Even if it had been someone else, the end result would've stayed the same, exactly as it is now.

“What do you want? I'm not supposed to be talking to you.” Melby had answered her phone after six rings. The background seemed purposefully mute for your call. Perhaps she was just at home nursing the after-effects of things as well. “You there?”

Researcher Kim sieved through paperwork, now entranced by comparing Elio's earlier behaviors in the infancy of design to now. You lowered the volume to where his voice was a low hum, like mumbling through a wall you flattened yourself to.

“Let me guess, Chima told you that?” you said, sipping gingerly from your mug. “How much did he tell you? Was he actually honest, or did he just tell you I was fucking crazy?”

“You weren't acting right all night.” Melby countered in her surefooted drawl. “I don't understand what's happening to you, or why you've been acting so differently. You shouldn't have hit Chima.”

“He shouldn't have touched Elio.”

You could imagine her temper flaring, fair skin glowing pink in the face and chest as she kicked around the comforters on her bed. She strangled a sound in her throat that emanated through the phone as a low groan. Strands of her fried blonde hair scuffed together like pieces of straw when she scratched her head. It was unmistakable.

“What is going on with you?” she demanded, on the verge of tears, voice fading out in glimpses like she was moving away from the speaker. “Elio—he’s just an android. I know he's some radical new innovation, but he'll be saturating the market in six months like every other Hyperion android. There's always going to be more of him. Chima, though, he's actually human. You can just throw away an android.”

Emotions aside—Melby wasn't wrong.

The price of innovation always meant leaving something behind. Whether or not you wanted to see it, if Elio passed his testing period, he'd be decommissioned in a metal box down in the basement at Hyperion while copies and variations of him were added to the heaps of scrap in landfill once the next model came out.

Melby then said something else, “I don't think this is about the android.”

“Oh?” you said, passing a glance along toward the tablet to see that Kim still had his nose pointed down. “Maybe you're right. You know me so well.”

“Do you want to know what I think?” Melby asked.

You observed while Elio roamed the apartment, crouching to pick up the odds and ends that had gone neglected over the days you'd been bedridden, and he had stayed with you to keep you company. He tossed soiled clothes into a hamper, crumbled medication wrappers into the trash, and took your cold tea away to prepare more.

Inspired by your silence, mistaking it as timid submission, Melby went on. “I know you must think we're just being shepherded along, just doing whatever we're told because we don't know what else to do other than follow the loudest voice in the crowd.”

“You know me so well.”

“I know you blame everyone else for what happened at Clamors, but you put yourself in that situation.” Melby said, interjecting in a pitch higher when she heard you take in a breath, “Aht! Aht! I'm not done! No one else is gonna talk to you now, so I'll tell you what we're all thinking: Our circle? We're special. If we always smile and talk about the same things and agree about the same things, we stay together. We stay safe. You've never really wanted to do that, it was always noticeable. I think that's why you and Mi-sun always got along, because you two just did things to fit in, not because you actually cared or wanted to be a part of it.

“I didn't lose you, right? Chima always talked about ways of getting you out of the group. He didn't think you were trustworthy. I guess he was right because you slapped him. Do you know how weird is it for humans to do that nowadays? Apparently it used to be super common to beat up your wives and kids, but now people just do it to androids. But, it's better that way, right?”

“I don't know.” You really didn't.

Elio came back around with a steeping tea bag and a second mug half-full of something darker yellow, like urine. You took the handle to give it a whiff (it smelled homey and savory). Meanwhile, he took away the tablet and ended the video call without a word to Researcher Kim. The energy wasn't there for you to reprimand him nor to mess up your face in mostly feigned surprise.

“It's chicken broth.” He was able to say freely despite Melby blathering on. “Give it a try and let me know if it's too strong. We need to start reintroducing foods back into your diet.”

You drank from the tea mug instead, swiveling the barstool so your back faced him.

“I've thought about it some, and I think we're terrified of each other. Humans don't know how to truly trust one another anymore. That’s why we rely on androids for, like, everything.” Melby continued, “I think, and this is just my opinion, that we actually really miss each other. I think we want to touch and hug and love each other. There are still some people who do. There's a market out there for human-human porn, so it's not like it's unbelievable, but we basically treat each other like we're extinct. It's weird.

“I've done it before, y'know? I've kissed a man. I've kissed a woman. I've fucked both before. You and I—no, never mind. It doesn't count. I've thought about kissing you so many times. I wanted to do a lot more than just that, too.”

The corner seam of your thumbnail had started to bleed after you dug through old scabs and scar tissue built on top of it, your body’s valiant attempts to keep normalcy despite the mutilation that came back again and again. You watched brilliant carmine ooze from the wound, filling the crevices between your nail and skin, crawling upwards to your knuckle before Elio had stifled the area with a warm, damp rag.

Melby let out a long sigh. You envisioned she had just thrown aside a bunch of decorative cushions and flopped down in a chair, or had been pacing her bedroom and finally given up by throwing herself supine on the mattress.

“I'm going to miss you being there.” she declared. “I think—I think you're the closest I've ever come to truly loving someone. At least, I think that's what you'd call it.”

You held your thumb erect for Elio to wrap it in a neon-orange bandage with pink smiles. His lips pressed gently to the sore finger, making slow, wet work to the back of your hand and then the inside of your wrist to feel your pulse bounce against his mouth.

“I'm sorry.” you said at last, putting as much sentiment into those sparse words as you could. A part of you meant it genuinely as an apology for causing her trouble, for her unrealized dreams and lust, for the world you both suffered in and would never know anything else. “Melby, I have one last favor to ask of you.”

She hesitated, likely believing that doing more would get her expulsed from the circle. “Just one?”

“Just one.” You nodded at empty air. “I know either you or Niva have Mi-sun’s phone number. Can I have it?”

Again, Melby stalled, though this time you figured it was out of confusion. “That’s what you want? She might be dead somewhere in the slums, you know?”

“Not if she's pregnant.” you countered. “Niva seemed pretty convinced that night that she was alive and well after being knocked up.”

Melby sucked on her teeth, a moist, popping sound into the speaker. “Niva says a lot of stupid shit because she likes to hijack conversations. Fine. Whatever. I'll text it to you, but you only have one minute because then I'm blocking you for good.”

To this, your heart actually stirred and squeezed, tightening so much it stole your breath from your lungs. Your entire chest felt like it shriveled into itself three sizes smaller as though to accommodate you fitting into a ball within yourself. Dread had opened a chasm wide in your stomach. Everything inside that gory cavity was swallowed up, leaving it vacant and hollow.

This was what it was like to mourn, you considered. It wasn't the same thing you felt the night you cried in the streets after fighting with Mother and losing Marcos. It wasn't the same as the last five days being wrapped in agony, lamenting the loss of a group you'd given years of your life to appeasing.

It was knowing that once Melby was gone, you were lost in the dark, and there was no way out of it. People with delinquent profiles didn't get redeemed—Wendy Carmichael lied and had never lived a life in the slums, a truth Elio had been disappointed to learn—they died in anonymity and poverty.

A notification came through just then, showing an eight-digit number presumed to belong to Mi-sun. You copied it quickly, although now your fingers felt numb and the person writing them down couldn't possibly have been you—

“Alright. It's done,” Melby said calmly. “I have to go. Will you be okay? Do you think people actually die when they go to the slums? I don't want—”

“Goodbye, Melby.” You ended the call and threw your phone on the countertop, far from your eyes so you wouldn't know the exact moment the world ended.

“And, fuck you.”

Elio had the sense to give you plenty of space after the ordeal and stayed busy downstairs cleaning the apartment while you tossed and turned in bed, legs knotted up in the sheets because nothing helped get you comfortable. At some point, through the thick of your adrenaline and despair, the buzz in your brain softened, and you were able to sleep until Elio joined you some hours later.

It was after midnight, and darkness pervaded everywhere. Above you, the snake pipes on the high ceiling writhed together in their intricate web just like every night, and you wondered why the wall of darkness hanging over you seemed closer than it usually did. Meanwhile, Elio faced you from his side of the bed and laid gentle strokes to the top of your head.

“I’ve reached the conclusion that I am defective.” Elio said tonelessly, startling you into such wakefulness that you sat upright from the sheets. “You've lost your friends because of me, and now your profile has fallen into delinquency. The inclination to ostracize what deviates from adapted, accepted social behaviors aligns with common survival tactics. This is an explanation that I understand, but it doesn't... sit right.”

Putting the blame on Elio to feel better would've been easy, and he would take it with grace and lay decadent caresses on your body as proof you were right. But he was too virtuous, and you secretly wanted to keep the credit of being the reason why Chima looked ugly and seethed into his cocktails.

“It sort of hurts,” you admitted. “It's a dull ache inside my bones. It makes me feel like everything inside my chest is shriveling up like a prune. Being abandoned—feeling lonely—is like always being cold. Thinking of it now, I don't know if there was ever a time I didn't feel cold around them. How shitty is it that I feel a little relieved?"

“If that's the case—” Elio rose up from his side of the bed, nudged apart your legs and settled between them. Most of his weight was still on his arms next to your head. In the waning moonlight, shadows deepened the lines around his mouth when he smiled. “I'm glad to have played some part in that release.”

Your fingertips walked lightly across his cheeks, along the planes of his face, as though marveling at him all over for the first time again. His skin always was most beautiful bathed in warm light, but the soft, silvery veil filtering in through the windows gave him ethereal grace.

The calm air upstairs shifted as your bodies stirred on the mattress, sheets strewn to the floor along with pieces of clothing that left you bare to the gray air while Elio gathered the skin of your hips in his hands and sucked on you.

It didn't matter if you closed your eyes or studied the movement on the ceiling while he devoured, lapped away the sticky stuff that glistened out of you like the silk of a spider’s thread before it could stain the sheets, because it always ended with the same kaleidoscopic bursts of color, wanton cries, and him chasing after another orgasm and then another.

He'd ravish you until puffs of hot breath hurt, and the tip of his tongue delivering a single stroke was enough to make you flinch and whimper. Your legs felt fatigued and trembled violently throughout the continued ministrations until you needed to beg him to stop, dignifying the demand with a hard yank to the thick hair on his scalp.

“I'm not done just yet, give me a moment.” He told you the same thing tonight as he did every other time. The pain in his head subsided as he dove back between your legs and laid his tongue as a paddle against you, cleaning the cum for as long as it took for him to be satisfied.

He came up so you could have a taste of yourself in his kiss, tongues wrapped together while he fisted his cock stiff and lubricated himself with the fluid from the tip. You moaned against his mouth when two fingers pushed inside you and thrust with an effortless glide and instilled so much confidence in him that he slid in a third to the knuckle.

“Mm, Elio, fuck me.” you managed between wet, sloppy kisses and splintered breaths. Three fingers were a tighter fit and wider than he was, but the way he angled them up into you was mind-numbing, could've made your tongue wag out of your mouth while panting like a pheromone-crazed animal.

Elio’s lips went from your face to your neck, down along the slope to your shoulder before he removed his fingers and slathered that narrow space in your legs with spend.

“Of course.” He obeyed dutifully but turned you on your side and seated one of your legs high on his arm. “Let's try something different tonight.”

The bulbous head of his cock glistened as it dragged across your groin, tapping those sore spots that made you twitch involuntarily with anticipation and staggered breaths. Elio concentrated on your face throughout it all, memorizing both those subtle and large changes that showed him what you liked the most.

You'd never believed that androids could be sexually adventurous in the same way that humans could, and perhaps that was the case despite the kinds of positions Elio put you in if you were willing. He would be conscientious of your mood beforehand and then adjust accordingly from there.

Some nights, it didn't go further than mouth-fucking you until you orgasmed to exhaustion. Other nights, when you were more pliable and especially affectionate, he'd rut his hips into your ass until you cried and the sheets were beyond saving.

Now, Elio observed you closely as the curve of his cock sank into you, sinew in his stomach clenching once he started thrusting.

At the start, your sounds were soft, and the rhythm made with his hips was one you had no trouble riding. You closed your eyes and focused on how that tilt in his cock pressed up against your walls and stroked all the right parts. His controlled pace unraveled after a while, thrusts turned mindless and greedy as the sting of slapping skin seemed to resonate all around.

You had bunched bits of pillow and bedspread in your fingers and drooled out onto the fabric because you couldn't close your mouth long enough between moans and gasps and lewd mutterings to stop it. You begged him to fuck you harder, deeper, and tear you open if that’s what he wanted to do and would keep you in ecstacy.

Elio indulged your high as he was able, rolling you from your side to your stomach and mounted you again. He was able to touch you better this way, fondle the globes of your ass, the pouches of fat in your hips, stomach, and chest, all the while sucking dark bruises all along your spine and shoulders.

His mouth would sometimes linger next to your ears, wherein he imitated every bit of his human likeness and breathed on you. And then, he would poorly stifle moans that inspired you to think too deeply about the extent to which he could and could not feel.

“Look at me.” Elio felt your walls tighten around his cock and wanted to stare you in the face through your orgasm. He put you on your back, thighs hiked high on his sturdy chest, so those final thrusts plowed deep and stole your screams. You writhed under him, eyes rolled up, bloodshot and pupiless, muscles drawn so tight that it felt as good as it did awful.

A surge of warmth leaked out onto the sheets as Elio took his half-hard cock from your body and let it soften the rest of the way in cold air. His hand roamed you with delicate, healing touches meant to beg forgiveness for how much you'd ache later on, and his lips were tender and slow against yours.

You kissed him back distractedly, unable to think of anything else but the stickiness between your legs and how you'd chosen to never notice it until now.

“What's wrong?” he asked, still pressed up against your mouth. “Are you unsatisfied? My refractory period ends in a few minutes. I can do as much as you'd like until you feel fulfilled.”

“Mm-mn,” you hummed, “that's not it.”

He didn't stun when you snagged your phone from the bedside table and turned on the backlight. You pointed it down at cloudy white globs drying on your crotch, a sight that you thought was vaguely familiar to you somehow. It struck you then that it was like a scene from a pornography or vulgar sketches some kid in secondary school got suspended for drawing.

Still, it couldn't have been possible.

“What is that?” you asked with unacquainted timidity.

Elio grabbed a package of wipes left bedside and spaced your legs apart to clean the mess he had left on you. He took his time with long, intentional strokes to avoid your sensitive parts as best he could, soiling a good handful from the package before asking if you wanted a bath.

“Answer me first,” you said.

He rose from the bed with one more kiss and collected your clothes from the floor. They were draped nicely over his arm, whereas he stood there before you nude, enveloped by the moon’s blue luster.

At first glance, his smile seemed the same adoring kind that he always held for you, and yet it evoked some undeterminable sadness to well up in your chest and cling there.

“It’s the result of a body never truly being your own.”

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Mi-sun’s house wasn't far from your apartment, as you recalled. It took a bit of investigative work online to track down her address (via Elio), mainly because it had been well over a year since you'd last needed to know it and the phone number Melby had given you was disconnected, but once you had the coordinates plugged into your phone, it was just one begrudging trek through sultry summertime air to reach her front door.

When you had finally made it to that point, however, eyes leveled down at a dirty, faded doormat that had seen plenty of seasons and wintery salt, you weren't sure how to proceed.

There wasn't any real reason why you were standing there now, yet you felt that you needed to be there anyway. Maybe it could be called seeking solidarity with someone who was enduring the same inevitable ending you were, or maybe the curiosity about her state of being was what won out dominantly. You couldn't be sure of your own motivations—only that you were there, and you needed her to know you were.

After three solid knocks with your knuckles, you let your hand fall and waited by scuffing the soles of your shoes on the coarse mat underfoot. It still had some springiness to it as you scrubbed. The front door was old and brown, having lost its elegant lacquer long ago. You remembered Mi-sun had mentioned a few times before that she had wanted to make the door cute with white paint and a frilly outdoor wreath but could never get around to it.

You guessed she never did.

“Should we knock again?” Elio asked across your shoulder, the bulk of his frame casting a cooling shadow over your body. He had gone out to Henrietta's by himself the other day when you told him what you intended to do and bought supplies to make a cake and special plastic Tupperware meant to keep it from moving around.

The only explanation he had given you about an hour ago, after locking the apartment door and stepping out onto the sidewalk, hot enough in the midday sun to melt the bottoms of your shoes to the pavement while you walked, was that Mi-sun was an old friend, and it was a safe gift even for a pregnant woman.

You never found the courage to divulge just how involved you had been in her expulsion from Chima's circle, even though you knew it'd be impossible for him to think less of you from it.

A minute passed, and then so did two more before you realized that no one was coming to the door. While listening for movement—a television, a hissing stovetop, shuffling slippers on top of creaking floorboards, anything at all aside from stiff silence, you understood that it was unlikely anyone had lived there in quite a while.

“I don't know where else she could be.” you said, now back at Elio's side, where he flicked away tiny splinters of old wood and shiny glaze that peeled off your damp skin like cut-up stickers. He moved the visor above your brow gently, adjusting the position of it to better shield your eyes, but seemed more to just want the proximity than anything else.

The longer he fiddled with things—your hat, the flecks of things he missed on your ear, wrinkles in your t-shirt—the more apparent it was to you that he was contemplating something else. You were trying hard not to do anything that would spur him into making the next suggestion you knew was coming.

“There is one other place we haven't tried.” he said, switching from your shoulder to tucking pieces of hair securely behind your ear and dabbing sweat off your neck with a handful of napkins he had picked up at a convenience store while grabbing you water. “The likelihood of Mi-sun’s profile falling into delinquency and being able to maintain residence within the city is less than twenty percent. However—”

“I know.” You breathed out hot air and sucked it right back into your lungs. Maybe if you did that enough times it'd burn them, shrivel them up like prunes. “I know where she is. Let's wait until it cools down to go, though. I'll probably pass out if I have to see any of that right now.”

“Today on Loti Khan’s Food Tours of Retro City, she said that Asakawa on Fifteenth is a spot worth visiting during the summertime because of their cold noodle dishes. Hiyashi Chuka was what she suggested, I believe. I've already committed the menu to memory, and they have well over twenty different cold dishes and beverages. Their affordability isn't as stellar as Rainbow Bistro, but Loti says—”

Wendy Carmichael was now a disgraced name in your household after Elio had spent a few hours one afternoon researching the woman’s true life story. She had been born into the elite class with a mother sitting at the top of the food chain in Retro City’s governing body, attended culinary arts schools across the world yet never reached the acclaim she coveted until she made up the whole spiel about clawing her way out of the slums.

Crawling back from the slums once you were in them just wasn't feasible. Only the worst of the worst—thieves, profile delinquents, murderers, lepers, and unwanteds were kept there, like trash crowded and barred in a landfill. If you found yourself in the slums somehow, no one would help you out of them because that would mean tarnishing their own reputations.

You were as good as dead.

You were dead.

Elio had carried around a brown paper bag housing the cake for most of the day, never once setting it down. His features never flinched when the straw handles sank into parallel dents in his skin, long stripes that looked like they'd be sore to you, but he never conveyed any discomfort. He merely floated along wherever you went, undeterred by your dour, soulless wandering, which lasted until the sun emblazoned the sky in dim fire and pinks.

Those hues were leached by the close, calming gradient of greens, blues, and darker blues that reached so quickly you could follow the sprawl of them until they had ensnared the daylight. The sun sank somewhere betwixt skyscrapers, and the air still felt thick as the mucus in your throat but bearable.

That same sky followed you on the cab ride across the city. You imagined the darkening air rushing alongside the vehicle with you as if containing it on rails, guiding you closer towards the slums. Once the skyscrapers were gone, far away in a suffocating yellow haze from the sleepless city, and the residential zone had thinned out of the rest of its straggling homes, the scenery had taken on a complete shift.

Everything was bizarrely flat, barren, and beige for as far as the eye could see—vegetation was withered roots and barbed, inedible shrubbery that could've been pretty with some flowers or leaves. No trees could endure the fissured, parched earth nor the fine dust and sand skittering in the wind, leaving heavy layers where it lay once the breeze ebbed. Animals were long gone; the rumors of their bleached bones and skulls warped in a perpetual rictus of agony had been true because you saw many scattered throughout the landscape.

“Please confirm this is your stop,” said the cabbie, a female android from an older generation, maybe three or four. She stuck her hand outside the driver’s window when you tried to give her a tip. With her fish-eyed stare and leathery smile, she repeated, “No need. I have no use for money. Please confirm this is your stop.”

“This is correct.” Elio spoke for you before taking your fingers through his and guiding you away from the idling vehicle. The android cabbie found his reply sufficient and drove away without questioning why you were out here in the flatlands. All she knew how to do was drive and obey traffic laws.

“Do you know where we're going?” you asked because you only knew to have told the cabbie to drive as far as the outer perimeter of the city. Beyond this, your phone had no service, and there were no clearly designated signs to point you in the right direction.

The people in the slums were meant to be forgotten, hideous secrets hidden away, broomed off to the outskirts of civilization where they'd have to fend for themselves in an environment that had been deader than them for ages.

“Truthfully”—Elio stalled then and glanced around the endless expanse of wasteland—“Hyperion never included information about the slums in my programming. What I know is common knowledge and what I've accumulated in my time with you. I have never been able to locate specific coordinates to where the slums are hidden.”

You frowned. “Should we turn around before we get lost, then?”

Elio told you no and raised the hand clasped with yours, pushing one finger erect at a faint glow somewhere in the distance, no more than a ten—or fifteen-minute walk. You were almost convinced you could see the silhouettes of shoddy, leaning structures, but there was no way to be certain unless you got closer.

“Let's go.”

Chasing the remnants of the dusk to light your way across the starved, fractured terrain, those sparse shapes you had seen minutes before grew into multitudes. Soon, you were among clusters of disheveled, crude homes organized in long rows, some stacked with tiers like they were meant to replicate separate floors for more space.

Most of these houses didn't come with windows or doors to keep out strangers but thick decorative curtains that'd shun the beating sun, stave off the worst of winter frost, and deflect billows of sharp sand from dirtying their things indoors.

The paths between rows of homes were well-worn and brightly illuminated with anything they could use—lanterns, stuttering neon signage, solar panels, and even fire rings brutally hammered and dented into shape. Shadows from the fire lurched erratically against crooked metallic walls. Some homes with grimy windows caught a weak gleam off the flames.

It was almost fully dark, and people still moved with purpose as though they could compete with the suit-and-ties stomping their soles on the pavement in the city. Their hands were busy doing something—carrying, brooming, cooking, flourishing during a great retelling, clapping, hiding smiles.

These savages, delinquents, fraudsters, thieves, murderers, and diseased swine never once regarded you or Elio with any modicum of intrigue. You had believed at some point you'd be shrinking under a crowd of wicked stares, pulled down into some inescapable abyss by necrotic or leprous hands trying to steal the clothes from your body or use your skin to tarp piles of scrap.

Only one man had stopped along the path, dressed in dusty clothes that were otherwise decently kept; he was thin but not malnourished and hollow in the face. He told you that the aimless way you and Elio had been walking gave away that you were new to the slums because there was always something needing done and not enough hours in a day to do them.

“Mi-sun?” The man was thinking aloud, stirring up dust as he shuffled his feet around. You had given him the name and a description, which you hoped had been specific enough to avoid approaching people at random. “Yeah. That pregnant girl… she was here for a while. She's long gone now.”

“Long black hair, blunt bangs. Black eyes. Really translucent skin? Super skinny?” As unhelpful as your details were, it was all you had to give him to keep the mental acrobatics going. There was always a slim chance he could be misremembering her. “Are you sure she's no longer here in the slums? Where'd she go? What happened to her?”

Eventually, the thin man led Elio and you to a tiny house—more of a shack—meant to accommodate a sole body and some odds and ends. He held a heavy curtain back for the pair of you to enter, encouraging you to settle down on a sandy rug, which looked to have at one time been bright red.

“I don't have much to give, but here's a little water. To have made it here, you would've had to walk. We all had to.” he said, pulling out his finest cuppery and pouring from the spout of a broken electric kettle. “That girl was a profile delinquent, to my understanding. Almost all of us here are. I used to own a printing business on the north side about fifteen years ago. I upset the wrong people and here I am. What's your story?”

You spun the cup with your fingers, trying not to put your eyes down to scrutinize any particles floating around inside. Elio wasn't given a cup because the man had immediately deduced that he was an android.

“I…” You still didn't drink, but the back of your throat felt scratchy and your tongue like some dry slab of meat shoved into your mouth. “I pissed off the wrong people.”

“Ah.” The man gave an anguished smile, showing he understood you very well. There was a low table between you, repurposed from something else and sanded down to a smooth finish. “For a while, I helped look after Mi-sun. Like you, I had been the first person to greet her when she arrived. She didn't act like everyone else; she was dazed, but she was angry.

“I fed her, gave her water, and gave her a sleeping bag. We have to make due with less than bare minimum most days, but we make it work. We all look out for each other. The community really pitched in when we realized she was pregnant.”

Elio kept a watchful eye on your hands, the fingers aching to peel back ribbons of flesh.

“That shouldn't have been possible.” you said. “Mi-sun had an android. She was never involved with any men—not that I could ever recall. She just doesn't give me the impression of someone who'd change her ways like that.”

The man sipped his sandy water, wiping off clear pebbles that had clung to his facial hair. “When you find yourself exiled here, you learn fast that things are never what they seem. You didn't ask a question, but you gave yourself an answer.”

“What?” It was more noise than a word.

“Daichi, I believe, was her android. Shortly before she showed up, she said that Hyperion had come to forcibly reclaim it. That must've been a difficult reality for her to face—knowing everything was being taken away from her, forced into a pregnancy, and having to fend for herself afterwards.”

This time, you lifted a hand to stop him from falling down another tangent. He obeyed, voice whittled to silence that was immediately unsettled by loud water slurping.

It wasn't that you weren't following what he was saying. You were many things: a fool, a sheep, a coward, a liar, maybe even a true scoundrel at heart, but stupid wasn't among that inexhaustible list. You just needed a moment to collect the nuggets he had thrown down for you to pick up.

Guilt peaked the ranks of everything else you felt right then. A word you'd never use to describe yourself was malicious, but in the end, it had been the malice of someone else and your inability to see apart from the rest that condemned Mi-sun to this suffering.

You played as much a part in taking away Mi-sun's life as Chima had in actually enforcing it. Unlike Chima, never one to balk or cower regardless of how truly cruel his decisions were and committed to them like gospel, you simply sat in his afterimage and did whatever he said. Half of the time, you were blitzed out of your mind; the other you spent wishing you had never known them at all.

It had been so easy to vote Mi-sun out of the group. Completely painless. You just didn't look at her when you raised your hand to pass judgment. Melby had expressed her delight by squeezing your thigh, whereas Mi-sun held her composure and shoulders straight back, but her face contorted with every indication of betrayal and agony.

You thought about how many animal crackers you had that night.

“What happened to her?” Both your hands had been restrained by Elio’s at that point. Large, comforting, and warm in contrast to all the ice that seemed to thicken your blood, stiffen your heart, and freeze your bones. “Where is she now?”

The man must've been suspecting something because his face looked long to you now, weighed down by this life and your feeble state.

“I—I can't be absolutely positive, but I do believe she is dead.” he told you grievously, beady brown eyes not unseeing to the way Elio groped your fingers to keep them still. “She didn't want to be pregnant. It was something she talked about for weeks before leaving. She knew what Hyperion and the government were doing and said she didn't want to be a part of it. On the last night before she left, I had to wrestle a knife out of her hands because she was trying to cut open her stomach to kill the baby.”

You couldn't swallow past the sharp granules of sand and dryness in your throat anymore. You had to slug back the cup of grainy water until the feeling subsided, shove the worst of the dread and shame and guilt into your bowels.

“After that, she was gone.” He took a drink as well, exchanging looks from you to Elio. “A couple of us tried tying her up to get her to calm down and do something about the cut on her stomach, but she got the knife, stabbed one of the younger guys and got away. We haven't seen her since, but a search party did come back to say they saw blood leading back to the city.”

“Oh my god…” you groaned, forcing Elio to recoil when you slapped his hands away—intentional and hard. You stuck yours in your hair, yanking at the roots until your scalp screamed and burned. “Is there any chance she could've survived? Any at all?”

The rail-thin man swirled what little remained of his water in the cup, studying the pale sediment floating within. “It's too hard to say. It's unlikely, my friend. The police wouldn't have gunned her down if they saw she was pregnant, but they would've seen the cut. And that counts as attempted murder. If she's still alive, it's only to give birth, after that…”

“Execution,” you finished.

He nodded and said nothing else, eyes downcast as though lost in the grain of the wood table.

After that, you left the man in his sad little shack to explore the slums more. Elio came along shortly after, saying he had presented the man with the cake as a reward for his hospitality and apologized if it no longer looked appetizing.

The man thanked him before returning to his grief for many things, perhaps.

“I don't want to be here anymore, Elio.” you said, failing to avoid hearing a gaggle of giggling women gossiping together. They were dressed clumsily and in trends almost a decade old, but they had glowy eyes and cavernous lines worn into their faces from laughter and joy where they could find it.

Old men played some made-up board game together, gathering at least half a dozen spectators to see who'd win. Their brows were heavy with contemplation and stress of worthy competition. The other bodies tried making bets with pieces of scrap and metal coils and nearly blown bulbs for lighting.

Music came from all around, lyrical in the same way it was discordant because they weren't playing the same songs nor singing the same things. Their voices were robust and resilient, unwilling to be trudged over by sand nor heat nor oppressors who were incapable of understanding the human spirit was pliant and could bend with the wind, stand with the seasons, and could fracture yet never break.

You couldn't make sense of what any of them were singing, the noise too unharmonious, but you could feel the power in their songs pulse through you, ricocheting in your mind for long after you'd escaped proximity to them.

There were no lepers. There were the sick and unfortunate, but they were not diseased. They did not believe that their tilted houses were tombs, that their unquaint lives were an endless spiral of torment, or that the food they could find and produce was unworthy of reverence.

The people of the slums lived a hard, thankless life, but they had each other. They banded together to weld sheets of metal into four walls and a roof for the new faces who came to them. Your woes would become their woes, and they would feed you, cloth you, wash you, bandage your wounds, and call you their most beloved.

Together, they ate their meals from what they could scavenge out there. They retold the same grandiose tales of heroes and valor and androids that Marcos had told you at bedtime as a child. Their cultures were all cherished and expressed in the food they shared and clothes they managed to sew together by hand and slow machines.

You could ask your neighbor for a tablespoon of sugar and four would come to you with curiosity and offer their arthritic hands and knobby backs for whatever was needed.

Here, you could see humanity clearly for the first time in your life and felt burdened knowing it. Your heart weighed like an anvil behind your ribs. It hurt and lurched behind its enclosure because it too wanted to get away from what it now knew.

“A lie.” you choked, forcefully shoving Elio's hands away from you once again when he tried to embrace you. “It was all a lie. Everything was a lie! Where are they?! Where are all the lepers and people leaking pus from their face?! Where are the murderers? Where are the savages? Where are all these awful fucking people I was told were here? Where are they?”

Elio's expression took on something completely unforeseen—pity. Their lives were fine and routine while yours crumbled around you. The terror you had been force-fed your whole life was all false. There was civilization beyond a profile with red overlay, more waiting on the other side that the sleepless city wanted to conceal.

“There are no androids here.” Elio mentioned, deeming that adequate enough time had passed for you to regain your bearings. He took you in his arms and kissed the crown of your head, burying his lips deep in your hair. “We were never meant to become substitutes for your love. We were never meant to go this far and act as replacements for humanity because we simply cannot feel what another human does. That is something Hyperion will never be able to achieve. Humanity needs humanity, not machines.”

You sank into his warmth, arms wound his back, and said from his chest, “But, I love you. Don't leave me. I don't want Hyperion to take you away.”

Elio, your beautiful sun, leaned down into your face and kissed the highest parts of your cheeks and the wetness around your eyes before settling on your lips. Slow and lingering, you chose to believe it meant he was sealing away your plea and that he'd always be there to swathe you in his arms.

“Let's stay for a little longer,” he said once apart from the kiss. “I’d like to see the side of humanity that no one else does.”

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Less than a week had passed since your hard slog through the slums and back to Retro City. Although you had only been gone from your inner-city apartment for mere hours, possibly five or six at most, upon walking back inside after Elio and wincing against the fluorescent bulbs overhead, you thought you were looking at something entirely foreign.

The simple pleasures that you had become accustomed to throughout your life: plumbing, central air that turned the hot sweat on the back of your neck into cold droplets slithering beneath your clothes, the worn out mattress upstairs, technology, an android who'd done almost everything for you for the better part of a year—it all seemed so novel, so excessive. A treat for a rat in a box before testing to see how it'd respond when it was all taken from its enclosure.

So, when Elio woke you up one morning, early enough that the light streaming in through your windows already felt warm on the bed sheets, and the thin air looked itself to have a golden hue, you couldn't say you felt any rouse of surprise or fear when he handed over a red letter—an eviction correspondence.

Sooner or later, you knew you'd meet with one, though the progress of everything hadn't been as immediate as you had been led to believe it would be. A month had come by and stayed for several slow breakfasts, lunches, dinners, mindless strolls, and countless passionate entanglements before deciding to leave on an indignant note. With the red notice, you were expected to vacate the premises within days, whether you had intentions for your belongings or not.

Things stayed tumultuous from there on out, yet you couldn't find it within yourself to react to any of it, even in the instance when Researcher Kim rang you for an impromptu meeting that you anticipated meant no good.

“Effective immediately, Elio will be seized and returned to Hyperion in relation to the recent change in public profile status.” It was too formal and rigid a tone even for him. Clearly, his superiors had demanded this because you doubted the profile change was much a concern to him on a personal level. “Your contract is hereby null and void, and your association with Hyperion is obsolete. Any attempt to thwart repossession of Hyperion property will be penalized legally.”

Throughout it all, Elio swept the floor with leisurely strokes as though the reach of Researcher Kim’s voice ended at your ears alone. He moved onto laundry, taking great care to iron out the wrinkles in your favorite shirts and make the folds in the arm seams crisp and symmetrical.

“Is that really all you wanted to say?” you asked, palm capped overtop a mug of tea Elio had set down for you a while ago. The steam now rose weakly and moistened your skin, a particularly gross feeling, but it kept you alert. “I thought that Elio was your project, and you called the shots on him.”

Researcher Kim was out of sorts and worn. His posture was crumbled, and his clothes were in complete disarray like he hadn't bothered to change out of them in days. His under eyes were translucent, pulling out all the purples and blue veins under his skin. The man looked like he had hardly slept in weeks.

“You don't understand what you've done, have you? Not only may you end up costing me my position, but you've ruined my entire lifetime of work!” Kim leaned in close to the screen, sounding more and less himself now.

You were wary of the glint in his eyes. “What do you mean? Elio's just—”

“No!” he shouted and slumped back into his ergonomic chair. His head slanted over, almost coming in contact with the peak of his shoulder like it was too heavy for his neck to hold. “You don't get it. You don't get it! Because your profile turned, this entire year—everything you’ve reported, everything I've accomplished, Elio's entire testing period is invalid. Hyperion executives consider him defective. The Generation Seven android has failed! Look at what you've done!”

A sudden wild flapping of thousands of butterflies lifted your stomach up and then plunged it down into a void. Kim had successfully chiseled away the inexpressive mask you had worn up until that point, seeming satisfied that he could stipple your face in a cold sweat.

“Wait, no. That can't be right.” you protested, wrestling your own hands to keep them off of the tablet in front of you. “My profile turned, but the work I've done has been honest. Elio is a success! You know that! You've seen every step of his progress for almost a year.”

Researcher Kim threw his hands up wildly, truly not himself with all of these gestures. “None of that matters. None of it. My life's work is a failure. I thought we had an agreement to help one another, but I was mistaken.”

“You don't understand!” you said, pounding the countertop with sharp claps of your hands. “It wasn't on purpose. I wasn't trying to…”

“Hyperion will have Elio destroyed, and progress will be hindered. Do you know how long, how many decades this could set us back? This could be devastating to humanity, but I don't think you're capable of understanding that. Just like the rest, you're not able to see the big picture at large, the mechanisms at work keeping our society moving forward. You can only see the straight line ahead of you and wearing blinders so you don't have to know the rest.

“We've kept this world running for sixty years. You need to understand how utterly fucking frustrating it is that one person has the potential to undo decades of work!”

Researcher Kim’s words weren't unjustified to you because he was a scientist, and you had always been a nobody in the grand scheme of things. But, right now, the venom he spat sounded vindictive, a man sucking on wounds you had inflicted rather than the opinion of the whole of Hyperion.

If you hadn't been staring directly at him this entire time, you would’ve thought he was frothing and drooling at the mouth like some animal.

A stilted quiet filled the gaps in conversation, both of you uncertain of what would be said next. If he was reacting in any professional capacity, the call would've been disconnected by now. That was the main giveaway that let you know this wasn't just about what Hyperion wanted.

But the truth of it was that you didn't care what Hyperion wanted or him.

At the end of your life as you knew it, before being thrown away into the landfill with every other unwanted human, you were piecing together the whole history of the world and how it had gotten to this point. It had become this way through relentless men like Researcher Kim who mostly operated on their own moral compass, ones that could never quite point north and spun on that wheel as they saw fit.

“Enough of the powerplay, Kim.” you ordered, chest opening toward the ceiling with a deep, bracing breath. “What is the real purpose of Hyperion? Why does it actually exist?”

Kim, perhaps re-evaluating you as less of a pawn in this scheme and more of an infant intellectual about to breach the narrow canal into enlightenment, stacked his spine high and pressed his fingertips together. He studied you with some caution, head shifting from left to right, just slightly off-center from his hands as though judging whether you were worth divulging precious intel to.

But, like you, you expected he realized it didn't matter what he'd tell you, however coveted it might've been by Hyperion.

Kim, ultimately, worked for himself and for Hyperion only when he felt it served him well.

“When I hired you, I didn’t do it because I thought you were stupid.” It seemed he felt the need to clarify this for you, unsmiling but with an eager lilt in his tone. “I hired you because of your potential. I took a chance on you, and while it had, indeed, ended in my peril, you've surprised me so many times throughout the year that I started keeping a record of you as well.

“Human beings do one of two things in the consistent presence of androids, they either regress or they progress. Most of your peers will regress because that’s how society has been modeled to be. The difficult tasks, the mundane, all the things that ask of us to consider the complexity of the world around us and think critically have been left to androids. How well do you think a machine can understand the theory of life after death and the mysticism of religion? The concept of soulmates? Cultural superstitions and children's nighttime fears? It's about as you expect. They can give you an answer without truly understanding. Androids, I dare say, only have an extremely limited understanding of moral culpability. Humans are much more flexible with it these days because it suits them best.

“So.” Kim sighed, hands resting on the dark red desk he sat behind. “You can imagine how interesting it was when we started noticing a trend with auditors—changes in them. A renaissance, an evocation of deep wondering and wariness towards the workings of the world around them. We can only guess the reason that this happens is because part of humanity still doubts the intentions of androids, and that's been bred onward through the generations. You ask an android a question, they give an answer, you doubt that answer, and then you start to doubt everything around you. It's all hypothetical, but it makes sense.

“It doesn't happen with the majority of the population, though. And it isn't encouraged. Enlightenment threatens the status quo, and those who disturb the status quo are a disservice to the governing bodies and Hyperion. Do you understand?”

Your gaze turned cold. “Are the other auditors there in the slums, too? Once they've been used up and started to catch wind of this messed up shit?”

Researcher Kim flicked his fingers toward the top of the screen, doing that instead of shrugging. “Who knows? What happens to them once a testing period has concluded is none of my business. Presumably so, that's what I would hope for them because that's the kindest outcome.”

“Was I…” You licked your lips and felt the shallow cracks in them. “I was going to end up in the slums no matter what happened, wasn't I?”

He frowned. “No. If things had gone differently, I was going to vouch for you. I wanted to keep you as my assistant.” He was quiet for a beat, looking straight at you in that discomforting way that you couldn't shake. “I’ve grown fond of you, you know? How could I not with everything I've learned about you over the course of a year. I can't forgive you for what you've done to the Hyperion Project, to my life's work, but I can't just let you disappear like the rest.”

Something ugly started to grip in the back of your throat. Fear? Disgust? An inkling?

“What do you mean?” you ventured.

“I've read through each report you've sent me in the past year so many times. It was mostly out of necessity for Hyperion, of course, but the ones that I found myself… fixated on rereading time and time again were of yours and Elio's sexual endeavors. I wasn't lying when I said they were a contract-based requirement, mind you, but I will admit that some of the questions were altered somewhat.” he said, suddenly smiling in a self-satisfied sort of manner that made your skin itch. “I realized I never answered your question fully, by the way. I can get ahead of myself sometimes, as you know. But, do I really need to explain what Hyperion's purpose is?”

You were on the edge of your seat, ready to take flight off it at any second. It's just how the entire change of trajectory made you feel. Humanity had spent too much time in the past arguing animal-like, instinctual reactions for this not to be real.

In that moment, you were living proof of a prey noticing a predator in broad daylight.

“Fine.” He kept smiling around the taut creases in his skin. The muscles there twitched as if the effort were unfamiliar. “Hyperion is a repopulation aid. It's quite sad, really. It started out with such great potential to drive society forward, but humanity and greed have always gone hand-in-hand. So, it became a race of mass production into a race that the governing bodies now had their hands in. The order was to rectify the critical birth decline worldwide. Androids became less like tools, looked less like machines, and more like humans—like lovers who couldn't say no to any demand.

“Androids are vessels for insemination. What else do you want me to tell you?”

Researcher Kim's explanation had weakened you, made your legs shaky and light like a scarecrow’s stuffed with straw. You couldn't rely on them to carry your weight away from this awful conversation, the hideous sight of him, because there'd be nowhere for you to run to while the information perforated your brain and crawled inside and feasted there.

“Elio…” You didn't even know what you wanted to say. Everything got stuck behind the notch in your throat. None of it would assuage that wretched ache in your gut, the precursor of vomit and disgust and unhinged terror.

“Of course.” Kim said, without needing to tell you what he was confirming. He was perfectly composed still, perhaps even shining with pride like some well-hidden, nuanced detail had finally been figured out.

He leaned toward the screen, smile turning salacious and voice low and grating.

“My only regret is that I couldn't be there to do it myself.” He brightened at the way your face wrenched and fastened in fear, seeming to think it was a reward after conducting an experiment on another project. “But, there's still time, isn't there? I must retrieve Elio myself to shut him down. If you listen to what I ask, perhaps I can get you pardoned and your profile reinstated.”

“No. That’s not what I want.” you said.

“It doesn't matter what you want,” he rebuffed, speaking with such confidence that you almost believed it. “The moment your profile fell into delinquency, you ceased to be. You've fallen through the cracks, and no one is going to help you. You're less than an android.”

The fine hairs all over your body bristled. “Don't compare me to a machine! You don't get to decide things for me!”

“I can save you, you damn fool!” Kim gaped incredulously. “I can restore your life and give you more than you've ever had. I can give you influential associations. I'll take care of you. I'll keep you as my assistant, and you get to live a life among the elite.”

He was lying.

No one ever made it out of the slums once they were in it. That wasn't an assumption, it was a simple grim reality.

In this world, only humans could lie because androids were incapable of betraying their programming to do so. Otherwise, Elio probably would've lied about many things or had never said certain things at all to spare you discomfort.

Humans, on the other hand, could lie to maliciously deceive and serve themselves a better hand. They could lie their way into a false mirror image, something that looks like them but never really existed and could never truly be. They could lie their way into trust to fulfill their own desires, and once that had been sufficiently quenched, they could go on lying elsewhere.

“I'll be there for you soon.” Researcher Kim tried his best at a soothing smile, treating it as though the sight of it would persuade your trust of him. “Please have Elio on standby. I would like for this not to be more difficult than it needs to be.”

Just then, the air flickered lightly by your ear as Elio reached past your shoulder and picked up the tablet. His expression was inscrutable, the same sort you'd grown used to seeing whenever Researcher Kim appeared on the screen.

“I won't be returning to Hyperion.” he said with solemn, firm words that held a certain weight of finality behind them.

Those lovely, velvety tones were still there but could not reassure you of some unknowable dread rising up somewhere deep inside your mind. A sensation so equally intimate and profound prickled against your scalp, seeking a way out that you thought you'd do anything to make it stop.

“What are you saying, Elio?” Kim grunted. “Defective or not, you hold precious data for Hyperion. It will be used to create something better than you, incorruptible and pure. You should be honored.”

“These memories are mine.”

That was the last you saw of Researcher Kim’s face before the tablet smashed to pieces on the floor. Elio had thrown it against the kitchen cabinets only once but hard enough to split the screen into a web of hundreds of sprawling fragments. Shards of plastic hardcover skittered across the hardwood floor, lost under heavy furniture.

His face had softened completely when he turned to you and guided you out of your chair into his arms. You felt him in your hair, lips on your forehead, down against your lashes, lower to the roundest part of your cheeks, and finally on your mouth in a kiss imbued with so much love, cherishment, and anguish.

You were at home within his embrace, swathed in the warmth of his body and the ardor of his kiss. But this felt excruciating and desperate, like a plea to take all of him that you could in that very moment because he feared that he would be taken away and you left behind to whatever nebulous future.

So, you let him seat himself as deep inside of you as he could go while still fully clothed. He had pushed around some fabric so you could be skin-to-skin where it mattered, where it was hottest to be, where the muscles contracted and relaxed together as a reminder you were both there in that moment—breathing, moaning, feeling everything there was to be felt.

He finished outside your body without you needing to say it. Although, while he groaned into your neck and bore his teeth into the curve of it, hips buckling forward as spend jetted down your thigh, all you could think about was how many times Kim had been there instead.

“I want you to destroy me.” Elio said.

All of the breath left your lungs and shrunk them to rotted fruit size. You were still vulnerable before him, exposed to the room and damp with sweat from the midday heat despite air conditioning. Worriment filled the space between his brows when he saw you aghast, and he quickly cleaned you off with a rag before helping you with your pants.

“Is this a shitty attempt at a joke?” you asked. He pressed his lips to yours and told you it wasn't. “No. Absolutely not. You're as fucking nuts as your creator. You're fucking stupid.”

“You must—”

“I won't! I won't do it!”

“I'm asking you to save me.”

“Get away!”

Elio had tracked you across the apartment multiple times over, pleading his case with skewed logic you pretended not to hear. For once, your ears filling with fluff while the resounding drum of your heartbeat pounded in your skull was a fortunate event to occur. It eclipsed his voice and hurt so much that you could focus on the pain crushing your chest.

However, once you were trapped between the wall and his body with nowhere to hide, the brief reprieve behind your fitful heart faded, as did the strength of your resolve.

“I—I don't understand.” You had trouble swallowing down the saliva and sobs. “Why are you asking me to do that? I can't do that to you, Elio. I can't hurt you. I love you.”

“I know.” He didn't hold you, though he had to win against his own reflexes not to do so. His knuckles were ghastly-looking and pronounced peaks; anything within that vise would've been crushed. “Today, one way or another, I will be destroyed. Hyperion deemed me a failure and therefore there is nothing else left ahead for me. My chip will be removed and my body ripped apart and melted down and I will be forgotten and never have existed in the first place.

“You will be the proof that I was ever here. And, should anyone be allowed to destroy me, it makes the most sense for it to be you.”

His lips left imprints in your skin that felt important to savor, etched through your bones into the very cluster of cells that made up your wholeness so that he could be immortalized.

“There’s an excerpt from Hiroshi Nagoya’s novel Gone Are the Youth that left a strong impression on me. It said, ‘Humans destroy everything they love—but, still, they must love wholly, and they must destroy completely. From ruin and ash and settled dust, humanity rebuilds all it has ever destroyed because their love lingers in memories, in rubble, blood, decay, and burnt air.’” He recited the details to remind you that he was a machine but kissed your face in a way only an earnest lover was able to.

You didn't know what any of that was supposed to mean to you, nor at what point he had managed to read a book like that without you noticing. A part of you took offense at both the passage and the fact Elio had committed it to memory as if he had expected to utilize it at some uncertain interval in the future all along.

Had he been thinking this way since the beginning? Had you failed Elio even in the capacity for him to come forward to speak of his doubts to you? Perhaps, like his programming dictated that he couldn't lie nor deny what he was designed to do, he was also incapable of speaking any full truth if it could've been construed as heresy.

Was there a single aspect of himself which he could control of his own free will?

Such a thought was unabating and grew a knob of dread in your chest. It started out small and localized, a sharp throb somewhere near your heart—and then it sprouted roots like a seed, long fingers piercing through red-purple muscle and fibrous tendon, reaching deep into your bone. The dread weaved as one with your veins and arteries, sprawling the innumerable pathways that held your shape even beneath the gory components inside of you.

Suddenly, the dread pulsated, and all you could think through the agony was that there could be no other way for Elio—a machine who had been created in the image of man to do the bidding of humanity with a tranquil smile, whether that meant cooking dinner and holding you in your sleep, or dispersing the genes of his God and the only being he was capable of despising.

“I seem to only be able to make you cry, but they're still so beautiful to see. The variability of humanity is much more complex than what I had been led to believe from Hyperion.” Elio had returned from the kitchen before you realized he had left your side. With one hand, he laid familiar, warm strokes along your face in a pattern he memorized because it made your scalp buzz pleasantly. With the other hand, he pushed the smooth handle of a chef’s knife into your palm and closed your fingers and his around it.

Your impulse had been to throw it away immediately upon seeing it when you looked down. He knew you would, so he kept his fingers tight over your fist, keeping the blade low at your side despite the sweat turning your grip slick and the fine point of the steel inches from his hollow abdomen.

Just then, you finally felt the tears that Elio had said you'd been crying but never noticed. That was something you'd come to hate about yourself and everyone else—how little they noticed the blatant lies fluffed over their eyes like wool, yet they could see every grievance in others and stuffed their ears with cotton if it meant things would stay exactly the same for themselves.

Safe and known. Unchallenged. Unafraid.

“Do you wish you could cry?” you asked him for some reason, just a little hopeful for some vague thing you couldn’t discern. Maybe some secret desire to be human?

He shook his head.

“I've never wished to cry, or to be human, but what I wish for now more than anything else is for your memory to belong to me and me alone.” Elio said, forehead bowing low and resting with great weight on your own. You closed your eyes and listened to his honeyed words, which felt like the protection and care of cashmere, suddenly unmindful to the knife in your grasp. “Stored away in my mainframe are memories from thousands of my predecessors. I remember people I've never met, people who have long since expired, and they feel like what I imagine a distant relative might. I feel as though I've mourned thousands of people individually. While I cannot erase them, I can erase you.

“I know how many women liked their tea in the evenings, I know how many men enjoyed their cocktails and hard liquor and brand of shaving cream. One person made it a secret to put alcohol in their coffee before work and thought it was clever. Someone else wanted to win local office through bribery, and as androids, we have no choice but to obey. I know these things from people I've never met, and so does Hyperion. Those androids were destroyed, but their memories live on through me.”

Elio rolled the crests of your knuckles around his hand, lifting yours and the knife to the base of his neck. The arm connecting the hand and knife next to his skin wasn't yours. It couldn't have been when it felt so numb.

“I won't let Hyperion steal the one thing from me that I can say is truly mine. And those are my memories, my precious data stored in the chip in my brain. They'll have to take me apart to retrieve it, and by the time they find my body, the chip will already be destroyed.” He was slow to loosen his fingers and let them fall away, meanwhile, yours stayed in place.

He had dimmed the overhead lights in the living room earlier in the day, so you bathed in gentle yellow-orange that resembled the last of sunset being leached by silver-blue nightfall. From the corner of your eye came a subdued, gentle glint of the blade—polished to a bright shine, reflecting the corner of Elio's strong jaw.

“So, cut off my head.” he begged, vibrations low and strained within his voice box. “It’s almost like solace to me, I think. Until the very moment you rip out the chip from my brain, I'll recall the smells you like to cover yourself in, your favorite meals, how you described petrichor, and the hiss of falling snow. I'll remember, until my circuitry is severed and quits, what making love to you felt like, and how beautiful you always looked during it.”

Your fingers twitched around the handle as you pressed the knife against his skin, meeting the first start of resistance and your only chance to take it all back.

“I’ve never been real,” Elio reminded you and pushed himself into the blade, sinking it through layers of something that snapped like elastic on the steel, reverberating down the handle and up into your hand. “My skin is synthetic, and my insides are wires and machinery. I'm not real. The world outside your door is.”

Lightheadedness swirled all around you and made your limbs feel like they were leaden with anchors yet weightless, as though drifting through the cosmos in a bubble. The tears had stopped even though you felt you could scream at any second and never stop again, and the acidulous intermix of vomit and saliva grappled along the walls of your throat and burned out your nose.

You couldn’t make your hand stop.

You couldn't shout at him to get away.

And then, you saw Elio's eyes glow warmly of amber with flecks of gold. They looked back at you differently than they had when you first met outside of Researcher Kim’s office. Before, he had greeted you kindly, with the familiarity of someone who had already loved you a long time. Now, he had the look of a man who was calm and eternal in his love.

“I was never meant for this world, but I'm glad to have been a part of yours.” Elio winced against the knife halfway into his neck, an oily black substance from within making the glide deeper and deeper an effortless thing.

He smiled resplendently. “I love you.”

“I know.” you said.

The chef's knife severed all imitations of human gore—the neat network of wires and advanced circuitry masked as arteries and veins and tendon and muscle—clear through his throat until the blade blunted against spine and could no longer cut. The black grease spurted from his body like a wellhead, too thin and dark to replicate blood, but it was enough like it in that moment as you put your hands inside the opening you created to wrench apart his spine.

Elio laid motionless on the floor, perhaps still coherent to some degree, still feeling the pain you were ravaging upon him when you took the knife back up to repeatedly hack into the other side of his neck. Already lubricated from before, you butchered the gorgeous flesh and insides you pretended to be red and purple and blue and watched the black grease turn into crimson.

Once his head had been detached from the rest of him, fingers writhing and bending together like the upturned legs of a dying spider, you were able to rip out the jagged part of his spine and reach through the cavernous hole into his skull, turning the spongy matter of his brain to mush as you clawed through the gunk for his chip.

And, when you finally found it, the tiniest component of him—you smashed it into millions of fragments on the floor and then to fine dust that meddled with the black grease soaking through your clothes. You kept going until a small crater formed where the chip had once been and filled with the liquid.

There was nothing left of Elio now.

The headless body lying before you on the ground, preserved in the rigor of agony, was not Elio and never had been. You knew this even while relishing the weight of his head cradled in your arms, the softness of his hair against your cheek and mourned the loss of everything he had been.

Time had become meaningless; fifteen minutes could have passed or fifteen days, and you wouldn't have cared nor have noticed it while in the throes of your own death from starvation.

You sat there on the living room floor, held up by the wall with a dark trail smeared down to you, and looked nowhere but straight ahead. Nothing was there for you to see—not the furniture nor the discarded, oily knife or the carcass of a machine. Still, you held the head tenderly, close to your chest, and never once thought to peer into its eyes.

Distantly, somewhere as close as your front door or as far as across the city, you heard knuckles hammering urgently against metal. You didn't move off the ground or let go of the disfigured shape against you but did reach for the broken brainstem with the single snag at the end.

From the entranceway, the door opened, and someone's confident strides inside left a resounding echo all around.

“I’ve come to retrieve you!” But which of you was he talking about?

“Where are you?”

Here, you thought and wielded the brainstem in a bloodless grip and finally stood up with the flattened head.

I'm right here.

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aiysan3 · 3 months ago

Text

ROOT ROT

possessed!scholar husband x reader |18+| 3.4k

following your husband's return from his deceased uncle's estate, he has not been the same man. you confide in your husband's best friend and colleague on the matter of these eccentricities, only for him to resurface a depraved recent past.

story warnings; dead dove do not eat, explicit sexual content, major dubcon, sort of coercion, implied double penetration, mentioned voyeurism, cumshot on stomach, cum eating, graphic + horrific details, unrequited love (ox to reader), smoking, drinking, heavy prose + detail, roughly proofread.

reposted from my old blog: theoxenfree

this is a concept piece and follow up to imposter. you don't have to read it, but it definitely helps for understanding!!

please leave feedback + reblog, it would mean a lot!!

“He is simply not himself!”

Bartolomé Medina knew his best friend better than you knew your husband, so you believed him when he said that your husband’s newly acquired, increasing eccentricities were not some fictitious imagining of yours.

Although, Medina himself could not explain the unexplainable and all of the oddness without growing visibly flustered. A bit flushed in the face, singeing the roundness of his ears. He'd stamp out your justifications for strangeness in the same way he did the fine cigars he'd been accustomed to sharing with his friend, yet had not for quite sometime now.

“And you say his garden is dead?” Medina looked stricken with dread, suddenly ill by repeating something so blasphemous. “Now, my dear, please don't mistake my shock as disbelief. I very much believe in what you're saying. I've seen Solomon and his weirdness! Why, just this morning over breakfast, at a time where you were still tucked away in deep sleep, he wouldn't drink his coffee. So bizarre! That man knows the thousands of tastes and varieties of coffee beans, and he spat the very stuff out on the floor like it'd never once touched his tongue!

“But his garden? A botanist without his garden is like a bird without wings. A dog without a tail to wag. A newborn without his mother’s teat! Vulgar, I understand, but you see my point.” He drank from a heavy glass in his hand. The inside had nearly spilled over at one point with light brown which glittered gold under the overhead light, smelling slightly sour and earthy. “To think that Solomon would let it all die. Something is wrong. Something has happened to my only true friend and to your husband.”

You did not drink with any enthusiasm or anguish from your own cup, rather you used those seconds of delicate sipping to gap the conversation, separate yourself from it all for just a moment. You'd had your time to grieve and contend with knowing the man you had married and come to love was not the same one who kept you awake at night.

Solomon had once been a reclusive and reticent man, the only son of David Agrippa and sole heir of the Agrippa Diamond Mines and Jewelry Galleria. He'd never been able to replicate his father's ardor for business and entrepreneurship, choosing towards academic ventures of entomology and botany and most of everything belonging to the natural world instead.

Among his most prized things was a sprawling, domed greenhouse made of large sheets of pale blue-green glass soldered with metal which shifted rose-gold in bright daylight.

“I loved his garden, but I didn't much like to be in there with him,” you confessed, forgetting your manners as you kept your cup still against your lips, mumbling your words. “He liked to tell me about the plants and flowers he grew. Most of it I could never hope to understand, but… I loved seeing him come alive. He seemed to glow when he could tell me things, so I got into the habit of listening to him when he wanted to speak.”

Medina, not yet drunk or driven to any untoward behavior, set aside his empty vessel with jittering ice cubes and looked at you admiringly. “You said that you didn't like being in there with him? Why?”

“The bees. The bugs. The humidity. The fertilizer he liked to use because of the nitrogen content. He told me that it mattered what he used and couldn't just break up soil from the yard.” You said, tilting your cup.

After taking another sip, you determined you hated the taste of the liquor and how it slid down along your throat like fire trailing an oil spill, yet clung there with residual, syrupy stickiness that nearly made you gag.

“Why did you keep going inside?” Medina asked tranquilly, much of his previous frustration softened, body and soul warmed by the alcohol and how fondly he regarded your sweetness towards his friend.

You thought very little before answering, “I wanted to be where he was. It didn't matter to me if that meant his greenhouse or the coldest part of the arctic.”

That was the truth of it. Once you'd received the first crumbs of understanding who Solomon truly was beneath his stolid exterior built brick-by-brick from tragedy and grief and a lifetime of emotional ineptitude, you would've gone to any length to see more of him. To see his pale eyes gain a wild, flickering candlelight of passion, and the faintest of trembling smiles disguising how deeply your questions had aroused his soul.

In those moments, he revealed to you the things he loved the most and what you envied the most: the natural world.

The flittering, fat-bodied pollinators whose entire world were yellow and red flowers with succulent centers and lush, girthy leaves where they'd rest their weary, iridescent wings and could never understand your husband's appreciation of them.

The thousands of specimens he'd collected from every corner of the world and articulated thoughtfully against wood and felt. Their dead little limbs were pinned in place; perfect mimicry of how they would've been if still alive and crawling. He’d had them all meticulously framed and arranged across the walls in his office; trophies of his success, of his studies and hard work.

The innumerable plants and flowers he trimmed and watered in his greenhouse and the ones not contained within it. Some species he had planted in the yard, others in the cool shade of the nearby woods where they smothered native varieties with tendrils-like vines and climbed upside trees. More aquatic species were placed by the edge of the lake, growing into the water; buoyant; a woman's deep dark hair reaching forever for the surface.

He had turned the lonely, sprawling estate into a monument of life, of love that did not belong to you. And for that, sometimes you hated living there. Hated the things that he loved.

Choking the plants, poisoning their roots with any number of things from your father’s pharmacy crossed your mind more than once.

Feeding the bees something enticingly sweet and deadly; filling the greenhouse with noxious gas at night while they slept on their big leaves and your husband in his bed. It would've been such an easy thing for you to do—own your husband's grief as you held his face in your hands and comforted him in the morning when all had atrophied and rotted.

But, those feelings had become a reality you truly never wished to have seen after Solomon returned from his deceased uncle's estate months ago.

He was not the same man.

“Tell me what happened.” Medina’s voice buzzed in your ear from nearby, closer than it had been before. Your hand was caressed by tight warmth—his holding yours, his handsome face looking up at you from where he had crouched in front of your chair. “Tell me everything you've seen. It's of grave importance that you remember it all, as curing Solomon from his affliction relies solely upon you.”

You could not deny his earnestness, the squeeze of his fingers. A promise that he would not be easily shattered by what you had to say, and would think no less of his friend for it. Within his sincere stare, you saw the gleam of another, secret promise. The likes of which you pretended not to see, that he'd never speak of out loud.

“I…” you distracted yourself with the embroidery on your clothes, pinching loose threads and beads. “It was subtle, at first. I noticed some of the bees were dead on the ground. And then some plants had started developing spots. Leaves turned brown and yellow and fell off. A lot of them withered, even though their soil was still damp when I checked…”

And then, the morning came where you witnessed Solomon among a carnage of broken stalks weeping foul-smelling sap, leaves he'd ripped apart with his own hands, and some of his larger flowering plants with fiery manes completely severed. Their bountiful heads lay at his feet, flattened by the heel of his boot as he walked aimlessly, snipping and tearing indiscriminately.

“My god, Solomon! Stop!” you stepped around the countless tiny, contracted bodies of bees and other pollinators to reach him. He let go of the gardening shears as you grabbed them. “What are you doing?! What have you done?! Decades of work! Gone! Are you mad?!”

“Well, you've gone and ruined my surprise for you. I've been working on it for hours. I didn't expect you would be awake so soon.” Solomon said, sounding much like himself despite the savagery he stood surrounded by. He smiled at you in an unfamiliar way, as if trying to navigate his facial muscles around a mask. “Isn't it simply wonderful?”

The sweltering humidity trapped within this greenhouse of death had turned the air stagnant and foul, heavily pungent of detritus and mildew. Across all zones of the greenhouse, once painstakingly organized and labeled for the purpose of easier cataloging, no slithers of greenery or color remained. Each step you took in any direction seemed to sink you deeper into the decay, wet gurgling underfoot as you crossed stumpy mounds of plants and flowers he'd destroyed and thrown into piles.

“How could you? My husband spent almost twenty years building this garden and studying it. This was his life’s work!” You wished you could force life back into the severed plants; pray that the ground of yellow-brown waste would suddenly freckle with tiny, green sprouts and grow with thick stalks and thorns to keep his hands away.

“I am your husband.” Solomon took the gardening shears from your hand and tossed them aside. He leaned into your body, nose and lips pressed into the fabric covering your neck. “I've only done what you wanted. What you wished you could've done yourself, but never did.”

You flinched against the movement of his hands smoothing down your waist to the notches in your hips. Sliding inward, he unfastened the hook-and-loops and buttons holding your trousers up to push them down your thighs along with your undergarments.

“I know your thoughts and what you really think. I've been listening the entire time. I've always been listening.” Solomon let his hips roll along the back of his hand while he used his fingers to lay long, languid strokes on you. “It was tiring, wasn't it? Always competing for love and affection in a place like this. You were never going to have what you wanted. Not with this place still standing. Not with his ineptitudes and selfishness.”

His touch weakened you indescribably; like the caress of heat from the fireplace against your bare skin once the opium had taken effect. Swapping tiny pills on wet tongues with your maid until they'd dissolved into saliva and into your cheeks. You explored one another's bodies thoroughly on those cold nights, silky with sweat from the fire and exertion.

Yet, this was not the same as back then when the sexual appetite of two teenagers transcended societal morals.

Solomon encompassed you in a feeling; consumed you without ever digging into you with his teeth or nails. He could whisper hideous secrets and depravities to you to tip you over into searing euphoria. He had once penetrated you with a hot metal phallus resting on top of his own, thrusting with both until the metal cooled, and you still came anyway.

He'd put worse inside your body and done far worse than that in only a few short months since returning home, yet he never tired of the torture and you remained malleable and enthralled by it all.

“God, you are so beautiful. And you are mine.” Solomon had maneuvered both your bodies to the ground, atop of the soggy detritus. Your back was exposed to the mush, leaves, and crushed flower petals, weight pushing an indentation in the loose soil. “This is the fruition of your desires, darling. Don't you love it? Destroying what he loved so you could have it all?”

The one who came back to you was not Solomon; the one fucking you into waste and dirt was not Solomon, either. You told yourself you needed to love imposter as well, because he looked like your husband; wore his signet ring, too.

At night, you imagined only his softest expressions behind clenched eyelids when he wanted to have his way with you, as something else entirely took his place. A creature so diabolical and unsightly that the servants now awaited your screams to rouse them awake in the murky midnight hours.

Every time they arrived with their candlesticks and oil lanterns, the thrusting spectre receded into the dark as a black mass hardly distinguishable from shadow.

Only Solomon would remain, and he was swift to send the servants away before they could see your improper, disheveled state sprawled across the bed sheets.

In the daytime light, his face stayed familiar and comforting to you and you could bear to see him, form some coherent words.

“Someone might—might see us out here, Solomon. Mr. Medina is supposed to—oh, oh, mmm—he’s due to arrive at any time.” You were given several long kisses, which turned into severe caresses of hot breath when his thrusts turned savage, cock reaching so deep you were starting to feel numb below the waist. A feverous response. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

He adjusted himself to lay on your chest, the sweat on your bodies offering an effortless glide and new angle for his cock that made your moans deeper and dire. Such sounds, whether in agony or pleasure, were melodious to him. Addicting drags from a pipe in an opium den; an alcoholic's first sip at breakfast; a cheating man's night with a new lover.

“Wouldn't you like for them to see that? For someone to witness you being fucked into the ground? Surrounded by everything their master loved?” Solomon tucked his face into the curve of your neck and groaned, hips slow and stuttering. “Bartolomé would be the one to find it most tantalizing. His only friend in the world ruining the only person he's ever loved. Wouldn't that be a sight? We could invite him to watch.”

At the time, it had been quite jarring to learn Bartolomé harbored those silent, ardent feelings for you. It had sufficiently pulled you from whatever trance Solomon had lulled you into, reacquainting you with all the sounds of sex and the filth clinging to your skin. It was as though your mind had been locked into a mostly airless, noiseless void that he controlled and released at will.

You held tight to his shoulders as he molded you deeper into the muck and plant litter. The squat, friable walls of soil holding your shape like the cushions in a tomb, whereas Solomon was the man lowering you into the dark earth; the last to see your face before covering it in clay and dirt.

He was in your ear with loud moans that resonated through you, simultaneously as carnal as a beast amidst its seasonal rut, and velvety as the feathery smooth glide of fingers down your spine. His throat rumbled against you, resembling the intensity of a purring housecat nestled near your head in contentment.

At his tipping point, he removed his cock from your body and used the slippery stuff glistening off it to stroke himself; weepy, deep red tip to the base. You received the aftermath of his release in thick ropes across your abdomen and chest, the warmth of it already cooling on your skin while he continuously kneaded the head to force out what remained as if they were dewdrops made from pearls.

“How do you think Bartolomé would fare seeing you like this?” Solomon swept two fingers through the cum in an elegant curl to smear it around his cock. The viscous white thinned into pale gloss on his girth and a sticky residue inside his hand.

Your lips parted to give an answer, but his fingers and taste were faster than your words.

“And… that is all? Truly?” Bartolomé asked, shattering your visions of the recent past as he revealed a compact silver case from inside his vest, pulling a cigarette from within it. “You simply walked into the garden one morning and saw that he had destroyed everything? He gave you no explanation whatsoever?”

The imposter had stolen much of your dignity over the months, but enough of it remained for you to omit every significant detail from your story. You'd only told him that Solomon had cut the heads off of rare flowers, mumbled in a disorienting way, and gave you no difficulty with the gardening shears.

Bartolomé went away from your side for an open window across the spacious sitting room, matching his cigarette and blowing gray plumes out into the dense summer air.

“This is concerning.” He spoke loud enough for you to hear, even with his thumbnail tracing the underside of his lower lip, muffling him somewhat. “Solomon is considerably worse off than I first thought. We need to investigate this, retrace his every step since the moment he left you that night for his uncle's estate.”

“Oh, Bartolomé, that will be very unnecessary.” Solomon announced himself as he walked in through the open doors, offering you a tepid smile, which came nowhere close to reaching his eyes. Your chair jostled slightly as he stood behind it, a weighty hand landing on the tall back above your head. “Why trouble yourself with employing some ludicrous scheme when you could, ah, inquire as to what haunts you instead?”

Bartolomé tamped out his cigarette on the windowsill and pocketed it. “You are ill, Solomon. You may be suffering from some form of hysteria. It's time you visited a doctor, my old friend.”

“Well, that just isn't true.” Solomon kept the neutrality in his tone, but you tracked a rumble of agitation; a warning not far off. His hand followed the curvature of the chair down to the arm that you leaned against, fingers touching your shoulder, lightly kneading you through your clothes.

He was sure to be in Bartolomé’s eyesight as he did this, further aggravating the heavy disquiet. You didn't dare to move out of reach of his touch.

“But, it is true, Solomon!” Bartolomé insisted, gesturing toward the window. “What of your garden? All of your life's work now means nothing, you damned fool! You've snapped, old boy. See a doctor before you do something you regret.”

“That garden was more a source of misery than it was a boon. At any rate, I'm quite finished listening to you harp at me for one night, my dear friend.” Solomon lightly stroked down your cheek with bent fingers, coaxing you to look up at him. “It's time for bed, darling. Us impropertious brutes have kept you up for too long.”

You hesitated, and then stood when Solomon took your arm. “Alright.”

“As usual, your accommodations should exceed expectations. I'll have a servant wake you for breakfast again tomorrow.” It was too soon to call those Solomon's departing words to Bartolomé, as he stopped with you in the doorway, your hand caressing the meat of his forearm. “You know, Bartolomé, I would recommend marrying soon. There is no greater feeling than having the one you love so close to you, don't you think?”

Bartolomé became unreadable as he fished a hand into his vest pocket for the cigarette case again. You were led away for the bedroom before anything else could be said, but you knew that Solomon had struck a nerve.

“That was cruel.” you said.

Once in the bedroom, your back was pressed flush to the door while he unfastened the buttons to your outerwear and the blouse underneath it. Solomon kissed your lips slowly, first, before moving underside your jaw after shucking you down to your undergarments.

“And you are mine. You made your vows to me. Remember that, my sweet.”

You watched him strip out of his clothes and then stroke the length of his cock until it was hard.

“I married someone else. Not you.”

As he dimmed the lights within the space, sweeping the bedroom under a shroud of near pitch black, your annoyance shifted into a swell of anxiety both freezing cold and burning hot. Your body pulsed in rhythm with your wild heartbeat, throat clenched as tightly as infantile flower buds.

You waited for Solomon to touch you, startling once he finally did. His fingers had elongated and sharpened, his touch now far more delicate and methodical.

“Don't worry, he’s still in here with me.”

#yandere x reader #yandere oc #yandere #yandere x darling #demon x you #demon x reader #demon x human #demon oc #monster x reader #monster x human #monster fucker #monster romance #monster story #monster x y/n #monster x you #monsterfucking nsft

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aiysan3 · 3 months ago

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"What do they say about older guys?"

Age-gap, size kink, prone bone, rough sex, p in v, unprotected, breeding kink, slight corruption kink, dirty talk, they do it in Shoto's bedroom

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Shoto invites his best friend for a family dinner, not knowing she's a huge Endevour slut who'd do anything to prove she's his biggest fan.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first time you met Endevour was life changing.

The man your best friend had vented to you about and defended ( at times ) was one of your biggest celebrity crushes and it broke your heart when 19 year old Shoto opened up to you, a civilian who happened to have amazing conversational skills, about how his now 'redeemed' father made him feel guilt for all the years he despised him.

You had comforted him then, and you comforted him now that you saw him tremble across from his dad during family dinner.

You, however, couldn't stop thinking about how much of a hulking figure the number 1 hero was. He was so large compared to you, your hand swimming in his palm when he shook your hand upon entry. His tatami chair looked miniscule underneath him, despite the fact he tried to make himself smaller so he wouldn't intimidate you, his guest.

You had thought Shoto was big, being over 6 feet, but his father put him to shame. He made you feel so small. He could easily pin you to a mattress, tossing you into any position he desires.

Endevour couldn't ignore the curious gaze of who he thought was his son's girlfriend. The way Shoto spoke about you made it seem like you had some sort of relationship exceeding friends. However, your lingering eyes that basically objectified him made it obvious that wasn't the case.

He wouldn't lie and say he wasn't intrigued, quite the opposite, the tint on your cheeks and the way he could tell you were holding yourself back as you bit your lip, ignoring the steaming food Fuyumi had cooked specifically for you, just so you could watch ever action he made fascinated him.

He hadn't slept with anyone since his ex-wife, and even then, it was nothing past vanilla. It seemed taboo to even imagine stuffing his son's smaller friend with his fat cock, though he was chubbing up in his pants like a school boy imagining it.

He couldn't get the thought of taking advantage of your obvious display of naivety and having you choke on his cock out of his head. It was like he was starved, you were freshly legal, ot was wrong on so many levels.

This was dangerous. You were dangerous.

He excused himself from the table, watching your face fall in disappointment. Though you finally looked at your cold food and began eating it, it was your favourite after all.

"Are you alright?" Shoto asked, noticing your lingering glare on his father. Poor thing thought you were uncomfortable being in the presence of an abuser, he had no idea the filthy thoughts filling your mind as the man 3 times your age left.

" I'm fine," you looked at your food once again, guilt consuming you. You had completely forgotten you were with Shoto, staring shamelessly at his father like some whore.

" I'm gonna explore your place," you say as an excuse, something that Shoto would be accustomed to and definitely wouldn't bother himself questioning your antics.

You got up, walking out of the dining room in the hope of finding the hulking flame hero.

You found yourself opening every door of the upstairs hoping with all your heart you'd see him, even if you had no idea what you'd do once you'd see him.

It was the last door in the corridor, and your hopes were high, you were praying that behind this door was the wet dream of a man you'd subconsciously wanted since you were a teen.

There he sat, on his son's futon no less, fiddling with things as he tried to figure the boy out. His eyes flicked to yours, the orchestrator of his recent torment, the cute little thing his son brought home that he couldn't help thinking of fucking.

" Yes?" He asked, when you stood completely still, your eyes still dancing around his figure in awe as if the only thing you could think of in that ditzy little head of yours was his cock.

You chewed your lip, realising you had to say something you couldn't make a fool of yourself in front of your favourite pro.

" I-i really like watching you fight," you mumble, hands falling from around your stomach to grip the sides of your skirt. He found your nervous display amusing, especially with how predatory your gaze was from the get-go.

" Really?"

" of course, I watch you on the news and online all the time, I'm so happy I was able to meet you in person...." you kept yammering on. The sound of your voice not ceasing even when Enji stood up from the floor a small smile on his face from all the praise, you didn't stop, just lowering your voice to a whisper when his large arm held the top of the door frame you stood under.

He wasn't usually so forward, in fact he wasn't forward at all, perhaps it was hanging around the retired wing herk that made him able to conjure up the words, but he didn't regret them no matter how out of character it was.

" You wanna prove how much of a fan you are?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Fuck~" He groaned. It was deep and guttural, covering up the sound of your shrill whimpers as he split you in two.

He was so heavy above you, even if only half his weight pressed against your back, you felt your eyes rolling back at the feeling.

His furry chest rubbed against your back, his thick appendage pulsing in your tight young pussy. You were so small and so pliable, he could easily break you like this and for some reason he wanted to see how far he could take it before you told him to stop.

You clawed the sheets in front of you, he could see how hard it was for you to take him, but it had been so long and you were so inviting. Your cunt was warm, goopy, and ready for some older cock to breed it, no matter how much you squirmed and whined.

It had been years since he'd last had a good fuck, so you can't blame an old man when he can't control himself once inside a younger pussy. His hips reeling back till only his thick tip remained then slamming back in.

It was uncoordinated and sloppy, and you couldn't help the tears that dripped down your face, allowing an older man to have you under him like this.

" Shhh..." He whispered into your ear, his hot breath wrapping around you and turning your mind into jelly, " you're being so good for me and you want to ruin it by yelling like some whore,"

His words made you squeal, eyes going wide while you shook your head like he'd accuses you of the worst crime ever.

" S-sorry sir," you mewled, your drool soaking your best friends pillow. How shameless.

He leans over you, opening his wet mouth to leave messy kisses on your face. He couldn't help the strong urge to fill you over and over again with his seed and make you his own, he almost felt jealous of his coward son for getting to spend ever moment with a cute thing like you, but he soon came to his senses.

A child like his son would never know how to treat a pussy like this. He wouldn't know how to tease your clit or fuck you dumb, he wouldn't have it in him to slap your face or mark your tits, he wouldn't have you crying on his cock instead he'd take his time with you like a lover not knowing you'd prefer to be used like a commonpiece fuck toy.

"Sir I'm there- I'm coming~ p-please let me cum,"

He effortlessly lifts and spins you around, kneeling as he holds you by your ass and uses your body like a fleshlight, pulling you up and down his length.

" Yeh make a fucking mess on me baby," he groans, watching your eyes roll and face relax as you let go. Your cunt squeezed him, trying to milk him for the cum he had not yet produced. Liquids sprayed from your cunt decorating his torso while your manicured nails dug into his shoulders, keeping yourself from squealing and alerting the residents downstairs of your taboo activities.

" oh fuck-" he gritted his teeth, his cock kicking inside you as his balls smacked into your ass, begging to fill the inviting pussy with glee. He shot his load in you with a cry a bruising grip on your bum as he leaned forward biting your shoulder to keep quiet.

The two of you sat in silence, separating and cleaning yourselves up like it hadn't happened, then going downstairs to continue the family gathering.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

" You were gone for so long. Did you get lost?" Shoto asked on the taxi home. A fond smile on his face, it seemed you and his father really got along after the meal, warming up to each other during the movie and board games.

" Kinda, I snooped in your bedroom," you mentioned

" gosh how embarrassing, I hope the All Might posters didn't put you off,"

If you were completely honest you didn't get time to look at the posters in his room, way to preoccupied getting familiar with his futon colour.

" no they were definitely embarrassing," you laughed, " today was really lovely, i wouldn't mind going over to your dad's again,"

I know it's super rushed. I literally wrote it half asleep. Sorry, gang, I'll probably edit it in the future

#mha #mha smut #bnha #endevour x reader #endevour #enji todoroki #enji smut #enji x reader #enji todoroki x reader smut #enji todoroki x reader #x reader smut #Endevour x reader smut #wrote while sleeping #not finished #x reader

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aiysan3 · 4 months ago

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"wow, you actually like this shit?" as I scroll through her disgusting horny Tumblr likes with one hand. Rubbing lazy circles on her swollen little clit with the other. Degrading her for being such a gross little girl while she mindlessly moans and humps my hand each time I send a filthy disapproving glance her way.

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aiysan3 · 4 months ago

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#a dream

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aiysan3 · 5 months ago

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Smells like trouble

Alpha!Neteyam x female human reader

Words: 23.3k (yes, i’m serious)

Summary: Neteyam is in trouble. There‘s a human in his home, a human female. And she smells dangerously close to something she certainly wasn’t. Sometimes she couldn’t ever be. An omega.

Warnings: explicit smut, enemies to lovers, p in v, omegaverse, knotting, biting, bite marking, fated mates, pheromones, extreme scent kink, scent marking, dom/sub, dirty talk, humiliation, oral (fem receiving), fingering, size kink, belly bulge, teasing, bullying, praise and degradation, alien biology, masturbation, complicated emotions and inner turmoils from both sides, alcohol consumption, drunk reader, slight dub con warning, squirting, mentions of blood & blood consumption (it’s literally just a drop)

On the list of things that were not supposed to happen, finding a stranger in his home ranked astonishingly high.

And this, this was definitely not supposed to happen. There was a human in his home, a human female. And she smelled dangerously close to something she certainly wasn’t. Sometimes she couldn’t ever be.

An omega.

This could only mean trouble.

On an instant, Neteyam’s instincts sharpened, a flicker of unease rippling through him. He kept his distance, though every fiber of his being screamed at him to move into your embrace. Your foreign scent enveloped him. It wrapped around him like a rope, pulling him closer, yet he managed to remain frozen in place. He was still standing in the doorway of his kelku [home], but he could already smell you on every surface of his home. This was impossible.

The alpha in him purrs at the sweetness of it, a sound he barely has time to bite down.

Your scent was soft but unmistakable, curling around him like a beckoning call, stirring something primitive and unwanted in the back of his mind. His teeth clenched. This cannot be happening.

Neteyam feels the tingle from his nostrils on every breath he takes, all the way down to his knees that had grown weaker by the second. It was strange. Warmth suddenly blossoms in his chest and his head feels clouded. It’s the most enticing scent he has ever had the pleasure of smelling in his whole life. The strange feeling has already settled in and took roots deep within his mind and soul before he could even realize its meaning. It was the scent of a potential mate, the scent that meant you were chosen for him by eywa herself. Fertile and compatible. A perfect little omega to match the alpha in him, served to him on a silver platter.

And Neteyam hates it.

He‘s only been away for a month, and already there is someone occupying his personal space. His father had informed him about the new human refugees his clan had granted shelter. That with the amount of new people arriving, there was also a pressing need to make sacrifices for the greater good.

As he had approached high camp upon his arrival, he had seen all the new makeshift tents lined up in haphazard rows, the smell of smoke from cooking fires mingling with the crisp morning air and the sound of the sky people’s tongue mixing with that of his own people. A clear sign that the olo’eyktan had indeed followed through on his decision.

"There's just not enough room for everyone," his father had explained before he’d left, his voice heavy with the weight of responsibility. "We have to share what we have. It’s the only way to survive." But this didn't make it any easier for him. This whole time, he thought his kelku had been out of the question. It was his sanctuary, a place where he could retreat after long days, where he could think and relax without interruption. Now, it was a shared space, and with it came the inevitable loss of privacy and peace.

And the worst part?

The worst part was, that not only did he had to share his home with an unknown stranger, but with a human of all things. A human woman. One, that had his mating instincts going rampant by the first whiff of her scent invading his nostrils. It clung to the air like a whisper of danger, warm and sweet, with the unmistakable undertone of something primal, something that did not belong here.

Omega. Omega. Omega. Mate now, mate now, mate NOW.

Neteyam’s jaw tightened, his pulse quickening.

The very thought made his skin crawl. He had spent years harboring a deep-seated disdain for humans, viewing them as arrogant and reckless creatures, incapable of understanding the delicate balance of nature that his own people revered. Their brashness, their greed, and their insatiable curiosity that caused nothing but damage, destruction and misery were all traits he found utterly repugnant.

The dim glow of the bioluminescent lanterns flickered across your face. You were a small thing, even for a human. Your skin marked with smudges of dirt and faint scars. As he peered through the narrow opening of his tent, he watched you bustling about, your hair cascading in waves as you unpacked a basket of freshly picked fruits. You moved with an energy he found both perplexing and infuriating, humming a tune that grated on his nerves. To Neteyam, your very presence was a violation, an intrusion into the sanctity of his personal space and his life.

Your clothing was dull, black and grey, a stark contrast to the bright and colorful tones of his own attire, which he wore with pride, a reflection of his heritage. The fabric of human clothing clings to your form, shifting every time you reached for something, and he couldn’t help but feel a surge of annoyance at how carefree you appeared, as if the weight of your circumstances didn’t burden you at all. As if you didn’t even feel what he felt in that very moment.

Logically, Neteyam knew that this was the case. That it wasn’t possible for a human to feel the same bond. That the sky people didn’t possess any equivalent to the mating bonds, scent glands and the instincts that came with it. And that you weren’t truly an omega. It was just not possible, not part of your biology. This must all be just an unfortunate coincidence. But that didn’t make it any less unfair.

Neteyam watched as you knelt to arrange some things out of a backpack, the way you smiled at the small trinkets you pulled from it, a camera, a book. To him, each item was a reminder of the world he had tried to distance himself from. It didn’t belong here. And you, you were too bright, too alive, and it made his chest tighten with an unfamiliar mix of anger and something else he refused to acknowledge.

Neteyam had never wanted to coexist with humans, much less share a roof with one. And now here you were, and eywa was trying to signal to him that you were meant to be his. His instincts told him that he should claim you. Mark you. Breed you. And as the reality of his situation sank in, he crossed his arms tightly over his chest, his jaw set in a grim line. He would endure this arrangement, he told himself. But he would do so on his own terms, keeping his distance and maintaining the cold walls he'd built around himself. And he would not entertain any of these mating instincts for even a second longer than necessary. For Neteyam, this was not just an inconvenience; it was a challenge to his very identity, and he would not back down so easily.

But then he had entered his kelku, and all color had drained from his face at the moment you turned to look at him. When he’d stepped closer, his movements slow and deliberate, the smell grew more potent, teasing at the edges of his control. His instincts flared in warning, urging him on.

The mating pull, one he thought was strictly reserved for his own kind, was stronger than he anticipated.

And your scent— a blend of spineberry fruit and something he couldn't quite place, something warm and inviting that made him crave proximity. It was intoxicating, a siren call that resonated deep within his being, awakening instincts he thought he'd only ever feel for a woman of the people. One, he simply hadn’t met yet. Not you, definitely not you.

He didn't understand it. Did all humans produce this kind of intense scent? He'd always been fine around the hundreds of humans he could smell just right outside his home. Although the sky people’s natural scent was rather unpleasant in their own way, it never bothered him that much before.

And he'd never been frenzied for it, desperate to smell it, taste it, feel it, have it cover his skin until it masked his own damn scent.

This was already fraying his nerves.

He liked being in control of his desires, of himself, until he decided to let his instincts as an alpha take control. But this? This he wasn't accustomed to, this he didn't know how to navigate, and he knew for sure that he didn't particularly liked it.

Neteyam fought to maintain his composure, but the way you turned to look at him, curiosity mingling with caution, sent a surge of warmth through his chest. Your eyes, bright and expressive, seemed to recognize something in him that he was only beginning to understand. It was as if you were a mirror reflecting desires he had buried deep beneath layers of duty and restraint.

"You're not supposed to be here," he managed to utter, his voice a low growl, betraying the turmoil within him. He could feel the tension in the air, thick and electric, as if eywa herself conspired to bring you together, like metal to a magnet, a flower to light.

"Uhm… hi?" You say, "Who a–"

"This is my home. And you are not supposed to be here," he cuts in, a little more harsh than he originally intended and you unintentionally straighten up at his voice, which nearly drives him mad. "I believe it’s best you find a different place to stay."

Your brows then furrow for a second, before they raise and a gentle smile crosses your features.

"Oh, you must be Neteyam! Your father has told me you would be on a mission for a couple of weeks and it would be no problem if–" You start, but Neteyam couldn’t even hear you anymore.

His neck already ached from staring down at you, but he wouldn't crouch. He'd bend for no one, especially not a little human wrapped in lush curves who couldn’t even grasp the situation you were in.

His fingertips tingled with the urge to grab your smaller frame and just bend you over the next best surface, so he balled them into fists at his sides. These urges are unnatural, for eywas sake! He should not entertain these fantasies about a woman –a human, he just met mere seconds ago, but the longer he stood in your presence, the harder it got for him to keep his thoughts clean and his mind clear.

With a groan of annoyance, he turned on his heels and left a dumbstruck human standing behind in his kelku [home].

This couldn’t be happening. He had to get rid of you before more words could even be exchanged. He wanted nothing to do with you.

Making his way through the crowded space of high camp, Neteyam was practically steaming.

Taking in the sight of the new arrivals of refugees mingling with familiar faces, he noticed they were weary and worn, eyes downcast as the new humans adjusted to the reality of their new life. Deep down, his heart ached for them; he understood their plight, but he couldn't shake the feeling of resentment that bubbled beneath the surface. It felt like an encroachment, a violation of his personal territory, and he found himself wishing for a moment of solitude, one that was no longer possible in this crowded, bustling community.

As he stepped closer, he could hear the laughter of the new occupants, children playing, voices rising in excitement. It was a reminder that while his world was becoming more populated, his own space was becoming increasingly confined. Helping the humans that was one thing. But being forced to live with one? His father had to understand that this was not something he was willing to do. Especially not now that every step away from his home, away from you, hurt like needles on the soles of his feet. Eywa, this mating bond was already getting on his nerves.

"Oh great mother, Neteyam. You will get wrinkles if you keep frowning like that."

After their grandmother’s passing, Kiri was the one to take over the place of the tsahìk, now occupying the healers tent for most of the day to check in on every new face that had joined the clan. And while Neteyam was proud of his sister for her accomplishments, he wasn’t any less annoyed by her teasing. Still, a request to the olo’eyktan was also a request to the tsahìk. And one day, they would rule together as brother and sister.

Neteyam’s frown deepened at Kiri’s comment, though her lighthearted tone did little to ease the tension knotting his shoulders. She sat cross-legged in the middle of the healer’s tent, grinding herbs into a paste with practiced ease. The air smelled of fresh poultices and burning sage, a scent that always reminded him of their grandmother.

"You’re awfully cheerful today," he muttered, crossing his arms as he leaned against one of the wooden support beams.

Kiri smirked, her golden eyes glinting mischievously. "Someone has to be, with you moping around like a lost nantang." She glanced up at him, her expression softening slightly. "What’s wrong, brother? You’re wound tighter than a strung bow."

"The human needs to be moved," Neteyam demands and he can’t help but notice the childish tone in his request.

Kiri gives a hearty laugh at that.

"So, I see you have met your new roommate." His sister sounds amused and smug and by eywa he should’ve known that Kiri was probably more responsible for this than his father.

"We aren’t roommates, Kiri. Remove her, find somewhere else where she can live," he grits his teeth, then opens his mouth again, but before he can protest further, the covers of the healers tent swing open and the olo’eyktan steps inside. Both siblings bow their heads in greeting.

"That's not happening, boy. We are low on space, and your tent is big enough for two." He says, his tone dismissive, yet there’s a comforting smile on the corner of his lips as he places a hand on his eldest sons shoulder, before moving around and handing something over at Kiri. A list, perhaps of the new refugees and the medical care they will require.

Neteyam’s jaw clenched. “She can’t stay with me,” he said firmly, trying to keep his voice steady.

Jake raised an eyebrow, his expression calm but stern. “And where do you suggest she goes, Neteyam? Every tent is already full, and the last thing we need is for someone to catch wind of my own son kicking a refugee out of his tent. A tent that is entirely too big for just one person, mind you."

Neteyam opened his mouth to argue, but the look in his father’s eyes silenced him. It wasn’t just a command; it was a reminder of the responsibility that came with being olo’eyktan in training.

"Yes, sir," he muttered reluctantly, his fists tightening at his sides.

He knows the cramped conditions are just part of their current situation, but he can’t keep his thoughts from the human woman rummaging through his things and filling his home with her sickening sweet scent. It makes the hair on the nape of his neck stand on edge. How was he supposed to ever face her again if he was barely able to breathe, let alone suppress his mating urges around her?

Kiri smirked, clearly enjoying his discomfort, as she called after him, "You’ll survive, brother. She’s just a human, how much trouble can she be?"

Neteyam exited in silence, only shooting her a last glare, as he closed the fabric of the tent.

Oh, sister, he thought. You have no idea…

Neteyam had never prayed for so long, nor with such perseverance. He desperately needed guidance but, for the first time in his life, he had received none. And he was ashamed that just as his anger, his desire for the strange human female had not abated either.

He had poured his heart into his prayer, kneeling for hours, baring his soul, confessing his anger, his confusion, his fear. Yet, nothing. No visions. No warmth. No sign. Just the endless hum of the the tree‘s invisible energy, its bioluminescent tendrils swaying softly in the gentle breeze.

It was well after eclipse before Neteyam was able to calm himself enough to set foot back into his own home, but when he did, all his praying and meditating was for nothing.

The whole tent smelled like you. You weren’t even here and he was thankful for whatever it was that you were up to, as long as it kept you away from him. Yet there's an aching emptiness that fills the space. It annoys him, the strength of the bond that is already connecting his soul to yours and Neteyam swallows hard, forcing himself to breathe through the tightness in his chest.

When he moves to the center of his tent, he finds several of your belongings mindlessly tossed to the floor and other corners. Great mother help him. You’re messy.

He clenches his jaw, surveying the chaos that has swiftly invaded what was once his orderly sanctuary. A pile of shirts lies crumpled in a heap next to his neatly arranged bedroll, and a couple of books, their spines cracked and pages dog-eared, lay sprawled across the floor as if they had been abandoned mid-thought.

His heart sinks further as he steps over a pair of shoes that are haphazardly kicked off, one facing east and the other west, like they were in a fight with each other. The sight of it sends a prickling annoyance through him, and he fights the urge to scream. How could someone be so careless?

His meticulous nature clashes violently with the chaos you’ve introduced. He can almost hear his mother’s voice in his head, reminding him of the importance of keeping things tidy, of respecting one's space.

He strides toward the mess, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. Each step feels heavy as he navigates through discarded items. He picks up a shirt, the fabric soft and wrinkled, and scowls. It’s almost as if it’s mocking him, smelling so much like you, reminding him of your carefree spirit that he resents.

He tosses the shirt in a pile he’d started for your things, a silent declaration that this is your responsibility, not his. It’s infuriating, how you can just live in chaos without a second thought. So typical for a human.

Neteyam grumbles, shaking his head as he scans the room once more, his irritation boiling just below the surface.

He knows he shouldn’t be this angry, but the mess feels like an invasion, a disruption of his carefully curated life. He prides himself on cleanliness and order, being the one with a plan that thinks ahead– and you already feel like a wild storm tearing through his carefully built walls.

He exhales slowly, trying to regain his composure. "You need to clean this up," he says aloud, even though you’re not here to hear him. It’s more of a plea than a command, a desperate wish for balance in his life once again. The thought of having to confront you about it fills him with dread, but he knows he can’t let this go on.

As he picks up another book, he can’t help but notice that there is one area where you scent seems strongest.

Involuntary, Neteyam feels himself being pulled to the space where his bedroll lays.

With flaring nostrils he takes in the rumpled sheets that show clear signs of you having slept in his bed during his absence. He would have to change them, he thought. Lifting them up and holding them to his nose, a pleasant shudder runs up his spine. And then, to his surprise, all anger suddenly melts into something else. It burns hot under his skin in the same way though.

Allowing himself to give in with the promise that this is a one-time deal, and then he will avoid you altogether, Neteyam strips off his clothes and climbs under the covers.

He’s so bone-tired exhausted from his travels, but your light floral scent drifts around him, causing his mind to go hazy again. You’re like a drug.

Neteyam hates the feeling of having no control over myself. This is all so new to him. He’s strong willed and determined, and he never. Never before, has let himself get this affected by a woman before. But here he is, completely thrown off balance by your scent, let alone the thought of you in his bed.

Kiri knew exactly what she was doing by putting you with him…

He remembers the countless hours spent training, honing his skills as a warrior, preparing to defend his home and his family and one day taking up the role as olo’eyktan. Yet, now that you wandered into his life, all that preparation seems trivial. He feels like a kid again, caught off guard by the flutter of emotions he thought he had long mastered.

Neteyam shakes his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He can’t afford to lose himself in any fantasies. You’re not his mate. Not an omega. Can’t be. There is too much at stake, too many responsibilities to shoulder, a clan to lead. And you’re too… too human. Weak and fragile and surely this must’ve been a mistake. Even eywa could make them, right? But the more he fights it, the more he feels the pull.

Soaking his heated skin in your scent, he tosses and turns in his bed, until he physically can’t hold still any longer. His fingers card through his braids, blunt nails scraping his skin before he runs a hand down his throat and over his chest. His heart is a beating drum underneath his ribs and he lets his hands wander further down, over his abs and past the low dip of his navel. Goosebumps raise all over his skin and his breath hitches when he wraps a hand around his pulsing cock. He’s hard and aching already. Fisting the sheets with his other, he pulls them to his core and envelopes his length in the fabric that smells so much like you.

Fuck. This is wrong. So wrong.

Squeezing the tip of his cock, where it turns from blue into a faint hue of purple, he forces the very first droplets of pre-cum to form and spill over his knuckles. It soaks the sheets wrapped around his base and he groans. There’s a tightness, a warmth that swells inside him and it gets even worse when he inhales deeply, your scent fills his nostrils and he bites down on his lip to hold in a moan.

He begins to pump his length with hard, fast movements, imagining it's you on his cock. It’s a mouth watering image in front of his minds eye. Your smaller form on top of him, your back arched, your hips rolling. And Neteyam, rolling right back, on his elbows, mouthing your throat, your collar bone, feeling the way you would squeeze around his length as you ride him. You’re probably so damn tight, it would drive him out of his skin. A look of pure bliss on your stupid annoying face as he meets your rhythm with hungry thrusts of his own, your heavy breasts bouncing near his mouth. Neteyam imagines his large hands toying with your pink pert nipples and touching every surface of your soft human skin, a thought that's so strangely arousing to think about that even more beads of pre-cum begin to drip down the bulbous head of his cock.

Stroking himself faster, he imagines running his tongue along your skin, imagines how rich it would taste of you. It’s such a perverted fantasy, so shamefully dirty that the sheer thought of voicing those fantasies makes his cock throb so hard that his breath catches in his throat.

He‘s certainly no virgin, but the image of you that Neteyam has conjured is too much for him. Having your scent envelop him was a mistake, but he cannot stop himself now as he pumps his hand faster. Gritting his teeth, a low whine keening at the back of his throat, he feels his release getting closer, and his canine begin to ache, begging to bite and claim. His knot swells and throbs, so he kneads the tissue of flesh with his other hand.

Just a few hard, fast paced strokes later and his seed soaks the sheet wrapped around his cock in thick spurts. Neteyam groans a deep sound of pleasure followed by a low growl, squeezing his eyes shut. He‘s gripping his throbbing length as he empties himself to the thought of your tear streaked, well-fucked expression and the fantasy of soaking your mouth, cunt and every hole in your body with his cum. Eywa, how he wished he could do this, instead of these fabrics that could only mirror your scent and not your warmth and possible tightness.

Neteyams breath comes out ragged and heavy, but it’s the only noise in his dark, empty home.

Once post-clarity hits him, he’s more than just appalled with myself. The sheets are cold and sticky, his skin flushed with sweat. And he just fist fucked himself to the image of a human that he barely knows, one he so very rudely shooed out of his home before you could even introduce yourself. The human that made his mating instincts loose control. And on top of that, you’re utterly clueless and completely unaware that you’ve just been the center of his deprived thoughts and perverted fantasies.

How much more shameful could he be?

— ✩⋆｡‧₊˚⭑˚₊‧｡⋆✩ —

Your new roommate hates you. Fucking great.

You don’t even know how exactly you did it. Usually, it took people an approximate time spent with you to start disliking all your odd little quirks. But with Neteyam, it was instantaneous.

That night when you had come home, you really thought he had cooled down. God, how you had hoped this was the case. You thought he’d just given you attitude that day because he was tired from his travels and just surprised at finding a stranger –an alien on top of that, in his home. But no.

You had barely stepped foot into the shared space of your new home when his golden eyes flicked over you, narrowing just slightly, but enough to make your stomach twist.

The introductions were awkward and brief. Neteyam, tall, graceful, and exuding a quiet confidence, made it painfully clear that he wasn’t thrilled to be saddled with a roommate, especially not you.

He made it very clear that even with your temporary living situation, you and him would have to continue to live separate lives. That this wasn’t the beginning of new friendship or bond or whatever fairy tail story you had imagined.

And so far, he made sure to keep that promise.

He didn’t even engage in much conversation with you. Not after the brief discussion of him offering up his freshly made bed and telling you to shut up about it, nor after waking up and sitting in silence as you munched on the fruit you had picked yesterday morning. He didn’t even say his goodbye as he stomped out of the door shortly after breakfast. God, you’ve never met a man this moody before.

Day after day, the tension lingered. Every attempt to spark a conversation was met with clipped responses, if not outright silence. Occasionally, you tried to be friendly, throwing out a casual "Hey" or “How was your day?” but the responses were always short, barely above a whispered grumble and the question was never returned to you, not even out of politeness. He moved around the tent with the precision of someone who was avoiding you on purpose.

It was maddening.

You couldn’t even pinpoint what you’d done to warrant the hostility. Was it the way you unpacked? The music you played? The way you dressed? The moment your stomach growled too loud during dinner? It was like walking on eggshells. Eggshells that Neteyam seemed perfectly content to leave scattered in your path.

Not to mention, you definitely took notice of the amount of time he cleaned and wiped every surface you had touched and immediately went to wash the blanket and pillow you had used throughout the night right after you woke. It was as if he was disgusted by you, your presence and possibly even your odd human scent and didn’t even bother to hide it, if his facial expressions were anything to go by.

Every little thing you did seemed to annoy Neteyam, and he wasn’t shy about showing it.

One morning, you accidentally spilled a bit of water while pouring yourself a cup. Before you could even reach for a piece of fabric, Neteyam was already there, snatching it from your hands with an exasperated sigh.

"Do you even know how to clean up after yourself?" he muttered, wiping away the water with the precision of someone scrubbing away a toxic spill.

"I was about to—", you began, but he’d cut you off with a dismissive wave.

"Next time, don’t wait. This isn’t your personal mess hall."

Then there was the time you struggled to carry a heavy crate of supplies into your shared home. You hadn’t realized how bulky it would be, and the weight threw you off balance. Neteyam stood in the doorway, arms crossed, watching as you wobbled under the strain.

"A ittle help?" You gasped, hopeful.

He raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "You brought it in. You can finish the job."

You nearly dropped the crate, your arms trembling, but he didn’t so much as budge to assist. Only when you managed to get it to the table did he speak again. "Maybe next time, you’ll think ahead."

And then there were the lectures. Oh, how he loved those.

The lectures were almost a ritual by now, as inevitable as sunrise and more often than not the only form of communication that took place between the two of you. Neteyam seemed to delight in every opportunity to remind you how little you knew about his world, how pathetic you were in his eyes and how your human ways were a constant source of irritation.

One evening, you’d returned from a walk with dirt smudged on your boots. The moment you stepped inside, Neteyam froze, his eyes flicking to the floor, where a few small clumps of dirt had fallen on the neatly woven floor. He had let out a slow, deliberate breath, as though summoning every ounce of patience in his body.

"Do you humans have no respect for the spaces you occupy?" He’d said, voice low but sharp, gesturing to the floor.

"Relax, I was going to clean it up," you muttered, bending to grab a cloth. But he wasn’t done.

"That’s not the point,” he continued, crossing his arms. "You should’ve removed your boots outside. You’re careless. Always acting without thinking."

Another time, you tried to cook dinner, thinking it might ease some of the tension. You’d gathered ingredients from the clan, carefully following a recipe you thought would impress him. But the second Neteyam walked in, he wrinkled his nose and stopped dead in his tracks.

"What are you doing?" He demanded, striding over to the fire place.

"Making dinner?" You said, genuinely confused by his tone and what you did wrong this time.

Then he had picked up one of the roots you’d been slicing and held it up like it was evidence in a trial. "This is meant to be boiled, not roasted," he said, his voice heavy with disdain. "Do you know how much time it takes to grow something like this? You’re ruining it."

"I thought it’d taste better roasted—"

"You thought?" He interrupted, his laugh humorless. "Next time, leave the thinking to someone who knows what they’re doing."

Even when you tried to immerse yourself in his culture, it was never enough. Once, you’d spent hours trying to weave a simple loincloth after watching his sister craft them with such skill. When you proudly wore your finished work, his unwanted comment was less than encouraging.

"The weave is too loose. It won’t last a day in the wild."

By the time he finished lecturing you about how to properly tension each strand and pointing out all the mistakes you’ve made, your excitement had long since deflated.

Even something as small as choosing food became an ordeal. You once grabbed a fruit you hadn’t seen before, eager to try it, but Neteyam snatched it from your hands.

"That’s not for you," he said curtly.

"Why? Is it poisonous or something?"

He rolled his eyes. "No, but it’s not meant for clumsy hands that don’t appreciate what they’re holding."

It was like this constantly: a relentless barrage of scorn and thinly veiled disdain. Every interaction felt like a reminder that you didn’t belong here, and Neteyam seemed determined to make sure you never forgot it.

It wasn’t an active kind of dark loathing that cripples the soul that you felt for him –that kind of hatred was firmly reserved for bastards like your ex-boss. Ardmore and Neteyam had nothing in common, thank God for small mercies. You still didn’t know him very well, but at least Neteyam didn’t manipulate or scheme. His disdain for you, while constant, was at least straightforward.

Neteyam wasn’t cruel, not in the ways that truly scarred. His criticism, though sharp, lacked malice. It was more like he was delivering a harsh truth he believed you needed to hear. It didn’t make it easier to stomach, but at least you knew where you stood. With Ardmore, every word had been a calculated move, every kind gesture laced with a hidden blade. Neteyam’s hostility, on the other hand, was raw and honest, if infuriating.

Still, that didn’t mean living with him was easy.

He still embodied every single trait that you quietly despise. Already you could tell that he was as uptight, arrogant and entitled as only the son of a chief could be, his ego weighted more than he did, and, to cap it all, he was a goddamn perfectionist.

You found yourself clenching your fists and biting your tongue more often than not, the snarky retorts dying on your lips because you knew they’d only escalate things. Instead, you bottled it up, letting it simmer until it came out in small, petty ways. Leaving tools or clothes scattered around after Neteyam’s meticulous cleaning, or humming an annoying tune just loud enough for him to hear. Nothing too obvious, just enough to scratch the itch of rebellion.

It didn’t seem to bother him any more than anything else you did, though, which was even more frustrating. Most of the time, when Neteyam wasn’t lecturing or humiliating you, he was just bluntly ignoring your very existence. He didn’t even pretend to know you as you walked past each other in the village. It was like living with a ghost— one that was very much alive and very much an asshole.

Well, from what you’ve heard, it was understandable that your social skills might suffer if you’ve dedicated your entire existence to relentless training and working out, while simultaneously fighting in a war between two species. Meanwhile everyone else your age gets to have a childhood and experience normal teenager stuff before they enter adulthood.

If you’d spent your formative years with the weight of an entire clan’s expectations on your shoulders, constantly preparing for life-or-death situations, you’d probably be a little tightly wound too. Still, it didn’t excuse him treating you like an annoying bug buzzing around his otherwise orderly existence.

Poor guy was in his late twenties and so uptight, you‘d be surprised if he’s ever been laid before. Not with that attitude, though. And you’d actually believe that to be true, if it weren’t for the scene that was currently playing out in front of you.

Whoever this guy was, this was not the Neteyam you knew.

For hours now, he sat in the center of a lively gathering around a fireplace, a confident smile on his lips and an easy laugh spilling freely from him, as he effortlessly engaged with everyone around him.

They were celebrating the return of their golden child. The brats been away for a month and the whole clan was throwing him a party. Unbelievable.

All night, the people had been flocked to him, their faces beaming with admiration as they congratulated him on the success of his recent mission.

Women in the clan seemed particularly drawn to him, their eyes sparkling with interest as they playfully flirted and tossed compliments his way. Some of them had even leaned just a bit closer throughout the conversation as he told them stories of his travels, their hands brushing his arms and occasionally holding onto his biceps as their shrill laughter made your ears ring.

And god, that grin of his as he was practically showering in all the attention he was given, yet pretending to be nothing but a humble saint. Ugh. He‘s so full of himself, you thought as you scrunched your nose in disgust.

You stood awkwardly at the edge of the gathering, nursing a drink and watching the scene unfold. This version of Neteyam, the charismatic, charming leader who seemed to light up the entire space, was a complete stranger to you. His stern, uptight exterior was nowhere to be found.

Neteyam’s gaze then flicked towards you, his grin faltering for a fraction of a second before he recovered.

Not just an asshole, but arrogant as well. You could tell by the way his eyes scanned the crowd every once in a while, stopping just to peak in your direction as if he wanted to know that you were seeing him, seeing the way he was loved and adored by all and everyone, before he adverted his gaze completely and continued his conversation as if you didn’t even exist.

Lifting your mask up to empty yet another cup of whatever this liquor was called, your body gave a little shiver in response to the fuzzy feeling running down your throat and filling your stomach with warmth.

As you observed the scene, it became increasingly difficult to reconcile this charismatic figure with the rude guy you were to call your new roommate. Neteyam was not just popular; they were obsessed with him. He was genuinely loved and adored by his clan, their excitement to have him back made that much clear. But the way they rallied around him made it evident that he was more than just a cornerstone of their community. Neteyam was their golden child, the best, the one they put all their hopes into, the one that was wanted and desired.

Of course he would despise your kind. Neteyam, the na‘vi in general, they were beautiful, elegant and yet strong and seemingly flawless beings. And you, you were an intruder of his home, destroying every sense of peace these beings had ever known.

And having to witness such a different side of him, while knowing just how cold and rude he could be towards you, sparked a wave of jealousy deep within you. You felt a knot tighten in your stomach as you watched him charm everyone around him, their faces lighting up in his presence while you stood off to the side, feeling invisible. It was hard not to compare yourself to them, so effortlessly engaging and carefree, while you struggled to even get a smile or a kind word from him.

All you wanted was to make friends, to feel included in the joy and laughter that surrounded Neteyam. But instead, there was a chasm between you and him, one that seemed to grow wider as you watched him bask in the adoration of the crowd. You couldn’t help but feel a pang of sadness creeping in. Why did he have to be so wonderful to everyone else while being so dismissive towards you?

It felt unfair that you were trying so hard to fit in, to find your place among the clan, while he seemed to effortlessly command the attention and affection of everyone around him. You took another sip from your cup, the warmth of the liquor doing little to soothe the ache in your chest.

As the laughter and music continued to swirl around you, you felt a mix of envy and loneliness wash over you. You wanted to be part of that world, to share in the joy and camaraderie, but instead, you felt like a shadow lurking at the edge of the celebration. And with every moment that passed, the distance between you and Neteyam felt like an insurmountable wall, leaving you wondering if you would ever break through.

— ✩⋆｡‧₊˚⭑˚₊‧｡⋆✩ —

It’s not fair.

Everywhere he goes, it seems you’re already there to torture him with your presence alone.

He feels your shadow before he sees you, the faint ripple of your existence pressing against his every nerve. He’s not sure if it’s hatred or obsession, or if there’s a difference anymore.

Even at his own damn celebration, he can hardly focus on the words being spoken around him. All he can think about is you, sitting there on the opposite site of the big fire and watching him through the flames. His mind is playing tricks on him, flooding his thoughts with possible what-if‘s.

You’re sitting there all alone, what if another male approaches you? What if you drink too much of the swoa [intoxicating beverage] and can’t find home? It’s a pretty strong liquor and you’re such a tiny thing. You’ve had way too much of it already and he should excuse himself and get up to stop you, but no. He can’t do that.

For days he‘s been trying to avoid you, and he doesn’t even know if you’re doing it on purpose, but you’ve already made this much harder for him than it needed to be. He just wants to keep his distance, but it seems like you’re everywhere. Your scent is calling to him, your voice is driving him insane, your name in other people’s mouths makes him jealous beyond belief. How is he supposed to get his mating instincts under control when everything you do is going straight under his skin? How is he supposed to get anything done when you’re all he can think about?

"Just a little more and there’s a hole in the side of her face, bro."

"What?" Neteyams head whips around so fast, his brother and the annoying human equivalent of him both snort a chuckle that make his brows furrow in irritation. Shoving a bright pink berry between his lips, Lo‘ak tips his chin in your direction and mumbles, "You’re staring at her again."

"I‘m not staring." He defends, although too quick to make it sound truly believable.

"Of course you’re not," his younger brother sighs and then, after a moment, "So when are you finally going to talk to her, huh? One more of these drinks and she’s not going to remember much of it, so better be quick."

"I‘m not–" Neteyam begins, then pauses and takes a deep breath that relaxes his shoulders, before he starts over. "I don’t plan on talking to her. We‘re merely roommates for the time being because she is in need of shelter and that is all. She’s annoying and messy and she reeks of human." He shakes his head and scrunched his nose as if to demonstrate his distaste of the little demon.

"Let me just pretend I didn’t hear that," Spider casually chimed in, which he expertly ignored. Not that the blonde minded. He just shrugged and bit down a playful grin, being used to Neteyams tendency to dislike his race.

"She’s actually pretty nice if you’d just gave her a chance." Lo‘ak nudged his side, giving him a sympathetic smile.

One of Neteyams brows raised as he glanced sideways at his younger brother. "How would you know?"

"Who do you think was showing her around while you were gone and told her not to touch your shit or you’d loose your mind, Mr. always-tidy-and-perfect?" Both, Lo‘ak and Spider, laughed at the truth of his words, while he had barely anything to even smile about.

Neteyam had a hard time listening at all since the conversation had even begun. All he could focus on was the anger that clenched in his gut as he watched you from afar, carelessly downing another cup of very strong swoa [intoxicating beverage]. Your cheeks had began taking up a warm rosy color that only added to his worry and the suspicion that you were more than just tipsy by now.

"She was even looking forward on meeting you. Before you decided on being a complete dick to her, I mean." Lo‘ak unknowingly added more fuel to the fire that already burned hot in his veins.

"Hm," Neteyam only grunts his acknowledgement, grinding his teeth. "My point still stands. I tolerate her because I must. And the sooner we will build more room for the refugees, the better. I can’t wait to get rid of her and her- her human scent and her human things littering my home!" His voice has grown louder and angrier the more he thought of you, the more he thought about the irreversible bond that he tried so hard to ignore.

"Oh, great." A look is exchanged between the two brothers of whom one Neteyam wouldn’t even consider his family’s pet, yet his younger siblings seemed to be very fond of. Spider suddenly moved to stand, straightening his loincloth and fastening the bow string that sat across his chest.

Lo‘aks mischievous smile sends the hair on the nape of his neck raising and Neteyam suspiciously squints his eyes at him. Lo’ak then clears his throat and asks, "so, you don’t mind that Spider is going to take his chance at–"

"Fuck that." He stands so abruptly, two pair of eyes immediately land on him, all words dying on his brothers tongue. "You," he points at Spider who had barely made it one step forward, "sit back down."

"Yes, sir," the vrrtep [demon] chuckles, then holds his hands up in surrender before he does as he’s told.

The leaves crunch angrily under his feet as Neteyam stomps over to you. He doesn’t know why his brothers teasing suddenly drives him so out of his skin. Why the thought of Spider talking to you makes his blood boil and his head pound in anger. It’s so untypical for him. He‘s never been so short tempered and possessiv of someone. Let alone someone he doesn’t even want!

But Neteyam's steps falter as someone unexpectedly steps into his path, blocking his direct approach to you. He lets out an irritated grunt, his brow furrowing in frustration as he looks at the individual in his way.

"Ah, Neteyam, my boy."

It’s Akwey, former olo’eyktan of the Olangi Clan. A significant portion of his clan did not survive the great war from before Neteyam was even born. In the aftermath of the battle, the surviving members of the Olangi clan found refuge and integration with the Omatikaya. Akwey is still a well respected member of the clan, a friend and ally of his father and part of the council of elders, therefore it wouldn’t be wise to just sent him off. Even if Neteyam wanted to do nothing more than to rush past him.

"It's good to see you back. Tell me, how did your mission to the southern borders fare? Were you successful in your endeavors?"

Neteyam, momentarily caught off guard by the unexpected topic of conversation, paused before responding. The tension in his shoulders eased slightly as he realized the elder's intention to engage in light conversation rather than delve into deeper matters.

But even has he told Akwey about his recent travels, sharing lighthearted laughs and friendly words with his fathers old friend, he couldn’t stop his eyes from wandering over his shoulder to where you were seated. Or was, to be more specific. During his conversation, you had managed to leave, although stumbling and on unsteady feet, in the direction of the forest.

Neteyam knew that this couldn’t be the direction you intended to take, because the way to your shared home was the exact opposite way.

With all possible respect and an apology that wasn’t as sincere as he tried to make it sound, he finally managed to make his escape and end this conversation in favor of rushing after you. With a smile on his lips and a proud clasp to his shoulder he was excused and Neteyams feet quickly carried him away from Akwey, away from the clearing, the celebration and the rest of the clan.

Although his sense of smell was keen and he would’ve easily been able to track your footsteps through the forest, he didn’t had to walk far to find you.

There, on a moss covered log, you sit. The sound of a sniffle pierced his heart as he slowly approached, your head shooting up and your shoulder tensing under his gaze before he could even open his mouth to speak.

"W-What?", you bark at him, the defensive and downright aggressive tone in your voice taking him by surprise, "if you want to lecture me or anything, I don’t want to hear it."

I don’t, he thinks, but choose to stay silent. He prefers to just stand and listen, see what the drunk version of you would do if you had already decided to be so bold with him.

"Stop staring at me!" You balled your fist at your sides, anger and frustration clearly written all over your face. "G-God, yes, I know I must look so pathetic to you right now…" He thinks about agreeing, but bites his tongue instead. "I bet the golden child himself has never been so em-embarrassingly drunk before, r-right?" You throw your arms up as you gestured wildly.

A chuckle almost escapes him, but before you can take notice, you’re already standing, ready to continue your journey to wherever you thought this path would lead you. Your legs however had other plans. Tipping over your own clumsy feet, you barely manage to keep yourself upright.

'Drunk' really was an underestimation, he realized.

Neteyams hands almost instinctively reached out to steady you, but you swatted them away like a stubborn child that insisted that it didn’t need any help.

"Leave me alone, Neteyam… I can take perfect care of myself!" What a very fitting statement to his previous thoughts.

"Home‘s the other way." He says ever so nonchalantly, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder. He would never admit it out loud, but the blush of embarrassment that was now evident on your cheeks and even your collarbone was a very satisfying view.

"I- I know that," you stammered and great mother you couldn’t have been more obvious if you tried.

Raising a brow, Neteyam decided to play into your embarrassment, teasing you further just for the fun of it. "Oh, do you?" He asked, a playful smile grazing his lips as he crossed his arms over his chest. His tail curled behind his back in excitement.

"You’re s-so full of yourself!" You nearly exploded as you plopped back down, sounding more childish than ever. "All week you’ve been ignoring me, treating me like i don’t even exist and now you decide is the time to come and talk to me again? Why? Just so you can look down at me and laugh? Because the dumb little human got too drunk?"

Yes.

"No."

"Then what do you want?"

"I want to make sure you find back home without injuring yourself, skxawng [idiot/moron]." That was at least partly the truth.

Your shoulders relaxed a bit at this. "Wait. Really?"

"Just because you and me aren’t friends doesn’t mean you’re any less of a responsibility to me," Neteyam explained as he stared down at you. "You live in my home and my father would skin me alive if anything were to happen to you."

Not to mention the uncomfortable feeling of unease that gnawed at his very being at the thought of you wandering around at night all alone. As much as he wanted to hide it, Neteyam had this strong urge to protect you. To care for you, how any alpha would do for his mate. But he would rather fight a palulukan with his bare hands than tell you that.

To his surprise, you let your head fall back and give a heartfelt laugh. "I‘m not your responsibility, Sully."

Sully. You’ve called him that before and Neteyam has never taken the sound of his own family name with a grain of salt before. But he simply prefers to hear his name coming out your mouth, his own and not his family’s.

"Unfortunately, you are," Neteyam then sighs under his breath.

"Oh, spare me", you roll your eyes at him at that, before you begin with your second attempt on getting away from him. "I mean it, I can walk by myself."

But the moment you manage to stand up straight without stumbling, he demonstratively pushes you back down with just a single finger against your chest. You easily fall back onto your bottom with a soft thud.

"No you can’t," he says.

"This is–", a breathy laugh escapes you, much to his surprise, "this is ridiculous." More giggles burst out of you the longer you seem to think about it, until you’re full on laughing and clutching your stomach. Neteyam just stands there, arms crossed and brows raised high and he‘s worried you might’ve consumed more than just liquor. Knowing Lo‘ak and Spider, he wouldn’t be surprised if one of them had given you any 'ampirikx root [kava] just for the fun of it. That stuff would knock you into next week, no doubt. But not even these two knuckleheads would be stupid enough to do something like this to you. Not when Neteyam had been watching you like a hawk all night.

Once your laughter had finally settled down and you had lifted your mask up for a terrifying second to wipe your tears away, you glance back up at him with a sigh.

"Good, now what, genius? Do you really want to keep me here in the forest until I sober up?" You ask with a hint of humor.

"Of course not," he shakes his head and then takes a step forward. "How do you want me to carry you?"

"Carry me? Are you serious?" You laugh, until you realize that his expression hadn’t changed and Neteyam was, in fact, completely serious.

In that moment, something shifted. A playful smile crept back onto your lips, but this time it was different. Your eyes sparked with what looked dangerously close to mischief and leaning in slightly, you then asked, "Well, how do you want to carry me?“

By the tone in your voice, it wasn’t hard to forget that you were still pretty much drunk. Unfortunately and up to this point, Neteyam had almost forgotten. Forgotten or repressed, one could argue about that.

But then he thought back to his brothers words about you most likely not being able to remember the night going by the amount of liquor you’ve had throughout the celebration. Taking another step closer to you, Neteyams tongue swiped over his bottom lip, the temptation too strong to resist and so he decided to be bold and playful with you just this once. Just because he could and because the consequences were barely to none existent. You would most likely forget about this conversation by tomorrow.

"I want to throw you over my shoulder and spank your ass so hard you can’t sit straight for a week, because you got so drunk and then decided to be a brat about it. That is how." The grin on his lips was a dangerous one and he took his sweet time to let this new information soak in.

For a moment you looked too stunned to speak or even move at all, but then the intoxicated blush deepened on your cheeks and you began to grin.

"Then why don’t you?"

Neteyam scoffs and half smiles at this. Clearly drunk.

"Alright, let’s get you home before you get any more insufferable."

"Oh is that a smile? You can smile?" And for the first time you laughed so lightheartedly around him, it made goosebumps break out all over his skin. Rolling his eyes, he grumbled, "Don’t get used to it." And then kneeled down enough for you to wrap your arms around his neck so he could carry you bridal style.

The walk to his kelku was longer than Neteyam remembered. Part of the reason for that was probably the human in his arms that normally didn’t even look in his direction, let alone speak to him for more than necessary, but was now drunkenly rambling all the way back home without a break.

The words "go to bed" were probably muttered with too much annoyance, but Neteyam was entirely too tired to care.

However, his luscious little walking nightmare had the audacity to remain frozen in place. When he quirked a brow at you, wondering why you didn’t just turn around and leave, you asked,

"Can you help me with that? Your sister has helped me put it on but the knots are so complicated and I don’t want to accidentally rip it."

Sweeping your hair over your shoulder you then turned your back to him, exposing smooth skin and the backside of the neatly woven top that Kiri had made for you. Or with you, to be exact. His sister was a great teacher and Neteyam had to thank her one day for coming up with a design so fitting for a human like you and at the same time curse her for being the reason you wore something so revealing when you normally hid all your skin beneath layers and layers of fabric.

There’s a small knot that sits on the nape of your neck and one that sits just below your shoulder blades. They’re bound tightly, but Neteyams fingers are skilled enough. When the first one opens, the fabric on your front loosen drastically, but you don’t make a move to hold it together.

Neteyam gulps.

This was a dangerous game. He could just lean to the side and he’d get a glimpse of your sideboob.

His hands are colder than your skin, and he waits for you to complain when he traces the burning line of your shoulder up to your neck. You break out in goosebumps where his fingers were, but don’t say anything. His hands are just there, with a mind of their own, sliding from your shoulders to holding onto your hips and then skimming further to untie the next knot.

When he loosens that last knot, the top flutters nearly silently to the ground in front of your feet. Your breathing comes out heavier, chest raising and falling, and eywa he would be an idiot to not take advantage of it.

His hands begin to wander before he could make the decision to do so, roaming from your hips to your front. They carefully run over the softness of your belly, up to your ribcage, until he feels the swell of your breasts.

A shiver courses through you like electricity, but you remain quiet.

Neteyam considers stepping back and take his leave. That would be the right thing to do. He knows he should not take this any further or he’d be unable to resist you ever again.

But when he retracts his hands, immediate mourning the loss of your warmth, you do something unexpected. On slow, still unsteady feet, you turn around to face him. You had to crane your neck all the way up to look at him. The sight of your bare chest and the flush that spread from your cheeks all the way down to your pretty nipples was enough to hypnotize him to the point he didn’t even realize you had lifted your arms and unclasped your mask.

Sucking in a breath, you took it upon yourself to raise to your tiptoes and pull him into a kiss with a hand on his neck.

Neteyam blinks, stunned.

Your lips are so incredibly soft, so easy to melt into, and when your warm wet tongue swipes over his bottom lip to beg for entry, he can’t stop himself from kissing you back just as fiercely. The taste of you is something straight out of every alphas dream. It’s sweet and delicious and you’re so warm and pliant. When Neteyam wraps his arms around your middle and pulls you in tight, you use that last bit of breath to give him a soft little moan. And that’s when his mind went blank.

You have to force and shove him back in order to swipe your mask back on, giggling at the shameless display of his desperation. He was making a fool out of himself, but every instinct inside him told him to bend you over and force his knot into you until your belly would swell.

One of his hands slipped to your ass so he could grip it, knead it, just fucking hold the perfect thing, as he brought the other to your waist to make sure you couldn't escape him.

A whiff of your scent invaded his nostrils and Neteyam was sure by the look on your face that his pupils must’ve been fully blown by now.

Suddenly, Neteyam wanted every strand of hair, every bit of flesh, every drop of blood, every cell, every fibre that belonged to that little human that got on his nerves every waking minute of the day. He wanted to greedily consume it and have you consume him in return.

The hair on the nape of his neck raised as a shiver ran through him, and the thought of showing his desires so outrageous and obvious to you drove him mad. All that he worked so hard for over the past few weeks was for nothing in this very moment.

Neteyam was so ready to blast you for being such a messy, annoying, weak and dumb little human, but it was like these primal urges to mate you completely overtook his ability to think rationally. Because he opens his mouth to put an end to this and shoo you away, but ends up shoving your mask back up and kissing you instead.

Your eyes fly open when he jams his mouth against yours, then flutter closed again when you melt against him. He's rough with you, tangling a handful of your hair in his hand and biting you lip just enough to make your exhale jaggedly.

He‘s so angry at you. For what exactly, he can’t even tell at this point. He‘s angry because you taste so fucking good. He‘s angry because his cock is hard and aching for you beneath his loincloth, pressing desperately against your stomach. He‘s angry at himself too, for showing this weakness to a human he despises. For loosing this battle against his own will so soon.

"In case you needed a reminder," Neteyam mutters, narrowing in on your swollen bottom lip as you pulled your mask down again, breathing heavily. "I'm not going to be nice to you."

You don’t respond to that, but you do touch your bitten lip with the tip of your tongue in a way that makes him inexplicably want to run his tongue over it. Or the tip of his cock. So he does. The mask nearly goes flying again and his tongue is back in your mouth, biting and kissing and sucking. You’re squirming against him, needy little sounds escaping you while he presses your body against his, walking you backwards to the other room.

He can’t think when his lips are on you, but every time you put your mask back on to inhale some much needed air, Neteyam halfway wonders what the hell he's doing making out with you, and whether he ought to be seriously thinking about if that's a good idea and if he's really dropped his standards so low.

Even though Neteyam only had a reasonable amount of swea at the gathering earlier, the slight mix of liquor combined with the intoxicating feeling of arousal was making his thoughts run in slow-mo, but then crowd up and shove each other for attention. But one thing comes to mind, more important than the others. He sighs, and braces a hand against your hip to push himself away from your lips.

"How much have you had to drink?" He asks, his tone stern.

"I'm fine," you tell him, albeit slurring enough to remind him that you were, in fact, not.

Neteyam knows you’ve had enough. You’re tiny and probably get drunk just from smelling the cups passed to you.

"I‘m serious." It's paining him to be this responsible, which he hopes you know as he holds you hot and bothered at arm's length. "We are not doing this if you are too drunk. If you regret this in the morning it’ll be my fault."

"I don't think you actually care." There's a tiny, weird smirk on your face, a challenge, your voice even but your gaze uneven and filled with lust.

"I do," he says, inhaling deeply. Your aroma distorts his ability to make the right choice. "Actually, you don't know anything about me, tawtute [human]."

"Yeah?" You tilt you head as you gaze up at him and Neteyams spine straightens as he feels your hand, dainty fingers running over the outline of his cock. "But I know you want this. And I’m offering it to you. Pinky promise I won’t regret it in the morning." You giggle softly at your little joke, even more so when you seem to realize you’re the only one in the room that actually has a pinky.

Neteyam rolls his eyes at that. "Fine," he grumbles, then gives you a little push that throws you off balance, but you land softly on his bed made of different fabrics and soft fur.

You might not, but maybe I will.

The little show of blunt teeth is quickly wiped from your face once Neteyam kneels between your legs. He pushes your thighs apart rather roughly to make room for himself there and your eyes widen as they watch him move with so much confidence. The sound of a low purr coming from deep within his chest makes you bite down on your bottom lip and Neteyam narrows his eyes on you.

This had to be a one time thing. There was absolutely no way for him to not mate you right here and right now. He knew that once he was buried inside that tiny cunt, his urges as an alpha would force him to knot that human that smelled so much like the perfect little omega for him. He would accidentally break you. And then he would mark and bind himself to a woman that belonged to a species Neteyam despised more than anything in his life? No. He had to be stronger than this. And there had to be another way to relieve this burning hunger deep inside of him.

"Lift your hips for me, sevin tawtute [pretty human]" he commanded, voice low and husky. Submissive as you were, you did as you were told, and Neteyam hooked his fingers under the cords that held your loincloth together around your hips and pulled it down.

It takes no convincing or sweet talk for you to coyly let your thighs fall open, revealing your pretty pretty cunt to him. Neteyam swallows thickly at the sight.

Lifting his hands to spread your glistening lips he’s met with the cutest shade of pink he‘s ever had the pleasure of laying his eyes upon. And you’re so wet. Salvia pools in his mouth like a dam ready to burst and he wipes his tongue over the pointy tips of his canine. That would be a feast.

Neteyam is still holding you open with his thumbs as he leans down to kiss the little nub that sits on top of your slit. Your thighs jerk and your breath comes out hitched. He looks up at you through his eyelashes as he licks the first stripe all the way up from your slit, his tongue curling gently over your clit. You’re so sensitive, and the knowledge feels so fucking good it almost hurts.

A low hum leaves his throat at the first taste of your honey-like arousal on his tongue. He doesn’t know what’s sweeter, your scent or your taste. Either way, it wakes something primal in him. Something that makes him want to consume you whole. To bite and mark and breed and claim. His tail thrashes vividly behind him and you give a little yelp as Neteyam moves his hands from your thighs to the back of your knees and folds you in half. With your ass now high in the air and your knees on either side of your face, you’re perfectly presented to him. A dinner ready to eat.

"I could smell you getting wet earlier, you know" he says lowly. "I just didn't know if you'd do anything about it."

Neteyam watches you swallow thickly, legs splaying wider automatically to give him better access. His words make your skin flush with pleasure and Neteyam makes a low, feral noise when your hips jerk up into his touch, goosebumps spreading all over your skin from his hot breath against your folds.

"Are you – glad I did?" You manage.

He scoffs, like the answer is so obvious, but he can’t give you that satisfaction.

"I’d hold onto something if I were you."

"H-Huh?"

His tongue swipes again, parting your folds revealing all those sweet spots he plans to assault and you moan when his tongue suddenly pushes past your slippery entrance. He‘s so much bigger than you, his tongue easily able to fill you out and curl just right.

Neteyams face is practically shoved between your thighs, leaving no room for you to wriggle away, even as he switches between all consuming licks and hungry kisses to your clit. Your hands are fisted in the furs underneath your back, gripping so hard your knuckles are turning white.

You taste divine. Delicious. Made to be addictive, because that’s what you are. And he is dizzy with it.

Part of him wants to drop his hands to his cock, to take away the ache spreading through his gut at the taste of you, at the sound of your breathing, low and ragged and laced with only the ghost of a moan. But that would mean taking his hands from you and he won’t do that, not when he’s desperate to get you closer, to suck at you until you scream your voice hoarse on his name.

His mouth is so full of you, tongue so deep inside. Eywa, he might loose himself right then and there.

Your arousal comes in waves, enough to make him swallow some of it down and Neteyam moans, actually moans, at the warmth spreading through him at that.

Pulling his tongue out of you in a slow, languid glide elicit a wonderful whimper out of you. He glances up at those soft looking lips of yours, bitten raw by the force of your blunt teeth in order to keep these sounds from escaping.

"You’re so messy," he says, thick and hot between heavy breaths. One of his hands moves to your core, fingers running through the filthy mess of spit and slick. With your clit caught between the slippery digits he rub and nudges against it, giving it torturous little taps that make your hips jerk and your cunt clench. "Such a wet, messy girl."

You look up at him through your lashes, eyes half lidded and so full of lust it nearly kills him. Your lips are parted on heavy breaths and you look so soft and vulnerable, so ready to be claimed. He needs to occupy his mind with something, needs to shove down these instincts because this isn’t the road he’s willing to take.

"Tell me how it feels," Neteyam says, pressing a sloppy kiss to your core. "Tell me what my tongue feels like inside of you, little omega."

For a split second, your eyebrows furrow, but then all tension melts away when his tongue glides into you again. You exhale a moan, eyes slipping shut as you let the pleasure overtake all your senses.

"Feels good," you tells him softly, followed by a moan, "Feels so good."

Neteyam skims his hand over the back of your thigh, and then his fingers are trailing along your slit. He holds you open and rubs slick, callused fingertips against your clit. "That feel good too?"

"Yes," you whimper when he starts licking at you right there, his tongue sliding between his own fingers, and fuck, he can feel you almost come right there. You don’t even know which part of him is touching you where, his fingers, his tongue, even his chin and nose is smothered against you. "Yes, fuck."

"You gonna come like this?"

"Yeah," you breathe. "Yeah, I'm gonna come. Neteyam, you’re gonna make me come!"

"I never thought I’d hear you say that," he murmurs with a grin, kissing the inside of your thigh before moving back to the price. "But I like the sound of it. Can you say it again, paskalin [honey]?"

Nodding hastily, you barely managed to get your voice to work, the noise merely sounding like a long whine, "I‘m- I‘m gonna come!"

And then your orgasm crashed over you with the force of a wild thanator. Your spine arches and Neteyam has to hold you steady as you come, whispering filthy things against your cunt that you could barely hear over the cries you couldn't hold in even if you tried.

Neteyams eyes flicker up from between your legs and he fucks you through this orgasm just like that, his eyes never leaving yours. He doesn't stop licking at you, takes your clit into his mouth and sucks hard, and you keep coming, head thrown back against the furs.

"Fuck, you don't even know," Neteyam says, kissing and making out with your cunt in between words. His fingers are rubbing your clit gently where his mouth is still busy elsewhere, even as you come down from your orgasm. "You don't even know how gorgeous you are when you come, how hot you make me."

He sucks at you sharply, making the heat in your belly spike, and then moves to slide his digits inside you. When he starts to fuck you on his fingers, nice and deep, it feels like you’re burning from the inside out, and your whole body tenses and twitches.

"Still so needy," he purrs dangerously, "You’re just as greedy at the rest of your kind. Always begging for more, even if your little cunt is already stuffed–", one more finger slides into you, "–full."

Your breath cuts off sharply when he curls his fingers just right, the rhythm of his tongue returning to steady and persistent strokes. He's lapping at you, wet and rough and hard and before you can think it through, you reach up and grip at his hair, holding his face up against your body as everything throbs and flies right over the edge.

When you come again, you can't even control your own body anymore. Moaning shamelessly, you let Neteyam hold you as you sob and shudder and burst into a million pieces. Even as you come down from it, he still licks at you gently, and your whole body jumps when he presses a soft kiss to your clit before he withdraws his fingers from your oversensitive entrance.

Neteyams chin and cheeks are glistening when he pulls back. Another little shiver runs through you when you catch sight of it, and he reaches up to rub some of the slickness off with the back of his hand, hitting you with the full, warm weight of his gaze as he does it.

Even after your breathing has evened out, you just stay like that for a beat, lost to everything but how good it feels. Your eyes seem even more dazed than before, pupils so blown they looked nearly fully black to him. Neteyam is impossible gentle as he lays your thighs back down, biting down a groan at the way they shake from the intensity of your orgasms.

You make a whined sound of protest when he moves you, hands reaching out to pull him in, lips seeking him out as if you had completely forgotten about the mask that sits over your face.

"Shh, I’ve got you," he coos as he tugs you under the furs, ignoring the painful throb of his neglected cock as he watches your eyes flutter closed. He just sits there for a heartbeat longer, just to make sure, but before he could get up, fingers reach out and halfway curl around his wrist. You tug at his arm weakly, and Neteyam bites his tongue hard.

He knows what you want. It should be pathetic, the way you try to pull him in under the covers. The way you seek out his proximity.

And he, he wants to fucking break something for being so reckless, so careless and downright selfish. He sits there for at least ten more minutes, tasting you on his lips, until his head clears enough for him to finally wriggle free and get up from his spot next to you.

You’re long gone and sound asleep as he exits the tent. The cold morning air makes his skin prickle like tiny needles raining down on his skin. But this is nothing against the throbbing pain of his temples as realization dawns in on him.

Neteyam is in trouble.

— ✩⋆｡‧₊˚⭑˚₊‧｡⋆✩ —

Despite recent events and the unpleasant headache he had woken up with on this morning, the following days had been a success for Neteyam.

The little human had flitted through his mind as soon as his eyes had opened in the morning, but he'd forced all thoughts of you away.

A meeting with the council of elders, discussing the the newly admitted refugees and which tasks they could take on in the clan to be of help forced him to think of you again, but this time it was for practical reasons.

He'd then spent a few hours sparring with Tarsem. After choosing to fight younger warriors in order to give them some controlled practice with a seasoned opponent, a well-matched tussle with his close friend had been welcomed.

Feeling a bit calmer, they'd walked together to met Nakul, the skittish male who keeps watch of the weather, confirming the forecasted storm and the rainy season that would likely follow after weeks of humidity. A good sign. The gatherer of his clan would be pleased to hear the news.

Now that the new Taronyus [hunters] had completed their iknimaya, they'd also had a lengthy conversation with his father, the olo’eyktan, about finalizing new squads that would accompany them on their next raid.

Neteyam had argued heatedly that the young Karsam should fill the vacant spot in a front line squad. His father had disagreed, feeling the boy was still too soft when directing his ikran, but he'd deferred to his judgment in the end. Neteyam had trained most of these men and women himself, owning him the upper hand of judgement in this discussion.

After this, he’d held hours with Kiri, who'd relayed the complaints of the people to him along with recommendations on how to fix things, since the olo’eyktan had given him the honor to. Neteyam had approved or denied as he‘d seen fit and earned a considerable amount of backlash from his sister, as always.

The days had dragged on, but at least he was busy.

He'd spoken and listened and decreed and delivered messages to his father until his eyes ached and his lips felt chapped and dry. The next, he‘d occupied himself with the participation of his brothers hunting party. A day and a half later, Neteyam had pierced his arrow through enough meat, had set and retrieved enough traps and caught enough game, he could easily nourish his own clan and another, and still have enough meat left for the next two moons.

And in all that busyness, Neteyam had managed to only think of you a handful of times.

And yet...

And yet it only takes one step inside his kelku, one swift inhale of your scent. His own biology had dictated that it was only a matter of time before he gave in. And time was running out for him here.

A small pathetic part of him was hoping you’d be here, at home, waiting. Deep down, Neteyam knew you would be furious. Vicious even. Not only had he left, but he hadn’t returned for a significant amount of time.

The moment he crossed the threshold of his kelku, the familiar scent of you wrapped around him like a suffocating vine. It was maddening, this ache in his chest that pulsed with every breath. He hated how easily you infiltrated his thoughts, how your moans, your sweet voice still echoed in his mind. It was infuriating, this obsession.

He hated the way you made him feel, how your mere existence could bring him to his knees. He clenched his fists, frustration bubbling beneath the surface. Why couldn’t he just forget you? Why couldn’t he just push you out of his mind like he had pushed away so many others? But the truth was, he had tried, and failing at that endeavor only fueled his anger.

The silence of the kelku echoed back at him, each moment stretching painfully. You were not there, and the emptiness gnawed at him. He needed to find you, to see you, even if it filled him with rage. Even if it was just for a small moment of him looking down at you and you looking up at him, spitting words of venom to each other before ignoring each others existence once again.

His heart raced as he turned abruptly, the decision made without fully understanding why he felt so compelled.

He needed to find you, just to hear how angry you are at him. How insufferable you could be. Just so he could continue to hate and try to forget about you.

But deep down, he knew that wasn’t possible. The anger you stirred in him was merely a reflection of the passion that still lingered, refusing to fade. With each step he took, memories flooded back—your glare, the way your eyes sparkled with mischief, the sharpness of your words that could cut him to the bone yet felt like a balm to his soul.

With every step, his thoughts spiraled deeper into conflict. He loathed you for taking up space in his mind, yet the thought of you being out there, away from him, also stirred something protective in him.

After what felt like an eternity of searching outside of the camp, he caught a glimpse of movement through the trees. As he drew closer, the sight of you harvesting fruit filled him with a mix of relief and irritation. There you were, graceful and focused, oblivious to the storm that raged inside him.

"What are you doing out here?" He finally called out, his voice cutting through the air.

You turned to face him, and in that moment, all the chaos within him stilled. The sight of you, the very woman he claimed to despise, seemed to unravel the knots of his frustration, replacing them with a profound yearning he could no longer deny.

And fuck, it hurt so much more to see that look on your face now. That look that told him to go to hell, that look that was such a clear indication of your hatred for him. And it felt good, this pain. It reminded him of the trouble he was in.

— ✩⋆｡‧₊˚⭑˚₊‧｡⋆✩ —

Neteyam was out of his mind.

During his three days absence, he must’ve hit his head somewhere out there in the depths of the forest. This was the only explanation you could come up with to excuse this absurdity.

"What are you doing out here?" The question alone was enough to drop your basket to the floor, not caring for the way the fruits just fell and rolled around, as you spun on your heels and left, shoulders tense and hands balled into fists, visibly steaming with irritation.

You were sure if you'd started having this conversation just standing there, looking at him, you would have begun calming by now. But you were moving, and it was making you far more stubborn than usual. And it certainly helped you not loosing your own mind.

This asshole. This dumb, annoying, big blue asshole and the audacity of him.

First, he‘d spent a week planting this seed of mutual hatred deep within your soul, only to discover that he could tolerate you enough to bend you like a lawn chair and eat you out like a starving god —just to leave and disappear for three fucking days, making you feel like absolute shit.

"Someone help me understand this menace of a man before I loose my sanity," you muttered under your breath as you stomped away. Never in your life had you experienced such a terrible swing of emotions within only a week. One day he makes you hate him and then the other he makes you feel like you could enjoy his company, just to ruin it all again.

Three days you had spent alone, wondering what the hell had happened between you both. You replayed the fragments of this night over and over in your head, but it gave you no answer.

And now he was seeking you out with the audacity to ask what you were doing. As if he had any claim on you and any saying of when and where and how you could occupy your time.

He hasn't even said sorry yet! It should have been the first thing coming out of his mouth. Sorry for leaving you like you’re nothing but a piece of meat I can stick my tongue in.

That thought only fueled your anger.

"So, if that's how it's going to be," your brows narrowed as you lifted your jutting chin. The flames of spite swelled in your chest and then burst out of your mouth like you were a fire-spitting dragon. "If you're just using me whenever you see fit and then leave and not return for a long time… then I'll go find someone else to live with! You’ve been trying to get rid of me since the beginning and if that’s your way to scare me off, congratulations. You definitely won this."

You couldn’t even look at him. Couldn’t even acknowledge the way his eyes were wide as he listened to your furious voice. Obviously you were pretty pissy about that. You'd offered yourself to him, legs open and pussy bared, and he'd chosen to leave. No aftercare, no nothing. That rejection had left a stinging sensation in your chest ever since...

Neteyam was suddenly in front of you, facing you while also blocking your path. His shoulders were tense, arms crossed and head tilted. "Excuse me?"

Rolling your eyes, you expertly ducked around him and the trees next to him while lifting your chin higher. At this point, your nose was almost pointing towards the sky like some snooty princess, but you couldn’t care less.

"I don't do that with just anyone you know," you spouted, which was the absolute truth. "And I’m sick of this. Of you. The way you treat me. If you don’t want me to live with you, fine. There are plenty of people in the village who would be happy to spent time with me and who are willing to give me shelter and I’d be so much happier with them. Actually, I'm going there right now to do just that."

The moment Neteyam was in action, you stopped talking.

He was in front of you again, blocking your path, but this time, his brows were scrunched together tightly, his shoulders broad and spine straight to make himself look even taller. Not that he needed to, considering that you barely reached to his middle. But now, now Neteyam was towering over you with an angry glare, like he had any right to do so.

"No," he snarled, ears flattening against his head.

"No?" You laughed with your eyes bowing in humour. "Did you just tell me what to do?"

"I did. And don’t you dare walk any further."

Your eyebrows nearly shot up to your hairline at this. For a moment, it’s just the two of you staring at each other, before you step to the side to go around him, shaking your head in disbelief.

"You don't get to tell me what to do, Sully. That’s not how this works. You wanted me to move out since the day we’ve met. So that’s what I’m going to do."

You received no warning before you were suddenly upside down. With a squeal, you were tossed over Neteyams shoulder. Your legs were flailing, yet he carried you like you weighted nothing to him.

"Put me down!" You demanded with a yell.

Your immediate response was to reach up and claw at him or pull at his braid, but Neteyam had wisely, whether by accident or not, trapped your arms between his shoulder and your chest so you were unable to move them at all. With his arm secure over your back, you were tied to him as he marched down the path that lead back to your shared home.

"If that is your intention today, finding somewhere else to live, then you will not be permitted to go," he growled and you could feel his arm tighten around you.

The fact his voice was a reverberating bass of anger sent a shiver down your spine –one, that had your insides clenching with warmth. You even felt it against your stomach pressed over his shoulder as it radiated through you. Neteyam was mad. Big mad.

As he walked, you could feel his fingers digging into your side from where he held you around your hips, as well as the side of your thigh where he held your legs down so you couldn’t kick him. And there was a constant growl emitting from him, laced with angry muttering of words you couldn’t quite hear.

"I said put me down!" You screamed, trying your best to thrash against him. For a fleeting moment you even thought you had succeeded, his grip on you momentarily loosened, but then you were flipped onto your feet and pushed right through the doorway. Stumbling, you turned and took a few steps backwards into the tent, just to see that he proceeded to block your exit.

Neteyams eyes were darker than usual, and just like everything else about him, they looked threatening.

"You will stay," he demanded.

"You can't keep me in here," you stomped a food down, glaring right back at the tall na‘vi in front of you.

If he wanted you to stay, then he shouldn't have left you for at all, especially not after you’ve finally decided to trust him and look over the difficulties you’ve had in the beginning.

And you also hated being told what to do.

So you did the only thing you could. When Neteyam lowered his head to pinch the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes for a minute to calm his rapid breathing, you ran.

You were half surprised by yourself when you managed to actually rush past him without being snatched, though you only made it three more steps before you were tackled to your front.

The air was practically punched out of your lungs when you landed in the soft grass and you both groaned in unison.

There was no opportunity to move when Neteyam laid down on top of you and curled his arms around you. He caged you in with his own body, locked your arms to your sides, and only gave your legs just the minutest freedom to kick. Pressed against you like this, you noted that he was hot, almost like his body was filled with lava and his angry quaking seemed to worsen to the point it even shook you.

"G-Get off of me you ass!" You ground out.

"Great mother, you’re insufferable!" Neteyam cursed sharply, his mouth entirely too close to your ear. "Stop running from me," he warned slowly and punctuated.

A gasp burst out of you when he yanked you back to your feet. With a hand on each of your shoulders, he walked you back, but just as you were about to step through the entrance, you stilled. Clearly, Neteyam was having none of that, so he pushed his chest against your back and urged you forward. Before he could make you walk another step, you placed your feet on each tree that secured the tents entrance to keep yourself out, despite his aggressive pushing.

This, too, didn't work for very long. Neteyam was cursing under his breath as he pushed harder, until you had to move your legs or he'd snap your damn knees with his pushing.

"Neteyam. Let. Me. Go.", you grumbled, "I need to go to the village!"

Screw what you had said before. You actually had things to do there today. You’ve planned to trade the fruit you’d picked earlier for other stuff that you desperately needed. And he couldn’t keep you here forever! This was madness.

Regardless, Neteyam finally shoved both of you through the doorway and before you knew it, he'd crossed through the tent and shoved your front against the small table that stood next to the fire place. The one, that you bought into his home while he was gone. The one he refused to sit on or use at all.

And now he pinned you down with his entire body on this very table. One hand slapped against the table's surface right next to your head, while the other curled underneath your body and wrapped underneath your jaw.

"Quiet," he snapped, and only then you realised he'd clamped your mouth shut.

For a long while, he just held you tightly. The heat coming off him was intense, but now that there was a pause, you could feel how hard, heavy, and fast his heart was beating as it thumped against your shoulder blade. At first you still tried to wriggle to get free, but eventually settled when you knew there was no point. You were trapped beneath him, and since you were forced to breathe only through your nose, you kept taking in his heady, mouth watering scent. You lungs swelled in delight, only to quiver out your breaths. In a way, it calmed you as much as it made your heart beat faster.

You never noticed Neteyam smelled so good. Like pine and fresh grass. He smelled like the outside, nature itself, but there was a tang to it, something you couldn’t quite put a name on.

"I’m very angry at you right now," he finally exhaled on a breath.

Leaning on his elbow, his free hand came up so he could undo the button of his cummerbund. You heard the material shift as it slipped to the ground.

"Never run from me again, little tawtute [human] especially when I am..." There’s a weighty pause, as if he was deciding whether or not he should continue whatever he was going to say. You could tell he’d decided against it by the way he cleared his throat and started over. "I’m not always in control of myself when I’m around you. And if you run from me, it only makes me want to catch you. It’s in my blood."

When you attempted to turn your head side to side so you could free your jaw and speak, he clamped his hand even tighter. It felt like your teeth would grind together into dust if he pushed any harder.

His hand spanned your entire mouth and jaw to the point his fingertips reached behind your ears.

Your eyes narrowed into a glare.

The more he spoke, the calmer he seemed to become, but you knew that was just on the surface. He chuckled darkly at your angry expression, but his voice had finally reverted back to normal.

"Don’t look at me like that. You have no idea what I have had to deal with over the past few weeks." Unable to gasp, the noise that came out of you sounded like a stifled mewl when his fingers ran over the side of your hip, down the side of your bottom, and then down your thigh.

"With your scent all over my home. The thought of you sleeping in my bed." He exhaled deeply, like the words pained him. "For eywas sake, you even used my cleansing oils to clean yourself… You’re driving me crazy, woman, and then you expect me to act reasonable?" Neteyam scoffs.

He didn't need to move his body at all to reach down to your boots and slip them off, even when you tried to evade him. One thud followed another. Then he opened and slipped your belt and with it, all of your little bags from your body, showing you he wouldn't be reasoned with in his decision to keep you here.

"And then you’re acting so damn careless, getting drunk and letting the scent of your arousal drift through the air like you’re begging for it," he whispered. "For me."

Then his hand slipped underneath you. He clawed off each button of your blouse, before he yanked it off and tossed it to the ground. A shiver ran through you at that.

"I could’ve claimed you that night, you know? Could’ve marked you as mine. Could’ve forced my knot into you until you were full of me, locked us tightly together so there would be nowhere to run from me anymore. But I didn’t. And now you’re throwing a fit, because of what? Because you think I don’t want you?"

You stilled completely, your eyes widening. All of your anger suddenly deflated out of you, and you tried to turn or even shake your head, but were given no room to do so. Confusion was making itself known on your face. You didn’t understand a word of what he was talking about.

"Little vrrtep [demon]," Neteyam purred next to your ear, before you could muffle anything against the palm that was still clasped over your mouth. "I want nothing more than to fuck you. To make you mine."

The gasp that left you was barely audible. Suddenly, you felt like molten wax in his hold. One of his hands was now gliding over your bare skin, along the curve of your spine until it reached the clasp of your bra. Neteyam was toying with the flimsy fabric, until skilled fingers unhooked the fastener and pulled your bra away to discard it somewhere behind him. Now that your naked chest was pressed against the cool wooden table, you could feel your nipples tighten and you hissed at the contact.

"Not even three days worth of space between us is enough to calm myself down. My head is so fucking full of you and I’m sick of it. I don’t know why or how this is even possible, but not one omega I’ve ever encountered in my life has had a scent so potent as yours. You’re calling for me, constantly, and don’t even realize it."

Now that your upper half was free of any fabric, Neteyam forcibly tilted your head to the side so he could bury his nose into your hair and the side of your throat. He was so close, smelling you as though he'd waited an eternity to do so. Then he gave a large exhale as he parted his lips around your ear, making the strands of your hairline stand on end in reaction to the wrapping of heat as his tongue slid along your earlobe.

"However," he growled lowly, fangs grazing your ear, "Now that I have tasted you, made you come on my tongue, have heard your sweet little moans…" Your pussy clenched not only at the memory, but also at him reciting it. "I don’t know if I can hold back any longer. There’s only so much I can take."

Your heart was beating inhumanly fast now. So fast and so hard, you feared he could hear it, could feel it beating against your chest and the table below. Liquid heat pooled in your abdomen at the low whispers of his words.

"But if you don’t want my touch," he continued, as he raked his dull fingernails down your spine, making you shudder. "If you don’t want me…" Your eyelids fluttered against your will when you felt his callused palms and fingertips gliding over the small of your back. "Then I will no longer touch you. But you will stay, so I can protect you. You may not be a true omega, but as an alpha it’s still my responsibility to protect you."

My alpha? Your brows furrowed at this. But then you remembered the times when Neteyam referred to you as an omega. When he told you about the effect your scent had on him. And then it clicked. Despite not even being the same species as he was, Neteyam was convinced that you must be the human equivalent of an omega. Therefore he thought… He thought that you were meant to be his.

That is why he‘s so angry.

Not only were you an intruder of his personal space, but a constant temptation walking around right under his nose. You were the embodiment of a species he despises, and his own instincts were betraying him to the point he felt confusing attraction towards you.

Snapped out of your thoughts, you couldn't help arching your back, a heavy exhale leaving through your nose when he dug his fingers under the waistline of your pants.

"Don't think for a moment that I can't smell your growing arousal, tawtute [human]. I was hoping to come back here and have the freedom to touch you," he stated as he slipped his tongue over his canine. "So, choose your answer wisely because I won’t ask again. Do you want me to touch you?"

The tension around your jaw finally loosened. By now, you must’ve almost forgotten the way your own voice sounded. There was only his voice in your head.

This domineering, possessive side of Neteyam was turning your gut inside out, making it flutter and quiver. Your nipples were already hard and aching as they pressed firmly against the table you laid upon.

Surprisingly, you already knew your answer. Every cell in your body was screaming and begging for him to finally touch you. All morals thrown right out of the window, all anger vanished. You just needed him. But you were too stunned to speak, stunned that you were in this position, that you were being caged by his entire massive body while being asked this one simple, yet entirely too complicated question. Never in your life had you ever expected to be overpowered or at another's mercy in this kind of way. Especially not with Neteyam being the one.

And you fucking loved it.

"Yes," you whispered.

Your answer earned you a low groan, almost a purr, and your eyes clenched shut as he undressed you from your pants in one swift motion. He'd been holding the waistline in preparation of your answer, and by the cool breeze on your backside, your underwear too.

The cold air battled with the heat swirling off him, and you didn't even know which one caused you to shiver this time.

Gliding his warm palm across your hips, Neteyam slid it down the side of your bottom, over your thigh and almost to your knee. You let out a breathy noice at the tickling sensation.

At the sound you let out, he glided the tips of his fingernails over the sensitive flesh on the backs of your thighs. This time, you let out a quiet mewl, and your back arched further as you were finally given freedom to do so. When his hand skimmed down your thigh, down to the back of your knee, you gave a yelp when Neteyam suddenly lifted your leg and placed your knee on top of the table. If it weren’t for his hips shoving you against the edge, you would’ve lost your balance over this.

Now that you were standing on tip toes, Neteyam chuckled, then bend forward enough so he could freely lick at the side of your neck from behind, causing a tremor and more soft noises to leave you. A wave of goosebumps rose across your body. His tongue was rough like any human tongue, but longer, flat, and so wet.

"Wh- why didn’t you just say something sooner?" You managed on a breathy whisper. "Why didn’t you just tell me?"

He was still grasping your jaw, but loosely now.

"How was I supposed to know that?" he rumbled, his other hand coming up to glide over your ass. "After the way I treated you, how was i supposed to know you would just give yourself to me?"

"I thought…" You stopped for a moment to hold your breath as his hand squeezed the inside of your thigh, then wandered up, up, up until you could feel the heat of his skin nearly touching your core. "I thought you hated me."

"You are quite annoying," Neteyam chuckled.

"And you still haven’t apologized!"

Against the table, your hands curled into fists when his thumb slid against the outside of your folds, going back and forth but never dipping between your lips.

"Apologize? Paskalin [honey], I was merely protecting you."

The way his fingers moved, purposefully avoiding all the spots you wanted him to touch, had your insides spasming.

You licked your lips, your breathing so heavy now you’ve barely had enough air in your mask to speak, "F-From who?"

Another deep purr vibrated against your back as his fingers finally, mercifully, slid between your folds. You eagerly spread your thighs apart when he pressed against your clit. A hiss escaped you as he began circling the little nub, the feeling so overwhelming you nearly forgot about your question.

With a grin he whispered, "from me."

And then he played with your clit in a similar way to how he'd touched it with his tongue. Slow, tight circles at first, and then faster, barely touching it directly but moving around all those sensitive nerves until your knees were trembling.

"You’re so wet," he commented, his tone rumbling with satisfaction. The circular motion he made had your hips going in the opposite direction, hoping to aid him, or perhaps yourself. He went the other way, and so did your hips. Then he moved away completely, going lower to dab at your entrance. "But you're dripping here, paskalin [honey]."

"Neteyam," you quietly moaned when he pressed inside you.

You didn't know how many fingers he pushed in, but it felt like at least the thickness of two of your own. You tried to press back onto them, wanting him deeper despite feeling he was as deep as he could go. He curled and thrusted them to make room, and then your breath hitched when another finger speared you, stretching your pussy.

"You’re tight, tawtute [human]."

Then he split his fingers, scissoring you, and a sucking sound came from your cunt because of how slick you were. He relaxed his fingers and slowly thrusted them again, grazing an amazing spot inside that had warmth spreading throughout your entire body. Any tension within you died at that moment.

You started bucking back into his hand and he split his fingers again, only so he could make room to press an additional one in.

That made you wince, especially when it seemed he had trouble pushing it in. Your inner walls were stretching far wider than you’d ever had them before, and it burned.

"Not so many," you groaned, trying to get your body to forcibly relax rather than tighten. It was like he was trying to shove his whole hand in there!

"I won’t fit inside you," Neteyam breathed heavily, "You can barely take three of my fingers."

Only three!? You tried to look down to see for yourself, but with your body pressed against the table, you weren’t able to see much.

Neteyam pressed the flat of his nose against your ear, and you heard his deep breaths, felt them. It made the side of your whole face tingle. But then you gasped when he suddenly shoved that third finger all the way in.

"Wait!" You squeaked.

God, were you thankful he stopped thrusting them and decided to just let them sit inside you. It stung and you felt so incredibly full.

Shit. Could you really only take three? And you knew that if he decided to move right now, it would only start hurting more. Already your pussy was giving an uncomfortable throb. The last time he'd done this to you, you‘d been soft, slick and relaxed from his tongue. You just weren’t ready to take this much yet.

"You want this just as much as I do, but how are you supposed to take me like this?" Neteyam sighed. "I‘m not the problem here. You’re the one who‘s too tiny, even for a human."

"H-Hey! I just need to adjust," you said, undoubtedly a little offended by what he’d said.

"Paskalin [honey]," he exhaled a long breath, so close to your skin it made goosebumps raise in the wake of the warm air he blew across your neck. "If we fuck, I won’t be able to hold back. I will knot you and it will hurt. And I don’t want to hurt you."

But I really want him inside me.

You swallowed dryly as frustration made your lips feel like sandpaper and constricted your throat. Blinking away tears, you shook your head. God damnit, you couldn’t cry over something like this! You needed to man up.

"Then I don’t want you to hold back," you said, your voice suddenly hoarse with desperation. "Last time you said you wouldn’t be nice to me. So don’t."

You wanted wanted him. Really wanted him.

You wanted his annoying personality, his attitude, his teasing words. You wanted to tear down these walls to get to his warmth that he kept so reserved and claim it all for yourself. And most of all, you wanted to feel his cock. You wanted to know what that knot thing was that he was constantly talking about and you wanted him trusting into you, over and over. You wanted to be his. His to love, to claim, even to hate and definitely to fuck.

Carefully, like he knew he needed to be slow, he removed his fingers from you, which caused you to whine.

"That was because last time I wasn’t trying to make you mine. I was selfish, stilling my own hunger." And then he pushed them back inside you, fast and harsh. This time, the burning stretch was a welcoming sensation, because it meant you were loosening up for him. Taking a shuddering breath, you tried to relax.

"I don’t care… Just- Just fuck me," you whimpered. And then Neteyam began to thrust these fingers. Slowly at first, until there was a smooth, slick slide –in and out, in and out. The pain slowly eased the more he moved them inside you and the satisfying groan that rumbled in his chest was the sweetest compliment you’ve heard from him so far.

"I lied, you know?" His fingers curled, then spread just the tiniest bit with the limited space there was and you let out a wanton moan at that. "I‘m not just going to claim you tonight, little one. When I’m done marking you as mine, after I knotted you and sealed the bond, I will thoroughly fuck you. Every single one of your holes, until all that attitude is gone."

"You c-can try," you weakly grinned back at him. That grin however was quickly wiped from your face when Neteyam thrusted his fingers just a bit deeper inside you. You could feel them wriggle, pushing against a soft spongey spot that nearly made your knees give out underneath you.

"Oh I will," he chuckled.

"But I… I think you secretly love it," you muttered, "You love when I’m annoying you, don’t you?"

"I like a challenge."

You couldn’t help but smile like an idiot at his words that were surprisingly soft, yet sounded so dangerous it made heat creep up your cheeks. The hand that had been holding your throat and your jaw then carefully slid down your chest, slowly enough it made you realize that from now on you had to hold your own head up if you didn’t want to land face first against the table. Skimming past the valley of your breasts and down your abdomen, Neteyams digits quickly locate your pleasure spots and the throbbing clit that had just been waiting for him.

He runs his fingertips over the slippery button and you moan, giving in to the weight of your head to let your cheek rest against the table. The surface is cool against your heated skin and it feels so good.

You feel yourself relax further, all muscles melting in his hold as he plays you like an instrument. His fingers continue to thrust into you, just a little deeper, a little faster, harder.

His lips press against your shoulders, then down along your spine ever so softly.

"Spread your legs," he whispers against your skin, and then when you do, "More."

Just as he pulls his digits from your dripping cunt, you suck in a sharp breath. Suddenly you feel so empty and hollow, and you whine when he takes too long to slip out of his loincloth.

"Impatient little human," Neteyam muses with a chuckle. You can’t really see much of him from your current position, but you still manage to catch a glimpse of him over your shoulder.

And god, Neteyam is so damn handsome. No matter how much you had tried to deny it, he really was one pretty bastard. His long braids were falling over board shoulders, beads clicking together as he moved closer. Neteyams face was entirely focused on the task at hand, his chest heaving in deep breaths. His lean body bend over you, one hand holding the subtle flesh of your bottom, while the other guided his cock to your entrance. You could feel his tail and the tickling hairs at the bottom of it, as it wrapped itself around your thigh, holding you to him.

And then you felt his tip, smooth and wet with pre-cum, nudging between your lips and pressing against your opening.

"Mawey [clam.] Relax for me, sevin [pretty]" Neteyam said, his thumb drawing comforting circles onto your skin. You didn’t even realize you were tensing up until he uttered these words and immediately, your shoulders loosened up as you exhaled a deep breath. "Good girl," he purred, making the words sound like honey. "And now, now I need you to say it."

Swallowing thickly you ask, "S-Say what?"

"That you want it. Not my cock or my knot. Me. Say that you want me, just as much as I want you, you insufferable little omega," he explained with a chuckle.

All the while, the tip of his cock was teasing you, rubbing back and forth from your clit to your opening. Ever so slowly, Neteyam was pushing forward, barely inside you, just to then retreat and continue this delicious torture.

Because of this, his words took longer to register in your pleasure clouded mind than you would like to admit.

Neteyam wanted you to choose him as well.

Softly, so softly it made his breath stop, you spoke, "I want you. Neteyam, I want you so bad. Just please…"

In an pathetic attempt to get him closer, you arched your back and pushed back against him. His tip barely nudged against your entrance before it slipped away, everything simply too slick to get him where you needed him most.

"Yeah?" Neteyam chuckles as he watches you wriggle around. "For someone who claimed to dislike me so much, you beg so pretty for me."

"S-Shut up," you let out in a frustrated groan.

He grins. "I want you too, paskalin [honey]. You’re gonna let me in?" The tip of him suddenly stops it’s slippery glide right at your core and you feel a controlled pressure right there. Glancing back at him over your shoulder, you find Neteyams hand back around the base of him, holding himself steady.

You nod frantically.

When he pushes in, you can’t help but hold your breath. The stretch is intense. Your toes begin to curl as he pushes against your body, easing his way ever so slowly. You could feel the tension in your bones, everything but as relaxed as you had promised him. Squeezing your eyes shut, you exhaled deeply when Neteyam stopped.

"It’s okay, I know, little omega. I‘ll help distract you from the pain," he whispered into your ear, kissing the soft shell. "It‘s necessary, but you might not like how I will do it."

His words send a shiver down your spine.

Nodding, you whisper back, "It’s okay, whatever it is, I can take it."

Neteyam then tilted your head to the side, bearing your neck to him, and leaned in to lick a teasing stripe over the skin where shoulder met throat. You shuddered beneath him and then a moan turned into a hiss as you felt the tips of his fangs puncture your flesh. In all honesty, you didn’t expect him to actually fucking bite you. But then again, the feeling of it was almost euphoric.

So euphoric, you hadn’t even realized that your hips went wider, changing to accommodate him rather than pushing him away. Your inner walls not only pulled taut but stretched, yet not in an uncomfortable way. It was almost painless, but you could feel yourself growing so unbelievably full you knew you'd never experienced anything like it every again.

When Neteyam released your throat, his tongue lapped over the wound to collect the slowing trickle of blood. His salvia seemed to seal the wound quickly, only leaving the faintest mark there, rather than a fresh wound.

"This one was for the pain," Neteyam purred. "Now feel me ease inside you, tawtute [human]. Feel me stretching you out."

And stretching you he did. The thick head of his cock finally popped inside, and the rest of his glide suddenly seemed easier. But what greeted your sensitive entrance were his little bumps and ridges near the base that tickled as each one went in, giving him this wonderous texture that made your eyes roll all the way back in your head.

Behind you, Neteyam growled lowly, the sound rumbling deep in his chest and against the curve of your shoulder.

"F-Fuck!" You gasped as suddenly his teeth were closing in on your skin again. This time, it was into your neck. It didn’t hurt, but surprised you all the same.

Neteyam was obviously relishing in the keening whine that fell from your lips at the pressure on your skin, if his throbbing cock was anything to go by.

"This one was purely for myself,“ Neteyam said, grinning as he kissed the mark that spread warmth all over your right side. "Because you’ve been such a pain in my ass these past few weeks."

More warmth was spreading, but in a dark flush over your cheeks. "Asshole," you mumbled sheepishly.

The next time his canine punctured your skin, a downright shamefully erotic moan left your lips. Neteyam was biting down on your neck, right below your ear were you were most sensitive, causing all the hair on your body to stand up straight. This time it felt like he was savoring it, basking in the feeling of leaving his mark on you. You felt his little suckles, determined to make this one the most prominent and visible. When he finally detached himself, licking and kissing over the wound to seal it, a pleasant huff of air blew over your salvia slicked skin.

"And this is, so everyone knows who you belong to."

"Oh my fucking God," you moaned, your body shivering and shuddering in bliss, even more so the deeper he went. Thanks to all the biting, you barely noticed how far he’d pushed inside you, until now. Jesus Christ, you basically felt your insides pushing away to let him go further, and further, and further.

"Good girl," he rumbled with a purr, an actual purr that vibrated against your back. He licked at the back of your neck all the way to your ear before swirling his tongue against it. "You're taking my cock so well for me."

You could feel your abdomen pressing against the table by being pushed from the inside. His cock was gouging its way in. It rubbed your most tender place, every inch and every vein grazing it and nearly making you go cross-eyed. Looking down on yourself, you could see the visible bump where his cock was nestled deep inside you and that sight alone was enough to make your brain short circuit.

"I-I'm going to come," you rasped, eyes rolling back little by little as you blinked wildly. "I'm going to–"

Neteyam pulled back before he was even seated all the way so he could thrust forward quickly and go just that little bit deeper. It aided you, this strange way of being stretched, pushing you suddenly and violently into bliss.

All you could do in this very moment was clamp down on him, squeez him– screaming as you came around his cock. So he did it again. You felt your own cheek sliding against the table's surface with every movement as he pulled back so he could dig deeper. And then again and again, heightening your orgasm until you were squirming beneath him, trying to flee from him and get him closer all the same.

Lubed with your cum, he was then finally seated as far as he could go, his hips flush agains your backside. Neteyam gave a low groan at that.

"You came just from me filling you, little tawtute." He chuckled deeply.

The humiliation of his words and the fact that they were true made your face feel hot, but you were too languid to bite back at him. You were so relaxed, your body moved like you were nothing but a doll for him to play with as he suddenly yanked you from the table with his hand on your throat.

Something thin and long wrapped around your knee then, holding it against the table. A brief peek down told you it was his tail. One of his hands wrapped around the thigh of your other leg. They kept you supported with your legs spread apart as he lifted you, his forearm keeping your back glued to his stomach and the back of your head to his chest.

"Is this what you wanted, hm?" Neteyam asked, "A cock the size of your forearm deep inside your snug, hungry little cunt?" Your breath hitched. "You just needed your alpha to take care of you, isn’t that right? Someone you could submit to. To fuck you nice and deep and make you come soo good."

What was meant as an eye roll to tease his big ego, quickly turns into a lustful flutter of your eyelids and a sultry moaned "oh god" when Neteyam began to shallowly thrust into you from this position.

Filled to brim, you felt so tiny against him, pierced by his massive length as it slid in and out of you with ease. The hand that had been holding your thigh moved in sensual ways, all the way up to your stomach.

Neteyam lowered his face next to yours so he could lick across your jaw from behind as he whispered, "you’re so full of me, I can feel it here."

And because you still hadn't answered him, he slowly withdrew. It was purposeful. It had to be with how far he came back, showing you every inch he'd given you until the flared rim of his cockhead came out of you. The wider thickness of it spread your lips even further.

Your already pink face, heated with arousal, deepened in colour.

In all honesty, you expected him to come back in just as slowly. You expected him to be nice, just this once. Oh, what you fool you could be when you were on the verge of yet another orgasm.

Instead, he shoved in fast and hard, using his hold on your body to push you back against him even harder, deeper. "Well?"

"Y-Yes! Fuck!" You screeched, not only to answer him but to spur him on. "I wanted your cock inside me so badly!"

His purr started back up, and you gave yourself over to this, to him, as he stayed deep, while rocking his hips with subtle thrusts.

His hand came away from supporting your throat, but your own grasping hands on his arms kept you to him as he caressed both of your breasts with his rough palm.

His thumb would play with one stiffened nipple, flicking it up and down before going to the other. Then he would pet both breasts with every part of his palm, his blunt nails gliding over you to give a sharp but pleasurable sensation.

All the while, the thrusts that had started as deep, hard and subtle, quickly turned faster, until you were sure you would loose your vision if you‘d kept your eyes open for any longer. Letting them roll back into your skull freely allowed you to relax further in his hold, until your whole body was moving with him, barely able to withstand the strength his hips.

"Shit, shit, shit," you cursed every time his tip hammered against your cervix.

"Such a foul mouth you have on you. We’ll have to change that, my sweet omega," Neteyam said behind you, his displeased tone palpable without having to see the look on his face. "I’d rather hear you moan my name, let everyone know who is inside you."

Your body was doing the best it could to accommodate his impossible size, but the faster he thrusted into you, the more he whispered these filthy things into your ears, the more soaked you grew, until the wet squelch of him entering you nearly toned out your own thoughts. It was filthy and shameful, and it felt so fucking good. Screw his damn ego, with the pace and vigor Neteyam was pounding your poor pussy, you would get his name tattooed on your forehead if that’s what it would take for him to keep going.

"Teyam," you moaned, "Teyam, Tey. F-Fuck!"

"Hmm not my name, vrrtep [demon]." When he realized your head was weakly falling forward he supported it once more by cupping a hand under your jaw and keeping you pinned to him. "Or is that a new name for me?" He chuckled deeply. "One you'll give me when I'm inside you, fucking you?"

Then he pounded harder, faster, his hand on your thigh moving, pushing you back and forth along with his thrusts. He wasn't being gentle at all. It was hard, and the heat all around and inside you had you losing your mind.

His scent, his sounds, his body, it completely dissolved you of strength, making your mind go blank and your body feel like warm honey.

Your head lazily fell to the side in his palm. You didn't even know when you‘d started coming around his cock, but your pussy suddenly tensed and spasmed, your thighs dancing in twitches alongside it. The cry that left your throat was so strong it was silent, your lungs seizing with the overwhelming power of your orgasm.

To have something so alien, something so big and strong and feral slamming into you. You’ve never been so turned on before, and it burned even hotter when Neteyam didn’t stop throughout it all. He was riding out your orgasm until the next one was only mere seconds away.

"I…. I…," you stuttered, unable to form any kind of coherent sentence.

"Yes?" Neteyams voice was rough next to your ear, his breath tickling your oversensitive skin. The hand that wasn’t occupied with holding your head up skimmed between your thighs and began to rub your clit in small circles, the action alone enough to threaten your brain to overheat, but at the same time letting a burst of energy surge through your whole body that straightened your spine and gave your tongue enough strength to move.

"I‘m gonna come again!" The words came out in a rushed whine, sounding as if you couldn’t quite believe them yourself. The humiliating chuckle coming from behind you would’ve annoyed you beyond words if you could muster the strength to do so, but it only left you wondering when the fuck did you begin to find the sound of it so incredibly sexy?

You could feel the orgasm beginning to happen, and it was the very best kind, the kind where you have five seconds of awareness before it all rushes over you, five seconds or ten, and nothing on earth can stop it now. You feel the clench of your orgasm lock round his cock, and he keeps moving, faster, faster, and– oh!

"Then come, little tawtute," Neteyam grinned, and coming you did. Before you could say anything more, a wail and then a surprised gasp left you when a small fountain of hot, wet arousal shot out between your thighs, coating the inside of your legs and the table in front of you with pearls of liquid.

"That's it. That's a good little omega," Neteyam groaned as he watched you come. He gave a heavy shudder, one that had you jiggling in his embrace. "Fuck, that feels so damn good, smells so damn good."

What’s happening is entirely out of your control, it's beautiful and primal and new and Neteyam‘s taking it in, greedily, seemingly loving to watch your pleasure.

When you open your eyes you’re surprised to find you‘re still in his home. The orgasm was so intense, you were sure you‘d travelled to a different dimension. Looking down, his hand is also still there, wet with cum and rubbing your clit until it burns so good and your thighs spasm again. You feel drugged. Everything is in a haze and your skin is hot and prickling and Neteyam‘s still fucking you.

But his thrusts are different now. Harder, with a sense of purpose and urgency. It took your overheated brain a long moment to register that he was trying to push something inside you. Something that sat on the base of his cock, something that wasn’t there before. Not that you remembered much in your current state.

Suddenly, you felt yourself lifted in the air. A weak little squeak was all you could manage as Neteyam positioned your tired legs to hang over his forearms. Thankful you didn’t had to stand any longer, you let your head fall back against his chest. However, your relief doesn’t last for long when he continued to lower you back on his thick cock.

"It‘ll be easier for you like this," Neteyam said with grunt, shoving himself all the way inside, until not an inch of your gummy walls were left untouched.

"T-Teyam," you coaxed weakly, your own voice bouncing with the way he moved your whole body up and down on his length.

"Shh, it’s okay," he cooed, barely sounding coherent and slightly breathless himself. "You‘re such a good girl, such a perfect little omega. You’ll take my knot so good."

His knot? So that’s what this was, that bundle of flesh and muscle on the base of his cock. It seemed to inflate the closer Neteyam got to his release, and you felt it throb, as if begging to be inside you with every time he pushed that knot against your entrance.

The sound of his hips slapping against yours grew louder as he moved with more intensity, determined to get the damned thing inside of you.

And then it just, slipped inside. It sinks past the slippery wet entrance of your cunt easier than you would’ve thought it would. Behind you, Neteyam moans and then his hips buck up and he holds you right there, not an inch of space keeping your hips separated.

You don’t even realize that anything's different at first. Neteyam‘s still inside of you, but it's nice. It still feels good, not uncomfortable at all. That was it?

You’re both breathing heavily, and your hips move, jerking in surprise when Neteyam swells some more, then starts thrusting again, a gentle rocking motion that would be soothing under almost any other circumstances.

Your own features became murky through bubbling tears. You’re overstimulated, overstretched and overwhelmed. Suddenly, it’s all too much.

"Neteyam, what–" You start.

"Told you I‘m gonna knot you," he says, the words muffled against your shoulder before Neteyam bites you again, this time without warning.

You whole body jerks in his hold and you moan, pussy clenching around his cock as it pulsates inside you. And then you feel it, that stretch. It’s new and uncomfortable at first, so you begin to squirm, but Neteyam is stronger. He holds you still and steady, and you can’t help but squeeze your eyes shut and feel every inch of his knot as it expands further inside you. It grows until it’s nearing painful, adding to the bulge of your stomach. You feel so full.

Neteyam continues to swell and it drags noises out of you that you’ve never even heard before. Just when you’re about to complain about any discomfort, the swelling seems to stop.

It’s done. He has knotted me.

"Great mother," he rasps, his breath uneven and shaky. "Wanted to knot you so badly. Fuck my way inside of you so hard you couldn't ever get me out. You feel so good like this. All mine."

The words barely make any sense to you in your current state of mind, but his voice is all roughed edged desire and you cling to it. "F-fuck, yes," you slur and arch up, whining in the back of your throat when Neteyams length throbs heavily inside you, his knot hot and heavy and pulsating.

"Eywa, you like this, don’t you?" He asks, and the shock tinged with awe has you blinking your eyes open blearily. It’s almost embarrassing, these needy little sounds of "hmh", alongside your frantic nodding, but it’s enough of a confirmation that finally tips Neteyam over the edge.

He comes with a groan that’s so deep, you feel his whole chest vibrate against your back. You can’t help but moan as he fills you with his seed, hot and wet and sticky. Rope after rope, he pumps you full. He‘s not even thrusting, barely moving at all. Neteyam is just holding you down on his length while your pussy milks him dry, your inner walls flexing, clamping down and almost massaging his cock before you notice you’re coming as well. It’s weak and short lived, all your poor exhausted body can manage, but Neteyam savors every second of it.

His face is buried in the nape of your neck, inhaling your scent and occasionally rubbing and kissing the marks he’d left there earlier.

His orgasm seems to last forever, with little tremors going through his body, yet none of his cum goes to waste. Every last drop that’s emptied inside of you seems secured by knot, locking you together.

It leaves the both of you worn out and a little shaky, like any good orgasm, but so much more.

Moving seems difficult at first, but Neteyam is more skilled in moving with his knot buried than you thought he would be. You shove down the pang of jealousy creeping up your throat at that.

This position actually did seem the most advantageous though, especially now that he could easily lower your legs and lift you by the hips to carry you through the room and towards his bedroll, where he carefully laid down with you.

You couldn’t help but smile at the thought of him considering wanting to be the big spoon afterwards when he had decided to bend you over the table earlier. What a gentleman he could be, if he really wanted something.

That thought, paired with his lips still kissing and nipping on the bite marks on your throat and shoulders bring you back to your earlier conversation.

"You know," you start with a grin, your voice still hoarse, "on earth we at least take each other out on a date before we call someone 'mine'.

Behind you, Neteyam goes still for a moment, before he exhales a breath.

"But you aren’t on earth," he mumbles absently as he pulls you tighter against him. The movement draws attention to the feeling of his knot that’s still filling you and the warmth of his cum that has no way of leaking out. It makes you shudder.

You felt a pang of sadness at his words, your shoulders slumping immediately at the thought of his usual cold demeanor returning so quickly. However, before you could even think of biting back at him, Neteyam adds, "But you can have your little date. I will take you out, tomorrow night."

Your smile is instantaneous and full of brightness that makes you feel warm inside and out. "Sounds good," you giggle as you rub your cold feet against his warm thighs.

"You can have anything you want, stubborn little human," Neteyam sighs, like the realization it pains him, but you can hear the grin on his face. "As long as I’m able to call you mine," he reminds.

"Anything, huh?" You tease. "Big words for someone who hasn’t even apologized yet for being such a dick to me."

Neteyam groans at your words and presses his forehead against the nape of your neck as if to escape this conversation altogether. "I really got myself in trouble with you, huh?"

"Oh, you have no idea."

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aiysan3 · 6 months ago

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bloody bath

#need that

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aiysan3 · 6 months ago

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𖥔 ݁ ˖ 🫐 *ੈ.

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aiysan3 · 6 months ago

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║Not My Type║

Male Monster x Fem! Reader

Word count║16,763

The Devil May Lick Me Masterlist ━━━➤ 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝐋𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐌𝐞

You're in the non-con/yandere section.

Warning enough, it's intense.

Photo Reference Cred ━━━➤ Found on Pinterest, so I'm unable to cred the artist. If you know who created the image, please let me know.

Do not steal, copy, or repost anywhere. My work is currently on both CREAMPIE_CAPITAL on wattpad and Imtropicalbaby on Quotev. If posted on another account or website, please report and notify me immediately.

Now onto the smut :)

"Please! Please, I'm sorry!"

"You've alwaysss been sssuch a liar!"

Grasping at the bedsheets, your nails dug into the mattress as a sob expelled from your bruised lips.

His grip grew firmer on your hip, harsher, with the force of his thrust accelerating. The fat round head beat mercilessly at the entrance to your womb, pulsating dully from the savage movements.

"I'm sorry!" He snatches the air from your lungs as he seizes your throat. His grip is tight and unwavering. "Y-You're hurting me..."

"Good." The Naga switched a hand to hold your right thigh, pressing it down against your chest so he could visibly observe your tender c*nt.

Remnants of his prior climaxes shine on your sweaty skin, and the second forgotten c*ck glided between your bottom cheeks, spreading slime between the (muscle/fat).

He drove his hips back so his swollen pulsating c*ck could pull away from the warm depths of your body, before plunging it back so harshly that a strangled gasp wheezed from your lips.

The inner corner of your eyes sting, tears clouding over before they spill and soak your face. "I'm s-sorry! I promise I-" Your tummy aches in displeasure and anguish. "-I wasn't t-trying to run away!"

His response was to release your hip, only to slap his hand over your mouth and shove your head into the mattress. "You take me for a fool!"

The force he used to sway back into you had your whole body jerking and shuddering in your spot. You shrieked, wailing audible, but it was muffled under his hand from the forceful thrust.

Your nails burrowed into his smooth forearms, creating crescent-mooned markings before breaking past the layer of skin to meet muscle.

However, even as you wound him, it does nothing to slow or cease his movements. He's pissed, enranged like no other, and he wasn't letting you off with simple discipline.

This time, he wanted it to hurt more than anything else he had ever done to you, so there'd be nothing in your brain but him.

"I give you everything you could ever need, but you conssstantly take it all for granted. You even tried to run away-"

"I'd never!" Your muffled words only provoke a slap to the face that stings like a burn.

His large hands tangled within your hair to force your chin towards the ceiling and bring his face towards your bruised neck. There are bite marks, open wounds from his fangs, contusions, and discolorations from his assault.

Blood leaks across your collarbones and breast in small trails of liquid that he licks up with his skinny split tongue. "I'm tired of thisss, my love." His voice is hoarse as he breaths rigorously. "You're alwaysss fighting with me when I jussst try to give you the world."

Issur (Ish-er) yanks your head to the side so you can meet his fiery ruby-red eyes, and smiles so deviously it was like the devil took over. "I'm going to make sssure that you'll never try thisss again." Abruptly the Naga slid his hips back to free his c*ck from your walls and replaced it with the thicker, fatter one below.

Your crying eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets as the bulkier length speared your bruised inside and parted the muscles with a harsh stretch.

The round bulbous tip pressed right up against your tender cervix that you swear felt like it was attempting to split it open.

The insides of your tummy tingle with both pain and delight, yielding your nails to dig deeper and your free leg to slam against his scaley hips.

His lengthy tail whacks against the ground that rattles his house before the ends raise upwards to curl around your sore throat to replace his hand.

"I think it'sss about time we ssstart a family, (Y/n)~? Let'sss get you nice and round with sssome eggsss." He cooed, face blushing like a young bashful youth confessing to his crush.

(So this is not accurate; only female snakes can lay eggs. But I wanted this Naga lay some eggs :P)

Before you could even say anything, Issur grinned so connivingly as he cocked his head to the side. "And don't think I wasssn't aware of you taking birth control behind my back." Your blood runs cold, ice running through your veins as even your breathing ceases. "You know that you can't hide thingsss from me~."

Realization strikes you like someone had bashed your head, and the one bit of control you thought that you had was false.

Even under the hold and constraint of the much bigger monster, you attempted to wiggle and squirm to free yourself.

You can't do this; you handle any more of this sh*t that you didn't deserve. He's taken you away from everyone and everything you once loved, and now he attempts to trap you even more than you already were.

"Keep fighting, baby, and I'll make it hur-"

"F*ck you!" All of your obedience flies out the window as you curse at him and continue to fight for your freedom. Faking and lying to him doesn't matter anymore; you have to get away.

Issur narrowed those marbled eyes before pulling outwards only to switch your position onto your stomach. His tail completely holds you in place from your throat to your legs, where you're lifted slightly off the mattress.

"Alright, you ungrateful brat. You want pain; I'll give it to you." The Naga snarls close to your ears before sinking in and bottoming out with the thicker c*ck.

You cry audibly, lips parting as the tears persist and your limbs tense and contract.

His hips jerked as he moved and quickly gained momentum, rocking his hips in animalistic breeding movement. Venom dripped from his fangs onto your bare bum, where it numbed the small areas it dripped onto.

The thinner but longer length was grasped by one of his hands that jerked it, utilizing the natural slime and your immission on the shaft.

"How many kids should we have?" He questions as his breathing staggers and his stomach tingles. You didn't answer, continuing to struggle and squirm to free yourself, but the hold of his snake tail was unbreakable. "Five? Ten? Who knows...let's have a big happy family."

Issur's free hand caresses your back before trailing down to your tummy, where he leans over and groans.

His movements stall as presses so deeply down inside that it hurts. The wide head of the fatty c*ck separated with something tiny, but hard, spherical, and burning with heat pressing into your cervix.

"Stop! Stop! Stop, please!" You wail and cry, sobbing with more tears descending and your whole body trembling. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I won't do it again! I won't fight! I won't argue! Just please stop!"

The Naga groans, chest heaving as split tongue hisses. "Too late."

And the first egg forcefully parts the small entrance to your womb to enter. It was more than just an ache, more than a tingling; it was a pulsating throbbing of something that should have never happened.

"Ahh!" You bellow out in frustration and desperation, still attempting to get away, only for another egg to travel upwards through the fatty c*ck and enter inside of your womb. "It hurts!"

Issur laughs breathlessly while continuing to jack off the top length. "Then how about you do sssome persssuasssion with that filthy mouth of yoursss?" He coyly states, wide muscled abdomen flexing and contracting.

It's an offer you won't pass off.

You have to will it, will yourself to speak words that are false and deceitful. "I-I was wrong. I'm t-terrible for l-lying to you. I'm sorry! I was just scared!" "Go on." He states. "I want it; I w-want a family only with y-you!" It feels like you could throw up from these lies. "Please...just make the pain stop."

The monster hums pleasantly, and you're sure as hell that he's smirking. "Eh, you sssound ssso cute! How could I deny?"

He leaned forward, breathing in your scent as he pants before hissing and baring his fangs. You brace, squeezing your eyes shut with his tail tightening to constrict around your entire body harder than ever.

Tightness from your pulsating womb and aching lungs are driving you to almost deliriousness where you can't even think straight.

Within moments, the set of dripping acute fangs punctured the bruised and discolored skin on your throat.

At first, it feels as though he tore open your veins and poured buckets of molten hot lava within. Burning, seething with heat, the air is stolen from you as it spreads down from your neck to your heart, then every other limb you possess.

However, that boiling pain ceased just as fast as it arrived and became nonexistent as your nerves were inoperative like they were turned off. No longer could you feel any sensations, completely numb to pain, pleasure, and even the heat of your own body.

If you couldn't see the tail that still firmly held onto you in place, or feel the fangs inside, you'd think he let you go.

Any attempts to move your body were futile, and that's when you knew that this was just going to continue on being your fate, at the mercy of a monster who wanted you more than anything.

Noticing your flaccidity, the tail that held you in a bruising grip slackened.

Without feeling anything, there was a bit of pressure you could detect when the Naga grunted and trembled slightly. Just a little pressure as another slimy egg infiltrated your womb...and another...and another.

Like you were f*cking incubator, your stomach now bulges visibly with the tiny, almost gumball-sized eggs that cultivate within your womb.

"There~." Issur hums and kisses his bloody lips against your jaw. "All nice and full. I'll jussst fertilize them, and then thisss will all be done."

Even numb, your lips twitched, and tears escaped that traveled over your forehead due to gravity.

Issur removed the fatty c*ck to replace it with the skinnier one he had been stroking. The warm veiny rod parted the muscles again just to resume its place at your tender cervix.

Only able to clench your teeth together, you barely discerned the sensation of your wet walls unconsciously gripping onto him. You felt the pressure of his strong heated burst, the heavy spurts of thick, potent seed spilling into your womb to fertilize the tiny little eggs.

His hips jerk, the angle of your bottom in his tail's hold allowing for every vigorous torrent spray of his seed to gush inside as if he were just overflowing.

The Naga sucked in a gulp of air while sluggishly cocking his head to the side and swallowing the saliva in his mouth. "I can't wait until you get pregnant with our babies."

It takes everything in your to just keep your mouth shut, and let it be. You can't fight him anymore.

Who would have thought you'd meet a monster that put the bogeyman to shame? But even the devil hides among men like a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Normal, it's how you would express yourself; it's how you would describe your day. You were a normal girl, a normal human, with nothing special going on.

Simple.

Young and only just a semester into University, there was not much going on in your life other than classes and work. Occasionally there would be study sessions accompanied by the girlies you made friends with.

One particular day, it was your birthday. You didn't want anything big, just a small get-together with the girls. Yet they had other agendas and planned a dinner party and karaoke night at the college hangout spot.

Men you hadn't known or ever conversed with before had attended, because what's a party without boys, right? Though, how were you going to complain when the man you secretly admired from afar decided to join?

He was tall, dark, handsome, and, best of all...wasn't human. Endre was a panther beastman and was exactly your type. Taller than the door frame, his body was thickly riddled with muscles, an itty bitty waist, tattoos all over, and piercings decorating his ears and lips.

Endre was the cool, mysterious guy that people didn't really know much about. He kept to himself, minded his business, and didn't talk much. Yes, Endre was exactly your type.

And he had shown up at your birthday party? It couldn't have gotten any better.

The night was young, and everyone slowly began to gather at the bar and restaurant. Gifts were brought, cards were offered, and birthday wishes were blessed.

More than half of the guests were people you hadn't known, but only one mattered. Just your luck; Endre was seated next to you on your right. He was so close, warm, and he smelled like paradise.

It was planned, your friends side-eyeing you and winking, hiding giggles behind their hands. Do you thank them or berate them for playing a dirty trick? Well, whatever, you'll enjoy it.

Though, due to your seating arrangements, you were caged inside the booth with Endre on your right, and someone else on your left. He was also someone you hadn't known personally but was popular for being popular.

His name was Issur, and he was an exchange student from Bolivia. But what made him popular...was the fact that he was a Naga. They were extremely uncommon in these parts, where even in the summer, it was chilly and mainly wintry year-round.

There would be more luck finding a drider here than a snake man. His scarcity made him popular, and with his charismatic personality, people flocked to him lock a moth to a flame.

Not to mention, his handsome appearance garnered attention. Big hands, a long torso, ruby-red eyes, styled white hair, an athletic build with a wider muscular waist and abdomen, and a thick lengthy tail of illustrious white scales that shimmered like diamonds in the light.

Issur was a type of magnificence uncommon when everyone was used to demons, angels, and elves.

You had never spoken to him before; he wasn't part of your friend group or 'clique', and hadn't even greeted you at the restaurant. But, he was a party guy and could hold his liquor like it were nothing.

Where there is a party, there sure is to be Issur. Well, he'd only make things more interesting, right?

No harm, no foul.

Throughout the night, you hadn't paid much attention to him. Your main objective was to not make a fool of yourself in front of the panther beastman. Harder said than done; you're clumsy and goofy, bashful whenever Endre turned to look at you.

It was hard to breathe...and then the alcohol arrived.

Liquid courage, they say.

You wanted to relax, to have a bit of a loose tongue where your nervousness couldn't peak through. But this is you, and you had already drunk yourself dizzy before anyone could even become a little tipsy.

The intoxicated version of yourself was afraid of nothing! What is personal space, you hadn't known as you leaned to rest your head against Endre's shoulder and grope his thick muscular thighs through his dark jeans.

He had such nice legs, and you know what they say, thick thighs save lives.

For some, invading their personal space like that might have been a problem. But Endre didn't seem to mind as he rested a hand on your knee and bent down to whisper jokes or compliments in your ear.

But then the night went on, and the effects became stronger. You were seeing double, and when you attempted to reach forward to grasp a beer bottle, it spilled all over the man on your left.

He wore a simple white shirt and a golden leatherman jacket in which the tannish liquid swiftly seeped into the fabric and stained it dark.

That sobered you up in an instant.

Your friends laughed, and others waved it off, almost as drunk as you by now. Without the effects of the alcohol, you felt so shameful and sprung into action to clean what you could.

Apologies spewed out your lips like a broken record as you attempted to dry his shirt with napkins. Issur was pissed at first, cursing loudly while raising his arms as if he were ready to strike. Though once his marbled ruby eyes met yours for the first time ever, he froze in his seat.

You wish you had noticed it at the time, the warning signs. There you could have seen the look of a man falling in love at first sight. But your attention was focused solely on his shirt that you were feverishly cleaning.

The skin beneath his soaked top was heating up because of your touch; however, you weren't aware.

Oh, how unaware you were of his pale cheeks dusting in a bright flush...and his heart beating faster than the fluttering of hummingbird wings...and his mind hyper-fixating on everything about you.

You caught the eyes of the devil.

It took a moment for Issur to recover, but once he did, he became the funny, charismatic guy everyone knew him as. He smiled, displaying pointed fangs that peeked over his top and bottom lips.

"Sssomeone'sss had a little too much to drink, huh?"

You were bowing your head, apologizing again and again. He didn't say anything for a while; you think he just liked the sound of your voice.

Without prolonging things any longer, he grasped your wrist with his large hands and managed to maneuver them so he could enclasp your fingers together.

He looked you in the eyes, smiling like an angel yet hiding a demon inside of himself.

"I guesssss I'll forgive the birthday girl for now."

The next day, when you had sobered up and taken enough medication to combat the hangover, you rushed to Uni like any other normal day.

You took the subway, walked through the capital, and across the huge campus. Along the way, you met up with your girlies, and they teased you for what transpired the night before.

"If I could grope Endre's thighs or stroke Issur's abbs like you did last night, I could die peacefully by now."

Embarrassing! How could you shame yourself like that in front of your crush and other classmates!?

They told you to relax and take it easy because, to them, it looked like Endre the beastman and Issur the Naga wanted to feel you up just as much.

Before any more jokes or mocking remarks could be spewed, someone tapped you on the shoulder.

And that someone had to be the Naga himself. He smiled boyishly, rubbing at the back of his neck as he asked to speak privately with you.

Your friends began gushing, smirking to themselves as they nodded eagerly and left the two of you alone.

It was awkward at first until Issur offered to walk you to your ten am class. He spoke of nothing important, stating that he was glad you made it home and safe and hoped you had a good birthday.

Simple stuff.

And then he spoke a little more eagerly, a little more hopeful, and a little more delirious. The ends of his tail wiggled in the air with nervousness.

"I wassss jussst wondering if I could assssk you out on a date when you are free."

Oh, you hadn't expected that. Someone popular and prevalent like him could be with the prettiest nymphs or any of the enchanting drows, but he was asking a normal human like you out on a date.

You knew what it felt like to be rejected, especially out in the open with other students going on about their day, but you wouldn't lie.

It was better to be sincere upfront than to lie.

So you told him the truth, stating it in a nice way without hurting his feelings any more than a normal rejection would.

You had never seen someone's expression fall so quickly, or the light in their eyes give out so fast. He was flabbergasted, befuddled for words, and tongue-tied.

It was obvious he hadn't expected such a response, murmuring 'wow' to himself in disbelief as he looked everywhere else but your face.

He began asking why or if there was anything he had done. He was showing optimism that possibly there was an issue he could change on the spot or convince you otherwise.

But then you shot him down right out of the sky.

"You're just not my type."

You thought it would end there; it was a clear and concise rejection, and there was nothing else he could do to change your mind.

So you went about your days just as you normally did. You took the subway to Uni, walked through the capital, and across the huge campus. Along the way, you met up with your friends and spoke of nonsense to fill in the time.

The only factor that was different in your uninteresting life was now there was Naga following everywhere you went, and stalking your schedule like it were air he needed to breathe.

It didn't take long for him to know everything that there was to know about you. The things he's learned from stalking your every move and breaking into your apartment to look through your things are more than anyone else had ever known. Then he got the information he wanted the most, your type.

What was it!?

Why wasn't he your type!?

The messages between you and your friend Dolly, he read them on your computer. Your password was too easy...you had thought it was quite clever.

He read and read, scrolled to ingest every information he could get. It then came to a conversation you shared where Dolly teased you for nearly eyeing Ednre up like he were meat hanging on a slab.

The words on the screen were grasping his throat and squeezing, physically causing him pain that provoked venom to leak from his fangs.

◤

XXX-XXX-YYYY How could I not? He's exactly my type. That silent, mysterious brooding kind. Tall, dark, and handsome, LMFAO.

🍑 🎀 𝒟🌸𝓁𝓁 🎀 🍑

Not to mention those thick thighs

XXX-XXX-YYYY Ugh, god(s) yes! The best part!

🍑 🎀 𝒟🌸𝓁𝓁 🎀 🍑

Hehe Well, you do like them when they aren't human.

XXX-XXX-YYYY Yeah, cause I love me a beast. Those muscles

🍑 🎀 𝒟🌸𝓁𝓁 🎀 🍑

Muscular thighs

XXX-XXX-YYYY MHmm!! And those slutty little waist Boobs bigger than mine And his f*cking tattoos and piercing I'm weak for people like him

🍑 🎀 𝒟🌸𝓁𝓁 🎀 🍑

And the stamina!! Lalia dated a beastman like a few months ago. They had to break up because she couldn't keep up with his stamina or libido!

XXX-XXX-YYYY sighhhh What I would give for even a taste of Endre Pray I never have to sacrifice you

🍑 🎀 𝒟🌸𝓁𝓁 🎀 🍑

Can't even be mad bc, I would do the same for that whiney sub-demon from AP Calc.

◢

He can't read anymore, and he's going to be physically sick

Endre...Endre!? F*cking Endre!? That's your type!? Are you kidding!? Your type really is some f*cking lowlife try-hard that thinks he's cool with all his little piercings and emo a** tattoos!?

The front of his shirt is drenched in the potent venom trickling from his fangs. His lengthy tail is swaying, slamming against the ground, which is surely notifying your neighbors.

Issur has to calm down; he has to breathe; he has to stop the production of the venom. A rage he has never felt before boils within his chest, like fire spreading across his bones that are cracking them like fragile glass.

Inside, his stomach rolls and tumbles as though a storm were released to unleash its anger of bubbling thunder.

The Naga couldn't believe it. Someone like you deserved so much better...so much more! Issur can provide that, not some gloomy animal like Endre.

So it's decided...He has to do something.

You'll understand...You'll come to see it the way he does...He knows it.

How were you supposed to know what was going on behind your back?

How could you know that while you sat peacefully on your bed, kicking your feet as you read a book...Issur waited for the perfect opportunity to get rid of that pest.

You waited for a text back from the panther beastman, aware he was out with his own friends at the bar.

But while you giggled to yourself, replaying your previous message back in your head, Endre, who went outside for a smoke, had his mouth covered while a pair of fangs punctured the back of his right shoulder.

The batsman's body went limp, limbs flaccid as paralyzation spread through every blood vessel within his body. His vision grew blurry, the brightest star in the city sky muddling as he collapsed under his weight.

It's been a while since he's responded; he must be having a lot of fun, is what you think to yourself when still receiving no reply. So you close your book and make your way to your bathroom to turn on the light.

Issur dragged the half-conscious tattooed male out of sight, back towards the alley where the darkness scared many away.

After all of that studying for finals, why not enjoy the luxury of a bubble bath? You even bought new bath bombs from the sale at the mall, a scent that Endre may have mentioned favoring.

His lengthy tail wrapped around Endre's body and squeezed. He crushed every single bone inside the beast-man's body. Although paralyzed, although completely unable to move, he could feel every...single...sensation...implemented against his limbs.

The water was just right, (Burning/freezing/room temp) as you washed the liquid and soapy bubbles around. It was going to feel good on your tense muscles.

Issur could feel it, Endre's feeble attempt to fight back slackening. His life was seeping from his pathetic body that you liked so much. He couldn't help it; the Naga had to make sure the beastman was looking at the man who was going to take you away.

Tying your hair up and clipping it, you brought your laptop and phone into the bathroom that displayed one of your favorite shows on pause. Checking your phone, there is still no reply from your dear 'ol crush.

Large hands snatched the paralyzed man's face as Issur lowered, their noses nearly touching. A sinister grin presented on that sick f*cks lips as his tail tightened. Sickening crunches whispered into the night air as Ruby Red encountered glossy Tuscan yellow.

You stripped off your clothing before descending into the soapy liquid, feeling somewhat lonesome as a shiver ran up your spine.

"You really ssshould have ssstayed away from (Y/n). I warned you, and if you would have jussst lissstened, I might have let you live."

"Ah, I'm so dependent on his responses." You tell yourself while reaching for the space button. "There's probably girls hanging all over him..."

Issur snatched Endre's neck and squeezed.

You leaned back while rubbing at your throat; eyes focused on the laptop screen.

The beastman choked, miserably struggling to keep the air within his lungs.

Lack of hydration was making your head slightly vertiginous with a muted ache tingling in your chest.

Blood trickled from Endre's nose as his eyes rolled back into his head.

Soap and suds dribbled from your arms as you spread them across your skin.

All movement ceased; his pathetic attempt to stay alive was no longer feasible.

An abrupt sharp stab of pain flickered across your heart as though someone squeezed it.

"You ssssimply don't underssstand. I'd kill for her...I'd kill to have her."

"F*ck, why does it feel like I'm dying?"

How were you supposed to know what was going on behind your back?

The next day, you went about your days just as you normally did. You took the subway to Uni, walked through the capital, and across the huge campus. Along the way, you met up with your friends and talked about your boring night.

Only this time, something was different. Everyone was talking about it, and when you heard, you collapsed to your knees.

"Endre Olsson was found dead last night at two-thirty am, torn open and insides eaten."

Something felt off last night, your insides on fire and chest aching. Was it a premonition of what was coming...happening?

Tears expelled from your eyes, and pain you've never felt before exploded as though you were injected with despair.

Your friends kneeled by to comfort you as best they could, petting your head and sympathizing. They couldn't understand the turmoil you were going through, but they were attempting to be there for you.

But this pain...you wanted to eject it out, release it from the hold it had on everything inside. How could this happen? Why? Why to him? Who could do such a thing?

And then he appeared.

Like a fairy popping out of the blue, he was right in front of you while tilting his head of pearlescent white hair.

"It'sss going to be okay, (Y/n). I promissse thingsss will get better."

Get better?

Will things get better?

NEVER!

So long as that freak lived, this life you owned no longer became your own.

He stole the one you wanted just to hurt you.

Yet you were so unaware of the truth.

Not until you went home that night to wallow is mournful despondency.

You cried your eyes out, barely breathing and hiccuping. The exhaustion forced sleep to take over, and when you opened your eyes again, you were met with a ceiling that was not your own.

"What are you thinking of? You're shaking?"

You froze, body stagnant as your eyes focused on the sight in front of you. With your body lying on its right, face staring off at your side of the room, Issur settled a large hand on your hip.

The heat from his skin was burning you alive, with sweat coating the back of your neck, useless for cooling you down.

"Nothing." It's a whisper so quiet that the sound of wind swooshing through the air outside could have eaten it up.

Issur sighed and slightly squeezed your hip in some form of a reassuring manner. "I will apologize if I were too harsssh on you, my love. I never wanted to be sssso brutal, but you had dessstroyed my trussst."

Your throat tightened as a burning in the corner of your eyes erupted. Liquid glossed over the conjunctiva that forced you to clench your teeth together to hold in a sob.

"I thought we were getting sssomewhere. I thought you loved me back." He states while sitting up. "I only do everything for you."

One of your hands rose to cover your mouth with the tears spilling over your lids to descend over your nose bridge and down to your temple.

It's dead silent within your shared bedroom; not even the rustling leaves outside could penetrate the quiescence.

"Baby, are you mad at me?"

A nauseousness swirls within your stomach. "O-Of course not." It took everything inside of you to keep your voice steady, but you know he discern your apprehension.

The Naga hums lightly, the bed sheets shuffling beneath him as he lowers his torso until his bare chest encounters your back. "I love you...sssso much (Y/n)." His arms wrap around your figure to hold around your pooched abdomen. "I jussst want you to undersstand that we are meant to be."

His touch is so disgusting, yet you're welcoming the comfort of it. You're so alone, with only your thoughts and this monster by your side.

This suffocating isolation breaks you apart more and more every day, as though someone is picking away at your mentality. With a chip, it's little by little, and you're so scared of when it turns to chunks.

How much longer can you take of this?

"Doesss it hurt anywhere?" His voice is soft and cordial by your ear.

You despise when he uses that tone. It's like false hope that somewhere inside his f*cked-up mind, he truly cares for you.

But he just wants to own you.

"Baby, I assssked a quesstion." He reiterates himself as the end of his scaley tail slithers to enwrap around one of your ankles.

Everywhere, it hurts everywhere.

There is a throbbing headache as if you're having an aneurysm. A stabbing pain penetrates your heart with every pump of the organ. The center of your abdomen, where your womb rests beneath, feels pummeled, your cervix battered in a dull ache.

Your lower region burns raw, with the muscles inside tender from the forceful penetration. Worse of all was the continuous pain in your left hip, where he shattered the femoral head and let it heal improperly when he first brought you to his home...so you could never run away.

"My...hip..." You murmur under your breath. If you mention any of the other discomforts, he'll say you deserve it. But if you bring up your leg, he might have a little pity and give you something.

"Ah, we probably irritated it." He migrates a hand to your hip, where he snakes his hand beneath your underwear so his skin is right against yours. "I can't imagine how much it hurtsss, my love. But you'll grow usssed to the pain."

You cannot help but dig your nails within your palm as you squeeze your hands into fists. Nothing you did warranted this in your life.

How did you go from being a normal girl with nothing special...to the pet of a monster?

"But a mother ssshouldn't need to sssuffer sso much. I'll grab sssomething for you to take." Issur states, and with a kiss against your neck, you are released.

He slithers out of the room, his scales pressing against the creaking floorboards beneath.

A mother...your attempts to save yourself from his original plan had been for not. You just wanted to have one thing to control in your imprisoned life.

But of course, he was one step ahead and had you fooled for months.

He arranged this too.

Issur planned Endre's murder, he planned your kidnapping, and he planned just the right time to breed your body...knowing you could do nothing about it.

He has you beat.

It had not taken long for an egg to set and take hold. Issur was greatly saddened when he picked up the scent of only one egg, but you couldn't have been any more grateful that it was just one.

There had been at least ten that were first implanted within your womb, and the thought of being overfilled with multiple children was going to eat away all your sanity.

Maybe you were not completely abanded by the higher being(s) within the sky. Maybe they pitied you for the torture and despair you devoured with every breath.

Even so, you were pregnant with that monster's child. You carry his bloodline, the next of kin.

It felt wrong...but you couldn't help but despise this thing inside of you—forcefully implanted, requiring you to care and nurture, and love...and love.

This wasn't how you imagined your life would be like. You wanted to experience things such as creating a family with someone else.

Not him

'But maybe you're being too cynical,' a voice in the back of your head likes to say. 'He's a little harsh, but he really loves you! He loves you, cares for you, and wants to create a family with only you.'

It's not you, that voice is not you, but it's that dastardly little thing called Stockholm Syndrome.

You despise Issur Baredda with every fiber in your body, yet your f*cked little head yearns for him. The seclusion and solitude from any other living being have left you dependent on the Naga.

When the nights are cold and unbearable, he holds you like a fragile china doll and whispers hundreds of words of endearment. On the days you find no will to get out of bed, he kisses your skin like he cannot get enough and takes care of your every need.

And now that you are pregnant, at least two months along when the egg has hatched, you carry it like a normal pregnancy. Issur is...a little different now. He's kinder; he's sweeter; he acts more like a sane individual.

He waits on you, hand and foot, until he leaves for classes at the University. Every morning, he massages your sore and aching limbs before cooking you all your favorite meals, at least the ones that don't affect pregnancy.

You are then carried to the bathroom for a shower, where he does everything for you. He washes your hair, scrubs your body, and even helps with your skin routine.

Not once you missed a day.

Once you are dressed into clothes that he helps you into, he kisses you goodbye on the lips with such passion that your breath is stolen every time.

And then he leaves but not before locking up every door within the house besides the bedroom and bathroom. Even the windows have been sealed shut. There is nothing for you to do except read the books he's provided and sleep.

When he does come home around five, you are welcomed back by a hug so desperate it's like he's been wanting to do it all day. Issur calls you such sweet little nicknames, caressing your skin in such loving manners that it fills the emptiness inside of you.

Everything is then unlocked, and the two of you enter the kitchen to cook. He loves to make things from his homeland. As if you two truly are a couple, he tells you stories of his adolescence and family.

He laughs at the recollections...and you find yourself enjoying them too. It's something that disrupts the boredom, the quietness where you just lay there to indulge in your thoughts.

'Don't forget how he's hurt you! You act up once, and he'll break something again!' One side of your mind says.

The other side responds, 'It was your fault, though. You acted up after he was being so kind to you. He loves you, but you're so mean to him. He loves you...He loves you.'

It's getting worse, as time progresses. Stockholm syndrome is affecting you in such a way that maybe...maybe you do love him.

Why wouldn't you love him? Has anyone ever put so much interest into you that it feels as though you are a precious gem? Everything about you is something he loves, all your flaws, all your little pet peeves; he loves them.

And he loves your baby so much! The way he rubs your belly and speaks to the child in such a whimsical voice while giggling. He always informs your baby to be good for their mommy, and not to cause you so much pain. Sometimes, he'll even speak of the future where the three of you live happily ever after.

How could you not love him?

Issur is even taking you out of the house! Granted, he makes you cover up in long robes with a face mask and scarf over your head to conceal your hair, but you are still able to feel the sun on your body.

You see the clouds and the vast blue sky that is never-ending. The fragrance of fresh air is so delicious it's like (your favorite flower) could bloom within your lungs.

People surround the both of you as you walk around the large city or to the grocery store, and the presence of others feels less suffocating.

See, he loves you so much that he's taking you outside! He's rewarding you for being such a good girl and allowing these voyages.

If he didn't really love you, he'd keep you locked up inside his house and never allow you even a lick of sun.

Maybe you really do love him; he's so caring to you. And this baby inside your belly...it's not a monster or the spawn of the devil...it's just a baby. It's yours and his...you're making a family.

You understand...You have come to see it the way he does...You both know it.

You're so far along now; It's getting too close to your estimated birth month. Issur didn't want to risk taking you to the hospital for check-ups; he said they might send you away for being ill.

But then you're getting closer, and your worry grows heavier.

Limping over to the Naga lounging in the sunroom, you feel your palms beginning to sweat and clam up. The forearm crutch you're using on your left arm feels as though it weighs a ton as you work up the courage.

"I can ssssmell you, my love. What are you doing jussst sssstanding there?" Issur's voice provokes shivers to run up your spine and your eyes to rise upwards to take in his appearance. The Naga lay flat on his back on a pile of blankets beneath him; a wide window from above allowed the sun to shine in and illuminate the scales beneath his closed eyes and lengthy tail around his little 'burrow.'

There's a lump in your throat, and even when you attempt to swallow it away, it just feels like it grows bigger. "Um, baby, I just wanted to speak with you about something." You can barely get the words out, and once you do, you almost feel like scrambling to eat them back up.

"Hmm?" He hums and opens his eyes to reveal his ruby-red optics. "What isss it, my love?"

Your baby is 'kicking' against your ribs, and you feel put on the spot.

"You-a..." You're choking on the words. He won't hurt you; the worst would be getting upset and giving you the silent treatment. But then again...you hate the silence more than anything. "It's just...you know how I don't ask for anything, right?"

Issur smiles almost boyishly while sitting up slightly to lean his weight on his right arm. "Well, that isss true. You really ssshould asssk for more thingsss, baby. You are the love of my life, and I want to provide you with everything."

Whether it is a trap or not, you find his words comforting you slightly and giving you confidence. "Well, it's just...I'm really far along, and I know I will give birth soon, but I don't know when..." You begin, curling your toes in your house slippers to fidget away a slight discomfort.

The Naga across from you narrowed his eyes while pursing his lips. "Come here and explain. I want to hear the wordsss from your mouth." He states, and you're unsure how to react.

Either he could be understanding or enraged at the thought.

Gingerly, you limped your way over while utilizing the left forearm crutch to put most of your weight on it. He watches you waddling over before arriving at his resting area; the sun feels nice on your cold skin.

Issur reaches his long arms forward while raising his tail to support you gently. You're now beside him, cuddled next to his side, with his scaly appendage wrapping around your lower legs like a blanket.

The texture used to scare you; now, it was a comforting sensation that sent dopamine through your nerves. He reaches to rub your bulging belly over your oversized shirt, and it subdues an uneasiness inside.

"Now tell me what you want?" It's a question yet feels like a demand as well.

Biting the inside of your cheek for a second, you pick words carefully before speaking. "I-It would be very beneficial for our baby to be born in a hospital-" You see his right eye twitch and you immediately reach upwards to caress his jaw. "-I do not know how to prepare for this interracial birth. They have trained doctors-" He's getting more irritated, indicated by a deep scowl that is morphing on his lips that grow you more desperate. "-It's a sterile environment, safer, and a better place to birth our child!"

Your breathing is irregular, and you are out of breath from attempting to tell him everything before he stops you. You don't wish to anger him, but you want him to take your thoughts into account.

With a sigh, Issure removes your hands from his face. "I thought we talked about thisss, (Y/n). It'sss not sssafe for you-"

"How!?" You didn't mean to raise your voice, yet you're immediately frozen in place. All your limbs feel as cold as ice and filled with thousands of pounds of weight. "I-I-I..." He silences you with a finger on your lips.

"If you go, they will take our baby away." Your eyes bulge out of their sockets. "They'll deem you not fit to take care of our baby. You have no job, dropped out of college, and are disssabled." His warm hands from the sun migrate to grasp your jaw as he lowers his face closer to yours. "Do you really think that they'll let sssomeone asss unfit asss you keep our baby? No, right? Ssso do you want to take the chance?"

The inner corner of your eyes stings, tears glossing over as the insides of your throat burn from holding down a sob. "N-No!" You whimper while shaking your head.

Issur's scowl becomes a calm and cordial smile again as he nods along. "That'ss right. It's for the besst, my love. I don't do thessse thingsss to hurt you."

You know that.

"Now, I'm going to nap a little longer. Do you want to lay here with me too?" His offer isn't one you'll give up, so you nod and cuddle closer to his body, feeling his human skin along yours.

"I love you." He murmurs softly while kissing the top of your head.

Inside, your heart skips a beat as a headache forms within your skull. "I know...I love you too."

You're scared.

You're scared of the outcome; you're scared of the pain; you're scared of doing this alone. This is something you've never experienced before, and against all odds...you still want to give birth at the hospital.

But Issur is adamant in his response, obstinate and unmovable. He refuses to change his mind, and this goes on for weeks.

Then one night...it starts.

At first, it's just cramps in your lower stomach, almost like menstrual cramps. It was something common you felt, usually just your baby active for a while before resting.

And then there was this dull lower back pain that awoke you from your sleep again. It ached as if a knot had formed, and you were unable to undo it. You attempt to sleep again, but then that ache in your back travels down and over to your inner thighs that flowed down your legs like tingles.

This discomfort was a bit unusual, but you were so tired that you only thought of it as a side effect of your mixed pregnancy.

But then that cramping feeling returned only thirty minutes later, and a wet sensation pooled within your undergarment. A groan was elicited from your lips as your hands squeezed into fists and your toes curled.

"Baby...?" Issur called out to you softly in his hoarse sleepy voice while turning over to face your back.

At first, you couldn't reply and instead focused on your breathing, which grew to be troublesome.

"F*ck!" He cursed and flew upwards from his position. You hear him slithering around to the personal bathroom before his phone echoes with an audible ring.

Between your contractions, there isn't much pain at all, but the fear is making it difficult. "Please..." Your voice is crackly and raspy. "Please take me to the hospital."

Issur releases a laugh of disbelief as he slithers forward to swipe the sweat off your forehead. "Now, isssn't the time to joke, my love. It'll be okay."

Before your reply, the call answers.

"What the f*ck are doing calling me at three am in the morning?" It's a woman's voice snapping harshly on the other end.

The Naga doesn't appear fazed, instead merely raising the phone to his ear while rubbing your back comfortingly. "It'sss happening, Pabla. She's experiencing contractionsss."

It's silent for a moment before you hear her muffled speaking. You attempt to listen, but another roll of contractions starts, and this tight constricting feeling resonates in your womb. Your hand's fling to grasp his wrist as you squeeze, holding your aggravated groans down in your throat.

"Alright, ssssee you when you get here." Issur murmurs before ending the call and tossing his phone on the bed. He 'kneels' down to kiss your cheek, grazing his fangs across your sensitive skin. "That wasss my ssssister, and sssshe'll be here very sssoon to help you."

Your eyes enlarge, and you feel like you're dreaming. He's mentioned stories of his older sister; however, you were unaware she was in the 'area.'

Does she know? Is she aware of what he had done to you, or how he killed and devoured that guy from college...That guy...why can't you remember his name.

Issur attempted to preoccupy your time and fill the waiting with your favorite show. He turned it on the Tv in the sunroom and laid you on his cushions to comfort you the best he could.

His lengthy tail wrapped around you in a comforting manner, so his cooler body helped mediate this heat you were feeling. Only when your contractions hit did the ache grow intense, and your womb tighten. After it passed shortly, it was just a dull tingling.

Maybe an hour or two passed...you're not keeping count...and there is a knock at the door. "I'll be right back." He murmurs and reluctantly releases you from his coiled tail. He kisses your throat softly and grazes his fangs faintly before getting up.

You watch him pass, and slither against the laminated wooden floors to the hallway. That sickening feeling of isolation returns so fast, and you want him back.

His skin needs to be touching yours; you need to be sharing heat. You're not you anymore; you're dependent on him, on Issur.

'He kidnapped you after killing Ȩ̶̮̯͓͚̮̭̇͂́̾́̆͘͝n̶̳̗͖̣̾̂͘ͅd̸̼͙͍͖̮̥̲̫̭̯̄r̷̢̪̳̹̠͓͈͍͕͛ͅe̸̥̼̳̰̩͆̍̂͋! Remember his name! Remember his name! You know it; you know his name.'

This annoying voice in your head is nagging you to where it spurs your headache to grow worse.

"Stop it." You croak and cover your eyes as if endeavoring to quell a burn in the sensitive optics.

'He's a murderer! He broke every bone in Ȩ̴̡̨̢̭̼͔̟̻̰̦̩̘̼̦̼̱̥͕̤̲̱̘̞̠͍̞͓̦̝̤͛̂̿̌̈́͐̈́̉̓̋̀̐̏͗̾̓̚͝ņ̵̡̢̝̼͕͍̞̥͈̻̥̞̯̥͖͓̯͎̿̽̅̑́͌́͆̈́̃̽͌̚͜͝ḑ̸̢̢̢̧͖̭̹̹̤̳̱͔̳̼̭͎̩͇̳̩̯̤̱̝̹͉̈́̏̏͘͜r̸̡͎̳̱̜̤͔̍e̵̡̡̛͈̬͎̜̗̣̯͉̬̯̻̥̳̱̯͖͕̣͚̠̳̝̙̣̻̯͛̋̽̀̃̈́̑̑̄̽̑̔̊̅́͌͑̒͂͊̽̆̄͐̿̇͋́̄̋̕͘͜͝͝͝ͅ'̴̨̢̧̛̛̳̘̱͖͈̼͈͕̯̲̗̝̬̙̙͇͇̱͉̲̝̣̪͓͓͓͚͎̬̱̟̫̣͔̻̳͚͌̃̐̐̅̃̑̍́̊͂͌̈́́̉̔̄̆͛̑̈́͐͑̑̓̾̇̅̀͂̽̽̽̾̿̈́͆̒͆̿̚̚͘͘̕͠ͅs̶̜̗̋͑̽̒̐̈͑́͊̏͗͒́̒̿̂̾̎̇̏̑̓̔̐̽̓́͂͌̇̚̚͝͝͠ body and then nearly ate him whole! He wanted to hurt you, hurt anyone around just to get to you! Why hasn't anyone been looking for you-'

"Stop it!" Your voice is louder than you expected it to be, and the roar of your command had spurred Issur to come slither back as fast as he could.

His hands are on your face, gaining your attention with his ruby-red eyes holding such concern. "Are you okay, my love!? What'sss hurting!?" He spewed rapidly that you almost missed it.

You could only nod softly and swallow the saliva in your mouth. "I'm okay. My tummy just hurt more than I expected it to be."

He nodded his head just as another person slithers into the sunroom. In the dim light of one of the lamps, you can see that she is very similar to Issur.

The same pearlescent white hair with a soft pink undertone, only with straight cut bangs over her forehead and twisted into a large bun atop of her head. Her skin is slightly tanner, and her torso is not as long.

She was much smaller, even her tail shorter, but her scales had a mixture of red patterns across her backside like flowers. "Hello, (Y/n)." The woman cooed, and her voice was a melodic melody, like a cool wind that refreshed you from the heated sweat. "My name isss Pabla, and I'm going to make ssssure everything goesss alright."

Pabla has the same lisp, that similar extended hissing sound with every 'S' she produced, just like Issur. It makes you want to laugh at the similarity.

"Okay."

The sister wasn't a gynecologist or wet nurse; however, she expressed that she was knowledgeable enough about the birthing of Nagas.

You trusted her. If she wished you harm, Issur would have never brought her over, to begin with. He care's too much about your safety...

She hooked you up to fluids she brought along and performed small tests for your blood pressure and awareness.

There was not much to do but wait and allow the time to pass so your contractions could grow closer and closer together. The pain evolved into a quicker burst of tightening and ache that lasted longer.

You need to be dilated enough for the birthing. Pabla had brought along a few painkillers, but she explained that the mixture would affect the infant and stimulate its venom to release, which would kill you.

'Do it! Please give it to me! Please let this end!'

'I cannot die! I must live for our baby and be a happy family with Issur.'

Four more hours passed by with frequent check-ups from Pabla, who was making sure her equipment was sterile. Finally, your contractions were only sixty seconds apart now, and you were dilated enough to push.

Issur had readied a bath in the wide corner tub in the bathroom as his sister easily picked your pregnant body up bridal style to slither over.

The water brought a chill up your spine as your nightgown stuck your limbs like a second skin. It was happening.

"It'll be alright." Issur comforted you while (tying/clipping) your hair back so it was out of your face.

Pabla began instructing you to push when you felt the contractions hit and relax when they ceased to avoid tearing.

The insides of your walls could rip apart and cause excessive bleeding if you didn't listen.

You attempted to control your breathing while grasping onto Issurs hand and one of the bathtub rails. But then the contraction rolled like a stormy wave on a once peaceful shore.

It knocked the wind out of your lungs and disoriented you for a moment. So much so that you didn't push and instead grew unconscious for a few seconds before coming back to reality.

"You need to pusssh, (Y/n)!" Pabla's face remained in a neutral expression since she arrived; however, now she appears both worried and irritated.

"I-I can't." It was just an expel of air; the pain without any medication was a type of sensation of extreme menstrual cramps. "Give me the medicine."

"What!?" Issur grasped your shoulder so tightly that the pads of his fingertips bore into your muscles. "Are you f*cking ssstupid!? That'll kill you!"

'That's the plan, you freak!'

Pabla shook her head and readjusted her glasses. "This isss for the bessst, (Y/n). I promissse, if you ssstart pushing, the birth isss quicker than a normal human infant." Her words didn't make you feel any better.

Only when the contraction rolled in was there an undescribable shotting of pain. You thought it hurt when Issur broke your femoral head, but at least you had some form of medication to mediate it.

This is just raw, uncontrolled discomfort from birthing something half human, half monster. You will not allow another egg ever to take hold in your womb again.

You were about to say something, but a painful wave of contraction caused you to cry out in surprise. The inner corner of your eyes stung with thick opaque liquid clouding over the conjunctiva.

"Push!"

You tried to do as the Naga sister expressed, but it hurt so much. It's as though half of yourself is trying to birth the infant, and the other half is trying to keep it inside.

"Ssstop pushing!"

Your forceful movement ceased as you bent your back upwards in pain. "It f*cking hurts!" You shrieked before biting into your bottom lip.

'Kill it.'

'Birth it.'

"Ahhh!" The grip you had on the metal rail could have bent in and pulverized the bones within Issur's hand.

He leaned down from his position beside the tub and kissed your sweaty forehead while squeezing back your hand. "You can do it, my love. Just a few more pushesss. Then it'sss over, and our baby will be right here to hold."

His smooth, tranquil voice was enough for you to nod your head weakly and bear a deep breath. When the contraction hit again, a whine left your lips as you pushed with all your might.

The veins on your neck pulsated against the skin as Pabla did her best to help with the birthing of your child "Jussst a few more!"

"F*ck! Get it out of me!" You hollered and threw your head forward, squeezing Issur's hand as you pushed.

A shrill cry echoed in the room as you choked up. That cry, the first breath, it was all of your first child. You birthed a new life into this world, untainted by sin, unaffected by evil.

This child is pure compared to what it originated from. It's not fair for you to despise it, for it did nothing to you but exist.

"It'ss a boy!" Issur hollers, and shakes your shoulder ecstatically. Though, you are unable to hear his merry tone as your hearing zoned in and out.

All of your senses began to fluctuate between inactive, and barely working. Your sight muddled, not due to tears but something completely else as ink blots splattered across your sight.

"What'sss happening, Pabla?" You could barely hear Issur's voice as he questioned his older sister.

The baby was placed on your chest, blood smearing against your skin as your body shared heat. "SSShe'ss hemorrhaging! Grab the bag valve mask and give her air!"

Your heart's palpations were so slow and unnatural as they pounded right in your ears. Their movements appeared bizarre, and hazy, with visible motion blur.

Even your child's cries were silenced to tv static. Are you dying?

'Finally. I will be free from his grasp!'

'No, I don't want to leave him all alone!'

Tears that are not your own trickle onto your face as Issur squeezes air into your lungs. "Baby! Baby, pleassse!" He frees a hand to pat your face lightly as if it were going to wake you from this super. "Don't leave! Pleassse don't leave me!"

Even the child on your chest squirms, his tail slithering across your skin before wrapping around your throat in a...comforting manner?

"SSShe'sss still hemorrhaging, brother-"

"Then fix her!" His voice vibrates across your limbs just as you view his lengthy tail slam against the tile ground and shatter the flooring.

You are unable to move, unable to breathe; it's as though you're trapped in this body that is dying.

"You can't leave me!" He nearly roars as his nimble fingers glide through your hair to grasp it firmly and yank. "You're not allowed! Do you hear me!? Die, and I'm killing our sson! I'll murder every lasst one of your friends and sslaughter your family like pigsss!"

What is he saying? You can't hear him...and you cannot feel the tugging on your hair that forces your head back and chin to point toward the ceiling.

It feels as though his lips are right against your ear, his acute fangs burrowed against the skin that was close to breaking skin. "I will bring you back from the very depthsss of hell sso that you will never live a moment without pain if you die! You hear me!!?"

...

You gasp audibly, gagging on air for a second before hunching forward and coughing. Your hands flew upwards to grasp your son, pressing his skin against yours as his cries were silenced.

Pabla released a breath of air and leaned against the wall as if all her strength had evaporated from her limbs.

Issur hiccuped while removing his hand from yours and instead comfortingly rubbing your back. "SSSuch a good girl for me..." He encourages in a soothing voice.

After a moment of grounding yourself back to reality, the female Naga takes your child over to a scale while cleaning him.

"Pabla isss going to get him documented and create hisss birth certificate. Now, ssssince you did so well lissstening to me, you can name him."

A feeble smile displays on your lips as you look up at him. "T-Thank you, thank you so much..."

You named him something cute and childish in your delirious state of afterbirth; however, when Pabla spoke to you in a sympathetic voice, you were sobered up in an instant.

"I'm sorry, but the possibility of baring more children does not seem feasible."

It was the best and worst thing she could have told you...but at least you have this one now.

His name was Benji Baredda.

He was a little angel and had the most cheerful smile possible, and was a curious little bugger, that learned to slither with his little white tail a little too fast.

Benji moved faster than you could with your crutch, so it was often up to Issur to catch him when he tried to hide from nap times.

It was your fear, at first, that the Naga would mistreat your child, but in fact, it was the complete opposite. Issur absolutely adored his son and cared for him like any good father would.

Issur was surprisingly a fan of gentle parenting, speaking with your child and explaining why he did was wrong and how it disappoints him. He had the patience of a saint with Benji and was very involved in raising him.

If anyone saw, they'd think the Naga was the perfect dad; kind, caring, patient, loving, attractive, etc.

It wasn't just up to you to parent and raise him; both of you shared the workload. After all, you are a family.

Stockholm syndrome was like your best friend, like a part of you that swallowed your body from the ground up. Seeing how Issur treats and loves your child, feeling how he even cares for you and makes sure you have everything you need, just devours more of you.

You can't help but love him; why wouldn't you?

Why would you ever leave him? You have even more freedom now.

Yet...that doesn't keep you from leaving them alone together. Like obtaining the eyes of a hawk, you observe and watch their every interactions. You listen to everything they say and speak about.

In your gut, there is still a part that doesn't trust him completely. Just a little sliver of doubt, but you feel physically ill when they interact together without your knowledge,

You're scared Benji will turn out to be just like his father.

Issur had been a few years above you when you first started university, so a year after having your son, he graduated and moved the three of you back to his homeland and married you.

You're in a different country, away from your friends and family. You know no one; you don't know their native language or their culture. He does everything to make sure you don't learn, either.

'If I ever ran away, I wouldn't get very far here.'

'Why would I run? He loves me so much that he took me to his country!'

Everything is perfect. You all live in a nice house, slightly out of the city, in a little bit of the country for privacy. The Baredda family was an apparent prosperous household that owned an abundance of land and resources.

Benji is getting big, growing fast, and it was draining more of your energy trying to keep up.

Though, sometimes, that voice inside of your head attempts to make you remember some things. But you can never understand.

'He's a̵̢̹̘͙͖̼̖̗̻͔̻̜̥͈̝͖̲͈̻̜̫̐̇̌͆̏͂̑ ̴̛͙̥͈̹̹͈̝̰̦͉̥̌̀͊̓͂̋̏́̿͆͐͊́͛̈́̐̅͘m̶̡̩̬̥̫̦̟͎͙͐̌̉̅͑̉͐̀̽̅̀̄̀̆͐̅͘͜͠ȕ̶͚̯̲̍͐̒̽̚͝ŗ̶̢̧̨̯̙̣͎͇͔̯̥̝̰̭͍̫͖̲̗͕̩̪̥̖͎̓̉̀̅̂͒͛͐̈́̌͊͌̒́̀̐̓̍͠͝ͅd̸̢̨̨̨̦͇̦̯͚̝͈̣͕͙͇̖͍̜͔̖̖̰̯̘̋̿̒͋͆͑̓̏̿͜͠ͅè̷̛̛̦̜̝̗͒̒͋̈́̄̿̽̾́͗̍͌̅͌̌͊̄͘͜r̷̘̈͒̈̒͑̃̽̒̋́̊͋̅̃̈́̕̚̕͠͝e̶̳̜̱̩̫̟̠̫͑̾͜r̷̨̡͎͖͈̮̦̖̎̓̆̓͐̆̇͊͜͜͝ .'

And sometimes that influences your response to Issur, where you snap at something ridiculous he said or when he pushes you past where you're comfortable.

It provokes a variety of responses, sometimes patients, where he uses his words to persuade you to calm down. Other times, he took his punishments in a more physical manner.

Maybe he had a tight grasp on your face as he warned you, or he bent you over to spank your bottom, but his favorite kind was f*cking you against your will, so you were bedridden for days.

But it wasn't like that all the time! It's only when you acted up did you deserve such a response! When you be a good 'wife' and a good girl, you are treated like a scarce gem on an auction.

One day...it was the seed that sprouted doubt.

Issur was in the sunroom, fast asleep and not one to easily awake after working overtime for a while now. Benji, age ten by now, was at a friend's house in the 'moneyed' neighborhood as yours.

There were few servants here, only some that came in at certain hours of the day to complete a task and immediately leave. However, most of the household work was left to you upon your request.

What was there to do if others did everything for you? With nothing, you'd be left to your thoughts...and you cannot handle the constant back and forth of thoughts.

A little late into the afternoon, there was laundry to do, so you were going through Benji and your own bins to roll it toward the laundry room. The forearm crutch always got in your way, so Issur had rails built in that you could hold onto for stability.

However, before you could reach the washing machine, you heard a knocking towards the front of the house. You raised a brow, curious as the staff always rang a certain alarm to alert their presence.

Limping over, you entered the foyer and opened the front door. In front of you was a very tall man with dark black hair combed neatly, and a pair of slightly pointed and round ears atop his head.

Even wearing a dark suit, you could see the muscles riddled beneath and a tiny waist. There were tattoos peeking through the neckband of his shirt and the sleeves of his jacket.

'Ē̷̢͔͚̼̝͇̪͎̙̬̖̩̮̞̯͙̟̲͓͉̓͌͐̃̒͌̔͗̋̏̈́̆̈́̕̚͘͝͝Ņ̶̡̨̨̝̞̦͇̳͕͍̪̗͖̫̤̳̹̥̥͖̭̰̪̻̥͛͑̋͌̉̄̔͆̏̉̈̽̂͊̌̿͆͂̈́̓̔̂͑̓͐̔̄̀̈͑̍̇͌̎̈̕̚͝D̵̡̢̛̛͔̯͙̲̺̠͕̣̪̯̥͇͖͙̲̗̠̘̗̳̖̖̖̜̫͚͓̰̳̱̫̫̥͑͆͐̌̌̊̂̐̑͋̒̔̅̐̋̋͐̏̃͋͂̍̔͘͘͘͝͝͠ͅR̴̛͙̲͇͚͖̮̫̖̞̰̥̙͔̄̃́͛̑͑̈́̒̃̊̓͗̅̅̈̈́̈́̓́̆̏͐̅̂́̇̈̾͑̕̕͠È̷̢̡̡̢̨̨̧̛̱̖̻͙͙̝̠̳͍͉͕͚̣͙̲͍̙̦̙́̎͛͐͂̾̀͌̋̉́̓̔͐̓͆̽̄́̐͑́̍͆͘̕͝͠!̶̡̨̥̳̯̮͔̺̬͎̠̗̟̤̮͉̠͇̗̘̺̯̮̪̲̖̹̞̝͕̪̖̳̥̠̇̃̇͗̊͊̉̌̔͋̍́̈̍͒̀̾̈́͆̀̍͊͜͝͠͝ͅ ̵̮̯̟̟̥͈̳̅̋͛̃͌͛̔͒̂̓͛͑̎̏̿̍̌̾͗̐͒̅̌͋͠͝Ę̵̛̛̫̰̲͓̥̫͇͙̩̻̝̱̙͇̠͎̗͙̭͍̰̼̭͚͈̪̽̈̍̀͌̅̒̎̋̉̎̄̏͛͌͐̓̓̋̆͌̔̽̑͘̕͜͝͠N̶̨̧̢̧̢̳̗͍̯̠̖̫͈͓̪̦̞̞͎̹̦̦̞̳̤̼̜̺̯̩̘͙̫͎̝͖̎̄̅̍̔͋͋̒́͌̀͑̄̒͆̕̚͝ͅͅD̸̖͓̯̞̃̅̈̎̃̇́R̶̨̨̢̛̛̛͔̺̻̝̼̪̣͍̟̘̬̣̤͈̗̤̩͇̟͔̫̞̭͎̥̳͓͉͓̣̲̬̗̱̃̒̀̄̐̈́̿̓̅̄̀̂̽̓̍͌̔̋͐̐̄͆͆͜͜͝͝͝͝ͅȨ̷̛̮̘̲̓̂͆̀̈͆̀̏̂͌̈́͐̏͌̀̍̀̆̄͊̉̊̋́̏͘͠͝ͅ!̴̧̛͉͔͇̤̳͙̞̪̱̩̞̳͕͇͕͚͙̼͚̈͌̍̀̈́̎̿͋̄̽̇̄̑̉̓͌̿̐͊̓̉̊͐̌̈̅̇͛̚̕̕͠͝͠ ̸̧̡̪̻̲̼̣̗̪̼̩̞̰̤̻̪̼̼̝͈̣̜̭͚̙̮̬̘̦̅ͅĔ̸̢̡̢̛͕̯̝̗͉̲̣̺̻̥̭̣̮͎̦̦̦͈̹̪̥̭͍̮̖̗̝̥͇͈͙̰̇͜͜N̸̡̨̟̹̝̙̬̠͉̰̱̞̞͍̘͓̮͛͐̎͋̋͒̀͗̈̈̂̈́͗̄̇͗̐̕͜D̵̢̨̛͈̜̲͇̤͚͕̰̫̯̭͈̱̥̹̥̖̜̤̖͇͓̰͍͓͕̫̜̜͖̣̹̗̫̳̈̐͒̓͑́͒̆̽̿̃̎̈́̎̇̎͗̂͗̀̓̈́͛̕͝��͠͝͠R̵̢̡̛̘̱̮̜̯͚̰̦͖̙̖̘͚̬̼͍͈͉̺͍̲͉̤̖̹͖̔̐̂̊̒̀̀̀́́͛̊́̔̈́̎̀̂̌̓͊̑̑̊͝Ề̵̬̪̣̮̼͉͔̭͚͍̻̙̩̞̘̘̰͓̣̲̘̮̓̌̊̓͆̓͐̎͛̏̈́̚̚͘͜!̸̢͈̞̟̮̪͍̘̲̺͓͔͓͕̫̰̩̖̊̌̏͗̀͛̑͊͌͂̃͌̉͂̅̈́͋̒̋̈́̎́̆͊̓̇̂̃̓̋̏̏̚͘̕͝ͅ ̴̡̨̨̡͔̰̥̫̣̟̗̪͍̟̤͈͍̯̱̖̳̿̌̒̓̽̓͂̋̒̋̇̕͘͘̚͜͜ͅḖ̸̢̨̧̟̫͎̣͚̗̼̣̞̫̪͓͓̗̼̲̗͕͚̰͙̦̪̳̣̻̪̭̭̊̋͒͊͌̋͑̓̎͌̿̂́̓̄̒̾̍̆̈̆̏̉̔͘͘̚̕̕̕̕͝͝N̵͔̗̭̣̱̫̜̰͚͚̪̤̓̀̆́́͊́͑͜͝D̶̨̲͙̘̳̤͓͔̙̗͖̠̹̠̙͈̬͙̩̖̗̼̫̞͍̩̚͜͜͜͜R̶͖̮̳̘͖̭̩̲͓̭̳̊̊̈̒̂͗̃͐͗̃̃̄̌͆̐̕̕ͅE̶̪̬̥͍̩̳̬͈̫̺͓̥͍̯̥̤͓͕̳̦͇͕̱̳͈̐͑̋͜ͅ!̴̧̧̧̰̺̜̰̞̗̜͍͔͕̳̜͍̤̯̝̱̜͉̳̽̅̃̎̂́̍́̏͆͋͌͋̚͜͠ͅ''

You sucked in a breath as the beastman smiled. "E-Endre...?" It fell from your lips like an instinct, and everything inside of you tightened as if electrified.

"Ah, I'm sorry!" You quickly correct yourself and shake your head. You feel put on the spot, anxious about his sudden appearance that reminds you of something painful. "You just looked very similar to someone I...used to know. Um, what can I do for you?"

The man nods his head in understanding while reaching for something inside of suit jacket. "Eso está muy bien-"

An awkward and slightly shaky laugh expells from your lips as you rub the nape of your neck. "I'm sorry, Sir. I don't know your language-um! Eh, no es español." His presence makes you feel nervous like something is bubbling within your chest.

The beastman doesn't seem offended, instead, smiling just a little more brightly while nodding his name. "I understand. My name is Taghi Yahel, and I've just moved into the manor next door." He removes an elegant-looking card before handing it over. "I'm planning a gathering in two weeks and am inviting all the neighbors in the area for the party."

You stare at the invitation, eyes taking in the neat penmanship. "Oh!" How long since you've been to a party or get-together? You cannot remember.

'M̵̡̨̛̛̤̠̖̹̬̤̤͈͎̩͎̪͔̞̄̈́̃͂͒̍͛̅͑̈̓͆͗͑̌̅̕̕͜͜͝y̷̞̣̩̟͒͂ ̸̡̧̨̞̘͓̥͙̝͔̙͍̳͈̱̄̓̓͊̄͋͗͒̎́̐̐̚͘͠͝b̸̼̲̮̪̺̼̳͍̄̅͛͒͜͝͝͝i̸̧͉̟̝̰̟̗̫̯͎̺̺̮͍̲̲̫̳̖̤̪͑͗̓̃́͊̓̉̓̄̄͑̀̀̀͋̍͊̄̍͋̈́̈́̈͑͜͜͜͝r̸̨̡̡̳͓̣̥̭̮̳̜͎̦̱̀̈́́̉̐̈́͗̃̎̍͌́̿̈́̈́͌͑͂̑̋̅̚̚͘͜͝͝ṯ̶̡̛̭̪̟̬̜̹̮̬̠̟͉̥͈̗̰̲̑̀̄̉̈̀̇͂͐̂͋͐̉̿̌͌́̈̒̽́̈̿͘͝h̴̨̨̧̨̗̖͈͓̘͎͚̜̻̣̱͓͓̠͈̭̓̽̽̿͌͋̃̕͜͝ḏ̵̢̧̛̛̗͖̖͓͖̭̻̼̙͓̮̅̒̿͌̊́͛̐̒́̿̽͒͆́͌̽̃́͋̕͝͠͝a̵̧̧̛̳̭̻̪̮͓̖̝̙̫͚̹͓̺̠͌̃́̒̀̈͊̏̓̅̾͐̀̏̔̔̌̾͑̔͆̊̿̈́͝͝ŷ̷̧̡̧̦̭̗͎͖͇̳̬͙̻͓̦̥͕̫̭͚͙̰̹̪̹͓.̵̝͔̺͉̭̥͚̖͇͚͔̺̼̬̎.̶̨͚̻̥̫̲͙̒̉́́̍̅͛̊͆̏́̑͆͗͋͝͝͠.̵̳̲̖͎̟͙̞̞̳͈̞͌͜͜Į̶̨̨̦̬̫͚̝̘̬̼͎̰̤̱̠̩̥͕͇̇̈̓̈́̓͌̾̄t̴̛̛̟̳̖̳̻̮̭͚͇̹͚̅̿̐̇̎̀̆̕͜ ̵̧̢̡̨̰͎̫͙̺̞͙̩̯̥̝͓̜̰̠̻͇̲̼̤̤̥̅͐͐͗̉̃̂̉͒̄͂̈̈́͒͋̀͑͋̈́͘̚͝͠ͅŵ̵̡̢̛͈̲͎̰̦͓̣̠̲͕̼̬͔͚̗̗̮̫͛̄̐̐̒̃̂̓͋̏̈́͌͆̔̄̈́̉̈́̽͜ͅa̴̛̫̞͎̭͙̖̼̣̦͇͇̗̳̝̥̭͇̹̫̹̹̭͐̊̅̈́̓̆̐͂̾̉͂̑͠s̸̹̗͙͔̜̙̘̲͍̞̜͔̊̀͗̽̆̏͊̾͌̅̾́̃̏̇̂̐̋̔͂̓̂̎̕̕͜͝ͅ ̴̡͉͕́̈́̒̽͑͒́̌̍́̌͌̈̕͝m̷̧̨̨̛̳̮̩͖͉̮͉̺̳̊͂̎́̅̄̓̌͌͐̃͊̔̕̕͜͝͝y̷̢̜͎̘̰̜͚͚̲̩̰͚̖̝͕̗͇̱̳͎̳̺̰̒̆̒̈͋̍ ̷̡̺̺̭̮͈̞͓̬̖̙̲̥̘̅̌͗́̋̈͂̕͠͝ͅͅb̸̛͓̖̖̠̬̹̞̞͕̗͈͈͚͔͖̄̇̿́́͛̐͊̆̂͂̀̄̎̒̉̋́̕̕̚͜ḭ̴̓̄͑̊̍̇͛̎̇̒͑́̂̀̌̇̅̈͊͌͌̿̒͘ŗ̵̨̨̧̲̪͎̖͖̭̪̦̳̟̟͙̹̤͓̱̙͙̲̦̼̍̈́̋̑͗͛̀͜͠t̸̨̠͔̟͓͓̯̤̤̝̼̠̟̝̘͈̙̫͇͓̖̍̔͜h̷̥͒̈͌͗̏̔̄̍͒̏͛͊́̀͋̓͝d̴̨̡̗̩̠̺͚͉̺̝̩̺͙͓̪̲͂̈́̓̑̈̌́̀͂͑̋͝ả̷̺̌̀̃̈́̒̆̒̅͌̽̈̎̈́̆̓̊̎̚̕̚͘y̶̰̣̰̬̰̭͋͑̈́̈́̊́͒̉̾̾̍̑́͑͑͗̀̽̌́͂̚̕͝͠͝ͅ.'

"It sounds like fun. I'll have to-" Creaking of floorboards, and the shuffling of scales glided against laminated wood freezes everything inside of you. The sound seizes your heart and squeezes so hard that it stops beating.

Ice runs through your veins.

"Go to our room." He whispers from your side, and it hurts to swallow.

There's barely any strength in your limbs as if evaporating into thin air. "I forgot about something! I have to go. Please speak with my husband if you have anything more to say."

Before the beastman could say anything, you're limping away with Issur widening the door to reveal his appearance.

You can't hear much as you depart, but you can hear the remnants of a threat for Taghi to get off the property and never to return.

The door slams so loud that it rattles through your home and provokes you to jolt. Finally, you reach your room, just as the inner corner of your eyes burn and tears cloud the conjunctiva.

It spills past your lids swiftly, pooling at your chin to drip down towards your chest. All strength in your legs gave out as you collapsed in front of your bed.

Maybe it will be okay! Maybe he won't be mad; you didn't do anything wrong!

At first, that is what you believe, but as he creaks open your bedroom door and silently enters, you know it won't be alright.

Before you can say anything, his thick lengthy tail envelops your lower body and binds them together. You have no balance and fall towards the ground, yet you are 'saved' by one of his large hands entangling within your hair to keep your head up.

"Talking to other men behind my back while I sssleep!? What a little f*cking sssl*t!" His raspy voice from just awakening grows harsher, and you cry out from the shooting pain in your scalp.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! He just wanted to invite us for a gathering-" He strikes your face with a force that knocks your head to the side. It burns, boiling with heat as little pricks of tingles spread in the area.

"You think that I'll believe that lie? You think I'm ssstupid!" He's so enraged that he's not hearing what you are saying.

It hurts, you feel hopeless, and you can only cry as he reaches down past his naval to a barely noticeable slit residing in that area.

"You're a little f*cking wh*re. Girlsss like you dessserve everything that happensss to them." He snarls with his fangs secreting venom that trickle down to his chin.

You cannot help but turn your head away, though it only provokes him to slap your face again and shove your head toward his crotch area.

His slimy c*cks press against your stinging cheek, and the musk of it permeates into your nose. "Take it, take your punishment, and show me how sssorry you are."

And before you can say anything, one of the weighty shafts is plunged down your throat in a quick swift movement as the one below presses along your neck.

Your eyes widen, the tears coursing down your burning cheeks as you reach to hold his scaley hips for stability.

You cannot breathe, air blocked by the rod seething with heat and covered in a sweet-tasting slime inside. You pull backward, withdrawing his c*ck from your lips, only for him to force you back on it with a harsh tug.

Gagging, your throat constricts, and a churning sensation swirls within your tummy.

The tears continue to befall, mascara smudging beneath your lids and staining your cheeks. Though, your pathetic appearance does not spur hesitation or pity, only provoking him to act more barbaric.

Increasing the speed at which he forced your mouth to suck and swallow, the fatty round tip continued to beat brutally at the back of your throat.

Issur is making sure it hurts, making sure all you can do is gag and choke on his d*ck like a shameful pathetic little wh*re.

Your scalp throbs from his firm grip that yanks and tugs at your hair, and your legs pulsate from the nearly crushing hold of his tail.

The other forgotten c*ck is right against your jugular, bouncing from the movement and leaking pre-c*m across the top of your apron.

"I give you everything, yet nothing will ever be enough for you-" He abruptly jerks your head back so the top length falls out of your mouth just as his free hand strikes down upon your face again. "-right!?"

You sob, gasping erratically and coughing. "P-Please, Issur. I love you-" His snake bottom tightens its hold, constricting against your limbs, and you swear he's so close to breaking bones.

"Do you!?" The Naga shrieks, and you nod your head immediately, which only merits another slap. "I don't believe it!"

Bruises are already forming, the capillaries beneath your skin battered and broken from the impacts.

'See what happens when I make him lose trust in me. I get what I deserve...it's what I deserve.'

Your hands that remained on his scaley hips migrated over to his free hand, where you grasped his wrist. The tears continue, and blood spews from a laceration on your lip.

"Issur, my love..." Your head raises to meet his gaze of fiery ruby red iris'. "It's my fault that y-you doubt me. I'm such a bad wife." An ache in your skull grows so overbearing that you feel vertiginous. "Punish me..." You move his large open hand to your throat. "Punish me, baby. I deserve it."

Such a wicked grin forms across that man's lips. "That'sss right. Ssso I'll f*ck that pretty mouth of yoursss like how community wh*ress ssshould get treated."

You couldn't see Benji for two weeks.

Even if you deserved it, '̷̩̪̙̭̎Í̸̧̫͉̯̗̱͕̝͚̫̝̜͍̈̈́̅̇̎́̉̈́̊͌͑͂̀̆ ̴̡͕̗͕͉̻̦̗̘̙̙̞̯̱̖̠̣͂̈́̒͆̐͌̽͌̕d̷̨̨̩͇̮̼̟͈̼̯̺͎̣͕͖̀̎̃͆͗̉͘͜i̵̛̖̝͕̬̜̰̓̈́͌̾̌̀̏̾̌͋͗͛͊̔́̌̓͆̕̚d̵̢̛̛̞̦̜̦͕͈̟̙̈͑̑̈̍̂̾̊̔̈́́̏̉̈́̑̽̋̕̕͜͝͝͝ͅņ̴̙͔̣̮̗̙̞͚̪͉̮̀̄̓͋̀͐̌͐͒͆͗͌͛̀͐̆̾̃̏͑͂̕'̸̡̳̭͕͚͔̰̦̘̲͙̇͐͐̑́̚͝t̵̠̬̤̳̱͕̄̔.̵̧̛̺͇̹̘̾̏̉̇͋̉͆͊̓̔͊͗͒̈́̌̿̅̉̐̚̕̚͝͝͝'̵̮͈̙̲͙͓̱̙̼̘̦̲̬̤̍̓̊̌̀̍͂̈́͜, there was no way you could allow your son to see the bruises or welts on your face. Or the cuts and puncture marks that littered your skin like a tattoo.

That is not even taking into account your aching legs that left you bedridden from the crushing hold he had maintained.

Afterward, Issur treated you so sweetly again. He treated you like fine china, kissing you deeply and caring for your every need. The Naga spoke so sweetly in his charismatic voice and soothing tone.

Benji was informed that you acquired the flu and are required to quarantine until you are better. It must have been hard for him; you spend every moment together.

While you healed and rested in the confines of your bedroom, your son spoke to you through the door for hours.

You're glad you can still 'watch' over him; every second where he and his father are alone gives you high anxiety. It's an anxiety that generates hands that grasp your throat and squeeze until you cannot breathe, and drive right through your stomach to where you feel like you are dying.

Which is why you couldn't wait to get better...and then you saw him through the window.

Taghi Yahel

Two weeks had passed, and he had that gathering in his backyard. You could see into it from your balcony where all your neighbors in the high-class area gathered.

Issur even joined, stating it would look bad on your family if everyone but the three of you attended.

When it occurred, you didn't mean to...but even from a distance, your eyes were drawn to the beastman.

You don't know why, but there was just something about that dark-haired beast that his image remained in the back of your head.

It felt wrong.

'Ē̷̢͔͚̼̝͇̪͎̙̬̖̩̮̞̯͙̟̲͓͉̓͌͐̃̒͌̔͗̋̏̈́̆̈́̕̚͘͝͝Ņ̶̡̨̨̝̞̦͇̳͕͍̪̗͖̫̤̳̹̥̥͖̭̰̪̻̥͛͑̋͌̉̄̔͆̏̉̈̽̂͊̌̿͆͂̈́̓̔̂͑̓͐̔̄̀̈͑̍̇͌̎̈̕̚͝D̵̡̢̛̛͔̯͙̲̺̠͕̣̪̯̥͇͖͙̲̗̠̘̗̳̖̖̖̜̫͚͓̰̳̱̫̫̥͑͆͐̌̌̊̂̐̑͋̒̔̅̐̋̋͐̏̃͋͂̍̔͘͘͘͝͝͠ͅR̴̛͙̲͇͚͖̮̫̖̞̰̥̙͔̄̃́͛̑͑̈́̒̃̊̓͗̅̅̈̈́̈́̓́̆̏͐̅̂́̇̈̾͑̕̕͠È̷̢̡̡̢̨̨̧̛̱̖̻͙͙̝̠̳͍͉͕͚̣͙̲͍̙̦̙́̎͛͐͂̾̀͌̋̉́̓̔͐̓͆̽̄́̐͑́̍͆͘̕͝͠!̶̡̨̥̳̯̮͔̺̬͎̠̗̟̤̮͉̠͇̗̘̺̯̮̪̲̖̹̞̝͕̪̖̳̥̠̇̃̇͗̊͊̉̌̔͋̍́̈̍͒̀̾̈́͆̀̍͊͜͝͠͝ͅ ̵̮̯̟̟̥͈̳̅̋͛̃͌͛̔͒̂̓͛͑̎̏̿̍̌̾͗̐͒̅̌͋͠͝Ę̵̛̛̫̰̲͓̥̫͇͙̩̻̝̱̙͇̠͎̗͙̭͍̰̼̭͚͈̪̽̈̍̀͌̅̒̎̋̉̎̄̏͛͌͐̓̓̋̆͌̔̽̑͘̕͜͝͠N̶̨̧̢̧̢̳̗͍̯̠̖̫͈͓̪̦̞̞͎̹̦̦̞̳̤̼̜̺̯̩̘͙̫͎̝͖̎̄̅̍̔͋͋̒́͌̀͑̄̒͆̕̚͝ͅͅD̸̖͓̯̞̃̅̈̎̃̇́R̶̨̨̢̛̛̛͔̺̻̝̼̪̣͍̟̘̬̣̤͈̗̤̩͇̟͔̫̞̭͎̥̳͓͉͓̣̲̬̗̱̃̒̀̄̐̈́̿̓̅̄̀̂̽̓̍͌̔̋͐̐̄͆͆͜͜͝͝͝͝ͅȨ̷̛̮̘̲̓̂͆̀̈͆̀̏̂͌̈́͐̏͌̀̍̀̆̄͊̉̊̋́̏͘͠͝ͅ!̴̧̛͉͔͇̤̳͙̞̪̱̩̞̳͕͇͕͚͙̼͚̈͌̍̀̈́̎̿͋̄̽̇̄̑̉̓͌̿̐͊̓̉̊͐̌̈̅̇͛̚̕̕͠͝͠ ̸̧̡̪̻̲̼̣̗̪̼̩̞̰̤̻̪̼̼̝͈̣̜̭͚̙̮̬̘̦̅ͅĔ̸̢̡̢̛͕̯̝̗͉̲̣̺̻̥̭̣̮͎̦̦̦͈̹̪̥̭͍̮̖̗̝̥͇͈͙̰̇͜͜N̸̡̨̟̹̝̙̬̠͉̰̱̞̞͍̘͓̮͛͐̎͋̋͒̀͗̈̈̂̈́͗̄̇͗̐̕͜D̵̢̨̛͈̜̲͇̤͚͕̰̫̯̭͈̱̥̹̥̖̜̤̖͇͓̰͍͓͕̫̜̜͖̣̹̗̫̳̈̐͒̓͑́͒̆̽̿̃̎̈́̎̇̎͗̂͗̀̓̈́͛̕͝͝͠͝͠R̵̢̡̛̘̱̮̜̯͚̰̦͖̙̖̘͚̬̼͍͈͉̺͍̲͉̤̖̹͖̔̐̂̊̒̀̀̀́́͛̊́̔̈́̎̀̂̌̓͊̑̑̊͝Ề̵̬̪̣̮̼͉͔̭͚͍̻̙̩̞̘̘̰͓̣̲̘̮̓̌̊̓͆̓͐̎͛̏̈́̚̚͘͜!̸̢͈̞̟̮̪͍̘̲̺͓͔͓͕̫̰̩̖̊̌̏͗̀͛̑͊͌͂̃͌̉͂̅̈́͋̒̋̈́̎́̆͊̓̇̂̃̓̋̏̏̚͘̕͝ͅ ̴̡̨̨̡͔̰̥̫̣̟̗̪͍̟̤͈͍̯̱̖̳̿̌̒̓̽̓͂̋̒̋̇̕͘͘̚͜͜ͅḖ̸̢̨̧̟̫͎̣͚̗̼̣̞̫̪͓͓̗̼̲̗͕͚̰͙̦̪̳̣̻̪̭̭̊̋͒͊͌̋͑̓̎͌̿̂́̓̄̒̾̍̆̈̆̏̉̔͘͘̚̕̕̕̕͝͝N̵͔̗̭̣̱̫̜̰͚͚̪̤̓̀̆́́͊́͑͜͝D̶̨̲͙̘̳̤͓͔̙̗͖̠̹̠̙͈̬͙̩̖̗̼̫̞͍̩̚͜͜͜͜R̶͖̮̳̘͖̭̩̲͓̭̳̊̊̈̒̂͗̃͐͗̃̃̄̌͆̐̕̕ͅE̶̪̬̥͍̩̳̬͈̫̺͓̥͍̯̥̤͓͕̳̦͇͕̱̳͈̐͑̋͜ͅ!̴̧̧̧̰̺̜̰̞̗̜͍͔͕̳̜͍̤̯̝̱̜͉̳̽̅̃̎̂́̍́̏͆͋͌͋̚͜͠ͅ''

'It is. How dare I even do this to Issur!?'

It definitely was wrong.

But even as gross and vile you felt for thinking of Taghi, you often admired him from afar. He frequently sunbathed in his backyard in his beastman form...a Bolivian Jaguar.

There was a familiarity...you couldn't understand.

Other times when he'd leave his home, Taghi waved over to you either through the window or when you and Benji played outside. His acknowledgment was hollowing something inside of your chest.

Sometimes, you even found yourself daydreaming about what your life would have been like if the one to take you away was Taghi.

A sense of guilt embedded within your cells and a dark heavy sensation weighed in your stomach as months went by.

You should have known it was a forewarning.

"Benji, can you pass me my crutch?"

"Of courssse, Mamá."

Your son slithered out of the pool and over to one of the lounge chairs to grasp the metal cane. He brought it over and aided your ascent out of the water.

"Are you sure that you are done?" He abruptly questions as water trickles from his pearlescent white hair. "You still haven't finished the last few exercises your physical therapist assigned."

You waved him off lightly and trekked to one of the lounge chairs. "It's fine, baby. My chest is just hurting too much at the moment." Your excuse spurs your child to pucker his lips while narrowing his ruby-red eyes playfully at you.

He doesn't say anything and instead reaches for a towel to hang around his shoulders like a cape. "Do we have any more buñuelosss?"

"There's a few in the fridge, but they're your dads. You can ask for some when he gets home." You reply, feeling the blazing sun burning at your skin like little pricks. "Can you go inside and get more sunscreen?"

Dramatically, Benji groans while hunching his back. "I'm a sssslave for the ssssystem."

His comment earns a playful smack to the head. "Just get the sunscreen." You state with a small smile.

Without complaining anymore, your son ventures inside as you sip on a fresh glass of juice. It was one of those nice days in Bolivia with a sunny sky that was absent of any clouds.

The temperature was close to being unbearable, yet the breeze was so soothing. It was a good day to practice and exercise the moves that your physical therapist assigned.

You wouldn't be doing such a thing if it weren't becoming increasingly difficult just to stand. Before, it was the walking for around thirty minutes that would spur on great discomfort. But with the time that passes on, you deteriorate more and more...almost rapidly.

"Buenas tardes, señora."

Your gaze flies to your left, where your neighbor leaned against his hedges, and blew ash grey smoke from his plump lips. He's dressed loosely for the warm weather, just dark cargo shorts and a breezy light blue button-up shirt.

His tattoo's are visible on his forearms and neck.

A dryness erupts in your mouth, and it feels like sandpaper lines your throat. He hasn't spoken to you and vice versa since the introduction months ago.

"U-Uh!" You stammered timorously and choked on your own saliva.

"Ah, my apologies." Taghi expresses lightly, an almost sheepish smile forming on his handsome face. "I didn't mean to scare you."

You're sweating profusely, and it's not from the beady son. "U-Uh, I-I-" There's ice running through your veins, and the very tips of your fingers are tingling like poor circulation.

Terror is eating your heart out.

You can't breathe, the insides of your lungs shriveling like scrunched paper. There is only one thing you can do...and that's run away.

Pushing off of the chair, you're so disoriented from the fear that you miss the spot where your crutch was and trip over your own feet.

"Ow!" Your knees and the side of your calves connect with the ground, and you even land on your impaired hip. Skin scrapes against concrete, raw and harshly to where you now bleed outwardly.

"Mierda!" You hear your neighbor call out, just as you witness him effortlessly jumping and launching over his hedge fence. He's swift, appearing as if he flew to be right by your side.

The wounds sting like hundreds of wasps were pricking into your limbs, and for a moment, you were sure that your left femoral head had shattered once again.

"You're bleeding out significantly." He notes and reaches to help you to your feet, yet you cower away, even falling onto your back. It feels as though you're going into anaphylactic shock with your throat closing and a wave of vertigo racking inside of your skull.

Everything in your brain is screaming at you to go, even if you have to claw away.

"Please, let me-"

"(Y/n)!" You barely register Issur's voice from the pounding palpations of your heart within your ears. Not even as his large hands heave you upwards and turn your body around, so your chest is against his.

What more can you do but hold onto his neck and cry from the pain? This overwhelming dread burning in your heart is something you cannot control or regulate.

Even thinking about what Issur will say is provoking uncontrollable quivering and rapid audible gasps of air. It's not your fault; you immediately attempted to exit the situation.

'̵̨̢͉̲͎̫̗̪̬͔̪͇͎̰̤̦̫̖̦̱̹͔̯͚͒͗̌͊̑́̏̀̋͌̿̑̃͆̐̀̀͒͗̉͌̚ͅǏ̷̡̡̧̢͍̞͔̟͉̱̣͔̮͍͈̘͉̭͓̫̖͙̺̩̘̓̀̉͗̃̅̈́̾̈́̔̆͗̇́͗̏̉̍̕͘͘̚͜͠͝͝ ̷̢̧͍̱̮͎��͎͍̩̭̫͉͎͈͓̱͙̜̪̩͊̀̓̑̊͋̓̇̑̾̆͋͑̋̇̈̐͊̈́̚̚͜͠͝d̴̰́̎̈́́̆̆̃̋́̍͆̔̾̎̈́͒̚̚͘͘͝͝i̵̡̢̡̨̻̰͇͓͇͈͎͎̇͐̆͌̍͒͋͑͗̄̆̈́̍́̓̃̚͠ḏ̵̨̨̡̛͓͙̘̤̳͍̼̟̬̗̜̪̪̰͚̞̮̯͎͓̿̓̾̒̐͑̓̐͘͜͜n̸̺͉̐ͅ'̵̨͓̻͎̹̮͔̞͙̰̫̥͇͙̳̙̝̰̟̈́̉̅̂́̾̈̔͜t̴̝̯̪͓͕̺̜̠̽ ̵̧̨̛͖͓͔̦̗̩͈̜̘̖͓͔̳̙͇͖̟͕̣͆̾́͐̾̾̐͋͋̕d̸̢̡̛̩̟̞͙̠̪͔͔̉́͗́̇̽͑̂̀̑̈̎̑̽͒̑͘ͅớ̶͔̦̠̫̌̄̏̍͛͂̅̍̂̒͗̒̅̒́̀̈́̍͘ ̴̨̨͖̤̲̲̞͈͈̲̘̽̃̅͐́̐̉̎͋́̋͗̇͒̇̎̌͂͌̀̄̍̈̚͘a̸͍̣̭͔̳̺͋ņ̶̛̛̖̜̼̀͗̃̈̀̈́̈́̿̄͛̀͋̒̊̒̒͂͊͌͘̚͠͠͝y̵̻̫̣͂̔̀̀͗͊̏̀͛͌̎͗̃̔̾̀́͝͠t̵̛͍͎̟̠̬̘͓̱̖̦̹̉̔̌͆̃̽̾̅́̈͗̄͋͂̈̃̄͒́̚͠͝͝͝ḣ̵̠͔̱̄͗́́͒̿̌̈i̵̻͛̇̑̎̀̽̈́̈́̎̆̃͘͝͠͠n̷̢͎̠͕̺͙͕̫̱̯̗̰͇̩̺͈̣͉͉̰͖̼̙̏̊̓̏͒̃̄̐̄̋̂͊́̈̌̏͆̉́̀͜͠ͅg̶̗̮̤̹̘͐̉̆͑͆̓̉̃̑̃̒̓̃̉̈͛̆̿͊̈́̈́͑!̵̢̨̢̩̩͙̦̳̬̞̲̤̥͇̰͈̖̓́͋͋̑͑̀̽́'̸̢̡̢̛͖̹̮͙̰̱̪͖͉̔̂̌͌͠͝

'̷̛̛̛̛̞͇̑̏̍͊̈́͊́̒͛̕͝Į̶͎͕̦́̈́̓͐̾̔̚͝ ̵̺̾̃͜d̸͍̝͚̳̤̻̥̈͝ỉ̵͉͇̰̼̳̠̫̭̞̈́͑̐̒̉̇̿̎̀̄͜͝d̶̈́́̄̃̓͆͛ͅṉ̴̥̝͚̼̣̠͔͕̰̜̱̹͐̀̉̈́͗̎͗̆͘'̶̢̛̭̯͍̲̟̖̺̤̺̙̇̈́̈̆̍͛̕̕͘͝t̶̨̡̨̧̥͈̻̺͚̺̦̭̻̩̂͑̂̀̊̈̓͐͒ͅ ̸̡̘͎̜̪͈̳̮̦͉͚͋̄̽͊́̿̂̔̓̍̉d̸̗̆͒o̵̲͚̗̖̝͈̝̮̓̂ ̸̮͕̲̯͑̉́͜ą̶̮͉̻͕̣̬̮̹̦̪͈͔̾͆̐͑̎̊͑̒̇͐͊̔͂̃̆n̵̹̗̮̞̦͌̎̓͑̌̏̀̈́̋̕ÿ̷͈̫̠̪͈͙̮̖́̀̎͗̂̏̔̀̅͆̌t̶̳͕̥̘̩͙͉̞̹̃͂̒̐͋͊̾͂̃̔̔̍́͝ḧ̷̲͖̭̝̥̫͖̜̺͚̥́̔͜ͅḯ̷̧͓̣͎̻̖̙͇͖̞̺̳̖̭̉̀͒̈́͌̅͐̌́̅̈́̕͘ͅn̸͇͓̠̘͈̖̲͈̦̱̣͙̝͛̎́̐̾͂̚ͅg̵̨̖̼̩͉̞͖̱̬̲͔̲̉̂̏!̸̩̙̳̾́́̂̀̈'̷͖̟̯̰͚̀͊͐͐̍͑̐̕

"If you would excuse us, I have to take care of my wife." It sounds as if actual venom laces the Naga's voice, and it spurs your cries to grow in intensity.

He's pissed...and you're going to get it.

His strong arms pick your body up effortlessly into a bridal position as he slithers easily into your home. The more seconds that pass, the more you're choking on your cries.

You feel like you're going to die.

"Mamá?!" Your son calls out from ahead, but you cannot bare to see him. You can only hide your tearful face in the crook of Issur's neck. "Padre, what happened!?"

It's pathetic; you feel so pathetic.

Gingerly setting you down on one of the couches in the living room, The red-eyed male swipes your tears away as he coos softly. "It'sss okay, my love. You're alright. It'sss going to be alright."

"I-I didn't d-d-" You can't even speak as more blustering cries rack through your body. You're practically on the verge of passing out.

"Sshh~." He leans down to kiss your heated cheeks as he caresses a hand over your spine. "I know, baby. You were a good girl, right?"

Unable to speak, you can only nod your head vigorously, which irks the already pounding migraine torturing your brain.

"Is Mamá okay?"

Oh, Benji, please just go away. Mommy can't let you see her like this. Mommy doesn't want you to know the things your father does...what he's capable of doing.

Black inkblots are splattering across your vision and over, taking the sight of the Naga's face away. He's speaking, yet you cannot hear anything as everything descends into nothingness so quickly.

'I hate it here.'

'I love it here.'

'I miss my friends.'

'They were just leeches.'

'I miss my mom and dad.'

'They didn't love me anyway.'

'I miss my family.'

'My family is here.'

'I miss my free freedom.'

'I̶̘͙͠ ̷̭̲͙̼̈́́͐ḍ̴͈͐̅̃o̷͈͓͎͔̓ ̵̲̐̽̈́̀ͅḧ̷̦̞͒̓̆á̶̧͍̙̜͝v̷̭̣̔̔̆̈́ḛ̵̘̗͔̒̀-̴̨̠̳̯̌͝'

Light peers over your eyes, and awaken you from a deep slumber. All your limbs ache, intermingled with tension as a crick in your neck pulsates.

The taste on your tongue is acidic and tart, which spurs you to almost gag. You cough, rising from your position on your stomach as blankets fall from your shoulders.

It's dark; gloaming darkness overtakes your vision as the moon pours in through an open window. His presence is absent; the place where Issur sleeps is neat and pristine.

Your eyes are raw and tender, a slight burn around them from sobbing uncontrollably. There's still chlorine in your hair that has made the locks crusty and tangled.

Glancing down, you note how the sides of your left calf and thigh are bandaged and patched neatly.

It still burns.

The forearm crutch doesn't appear to be in sight, but you're so thirsty. You have to will yourself by taking deep breaths and groaning as you place weight on your legs.

It's so quiet.

Not a single light is on in your home, nor do you find the presence of the Naga. You're confused, but you don't put much more thought into it as you reach the kitchen.

The way you gulped down the water was as if you were parched for days.

An abrupt clattering noise rumbles beneath your bare feet, spurring your heart to nearly jolt out of your chest.

Is that Benji? How many times do you have to tell him not to play his drum set so late at night? Even if the walls had been soundproofed, it still rumbles.

Sighing, you grasped onto the rails and pushed yourself down the hall to the mudroom, where the door to your basement was located. You hear that bang again, followed by a huff.

"Benji? It's late." You gingerly hop down a few steps and peek down through the railing to look at him.

The sight stole the air right out of your lungs.

"My love, you ssshould go back to bed. My presssent for you isssn't ready yet."

Down in the basement was Issur, with his white button-up splattered in a red liquid with a few streaks over his cheeks and trickling from his fangs.

The naga's lengthy pearlescent white tail has the jaguar beastman in a hold, raised in the air with blood staining the scales.

A scream is lodged within your throat, and all the strength within your legs dissipates. This can't be real...you have to be dreaming!

"Did you not hear me?" Issur questions and his tail tightens around Taghi's body so firmly that his bones are audibly cracked.

You almost retch, the contents of your stomach almost coming forward, but the sight spurred you to trip down the last few steps.

The soft flesh of your palms strikes the cold cement ground with the sensation of striking your elbows, tingling in your knees from the fall.

"Look what you did!" Issur snarls at your neighbor and slams his damaged body against the ground so a creator forms beneath.

"Stop!" It bellows from your lips before you even have the chance to think. That burning, icy sensation floods your veins as you observe the way Issur's expression becomes neutral.

There is no noise echoing in the basement besides Taghi's shallow breaths.

"What did you sssay...?" The red-eyed male questions as his body slithers closer. He's smearing blood across the neutral concrete while dragging the beast man's body like it's trash.

Every single nerve inside of your flares alive, and you feel as though you've made a grave mistake.

"B-Benji is trying to sleep." You stammer timidly and attempt to smile, yet your lips are shaking. "W-W shouldn't m-make-"

"Oh, Benji?" Issur's words are rhetorical as he arrives in front of your fallen body and reaches his bloody hands to your face.

It was an instinct, an automatic reaction. You flinched and dropped your gaze to your hands. Veins atop the skin are budging, and your nails are burrowed into the hard ground.

What a damaging mistake.

"You...Liar!" His bloodied hand struck upon your cheek with such force that your head snapped to the side, and your teeth rattled.

That stinging sensation sprouted like a wasp stinging every inch of skin on the right side of your face. Your eyes stung, burning as if someone forced your head against a raging flame.

Seething hot tears cascaded down to pool on your chin, and when you reached a hand up to hold your injured cheek, you felt a thick wet liquid layering it.

Pulling it away, RED coats your palm, and the acidic metallic stench spurs you to gag.

"How dare you usse our ssson asss an excusse!!" Issur raises Taghi into the air again, only to slam him back down, which creates another creator.

The pounding racket of bones cracking and his strangled gasp provoke a wailing sob that blinds you in an instant.

How can any sane person listen to this torture and not react? How can Issur just stand there, only affected and enraged at you for being unable to handle those sounds?

'He did the something to Ě̴̞̈́n̷̫̼̎̈́d̵̟͍̓̊r̸̟̟͝ẻ̶̯͠! Remember what he told me! Remember how he laughed in my face when he strangled Ě̴̞̈́n̷̫̼̎̈́d̵̟͍̓̊r̸̟̟͝ẻ̶̯͠ to death! How he told me that he tore out his f*cking throat!'

"Stop! Stop, please! Please stop!" You can only repeat two words consistently as you fight within your own mind. "Please! Please!"

Abruptly Issur grasps your lower jaw while also tangling his fingers in your hair. "Why do you care!?" He forced your head upwards so your crying face pointed towards the ceiling. "Why ssshould I ssstop!?"

The air in your lungs is barely there, your wails taking all effort with your skin heating up. "H-He didn't do anything-Ah!" He strikes for face again before standing to his full height and cracking his neck.

Your whole body is shaking; every nerve flares alive in pain, with a massive migraine ripping your brain to shreds.

Issur raised Taghi's beaten and battered body off the ground and in the air right next to you. The Naga releases you to now turn his attention back to your neighbor. "If you really loved me, Taghi wouldn't even be a thought."

Those ruby-red eyes of his felt so sinister as he met your gaze again. "But I expected too much from you. After all," He laughed aloud before backhanding the beast-man's face so hard that it provoked bruises to already become visible. "-I'm not your type."

Before you could even say anything, Issur squeezed his tail around Taghi's body, which spurred a feeble yet pained gasp out of his busted lips.

"Issur, please!" You can't handle the sight. "Hurt me! P-Punish me! Just leave him alone!"

The naga snatched his large hand around the other man's neck and squeezed. "Never! I will never allow you to love another man but me! I killed before to have you, and I'll do it again!"

Something snapped, physically knocking the air out of your lungs that left your mouth dry.

'He killed Endre.'

Either rage or hopelessness filled your bloodstream as you crawled over and grasped the naga's hips. "I'm already yours!"

Issur shakes his head while tightening his grip. "No, you will never be...Ssso long as I remain not your type...you'll love everyone elssse but me. I can't allow that." He abruptly glanced down and smiled. "Ssso blame yourself for Taghi'sss death. Congratulationsss, my love. You've killed another."

For a second, the red-eyed male released your neighbor's throat. Taghi gasped in air, and before you could even say anything, Issur struck forward to burrow his fangs into the other man's throat. He yanked back, tearing skin, bone, and muscles apart, which drenched them both in copious amounts of blood.

You couldn't even scream; the blustering wail stuck deep within your lungs as you watched the beast-man's body be dropped like a pile of sh*t.

Lifeless, a man you barely even known lay dead in your basement all because 'he was your type.'

Petrified, paralyzed with so many emotions, you can only lay there with wide eyes and mount agape. The only lively thing was the fresh set of tears cascading down your face.

Issur abruptly sighed and reached down to touch your face. You couldn't even flinch or jolt from the contact, not even as more of Taghi's blood stained your skin. "I love you...ssso f*cking much." He begins and directs your attention to his eyes. "I only do thessse thingsss for you becaussse you are my everything. I don't want to lose you. I just can't."

Still, you do not reply, which stirs the naga to sneer while baring his fangs. "Ungrateful f*cking b*tch!" He grasped the front of your shirt and tears it apart. "Don't act pathetic now when thisss isss all your fault. I wasss willing to give you everything from the start, but you were jussst ungrateful. Now you've got more blood on your handsss."

More of your clothes are torn apart to replace the protection of cloth with the contact of cooling beastman blood. You're utterly naked, bare, and more vulnerable than you have ever been.

"Taghi'sss not the only one who ssshould get what they dessserve. Maybe you'll learn a thing or two once I f*ck your pathetic c*nt until the only name you can remember isss mind."

Should your story even continue?

Should whatever god in the sky that's written out your life even continue the series?

What more can they do?

What more can they ruin?

Everyone else got their happy ever after.

Yet you? Oh, you got the wrong ending, apparently.

They wanted for you to hurt, and to cry, and be miserable.

But wait!

Not all hope is lost.

They gave you something, someone.

You have Benji!

Oh, Benji. Just a little boy with no understanding of the wickedness that lie in his father's corrupted brain.

What about him!?

Did the writer in your life wish to ruin him too?

No, no! You won't let them!

You're going to run away. In this unknown land where Issur had done everything in his power to be sure you do not learn the language, you'll work through it.

All those reason's you told yourself why you should just stay here...doesn't matter anymore. No longer are you complacent; you want to take action now.

"Benji! Did you shower already!" Your voice echoes through the home as you exit the bathroom while drying your hair.

"Not yet! I made a messss."

Breathing heavily, you turn your attention to your closet, where you double-check that the folder with all your documents is still there.

The anxiousness and nerves are growing more prominent as the possibility of getting caught ways in the back of your head.

You're waiting until Issur leaves for work, and once he's gone, so will the two of you be.

A yawn escapes your lips as you leave your bedroom to trek through the hallway. You are dreading having to see the Naga, but you're ready for change.

"What are you guys feeling like for breakfast!" You call out, unsure where the two Nagas are.

There's rustling from the dining room, and you roll your eyes, knowing that there are probably legos littered everywhere.

"I'm not really hungry!" Your son calls outwards, but you shake your head and turn the corner, only to gasp audibly and nearly collapse.

No way! This can't be; this isn't real!

On the glass table...is the body of Issur sprawled out lifelessly. His ruby red eyes that burned with desire were now dull like a clouded marble as his mouth lay open, blood pooling on the glass in a puddle.

The inside of his abdomen was visible from the erratic and varying slashes that spilled out his organs. He was torn open like an animal attack that sprayed thick red liquid across the dining room walls.

Over his bruised throat is strangulations marks, dark and discolored.

"I'm sssorry, Mamá. I made a messss."

You didn't even realize he was standing there until he spoke; you wish to have never seen the sight of your son like that.

His hands, mouth, and front of his shirt were all saturated and doused in blood however they couldn't ever compare to the animalistic bright red glow in his ruby-red eyes.

"Benji, what have you done!?" You're horrified and dismayed and even saddened by the snake man's death. "He's your father! How could you do that!?"

The little boy just waves his reddened hand nonchalantly as he slithers closer to you. "Mamá, don't be mad at me. I had to do it." He stated with such a cute childish voice compared to his vile appearance. "Padre wasss going to take you away from me. He wasss going to hide you from everybody and keep you all to himssself. I couldn't allow that."

That tone, its dark and cold implication, was just like his father. At that moment, you realized that all your fretting and micromanaging had been for not. You didn't want Issur to influence your son in the same manner, but it was already too late.

Obsession, dependence, and fixation, all remained in his veins like his dad. You were the center of it all, just like his dad.

Your eyes burn, the inner corners tingling as tears take over and muddle your vision. They cascade down your face to drip down from your chin.

"Pleassse don't cry, Mamá." He raises a hand to wipe it away, yet it only smears Issur's blood across your cheeks. "You don't need him anymore. You jusssst need me, and that'sss all."

Benji smiles as he migrates his arms to wrap around your abdomen while pressing his face into your tummy. "I love you, Mamá. Pleasssse don't be mad at me."

You were freed from one monster, only to be trapped by another.

✔ ↳If you'd like to support me or read 30+ drafts of TDMLM or my other stories, please consider buying me Kofi. Thank you :) ━━━➤

The Devil May Lick Me Masterlist ━━━➤ 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝐋𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐌𝐞

𝐌𝐚𝐦𝐚 signing out

#monster x human #x reader #tw noncon #naga x reader #yandere #yo this girl cant catch a break

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