matrixfangs

[matrixfangs]

Please enjoy some more Remmick Fanservice

[matrixfangs]

upcoming fic, title pending. remmick x reader in the 1890s. heavy influence from nosferatu, dracula, and crimson peak. let me know if you’d like to be tagged 😏

[matrixfangs]

slut for that blond man idk

Heavy Lies The Crown

Chapter I

Sir Jimmy Crystal x fem!reader

summary: Decades after the Rage Virus devastated the UK, the infected have thinned but the world remains lawless and brutal. You’ve been surviving on your own until you’re captured by patrols from a notorious compound hidden in the Scottish Highlands: Eden. Its soldiers are strange—clad in random mismatched tracksuits, long blonde hair hanging tangled and wild like heathen halos, each armed with beautifully maintained bows. Silent. Precise. Unsmiling.

And then there’s their leader. Sir Jimmy Crystal. A gold-chained, tiara-wearing, crushed velvet zip-up psycho with a God complex thicker than his drawl. He doesn’t want to kill you. He intends to keep you.

wc: 6.3k

a/n: So I started absolutely gooning for Jimmy from the moment he drawled “ugh fuckin’ geaux” in the ninety seconds of screentime he has and now here we are. And if you came to shame, save your breath—I already talked about the discourse around him here. My k-hole tracksuit cult-leading princess lives rent-free in my brain, and I’m charging him for every second. Stay mad. Stay wet. Stay blessed. Now ugh—fuckin geaux. Big shout out to @amaranthine-enihtnarama for beta reading, thanks pookie!! NO SMUT in this chapter it's all setup, sorry guys <333

warnings: dark!romance, post-apocalyptic setting, cult dynamics, abduction, forced proximity, authoritarian/power dynamics, God complex, psychological manipulation, ritualistic obedience, choking, breath play, breeding kink, creampie, corruption arc, sexual tension, mentions of blood and decay, mentions of death and violence, intimidation, d/s dynamics, forced bathing, captivity, worship themes, verbal degradation, possessive behavior, choking from behind, unsettling atmosphere, cult rituals, light threat of force, elements of stockholm syndrome, highly charged sexual context, dubcon overtones

likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated please enjoy!!

Fic Masterlist/Main Masterlist

Chapter I: Annointed

The air here smells like wet iron and peat. It clings to your throat, heavier with each breath, as if the land itself wants to remind you what’s been spilled on it. A silence rests over the hills—not peace, but the uneasy stillness of something watching. Listening. Holding its breath.

You haven’t seen another living person in days. Weeks? It’s hard to keep track when the sun rises behind a haze of ash and dusk always comes too soon. Even the sky seems starved. The clouds hang low and bruised, heavy with rain that never falls.

The forest stretches ahead like a mouth left open too long. You step lightly. Leaves rot wet beneath your boots. A broken fence curls under moss, the last gasp of an island that once had tidy borders and polite signs. You pass rusted-out trailers on cinder blocks, windshields shattered, doors long gone. The doors always go first. People rip them off in a panic, thinking it’ll help. It never does.

The cold bites through your clothes. Not sharp. Just damp. Soaks into your bones. Makes the ache constant. Your breath ghosts in front of you as you walk, and for a second, you pretend it’s cigarette smoke. You used to hate the smell of it.

Now you’d kill for it.

Your stomach hasn’t stopped making noise. You ignore it. You’ve become skilled at ignoring it, the same way you’ve learned to ignore your own smell, the taste of metal in your mouth, the dull throb in your calves from days of walking with no real destination. You’re looking for food. Shelter. A map. Anything.

You cross a clearing and crouch low in the grass, just like you’ve done hundreds of times before. You survey the landscape: a ruined farmhouse collapsed under its own roof. No movement. No dogs. No smell of death and decay that you've grown almost nose-blind to. Could be safe. Could be worse.

Everything could be worse now.

You move. Cautiously. Deliberately. The earth here is soft and the wind carries no scent—just the musk of damp bark and pine needles. Still, something feels…off.

You pause and tilt your head to listen.

Nothing.

Too much nothing.

Birds don’t sing out here anymore. The ones that do don’t last long. Sound gets you noticed. Attention gets you killed. And this silence is the wrong kind—the hollow kind, as if the trees themselves are waiting for a bloodcurdling scream.

You take another step. A branch snaps beneath your boot. Loud. Too loud. The noise cracks like a warning shot through the quiet.

And that’s when your spine prickles.

Not fear; not yet. Something worse.

Recognition.

You're being watched.

The hair on your arms stands up before your brain can catch up.

You don’t run. You don’t call out. You listen.

The kind of stillness around you isn’t natural. It’s curated. Like someone hit mute on the world.

No birds. No bugs. Not even the soft flit of wind threading through branches. The entire forest has gone tight—drawn taut like the string of a bow, pulled back and trembling, waiting for the moment it breaks.

You slowly lower yourself into a crouch, hand pressed into wet moss. It gives under your palm with a faint squelch, soft and cold and alive with decay. The loamy scent rises up, thick and rich and sharp in your nostrils. Earth and blood smell too close sometimes.

Your heart thuds once, a heavy pulse.

Your fingers curl tighter into the dirt. Grounding. You’ve learned to trust instinct over logic. Instinct kept you alive when logic said the people you loved wouldn’t turn. Instinct taught you how to sharpen a stick into a weapon. How to scavenge rats. How to sleep with one eye open.

Instinct is telling you now: you are not alone.

You shift your weight slowly, inching backward through the brush. One heel catches on a vine. A small sound, but loud enough to make your skin go cold.

Your breath starts to pick up. Not fast. But deeper. Sharper. Your throat feels too open—too vulnerable.

You scan the trees. Nothing.

But the feeling doesn’t go away–it grows.

That same prickle at the back of your neck starts to burn. You can feel eyes. More than one set. You don’t know how—you just do. You feel them drinking you in. Not hungry. Not even curious.

Calculating.

You stand and backtrack carefully toward the collapsed farmhouse, thinking maybe you’ll duck behind the stone wall, find higher ground, get a better vantage point.

You take one step. Another. Then freeze.

Movement. Not in front of you. Beside you.

The sound is barely audible—just the faint rustle of fabric, the smallest crunch of gravel.

Your lungs go tight. Your mouth floods with the taste of copper. Your fingers twitch toward the handle of your rusted blade, tucked beneath your coat. Useless. Too slow. You already know.

Whoever—or whatever—is out here with you? They’ve been watching for longer than you realized.

And they’re close. Too close.

The sound comes first.

It doesn’t ring like a bullet or howl like a holler. It hisses. A sharp, slicing whisper that splits the space beside your filthy cheek and buries itself into the tree behind you with a heavy thock!

You freeze, breath clinging to your lungs.

The bark splinters. Chips rain down against your shoulder. A sliver catches in your collar, warm with friction. You feel it there, resting against your skin—proof that the shot wasn’t a miss.

It was a message.

Your pulse explodes behind your ribs. That thin line of stillness you were standing on? It breaks. Snaps. Shatters.

You wheel around, instinct gripping your limbs. One foot twists in the underbrush. You catch yourself against the tree trunk—the same one the arrow is now buried deep in, vibrating slightly as if it’s still alive. The shaft is black, smooth, and handmade. Fletching dyed dark green. No markings. No blood. Not yet.

You reach for your blade without thinking.

And then you see the second arrow—already drawn.

A figure steps out from behind the trees. Slow. Graceful. Like they’ve had all the time in the world to decide what happens next.

They wear a tracksuit—top unzipped, fabric torn at one sleeve, the color somewhere between piss-yellow and vomit-green. Their hair is long, tangled, hanging in ropes around their face. Their skin is streaked with dirt. Mud along the jaw. Ash on the hands.

And they don’t say a word.

Another shadow moves behind them.

Then another, and another. And another.

One by one, they emerge like ghosts stepping out of the woodwork—blonde, dirty, silent—clad in mismatched tracksuits stained with smoke and rain. Each one armed. Each one watching.

Some hold their bows. Some notched and ready. Others just stand with knives visible at their hips, bone-handled and used.

The archer who fired first tips their head to the side. Curious. Unbothered. Like you’re not a threat. Like you’re already theirs.

You don’t breathe. Your lungs refuse.

Another arrow hisses past you and strikes the ground by your foot. Close enough to kiss your boot.

Still no words.

Just eyes. Watching.

Measuring.

And then one of them smiles, just a little

It’s not warm.

You don’t plan it. You just move.

One moment you’re frozen, breath snagged between ribs, and the next—your muscles snap into motion like a trap springing shut. You pivot on your heel, throw your weight into the turn, and take off into the trees.

Branches slap your face. Mud sprays up the back of your legs. The forest blurs.

You run like you’ve never run before—like the ground might open beneath you if you stop, like air is poison and the only cure is speed. Your lungs seize in protest. Your legs burn. Your heartbeat crashes against your eardrums, a war drum in your skull.

Behind you, the forest doesn’t make a sound.

No shouting. No chase.

Just the sick, humming quiet.

And that’s worse.

Because it means they don’t need to run. They already know where you’re going.

Your boots slip on a slick patch of wet leaves. You catch yourself, barely, skidding through brambles that catch your clothes and tear at your arms. You don’t care. You don't feel it. All that matters is forward. Get to higher ground. Get to somewhere—anywhere—they can’t surround you.

You vault over a fallen log, fingers skimming the mossy bark. The scent of rot is thick in your nostrils. Dead wood. Old things. It clings to you like a second skin.

Somewhere up ahead—there’s a break in the dense canopy of trees. Light, maybe. A clearing. A way out.

You bolt for it, lungs screaming. Every step is thunder in your bones. You don’t look back.

But the air changes again.

A shadow flits past your periphery—too fast to track, too quiet to follow.

Another.

Then—

Crack.

Your foot catches on something taut and hidden beneath the brush.

Not a root.

A snare.

The loop cinches around your ankle, and before you can scream, your body slams sideways into the ground with a sickening crunch. The air punches from your lungs. You taste dirt. Cold. Blood. Pine needles jam under your nails.

Then—snap—a figure descends from the treeline like a wolf from a perch, boots landing heavy in the earth.

You try to scramble. Slip.

A hand grabs your arm.

Another closes around the back of your neck.

Then a voice. The first one you’ve heard.

Low. Calm. Male. Fucking delighted.

“That’s enough now, wee thing. Eden’s got ye.”

The hand at the back of your neck doesn’t squeeze.

It doesn’t have to.

It just settles there, heavy and final, fingers splayed wide like it’s already mapping your bones. It holds you in place—not hurting, not pinning, just claiming. Like you belong on your knees, pressed into the mud, spine curved and breath coming in sharp, humiliated bursts.

You twist. You kick. But the snare’s still wrapped around your ankle, biting into the skin. Any movement pulls it tighter.

You try to reach for your blade.

Another hand wraps around your wrist. This one is colder. Slimmer. It doesn't yank—it just presses, thumb digging in just enough to tell you: don’t.

You look up.

They're all around you now.

Six. Maybe seven. It’s hard to count through the blur of leaves and light and pain, but they stand in a wide circle, mismatched tracksuits streaked with earth and soot, hair hanging in matted ropes, eyes like damp stones. None of them speak.

One of them—barefoot, bow still drawn—grins, flashing a mouthful of decay. Some teeth are rotted through, black at the roots. Others jut out at odd angles, twisted by years without mirrors. One is missing several along the top row, exposing pale pink gums when they smile too wide.

“Slippery wee thing,” someone mutters from behind your shoulder. The one who caught you. The voice is deep. Smooth. Oddly kind.

You flinch when he touches your hair. Just a graze. Fingertips through the strands. It’s not affectionate. Not cruel, either. It’s closer to curiosity. A priest handling a relic.

They murmur to each other in low tones, too quiet to make out. The sound of their voices doesn’t feel like a conversation. It feels like a ritual.

One of them kneels beside you and cuts the snare loose. It snaps back into the undergrowth like a live wire.

You think—now. Move. Fight.

But the blade is already gone from your belt. You don’t even remember the moment they took it.

The realization sinks in slowly that you never had a chance. They weren’t hunting you. They were herding you.

You try to speak. A demand. A threat. A plea.

But all that comes out is a ragged breath and the taste of copper.

One of the archers—an older woman, face half-shadowed by dirt—leans down close enough for you to smell her. Woodsmoke. Sweat. Blood.

“He’s gonna be so pleased with ye.”

You’re cargo.

They move with purpose now.

The man behind you grabs the back of your coat and hauls you upright. Not violently. Just effectively. Like lifting a sack of flour. You stumble, one leg still half-dead from the snare. He steadies you with a hand to your spine, then turns you sharply toward the trees.

“Come along now,” he says, rancid breath hot against your ear. “Wouldn’t keep Him waitin’.”

They don’t blindfold you.

But they might as well.

The forest that follows looks like no place you’ve ever walked before. The path isn't marked—but it’s known. Worn bare by repetition. Sinewy footprints in the muck. Grooves dug into the soil from dragging something—or someone. The trees here lean inward, heavy with damp and time, their bark split and bleeding sap that smells sickly sweet.

The archers fall into formation around you, wordless. You hear their breathing. One whistles tunelessly through a gap in his teeth. Another pulls a long rag from her waistband and begins to wrap your wrists together—not tight, but tight enough.

“There. Now ye don’t get lost.”

The woman smiles. Three teeth. All bottom row.

You walk.

The cold bites deep now, not just into your body, but into your understanding. This is a procession. And you are the offering.

With each step, the terrain shifts—brambles give way to packed soil, then mud, then flattened leaves stamped down by boots. You spot bones underfoot. Clean ones. Stripped bare. Not fresh.

Not all are animal.

Someone carries a lantern ahead of you—oil-burning, the flame shielded by cracked glass. The light it throws is golden but small, and it doesn’t reach far. Enough to see the tracksuits shimmer damply in the gloom. Orange. Burgundy. Baby blue. One glittery purple jacket with rhinestones across the back that read PRINCESS.

It would be absurd if they weren’t so quiet. So coordinated.

So devout.

The deeper you go, the more the woods shift.

There are things hanging from the trees now.

At first, it looks like refuse. Rags. Rope. Plastic. But then you pass beneath one and realize—it’s a tracksuit jacket, tied by the sleeves, dangling like a flag. Faded. Bloodstained. Bullet holes across the front.

Another hangs beside it.

And another.

Rows and rows.

You keep walking. Your stomach clenches. Something between fear and nausea. The woman beside you leans in close as you walk.

“Ye smell good,” she mutters. “He’ll like that.”

Ahead, between the trees, a shape rises out of the fog.

Too square to be natural. Too still. A low wall. A break in the forest. Stone, maybe. Cracked and overgrown but not abandoned. Smoke curls from behind it. Not rising—crawling. Slipping through gaps like it knows how to sneak.

Then you see it—Eden.

Not a village. Not a home. A ruin made sacred by madness.

You’ve reached the edge of something ancient and wrong.

And He is waiting.

They lead you through the gate without ceremony. They don’t speak. They don’t need to. Two archers bracket you like a pair of looming, mismatched statues come to life. One takes your elbow, fingers firm but not brutal, guiding you forward.

The other falls in step just behind your shoulder, close enough that you can feel the faint whisper of hot breath brushing the back of your neck. Together, they move like a single, breathing thing—as if this ritual of capture has been practiced countless times before.

The gate itself is little more than a broken arch of crumbling stone and rusted metal, tangled with ropes and strips of torn tracksuit fabric. You step through it like a witness passing into a holy site. The air inside is different. It’s thicker. Heavier. The smell of damp earth, old wood, and smoky oil threads itself around you.

Your guides do not march. They don’t shove. They don’t drag. They flow, forcing you to match their pace until your body finds its rhythm between theirs. The hand on your elbow doesn’t grip harder when you falter, it merely corrects, a quiet pressure that steers you along the path. The one at your back doesn’t guide with force, but with presence, an overarching warmth that reminds you any move backward would be met with a wall of muscle and sharp steel.

Each footfall becomes an announcement. The sound of your soles scuffing stone is echoed by theirs, precise and orderly. Not a word is exchanged. Not a glance thrown. But every movement feels orchestrated—as if every hand that guides you, every step that matches your own, is serving the same silent god.

They lead you through the gate, and you realize it’s not just an entry. It’s a threshold.

A point where belonging is no longer a choice. A moment where obedience is the only language you’re allowed to speak.

There is no archway. No guard tower. Just two leaning stone pillars draped in mold and rot, bound at the top with torn strips of tracksuit fabric, knotted into fluttering banners that shiver in the breeze. The wind shifts, and the smell hits you like a wet slap—woodsmoke, sweat, burned meat, something sour rotting under it all.

No one says a word as you cross beneath it.

Inside, Eden is...wrong.

Not abandoned,not thriving. Held together by will alone.

Shattered cottages lean against one another like drunkards. Doors hang from rusted hinges. Roofs are patched with sheet metal and broken crates. Every building is bruised and sagging, but still standing—as if the place refuses to die simply because someone commanded it not to.

There’s no power. No lights. No hum of life. Just the hiss of smoke and the wet slap of boots in the mud as you’re marched forward.

You pass people. Not many. Maybe a dozen.

They don’t wave. Don’t smile. Don’t ask questions.

They just stop what they’re doing—sharpening blades, scraping hides, pulling weeds from cold soil—and watch. Some lean against walls. Others crouch like animals. One man gnaws on a charred rabbit leg, letting grease run down his chin, his eyes never leaving you.

Their hair is tangled, matted, stuck to their foreheads with sweat or filth. Their tracksuits are soaked, stained, misbuttoned or zipped up all wrong. Their teeth—what’s left of them—gleam yellow or black or don’t gleam at all.

And yet, they glow. Not with health, but with devotion. The same way a fanatic glows just before the end.

They know where you're going.

And what you’re going to see.

Someone lifts a shard of glass as you pass, using it as a mirror. Not for themselves—for you. You catch your reflection. Brief. Blurred. Strangers’ hands on your arms. Mud on your jaw. Cold in your eyes.

They pull you toward the largest structure still intact. A chapel, maybe,or what was once a manor. The stone is cracked, the windows shattered, the doorframe splintered where something once forced its way in. Ivy curls up the side in long, choking ropes. Animal skulls hang from the guttering, bones threaded with string and beads and bits of plastic like wind chimes.

The archer beside you speaks for the first time in miles.

“Head down. No talkin’. Only answer if He asks.”

A door creaks open. Your feet hit stone instead of soil. The temperature drops. The smell shifts again—woodsmoke thickened by incense, something sweet gone bad. The air is full of it,like a mouth that’s never closed.

The inside is dark. Not pitch-black—just heavy. Filtered. Lit only by oil lamps tucked in alcoves, their glass streaked with soot. The flames flicker low, throwing long shadows that stretch and collapse as you walk.

The room isn’t empty.

Figures move at the edges. Not many. Two, maybe three. They stand still, but not relaxed. Like they’re waiting for a command. One of them holds a cloth. Another holds a bowl of water—brown and lukewarm, the rim charred black. A third has something folded in their hands. Clean fabric. A tracksuit. Less torn than the one you wear.

They don’t speak to you; they don’t smile.

They just wait.

The woman who cut the snare finally lets go of your arm and gestures forward, toward a wide wooden door. Someone’s carved symbols into it—crooked, hand-cut, messy but deliberate. A crude crown. A sun. Teeth. A flower.

“He’s in there,” she says. “Be grateful.”

Your wrists are untied.

No one grabs you again: you’re expected to walk through that door on your own.

Hesitantly, you step forward.

The wooden door groans open under your hand—warped from time and rot, but still standing. The sound it makes cuts the air like a blade.

The room beyond is dark, but warmer than the rest of Eden. Firelight licks at the walls from a hearth in the far corner, casting everything in flickering gold. The scent is sharper here. Not just woodsmoke. Something burned. Something sweet. A perfume made from candle wax, dried herbs, and rot.

Your boots echo across uneven stone. It’s quiet. Not silent—calm, in that same unnatural way a hunting trap is calm before it snaps shut.

He’s there.

You feel him before you see him.

He’s sitting in a long chair that might’ve once been a throne, might’ve once been a pew. It’s covered in scavenged fabrics—torn blankets, netting, old lace yellowed with age. His legs are spread wide, one elbow resting lazily on the arm, the other hand rolling a cigarette between two fingers.

His face is in profile.

And even that profile is chaos.

A cracked tiara tilts across his brow, nearly lost in the mess of long, greasy blonde hair. One eye is framed by an old smear of soot or charcoal. There’s blood on his tracksuit jacket—dry. Flaked. A constellation of it across his collarbone. His neck bears the weight of several gold chains, the slow pendulum swing of an inverted cross briefly snagging your attention. Rings stacked on every finger. A small, curved blade rests against his thigh like it belongs there.

When he turns to face you fully, he grins.

And it’s nothing like a human smile.

His teeth are uneven—some chipped, some yellowed, one gone entirely. But that doesn’t dull the power of it. That grin could lead armies. Could make monsters kneel. It beams at you like he already knows what you are and what you’ll be.

“Fuckin’ look at ye,” he says, voice thick and Scottish and sharp-edged with delight. “Fresh out the trees. All wild n’ twitchy.”

He leans forward.

His eyes are blue, but not bright. More like cracked ice over dark water. Alive with something violently unhinged and cruelly amused.

“Ain’t touched, are ye? Not claimed? Not branded?”

You say nothing.

He smiles wider.

“Even better.”

He tips his head, brushing the long, tangled hair from his eyes, and the faint glow of the room catches the gold and molten red at his throat. His voice drops into something almost intimate, almost holy.

“Name’s Sir Jimmy Crystal,” he tells you, the words tasting like a threat and a promise all at once. “Remember it, s'the only name that’s gonna matter ‘round here.”

The silence that follows is thick. Final. As if the room itself has memorized it.

He stands slowly—not towering but imposing, filled with the kind of presence that reaches. That carries. He steps down from the platform, boot heels scraping stone.

“Come here, then.”

You don’t move.

His head tilts.

“What’s the matter, love? Nobody ever asked ye polite before?” He chuckles, the tension in his shoulders radiating all the authority of a leader. “You’ll find I’m a very gracious host.”

Then, quieter—yet no less impactful—“when I want t’be.”

He closes the distance without waiting.

One hand comes up and brushes your jaw with the backs of his fingers. His knuckles are scraped, bruised. There’s blood under one nail. But his touch is almost soft.

“They said you fought,” he says. “Said you ran hard. Nearly got one of Jimmy Jimmy’s boys in the eye.”

He leans in, nose close enough to scent you.

You don’t flinch.

He smiles like that’s a gift.

“Yer not a Jimmy, though. You’re…somethin’ else.”

He steps back, hands on his hips. Studies you.

Then, finally:

“Petal.”

The name hits like a hot nail through the center of your chest.

“That’s what ye are, ain’t ye?” he continues. “Pretty wee thing, soft ‘round the edges, got thorns when you’re pressed.”

He gestures wide, like unveiling a painting.

“You’re mine now, Petal. Eden’s newest bloom.”

He steps forward again, crowding you slightly—he wants to see what you’ll do. What you’ll become under his heat. His shadow. His name.

“Say it,” he murmurs then reiterates, “say it back to me.”

Then nothing.

No further command. No raised voice. No gesture to prompt you.

Just his eyes—locked on yours, heavy and unwavering, his body stilled like a predator mid-pounce. All that earlier swagger, the grin, the biting charm—it drops. Slips off his face like a mask tossed aside.

What’s left is something still and unblinking.

His stare is pure scrutiny. Not rage. Not even anticipation. Just…expectation.

The kind that doesn’t account for refusal.

The fire crackles somewhere behind him, casting gold along the worn-out throne behind his shoulder, and still he doesn’t move. His jaw ticks once, slow. You see the faintest twitch of his fingers at his side—restless. Not angry. Just ready.

He doesn’t speak again.

Because Sir Jimmy Crystal doesn’t ask twice.

The room stretches.

You feel it in your chest first—tight, tense, a coil winding up behind your ribs. Your throat is dry. You don’t remember when your breath last came easy. You’re too aware of your heartbeat. Of the way your wrists still bear the red ghost of rope. Of the mud drying on your ankles. Of the way he’s looking at you.

Like he already owns you.

Like this is just a formality.

Your mouth opens.

And for a second, nothing comes out.

Then:

“Petal.”

Your voice sounds strange. Foreign. Like it didn’t come from you but was breathed into you. You don’t recognize how soft it comes out—how it hitches a little. How it lands in the air between you like a stone dropped in a still pool.

His head tilts. Just slightly. One corner of his mouth lifts—not a grin. Something quieter. Possessive.

“Good girl.”

The words land like heat across your spine.

He steps in again. Closer now. His boots bump yours, but he doesn’t touch you yet.

He just inhales. Deep, deliberate, like he’s dragging your presence into his lungs.

“I knew you’d be easy, underneath all that bark,” he says softly. “They always are.”

And then his hand comes up. Slow. Measured. He touches your jaw—not rough, not even possessive. Just assertive. His thumb brushes the edge of your lip, like testing the softness of something before he bites.

“Petal,” he repeats, voice lower now. “Gonna hear that name moaned through these halls, aye? Gonna have all of Eden know who the prettiest thing in it belongs to.”

The silence that follows is not awkward.

It’s complete.

He leans closer, nose brushing yours, voice barely above breath.

“Say somethin’ else, then. Something better. Say thank you.”

The words land soft, but they split your ribs open.

Not a bark. Not a threat. Not a demand, even. Just spoken like it’s inevitable.

His hand remains on your jaw. Fingers resting just beneath your ear, thumb dragging slowly over the corner of your mouth. The pressure isn’t enough to hurt. But it’s not gentle. It’s training.

You try to breathe, but your lungs won’t take it in right.

The room feels too small now. Too close. The air clings to the back of your tongue, hot and damp and sour-sweet, like you’re breathing someone else’s exhale. Smoke, rot, and something metallic. Something intimate.

You feel your spine go stiff, shoulders rising like you might pull away—but your feet don’t move. Not because you’re frozen. Not exactly.

Because you’re listening.

And you’re waiting for him to say it again.

He doesn’t.

He just watches. That calm stare. That awful patience. As if there’s no doubt at all that the words will come.

Your mouth parts slightly. Not to obey. Not yet.

To stall.

To feel what it would be like to say it—to give him what he wants and taste how it feels in your throat. To feel how it might curl against your tongue and rot something inside you.

You don’t want to.You do.

Your heart punches the inside of your chest.

You blink—once, slow—and then tilt your head forward, just enough that your lips brush against the edge of his thumb.

Not a kiss.

Not yet.

But the reaction is immediate.

His nostrils flare. His hand tightens, just a breath, enough to tilt your chin higher.

“Go on, sweet thing,” he murmurs. “Don’t make me think you’re ungrateful.”

And something breaks. Not loudly. Not violently. But with a quiet, traitorous tremor in your stomach.

Your tongue is slow to cooperate. Your voice doesn’t come easy. But it comes.

“…Thank you.”

Your voice sounds like a betrayal.

It sounds like submission.

It sounds like you meant it.

You hate that. You hate how easy it is to say.

You hate how it feels good to give it.

His smile widens—not wild. Not cruel.

Pleased.

“That’s my girl.”

The words are barely a whisper, but they hit like a nail through silk.

He steps even closer now—flush against you, chest to chest. You feel the heat of him. The weight of him. His free hand comes to rest on your hip, fingers curling just above your waistband.

“We’ll make a proper little thing outta you yet.”

And then, voice lower:

“Say it again. Like you mean it this time.”

He’s still touching you.

One hand cupped along your jaw, thumb grazing your lower lip with the intimacy of a lover, the calculation of a surgeon. The other hand low on your hip, fingers curling with idle pressure. Not possessive. Not yet.

Just poised.

Waiting.

His voice has that same half-smile cadence, but the edge is sharper now—threaded with something heavier. The kind of weight that comes before a strike.

He wants it again.

And this time, he wants it perfect.

You feel your mouth go dry. Your muscles ache from how still you’ve been forced to hold yourself. Your wrists itch where the rope had left its imprint. Your brain is screaming for space—but your body doesn’t move.

Not because you’re weak, but because you’re calculating, too.

You don’t say it right away. You let the silence stretch, just a breath longer than it should. Just long enough that it starts to feel wrong. You see it in his posture—the slight twitch of his hand, the flicker in his eye.

And that’s when you give it to him.

“Thank you…Sir.”

You say it sweet.

Too sweet.

You tip your head a little as you say it, lashes lowering like a smirk in motion. You speak with the kind of sugar-coating that’s almost mockery. Just enough to make it unclear.

Polite. Playful. Dangerous.

His thumb stills on your lip.

Then lifts—slowly, deliberately—tracing the curve of your mouth before sliding down your chin. His other hand firms against your hip.

And he doesn’t speak.

He just stares at you.

That same silent intensity from before—hot enough to blister. A fire without flame.

“You think I won’t know the difference?” he says at last, voice low and sharp as a knife dragged across bone. “Think I can’t smell when a thing’s just performin’?”

His grip tightens—not to bruise, but to remind.

His eyes roam your face like a wolf studying a lamb that forgot it was meat.

“You will mean it, Petal,” he murmurs. “One way or another.”

He leans in again—closer now. Lips near your ear, voice so quiet you feel it more than hear it.

“And when you do, it’ll drip off your tongue like prayer.”

You feel the press of his breath against your jaw, warm and patient and ruthless.

Then he pulls back—not far. Just enough to look you in the eyes again. Holding you in place by your silence.

“Now,” he says. “Be sweet. Try again.”

He pins you down with just his gaze.

The heat of his body radiates into yours—smoke and oil and something darker, like the breath of a house right before it catches fire. His hand at your hip has grown still, but it hasn’t let go. The other hovers at your jaw, no longer cupping it, just near—like he’s giving you space to hang yourself.

You feel the words curl in your throat like smoke before a scream.

You could obey.

You could soften your voice. Bow your head. Let the praise come warm and slippery from your mouth like honey melting over hot stone. Let him believe you.

But you don’t.

Not yet.

Instead, you tilt your chin up. A small gesture. Barely there. But it shifts the whole balance of the room. His fingers still in the air near your throat. His nostrils flare—just once. You don’t miss it.

And when you speak…

You lace it with venom.

“Thank you…my King.”

You make it sound filthy.

Not reverent. Not frightened. Not grateful.

You say it like it’s a joke. Like you’re daring him to earn it.

His mouth parts just slightly—no smile now. Just breath.

You watch something dark flicker behind his eyes. It doesn’t rise, doesn’t lash out—but it pulses once, slow and dangerous. You’ve struck a nerve. Not one that makes him angry.

One that makes him hungry.

He steps closer, boot between yours. His chest brushes yours. That awful stillness in him thickens, slows, sharpens.

“That what I am to you already?” he says, voice hushed. “Your King?”

His hand moves again—slow, deliberate. The backs of his fingers trail down your throat.

“Careful, Petal.”

Your heart is a hammer in your ribs now.

He moves around behind you without warning, slow as smoke, one hand dragging across your collarbone as he passes.

You don’t turn.

You feel him behind you. His breath against your hair. His voice just behind your ear.

“You keep speakin’ like that,” he murmurs, “I’ll start to think you want to be ruled.”

You can’t see his face, but you hear the smile in his voice.

“And you don’t want me to think that.”

A pause.

His hand settles at the base of your throat—not tight. Not soft. Just there.

“Because if you do…I’ll give you the crown myself.”

His hand stays at your throat for three long breaths.

You don’t move. You don’t speak. You don’t give him the satisfaction of swallowing beneath his palm. But the silence that stretches between you is not victory.

It’s ritual.

You feel his body behind you—heat and weight and tension, close enough to make your skin tighten, far enough to make you ache. His breath grazes the curve of your ear like a blessing dressed in threat.

And then—

He pulls back.

The absence is as sharp as a slap. The cold rush of air across your neck feels like exposure, like being unwrapped. You almost—almost—step back to reclaim his heat.

But you don’t.

You hold your ground as he moves around you again, slow and loose-limbed, like a lion circling the last twitch of a dying thing.

When he stops in front of you, his grin is back. Soft. Filthy. Relaxed.

But his eyes are still locked on you like a snare.

“That’s enough for now,” he says, almost gently.

He reaches out and brushes something from your shoulder—a bit of leaf, a smear of dirt, it doesn’t matter. His fingers linger longer than necessary, then drop.

“You’ll need rest. Food. I’ll see to it.”

He turns from you like it doesn’t hurt him to look away.

“We’ve got time.”

He takes two steps toward his throne before glancing back over his shoulder.

His smile is lazy now. Pleased. Possessive.

“You’re not gonna leave, Petal. Not because you can’t.”

He sits down. Spreads his knees wide. Drags his hand along his jaw, watching you like he’s already undressing your soul.

“Because by the time I’m through with you…you won’t want to.”

He gestures lazily, and the room stirs like a beast waking from slumber. Figures shift from the walls, rising soundless as mist. Two of them move toward you—a man and a woman. They don’t ask questions. They don’t hesitate. They only bow when he nods.

“See she’s bathed,” Jimmy says, brushing a hand down the arm of his chair like he’s brushing dust from a relic. “Get the stink of the woods off her. Put her somewhere warm. Somewhere quiet.”

A tiny shift goes through the room—almost imperceptible. A glance exchanged. A breath held. Not protest, no. Not that. Not with him. But surprise. The kind that doesn’t rise from disobedience, only from obedience so deep it doesn’t comprehend difference.

He doesn’t name them. Doesn’t call out by their variations of the same holy name. They just know.

They step closer and one of them takes your hand. Not roughly. Not lovingly. Just certain. The other moves to stand behind you, brushing the snarl of your hair from your neck like she’s making way for a blade. Not because she’ll use one. But because she knows he can.

They lead you toward the door, and the room doesn’t speak. Not a word. Not a shift. Not a glance that doesn’t already belong to him. They accept it the way soil accepts a seed falling from a hand that can choose where it grows.

“Go,” he says finally, voice soft and sharp as steel. “Rest tonight, Petal. You’ve a long road ‘fore you.”

And then he leans back, sprawling in that long chair like a man resting between victories, brushing the pad of his thumb across his lower lip as if tasting the air your name has changed.

“An’ don’t worry,” he calls after you as the doors creak open, voice rising just enough for it to fill the space between the walls. “I’ll be seein’ ye soon. Real soon.”

No one questions. No one speaks.

In Eden, when Sir Jimmy Crystal chooses, no one ever needs to ask why.

[matrixfangs]

ILY LIZ

@matrixfangs asked me about when Remmick would be looking at you like this so I said my thoughts and then they said I should post this so HERE YOU GO: To me, this look is adoration, pride, an overwhelming sense of awe and amazement...

- When you speak about something you love and go on and on about it and you stop and say "What? Why you lookin' at me like that?"

- When he walks in to you dancing around the kitchen with flour on your face and a mess in the kitchen as you attempt a new recipe.

- When you accidentally knick yourself shaving your legs and stick your leg out of the shower and say "Get it while its hot".

- When you run out of the house in the middle of a rainstorm and he stands on the porch just watching before joining you.

- When you finally come back inside, nightgown soaked to the skin and you stand brave and bold before him as you pull the heavy wet material over your head and are naked not just physically but emotionally.

- When after showing you with ever fiber in his being how much he loves you and how every little thing you do undoes him, and he gets up to leave before the sunrises, you pull him back into bed and tell him you've put up blackout curtains. "I want you to stay if you want to stay." To me, that look is love.

[matrixfangs]

someone wanna put some soft/fluffy remmick requests in my inbox ;) they can include smut but i’m just dying for some tooth rotting sweetness to write

[matrixfangs]

hello chat. just checking in to say that blessed be the whore part 2 is going well and it’s MUCH filthier than part 1 🙂‍↕️

[matrixfangs]

him and that damn chain bruh

[matrixfangs]

Stop, he looks so excited when they turned to him 😭❤️

Source TikTok: @traddav

[matrixfangs]

blessed be the whore part 2 is officially in production. go ahead and read part 1 if you haven't yet <3 also pls let me know if you'd like to be added to the taglist. if you already asked underneath part 1, i have your username down so no need to comment again!

[matrixfangs]

ATTA GIRL AND CROSS TATTOO. ROSIE STAYS FEEDING ME

All That's Left Is Yours

Part II

Walter "Lion" Kaminski x fem!reader

summary: Walter Kaminski doesn't know how to be loved without bracing for impact. A washed-up fighter living out of motel rooms and underground leagues, he's spent years surviving hits—in the ring, from his brother, from the world. But when you, a runaway with a sharp mouth and a sharper gaze enters his orbit, everything starts to tilt. The closer you get, the more Walter fears what his hands—trained to hurt, never to hold—might do.

wc: 12.4k

a/n: Welcome back, masochists!! if you thought part one hurt, haha. anyway! here’s part 2, featuring: soft boys with shaky hands, found things that break, and a very ill-advised poker game. wear your seatbelt. don’t yell at me. (or do.) Big thank you to Liz @fuckoffbard for both beta reading and providing me with the speech Walter makes when he stands up to Stanley's bitch ass!!

warnings: emotional trauma, PTSD, chronic pain (arthritis), memory loss, abusive family dynamics, sibling codependency, toxic sibling relationship, past drug use (mentioned), past physical abuse (mentioned), canon-typical violence, fighting/violence, objectification, implied sexual coercion (non-graphic), betrayal, trauma bonding as a form of intimacy, hurt/comfort, unhealthy coping mechanisms, unsafe living conditions, sub!Walter, praise kink, unprotected sex, fingering, creampie, oral (m!receiving), emotional breakdowns, angst with smut, crying during sex, abandonment

likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated, please enjoy!!

Fic Masterlist/Main Masterlist

Part II: Winner Take Nothing

The motel was quiet in that early-morning way, the kind of quiet that felt borrowed—like it wouldn’t last.

You woke to the sound of the bathroom door clicking shut.

The bed beside you was still warm.

Your hand reached out instinctively, finding only the crease of a pillow and the faintest trace of his scent—soap and sweat and something deeper, something that clung to your skin like sleep.

You sat up, blinking hard. The bedside clock blinked 6:17 AM in angry red.

The faucet turned on.

Then off.

Then silence.

It wasn’t the kind of silence you trusted.

You swung your legs out from under the sheets, soft carpet warm beneath your bare feet. Walter hadn’t bothered with the lights. A dim beam of sun cut through the edge of the blackout curtain. You padded across the room and pressed your ear to the bathroom door.

You heard the ragged breath first. Then something else. Something wet. The soft, slow slap of skin against skin.

You should’ve turned back. Gave him privacy.

But something in your chest tightened, because it wasn’t just the sound of him getting off.

It was frustration.

Sharp. Muffled.

A low curse. The thunk of a closed fist on the counter.

“Shit—fuck—come on—”

You opened the door without knocking.

Walter jerked like you’d thrown a punch. He was standing in front of the sink, shirtless, boxers pushed down, one hand clenched painfully tight around himself, the other braced against the counter, flexing like he was trying to shake the pain out.

His face flushed deep—mortified, more than angry. “Jesus—fuck—I didn’t—”

“Hey.” You stepped in, voice gentle. “It’s okay.”

He turned half away, still holding himself, jaw tight with shame. “I didn’t mean for you to see this.” He couldn’t meet your eyes. “My fingers keep cramping. It’s stupid. It’s fine. I’ll get it—”

“Walter.”

He stopped.

Your voice softened. “You don’t have to touch yourself.”

He blinked.

You stepped in, closing the door quietly behind you. “That’s what I’m for.”

That broke something in him. Not in a way that hurt—just in the way that made him look at you like you’d said the one thing he didn’t know he needed to hear.

You reached for his wrist. “Let me?”

He nodded. Wordless. Eyes wide and hungry and aching.

You gently pulled his hand away. He let you. His cock was flushed and heavy, twitching against the cool air. You wrapped your fingers around him, slow and sure, and he groaned like it startled him.

“Jesus,” he breathed. “That already—fuck, baby—”

You started stroking him with practiced rhythm, watching the way his head dropped forward, mouth parting. His moans were soft, hesitant, like he wasn’t used to giving in.

“That’s it,” you whispered. “Just let go. Let me.”

His hips jerked. “Fuck,” he groaned. “Your hands—feels so good—”

Then, slowly, you sank to your knees in front of him.

Walter’s eyes widened, breath catching in his throat as he looked down at you—his hand tightening on the counter like he needed something to hold onto. His mouth opened slightly, lips parted, barely breathing through it. His eyes were hooded, heavy-lidded with sleep and pleasure, and he looked at you like you were a dream he wasn’t sure he deserved.

You looked up at him, still holding him in your palm. That moment stretched—silent, sacred.

And then he reached for your face. Cradled it in one trembling hand.

His thumb gently swiped across your cheekbone, slow and reverent. Like he couldn’t believe you were real. Like he needed to memorize you.

You held his gaze. Didn’t look away. Not once.

Then you parted your lips and spit.

A warm string of saliva landed on the head of his cock, mixing with the precum already beading there.

“Holy fuck,” he whispered, voice gone rough. “Jesus—fuck.”

You wrapped your hand around the base and smeared it in slow, deliberate circles—mixing it, stroking him from root to tip until he was glistening, slick and twitching in your palm.

Walter’s head dropped back. His chest was rising too fast, too rough.

“Baby…” he moaned. “You’re gonna kill me—”

You didn’t stop.

You didn’t look away.

And then you wrapped your lips around the weeping crown of his flushed cock.

He sucked in a breath—sharp, ragged—as your mouth sealed around him. His free hand slammed flat to the wall behind you as he exhaled a breathy, “fuuuuck.”

It hit you deep in your ears—like that sound was stitched straight into the base of your spine. Walter’s whole body twitched. One hand gripped the counter so tight his knuckles blanched, and the other hovered—hesitating—like he wanted to touch you but didn’t dare.

You flattened your tongue along the underside of his cock and eased forward, slow and steady, until he hit the back of your throat.

“Holy shit,” he gasped, hips bucking before he could stop himself.

You moaned around him—soft, pleased—and his knees buckled slightly.

He reached out, instinctively, grabbing the edge of the sink behind you like he needed something to anchor him. His head dropped forward, sweat-slick hair falling over his forehead, breath stuttering out of his chest.

“Baby,” he whimpered, so quiet. “Fuck—your mouth—your mouth’s perfect—”

You pulled back until just the head was in your mouth, then sank down again—slower, deeper, letting him feel all of you.

He whimpered. High and raw. His abs tensed and twitched, thighs shaking.

“Atta girl…” he breathed, his voice breaking at the edges. “That’s it. That’s—shit, just like that…"

You looked up at him, keeping eye contact as you started a rhythm. Not fast. Not rough. Just firm and deep and steady—dragging your lips down his length, letting your tongue swirl, feeling him pulse in your mouth.

You peeled your hand off one trembling thigh to cup his balls gently, rolling them in your palm with practiced care, the way you knew would drive him insane. 

And it does. 

His hips jolted again, sharper than last time. 

“Shit—sorry,” he gasped. “I didn’t mean to—fuck—I’m sorry—”

You patted the back of his thigh. Once.

Firm.

He froze.

You did it again.

Telling him everything he needed to know.

Walter groaned—loud—a sound torn straight from somewhere guttural. His head tilted back, jaw slack, eyes fluttering shut.

“Jesus Christ,” he choked out, rocking into your mouth like it physically hurt not to. “You want—fuck, baby, you want me to—”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. Could barely think.

You hummed low in your throat, the vibration making him shudder violently. His breath hitched. His thighs tightened. His mouth dropped open wider but no sound came out this time—just air, just disbelief.

“Atta girl…fuck, atta girl, just like that, you’re so good,” he babbled, voice thin and wrecked, as his hips began to roll gently, fucking into your mouth like it was instinct—like he was too far gone to stop.

You kept your grip steady, your throat soft, your eyes locked on his face like this was yours to claim.

And it was.

He wasn't going anywhere.

Not when he was already falling apart in your mouth, whimpering your name like it was the only thing keeping him from coming too fast.

But not yet.

You weren’t letting him finish.

Not until you said.

He was panting now.

Not breathing—panting.

Walter’s thighs trembled on either side of your face, tension coiled tight in his abdomen. His head had dropped again, lips parted, flushed from his chest to the tips of his ears. One hand gripped the counter behind him like it was the only thing keeping him upright. The other was buried in your hair—gently, reverently—thumb stroking along your temple in time with your pace, like he couldn’t help it.

Your mouth was slick, shiny, your chin dripping with spit and precum. You’d long since given up on staying clean—this wasn’t about that. It was about ruining him. Making sure the first time he came from your mouth would haunt every quiet morning and sleepless night after this.

You pressed your thighs together, whimpering quietly around him.

That sound made him groan—long and low. “Fuck, baby—fuck, you’re touching yourself? While you’re—Jesus—” He sounded delirious.

You didn’t stop. One hand still at the base of his cock, stroking in rhythm with your mouth. The other slipped beneath your panties, fingers working fast, messy, desperate. The more he squirmed, the wetter you got. The more his voice broke, the harder you chased that high for both of you.

“God, you look so good down there,” he rasped. “So fuckin’ pretty with my cock in your mouth…fuck, you were made for this…”

You moaned around him—deliberate. Loud.

He cursed again, jaw dropping.

The hand in your hair tightened just slightly. “Baby, please, I’m gonna—I can’t—fuck, I can’t hold it—”

His hips bucked. Just once. Hard enough that you gagged, eyes watering—but you didn’t stop. You wanted the tears, the wreckage, the string of drool now connecting your mouth to his skin when you pulled off just enough to swirl your tongue around the tip and then—

Back down.

Swallowing him whole.

He whimpered.

That’s all he could do. Just whimper.

Then it came.

“I’m gonna—” he choked, voice thick with panic. “Baby, I’m coming—gonna pull out—”

He tried.

He really did.

But you held him in place—both hands now on his thighs—and moaned.

And that was it.

His whole body locked up, shuddering, and he came with a cry that punched straight out of his chest.

“F-fuck—oh fuck—baby, oh my god—”

Warm, thick release filled your mouth. You swallowed greedily, messily, licking and sucking through it like you didn’t care how much he shook or gasped or begged. He was saying your name over and over—breathless, slurred, drunk on it—one hand trembling in your hair, the other still braced against the wall as his knees threatened to give out.

You sucked him through it. Every twitch, every drop. Milking him dry.

When you finally pulled off with a wet pop, you looked up—still on your knees, lips puffy, chest heaving.

He was staring down at you like he’d seen a ghost.

Or a goddess.

“…Jesus,” he whispered, wrecked. “What the fuck are you?”

His breathing was still ragged.

You kissed the corner of his hip bone, just below the stretch of his cross tattoo—ink faded and barely held on through scarred skin and years of sweat. The budded tip curved toward his ribs, the lower point dipping down low enough to kiss his waistband, and your fingers followed it like a prayer.

He twitched under your touch. Still trembling. Still panting like he’d been run through a war.

You leaned forward, tongue tracing a line up the tattoo’s spine. “You always make that much noise?”

Walter let out a breathy half-laugh. “Only when it’s…fuck, when it’s like that.”

You grinned against his skin. “So that’s a yes.”

He gave a little huff. “You’re a menace.”

“Me?” You looked up at him, hand sliding lazily up the back of his thigh, tracing the sharp cut of his muscle, the other wiping the drool from your chin, “You were the one whimpering like a virgin.”

His face went redder than you’d ever seen it.

“God, don’t say that—”

You stood slowly, dragging your hands up his torso as you rose. He didn’t stop you. Just stood there, flushed and softening, eyes still heavy-lidded with post-orgasm haze. His hand hovered at your waist like he didn’t know if he was allowed to hold you yet.

You leaned into him. “You didn’t wake me,” you said softly.

His expression faltered.

You cupped his jaw. “You should’ve.”

He looked away. “…Didn’t wanna bother you.”

“Bother me?”

His voice went quiet. “I’m not good at asking for help. Never have been.”

You traced his jaw with your thumb, gently turning his face back to yours. “You’re allowed to be rough with me, remember?”

His eyes met yours. Hesitant. Warm.

“But you’re also allowed,” you added, softer, “to need things. To ask.”

He swallowed hard. “I didn’t think—I just figured I’d take care of it and crawl back into bed before you even noticed.”

“You really think I wouldn’t notice if you were hurting?”

His silence said it all.

You ran your fingers across his cross again—soft this time. Reverent.

“You’re not alone anymore, Walter.”

At that, he reached for you.

Slow. Gentle. Both arms coming around your waist as he buried his face in the crook of your neck, still shirtless, still raw. You could feel the rise and fall of his chest. The way he breathed you in like he didn’t know what to do with kindness that didn’t cost him something.

You hugged him back.

And after a few quiet seconds, you pulled back, kissed his flushed cheek, and whispered, “Next time you wanna jack off, maybe start by waking me up.”

That earned a hoarse, surprised laugh.

“Fuckin’ menace,” he mumbled again—but this time, his voice was softer.

Grateful.

The diner wasn’t anything special.

It sat on the edge of a truck stop, caught between nowhere and someplace smaller. Vinyl booths. A counter lined with barstools older than either of you. The windows were fogged from the fryer, from the cold outside and the heat of bacon and home fries curling into the air like steam off wet skin.

You were tucked into a booth by the window. The Formica table glowed pale green under the flickering overhead light, and Walter sat across from you, legs sprawled obnoxiously far into your side—half on purpose, half because the man didn’t know how to sit in a chair like a normal human being.

He had a blue plastic straw hanging from his mouth, chewing the end like it had personally wronged him. His flannel shirt was unbuttoned over a worn hoodie, sleeves shoved to the elbows, a soft buzz of stubble grazing the sharp line of his jaw. The morning light hit the high points of his face, making his eyes look less blue and more stormy-grey, like wet asphalt after a rain.

You kicked his shin under the table.

He jolted. “The hell was that for?”

“You’re takin’ up half the damn floor, Kaminski.”

He chewed on the straw a second longer before pulling it from his lips with a grin. “I’m long.”

You snorted. “You’re not even that tall.”

His smile twitched. “I’m five-foot-eight.”

“Exactly.” You raised an eyebrow. 

“That’s plenty tall,” he insisted, feigning offense. “Ain’t about how high your head sits—it’s about how you hold yourself sweetheart.”

“Oh, you’re one of those ‘it’s about the vibe’ guys,” you teased, leaning your cheek into your fist. “This some kinda Napoleon complex in flannel?”

Walter scoffed, flipping over his empty coffee mug to signal for a refill. “It’s statistical. Practical. I read somewhere five-eight’s the average for guys in the U.S.”

You narrowed your eyes. “You read that?”

“Yeah.”

“In what? A gas station bathroom?”

He gave you a flat look. “You done?”

“For now.” You reached across and snagged a sausage link from his plate.

He watched you eat it with mock betrayal. “You’re stealin’ from me now?”

“I’m borrowing,” you said through your bite. “Temporarily appropriating your resources.”

“You know,” he said, pointing his straw at you like a weapon. “I let you insult my stature, I let you mock my honorable research practices, and now you’re takin’ my food. What’d I do to deserve this abuse?”

“You brought me to a diner and looked at me with that face.”

He blinked. “My face?”

“Yeah. It’s infuriating.”

His grin broke through, helpless and boyish. “Jesus Christ.”

You both laughed, easy and full, echoing off the fake-leather booths and linoleum tile.

He looked at you like he was trying to memorize your smile.

Walter, when he wasn’t bracing himself, was something you didn’t know you’d needed. He looked softer here. His body still bore the marks of war—split knuckles, bruised forearms, those forever-healing cuts near his collarbone—but his shoulders had lowered. His posture was loose. That constant fight-or-flight tremor in his jaw was gone, even if just for the morning.

You caught him staring.

“What?”

He shrugged. “Nothin’. You just—you’re somethin’ else when you laugh.”

“Something else like cute?”

“Something else like dangerous.”

You smiled into your mug.

A waitress came by, topped off your coffee with the burned smell of bottom-of-the-pot brew, and Walter reached for the creamer. Then hesitated.

He pushed it toward you instead.

“Don’t let me forget again,” he said, tapping the little packet with one finger. “You always make that face when your coffee’s too bitter.”

You blinked.

“That face,” he added, making an exaggerated grimace and scrunching his nose like he’d swallowed battery acid.

You burst out laughing.

He just looked at you with a shit-eating grin.

And for a second, the whole world narrowed to this: a chipped mug, a stolen fry, your knees touching under the table.

“Hey,” he said after a while, stabbing at his pancake. “Wanna split?”

“You offering because you’re sweet, or because you already ate your hashbrowns and now you’re eyeing mine?”

“…both.”

You slid half your plate his way.

He looked at you with faux seriousness. “Gonna marry you someday.”

You paused, fork in midair.

He blinked, like the words had just fallen out of his mouth. “I was kidding. That was—Jesus, that was a joke.”

“Sure it was.”

“I mean—I meant it like—”

“You’re digging yourself deeper, Kaminski.”

He groaned and dropped his head against the booth. “Jury, please disregard my mouth.”

You reached out, wiped a smudge of whipped butter from the corner of his lips.

He went still.

Then you licked it off your thumb.

Walter’s eyes blew wide. The tips of his ears went red. His whole neck flushed like sunburn.

“I hate you,” he whispered.

“No you don’t.”

“…Yeah. I really fuckin’ don’t.”

And for one perfect morning, you were just two people in a booth. Laughing. Flirting. Pretending you didn’t know how it would end.

Because for now—just now—nothing hurt. And nothing would.

You noticed it first when he tried to pick up his mug again.

Walter’s hand trembled, fingers slipping slightly against the ceramic. Not enough to spill, but enough that he had to brace the bottom with his other hand. His jaw flexed. No comment. Just a quick look down, like maybe if he didn’t acknowledge it, neither would you.

You didn’t say anything.

Not yet.

The rest of the meal passed like a held breath. Conversation dipped, shifted. Laughter still lingered in the space between you, but now it felt thinner. You kept stealing glances at his hands—swollen knuckles, fingers flexing subtly in pain. He winced once while cutting a pancake. Tried to hide it by drinking more coffee.

Outside the diner windows, the wind pushed hard against the glass, rattling the loose pane near your booth. The neon sign that read All Day Breakfast buzzed faintly above the door. A waitress refilled mugs with a practiced hand while Elvis crooned low from the jukebox in the corner. You could smell syrup and cheap coffee and the faint sting of grease coming off the grill.

A couple across the aisle bickered gently over a crossword. Behind the counter, a cook flipped eggs one-handed. The bell above the door chimed every few minutes, and every time, Walter’s eyes flicked toward it like a reflex honed by too many years of needing to know who’s coming.

He was trying to read the menu when the next clue hit. His eyes scanned the page once. Twice. Then again. His brow furrowed like he was doing math, not trying to decide what flavor of milkshake he wanted.

You leaned in, resting your elbow on the table, chin in hand. “You okay?”

Walter blinked, then nodded—too fast. “Yeah, just…forgot what I was looking for.”

Your stomach sank.

He flipped the menu shut like it didn’t matter. “I’ll just get the usual,” he told the waitress when she came by.

“You don’t have a usual,” you said softly once she was gone.

He gave you a lopsided smile. “Guess I do now.”

It was easier not to push. Not here. But your throat felt tight, and your fingers itched to grab him by the face and make him look at you. Not in anger. In desperation. Because the man sitting across from you should have been wearing gloves in a ring somewhere televised—not icing his knuckles in a motel and forgetting what he was reading halfway through.

You bit your tongue so hard it ached.

You didn’t say his brother’s name.

Didn’t say Stanley.

Didn’t say, “You should’ve gone pro. You should’ve had a manager, a trainer, a doctor, a fucking shot. Not a leech bleeding you dry until your memory fades like old bruises.”

Instead, you reached across the table and tapped the corner of his plate. “You gonna eat that?”

He blinked out of whatever hole he’d been slipping into. “Huh?”

You smiled gently. “Your bacon. Looks lonely.”

He huffed a soft laugh, something breathy and light, and pushed it toward you. “What’s mine is yours.”

You took it without looking up, chewing slowly, chewing past the ache behind your ribs. He watched you eat with that same fond look he always tried to hide when he thought you weren’t looking—elbows leaning on the table, his thumb absently rubbing the edge of his napkin like he needed to stay grounded.

Walter. Twenty-five.

Fighting for scraps. Fingers already failing. Memory starting to fade.

And every part of it—every limp tendon, every sore joint—traced back to a brother who gambled on him like a dog.

You reached under the table, found his hand, and squeezed.

He looked down, startled for just a second—then smiled.

He squeezed back.

The waitress dropped off the check and left two mints, their wrappers crinkling like brittle leaves between your coffee cups. You watched Walter turn one over in his palm, slow and thoughtful, like it was something precious and not just a complimentary afterthought.

He was quiet again.

Not withdrawn, not exactly—but softer. Like his mind had tucked itself into a corner and was still trying to work out something unspoken. He cracked his neck and flexed his fingers beneath the table, thinking you wouldn’t notice. You noticed.

“You working today?” you asked, tone light, like it was just something to fill the air.

Walter nodded. “Yeah. Factory’s got a rush order goin’. Need to make numbers before Friday.”

You blinked. “Sewing?”

He gave a sheepish grin. “Yeah. Been there a while.”

You were quiet for a moment. “Does it help?”

He paused, a wrinkle of confusion between his brows.

“The arthritis,” you clarified.

That caught him. His mouth parted like he might lie—but something in your face, or maybe the fact that you already knew, made him drop it.

“No,” he admitted. “Makes it worse.”

“Then why—”

“Pays in cash,” he said simply. “No questions, no paperwork, no background checks.”

And suddenly it made sense. The cuts on his fingers that weren’t from fights. The slow, stiff way he sometimes curled his hands into fists. The shaking. The way he wore gloves even when it wasn’t cold out.

“They got me on the single-stitch machines. Old ones. Manual pedal, no assist. Good for precision, but rough on joints.” He shrugged, then tried to laugh it off. “Boss thinks it builds character.”

You clenched your jaw so hard it clicked.

“Sometimes I forget the pattern in the middle of a line,” Walter added, softer now. “Gotta start over. Or fake it. Sometimes I just…stall.”

He didn’t say how that felt. Didn’t need to.

You could picture it clear as day—him hunched over a rattling machine in some cracked-tile sweatshop, shoulder blades pulled tight beneath a hoodie, fighting against pain and memory loss just to meet a quota. All because someone else gambled his future away.

You wanted to scream. Or throw the table. Or track down Stanley and make him feel everything his brother had swallowed just to survive.

Instead, you slipped your hand across the table and took the mint from his fingers. You tore the wrapper open and held it out. “Open.”

Walter blinked. “What?”

“Your mouth, Kaminski. C’mon. You look like you need something sweet.”

He gave a quiet laugh, head tipping back, and opened his mouth. You placed the mint on his tongue like it was a communion wafer, then smiled when he raised both brows and playfully over-exaggerated the act of savoring it.

“You gonna give me a treat every time I look pitiful?” he teased, still rolling it across his tongue.

“Maybe,” you said, grinning back. “Guess I do now.”

He laughed again—real this time, not hollow or forced. Then he did something simple. Barely anything at all.

He reached for his napkin and folded it carefully into the shape of a flower—something lopsided and silly, made from cheap paper and calloused fingers that couldn’t quite bend the way they used to. But when he finished, he pushed it across the table and said, “That’s for being kind. Even when I don’t know how to ask for it.”

You stared at it for a second, something hot blooming in your throat.

“Thank you,” you whispered.

Walter leaned back, his smirk lazy, but his eyes warm. “You better keep that. That’s a one-of-a-kind Kaminski original.”

You pocketed it.

You wouldn’t throw it out.

Not now. Not ever.

Not when it said so much with so little.

It’s close to midnight when you hear the lock click.

Not loud—nothing ever is with him. But there’s a stutter in the rhythm. A pause. Like even the key didn’t want to turn tonight.

The door creaks open on its hinges, a long, low moan that makes your teeth ache. The kind of sound that feels too intimate for strangers and too sad for lovers. You don’t lift your head right away. Just lie there on your side, spine pressed to the cold motel wall, eyes half-lidded, watching his silhouette move across the room like smoke.

It’s dark, save for the flickering TV glow—muted and aimless, playing some nature documentary on repeat. The kind where every animal moves in slow motion and the voiceover too soft to register as human. It casts the room in washed-out flashes: the glint of the door handle as it shuts, the faded wallpaper peeling at the edges, the dull gleam of condensation sweating down the motel mini fridge.

Walter doesn’t say a word.

He drops his canvas bag by the dresser with a thump that’s heavier than it should be. Then he peels off his hoodie like it’s clinging to him, the cotton catching on the scabbed-over scrapes at his elbow. You see the way his muscles roll beneath the shirt beneath—tight, fatigued, like elastic stretched past its limit. His shoulders are hunched up high, all tension and bone.

He smells like a long day—sweat dried into fabric, a faint trace of oil from the machines at the sewing floor, something acrid underneath it like old blood or rust. It hits the air the second he moves past the bed, and you catch yourself inhaling like it might tell you how bad the shift really was.

His knuckles are raw again.

You track the movement of his hand as he kneels in front of the mini fridge. There’s a scrape of plastic, then the soft click as he opens the little door. He pauses, crouched low, elbows resting on his knees. There’s something cracked about his posture—like he’s been put together wrong tonight, joints out of order.

He reaches in.

Not much in there—just what little you’ve both managed to scrounge together. A half-eaten apple in a napkin. An old packet of butter. Two sodas. He grabs one and sits back on his haunches.

Then you see it.

His right hand shakes as he tries to twist the cap. Just a tremor at first—barely noticeable in the low light. But then the tremor grows. He tries to mask it with pressure, holding the bottle tighter, twisting harder. The joint at the base of his thumb gives a nasty little jerk, and the plastic cap resists him with a pitiful squeak.

You can see it all from the bed. The way his jaw clenches. The way he drops his gaze, ashamed to even be witnessed failing.

He tries again.

Fails again.

You close the book that’s been resting open on your chest. Your heartbeat’s already picking up, tuned to the tension in the room like it’s vibrating through the walls.

“Let me help,” you say softly, careful not to startle.

He doesn’t look at you.

Still crouched, still clutching that soda like he could will it open if he just tried harder, Walter lets the silence hang. His back is to you now—curved like a question mark, the fabric of his thin undershirt stretched across shoulders pulled too tight. One shoulder blade twitches, subtle but telling. His fingers flex. The bottle gives a weak, hollow squeak in his grip.

“I’ve got it,” he says, voice dull and low, like he’s answering something deeper than your words.

“I know,” you reply gently, not rising from the bed yet. “But I want to.”

That gets something. Not a flinch, not quite. But his posture stiffens like the words grazed something too tender.

His voice is quiet, but the edge is there. “You shouldn’t have to.”

“I want to,” you say again, slower this time. The quietest insistence.

He still doesn’t face you, but you see his head dip an inch. The fingers of his left hand come up to press at the creases of his right palm—almost like a stretch, almost like a plea. He tries again, twisting the cap with all the force his failing joints will allow. It slips. His grip falters. He mutters something under his breath that doesn’t make it past his teeth.

The soda falls.

It hits the carpet with a muted thunk and rolls toward the bed. He watches it go. Just watches it.

You move.

You rise to your feet and cross the room slowly, not touching him yet, not crouching beside him. Just standing there, waiting for him to let you in.

“Walter…”

“I don’t want help.”

There’s a little crack in the words. A break that catches like glass underfoot. Then, sharper:

“I don't want help,” he reiterates, louder this time. “I want to do it myself.”

His voice echoes louder than the small space should allow. The air seems to hold it, trap it, then stretch it until it hurts.

You take a breath.

“I know,” you murmur. “But—”

“I said I’ve got it, damn it!”

It rips out of him like a whipcrack—fast and bitter and louder than anything he’s said to you before. And the second it lands, the second it echoes back into the hollow of the room, his face caves in.

He blinks, stunned at himself.

“Shit,” he mutters, backing up a half-step like he wants to disappear into the carpet. “Shit, I didn’t mean that.”

His hands rise, fingers curling against his temples, pressing in like he’s trying to squeeze the moment out of his head. The tremor is worse now. Full-hand shaking, like his bones are vibrating loose under his skin.

“I didn’t mean it,” he says again, more broken this time. “I just—fuck—I’m so tired.”

His voice crumbles mid-word.

“I’m so fucking tired,” Walter says, barely above a whisper now. The fight drains out of him all at once, like a string snapped behind his ribs. “I didn’t mean to yell. I just…I can’t get my hands to work. My memory’s been shit lately. I keep…I keep forgetting where I put things. What day it is. What you said two minutes ago.”

He’s shaking, and not just in his hands now—his whole body’s doing this quiet tremble, like his bones don’t know how to hold him anymore. He shifts his weight to his heels but loses balance, so he steadies himself on the mini fridge. His knuckles knock against the side with a dull thunk.

You move before he can apologize again.

One soft step forward, then another.

You lower yourself until you’re kneeling in front of him, eye-level, and reach up—slow, deliberate—to place your palm on his chest.

“Hey,” you murmur.

His gaze is somewhere over your shoulder, jaw locked, lashes fluttering from the effort of not crying. He swallows, and it’s audible in the quiet of the room. A thick, dry sound.

You press your other hand to the side of his face, thumb brushing the faint stubble along his cheek.

“Walter.”

You say his name like it means something. Like it’s enough.

He finally looks at you.

And just like that, he breaks.

His whole frame folds forward like something caved in his chest. You catch him instinctively, arms wrapping around his back as his forehead finds the crook of your neck and rests there—hot, damp, his breath unsteady. One hand fists in the fabric of your shirt, not pulling, just holding. Needing.

“I can’t sleep,” he breathes. “Every time I do, I see the ring. I hear the bell. I feel the hits coming and I can’t fucking move. I wake up and I’m still in it. Still getting punched. Still losing.”

You stroke the back of his head, slow and steady, your fingers threading through sweat-mussed hair. His shirt damp near the collar. Smells like machine grease and old detergent and something uniquely him—salt and skin and heat.

“I forgot my locker combination at work today,” he goes on, shame thick in his voice. “Had to ask the floor manager to open it for me. First time in four years I couldn’t remember. And my fucking hands—” He pulls them up between you, trembling hard now, like leaves in the wind. “They won’t stop doing this. I can’t thread a needle. Can’t even hold a pen right. You think anyone wants a fighter who can’t make a goddamn fist?”

You guide his shaking hands to your chest. Cover them with your own.

“They want you,” you whisper.

His breath stutters again.

“I don’t wanna be like this.”

“You’re not broken,” you say firmly. “You’re hurting.”

And he lets himself sob then. Silent, body-wrecking cries that wrack his ribs. You hold him like he’s yours to hold. Like nothing he says or does or forgets could make you let go.

The tears don’t last long.

Walter’s never been someone who lets himself cry for long. But when he does, it’s like something sacred—something buried too deep to touch without bleeding. So when his shoulders stop shaking, when his breath evens out enough to speak, he pulls back just a little—not far, just enough to look at you.

His eyes are red-rimmed, lashes wet, cheeks still damp in streaks. But his mouth is soft now. Unguarded. A line across his lips where his jaw used to be clenched.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he murmurs.

“You didn’t.”

“Didn’t mean to yell at you, either.”

You reach up, swipe your thumb gently beneath one eye, then the other. “I know.”

His hands are still resting on your chest beneath your palms, warmer now, less tense. His fingers twitch like he’s not sure what to do with them. Like he still expects them to betray him.

You feel the urge before you even realize it—lean in and press your lips to the center of his brow. He goes very still. Doesn’t speak. But his fingers tighten, just slightly, bunching the hem of your shirt between them.

“I don’t like needing help,” he admits quietly.

“I know.”

“I hate feeling like a burden.”

“You’re not.”

His eyes flutter closed. His head tilts forward until his forehead brushes yours. The silence between you stretches again, but it’s different now—full of breath and blood and the knowledge of how close pain and comfort live side by side.

“I’ll get better,” he says softly, more to himself than to you. “I just need time.”

You nod.

“And rest,” you add.

That earns you a tired, almost-smile. “You trying to mother me?”

You cock your head. “Would it work?”

A pause.

“...Probably not.”

This time, the laugh you share is real—quiet and cracked around the edges, but real. And when he finally lets you help him up, when he lets you guide him toward the bed and ease him onto the mattress, you can tell he’s not letting go out of weakness. He’s letting go because—for once—he can. Because he's allowing himself to. 

You don’t leave his side the whole night.

You curl around him, one arm beneath his neck, the other draped across his stomach, palm spread flat over the trembling rise and fall of his breath. You let him be held.

And when he finally falls asleep, deep and still and quiet…

You stay awake a little longer.

Just to be sure.

Because if the world insists on wearing him down to splinters, then fine—you’ll be the one who gathers the pieces and whittles him back into something whole.

You weren’t supposed to be there.

The car smelled like hot vinyl and the old fast food wrappers Stanley insisted he’d clean out weeks ago. You had your knees pulled up to your chest in the passenger seat, cracked window letting in a breeze thick with summer sweat and exhaust. It was early evening, but the sun was still clinging to the rooftops like a slow bleed, casting everything in a dull gold that made even the parking lot shimmer.

Stanley had said it would take fifteen minutes. Quick in and out. Just a friendly meet-up with a guy he “used to know.”

Walter had gone with him, jaw tight, fists in his hoodie pocket. He hadn't wanted to bring you—hadn't even wanted to come, really—but Stanley had a way of pulling people behind him like storm currents. That low, snide charm. The confident grin that always seemed to promise this time would be different.

Fifteen minutes turned into twenty-five.

You shifted, checked your phone. No service. No texts. Just the occasional shout from inside the low-slung building they’d disappeared into—some half-legal dive pretending to be a private club. The windows were fogged, too dark to see through. The sign above the door buzzed dimly in green neon: NOIR ROOM.

You hadn’t been inside. Hadn’t planned to be.

Not until the yelling started.

You heard Walter’s voice first, sharp and low—cutting off something Stanley had said. Then laughter. Not the fun kind. The kind with teeth.

Curiosity turned to dread real fast.

You slid out of the car and approached the building slowly. The door was cracked open just enough to let the heat and cigarette smoke pour out, along with the muffled rise and fall of voices. You peeked inside.

There was a poker table set up near the back, ringed with men in folding chairs and sweat-stained button-downs. Someone had turned on an oscillating fan that clicked every time it passed over the table. The whole place smelled like stale beer and ashtrays that hadn’t been emptied in days.

Stanley was in the middle, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled, grinning like he owned the place. His face was flushed—either from the whiskey or the string of wins he was on. He had a stack of chips piled in front of him like he was untouchable.

Walter was off to the side, arms crossed, leaning against the wall. He looked tense, but quiet. Watchful. He saw you in the doorway before anyone else did. His eyes widened, subtle but sharp. A warning.

You started to back away. But that’s when you heard Stanley speak.

“C’mon, boys. One more round. Let’s make it interesting.”

Someone jeered. Someone else tapped a beer bottle against the edge of the table.

And then the man across from him leaned forward. Big guy. Sharp suit. Slicked-back hair. He smiled like a shark.

“Interesting, huh?”

Stanley grinned wider. His voice slurred a little now. “I got a hot streak you wouldn’t believe.”

Walter took a step forward. “Stan—”

“Relax,” Stanley muttered. “I know what I’m doing.”

Famous last words.

Walter was the one who tugged your elbow.

You didn’t protest.

“C’mon,” he muttered, barely above the noise of the card shuffles and slurred jokes. His fingers grazed your wrist—not quite a grip, not quite a plea—but enough to make your stomach knot. “Let’s wait outside.”

You followed without a word.

The club’s door creaked behind you as you stepped back into the heavy heat of early night. Streetlights flickered lazily overhead, insects humming beneath them like static. The buzz of conversation and glass clinks inside muffled behind the cracked door. Walter exhaled hard and leaned against the hood of the car, stretching his neck with a pop and running a hand through his sweat-matted hair.

“God, I hate this,” he muttered, knuckles resting on the car roof. “Hate this shit. Every time it’s the same.”

You didn’t ask what he meant. You knew.

Instead, you climbed up beside him, perched on the warm hood with your legs swinging slightly. “Thought you weren’t even supposed to be here,” you teased softly, trying to lighten it. “Weren’t you gonna stay home and nap for fourteen hours?”

“Should’ve,” he grumbled, but you caught the twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Could’ve used it.”

A few moments passed in silence. A car drove by with its bass turned too high. Somewhere in the next lot over, a dog barked and wouldn’t stop. You could still hear the faintest hum of conversation inside—cards slapping on wood, a laugh here and there, a sharper voice rising before getting swallowed again.

You stretched your legs out in front of you, crossing your ankles. The hood of the car was still warm from the day, humming low through the denim of your jeans. Walter glanced over at you sideways, like he was trying not to smile again.

“You always sit like that?” he asked, voice low and a little amused.

You tilted your head. “Like what?”

He nodded toward your legs. “Like you’re on a damn front porch somewhere, not sittin’ on a rusted-out hood in a parking lot behind a place called Noir Room.”

“Maybe I’m making it romantic,” you said, with a shrug. “Some of us have an imagination.”

“Oh, yeah?” he chuckled. “You romanticizing this?”

You smiled. “Trying.”

His laugh was small but real, and the sound of it made your chest feel too tight for a second. He rolled his shoulder, leaned his head back, and let the streetlight catch his profile—jaw all sharp lines, the bruises on his cheekbone gone yellow at the edges now.

“I’m not good at this,” he said after a beat, quieter. “The sittin’ still thing.”

You gave him a look. “You’ve been sittin’ still for like five minutes.”

“Longest I’ve gone in a while.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I dunno. Just feels different with you here.”

The words slipped out and then just…stayed there. Weightless. Barely tethered.

You didn’t press. You just watched him, heart skipping sideways in your chest.

Walter reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled something out. A quarter. He held it up between two fingers and flicked it toward you.

You caught it midair.

“You keep flippin’ it when you’re thinkin’ too hard,” he said. “Figured you’d want one of your own.”

You stared at it—just a plain old quarter, ridged edges worn smooth in places—but it felt heavier than it should’ve.

“That’s stupid,” you said, and your voice came out way softer than you meant it to.

“Yeah, well,” he muttered, getting up, brushing his palms off on his thighs. “I am.”

You looked up at him, and he paused before stepping away. The parking lot light silhouetted him, made the angles of him softer, somehow—like he’d been carved down just enough to let the world in.

“I’m gonna take a leak,” he said, slipping his fingers into his front pockets, thumbs hooked over the denim lip. “Try not to fall in love with me while I’m gone.”

You snorted, biting down on a grin, but he leaned in before you could reply—close enough that you could smell the smoke on his collar and the warmth of him beneath it.

Then, even softer:

“Or do. I wouldn’t mind.”

He walked off before you could think of anything to say back.

Inside the Noir Room, the air had thickened.

Smoke hung low over the table, curling from cheap cigars and half-dead cigarettes balanced on the edges of ashtrays. The oscillating fan clicked in its lazy rotation, but it didn’t help. Sweat slicked the back of Stanley’s neck, clinging to the collar of his shirt like it had grown there.

He was grinning too hard. That sharp, mean kind of grin that said he’d already won in his mind.

“Let’s make this last one interesting,” he said again, louder this time, slurring just enough that the vowels dragged. “I got one more in me, boys. You wanna walk out of here with something to write home about, right?”

Across the table, the man in the suit—DeSantis, they called him—watched without blinking. His pile of chips was sizable. Bigger than Stanley’s. But Stanley had swagger and booze and the high of three solid rounds stacked behind him.

He was reckless. And everyone knew reckless men were either lucky or stupid. And they all wanted to see which.

The dealer didn’t look up. Just started the next round.

Stanley slapped a hundred down, then another. Then the rest of his chips, pushing them into the center like he was still at the top of the mountain.

“Raise,” he barked, pulling the last of his cash from his wallet. “Let’s go big, baby.”

DeSantis leaned back, sipping his drink. “That all you’ve got?”

Stanley laughed, eyes gleaming. “Oh, I’ve got plenty. You just don’t know it yet.”

“Convince me.”

The table quieted.

Stanley’s hand hovered over his pocket. He didn’t have anything else. No car, no property, no IOU anyone in this room would take seriously.

But he had you. Not as a person. Not as someone real and breathing and waiting outside. He had you in the way someone like Stanley thinks they have someone.

He leaned in, tone dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “I got a girl. Real pretty. Tight little thing. Sticking around like she’s already mine.”

The table shifted. One of the men snorted. Another rolled his eyes. But DeSantis didn’t flinch. He just swirled the ice in his glass.

“Collateral?”

Stanley grinned. “Call it what you want. Just don’t say I never gave you nothin’.”

The silence that followed felt longer than it was. The air went still.

DeSantis reached into his coat and set a fat stack of hundreds on the table, placing them carefully, deliberately. His voice was cool, unreadable.

“Call.”

Stanley froze for a second. A flicker of doubt cracked through the drunk bravado, but he kept smiling. “It’s a joke, man. C’mon.”

DeSantis didn’t blink. “I’m not laughing.”

Someone at the table coughed. A chair creaked. The dealer looked up at last.

Stanley’s smile faltered. Just a little.

Then DeSantis added, without changing his tone: “She’s not yours to bet? Then fold.”

And that—that—was the trap.

Stanley couldn’t fold. Not in front of a room full of men who’d watched him swagger in like he owned the fucking place. Not with pride on the table. So he picked up his cards with a smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes and said:

“Let’s play.”

The cards slapped down like thunderclaps.

One by one, the dealer flipped them, the room leaning in with every reveal. A low chorus of mutters swirled through the smoke as hands tightened around beers and arms folded tighter across chests. Stanley’s grin wavered, then firmed—his poker face slipping back on like a bad habit.

He had two jacks in his hand. One red, one black. He was praying for a third. He was praying for anything that looked like luck.

Across the table, DeSantis watched in eerie stillness. He hadn’t moved since placing his stack of hundreds in the pot. His face was stone. His cards, untouched.

The flop came down.

Eight of hearts. King of clubs. Jack of spades.

Stanley’s heart leapt. He had two Jacks. One more face card, one more pair—and he’d have a full house. He shifted in his seat, swallowing the surge of adrenaline, trying not to show how it thrilled him.

DeSantis raised a brow, just slightly.

The next card: a Queen of diamonds.

The table exhaled like a single creature.

“Fuckin’ hell,” someone whispered.

Stanley’s knuckles whitened on the edge of the table. He leaned in, eyes flicking between the pot and his opponent. DeSantis didn’t blink.

The river card came.

Ten of hearts.

Stanley’s eyes danced. King, Queen, Jack, Ten. He had a straight.

“Holy shit,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. He sat back, smug, like the world had righted itself in his favor again. “That’ll do just fine.”

He turned his cards over with a flourish, letting the table drink it in: Two Jacks.

“Three-of-a-kind,” he said, voice loud, cocky. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

DeSantis didn’t react right away. He reached for his drink, took a slow sip, then set it down without a sound.

Then he placed his cards on the table like they meant nothing.

Queen of hearts. Queen of spades.

There was a beat of silence.

Someone coughed.

Someone else muttered, “Oh, shit.”

Stanley blinked. “Wait—what?”

The dealer nodded, monotone. “Full house. Queens over Jacks.”

Stanley just sat there.

His hand still rested on the edge of the table, hovering beside a stack of chips that wasn’t his anymore.

DeSantis tapped a finger once against the felt. “You just lost.”

Stanley’s grin evaporated. “No, hang on—hang on, we didn’t say this was real. That whole thing about the girl, that was just—”

“You made the bet,” DeSantis said flatly. “We played. You lost.”

Stanley looked around like someone else might step in, someone might laugh and call it a bluff, say the whole thing was a joke.

But no one did.

The dealer gathered the cards. The chips disappeared into DeSantis’s pile. And the money—the thick band of hundreds—got tucked neatly back into his coat.

Stanley was still sitting there, stunned and hollowed out, when the man added:

“I expect delivery. Tonight.”

Then DeSantis stood, adjusted his cuffs, and walked out—like the matter had already been settled.

Because to him, it had.

You were still perched on the hood of the car, flipping the coin Walter gave you—still replaying what he’d said before slipping inside to use the bathroom—when the door creaked open behind you.

You didn’t hear the footsteps at first. Just the click of a lighter, then the slow exhale of cigarette smoke carried on the wind.

“You must be her,” a man’s voice said, low and slick and sleazy like motor oil.

You looked up.

He was standing a few feet away, tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a slate-gray suit that might’ve been expensive once, now worn thin at the elbows. His hair was slicked back with something too glossy, and he smiled without warmth—like a monster wearing the skin of a man. His cigarette burned lazily between two fingers.

“The fuck do you want?” you asked flatly, not bothering to mask your annoyance. You didn’t recognize him, and you didn’t like the way his eyes were moving—slow and deliberate, like he was appraising you.

His smile stretched wider. “Sharp tongue. Stanley didn’t mention that.”

You slid off the hood, standing now, spine straight. “And who the fuck are you?”

He took a step closer, ignoring the question. “Said you were loyal. Said you were sweet on his little brother, but you knew where your loyalty lay.” He let the words drag out, each one heavier than it needed to be. “Said you’d make good on a debt if it came to it.”

Your stomach dropped like a runaway dumbwaiter in an elevator shaft, swift and sharp.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

He didn’t answer. Just took another puff, eyes dropping deliberately to the conservative scoop neck of your faded black t-shirt, the one you bought at a gas station just outside of Reno when you needed a change of clothing, cracked yellow lettering stretching across your chest that read, “NEVADA: HOTTER THAN HELL” above a sun-bleached graphic of a devil lounging on a slot machine, one horn snapped clean off, loosely tied around your waist, teasing just a hint of your midriff.

And, despite the heat, you feel the cold, slimy crawl of your skin as his eyes drag back up the uncomfortable length of your body, grossly unapologetic.

“Back off,” you warned, voice low, feeling the warm sticky kiss of your pocket knife against your ankle from where it's tucked inside your boot, fingers curling over the right headlight, ready to pull it if necessary.

But he didn’t.

He moved in too close—intentional, invasive. His arm brushed yours, not quite an accident, and the smell of his cologne was sickly strong, like sour wine and cheap aftershave. His free hand hovered like he might reach out to touch your waist.

You didn’t flinch. “Try that again and I’ll snap every bone in your fucking wrist.”

He laughed softly. “Fiery. That’ll make it more fun.”

You opened your mouth to speak, but another voice cut through the parking lot like a blade.

“Back the fuck up.”

Walter.

He was standing just behind DeSantis, face shadowed in the amber glow of a nearby streetlamp. His jaw was clenched, lips a hard line, chest rising fast like he’d sprinted to get there. His hands were curled into fists at his sides.

DeSantis turned slowly, like this was all part of the evening’s entertainment. “Relax, champ. Just introducing myself.”

Walter didn’t blink. “You don’t touch her. You don’t even look at her.”

“Oh come on,” DeSantis said. “Your brother put her in play. I'm just following the rules.”

Walter stepped forward fast enough that you almost moved to stop him. He didn’t swing—yet—but his chest was close enough to brush DeSantis’s. “Say that again.”

DeSantis didn’t back down. “I didn’t stutter. Stanley made a bet. You know how this works—he loses, the house collects.”

Your heart was hammering now, pulse roaring in your ears. “He bet me?”

DeSantis turned slightly toward you, as if only now acknowledging your presence as more than a chip on the table. “Collateral,” he said, like it was the simplest thing in the world.

Walter snapped. “She’s not a fucking thing.”

The air charged in an instant—thick with anger, with humiliation, with the kind of tension that only ends in blood or retreat.

DeSantis held up a hand. “Your brother said—”

“I don’t give a fuck what my brother said.” Walter stepped in front of you fully now, body tense, fists clenched at his sides. “Drop it.”

DeSantis’s gaze flicked between you and Walter. “Stanley bet her. That means she’s part of the pot.”

“She’s not.” Walter’s tone dropped to something deadly quiet. “She doesn’t belong to anyone. You want something else, I’ll find a way to cover the debt. But you’re not laying one finger on her, not if you wanna keep 'em."

For a long second, it looked like DeSantis might press it. But then Walter pulled out his wallet. Thin. Nearly empty. Constantly hemorrhaging money to cover the cost of motel stays and microwave meals. To pay the price for his older brother's fuck-ups.

He pulled out every single bill without looking at the amount and held it out, the natural tremor in his hand gone entirely.

“This’ll hold for now,” he said. “If it don’t—then make it hold. I ain’t scared of spendin’ a few nights in county lockup.”

DeSantis stared at the bills. At you. At Walter again.

And something changed.

He smirked, slow and oily, before snatching the cash, counting through the bills with an infuriating amount of nonchalance, like he hadn't just been moments from assaulting you before Walter intervened. “You’re loyal. I’ll give you that. Clearly doesn't run in the family. That brother of yours is a piece of work."

Walter didn’t respond. He just stood there between you and the man, breathing hard, still on the verge of violence, you could tell from the way he tightened his stance in his legs, his hands ready to come up at any moment and swing if pushed to it.

DeSantis turned towards the rest of the parking lot. “Might wanna keep her locked up next time,” he muttered over his shoulder. “Girl like that? Trouble.”

Then he walked off in the direction of his car, flicking the butt of his cigarette away, the burnt filter landing in a crop of weeds growing up through the cracks of the hot asphalt beneath them.

You exhaled a shaky breath, one you hadn’t realized you had been holding up until now, though your body remained tight as a bowstring, full of broiling tension.

Walter was still standing between you and the door, shoulders squared, chest heaving like he’d just gone ten rounds in the ring. You sat back on the hood, motionless, your hands shaking so slightly they might’ve gone unnoticed if not for the sudden stillness.

He turned to face you, but slower now. Like whatever fuse that had been lit was fizzling into something more dangerous—guilt, maybe. Or shame.

“You okay?” he asked, voice rough.

You didn’t answer right away. Didn’t look at him either. Just stared at the ground like if you focused hard enough, the earth might open and swallow you whole.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know he was gonna—Stanley never told me—”

“I figured that part out,” you bite, each word clipped and cold. Your arms were crossed tight over your chest like armor, jaw locked, shoulders stiff with barely-contained fury. “You think I’d be sitting out here if I knew your brother was trying to whore me out?"

Walter flinched. Not from the volume, but from the raw truth of it. He stepped closer, carefully, as if afraid he might break something else.

“I never would’ve let that happen,” he said, quieter now. “You believe me?”

You did. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he had to say it at all.

You swallowed hard, fists clenched in your lap. “Why does he always get to gamble things that aren’t his? And why does everyone keep letting him?”

Walter’s lips parted to answer—but then the door creaked open again.

“Hey!” Stanley’s voice pierced the silence like a knife through gauze—jarring, careless, like he hadn’t just tried gambling your dignity like another fucking poker chip. “Lion, you got any cash on you?”

He stepped out into the dusk light, rubbing the back of his neck and squinting like the world was doing him some kind of injustice. His shirt was untucked now, half of it wrinkled from where he’d been tugging at it. “Goddamn game turned south real fast, but I can win it back if I get back in—”

He stopped when he saw your face.

Or maybe it was Walter’s posture. Or the dead silence that had fallen like a dropped curtain.

But if Stanley noticed the tension in the air, he didn’t show it. He just gave a shrug and a half-laugh.

“C’mon,” he said, waving a hand like the past ten minutes hadn’t happened. “It’s not a big deal. Just a few bills, some chips, you know how it goes.”

He didn’t mention the bet. Didn’t even glance your way.

That was what did it.

You stood up slow. Too slow.

Stanley barely turned in time to see your hand whip through the air.

Crack.

Your palm met his cheek with a sound that echoed off the parking lot walls.

He stumbled a half-step back, blinking in confusion like he hadn’t seen it coming.

“The fuck was that for?” he barked, touching his face.

“Don’t you ever talk about me like I’m something you can put on the table,” you hissed, voice shaking. “I’m not yours. I was never yours.”

Stanley looked at Walter like he might intervene, but Walter didn’t move. His arms were crossed. His jaw was tight. His silence was loud enough to make Stanley flinch a second time.

Then Stanley scoffed and rubbed at the cherried red handprint on his cheek, ignoring the sharp sting. “Maybe it’s time you start earning your fuckin' keep if you plan on stickin' around,” he muttered, looking past Walter to you. “Ain’t no such thing as a free ride around here, sweetheart.”

Walter’s expression didn’t shift, but something in him went stiller than silence. Still like a snare trap tightening.

His voice came out low. Controlled.

“Dog. Person. Doesn’t matter to you, does it?” he said. “You’ll sell whatever you can—whoever you can—to cover your own ass.”

Stanley’s brows twitched.

Walter stepped forward once, not enough to crowd but enough to command. “I’ll tell you one thing right fucking now.” His jaw clenched hard enough to pulse. “She is off limits. She isn't yours. Not mine either. Not anyone’s to speak for. And you're an even bigger piece of shit than I thought for even daring to.”

For a second, Stanley just blinked.

Then the mask cracked—not into rage, but something uglier. Wounded pride. Pettiness in its rawest form.

“Oh, that’s what this is about,” he said, stepping back with a bitter laugh. “All this bark, and it’s over some roadside hussy?”

He looked between the two of you, mouth twisted. “Jesus, Lion. What, she gives you a sob story, spreads her legs, and now you’re what—pussywhipped? Thought I taught you better than to go getting soft.”

Walter moved so fast you barely saw it.

He didn’t hit him. He didn’t even raise a hand. But he stepped in close—chest to chest, breath to breath—and the look in his eyes could’ve stripped paint off a wall.

“Don’t talk about her like that. Don't you ever talk about her like that,” he said, voice like a fuse burning low, "choose your next words very carefully, big bro."

Stanley raised both hands like he was being martyred. “Alright, alright. Christ. You two deserve each other.”

He backed off, but his gaze lingered like rot—picking, calculating.

Walter didn’t move until he was sure Stanley was really done talking. Not just with his mouth, but with whatever damage he’d planned to deal.

Only then did he glance over at you. There was a flicker of apology in his eyes—not for what he’d said, but for the fact that you’d had to hear any of it.

You didn’t raise your voice. Didn’t have to.

“Give me the keys.”

Stanley blinked at you like you’d spoken a different language, his smug grin already fading. You took a step closer, hand out, palm flat—an edge to your voice so unfamiliar even Walter looked up. You weren’t shaking. You weren’t breathing heavily.

But you were done.

“Now.”

Stanley fumbled in his pocket and tossed the keys like they burned him. They hit your palm with a dull slap.

He tried to laugh it off. “Jesus, you two—”

“Shut the fuck up, man,” Walter muttered.

You didn’t look at either of them as you turned toward the car.

The parking lot was lit in halogen yellow and lined in cracked asphalt. It smelled like oil spills and baked gravel. Your footsteps echoed on the pavement, heavy with purpose. Walter followed, silent, the gravel crunching under his sneakers. Stanley trailed behind with an exaggerated sigh, hands in his pockets, stumbling a bit as he caught his foot on a parking stop.

Nobody said anything.

The slam of the car doors punctuated the quiet like gunfire—yours, then Walter’s, then Stanley’s as he collapsed into the backseat like it was just another night of heavy drinking.

You started the engine. The click of the ignition felt louder than it should have been. The radio, still on from earlier, crackled with static before fading into a low, buzzing hum of country rock. You turned it off.

Still, nobody spoke.

The world outside blurred into silhouettes—flickering strip mall signs, closed storefronts, busted streetlights. The kind of town that didn’t sleep so much as it coasted, lights dimmed, just waiting for the next fight to break out.

Walter stared out the passenger side window, face hollowed out by the shadows flickering past. His jaw was clenched so tight the muscle twitched.

In the rearview mirror, you caught glimpses of Stanley with his head leaned back, muttering something under his breath, too low to catch. Probably to himself. Probably to no one at all.

And even with all the windows rolled down, the air felt too thick to breathe.

The extended stay motel’s flickering sign came into view like a slow bruise bleeding into the dark.

You pulled into the lot hard enough to make the tires groan, the crunch of gravel under the wheels loud in the silence. The engine ticked as it cooled, but no one moved right away. The car was still, thick with tension. You could feel it in your teeth. In your throat.

Stanley got out first. Wordless. He didn’t slam the door, didn’t look back—just slouched his way toward the room next door to yours and Walter’s. The key jingled on the lanyard around his wrist as he unlocked it, his silhouette briefly backlit by the yellow-orange glow spilling from the room.

Then the door shut behind him like the end of a bad dream.

You didn’t move for a long moment.

Then opened your door and stepped out.

The night air hit you like a slap. Still warm from the day but heavy with dew, clinging to your skin. The buzz of a faulty street lamp hummed above like a mosquito in your ear. Somewhere a TV played behind thin motel walls, voices tinny and laughing at something you couldn’t see. Muffled laughter, a commercial jingle, the faint metallic scrape of someone’s ice machine coughing out cubes nearby.

Walter didn’t say anything. He just followed.

The door to your room creaked open under your hand. The stale motel air met you with the familiar scent of mildew, cleaning chemicals, and over-laundered sheets. The curtains were drawn, casting the room in a strange, shadowed hush. It was the kind of quiet that made your ears ring.

You stepped inside.

Walter closed the door behind you, slower this time. He lingered there for a moment, palm resting flat against the wood. His eyes stayed on it like maybe if he stared hard enough, he could undo everything.

You couldn’t keep it in anymore.

“I didn’t run away from one hell just to land in another.”

Walter looked up.

You weren’t yelling. You didn’t need to. Your voice was low, thick, shaking—not with fear. With fury. With heartbreak.

“I didn’t leave behind fists and screaming and broken glass just to end up with a man who lets someone bet me like a goddamn coin toss.”

He moved to speak.

“No,” you cut in, voice rising now. “You don’t get to say you didn’t know. You knew what Stanley was like. You’ve always known. And you brought me here anyway. You kept me here anyway.”

Walter’s face cracked open like glass under heat. Pain spread across it slowly, too slow to matter.

“He’s my brother,” he said again, but it was barely more than a whisper now. Like he knew how small it sounded.

“And what am I?” you asked, voice breaking. “Just a girl in the passenger seat? Someone to patch your hands after a fight? Sleep next to you in a bed too small for two people and pretend it’s enough?”

He winced. Hands twitching. “You’re not—you’re not just anything,” he said, hoarse. “You’re the only good thing I’ve got left.”

“Then act like it,” you said, almost pleading. “I know you’re trying, Walter. I know that. But trying doesn’t change the fact that I’m scared. Not of you. Never of you. But of what being around all this is turning me into. What it’s already turned you into.”

His eyes were glassy now. He dragged a hand over his mouth. “You don’t think I know that?”

“Then why aren’t you doing something? Why are you still letting him win just by existing?”

Walter sat down hard on the edge of the bed like his knees had given out. “Because if I don’t keep an eye on him, he’ll burn the world down,” he said. “And I can’t let him do that. Not again. Not after last time.”

Your breath caught.

He looked up at you, and something in his face—wet-eyed, clenched, hollow—made your chest twist.

“I’m not asking you to pick me over him,” you said quietly. “I’m asking you to stop choosing nothing. Because standing there and letting it happen again and again, that is a choice.”

Walter looked away. Down at his shaking hands. At the carpet. Anywhere but at you.

“Say something,” you whispered.

“I don’t know how to keep you both,” he said.

“You can’t,” you answered. “So I guess you do have to choose.”

The silence that followed didn’t feel like peace.

It felt like grief, sitting between you like the last breath of a dying thing.

The air in the motel room was suddenly too still, too stale. The hum of the wall A/C unit ticked like a faulty heartbeat. A muffled thump came from next door—Stanley, probably dropping his boots or throwing something against the wall—and neither of you flinched. You were too used to the sound of his chaos to react.

You stared at Walter. He couldn’t look at you. Not really.

So you moved.

Not fast. Not loud. Just…deliberately. Like every step cost you something.

You crossed the room to the far corner, where your backpack sat slumped and half-zipped on the floor beside the dresser. It had lived there for weeks now—always packed just enough, just in case. Your fingers were trembling when you reached for it. You didn’t need much. Toothbrush. Phone charger. Spare clothes. What mattered was that you were moving. That you weren’t staying still anymore.

The soft creak of the mattress behind you was the only sign Walter had even moved at all.

Then you reached up, just over the headboard, where the wall was stained slightly darker with sun-faded dust. A tiny silver pushpin held it in place—creased, delicate, one folded edge coming slightly undone from being flattened too many times.

The paper flower. The one he folded out of a napkin back at the diner.

You cradled it in your palm as carefully as if it were alive. The edges were soft with wear. The center was still sharp where he’d creased it with the side of his thumbnail.

Walter finally spoke.

“You’re not…leaving for good, are you?”

The question was small. Like he was trying not to frighten it by making it too real.

You didn’t answer right away. Just stood there, the flower in one hand, the weight of your backpack over one shoulder, and everything else too heavy to hold.

“I can’t be here anymore,” you said. Voice breaking. “Not like this. Not with him next door. Not when I won't be able to go a single night without thinking about what else he’s capable of.”

Walter flinched, just barely. But you saw it.

“You keep defending him,” you whispered. “And maybe that’s loyalty. Maybe that’s family. But if you can’t choose…then I’ll do it for you.”

You stepped forward and pressed the flower into his palm. His hand closed around it instinctively, but you didn’t linger.

“I’m not waiting for you to catch up,” you said. “I love you. God, I love you. But I will not stay and be collateral to another man’s mess. Not again.”

Tears burned, but you didn’t let them fall. Not yet.

Walter’s throat moved like he wanted to speak, wanted to fight—but all that came was silence.

And that silence told you everything.

The door shut behind you with the softest click.

No shouting. No last-ditch plea. Just that quiet, final sound that broke louder than glass.

The night air slapped your skin like a truth you couldn’t swallow. Humid. Heavy. It stuck in your throat as you walked down the motel’s cracked walkway, one flickering overhead bulb buzzing above like it couldn’t make up its mind about staying lit. Shadows from the railing stretched long across the concrete, dragging behind you like old ghosts.

Your backpack weighed nothing and everything.

You didn’t know where you were going. Just that it couldn’t be here.

Behind you, through the paper-thin walls, the room stayed quiet. Walter didn’t chase you. Didn’t open the door. Didn’t call your name. That, somehow, hurt more than any cruel word ever could.

The smell of motor oil and old cigarette butts hit your nose as you passed the parking lot. You blinked hard. Once. Twice. Didn’t cry. Not yet. There was no one here to see it anyway.

Just the sound of distant traffic and a vending machine humming like it might give up the ghost.

You paused when you reached the edge of the lot, turning once to look back.

The motel looked smaller now. Like it had never really been big enough to hold what you and Walter tried to build. You thought of the origami flower in his palm. The way his hands had always trembled a little, even when they were careful with you. The way he never once looked away when you cried, even if he never quite knew what to do about it.

You loved him.

But love didn’t fix everything.

Sometimes, love sat in the middle of the wreckage and whispered, I’m not enough to save us.

You wrapped your arms around yourself and started walking.

No plan. No ride. Just your own two feet and the kind of hurt that made you wish you could unzip your skin and step out of the ache.

You made it to the street before the tears came. Hot. Silent. You kept walking anyway.

Each step away felt like tearing muscle from bone.

You didn’t look back again.

[matrixfangs]

All That's Left Is Yours

Part II

Walter "Lion" Kaminski x fem!reader

summary: Walter Kaminski doesn't know how to be loved without bracing for impact. A washed-up fighter living out of motel rooms and underground leagues, he's spent years surviving hits—in the ring, from his brother, from the world. But when you, a runaway with a sharp mouth and a sharper gaze enters his orbit, everything starts to tilt. The closer you get, the more Walter fears what his hands—trained to hurt, never to hold—might do.

wc: 12.4k

a/n: Welcome back, masochists!! if you thought part one hurt, haha. anyway! here’s part 2, featuring: soft boys with shaky hands, found things that break, and a very ill-advised poker game. wear your seatbelt. don’t yell at me. (or do.) Big thank you to Liz @fuckoffbard for both beta reading and providing me with the speech Walter makes when he stands up to Stanley's bitch ass!!

warnings: emotional trauma, PTSD, chronic pain (arthritis), memory loss, abusive family dynamics, sibling codependency, toxic sibling relationship, past drug use (mentioned), past physical abuse (mentioned), canon-typical violence, fighting/violence, objectification, implied sexual coercion (non-graphic), betrayal, trauma bonding as a form of intimacy, hurt/comfort, unhealthy coping mechanisms, unsafe living conditions, sub!Walter, praise kink, unprotected sex, fingering, creampie, oral (m!receiving), emotional breakdowns, angst with smut, crying during sex, abandonment

likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated, please enjoy!!

Fic Masterlist/Main Masterlist

Part II: Winner Take Nothing

The motel was quiet in that early-morning way, the kind of quiet that felt borrowed—like it wouldn’t last.

You woke to the sound of the bathroom door clicking shut.

The bed beside you was still warm.

Your hand reached out instinctively, finding only the crease of a pillow and the faintest trace of his scent—soap and sweat and something deeper, something that clung to your skin like sleep.

You sat up, blinking hard. The bedside clock blinked 6:17 AM in angry red.

The faucet turned on.

Then off.

Then silence.

It wasn’t the kind of silence you trusted.

You swung your legs out from under the sheets, soft carpet warm beneath your bare feet. Walter hadn’t bothered with the lights. A dim beam of sun cut through the edge of the blackout curtain. You padded across the room and pressed your ear to the bathroom door.

You heard the ragged breath first. Then something else. Something wet. The soft, slow slap of skin against skin.

You should’ve turned back. Gave him privacy.

But something in your chest tightened, because it wasn’t just the sound of him getting off.

It was frustration.

Sharp. Muffled.

A low curse. The thunk of a closed fist on the counter.

“Shit—fuck—come on—”

You opened the door without knocking.

Walter jerked like you’d thrown a punch. He was standing in front of the sink, shirtless, boxers pushed down, one hand clenched painfully tight around himself, the other braced against the counter, flexing like he was trying to shake the pain out.

His face flushed deep—mortified, more than angry. “Jesus—fuck—I didn’t—”

“Hey.” You stepped in, voice gentle. “It’s okay.”

He turned half away, still holding himself, jaw tight with shame. “I didn’t mean for you to see this.” He couldn’t meet your eyes. “My fingers keep cramping. It’s stupid. It’s fine. I’ll get it—”

“Walter.”

He stopped.

Your voice softened. “You don’t have to touch yourself.”

He blinked.

You stepped in, closing the door quietly behind you. “That’s what I’m for.”

That broke something in him. Not in a way that hurt—just in the way that made him look at you like you’d said the one thing he didn’t know he needed to hear.

You reached for his wrist. “Let me?”

He nodded. Wordless. Eyes wide and hungry and aching.

You gently pulled his hand away. He let you. His cock was flushed and heavy, twitching against the cool air. You wrapped your fingers around him, slow and sure, and he groaned like it startled him.

“Jesus,” he breathed. “That already—fuck, baby—”

You started stroking him with practiced rhythm, watching the way his head dropped forward, mouth parting. His moans were soft, hesitant, like he wasn’t used to giving in.

“That’s it,” you whispered. “Just let go. Let me.”

His hips jerked. “Fuck,” he groaned. “Your hands—feels so good—”

Then, slowly, you sank to your knees in front of him.

Walter’s eyes widened, breath catching in his throat as he looked down at you—his hand tightening on the counter like he needed something to hold onto. His mouth opened slightly, lips parted, barely breathing through it. His eyes were hooded, heavy-lidded with sleep and pleasure, and he looked at you like you were a dream he wasn’t sure he deserved.

You looked up at him, still holding him in your palm. That moment stretched—silent, sacred.

And then he reached for your face. Cradled it in one trembling hand.

His thumb gently swiped across your cheekbone, slow and reverent. Like he couldn’t believe you were real. Like he needed to memorize you.

You held his gaze. Didn’t look away. Not once.

Then you parted your lips and spit.

A warm string of saliva landed on the head of his cock, mixing with the precum already beading there.

“Holy fuck,” he whispered, voice gone rough. “Jesus—fuck.”

You wrapped your hand around the base and smeared it in slow, deliberate circles—mixing it, stroking him from root to tip until he was glistening, slick and twitching in your palm.

Walter’s head dropped back. His chest was rising too fast, too rough.

“Baby…” he moaned. “You’re gonna kill me—”

You didn’t stop.

You didn’t look away.

And then you wrapped your lips around the weeping crown of his flushed cock.

He sucked in a breath—sharp, ragged—as your mouth sealed around him. His free hand slammed flat to the wall behind you as he exhaled a breathy, “fuuuuck.”

It hit you deep in your ears—like that sound was stitched straight into the base of your spine. Walter’s whole body twitched. One hand gripped the counter so tight his knuckles blanched, and the other hovered—hesitating—like he wanted to touch you but didn’t dare.

You flattened your tongue along the underside of his cock and eased forward, slow and steady, until he hit the back of your throat.

“Holy shit,” he gasped, hips bucking before he could stop himself.

You moaned around him—soft, pleased—and his knees buckled slightly.

He reached out, instinctively, grabbing the edge of the sink behind you like he needed something to anchor him. His head dropped forward, sweat-slick hair falling over his forehead, breath stuttering out of his chest.

“Baby,” he whimpered, so quiet. “Fuck—your mouth—your mouth’s perfect—”

You pulled back until just the head was in your mouth, then sank down again—slower, deeper, letting him feel all of you.

He whimpered. High and raw. His abs tensed and twitched, thighs shaking.

“Atta girl…” he breathed, his voice breaking at the edges. “That’s it. That’s—shit, just like that…"

You looked up at him, keeping eye contact as you started a rhythm. Not fast. Not rough. Just firm and deep and steady—dragging your lips down his length, letting your tongue swirl, feeling him pulse in your mouth.

You peeled your hand off one trembling thigh to cup his balls gently, rolling them in your palm with practiced care, the way you knew would drive him insane. 

And it does. 

His hips jolted again, sharper than last time. 

“Shit—sorry,” he gasped. “I didn’t mean to—fuck—I’m sorry—”

You patted the back of his thigh. Once.

Firm.

He froze.

You did it again.

Telling him everything he needed to know.

Walter groaned—loud—a sound torn straight from somewhere guttural. His head tilted back, jaw slack, eyes fluttering shut.

“Jesus Christ,” he choked out, rocking into your mouth like it physically hurt not to. “You want—fuck, baby, you want me to—”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. Could barely think.

You hummed low in your throat, the vibration making him shudder violently. His breath hitched. His thighs tightened. His mouth dropped open wider but no sound came out this time—just air, just disbelief.

“Atta girl…fuck, atta girl, just like that, you’re so good,” he babbled, voice thin and wrecked, as his hips began to roll gently, fucking into your mouth like it was instinct—like he was too far gone to stop.

You kept your grip steady, your throat soft, your eyes locked on his face like this was yours to claim.

And it was.

He wasn't going anywhere.

Not when he was already falling apart in your mouth, whimpering your name like it was the only thing keeping him from coming too fast.

But not yet.

You weren’t letting him finish.

Not until you said.

He was panting now.

Not breathing—panting.

Walter’s thighs trembled on either side of your face, tension coiled tight in his abdomen. His head had dropped again, lips parted, flushed from his chest to the tips of his ears. One hand gripped the counter behind him like it was the only thing keeping him upright. The other was buried in your hair—gently, reverently—thumb stroking along your temple in time with your pace, like he couldn’t help it.

Your mouth was slick, shiny, your chin dripping with spit and precum. You’d long since given up on staying clean—this wasn’t about that. It was about ruining him. Making sure the first time he came from your mouth would haunt every quiet morning and sleepless night after this.

You pressed your thighs together, whimpering quietly around him.

That sound made him groan—long and low. “Fuck, baby—fuck, you’re touching yourself? While you’re—Jesus—” He sounded delirious.

You didn’t stop. One hand still at the base of his cock, stroking in rhythm with your mouth. The other slipped beneath your panties, fingers working fast, messy, desperate. The more he squirmed, the wetter you got. The more his voice broke, the harder you chased that high for both of you.

“God, you look so good down there,” he rasped. “So fuckin’ pretty with my cock in your mouth…fuck, you were made for this…”

You moaned around him—deliberate. Loud.

He cursed again, jaw dropping.

The hand in your hair tightened just slightly. “Baby, please, I’m gonna—I can’t—fuck, I can’t hold it—”

His hips bucked. Just once. Hard enough that you gagged, eyes watering—but you didn’t stop. You wanted the tears, the wreckage, the string of drool now connecting your mouth to his skin when you pulled off just enough to swirl your tongue around the tip and then—

Back down.

Swallowing him whole.

He whimpered.

That’s all he could do. Just whimper.

Then it came.

“I’m gonna—” he choked, voice thick with panic. “Baby, I’m coming—gonna pull out—”

He tried.

He really did.

But you held him in place—both hands now on his thighs—and moaned.

And that was it.

His whole body locked up, shuddering, and he came with a cry that punched straight out of his chest.

“F-fuck—oh fuck—baby, oh my god—”

Warm, thick release filled your mouth. You swallowed greedily, messily, licking and sucking through it like you didn’t care how much he shook or gasped or begged. He was saying your name over and over—breathless, slurred, drunk on it—one hand trembling in your hair, the other still braced against the wall as his knees threatened to give out.

You sucked him through it. Every twitch, every drop. Milking him dry.

When you finally pulled off with a wet pop, you looked up—still on your knees, lips puffy, chest heaving.

He was staring down at you like he’d seen a ghost.

Or a goddess.

“…Jesus,” he whispered, wrecked. “What the fuck are you?”

His breathing was still ragged.

You kissed the corner of his hip bone, just below the stretch of his cross tattoo—ink faded and barely held on through scarred skin and years of sweat. The budded tip curved toward his ribs, the lower point dipping down low enough to kiss his waistband, and your fingers followed it like a prayer.

He twitched under your touch. Still trembling. Still panting like he’d been run through a war.

You leaned forward, tongue tracing a line up the tattoo’s spine. “You always make that much noise?”

Walter let out a breathy half-laugh. “Only when it’s…fuck, when it’s like that.”

You grinned against his skin. “So that’s a yes.”

He gave a little huff. “You’re a menace.”

“Me?” You looked up at him, hand sliding lazily up the back of his thigh, tracing the sharp cut of his muscle, the other wiping the drool from your chin, “You were the one whimpering like a virgin.”

His face went redder than you’d ever seen it.

“God, don’t say that—”

You stood slowly, dragging your hands up his torso as you rose. He didn’t stop you. Just stood there, flushed and softening, eyes still heavy-lidded with post-orgasm haze. His hand hovered at your waist like he didn’t know if he was allowed to hold you yet.

You leaned into him. “You didn’t wake me,” you said softly.

His expression faltered.

You cupped his jaw. “You should’ve.”

He looked away. “…Didn’t wanna bother you.”

“Bother me?”

His voice went quiet. “I’m not good at asking for help. Never have been.”

You traced his jaw with your thumb, gently turning his face back to yours. “You’re allowed to be rough with me, remember?”

His eyes met yours. Hesitant. Warm.

“But you’re also allowed,” you added, softer, “to need things. To ask.”

He swallowed hard. “I didn’t think—I just figured I’d take care of it and crawl back into bed before you even noticed.”

“You really think I wouldn’t notice if you were hurting?”

His silence said it all.

You ran your fingers across his cross again—soft this time. Reverent.

“You’re not alone anymore, Walter.”

At that, he reached for you.

Slow. Gentle. Both arms coming around your waist as he buried his face in the crook of your neck, still shirtless, still raw. You could feel the rise and fall of his chest. The way he breathed you in like he didn’t know what to do with kindness that didn’t cost him something.

You hugged him back.

And after a few quiet seconds, you pulled back, kissed his flushed cheek, and whispered, “Next time you wanna jack off, maybe start by waking me up.”

That earned a hoarse, surprised laugh.

“Fuckin’ menace,” he mumbled again—but this time, his voice was softer.

Grateful.

The diner wasn’t anything special.

It sat on the edge of a truck stop, caught between nowhere and someplace smaller. Vinyl booths. A counter lined with barstools older than either of you. The windows were fogged from the fryer, from the cold outside and the heat of bacon and home fries curling into the air like steam off wet skin.

You were tucked into a booth by the window. The Formica table glowed pale green under the flickering overhead light, and Walter sat across from you, legs sprawled obnoxiously far into your side—half on purpose, half because the man didn’t know how to sit in a chair like a normal human being.

He had a blue plastic straw hanging from his mouth, chewing the end like it had personally wronged him. His flannel shirt was unbuttoned over a worn hoodie, sleeves shoved to the elbows, a soft buzz of stubble grazing the sharp line of his jaw. The morning light hit the high points of his face, making his eyes look less blue and more stormy-grey, like wet asphalt after a rain.

You kicked his shin under the table.

He jolted. “The hell was that for?”

“You’re takin’ up half the damn floor, Kaminski.”

He chewed on the straw a second longer before pulling it from his lips with a grin. “I’m long.”

You snorted. “You’re not even that tall.”

His smile twitched. “I’m five-foot-eight.”

“Exactly.” You raised an eyebrow. 

“That’s plenty tall,” he insisted, feigning offense. “Ain’t about how high your head sits—it’s about how you hold yourself sweetheart.”

“Oh, you’re one of those ‘it’s about the vibe’ guys,” you teased, leaning your cheek into your fist. “This some kinda Napoleon complex in flannel?”

Walter scoffed, flipping over his empty coffee mug to signal for a refill. “It’s statistical. Practical. I read somewhere five-eight’s the average for guys in the U.S.”

You narrowed your eyes. “You read that?”

“Yeah.”

“In what? A gas station bathroom?”

He gave you a flat look. “You done?”

“For now.” You reached across and snagged a sausage link from his plate.

He watched you eat it with mock betrayal. “You’re stealin’ from me now?”

“I’m borrowing,” you said through your bite. “Temporarily appropriating your resources.”

“You know,” he said, pointing his straw at you like a weapon. “I let you insult my stature, I let you mock my honorable research practices, and now you’re takin’ my food. What’d I do to deserve this abuse?”

“You brought me to a diner and looked at me with that face.”

He blinked. “My face?”

“Yeah. It’s infuriating.”

His grin broke through, helpless and boyish. “Jesus Christ.”

You both laughed, easy and full, echoing off the fake-leather booths and linoleum tile.

He looked at you like he was trying to memorize your smile.

Walter, when he wasn’t bracing himself, was something you didn’t know you’d needed. He looked softer here. His body still bore the marks of war—split knuckles, bruised forearms, those forever-healing cuts near his collarbone—but his shoulders had lowered. His posture was loose. That constant fight-or-flight tremor in his jaw was gone, even if just for the morning.

You caught him staring.

“What?”

He shrugged. “Nothin’. You just—you’re somethin’ else when you laugh.”

“Something else like cute?”

“Something else like dangerous.”

You smiled into your mug.

A waitress came by, topped off your coffee with the burned smell of bottom-of-the-pot brew, and Walter reached for the creamer. Then hesitated.

He pushed it toward you instead.

“Don’t let me forget again,” he said, tapping the little packet with one finger. “You always make that face when your coffee’s too bitter.”

You blinked.

“That face,” he added, making an exaggerated grimace and scrunching his nose like he’d swallowed battery acid.

You burst out laughing.

He just looked at you with a shit-eating grin.

And for a second, the whole world narrowed to this: a chipped mug, a stolen fry, your knees touching under the table.

“Hey,” he said after a while, stabbing at his pancake. “Wanna split?”

“You offering because you’re sweet, or because you already ate your hashbrowns and now you’re eyeing mine?”

“…both.”

You slid half your plate his way.

He looked at you with faux seriousness. “Gonna marry you someday.”

You paused, fork in midair.

He blinked, like the words had just fallen out of his mouth. “I was kidding. That was—Jesus, that was a joke.”

“Sure it was.”

“I mean—I meant it like—”

“You’re digging yourself deeper, Kaminski.”

He groaned and dropped his head against the booth. “Jury, please disregard my mouth.”

You reached out, wiped a smudge of whipped butter from the corner of his lips.

He went still.

Then you licked it off your thumb.

Walter’s eyes blew wide. The tips of his ears went red. His whole neck flushed like sunburn.

“I hate you,” he whispered.

“No you don’t.”

“…Yeah. I really fuckin’ don’t.”

And for one perfect morning, you were just two people in a booth. Laughing. Flirting. Pretending you didn’t know how it would end.

Because for now—just now—nothing hurt. And nothing would.

You noticed it first when he tried to pick up his mug again.

Walter’s hand trembled, fingers slipping slightly against the ceramic. Not enough to spill, but enough that he had to brace the bottom with his other hand. His jaw flexed. No comment. Just a quick look down, like maybe if he didn’t acknowledge it, neither would you.

You didn’t say anything.

Not yet.

The rest of the meal passed like a held breath. Conversation dipped, shifted. Laughter still lingered in the space between you, but now it felt thinner. You kept stealing glances at his hands—swollen knuckles, fingers flexing subtly in pain. He winced once while cutting a pancake. Tried to hide it by drinking more coffee.

Outside the diner windows, the wind pushed hard against the glass, rattling the loose pane near your booth. The neon sign that read All Day Breakfast buzzed faintly above the door. A waitress refilled mugs with a practiced hand while Elvis crooned low from the jukebox in the corner. You could smell syrup and cheap coffee and the faint sting of grease coming off the grill.

A couple across the aisle bickered gently over a crossword. Behind the counter, a cook flipped eggs one-handed. The bell above the door chimed every few minutes, and every time, Walter’s eyes flicked toward it like a reflex honed by too many years of needing to know who’s coming.

He was trying to read the menu when the next clue hit. His eyes scanned the page once. Twice. Then again. His brow furrowed like he was doing math, not trying to decide what flavor of milkshake he wanted.

You leaned in, resting your elbow on the table, chin in hand. “You okay?”

Walter blinked, then nodded—too fast. “Yeah, just…forgot what I was looking for.”

Your stomach sank.

He flipped the menu shut like it didn’t matter. “I’ll just get the usual,” he told the waitress when she came by.

“You don’t have a usual,” you said softly once she was gone.

He gave you a lopsided smile. “Guess I do now.”

It was easier not to push. Not here. But your throat felt tight, and your fingers itched to grab him by the face and make him look at you. Not in anger. In desperation. Because the man sitting across from you should have been wearing gloves in a ring somewhere televised—not icing his knuckles in a motel and forgetting what he was reading halfway through.

You bit your tongue so hard it ached.

You didn’t say his brother’s name.

Didn’t say Stanley.

Didn’t say, “You should’ve gone pro. You should’ve had a manager, a trainer, a doctor, a fucking shot. Not a leech bleeding you dry until your memory fades like old bruises.”

Instead, you reached across the table and tapped the corner of his plate. “You gonna eat that?”

He blinked out of whatever hole he’d been slipping into. “Huh?”

You smiled gently. “Your bacon. Looks lonely.”

He huffed a soft laugh, something breathy and light, and pushed it toward you. “What’s mine is yours.”

You took it without looking up, chewing slowly, chewing past the ache behind your ribs. He watched you eat with that same fond look he always tried to hide when he thought you weren’t looking—elbows leaning on the table, his thumb absently rubbing the edge of his napkin like he needed to stay grounded.

Walter. Twenty-five.

Fighting for scraps. Fingers already failing. Memory starting to fade.

And every part of it—every limp tendon, every sore joint—traced back to a brother who gambled on him like a dog.

You reached under the table, found his hand, and squeezed.

He looked down, startled for just a second—then smiled.

He squeezed back.

The waitress dropped off the check and left two mints, their wrappers crinkling like brittle leaves between your coffee cups. You watched Walter turn one over in his palm, slow and thoughtful, like it was something precious and not just a complimentary afterthought.

He was quiet again.

Not withdrawn, not exactly—but softer. Like his mind had tucked itself into a corner and was still trying to work out something unspoken. He cracked his neck and flexed his fingers beneath the table, thinking you wouldn’t notice. You noticed.

“You working today?” you asked, tone light, like it was just something to fill the air.

Walter nodded. “Yeah. Factory’s got a rush order goin’. Need to make numbers before Friday.”

You blinked. “Sewing?”

He gave a sheepish grin. “Yeah. Been there a while.”

You were quiet for a moment. “Does it help?”

He paused, a wrinkle of confusion between his brows.

“The arthritis,” you clarified.

That caught him. His mouth parted like he might lie—but something in your face, or maybe the fact that you already knew, made him drop it.

“No,” he admitted. “Makes it worse.”

“Then why—”

“Pays in cash,” he said simply. “No questions, no paperwork, no background checks.”

And suddenly it made sense. The cuts on his fingers that weren’t from fights. The slow, stiff way he sometimes curled his hands into fists. The shaking. The way he wore gloves even when it wasn’t cold out.

“They got me on the single-stitch machines. Old ones. Manual pedal, no assist. Good for precision, but rough on joints.” He shrugged, then tried to laugh it off. “Boss thinks it builds character.”

You clenched your jaw so hard it clicked.

“Sometimes I forget the pattern in the middle of a line,” Walter added, softer now. “Gotta start over. Or fake it. Sometimes I just…stall.”

He didn’t say how that felt. Didn’t need to.

You could picture it clear as day—him hunched over a rattling machine in some cracked-tile sweatshop, shoulder blades pulled tight beneath a hoodie, fighting against pain and memory loss just to meet a quota. All because someone else gambled his future away.

You wanted to scream. Or throw the table. Or track down Stanley and make him feel everything his brother had swallowed just to survive.

Instead, you slipped your hand across the table and took the mint from his fingers. You tore the wrapper open and held it out. “Open.”

Walter blinked. “What?”

“Your mouth, Kaminski. C’mon. You look like you need something sweet.”

He gave a quiet laugh, head tipping back, and opened his mouth. You placed the mint on his tongue like it was a communion wafer, then smiled when he raised both brows and playfully over-exaggerated the act of savoring it.

“You gonna give me a treat every time I look pitiful?” he teased, still rolling it across his tongue.

“Maybe,” you said, grinning back. “Guess I do now.”

He laughed again—real this time, not hollow or forced. Then he did something simple. Barely anything at all.

He reached for his napkin and folded it carefully into the shape of a flower—something lopsided and silly, made from cheap paper and calloused fingers that couldn’t quite bend the way they used to. But when he finished, he pushed it across the table and said, “That’s for being kind. Even when I don’t know how to ask for it.”

You stared at it for a second, something hot blooming in your throat.

“Thank you,” you whispered.

Walter leaned back, his smirk lazy, but his eyes warm. “You better keep that. That’s a one-of-a-kind Kaminski original.”

You pocketed it.

You wouldn’t throw it out.

Not now. Not ever.

Not when it said so much with so little.

It’s close to midnight when you hear the lock click.

Not loud—nothing ever is with him. But there’s a stutter in the rhythm. A pause. Like even the key didn’t want to turn tonight.

The door creaks open on its hinges, a long, low moan that makes your teeth ache. The kind of sound that feels too intimate for strangers and too sad for lovers. You don’t lift your head right away. Just lie there on your side, spine pressed to the cold motel wall, eyes half-lidded, watching his silhouette move across the room like smoke.

It’s dark, save for the flickering TV glow—muted and aimless, playing some nature documentary on repeat. The kind where every animal moves in slow motion and the voiceover too soft to register as human. It casts the room in washed-out flashes: the glint of the door handle as it shuts, the faded wallpaper peeling at the edges, the dull gleam of condensation sweating down the motel mini fridge.

Walter doesn’t say a word.

He drops his canvas bag by the dresser with a thump that’s heavier than it should be. Then he peels off his hoodie like it’s clinging to him, the cotton catching on the scabbed-over scrapes at his elbow. You see the way his muscles roll beneath the shirt beneath—tight, fatigued, like elastic stretched past its limit. His shoulders are hunched up high, all tension and bone.

He smells like a long day—sweat dried into fabric, a faint trace of oil from the machines at the sewing floor, something acrid underneath it like old blood or rust. It hits the air the second he moves past the bed, and you catch yourself inhaling like it might tell you how bad the shift really was.

His knuckles are raw again.

You track the movement of his hand as he kneels in front of the mini fridge. There’s a scrape of plastic, then the soft click as he opens the little door. He pauses, crouched low, elbows resting on his knees. There’s something cracked about his posture—like he’s been put together wrong tonight, joints out of order.

He reaches in.

Not much in there—just what little you’ve both managed to scrounge together. A half-eaten apple in a napkin. An old packet of butter. Two sodas. He grabs one and sits back on his haunches.

Then you see it.

His right hand shakes as he tries to twist the cap. Just a tremor at first—barely noticeable in the low light. But then the tremor grows. He tries to mask it with pressure, holding the bottle tighter, twisting harder. The joint at the base of his thumb gives a nasty little jerk, and the plastic cap resists him with a pitiful squeak.

You can see it all from the bed. The way his jaw clenches. The way he drops his gaze, ashamed to even be witnessed failing.

He tries again.

Fails again.

You close the book that’s been resting open on your chest. Your heartbeat’s already picking up, tuned to the tension in the room like it’s vibrating through the walls.

“Let me help,” you say softly, careful not to startle.

He doesn’t look at you.

Still crouched, still clutching that soda like he could will it open if he just tried harder, Walter lets the silence hang. His back is to you now—curved like a question mark, the fabric of his thin undershirt stretched across shoulders pulled too tight. One shoulder blade twitches, subtle but telling. His fingers flex. The bottle gives a weak, hollow squeak in his grip.

“I’ve got it,” he says, voice dull and low, like he’s answering something deeper than your words.

“I know,” you reply gently, not rising from the bed yet. “But I want to.”

That gets something. Not a flinch, not quite. But his posture stiffens like the words grazed something too tender.

His voice is quiet, but the edge is there. “You shouldn’t have to.”

“I want to,” you say again, slower this time. The quietest insistence.

He still doesn’t face you, but you see his head dip an inch. The fingers of his left hand come up to press at the creases of his right palm—almost like a stretch, almost like a plea. He tries again, twisting the cap with all the force his failing joints will allow. It slips. His grip falters. He mutters something under his breath that doesn’t make it past his teeth.

The soda falls.

It hits the carpet with a muted thunk and rolls toward the bed. He watches it go. Just watches it.

You move.

You rise to your feet and cross the room slowly, not touching him yet, not crouching beside him. Just standing there, waiting for him to let you in.

“Walter…”

“I don’t want help.”

There’s a little crack in the words. A break that catches like glass underfoot. Then, sharper:

“I don't want help,” he reiterates, louder this time. “I want to do it myself.”

His voice echoes louder than the small space should allow. The air seems to hold it, trap it, then stretch it until it hurts.

You take a breath.

“I know,” you murmur. “But—”

“I said I’ve got it, damn it!”

It rips out of him like a whipcrack—fast and bitter and louder than anything he’s said to you before. And the second it lands, the second it echoes back into the hollow of the room, his face caves in.

He blinks, stunned at himself.

“Shit,” he mutters, backing up a half-step like he wants to disappear into the carpet. “Shit, I didn’t mean that.”

His hands rise, fingers curling against his temples, pressing in like he’s trying to squeeze the moment out of his head. The tremor is worse now. Full-hand shaking, like his bones are vibrating loose under his skin.

“I didn’t mean it,” he says again, more broken this time. “I just—fuck—I’m so tired.”

His voice crumbles mid-word.

“I’m so fucking tired,” Walter says, barely above a whisper now. The fight drains out of him all at once, like a string snapped behind his ribs. “I didn’t mean to yell. I just…I can’t get my hands to work. My memory’s been shit lately. I keep…I keep forgetting where I put things. What day it is. What you said two minutes ago.”

He’s shaking, and not just in his hands now—his whole body’s doing this quiet tremble, like his bones don’t know how to hold him anymore. He shifts his weight to his heels but loses balance, so he steadies himself on the mini fridge. His knuckles knock against the side with a dull thunk.

You move before he can apologize again.

One soft step forward, then another.

You lower yourself until you’re kneeling in front of him, eye-level, and reach up—slow, deliberate—to place your palm on his chest.

“Hey,” you murmur.

His gaze is somewhere over your shoulder, jaw locked, lashes fluttering from the effort of not crying. He swallows, and it’s audible in the quiet of the room. A thick, dry sound.

You press your other hand to the side of his face, thumb brushing the faint stubble along his cheek.

“Walter.”

You say his name like it means something. Like it’s enough.

He finally looks at you.

And just like that, he breaks.

His whole frame folds forward like something caved in his chest. You catch him instinctively, arms wrapping around his back as his forehead finds the crook of your neck and rests there—hot, damp, his breath unsteady. One hand fists in the fabric of your shirt, not pulling, just holding. Needing.

“I can’t sleep,” he breathes. “Every time I do, I see the ring. I hear the bell. I feel the hits coming and I can’t fucking move. I wake up and I’m still in it. Still getting punched. Still losing.”

You stroke the back of his head, slow and steady, your fingers threading through sweat-mussed hair. His shirt damp near the collar. Smells like machine grease and old detergent and something uniquely him—salt and skin and heat.

“I forgot my locker combination at work today,” he goes on, shame thick in his voice. “Had to ask the floor manager to open it for me. First time in four years I couldn’t remember. And my fucking hands—” He pulls them up between you, trembling hard now, like leaves in the wind. “They won’t stop doing this. I can’t thread a needle. Can’t even hold a pen right. You think anyone wants a fighter who can’t make a goddamn fist?”

You guide his shaking hands to your chest. Cover them with your own.

“They want you,” you whisper.

His breath stutters again.

“I don’t wanna be like this.”

“You’re not broken,” you say firmly. “You’re hurting.”

And he lets himself sob then. Silent, body-wrecking cries that wrack his ribs. You hold him like he’s yours to hold. Like nothing he says or does or forgets could make you let go.

The tears don’t last long.

Walter’s never been someone who lets himself cry for long. But when he does, it’s like something sacred—something buried too deep to touch without bleeding. So when his shoulders stop shaking, when his breath evens out enough to speak, he pulls back just a little—not far, just enough to look at you.

His eyes are red-rimmed, lashes wet, cheeks still damp in streaks. But his mouth is soft now. Unguarded. A line across his lips where his jaw used to be clenched.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he murmurs.

“You didn’t.”

“Didn’t mean to yell at you, either.”

You reach up, swipe your thumb gently beneath one eye, then the other. “I know.”

His hands are still resting on your chest beneath your palms, warmer now, less tense. His fingers twitch like he’s not sure what to do with them. Like he still expects them to betray him.

You feel the urge before you even realize it—lean in and press your lips to the center of his brow. He goes very still. Doesn’t speak. But his fingers tighten, just slightly, bunching the hem of your shirt between them.

“I don’t like needing help,” he admits quietly.

“I know.”

“I hate feeling like a burden.”

“You’re not.”

His eyes flutter closed. His head tilts forward until his forehead brushes yours. The silence between you stretches again, but it’s different now—full of breath and blood and the knowledge of how close pain and comfort live side by side.

“I’ll get better,” he says softly, more to himself than to you. “I just need time.”

You nod.

“And rest,” you add.

That earns you a tired, almost-smile. “You trying to mother me?”

You cock your head. “Would it work?”

A pause.

“...Probably not.”

This time, the laugh you share is real—quiet and cracked around the edges, but real. And when he finally lets you help him up, when he lets you guide him toward the bed and ease him onto the mattress, you can tell he’s not letting go out of weakness. He’s letting go because—for once—he can. Because he's allowing himself to. 

You don’t leave his side the whole night.

You curl around him, one arm beneath his neck, the other draped across his stomach, palm spread flat over the trembling rise and fall of his breath. You let him be held.

And when he finally falls asleep, deep and still and quiet…

You stay awake a little longer.

Just to be sure.

Because if the world insists on wearing him down to splinters, then fine—you’ll be the one who gathers the pieces and whittles him back into something whole.

You weren’t supposed to be there.

The car smelled like hot vinyl and the old fast food wrappers Stanley insisted he’d clean out weeks ago. You had your knees pulled up to your chest in the passenger seat, cracked window letting in a breeze thick with summer sweat and exhaust. It was early evening, but the sun was still clinging to the rooftops like a slow bleed, casting everything in a dull gold that made even the parking lot shimmer.

Stanley had said it would take fifteen minutes. Quick in and out. Just a friendly meet-up with a guy he “used to know.”

Walter had gone with him, jaw tight, fists in his hoodie pocket. He hadn't wanted to bring you—hadn't even wanted to come, really—but Stanley had a way of pulling people behind him like storm currents. That low, snide charm. The confident grin that always seemed to promise this time would be different.

Fifteen minutes turned into twenty-five.

You shifted, checked your phone. No service. No texts. Just the occasional shout from inside the low-slung building they’d disappeared into—some half-legal dive pretending to be a private club. The windows were fogged, too dark to see through. The sign above the door buzzed dimly in green neon: NOIR ROOM.

You hadn’t been inside. Hadn’t planned to be.

Not until the yelling started.

You heard Walter’s voice first, sharp and low—cutting off something Stanley had said. Then laughter. Not the fun kind. The kind with teeth.

Curiosity turned to dread real fast.

You slid out of the car and approached the building slowly. The door was cracked open just enough to let the heat and cigarette smoke pour out, along with the muffled rise and fall of voices. You peeked inside.

There was a poker table set up near the back, ringed with men in folding chairs and sweat-stained button-downs. Someone had turned on an oscillating fan that clicked every time it passed over the table. The whole place smelled like stale beer and ashtrays that hadn’t been emptied in days.

Stanley was in the middle, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled, grinning like he owned the place. His face was flushed—either from the whiskey or the string of wins he was on. He had a stack of chips piled in front of him like he was untouchable.

Walter was off to the side, arms crossed, leaning against the wall. He looked tense, but quiet. Watchful. He saw you in the doorway before anyone else did. His eyes widened, subtle but sharp. A warning.

You started to back away. But that’s when you heard Stanley speak.

“C’mon, boys. One more round. Let’s make it interesting.”

Someone jeered. Someone else tapped a beer bottle against the edge of the table.

And then the man across from him leaned forward. Big guy. Sharp suit. Slicked-back hair. He smiled like a shark.

“Interesting, huh?”

Stanley grinned wider. His voice slurred a little now. “I got a hot streak you wouldn’t believe.”

Walter took a step forward. “Stan—”

“Relax,” Stanley muttered. “I know what I’m doing.”

Famous last words.

Walter was the one who tugged your elbow.

You didn’t protest.

“C’mon,” he muttered, barely above the noise of the card shuffles and slurred jokes. His fingers grazed your wrist—not quite a grip, not quite a plea—but enough to make your stomach knot. “Let’s wait outside.”

You followed without a word.

The club’s door creaked behind you as you stepped back into the heavy heat of early night. Streetlights flickered lazily overhead, insects humming beneath them like static. The buzz of conversation and glass clinks inside muffled behind the cracked door. Walter exhaled hard and leaned against the hood of the car, stretching his neck with a pop and running a hand through his sweat-matted hair.

“God, I hate this,” he muttered, knuckles resting on the car roof. “Hate this shit. Every time it’s the same.”

You didn’t ask what he meant. You knew.

Instead, you climbed up beside him, perched on the warm hood with your legs swinging slightly. “Thought you weren’t even supposed to be here,” you teased softly, trying to lighten it. “Weren’t you gonna stay home and nap for fourteen hours?”

“Should’ve,” he grumbled, but you caught the twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Could’ve used it.”

A few moments passed in silence. A car drove by with its bass turned too high. Somewhere in the next lot over, a dog barked and wouldn’t stop. You could still hear the faintest hum of conversation inside—cards slapping on wood, a laugh here and there, a sharper voice rising before getting swallowed again.

You stretched your legs out in front of you, crossing your ankles. The hood of the car was still warm from the day, humming low through the denim of your jeans. Walter glanced over at you sideways, like he was trying not to smile again.

“You always sit like that?” he asked, voice low and a little amused.

You tilted your head. “Like what?”

He nodded toward your legs. “Like you’re on a damn front porch somewhere, not sittin’ on a rusted-out hood in a parking lot behind a place called Noir Room.”

“Maybe I’m making it romantic,” you said, with a shrug. “Some of us have an imagination.”

“Oh, yeah?” he chuckled. “You romanticizing this?”

You smiled. “Trying.”

His laugh was small but real, and the sound of it made your chest feel too tight for a second. He rolled his shoulder, leaned his head back, and let the streetlight catch his profile—jaw all sharp lines, the bruises on his cheekbone gone yellow at the edges now.

“I’m not good at this,” he said after a beat, quieter. “The sittin’ still thing.”

You gave him a look. “You’ve been sittin’ still for like five minutes.”

“Longest I’ve gone in a while.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I dunno. Just feels different with you here.”

The words slipped out and then just…stayed there. Weightless. Barely tethered.

You didn’t press. You just watched him, heart skipping sideways in your chest.

Walter reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled something out. A quarter. He held it up between two fingers and flicked it toward you.

You caught it midair.

“You keep flippin’ it when you’re thinkin’ too hard,” he said. “Figured you’d want one of your own.”

You stared at it—just a plain old quarter, ridged edges worn smooth in places—but it felt heavier than it should’ve.

“That’s stupid,” you said, and your voice came out way softer than you meant it to.

“Yeah, well,” he muttered, getting up, brushing his palms off on his thighs. “I am.”

You looked up at him, and he paused before stepping away. The parking lot light silhouetted him, made the angles of him softer, somehow—like he’d been carved down just enough to let the world in.

“I’m gonna take a leak,” he said, slipping his fingers into his front pockets, thumbs hooked over the denim lip. “Try not to fall in love with me while I’m gone.”

You snorted, biting down on a grin, but he leaned in before you could reply—close enough that you could smell the smoke on his collar and the warmth of him beneath it.

Then, even softer:

“Or do. I wouldn’t mind.”

He walked off before you could think of anything to say back.

Inside the Noir Room, the air had thickened.

Smoke hung low over the table, curling from cheap cigars and half-dead cigarettes balanced on the edges of ashtrays. The oscillating fan clicked in its lazy rotation, but it didn’t help. Sweat slicked the back of Stanley’s neck, clinging to the collar of his shirt like it had grown there.

He was grinning too hard. That sharp, mean kind of grin that said he’d already won in his mind.

��Let’s make this last one interesting,” he said again, louder this time, slurring just enough that the vowels dragged. “I got one more in me, boys. You wanna walk out of here with something to write home about, right?”

Across the table, the man in the suit—DeSantis, they called him—watched without blinking. His pile of chips was sizable. Bigger than Stanley’s. But Stanley had swagger and booze and the high of three solid rounds stacked behind him.

He was reckless. And everyone knew reckless men were either lucky or stupid. And they all wanted to see which.

The dealer didn’t look up. Just started the next round.

Stanley slapped a hundred down, then another. Then the rest of his chips, pushing them into the center like he was still at the top of the mountain.

“Raise,” he barked, pulling the last of his cash from his wallet. “Let’s go big, baby.”

DeSantis leaned back, sipping his drink. “That all you’ve got?”

Stanley laughed, eyes gleaming. “Oh, I’ve got plenty. You just don’t know it yet.”

“Convince me.”

The table quieted.

Stanley’s hand hovered over his pocket. He didn’t have anything else. No car, no property, no IOU anyone in this room would take seriously.

But he had you. Not as a person. Not as someone real and breathing and waiting outside. He had you in the way someone like Stanley thinks they have someone.

He leaned in, tone dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “I got a girl. Real pretty. Tight little thing. Sticking around like she’s already mine.”

The table shifted. One of the men snorted. Another rolled his eyes. But DeSantis didn’t flinch. He just swirled the ice in his glass.

“Collateral?”

Stanley grinned. “Call it what you want. Just don’t say I never gave you nothin’.”

The silence that followed felt longer than it was. The air went still.

DeSantis reached into his coat and set a fat stack of hundreds on the table, placing them carefully, deliberately. His voice was cool, unreadable.

“Call.”

Stanley froze for a second. A flicker of doubt cracked through the drunk bravado, but he kept smiling. “It’s a joke, man. C’mon.”

DeSantis didn’t blink. “I’m not laughing.”

Someone at the table coughed. A chair creaked. The dealer looked up at last.

Stanley’s smile faltered. Just a little.

Then DeSantis added, without changing his tone: “She’s not yours to bet? Then fold.”

And that—that—was the trap.

Stanley couldn’t fold. Not in front of a room full of men who’d watched him swagger in like he owned the fucking place. Not with pride on the table. So he picked up his cards with a smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes and said:

“Let’s play.”

The cards slapped down like thunderclaps.

One by one, the dealer flipped them, the room leaning in with every reveal. A low chorus of mutters swirled through the smoke as hands tightened around beers and arms folded tighter across chests. Stanley’s grin wavered, then firmed—his poker face slipping back on like a bad habit.

He had two jacks in his hand. One red, one black. He was praying for a third. He was praying for anything that looked like luck.

Across the table, DeSantis watched in eerie stillness. He hadn’t moved since placing his stack of hundreds in the pot. His face was stone. His cards, untouched.

The flop came down.

Eight of hearts. King of clubs. Jack of spades.

Stanley’s heart leapt. He had two Jacks. One more face card, one more pair—and he’d have a full house. He shifted in his seat, swallowing the surge of adrenaline, trying not to show how it thrilled him.

DeSantis raised a brow, just slightly.

The next card: a Queen of diamonds.

The table exhaled like a single creature.

“Fuckin’ hell,” someone whispered.

Stanley’s knuckles whitened on the edge of the table. He leaned in, eyes flicking between the pot and his opponent. DeSantis didn’t blink.

The river card came.

Ten of hearts.

Stanley’s eyes danced. King, Queen, Jack, Ten. He had a straight.

“Holy shit,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. He sat back, smug, like the world had righted itself in his favor again. “That’ll do just fine.”

He turned his cards over with a flourish, letting the table drink it in: Two Jacks.

“Three-of-a-kind,” he said, voice loud, cocky. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

DeSantis didn’t react right away. He reached for his drink, took a slow sip, then set it down without a sound.

Then he placed his cards on the table like they meant nothing.

Queen of hearts. Queen of spades.

There was a beat of silence.

Someone coughed.

Someone else muttered, “Oh, shit.”

Stanley blinked. “Wait—what?”

The dealer nodded, monotone. “Full house. Queens over Jacks.”

Stanley just sat there.

His hand still rested on the edge of the table, hovering beside a stack of chips that wasn’t his anymore.

DeSantis tapped a finger once against the felt. “You just lost.”

Stanley’s grin evaporated. “No, hang on—hang on, we didn’t say this was real. That whole thing about the girl, that was just—”

“You made the bet,” DeSantis said flatly. “We played. You lost.”

Stanley looked around like someone else might step in, someone might laugh and call it a bluff, say the whole thing was a joke.

But no one did.

The dealer gathered the cards. The chips disappeared into DeSantis’s pile. And the money—the thick band of hundreds—got tucked neatly back into his coat.

Stanley was still sitting there, stunned and hollowed out, when the man added:

“I expect delivery. Tonight.”

Then DeSantis stood, adjusted his cuffs, and walked out—like the matter had already been settled.

Because to him, it had.

You were still perched on the hood of the car, flipping the coin Walter gave you—still replaying what he’d said before slipping inside to use the bathroom—when the door creaked open behind you.

You didn’t hear the footsteps at first. Just the click of a lighter, then the slow exhale of cigarette smoke carried on the wind.

“You must be her,” a man’s voice said, low and slick and sleazy like motor oil.

You looked up.

He was standing a few feet away, tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a slate-gray suit that might’ve been expensive once, now worn thin at the elbows. His hair was slicked back with something too glossy, and he smiled without warmth—like a monster wearing the skin of a man. His cigarette burned lazily between two fingers.

“The fuck do you want?” you asked flatly, not bothering to mask your annoyance. You didn’t recognize him, and you didn’t like the way his eyes were moving—slow and deliberate, like he was appraising you.

His smile stretched wider. “Sharp tongue. Stanley didn’t mention that.”

You slid off the hood, standing now, spine straight. “And who the fuck are you?”

He took a step closer, ignoring the question. “Said you were loyal. Said you were sweet on his little brother, but you knew where your loyalty lay.” He let the words drag out, each one heavier than it needed to be. “Said you’d make good on a debt if it came to it.”

Your stomach dropped like a runaway dumbwaiter in an elevator shaft, swift and sharp.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

He didn’t answer. Just took another puff, eyes dropping deliberately to the conservative scoop neck of your faded black t-shirt, the one you bought at a gas station just outside of Reno when you needed a change of clothing, cracked yellow lettering stretching across your chest that read, “NEVADA: HOTTER THAN HELL” above a sun-bleached graphic of a devil lounging on a slot machine, one horn snapped clean off, loosely tied around your waist, teasing just a hint of your midriff.

And, despite the heat, you feel the cold, slimy crawl of your skin as his eyes drag back up the uncomfortable length of your body, grossly unapologetic.

“Back off,” you warned, voice low, feeling the warm sticky kiss of your pocket knife against your ankle from where it's tucked inside your boot, fingers curling over the right headlight, ready to pull it if necessary.

But he didn’t.

He moved in too close—intentional, invasive. His arm brushed yours, not quite an accident, and the smell of his cologne was sickly strong, like sour wine and cheap aftershave. His free hand hovered like he might reach out to touch your waist.

You didn’t flinch. “Try that again and I’ll snap every bone in your fucking wrist.”

He laughed softly. “Fiery. That’ll make it more fun.”

You opened your mouth to speak, but another voice cut through the parking lot like a blade.

“Back the fuck up.”

Walter.

He was standing just behind DeSantis, face shadowed in the amber glow of a nearby streetlamp. His jaw was clenched, lips a hard line, chest rising fast like he’d sprinted to get there. His hands were curled into fists at his sides.

DeSantis turned slowly, like this was all part of the evening’s entertainment. “Relax, champ. Just introducing myself.”

Walter didn’t blink. “You don’t touch her. You don’t even look at her.”

“Oh come on,” DeSantis said. “Your brother put her in play. I'm just following the rules.”

Walter stepped forward fast enough that you almost moved to stop him. He didn’t swing—yet—but his chest was close enough to brush DeSantis’s. “Say that again.”

DeSantis didn’t back down. “I didn’t stutter. Stanley made a bet. You know how this works—he loses, the house collects.”

Your heart was hammering now, pulse roaring in your ears. “He bet me?”

DeSantis turned slightly toward you, as if only now acknowledging your presence as more than a chip on the table. “Collateral,” he said, like it was the simplest thing in the world.

Walter snapped. “She’s not a fucking thing.”

The air charged in an instant—thick with anger, with humiliation, with the kind of tension that only ends in blood or retreat.

DeSantis held up a hand. “Your brother said—”

“I don’t give a fuck what my brother said.” Walter stepped in front of you fully now, body tense, fists clenched at his sides. “Drop it.”

DeSantis’s gaze flicked between you and Walter. “Stanley bet her. That means she’s part of the pot.”

“She’s not.” Walter’s tone dropped to something deadly quiet. “She doesn’t belong to anyone. You want something else, I’ll find a way to cover the debt. But you’re not laying one finger on her, not if you wanna keep 'em."

For a long second, it looked like DeSantis might press it. But then Walter pulled out his wallet. Thin. Nearly empty. Constantly hemorrhaging money to cover the cost of motel stays and microwave meals. To pay the price for his older brother's fuck-ups.

He pulled out every single bill without looking at the amount and held it out, the natural tremor in his hand gone entirely.

“This’ll hold for now,” he said. “If it don’t—then make it hold. I ain’t scared of spendin’ a few nights in county lockup.”

DeSantis stared at the bills. At you. At Walter again.

And something changed.

He smirked, slow and oily, before snatching the cash, counting through the bills with an infuriating amount of nonchalance, like he hadn't just been moments from assaulting you before Walter intervened. “You’re loyal. I’ll give you that. Clearly doesn't run in the family. That brother of yours is a piece of work."

Walter didn’t respond. He just stood there between you and the man, breathing hard, still on the verge of violence, you could tell from the way he tightened his stance in his legs, his hands ready to come up at any moment and swing if pushed to it.

DeSantis turned towards the rest of the parking lot. “Might wanna keep her locked up next time,” he muttered over his shoulder. “Girl like that? Trouble.”

Then he walked off in the direction of his car, flicking the butt of his cigarette away, the burnt filter landing in a crop of weeds growing up through the cracks of the hot asphalt beneath them.

You exhaled a shaky breath, one you hadn’t realized you had been holding up until now, though your body remained tight as a bowstring, full of broiling tension.

Walter was still standing between you and the door, shoulders squared, chest heaving like he’d just gone ten rounds in the ring. You sat back on the hood, motionless, your hands shaking so slightly they might’ve gone unnoticed if not for the sudden stillness.

He turned to face you, but slower now. Like whatever fuse that had been lit was fizzling into something more dangerous—guilt, maybe. Or shame.

“You okay?” he asked, voice rough.

You didn’t answer right away. Didn’t look at him either. Just stared at the ground like if you focused hard enough, the earth might open and swallow you whole.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know he was gonna—Stanley never told me—”

“I figured that part out,” you bite, each word clipped and cold. Your arms were crossed tight over your chest like armor, jaw locked, shoulders stiff with barely-contained fury. “You think I’d be sitting out here if I knew your brother was trying to whore me out?"

Walter flinched. Not from the volume, but from the raw truth of it. He stepped closer, carefully, as if afraid he might break something else.

“I never would’ve let that happen,” he said, quieter now. “You believe me?”

You did. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he had to say it at all.

You swallowed hard, fists clenched in your lap. “Why does he always get to gamble things that aren’t his? And why does everyone keep letting him?”

Walter’s lips parted to answer—but then the door creaked open again.

“Hey!” Stanley’s voice pierced the silence like a knife through gauze—jarring, careless, like he hadn’t just tried gambling your dignity like another fucking poker chip. “Lion, you got any cash on you?”

He stepped out into the dusk light, rubbing the back of his neck and squinting like the world was doing him some kind of injustice. His shirt was untucked now, half of it wrinkled from where he’d been tugging at it. “Goddamn game turned south real fast, but I can win it back if I get back in—”

He stopped when he saw your face.

Or maybe it was Walter’s posture. Or the dead silence that had fallen like a dropped curtain.

But if Stanley noticed the tension in the air, he didn’t show it. He just gave a shrug and a half-laugh.

“C’mon,” he said, waving a hand like the past ten minutes hadn’t happened. “It’s not a big deal. Just a few bills, some chips, you know how it goes.”

He didn’t mention the bet. Didn’t even glance your way.

That was what did it.

You stood up slow. Too slow.

Stanley barely turned in time to see your hand whip through the air.

Crack.

Your palm met his cheek with a sound that echoed off the parking lot walls.

He stumbled a half-step back, blinking in confusion like he hadn’t seen it coming.

“The fuck was that for?” he barked, touching his face.

“Don’t you ever talk about me like I’m something you can put on the table,” you hissed, voice shaking. “I’m not yours. I was never yours.”

Stanley looked at Walter like he might intervene, but Walter didn’t move. His arms were crossed. His jaw was tight. His silence was loud enough to make Stanley flinch a second time.

Then Stanley scoffed and rubbed at the cherried red handprint on his cheek, ignoring the sharp sting. “Maybe it’s time you start earning your fuckin' keep if you plan on stickin' around,” he muttered, looking past Walter to you. “Ain’t no such thing as a free ride around here, sweetheart.”

Walter’s expression didn’t shift, but something in him went stiller than silence. Still like a snare trap tightening.

His voice came out low. Controlled.

“Dog. Person. Doesn’t matter to you, does it?” he said. “You’ll sell whatever you can—whoever you can—to cover your own ass.”

Stanley’s brows twitched.

Walter stepped forward once, not enough to crowd but enough to command. “I’ll tell you one thing right fucking now.” His jaw clenched hard enough to pulse. “She is off limits. She isn't yours. Not mine either. Not anyone’s to speak for. And you're an even bigger piece of shit than I thought for even daring to.”

For a second, Stanley just blinked.

Then the mask cracked—not into rage, but something uglier. Wounded pride. Pettiness in its rawest form.

“Oh, that’s what this is about,” he said, stepping back with a bitter laugh. “All this bark, and it’s over some roadside hussy?”

He looked between the two of you, mouth twisted. “Jesus, Lion. What, she gives you a sob story, spreads her legs, and now you’re what—pussywhipped? Thought I taught you better than to go getting soft.”

Walter moved so fast you barely saw it.

He didn’t hit him. He didn’t even raise a hand. But he stepped in close—chest to chest, breath to breath—and the look in his eyes could’ve stripped paint off a wall.

“Don’t talk about her like that. Don't you ever talk about her like that,” he said, voice like a fuse burning low, "choose your next words very carefully, big bro."

Stanley raised both hands like he was being martyred. “Alright, alright. Christ. You two deserve each other.”

He backed off, but his gaze lingered like rot—picking, calculating.

Walter didn’t move until he was sure Stanley was really done talking. Not just with his mouth, but with whatever damage he’d planned to deal.

Only then did he glance over at you. There was a flicker of apology in his eyes—not for what he’d said, but for the fact that you’d had to hear any of it.

You didn’t raise your voice. Didn’t have to.

“Give me the keys.”

Stanley blinked at you like you’d spoken a different language, his smug grin already fading. You took a step closer, hand out, palm flat—an edge to your voice so unfamiliar even Walter looked up. You weren’t shaking. You weren’t breathing heavily.

But you were done.

“Now.”

Stanley fumbled in his pocket and tossed the keys like they burned him. They hit your palm with a dull slap.

He tried to laugh it off. “Jesus, you two—”

“Shut the fuck up, man,” Walter muttered.

You didn’t look at either of them as you turned toward the car.

The parking lot was lit in halogen yellow and lined in cracked asphalt. It smelled like oil spills and baked gravel. Your footsteps echoed on the pavement, heavy with purpose. Walter followed, silent, the gravel crunching under his sneakers. Stanley trailed behind with an exaggerated sigh, hands in his pockets, stumbling a bit as he caught his foot on a parking stop.

Nobody said anything.

The slam of the car doors punctuated the quiet like gunfire—yours, then Walter’s, then Stanley’s as he collapsed into the backseat like it was just another night of heavy drinking.

You started the engine. The click of the ignition felt louder than it should have been. The radio, still on from earlier, crackled with static before fading into a low, buzzing hum of country rock. You turned it off.

Still, nobody spoke.

The world outside blurred into silhouettes—flickering strip mall signs, closed storefronts, busted streetlights. The kind of town that didn’t sleep so much as it coasted, lights dimmed, just waiting for the next fight to break out.

Walter stared out the passenger side window, face hollowed out by the shadows flickering past. His jaw was clenched so tight the muscle twitched.

In the rearview mirror, you caught glimpses of Stanley with his head leaned back, muttering something under his breath, too low to catch. Probably to himself. Probably to no one at all.

And even with all the windows rolled down, the air felt too thick to breathe.

The extended stay motel’s flickering sign came into view like a slow bruise bleeding into the dark.

You pulled into the lot hard enough to make the tires groan, the crunch of gravel under the wheels loud in the silence. The engine ticked as it cooled, but no one moved right away. The car was still, thick with tension. You could feel it in your teeth. In your throat.

Stanley got out first. Wordless. He didn’t slam the door, didn’t look back—just slouched his way toward the room next door to yours and Walter’s. The key jingled on the lanyard around his wrist as he unlocked it, his silhouette briefly backlit by the yellow-orange glow spilling from the room.

Then the door shut behind him like the end of a bad dream.

You didn’t move for a long moment.

Then opened your door and stepped out.

The night air hit you like a slap. Still warm from the day but heavy with dew, clinging to your skin. The buzz of a faulty street lamp hummed above like a mosquito in your ear. Somewhere a TV played behind thin motel walls, voices tinny and laughing at something you couldn’t see. Muffled laughter, a commercial jingle, the faint metallic scrape of someone’s ice machine coughing out cubes nearby.

Walter didn’t say anything. He just followed.

The door to your room creaked open under your hand. The stale motel air met you with the familiar scent of mildew, cleaning chemicals, and over-laundered sheets. The curtains were drawn, casting the room in a strange, shadowed hush. It was the kind of quiet that made your ears ring.

You stepped inside.

Walter closed the door behind you, slower this time. He lingered there for a moment, palm resting flat against the wood. His eyes stayed on it like maybe if he stared hard enough, he could undo everything.

You couldn’t keep it in anymore.

“I didn’t run away from one hell just to land in another.”

Walter looked up.

You weren’t yelling. You didn’t need to. Your voice was low, thick, shaking—not with fear. With fury. With heartbreak.

“I didn’t leave behind fists and screaming and broken glass just to end up with a man who lets someone bet me like a goddamn coin toss.”

He moved to speak.

“No,” you cut in, voice rising now. “You don’t get to say you didn’t know. You knew what Stanley was like. You’ve always known. And you brought me here anyway. You kept me here anyway.”

Walter’s face cracked open like glass under heat. Pain spread across it slowly, too slow to matter.

“He’s my brother,” he said again, but it was barely more than a whisper now. Like he knew how small it sounded.

“And what am I?” you asked, voice breaking. “Just a girl in the passenger seat? Someone to patch your hands after a fight? Sleep next to you in a bed too small for two people and pretend it’s enough?”

He winced. Hands twitching. “You’re not—you’re not just anything,” he said, hoarse. “You’re the only good thing I’ve got left.”

“Then act like it,” you said, almost pleading. “I know you’re trying, Walter. I know that. But trying doesn’t change the fact that I’m scared. Not of you. Never of you. But of what being around all this is turning me into. What it’s already turned you into.”

His eyes were glassy now. He dragged a hand over his mouth. “You don’t think I know that?”

“Then why aren’t you doing something? Why are you still letting him win just by existing?”

Walter sat down hard on the edge of the bed like his knees had given out. “Because if I don’t keep an eye on him, he’ll burn the world down,” he said. “And I can’t let him do that. Not again. Not after last time.”

Your breath caught.

He looked up at you, and something in his face—wet-eyed, clenched, hollow—made your chest twist.

“I’m not asking you to pick me over him,” you said quietly. “I’m asking you to stop choosing nothing. Because standing there and letting it happen again and again, that is a choice.”

Walter looked away. Down at his shaking hands. At the carpet. Anywhere but at you.

“Say something,” you whispered.

“I don’t know how to keep you both,” he said.

“You can’t,” you answered. “So I guess you do have to choose.”

The silence that followed didn’t feel like peace.

It felt like grief, sitting between you like the last breath of a dying thing.

The air in the motel room was suddenly too still, too stale. The hum of the wall A/C unit ticked like a faulty heartbeat. A muffled thump came from next door—Stanley, probably dropping his boots or throwing something against the wall—and neither of you flinched. You were too used to the sound of his chaos to react.

You stared at Walter. He couldn’t look at you. Not really.

So you moved.

Not fast. Not loud. Just…deliberately. Like every step cost you something.

You crossed the room to the far corner, where your backpack sat slumped and half-zipped on the floor beside the dresser. It had lived there for weeks now—always packed just enough, just in case. Your fingers were trembling when you reached for it. You didn’t need much. Toothbrush. Phone charger. Spare clothes. What mattered was that you were moving. That you weren’t staying still anymore.

The soft creak of the mattress behind you was the only sign Walter had even moved at all.

Then you reached up, just over the headboard, where the wall was stained slightly darker with sun-faded dust. A tiny silver pushpin held it in place—creased, delicate, one folded edge coming slightly undone from being flattened too many times.

The paper flower. The one he folded out of a napkin back at the diner.

You cradled it in your palm as carefully as if it were alive. The edges were soft with wear. The center was still sharp where he’d creased it with the side of his thumbnail.

Walter finally spoke.

“You’re not…leaving for good, are you?”

The question was small. Like he was trying not to frighten it by making it too real.

You didn’t answer right away. Just stood there, the flower in one hand, the weight of your backpack over one shoulder, and everything else too heavy to hold.

“I can’t be here anymore,” you said. Voice breaking. “Not like this. Not with him next door. Not when I won't be able to go a single night without thinking about what else he’s capable of.”

Walter flinched, just barely. But you saw it.

“You keep defending him,” you whispered. “And maybe that’s loyalty. Maybe that’s family. But if you can’t choose…then I’ll do it for you.”

You stepped forward and pressed the flower into his palm. His hand closed around it instinctively, but you didn’t linger.

“I’m not waiting for you to catch up,” you said. “I love you. God, I love you. But I will not stay and be collateral to another man’s mess. Not again.”

Tears burned, but you didn’t let them fall. Not yet.

Walter’s throat moved like he wanted to speak, wanted to fight—but all that came was silence.

And that silence told you everything.

The door shut behind you with the softest click.

No shouting. No last-ditch plea. Just that quiet, final sound that broke louder than glass.

The night air slapped your skin like a truth you couldn’t swallow. Humid. Heavy. It stuck in your throat as you walked down the motel’s cracked walkway, one flickering overhead bulb buzzing above like it couldn’t make up its mind about staying lit. Shadows from the railing stretched long across the concrete, dragging behind you like old ghosts.

Your backpack weighed nothing and everything.

You didn’t know where you were going. Just that it couldn’t be here.

Behind you, through the paper-thin walls, the room stayed quiet. Walter didn’t chase you. Didn’t open the door. Didn’t call your name. That, somehow, hurt more than any cruel word ever could.

The smell of motor oil and old cigarette butts hit your nose as you passed the parking lot. You blinked hard. Once. Twice. Didn’t cry. Not yet. There was no one here to see it anyway.

Just the sound of distant traffic and a vending machine humming like it might give up the ghost.

You paused when you reached the edge of the lot, turning once to look back.

The motel looked smaller now. Like it had never really been big enough to hold what you and Walter tried to build. You thought of the origami flower in his palm. The way his hands had always trembled a little, even when they were careful with you. The way he never once looked away when you cried, even if he never quite knew what to do about it.

You loved him.

But love didn’t fix everything.

Sometimes, love sat in the middle of the wreckage and whispered, I’m not enough to save us.

You wrapped your arms around yourself and started walking.

No plan. No ride. Just your own two feet and the kind of hurt that made you wish you could unzip your skin and step out of the ache.

You made it to the street before the tears came. Hot. Silent. You kept walking anyway.

Each step away felt like tearing muscle from bone.

You didn’t look back again.

[matrixfangs]

1k notes on blessed be the whore!!! holy shit! thank you to everyone who's read so far, and ESPECIALLY thank you again to everyone in the discord who helped me write when i was soooooo stuck. i love you guys!

i promise you all that part 2 will NOT take as long as part 1 did, and it will be even more dirty. <<3

blessed be the whore - part 1

Priest!Remmick x fem!reader

summary: The old priest in your small town has died a gruesome death. The new one has an... eccentric way of doing things. 18+ READERS ONLY PLEASE!!!

word count: 6.3k

warnings: smut, sacrilegious actions, blood, praying, quoting the Bible during sex, sex in a church, sex on an altar, P in V, Oral F! Recieving, cum play, reader's first time, religious themes/imagery, blood play, blasphemy, abuse of a rosary, drool, squirting, degradation if you squint, praise kink, allusions to murder

a/n: HELLO! I have been working on this fic for weeks, and I finally came to the conclusion that it just needs to be a two-parter. I want to keep this A/N short and sweet because I have so many people to credit, all from Rosie's lovely Discord server! Firstly, my two beta-readers, @confetti-cakemix and @fuckoffbard! LIZ, YOU ARE MY NORTH STAR WHEN I'M WRITING, THE BESTTT, and CONFETTI!!! YOUR DESCRIPTION OF IMAGERY, EVEN WHEN YOU'RE JUST BETA READING, IS PEAK. Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to tag each and every person in the server that also gave me suggestions and helped me in ANY way! @spikedfearn @somnolenthour @citrinedigital @eternalstrigoii @le-temps-viendra36 @iceemochaa @hyoscyxmine @otxiycohcoy @flixpii @faestunna Clown (also not sure if they have a tumblr but that's my twin!!) @cherryxhaze. If I forgot ANYONEEE please please comment or DM me and I'll add you immediately! I got so much help in the server, and I had to scour through almost a month of messages to find everyone!

tags: @moyavsemoya @slasherflickchick @reneeswrld @made2wait @horror-moviehoe @arminstopguy @weirdblob21 @writersp3n @endofradio @thecontortionistsportal @notabot2 @spikedfearn @fuckoffbard @madkingcrowley @manyimaginativemuses

The new pastor of your quaint village church was strange.

The village itself was old. You’d grown up with wrinkled hands drawing ash crosses on your forehead, strings of garlic hanging on doorways, barefeet in hot, red dirt. When you were younger, you were never allowed out after dark. No exceptions. Kids who went out after dark went missing. Their names became prayers on the congregation's lips at each church service.

The old pastor, Monsignor Quinn, had been so kind. He’d listen to your panicked confessions, fleeting feelings of lust with a boy from school. Brushes of fingers against skin that kept you awake at night. 

He’d died so suddenly. He hadn’t been very old, not even past his thirties. And the weirdest part - the local sheriff wouldn’t tell you or anyone in your village how he died. You heard rumors of blood-streaked walls and screams that had only been heard by those awake that late into the night. You watched people cross themselves as they passed his boarded-up house. Little children crossed the street to avoid passing it.

And now, you were shaking the new pastor’s hand, rough and firm. Father Remmick. His lips curled like he could tell what you were thinking, his tongue running through the folds of your twisted mind. His eyes, calm and clear blue, never left yours when he introduced himself. Your father’s arm rested protective and heavy on your shoulders, the heat radiating from him comforting you like a blanket.

“Pleasure to meet y’all.” Father Remmick drawled, hand still wrapped around yours. His accent was strange - deep, and Southern, but mixed with something old that you couldn’t place. Something thick and gooey, honey falling slowly off a wooden spoon. “I’m sorry for what happened to Monsignor Quinn. Tragic… truly.”

He didn’t look sorry—not really. His other hand pressed to his chest in sorrow, but his eyes shone with a playful gleam that was sinister, bloody, and cold. 

Your voice was dry when you spoke to him for the first time, having to turn your chin up to look at him. “What happened to him?”

“Oh,” Remmick’s smile fell, but the concern didn’t feel real. It felt mocking. You felt his thumb stroke your knuckle. “Nothing that needs to fall on ears as sweet as yours.”

Your father’s arm tightened, and you were grateful for his presence. When Remmick released your hand, you fought the urge to wipe your palm on your dress, to wipe him off of you. His crooked grin remained, and his tongue slowly ran over his bottom lip, licking the sweat from his chin.

“I can’t wait to get to know you.” He looked away from you like he had to force his eyes away, like it was painful not to be looking at you. His gaze left you feeling naked, the inside of your body tingling like someone had dug around inside and pulled out everything sacred.  “All of you, of course.”

His sermon had been even stranger than he was. He said all the right words, but they came out of a twisted mouth. A serpent’s tongue ran over the words of God, words meant to comfort and uplift, but coming from him, made your stomach twist. Your fingertips ran over the silver rosary underneath your shirt as he spoke, his eyes never drifting down to the Bible before him. He knew the words by heart, and they still sounded so wrong. 

When you got on your knees to pray, you felt something so deeply, internally wrong in your chest. You couldn’t help but look up while everyone else’s heads were down, their lips moving silently in prayer. You found Father Remmick, hands wrapped tightly around the lectern, looking at you. His knuckles were white, his eyes roaming over you ardently. A rust color flashed over the blue of his eyes, like the nictitating membrane of a reptile. His gaze violated you, drilled a hole through your chest.  

For a single heartbeat you kept your gaze locked on his. When he smiled at you, you swore you watched something crawl under the skin of his forehead, two points—like horns—begging to poke out of his skin.

That night, and for many nights onward, you dreamt of Father Remmick.

The church was empty, save for you and him. His clerical collar glowed against the black of his button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal veiny forearms and slender fingers following it. Fingers that reach for your rosary beads, let them clatter to the floor. He spoke in a language you didn’t know, touching you in a way you’d never felt. A way that felt too good to be holy.

When you woke, you prayed. You prayed for hours into the early morning until the skin on your knees was raw and your eyes were sore from being squeezed tight. The rosary left a red and stinging imprint on your hand that would be there for days. 

But what frightened you most was the throb between your legs, pounding rhythmically and making you yearn for… fullness. After every hour of prayer it seemed only to get worse. 

At church, you couldn’t listen to the sermon. You couldn’t even look up at Father Remmick. Not without images flashing behind your eyes, sounds so vile and loud in your ear that you couldn’t even hear the words he was saying.

Throaty moans. A hot, wet tongue between your legs. The feeling of rhythmic thrusts, something pressing into a spot inside of you that made you feel more euphoric than God himself ever could. You felt weak every time you looked at him, your fragile body giving in with every glance. 

“My child-” His voice echoed through the rickety church, but you knew he was speaking to you.

“You look distracted.”

Your throat ran dry as you stared at the scabbed-over skin of your knees, just below your dress. You could feel your father's demanding elbow digging into yours. Be respectful.

A flash of something else when you looked up at him again. Something softer, something tender. Lips pressed to your skin, dragging against the top of your breasts. 

“What could be more important to you?” He was smiling. Smiling like he knew what you’d seen, and the devilish things you’d heard. “Than worshipping and praising God with your community… with me?”

His tongue ran over his bottom lip as he raised his arms to grip the sides of the lectern. The muscles under his shirt tensed, and your eyes lingered. By the way his smile widened, he noticed.

“Be sober-minded and alert, Miss.” He nodded his head toward you, like some kind of twisted teacher. “Your adversary, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion…” His eyes, gleaming again like something inhuman. “Looking for something to devour, like a lamb wandering from the flock.”

Remmick paused, smiling to himself. “Be glad that I arrived here at the right time, to lead you down the path of righteousness.” 

Your skin had grown cold, like spiders were running up your arms and the back of your neck. But it wasn’t just what he’d said that made you rigid, a dripping of cold sweat rolling down your spine. It was the agreeing hums of the congregation, like they knew what you’d been thinking.

You couldn’t sleep that night. The pillow's satin fabric was coated in sweat, which clung to the back of your neck and made your butter-yellow nightdress stick to your back. You stood from your bed, bare feet pressed against the hardwood of your bedroom floor. As you left your room, you knew every creaky spot to avoid, opening the door with close precision to keep it from making a sound.

You could hear your father snoring from the cracked door of his bedroom as you slipped through the hallway like a ghost. You blindly slipped your feet into slippers in the dark, your hand wrapping around the gold door knob of your front door. 

The cool breeze of a late July night kissed your skin, making your hair prickle against the fabric of your nightdress. The sky was black, stars spilled across it like bleached sugar against molasses. 

The walk to the church was by memory, your feet crunching above the gravel road in the cool dark of your village. No light was lit in anyone’s homes; the only sound was the cicadas whining in the trees surrounding you. As you passed Monsignor Quinn’s home, the foundation seemed to creak before you, the sound almost like a weeping in the air. You didn’t cross the street and kept your head forward to pass by it. It was just another house. Just another death. 

The church was dark but buzzed with an energy that made the air feel electric. You could see its indent in the darkness. It was made of white siding sun bleached from hundreds of years under the sun of the South. The smokey-colored brick spires reached out into the dark sky, pointing to the stars. Their elegance had entranced you as a child. Now it just made you feel sick. 

A rectory with a gabled roof and dead bushes surrounding it stood next to the church, just a few yards away. There was no light to be seen, no sign of life. Father Remmick would be asleep in there, sleeping soundly despite his completely taking over your mind and your body. 

As you entered the church, you didn’t make a sound, creaking the door open just wide enough to slide your body through.

You moved blindly down the pews, hands running across the cool wood, hoping it would comfort you. It didn’t. You fumbled around until you found a box of matches and lit the candlesticks at the table behind the altar. It didn’t provide much light, but you could at least see the flickering expression of Jesus on the crucifix before you, He who had died for your wretched, terrible sins.

Knees hit wood, your hands gripping the fabric of your nightdress as you prepared to grovel. But you wouldn’t get the chance to. Not to God, at least.

“Couldn’t sleep, sugar?”

A voice that echoed through the dark like it- he owned it. You stood, turning around and searching the dimly lit dark for him. 

Father Remmick was sitting in the pew furthest from you, legs crossed and arms stretched long behind him. He was smiling; crooked,pointy teeth nearly glowing in the dim light. Your eyes roamed over the clerical that remained against his neck.

Your throat had gone dry. You swallowed hard, one hand reaching out to steady yourself on the altar rail. 

“You could say that, yeah.” 

Remmick’s legs uncrossed, spreading out in a way that felt like it couldn’t be anything but disrespectful. His eyes didn’t look blue in this light. They seemed almost amber, gleaming and ever-changing in the flickering candlelight. 

“In peace, I will lie down and sleep,” Remmick said quietly, a teasing little smirk on his face. “For you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.”

Your knuckles had turned white against the altar railing, and the sudden realization that you stood before him in nothing but a nightdress made you freeze. You should have felt empowered by his words, but instead, you felt like prey under that violent gaze. You kept your expression blank. 

“Yes, I will perhaps follow those words when I know peace.”

Remmick’s head cocked to the side, like a dog sniffing out a treat. His eyes rolled down your body, stopping at your bruised knees. 

“You troubled, darlin’?”

He didn’t sound concerned, not really. He sounded starved the question dripping off his tongue like drool rolling down a chin. He looked at you with mock-concern, eyebrows just a little too furrowed, his lips just a little too downturned. 

“Have somethin’ you’d like to confess?”

His eyes flickered to the confession booth. Two purple, velvet curtains opened to a small wooden box—one side for the priest, the other for the sinner. 

You didn’t know what it was. Maybe it was the throb between your legs, or the puppy-dog shine of his eyes in the candlelight that made them look almost like melted caramel. Or perhaps the way his voice lingered in the room like steam after a hot bath. But you nodded, quicker than you’d meant to. 

Remmick stood on long legs, the sleeves of his black shirt rolled up to reveal curling veins that traveled along his forearms. He gestured toward the booth, lips curling deviously like he’d won something. Like he was collecting a prize he’d been patiently vying for.

“Ladies first.”

The confession booth was dark, except for the little light that flickered through the intricate carvings on the wood door. The worn leather cushion sank beneath you, full of cracks and creases from years of use. You could hear Remmick shuffling on the other side as you closed yourself in. You could hardly see him through the lattice-patterned window separating him from your booth, just the shadows cast over his face and the bright white of the clerical covering his throat. 

Your hands were tangled in your lap, your leg bobbing up and down under your nightdress. You listened to Remmick’s calm breath as he settled into his seat, closed your eyes for a moment, and envisioned his hands running over his pants, his head bowing in silent prayer. The thought of it made more heat travel down your body, your heartbeat loud in your skull.

“Sign of the Cross, yes?” 

His voice seemed even deeper, even more irresistible in the dark—something as velvet as the curtain before you. Your hands trembled as you made the Sign of the Cross over your face. 

“Bless me, Father,” you paused, licking your dry lips. “For I have sinned. It has been… far too long since my last confession. These are my sins.”

Remmick was smiling. Hands clasped in his lap, burning eyes staring into the wood of the booth. He could hear every shift you made, every breath coming from your heaving chest and out of your beautiful throat. The throat that pulsed with your heartbeat. The heartbeat that hadn’t left his mind since he’d laid eyes on you. He thought of your blood pooling in the dip of your collarbone and shifted in his seat.

Your chest was heaving, your nails digging into the seat's leather. You pressed your legs together, glanced at what you could see of Remmick’s face.

“Father, I have impure thoughts. I fear that the Devil has his hold on me, making me yearn for…improper things.”

Remmick’s smile curled, teeth sharp against his lip. You were right where he wanted you. Hot, pulsing, panting. His hands unclasped, his palm pressing into the seam of his pants. His head fell back, eyes slipping closed at the pressure against him.

“Improper things?” he asked you, his voice leveled as much as possible, but you caught the hitch. “Do you think the Lord would accept this confession… if you can’t even say what sin you’re thinking of?”

Your throat bobbed as you realized he was right. You were a sinning coward, unable to tell God what He needed to forgive you for. Your hands left sweat marks on the seat, palms raised to grip the rosary around your neck. The marks on your knees from groveling for God had started to sting, as if the Devil himself scratched down your legs. Reminding you of who you thought of and who you wanted to be on your knees for.

“I think of someone… touching me. Their hands against my skin, defiling me in a way that-”

A sound, guttural and desperate, left Remmick’s throat. His hand had continued to press against him, thick tendons and veins straining under his skin. His eyes opened, pupils nearly flooding his entire iris. All that was left was a ring of red on the outside, the color of blood stained on satin white sheets. He was silent, marinating in how you gasped at the sound he’d released. You were so deliciously untouched.

“And who is that you think of?”

The question lingered in the air, heavy and charged with something dangerous. It felt as if the rosary in between your hands were being tugged from your grasp, until you looked down and realized that it was just you releasing it, letting it clatter onto the floor.

The point of no return. Letting the Devil take you by the hand and dance you into Hell. You’d called to God so many times and He’d never answered, but Remmick was here. Real, tangible, beautiful. You dug your nails into your palms, prayed for your soul one last time before diving into the deep end.

“...I think you know, Father.”

Silence, at first. Something that made the air hot, that made your breath catch in your throat. 

The wood groaned as Remmick shifted, his feet scuffing against the floor. You could hear the screech of metal rings against a rod, Remmick pushing the curtain open. 

He didn’t ask for permission. He pushed your curtain open slowly, filling it with his broad frame and slender fingers. His fingers gripped the velvet, and a brass ring around his finger caught the light. He was a wolf in wolf's clothing, teeth sharp and bright in the dim light. 

One hand left the curtain, reaching out to touch the lines of your collarbone. He ran his nail up your neck to rest the pad of his finger against your pulse. 

“I do know,” he hummed, applying pressure to the pulse, just enough for you to feel him there. “And I always knew you’d come.”

His other hand flew from the curtain with a speed that didn’t seem human, fingers gripping your hair and tugging your head back to expose your throat. 

“God.” You moaned low in your throat, breath ragged as Remmick lowered himself enough to be straddling your lap, thighs warm and solid on top of yours. He leaned forward, his mouth finding your ear. You felt his tongue run over the shell of it, something long and cold like a serpent.

“Not sure your God is here, sugar.” His voice was low and sweet, rattling the inside of your body. “He woulda saved you by now, right?”

Remmick looked down into your nightdress, lip caught between his teeth. He was quiet as he raised his hands to the fabric, gripping it tightly before tugging. The nightdress split apart as easily as tearing paper, your skin prickling with goosebumps as the cold air hit your naked chest. He looked at you like a sinner did the cross, eyes nearly glowing. He waited; waited for your invitation to touch you, thick drool rolling down his chin like a rabid dog. It dripped onto your chest as you nodded, your hand shaking when you wrapped your fingers around the white clerical collar at his throat. You tugged it off, letting it fall to the floor beside your rosary. 

“Touch me, Father.”

Remmick was on his knees in a second, tearing away the rest of the ruined nightdress from your body as he nestled his shoulders between your thighs. The only thing that remained between you and him was a thin pair of underwear, lacy trim at the edges that he ran his fingertip over with a twitching smile. 

The pad of his rough fingertip pressed over the fabric of your underwear, firm against your clit. Your body jolted forward, legs falling open for him as the pleasure traveled up your spine. 

Remmick laughed, his head thrown back and mouth open wide.

“So wet for having never been touched, little lamb.” Remmick’s fingers hooked into the waistband of your underwear, tugging it down your smooth legs. “Do you want to be worshipped, as your God is…” He tucked your underwear into the back pocket of his black pants. “Or ruined, like the Devil would do to you?”

“I want…” Your words cut off with a whimper as he pulled his finger from you, only to open your legs wider. “I want what you want, Father…”

Remmick hummed, weighing his options. “Lil’ bit of both then, I reckon.”

His head dove in between your legs like he’d been starved of water for years, and you were the first drop of salvation he’d found. He groaned, deep and low in his throat, that sent a vibration through you that had your hands flying to the dark waves on top of his head, pulling him against you.

His hands gripped your thighs hard enough to bruise as he licked against your cunt, long tongue rolling around your clit like he’d been made to worship it.

“So sweet,” Remmick smiled against you, warm and wet for him. “Like the Lord made you just for me.”

Remmick’s hands left your thighs, palms searching the floor as he continued to suck on your clit, pushing his tongue into you, curling it up in a way that didn’t seem possible. When he found what he needed, he pulled away, looking up at you through half-lidded eyes and your wetness dripping from his lips.

His hand raised, your rosary beads tangled between his fingers. With careful precision, he lowered the necklace against your cunt, the coolness of the beads making you shiver and scratch marks into the leather seat beneath you. As the beads pressed on either side of your clit, your head fell back against the wall, heat traveling up your neck as if the flames of Hell were already licking against your skin. 

“Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.” He cocked his head to the side, eyes penetrating and sharp on your face. He could sense your impending release, the way your heartbeat quickened, your back arching off the seat.

“Don’t.” 

Once low and ragged in the dark, his voice had become clear. He closed your legs with one large hand and dropped the rosary beads back to the floor so he could lean forward, pressing his other hand against the wall next to your head. His face was inches from yours, and his breath was hot on your neck. 

“Not yet, darlin’. Not ‘til I say.” His lips found the pulse point on your neck, nipping before kissing tenderly. “The Lord teaches patience, lamb.” 

Remmick’s hand left the wall to grip your hair again, tugging your head back. It made your scalp sting in a way that made you want more, your mouth parting to whimper against him.

“That bein’ said,” A crooked smile - lips baptized in your essence. “I’m bettin’ you sound real pretty beggin’.”

His tongue was long and rough against your cheek as he tasted your sweating skin, a deep rumble in his throat as if he was tasting the sweetest nectar. He stopped at your temple, placing a gentle kiss there. His lips remained there, teeth grazing skin.

“So go on, darlin’. Pray for me to fuck you.”

Your breath caught, your entire body going hot from his words. He laughed against your skin, like he could feel the very chemistry in your body change, the way you grew slicker from his twisted request. The way you knew that you would do it for him. You’d pray to be spread open by him, explored in a way not even God could do.

“Oh, you will do it, won’t you…” 

It wasn’t a question. Remmick knew you’d beg; he knew how far gone you were. He laughed against your skin.

“Doesn’t matter how good of a girl you are… how much you love Him. You’ll give it all up just to get off, won’t you?” 

Remmick pulled back, hands sliding down to hold firm on the flesh of your hips. He lifted you from the seat like you weighed nothing, turned both your bodies around until you were straddling him. Your naked core rested against the rough material of his pants and made your body shiver. He smiled.

“Go on… hands together in contrition. Do it right…” His rough hands grabbed your wrists, pulling your hands flat together between your bodies. When they were pressed together to pray, he let his fingers linger on the bare skin of your thighs, fingers just too long and nails just too sharp against your skin. 

Your lips were dry, and Remmick’s eyes drifted to them like he wanted to lick across them, make them wet again. 

“Heavenly…”

 Remmick hummed in glee already, just from a single word. His head bowed, as if to join you in prayer, his eyes slipping shut.

“Heavenly Father… forgive me for what I am about to ask of you. I know I do not deserve such a blessing as being touched…” Your words faltered as one of Remmick’s hands slid up your thigh, gathering the slick in between your legs. His finger pressed against your clit, and you gasped, hands pressing together tighter. “As being touched by someone so good, so…”

Remmick’s finger pushed inside of you, pressing up to a spot that made your throat close up, the only sound coming out a pathetic squeak of a whine.

“Aww, darlin’, that’s so sweet of you. But you don’t have to lie.” His body leaned forward, his wet mouth pressing against your ear. “Tell your Heavenly Father what I am. What you know I am.”

“I’m…” You continued the prayer, voice deep and rasping. “I’m going to fuck the Devil… and Lord, I beg you to have mercy on my wicked soul.” 

Remmick laughed against the skin of your neck, drawing thin beads of blood with the sharp points of his teeth.

“Are you now? Going to fuck the Devil?”

All you could do was whine at the pleasurable pain in your neck, your hands shaking with the desire to pull them apart, to grab at his skin and his hair. 

Remmick hummed to himself, pulling his finger out of you with a slowness that made you bite the inside of your cheek. His cold hands slid up your arms, pulling your hands apart from their prayer. 

“Get up.” He said quietly, with that same thick, gooey voice he’d had when you’d shaken his hand for the first time. You did as he asked, spreading your legs and backing off his lap. His eyes traveled up your bare body as he stood, towering over you inside the booth. With a firm hand on your hip, he nudged you toward the curtain.

“To the altar.” 

Remmick’s breathing was heavy behind you, his gaze burning holes into the bare skin of your back as you slowly walked to the altar. You looked to the cross just above, and you felt no remorse, not anymore. Whatever God could do to punish you, you were sure Remmick could do worse. Maybe you wanted him to. 

You ceased walking once you had reached the altar, your belly just close enough to feel the cool wood against your skin. Remmick was behind you, his breath hot and wet on your neck. His eyes ran over your skin, from the top of your head to the balls of your feet. The expanse of a human body that he was now free to ruin. That he’d be begged to ruin. 

With one swift movement, he grabbed your wrists, raising them and placing them flat on the altar. Your fingers brushed the closed Bible there as your breath hitched. Remmick made no effort to remove it. He only slid one hand down your body, as soft and languid as a serpent, and pressed down on the arch of your back. 

“Look at you…” Remmick murmured, fingers sliding into your folds, finding you warm and wanting there. Your legs quivered at his simple touch, so his other arm found its spot under your belly, assisting in holding you upright. “So nervous… shaking. You must honor God with your body, little lamb.”

Two fingers entered you, pushing in and out with a torturous speed. Your legs spread wider, your nails scratching into the leather-bound fabric covering the Bible before you. 

“Please..” Your voice quivered as you tried to keep it level. Your head fell against the Bible, leaving sweat marks. “I need you inside me, I need it more than I need God.”

Remmick’s fingers pulled out of you, and you heard the faint sound of his lips licking his fingers clean. He moaned at the taste of you, his other hand pulling the clasp of his belt buckle apart. “Aw, sweetheart, that’s so kind of you.”

By the press of him against you, hot and pulsing, you could tell that Remmick was big. But nothing could have prepared you for the way it felt when the head of his cock began to press inside you, hardly able to breach your entrance. He pulled back, body lowering to press lips against your sweat-slick spine.

“Gotta open up for me, baby.” He said against your skin, running the length of himself against your folds. His tongue was cold and barbed as it ran up the expanse of your back and to the shell of your ear. “Take me all at once, and maybe I’ll make you see Him. Denying yourself would be the true sin…” Remmick tried once again, his cock slowly able to start stretching you, inch by torturous inch. Only babbles came out as your mouth fell open, tears beading at the corner of your eyes from the sheer size of him.

“Haven’t even fucked you good yet,” He groaned as he pushed in. “And you’re already speaking in tongues.”

When he’d bottomed out inside you, pressing deep on a spot inside you that only made a guttural sound escape your throat, his large hand pressed against your belly. 

“Feel all that pain, lamb. You’re just getting used to me… your body will learn quick.” He slid back slowly and pushed back in with just as much resolve. Your legs nearly gave out, hands scrambling for purchase on the lectern as he fucked into you. “Soon, all you’ll feel is me.”

Remmick was right. 

Soon, the only feeling that remained was deep, wicked pleasure. Every thrust of him inside of you felt like another ring lower into Hell, the souls eternally damned there shaking their heads at you as you made the same mistakes they did. But the problem was - you didn’t fucking care.

A whine escaped your throat as Remmick picked up the pace, just a little bit. One hand on your belly, the other gripping your hip so hard you were sure you felt the cold prick of blood on your skin. Every thrust was hitting something inside you that somehow made you wetter, something that had you dripping onto him like some kind of deranged baptism.

Remmick was grunting, getting louder with each thrust into you. He tried to hide with honeyed words, but you felt too good around him.

“So easy, aren’t you?” Remmick was grabbing one of your arms, pulling your hand into his to press onto your own belly. You felt the bulge of him with each thrust in, and the pressure on your stomach made your cunt flutter around him. He groaned, words faltering as you squeezed around his cock. “You…” He nearly whined, hand gripping yours on top of your belly. “Just a few words about your corrupt God and you... you spread your legs for me?”

He laughed, hand leaving your stomach to grab at your hair, tugging until your head reeled back just enough to see him. He was beautiful like this, pupils blown out, and the first few buttons of his clean shirt popped open. Blood streaked down the corner of his mouth from the wound on your neck, and his tongue was unnaturally long as it unraveled out to wet his lips.

“Do you know something, sweetheart?” He asked, dark eyes meeting yours. “Your God isn’t here.”

A whine broke through your mouth as he rolled his hips in a particularly torturous way, hitting the spot in you that he’d found with his fingers in the confession booth. There wasn’t anything you could do but let your body go slack against him, head kept in place only by his grip on your hair. 

“What would your God say, hm?” Remmick asked, pressing into that spot again, making your vision go white. “If He saw you split open for me?”

Remmick released you, and your head fell forward to the altar. He leaned forward, and you felt the cold press of something against your neck, a chain or something of the like.

“Do you still believe in Him?” He asked against the nape of your neck, pressing deep into you. He nipped at you again and lapped the blood up with his tongue with a soft moan. 

“Maybe you should apologize to Him, hm? How does that one go again?” Remmick pulled out, almost entirely. You felt the cold air hit the wetness of your cunt, and you whined at the loss of contact from him.

“Forgive me my sins, Oh Lord,” Remmick spoke, moved both of his hands to your hips, and thrust in with one swift move that made you cry out in shock, in pleasure, in shame. “The sins of my youth.” Another deep thrust, and back out again. “The sins of my soul,” Another. “And the sins of my body-” 

The last push inside of you made you see streaks of color in your vision, your mouth hanging open, and your lips wet with drool. You felt something like a spool form in your stomach, desperate to unravel. It was an odd feeling that you’d never felt before, akin to the feeling of nearly wetting yourself, and it made your face burn with embarrassment.

“Father,” Your voice was gone, raspy and unrecognizable. “Father, I feel…” You whined as the feeling grew, doing everything in your power not to let the spool unravel. “I think I‘m gonna pee… it feels like-” Remmick chuckled, increasing the speed of his thrusts. 

“Oh, my poor baby.” 

You could hear the smile in his voice. He was the Devil himself.

“You don’t even know what your sweet little body can do, do you?”

 And with that, Remmick was reaching around your body, pressing two of his fingers against your clit and rubbing, coaxing something out of you. The more he coaxed, the tighter the spool wound.

And then it snapped.

You didn’t recognize your voice as you came, nails scratching into the altar so hard that the wood began to splinter, piercing the tips of your fingers. Remmick was laughing as wetness coated him, the front of his pants and the fingertips at your clit. You’d provided an entire baptism for him, and he wouldn’t let it go to waste.

He pulled out of you, gripping your hips tightly and whipping you around so your back hit the altar. Remmick’s knees hitting the floor and his tongue diving inside of you happened in one action, in one second. He licked up everything you gave him, your essence leaking onto his face and dripping down his chin. 

His cock remained hard, long, and red below you as he sucked on your clit. You wet your lips, a shaking hand lifting from the altar to grip at his auburn waves.

“Touch yourself,” You whimpered, voice coated in overstimulation. “Please… let me see the image He created you in…” 

Remmick’s eyes slid open, peering up at you needily. His nose brushed your clit as his tongue pushed up inside you, and he grabbed at his cock with a strong, blood-covered hand. Immediately, he was moaning, the vibrations in his throat traveling through your entire body and making your head feel airy. His hand was so beautiful pleasuring himself, pulling up and down the length of his cock and making himself leak. His hips thrusted up into his fist, and you found yourself longing to see the muscles that flexed beneath his shirt. 

Your trembling hand scratched at his scalp, and Remmick sighed happily underneath your touch. He wasn’t even eating you out, not anymore, just nuzzling his face into your skin and breathing you in as he touched himself.

“Beautiful…” You whispered to him. “Like an angel.”

Remmick growled, hand tugging on your thigh and yanking you to the floor. Your back slid against the altar as he pressed the head of himself against your cunt. His forehead pressed against yours as he came with a groan. The warmth of him spilled against your clit and downward, and Remmick’s fingers gently pressed into you, making sure it stayed tucked away inside you.

Your body trembled as Remmick pulled his forehead from yours. His thumb came up to brush against your lips, and for a brief moment, he pushed it inside, humming as the pad of it pressed against your warm tongue. He leaned forward, replacing his thumb with his mouth. A small squeak sounded in your throat at the feeling of his tongue pressing against the roof of your mouth, licking away the last of the prayers that stuck there.

Remmick’s lips remained connected to yours as he helped you stand on shaking legs, his hands pulling you up effortlessly by your waist. His hand reached behind him, grabbing the underwear he’d tucked in his back pocket as he’d prepared to stick his tongue between your legs. 

He leaned down, untangling the delicate material and holding it out.

“Step in, sweet thing.” He peered up at you through half-lidded eyes. “Gotta keep everything I gave you inside… keep you close to me.”

Your hand gripped his strong shoulder as you stepped into the holes of your underwear. Remmick pulled them up slowly, leaving soft kisses on your skin as he went. When they were fully up, getting soaked with the mix of Remmick’s and your release, he straightened. His lips pressed against your forehead for a brief, sweet moment.

“I’ll see you at Sunday service.” He said as he pulled back, his voice just as fucked out as yours had been. 

“Front pews. Don’t think you can hide from me in the back.” 

His hand grazed your arm, almost innocently.

 “Or anywhere, for that matter.”

[matrixfangs]

blessed be the whore grid <3

[matrixfangs]

send me asks & requests! i’m bored! writing notes for priest fic part 2 as we speak

[matrixfangs]

rosie likes priest fic I’VE WON I’VE FUCKING WON

ily @spikedfearn 🫶

[matrixfangs]

forgot to mention that blessed be the whore has a playlist! i’ll probably add more songs as i write part 2, so keep an eye out!

blessed be the whore - part 1

Priest!Remmick x fem!reader

summary: The old priest in your small town has died a gruesome death. The new one has an... eccentric way of doing things.

word count: 6.3k

warnings: smut, sacrilegious actions, blood, praying, quoting the Bible during sex, sex in a church, sex on an altar, P in V, Oral F! Recieving, cum play, reader's first time, religious themes/imagery, blood play, blasphemy, abuse of a rosary, drool, squirting, degradation if you squint, praise kink, allusions to murder

a/n: HELLO! I have been working on this fic for weeks, and I finally came to the conclusion that it just needs to be a two-parter. I want to keep this A/N short and sweet because I have so many people to credit, all from Rosie's lovely Discord server! Firstly, my two beta-readers, @confetti-cakemix and @fuckoffbard! LIZ, YOU ARE MY NORTH STAR WHEN I'M WRITING, THE BESTTT, and CONFETTI!!! YOUR DESCRIPTION OF IMAGERY, EVEN WHEN YOU'RE JUST BETA READING, IS PEAK. Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to tag each and every person in the server that also gave me suggestions and helped me in ANY way! @spikedfearn @somnolenthour @citrinedigital @eternalstrigoii @le-temps-viendra36 @iceemochaa @hyoscyxmine @otxiycohcoy @flixpii @faestunna Clown (also not sure if they have a tumblr but that's my twin!!) @cherryxhaze. If I forgot ANYONEEE please please comment or DM me and I'll add you immediately! I got so much help in the server, and I had to scour through almost a month of messages to find everyone!

tags: @moyavsemoya @slasherflickchick @reneeswrld @made2wait @horror-moviehoe @arminstopguy @weirdblob21 @writersp3n @endofradio @thecontortionistsportal @notabot2 @spikedfearn @fuckoffbard @madkingcrowley @manyimaginativemuses

The new pastor of your quaint village church was strange.

The village itself was old. You’d grown up with wrinkled hands drawing ash crosses on your forehead, strings of garlic hanging on doorways, barefeet in hot, red dirt. When you were younger, you were never allowed out after dark. No exceptions. Kids who went out after dark went missing. Their names became prayers on the congregation's lips at each church service.

The old pastor, Monsignor Quinn, had been so kind. He’d listen to your panicked confessions, fleeting feelings of lust with a boy from school. Brushes of fingers against skin that kept you awake at night. 

He’d died so suddenly. He hadn’t been very old, not even past his thirties. And the weirdest part - the local sheriff wouldn’t tell you or anyone in your village how he died. You heard rumors of blood-streaked walls and screams that had only been heard by those awake that late into the night. You watched people cross themselves as they passed his boarded-up house. Little children crossed the street to avoid passing it.

And now, you were shaking the new pastor’s hand, rough and firm. Father Remmick. His lips curled like he could tell what you were thinking, his tongue running through the folds of your twisted mind. His eyes, calm and clear blue, never left yours when he introduced himself. Your father’s arm rested protective and heavy on your shoulders, the heat radiating from him comforting you like a blanket.

“Pleasure to meet y’all.” Father Remmick drawled, hand still wrapped around yours. His accent was strange - deep, and Southern, but mixed with something old that you couldn’t place. Something thick and gooey, honey falling slowly off a wooden spoon. “I’m sorry for what happened to Monsignor Quinn. Tragic… truly.”

He didn’t look sorry—not really. His other hand pressed to his chest in sorrow, but his eyes shone with a playful gleam that was sinister, bloody, and cold. 

Your voice was dry when you spoke to him for the first time, having to turn your chin up to look at him. “What happened to him?”

“Oh,” Remmick’s smile fell, but the concern didn’t feel real. It felt mocking. You felt his thumb stroke your knuckle. “Nothing that needs to fall on ears as sweet as yours.”

Your father’s arm tightened, and you were grateful for his presence. When Remmick released your hand, you fought the urge to wipe your palm on your dress, to wipe him off of you. His crooked grin remained, and his tongue slowly ran over his bottom lip, licking the sweat from his chin.

“I can’t wait to get to know you.” He looked away from you like he had to force his eyes away, like it was painful not to be looking at you. His gaze left you feeling naked, the inside of your body tingling like someone had dug around inside and pulled out everything sacred.  “All of you, of course.”

His sermon had been even stranger than he was. He said all the right words, but they came out of a twisted mouth. A serpent’s tongue ran over the words of God, words meant to comfort and uplift, but coming from him, made your stomach twist. Your fingertips ran over the silver rosary underneath your shirt as he spoke, his eyes never drifting down to the Bible before him. He knew the words by heart, and they still sounded so wrong. 

When you got on your knees to pray, you felt something so deeply, internally wrong in your chest. You couldn’t help but look up while everyone else’s heads were down, their lips moving silently in prayer. You found Father Remmick, hands wrapped tightly around the lectern, looking at you. His knuckles were white, his eyes roaming over you ardently. A rust color flashed over the blue of his eyes, like the nictitating membrane of a reptile. His gaze violated you, drilled a hole through your chest.  

For a single heartbeat you kept your gaze locked on his. When he smiled at you, you swore you watched something crawl under the skin of his forehead, two points—like horns—begging to poke out of his skin.

That night, and for many nights onward, you dreamt of Father Remmick.

The church was empty, save for you and him. His clerical collar glowed against the black of his button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal veiny forearms and slender fingers following it. Fingers that reach for your rosary beads, let them clatter to the floor. He spoke in a language you didn’t know, touching you in a way you’d never felt. A way that felt too good to be holy.

When you woke, you prayed. You prayed for hours into the early morning until the skin on your knees was raw and your eyes were sore from being squeezed tight. The rosary left a red and stinging imprint on your hand that would be there for days. 

But what frightened you most was the throb between your legs, pounding rhythmically and making you yearn for… fullness. After every hour of prayer it seemed only to get worse. 

At church, you couldn’t listen to the sermon. You couldn’t even look up at Father Remmick. Not without images flashing behind your eyes, sounds so vile and loud in your ear that you couldn’t even hear the words he was saying.

Throaty moans. A hot, wet tongue between your legs. The feeling of rhythmic thrusts, something pressing into a spot inside of you that made you feel more euphoric than God himself ever could. You felt weak every time you looked at him, your fragile body giving in with every glance. 

“My child-” His voice echoed through the rickety church, but you knew he was speaking to you.

“You look distracted.”

Your throat ran dry as you stared at the scabbed-over skin of your knees, just below your dress. You could feel your father's demanding elbow digging into yours. Be respectful.

A flash of something else when you looked up at him again. Something softer, something tender. Lips pressed to your skin, dragging against the top of your breasts. 

“What could be more important to you?” He was smiling. Smiling like he knew what you’d seen, and the devilish things you’d heard. “Than worshipping and praising God with your community… with me?”

His tongue ran over his bottom lip as he raised his arms to grip the sides of the lectern. The muscles under his shirt tensed, and your eyes lingered. By the way his smile widened, he noticed.

“Be sober-minded and alert, Miss.” He nodded his head toward you, like some kind of twisted teacher. “Your adversary, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion…” His eyes, gleaming again like something inhuman. “Looking for something to devour, like a lamb wandering from the flock.”

Remmick paused, smiling to himself. “Be glad that I arrived here at the right time, to lead you down the path of righteousness.” 

Your skin had grown cold, like spiders were running up your arms and the back of your neck. But it wasn’t just what he’d said that made you rigid, a dripping of cold sweat rolling down your spine. It was the agreeing hums of the congregation, like they knew what you’d been thinking.

You couldn’t sleep that night. The pillow's satin fabric was coated in sweat, which clung to the back of your neck and made your butter-yellow nightdress stick to your back. You stood from your bed, bare feet pressed against the hardwood of your bedroom floor. As you left your room, you knew every creaky spot to avoid, opening the door with close precision to keep it from making a sound.

You could hear your father snoring from the cracked door of his bedroom as you slipped through the hallway like a ghost. You blindly slipped your feet into slippers in the dark, your hand wrapping around the gold door knob of your front door. 

The cool breeze of a late July night kissed your skin, making your hair prickle against the fabric of your nightdress. The sky was black, stars spilled across it like bleached sugar against molasses. 

The walk to the church was by memory, your feet crunching above the gravel road in the cool dark of your village. No light was lit in anyone’s homes; the only sound was the cicadas whining in the trees surrounding you. As you passed Monsignor Quinn’s home, the foundation seemed to creak before you, the sound almost like a weeping in the air. You didn’t cross the street and kept your head forward to pass by it. It was just another house. Just another death. 

The church was dark but buzzed with an energy that made the air feel electric. You could see its indent in the darkness. It was made of white siding sun bleached from hundreds of years under the sun of the South. The smokey-colored brick spires reached out into the dark sky, pointing to the stars. Their elegance had entranced you as a child. Now it just made you feel sick. 

A rectory with a gabled roof and dead bushes surrounding it stood next to the church, just a few yards away. There was no light to be seen, no sign of life. Father Remmick would be asleep in there, sleeping soundly despite his completely taking over your mind and your body. 

As you entered the church, you didn’t make a sound, creaking the door open just wide enough to slide your body through.

You moved blindly down the pews, hands running across the cool wood, hoping it would comfort you. It didn’t. You fumbled around until you found a box of matches and lit the candlesticks at the table behind the altar. It didn’t provide much light, but you could at least see the flickering expression of Jesus on the crucifix before you, He who had died for your wretched, terrible sins.

Knees hit wood, your hands gripping the fabric of your nightdress as you prepared to grovel. But you wouldn’t get the chance to. Not to God, at least.

“Couldn’t sleep, sugar?”

A voice that echoed through the dark like it- he owned it. You stood, turning around and searching the dimly lit dark for him. 

Father Remmick was sitting in the pew furthest from you, legs crossed and arms stretched long behind him. He was smiling; crooked,pointy teeth nearly glowing in the dim light. Your eyes roamed over the clerical that remained against his neck.

Your throat had gone dry. You swallowed hard, one hand reaching out to steady yourself on the altar rail. 

“You could say that, yeah.” 

Remmick’s legs uncrossed, spreading out in a way that felt like it couldn’t be anything but disrespectful. His eyes didn’t look blue in this light. They seemed almost amber, gleaming and ever-changing in the flickering candlelight. 

“In peace, I will lie down and sleep,” Remmick said quietly, a teasing little smirk on his face. “For you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.”

Your knuckles had turned white against the altar railing, and the sudden realization that you stood before him in nothing but a nightdress made you freeze. You should have felt empowered by his words, but instead, you felt like prey under that violent gaze. You kept your expression blank. 

“Yes, I will perhaps follow those words when I know peace.”

Remmick’s head cocked to the side, like a dog sniffing out a treat. His eyes rolled down your body, stopping at your bruised knees. 

“You troubled, darlin’?”

He didn’t sound concerned, not really. He sounded starved the question dripping off his tongue like drool rolling down a chin. He looked at you with mock-concern, eyebrows just a little too furrowed, his lips just a little too downturned. 

“Have somethin’ you’d like to confess?”

His eyes flickered to the confession booth. Two purple, velvet curtains opened to a small wooden box—one side for the priest, the other for the sinner. 

You didn’t know what it was. Maybe it was the throb between your legs, or the puppy-dog shine of his eyes in the candlelight that made them look almost like melted caramel. Or perhaps the way his voice lingered in the room like steam after a hot bath. But you nodded, quicker than you’d meant to. 

Remmick stood on long legs, the sleeves of his black shirt rolled up to reveal curling veins that traveled along his forearms. He gestured toward the booth, lips curling deviously like he’d won something. Like he was collecting a prize he’d been patiently vying for.

“Ladies first.”

The confession booth was dark, except for the little light that flickered through the intricate carvings on the wood door. The worn leather cushion sank beneath you, full of cracks and creases from years of use. You could hear Remmick shuffling on the other side as you closed yourself in. You could hardly see him through the lattice-patterned window separating him from your booth, just the shadows cast over his face and the bright white of the clerical covering his throat. 

Your hands were tangled in your lap, your leg bobbing up and down under your nightdress. You listened to Remmick’s calm breath as he settled into his seat, closed your eyes for a moment, and envisioned his hands running over his pants, his head bowing in silent prayer. The thought of it made more heat travel down your body, your heartbeat loud throughout your body.

“Sign of the Cross, yes?” 

His voice seemed even deeper, even more irresistible in the dark—something as velvet as the curtain before you. Your hands trembled as you made the Sign of the Cross over your face. 

“Bless me, Father,” you paused, licking your dry lips. “For I have sinned. It has been… far too long since my last confession. These are my sins.”

Remmick was smiling. Hands clasped in his lap, burning eyes staring into the wood of the booth. He could hear every shift you made, every breath coming from your heaving chest and out of your beautiful throat. The throat that pulsed with your heartbeat. The heartbeat that hadn’t left his mind since he’d laid eyes on you. He thought of your blood pooling in the dip of your collarbone and shifted in his seat.

Your chest was heaving, your nails digging into the seat's leather. You pressed your legs together, glanced at what you could see of Remmick’s face.

“Father, I have impure thoughts. I fear that the Devil has his hold on me, making me yearn for…improper things.”

Remmick’s smile curled, teeth sharp against his lip. You were right where he wanted you. Hot, pulsing, panting. His hands unclasped, his palm pressing into the seam of his pants. His head fell back, eyes slipping closed at the pressure against him.

“Improper things?” he asked you, his voice leveled as much as possible, but you caught the hitch. “Do you think the Lord would accept this confession… if you can’t even say what sin you’re thinking of?”

Your throat bobbed as you realized he was right. You were a sinning coward, unable to tell God what He needed to forgive you for. Your hands left sweat marks on the seat, palms raised to grip the rosary around your neck. The marks on your knees from groveling for God had started to sting, as if the Devil himself scratched down your legs. Reminding you of who you thought of and who you wanted to be on your knees for.

“I think of someone… touching me. Their hands against my skin, defiling me in a way that-”

A sound, guttural and desperate, left Remmick’s throat. His hand had continued to press against him, thick tendons and veins straining under his skin. His eyes opened, pupils nearly flooding his entire iris. All that was left was a ring of red on the outside, the color of blood stained on satin white sheets. He was silent, marinating in how you gasped at the sound he’d released. You were so deliciously untouched.

“And who is that you think of?”

The question lingered in the air, heavy and charged with something dangerous. It felt as if the rosary in between your hands were being tugged from your grasp, until you looked down and realized that it was just you releasing it, letting it clatter onto the floor.

The point of no return. Letting the Devil take you by the hand and dance you into Hell. You’d called to God so many times and He’d never answered, but Remmick was here. Real, tangible, beautiful. You dug your nails into your palms, prayed for your soul one last time before diving into the deep end.

“...I think you know, Father.”

Silence, at first. Something that made the air hot, that made your breath catch in your throat. 

The wood groaned as Remmick shifted, his feet scuffing against the floor. You could hear the screech of metal rings against a rod, Remmick pushing the curtain open. 

He didn’t ask for permission. He pushed your curtain open slowly, filling it with his broad frame and slender fingers. His fingers gripped the velvet, and a brass ring around his finger caught the light. He was a wolf in wolf's clothing, teeth sharp and bright in the dim light. 

One hand left the curtain, reaching out to touch the lines of your collarbone. He ran his nail up your neck to rest the pad of his finger against your pulse. 

“I do know,” he hummed, applying pressure to the pulse, just enough for you to feel him there. “And I always knew you’d come.”

His other hand flew from the curtain with a speed that didn’t seem human, fingers gripping your hair and tugging your head back to expose your throat. 

“God.” You moaned low in your throat, breath ragged as Remmick lowered himself enough to be straddling your lap, thighs warm and solid on top of yours. He leaned forward, his mouth finding your ear. You felt his tongue run over the shell of it, something long and cold like a serpent.

“Not sure your God is here, sugar.” His voice was low and sweet, rattling the inside of your body. “He woulda saved you by now, right?”

Remmick looked down into your nightdress, lip caught between his teeth. He was quiet as he raised his hands to the fabric, gripping it tightly before tugging. The nightdress split apart as easily as tearing paper, your skin prickling with goosebumps as the cold air hit your naked chest. He looked at you like a sinner did the cross, eyes nearly glowing. He waited; waited for your invitation to touch you, thick drool rolling down his chin like a rabid dog. It dripped onto your chest as you nodded, your hand shaking when you wrapped your fingers around the white clerical collar at his throat. You tugged it off, letting it fall to the floor beside your rosary. 

“Touch me, Father.”

Remmick was on his knees in a second, tearing away the rest of the ruined nightdress from your body as he nestled his shoulders between your thighs. The only thing that remained between you and him was a thin pair of underwear, lacy trim at the edges that he ran his fingertip over with a twitching smile. 

The pad of his rough fingertip pressed over the fabric of your underwear, firm against your clit. Your body jolted forward, legs falling open for him as the pleasure traveled up your spine. 

Remmick laughed, his head thrown back and mouth open wide.

“So wet for having never been touched, little lamb.” Remmick’s fingers hooked into the waistband of your underwear, tugging it down your smooth legs. “Do you want to be worshipped, as your God is…” He tucked your underwear into the back pocket of his black pants. “Or ruined, like the Devil would do to you?”

“I want…” Your words cut off with a whimper as he pulled his finger from you, only to open your legs wider. “I want what you want, Father…”

Remmick hummed, weighing his options. “Lil’ bit of both then, I reckon.”

His head dove in between your legs like he’d been starved of water for years, and you were the first drop of salvation he’d found. He groaned, deep and low in his throat, that sent a vibration through you that had your hands flying to the dark waves on top of his head, pulling him against you.

His hands gripped your thighs hard enough to bruise as he licked against your cunt, long tongue rolling around your clit like he’d been made to worship it.

“So sweet,” Remmick smiled against you, warm and wet for him. “Like the Lord made you just for me.”

Remmick’s hands left your thighs, palms searching the floor as he continued to suck on your clit, pushing his tongue into you, curling it up in a way that didn’t seem possible. When he found what he needed, he pulled away, looking up at you through half-lidded eyes and your wetness dripping from his lips.

His hand raised, your rosary beads tangled between his fingers. With careful precision, he lowered the necklace against your cunt, the coolness of the beads making you shiver and scratch marks into the leather seat beneath you. As the beads pressed on either side of your clit, your head fell back against the wall, heat traveling up your neck as if the flames of Hell were already licking against your skin. 

“Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.” He cocked his head to the side, eyes penetrating and sharp on your face. He could sense your impending release, the way your heartbeat quickened, your back arching off the seat.

“Don’t.” 

Once low and ragged in the dark, his voice had become clear. He closed your legs with one large hand and dropped the rosary beads back to the floor so he could lean forward, pressing his other hand against the wall next to your head. His face was inches from yours, and his breath was hot on your neck. 

“Not yet, darlin’. Not ‘til I say.” His lips found the pulse point on your neck, nipping before kissing tenderly. “The Lord teaches patience, lamb.” 

Remmick’s hand left the wall to grip your hair again, tugging your head back. It made your scalp sting in a way that made you want more, your mouth parting to whimper against him.

“That bein’ said,” A crooked smile - lips baptized in your essence. “I’m bettin’ you sound real pretty beggin’.”

His tongue was long and rough against your cheek as he tasted your sweating skin, a deep rumble in his throat as if he was tasting the sweetest nectar. He stopped at your temple, placing a gentle kiss there. His lips remained there, teeth grazing skin.

“So go on, darlin’. Pray for me to fuck you.”

Your breath caught, your entire body going hot from his words. He laughed against your skin, like he could feel the very chemistry in your body change, the way you grew slicker from his twisted request. The way you knew that you would do it for him. You’d pray to be spread open by him, explored in a way not even God could do.

“Oh, you will do it, won’t you…” 

It wasn’t a question. Remmick knew you’d beg; he knew how far gone you were. He laughed against your skin.

“Doesn’t matter how good of a girl you are… how much you love Him. You’ll give it all up just to get off, won’t you?” 

Remmick pulled back, hands sliding down to hold firm on the flesh of your hips. He lifted you from the seat like you weighed nothing, turned both your bodies around until you were straddling him. Your naked core rested against the rough material of his pants and made your body shiver. He smiled.

“Go on… hands together in contrition. Do it right…” His rough hands grabbed your wrists, pulling your hands flat together between your bodies. When they were pressed together to pray, he let his fingers linger on the bare skin of your thighs, fingers just too long and nails just too sharp against your skin. 

Your lips were dry, and Remmick’s eyes drifted to them like he wanted to lick across them, make them wet again. 

“Heavenly…”

 Remmick hummed in glee already, just from a single word. His head bowed, as if to join you in prayer, his eyes slipping shut.

“Heavenly Father… forgive me for what I am about to ask of you. I know I do not deserve such a blessing as being touched…” Your words faltered as one of Remmick’s hands slid up your thigh, gathering the slick in between your legs. His finger pressed against your clit, and you gasped, hands pressing together tighter. “As being touched by someone so good, so…”

Remmick’s finger pushed inside of you, pressing up to a spot that made your throat close up, the only sound coming out a pathetic squeak of a whine.

“Aww, darlin’, that’s so sweet of you. But you don’t have to lie.” His body leaned forward, his wet mouth pressing against your ear. “Tell your Heavenly Father what I am. What you know I am.”

“I’m…” You continued the prayer, voice deep and rasping. “I’m going to fuck the Devil… and Lord, I beg you to have mercy on my wicked soul.” 

Remmick laughed against the skin of your neck, drawing thin beads of blood with the sharp points of his teeth.

“Are you now? Going to fuck the Devil?”

All you could do was whine at the pleasurable pain in your neck, your hands shaking with the desire to pull them apart, to grab at his skin and his hair. 

Remmick hummed to himself, pulling his finger out of you with a slowness that made you bite the inside of your cheek. His cold hands slid up your arms, pulling your hands apart from their prayer. 

“Get up.” He said quietly, with that same thick, gooey voice he’d had when you’d shaken his hand for the first time. You did as he asked, spreading your legs and backing off his lap. His eyes traveled up your bare body as he stood, towering over you inside the booth. With a firm hand on your hip, he nudged you toward the curtain.

“To the altar.” 

Remmick’s breathing was heavy behind you, his gaze burning holes into the bare skin of your back as you slowly walked to the altar. You looked to the cross just above, and you felt no remorse, not anymore. Whatever God could do to punish you, you were sure Remmick could do worse. Maybe you wanted him to. 

You ceased walking once you had reached the altar, your belly just close enough to feel the cool wood against your skin. Remmick was behind you, his breath hot and wet on your neck. His eyes ran over your skin, from the top of your head to the balls of your feet. The expanse of a human body that he was now free to ruin. That he’d be begged to ruin. 

With one swift movement, he grabbed your wrists, raising them and placing them flat on the altar. Your fingers brushed the closed Bible there as your breath hitched. Remmick made no effort to remove it. He only slid one hand down your body, as soft and languid as a serpent, and pressed down on the arch of your back. 

“Look at you…” Remmick murmured, fingers sliding into your folds, finding you warm and wanting there. Your legs quivered at his simple touch, so his other arm found its spot under your belly, assisting in holding you upright. “So nervous… shaking. You must honor God with your body, little lamb.”

Two fingers entered you, pushing in and out with a torturous speed. Your legs spread wider, your nails scratching into the leather-bound fabric covering the Bible before you. 

“Please..” Your voice quivered as you tried to keep it level. Your head fell against the Bible, leaving sweat marks. “I need you inside me, I need it more than I need God.”

Remmick’s fingers pulled out of you, and you heard the faint sound of his lips licking his fingers clean. He moaned at the taste of you, his other hand pulling the clasp of his belt buckle apart. “Aw, sweetheart, that’s so kind of you.”

By the press of him against you, hot and pulsing, you could tell that Remmick was big. But nothing could have prepared you for the way it felt when the head of his cock began to press inside you, hardly able to breach your entrance. He pulled back, body lowering to press lips against your sweat-slick spine.

“Gotta open up for me, baby.” He said against your skin, running the length of himself against your folds. His tongue was cold and barbed as it ran up the expanse of your back and to the shell of your ear. “Take me all at once, and maybe I’ll make you see Him. Denying yourself would be the true sin…” Remmick tried once again, his cock slowly able to start stretching you, inch by torturous inch. You couldn’t make a sound as your mouth fell open, tears beading at the corner of your eyes from the sheer size of him.

“Haven’t even fucked you good yet,” He groaned as he pushed in. “And you’re already speaking in tongues.”

When he’d bottomed out inside you, pressing deep on a spot inside you that only made a guttural sound escape your throat, his large hand pressed against your belly. 

“Feel all that pain, lamb. You’re just getting used to me… your body will learn quick.” He slid back slowly and pushed back in with just as much resolve. Your legs nearly gave out, hands scrambling for purchase on the lectern as he fucked into you. “Soon, all you’ll feel is me.”

Remmick was right. 

Soon, the only feeling that remained was deep, wicked pleasure. Every thrust of him inside of you felt like another ring lower into Hell, the souls eternally damned there shaking their heads at you as you made the same mistakes they did. But the problem was - you didn’t fucking care.

A whine escaped your throat as Remmick picked up the pace, just a little bit. One hand on your belly, the other gripping your hip so hard you were sure you felt the cold prick of blood on your skin. Every thrust was hitting something inside you that somehow made you wetter, something that had you dripping onto him like some kind of deranged baptism.

Remmick was grunting, getting louder with each thrust into you. He tried to hide with honeyed words, but you felt too good around him.

“So easy, aren’t you?” Remmick was grabbing one of your arms, pulling your hand into his to press onto your own belly. You felt the bulge of him with each thrust in, and the pressure on your stomach made your cunt flutter around him. He groaned, words faltering as you squeezed around his cock. “You…” He nearly whined, hand gripping yours on top of your belly. “Just a few words about your corrupt God and you... you spread your legs for me?”

He laughed, hand leaving your stomach to grab at your hair, tugging until your head reeled back just enough to see him. He was beautiful like this, pupils blown out, and the first few buttons of his clean shirt popped open. Blood streaked down the corner of his mouth from the wound on your neck, and his tongue was unnaturally long as it unraveled out to wet his lips.

“Do you know something, sweetheart?” He asked, dark eyes meeting yours. “Your God isn’t here.”

A whine broke through your mouth as he rolled his hips in a particularly torturous way, hitting the spot in you that he’d found with his fingers in the confession booth. There wasn’t anything you could do but let your body go slack against him, head kept in place only by his grip on your hair. 

“What would your God say, hm?” Remmick asked, pressing into that spot again, making your vision go white. “If He saw you split open for me?”

Remmick released you, and your head fell forward to the altar. He leaned forward, and you felt the cold press of something against your neck, a chain or something of the like.

“Do you still believe in Him?” He asked against the nape of your neck, pressing deep into you. He nipped at you again and lapped the blood up with his tongue with a soft moan. 

“Maybe you should apologize to Him, hm? How does that one go again?” Remmick pulled out, almost entirely. You felt the cold air hit the wetness of your cunt, and you whined at the loss of contact from him.

“Forgive me my sins, Oh Lord,” Remmick spoke, moved both of his hands to your hips, and thrust in with one swift move that made you cry out in shock, in pleasure, in shame. “The sins of my youth.” Another deep thrust, and back out again. “The sins of my soul,” Another. “And the sins of my body-” 

The last push inside of you made you see streaks of color in your vision, your mouth hanging open, and your lips wet with drool. You felt something like a spool form in your stomach, desperate to unravel. It was an odd feeling that you’d never felt before, akin to the feeling of nearly wetting yourself, and it made your face burn with embarrassment.

“Father,” Your voice was gone, raspy and unrecognizable. “Father, I feel…” You whined as the feeling grew, doing everything in your power not to let the spool unravel. “I think I‘m gonna pee… it feels like-” Remmick chuckled, increasing the speed of his thrusts. 

“Oh, my poor baby.” 

You could hear the smile in his voice. He was the Devil himself.

“You don’t even know what your sweet little body can do, do you?”

 And with that, Remmick was reaching around your body, pressing two of his fingers against your clit and rubbing, coaxing something out of you. The more he coaxed, the tighter the spool wound.

And then it snapped.

You didn’t recognize your voice as you came, nails scratching into the altar so hard that the wood began to splinter, piercing the tips of your fingers. Remmick was laughing as wetness coated him, the front of his pants and the fingertips at your clit. You’d provided an entire baptism for him, and he wouldn’t let it go to waste.

He pulled out of you, gripping your hips tightly and whipping you around so your back hit the altar. Remmick’s knees hitting the floor and his tongue diving inside of you happened in one action, in one second. He licked up everything you gave him, your essence leaking onto his face and dripping down his chin. 

His cock remained hard, long, and red below you as he sucked on your clit. You wet your lips, a shaking hand lifting from the altar to grip at his auburn waves.

“Touch yourself,” You whimpered, voice coated in overstimulation. “Please… let me see the image He created you in…” 

Remmick’s eyes slid open, peering up at you needily. His nose brushed your clit as his tongue pushed up inside you, and he grabbed at his cock with a strong, blood-covered hand. Immediately, he was moaning, the vibrations in his throat traveling through your entire body and making your head feel airy. His hand was so beautiful pleasuring himself, pulling up and down the length of his cock and making himself leak. His hips thrusted up into his fist, and you found yourself longing to see the muscles that flexed beneath his shirt. 

Your trembling hand scratched at his scalp, and Remmick sighed happily underneath your touch. He wasn’t even eating you out, not anymore, just nuzzling his face into your skin and breathing you in as he touched himself.

“Beautiful…” You whispered to him. “Like an angel.”

Remmick growled, hand tugging on your thigh and yanking you to the floor. Your back slid against the altar as he pressed the head of himself against your cunt. His forehead pressed against yours as he came with a groan. The warmth of him spilled against your clit and downward, and Remmick’s fingers gently pressed into you, making sure it stayed tucked away inside you.

Your body trembled as Remmick pulled his forehead from yours. His thumb came up to brush against your lips, and for a brief moment, he pushed it inside, humming as the pad of it pressed against your warm tongue. He leaned forward, replacing his thumb with his mouth. A small squeak sounded in your throat at the feeling of his tongue pressing against the roof of your mouth, licking away the last of the prayers that stuck there.

Remmick’s lips remained connected to yours as he helped you stand on shaking legs, his hands pulling you up effortlessly by your waist. His hand reached behind him, grabbing the underwear he’d tucked in his back pocket as he’d prepared to stick his tongue between your legs. 

He leaned down, untangling the delicate material and holding it out.

“Step in, sweet thing.” He peered up at you through half-lidded eyes. “Gotta keep everything I gave you inside… keep you close to me.”

Your hand gripped his strong shoulder as you stepped into the holes of your underwear. Remmick pulled them up slowly, leaving soft kisses on your skin as he went. When they were fully up, getting soaked with the mix of Remmick’s and your release, he straightened. His lips pressed against your forehead for a brief, sweet moment.

“I’ll see you at Sunday service.” He said as he pulled back, his voice just as fucked out as yours had been. 

“Front pews. Don’t think you can hide from me in the back.” 

His hand grazed your arm, almost innocently.

 “Or anywhere, for that matter.”

[matrixfangs]

blessed be the whore - part 1

Priest!Remmick x fem!reader

summary: The old priest in your small town has died a gruesome death. The new one has an... eccentric way of doing things. 18+ READERS ONLY PLEASE!!!

word count: 6.3k

warnings: smut, sacrilegious actions, blood, praying, quoting the Bible during sex, sex in a church, sex on an altar, P in V, Oral F! Recieving, cum play, reader's first time, religious themes/imagery, blood play, blasphemy, abuse of a rosary, drool, squirting, degradation if you squint, praise kink, allusions to murder

a/n: HELLO! I have been working on this fic for weeks, and I finally came to the conclusion that it just needs to be a two-parter. I want to keep this A/N short and sweet because I have so many people to credit, all from Rosie's lovely Discord server! Firstly, my two beta-readers, @confetti-cakemix and @fuckoffbard! LIZ, YOU ARE MY NORTH STAR WHEN I'M WRITING, THE BESTTT, and CONFETTI!!! YOUR DESCRIPTION OF IMAGERY, EVEN WHEN YOU'RE JUST BETA READING, IS PEAK. Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to tag each and every person in the server that also gave me suggestions and helped me in ANY way! @spikedfearn @somnolenthour @citrinedigital @eternalstrigoii @le-temps-viendra36 @iceemochaa @hyoscyxmine @otxiycohcoy @flixpii @faestunna Clown (also not sure if they have a tumblr but that's my twin!!) @cherryxhaze. If I forgot ANYONEEE please please comment or DM me and I'll add you immediately! I got so much help in the server, and I had to scour through almost a month of messages to find everyone!

tags: @moyavsemoya @slasherflickchick @reneeswrld @made2wait @horror-moviehoe @arminstopguy @weirdblob21 @writersp3n @endofradio @thecontortionistsportal @notabot2 @spikedfearn @fuckoffbard @madkingcrowley @manyimaginativemuses

The new pastor of your quaint village church was strange.

The village itself was old. You’d grown up with wrinkled hands drawing ash crosses on your forehead, strings of garlic hanging on doorways, barefeet in hot, red dirt. When you were younger, you were never allowed out after dark. No exceptions. Kids who went out after dark went missing. Their names became prayers on the congregation's lips at each church service.

The old pastor, Monsignor Quinn, had been so kind. He’d listen to your panicked confessions, fleeting feelings of lust with a boy from school. Brushes of fingers against skin that kept you awake at night. 

He’d died so suddenly. He hadn’t been very old, not even past his thirties. And the weirdest part - the local sheriff wouldn’t tell you or anyone in your village how he died. You heard rumors of blood-streaked walls and screams that had only been heard by those awake that late into the night. You watched people cross themselves as they passed his boarded-up house. Little children crossed the street to avoid passing it.

And now, you were shaking the new pastor’s hand, rough and firm. Father Remmick. His lips curled like he could tell what you were thinking, his tongue running through the folds of your twisted mind. His eyes, calm and clear blue, never left yours when he introduced himself. Your father’s arm rested protective and heavy on your shoulders, the heat radiating from him comforting you like a blanket.

“Pleasure to meet y’all.” Father Remmick drawled, hand still wrapped around yours. His accent was strange - deep, and Southern, but mixed with something old that you couldn’t place. Something thick and gooey, honey falling slowly off a wooden spoon. “I’m sorry for what happened to Monsignor Quinn. Tragic… truly.”

He didn’t look sorry—not really. His other hand pressed to his chest in sorrow, but his eyes shone with a playful gleam that was sinister, bloody, and cold. 

Your voice was dry when you spoke to him for the first time, having to turn your chin up to look at him. “What happened to him?”

“Oh,” Remmick’s smile fell, but the concern didn’t feel real. It felt mocking. You felt his thumb stroke your knuckle. “Nothing that needs to fall on ears as sweet as yours.”

Your father’s arm tightened, and you were grateful for his presence. When Remmick released your hand, you fought the urge to wipe your palm on your dress, to wipe him off of you. His crooked grin remained, and his tongue slowly ran over his bottom lip, licking the sweat from his chin.

“I can’t wait to get to know you.” He looked away from you like he had to force his eyes away, like it was painful not to be looking at you. His gaze left you feeling naked, the inside of your body tingling like someone had dug around inside and pulled out everything sacred.  “All of you, of course.”

His sermon had been even stranger than he was. He said all the right words, but they came out of a twisted mouth. A serpent’s tongue ran over the words of God, words meant to comfort and uplift, but coming from him, made your stomach twist. Your fingertips ran over the silver rosary underneath your shirt as he spoke, his eyes never drifting down to the Bible before him. He knew the words by heart, and they still sounded so wrong. 

When you got on your knees to pray, you felt something so deeply, internally wrong in your chest. You couldn’t help but look up while everyone else’s heads were down, their lips moving silently in prayer. You found Father Remmick, hands wrapped tightly around the lectern, looking at you. His knuckles were white, his eyes roaming over you ardently. A rust color flashed over the blue of his eyes, like the nictitating membrane of a reptile. His gaze violated you, drilled a hole through your chest.  

For a single heartbeat you kept your gaze locked on his. When he smiled at you, you swore you watched something crawl under the skin of his forehead, two points—like horns—begging to poke out of his skin.

That night, and for many nights onward, you dreamt of Father Remmick.

The church was empty, save for you and him. His clerical collar glowed against the black of his button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal veiny forearms and slender fingers following it. Fingers that reach for your rosary beads, let them clatter to the floor. He spoke in a language you didn’t know, touching you in a way you’d never felt. A way that felt too good to be holy.

When you woke, you prayed. You prayed for hours into the early morning until the skin on your knees was raw and your eyes were sore from being squeezed tight. The rosary left a red and stinging imprint on your hand that would be there for days. 

But what frightened you most was the throb between your legs, pounding rhythmically and making you yearn for… fullness. After every hour of prayer it seemed only to get worse. 

At church, you couldn’t listen to the sermon. You couldn’t even look up at Father Remmick. Not without images flashing behind your eyes, sounds so vile and loud in your ear that you couldn’t even hear the words he was saying.

Throaty moans. A hot, wet tongue between your legs. The feeling of rhythmic thrusts, something pressing into a spot inside of you that made you feel more euphoric than God himself ever could. You felt weak every time you looked at him, your fragile body giving in with every glance. 

“My child-” His voice echoed through the rickety church, but you knew he was speaking to you.

“You look distracted.”

Your throat ran dry as you stared at the scabbed-over skin of your knees, just below your dress. You could feel your father's demanding elbow digging into yours. Be respectful.

A flash of something else when you looked up at him again. Something softer, something tender. Lips pressed to your skin, dragging against the top of your breasts. 

“What could be more important to you?” He was smiling. Smiling like he knew what you’d seen, and the devilish things you’d heard. “Than worshipping and praising God with your community… with me?”

His tongue ran over his bottom lip as he raised his arms to grip the sides of the lectern. The muscles under his shirt tensed, and your eyes lingered. By the way his smile widened, he noticed.

“Be sober-minded and alert, Miss.” He nodded his head toward you, like some kind of twisted teacher. “Your adversary, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion…” His eyes, gleaming again like something inhuman. “Looking for something to devour, like a lamb wandering from the flock.”

Remmick paused, smiling to himself. “Be glad that I arrived here at the right time, to lead you down the path of righteousness.” 

Your skin had grown cold, like spiders were running up your arms and the back of your neck. But it wasn’t just what he’d said that made you rigid, a dripping of cold sweat rolling down your spine. It was the agreeing hums of the congregation, like they knew what you’d been thinking.

You couldn’t sleep that night. The pillow's satin fabric was coated in sweat, which clung to the back of your neck and made your butter-yellow nightdress stick to your back. You stood from your bed, bare feet pressed against the hardwood of your bedroom floor. As you left your room, you knew every creaky spot to avoid, opening the door with close precision to keep it from making a sound.

You could hear your father snoring from the cracked door of his bedroom as you slipped through the hallway like a ghost. You blindly slipped your feet into slippers in the dark, your hand wrapping around the gold door knob of your front door. 

The cool breeze of a late July night kissed your skin, making your hair prickle against the fabric of your nightdress. The sky was black, stars spilled across it like bleached sugar against molasses. 

The walk to the church was by memory, your feet crunching above the gravel road in the cool dark of your village. No light was lit in anyone’s homes; the only sound was the cicadas whining in the trees surrounding you. As you passed Monsignor Quinn’s home, the foundation seemed to creak before you, the sound almost like a weeping in the air. You didn’t cross the street and kept your head forward to pass by it. It was just another house. Just another death. 

The church was dark but buzzed with an energy that made the air feel electric. You could see its indent in the darkness. It was made of white siding sun bleached from hundreds of years under the sun of the South. The smokey-colored brick spires reached out into the dark sky, pointing to the stars. Their elegance had entranced you as a child. Now it just made you feel sick. 

A rectory with a gabled roof and dead bushes surrounding it stood next to the church, just a few yards away. There was no light to be seen, no sign of life. Father Remmick would be asleep in there, sleeping soundly despite his completely taking over your mind and your body. 

As you entered the church, you didn’t make a sound, creaking the door open just wide enough to slide your body through.

You moved blindly down the pews, hands running across the cool wood, hoping it would comfort you. It didn’t. You fumbled around until you found a box of matches and lit the candlesticks at the table behind the altar. It didn’t provide much light, but you could at least see the flickering expression of Jesus on the crucifix before you, He who had died for your wretched, terrible sins.

Knees hit wood, your hands gripping the fabric of your nightdress as you prepared to grovel. But you wouldn’t get the chance to. Not to God, at least.

“Couldn’t sleep, sugar?”

A voice that echoed through the dark like it- he owned it. You stood, turning around and searching the dimly lit dark for him. 

Father Remmick was sitting in the pew furthest from you, legs crossed and arms stretched long behind him. He was smiling; crooked,pointy teeth nearly glowing in the dim light. Your eyes roamed over the clerical that remained against his neck.

Your throat had gone dry. You swallowed hard, one hand reaching out to steady yourself on the altar rail. 

“You could say that, yeah.” 

Remmick’s legs uncrossed, spreading out in a way that felt like it couldn’t be anything but disrespectful. His eyes didn’t look blue in this light. They seemed almost amber, gleaming and ever-changing in the flickering candlelight. 

“In peace, I will lie down and sleep,” Remmick said quietly, a teasing little smirk on his face. “For you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.”

Your knuckles had turned white against the altar railing, and the sudden realization that you stood before him in nothing but a nightdress made you freeze. You should have felt empowered by his words, but instead, you felt like prey under that violent gaze. You kept your expression blank. 

“Yes, I will perhaps follow those words when I know peace.”

Remmick’s head cocked to the side, like a dog sniffing out a treat. His eyes rolled down your body, stopping at your bruised knees. 

“You troubled, darlin’?”

He didn’t sound concerned, not really. He sounded starved the question dripping off his tongue like drool rolling down a chin. He looked at you with mock-concern, eyebrows just a little too furrowed, his lips just a little too downturned. 

“Have somethin’ you’d like to confess?”

His eyes flickered to the confession booth. Two purple, velvet curtains opened to a small wooden box—one side for the priest, the other for the sinner. 

You didn’t know what it was. Maybe it was the throb between your legs, or the puppy-dog shine of his eyes in the candlelight that made them look almost like melted caramel. Or perhaps the way his voice lingered in the room like steam after a hot bath. But you nodded, quicker than you’d meant to. 

Remmick stood on long legs, the sleeves of his black shirt rolled up to reveal curling veins that traveled along his forearms. He gestured toward the booth, lips curling deviously like he’d won something. Like he was collecting a prize he’d been patiently vying for.

“Ladies first.”

The confession booth was dark, except for the little light that flickered through the intricate carvings on the wood door. The worn leather cushion sank beneath you, full of cracks and creases from years of use. You could hear Remmick shuffling on the other side as you closed yourself in. You could hardly see him through the lattice-patterned window separating him from your booth, just the shadows cast over his face and the bright white of the clerical covering his throat. 

Your hands were tangled in your lap, your leg bobbing up and down under your nightdress. You listened to Remmick’s calm breath as he settled into his seat, closed your eyes for a moment, and envisioned his hands running over his pants, his head bowing in silent prayer. The thought of it made more heat travel down your body, your heartbeat loud in your skull.

“Sign of the Cross, yes?” 

His voice seemed even deeper, even more irresistible in the dark—something as velvet as the curtain before you. Your hands trembled as you made the Sign of the Cross over your face. 

“Bless me, Father,” you paused, licking your dry lips. “For I have sinned. It has been… far too long since my last confession. These are my sins.”

Remmick was smiling. Hands clasped in his lap, burning eyes staring into the wood of the booth. He could hear every shift you made, every breath coming from your heaving chest and out of your beautiful throat. The throat that pulsed with your heartbeat. The heartbeat that hadn’t left his mind since he’d laid eyes on you. He thought of your blood pooling in the dip of your collarbone and shifted in his seat.

Your chest was heaving, your nails digging into the seat's leather. You pressed your legs together, glanced at what you could see of Remmick’s face.

“Father, I have impure thoughts. I fear that the Devil has his hold on me, making me yearn for…improper things.”

Remmick’s smile curled, teeth sharp against his lip. You were right where he wanted you. Hot, pulsing, panting. His hands unclasped, his palm pressing into the seam of his pants. His head fell back, eyes slipping closed at the pressure against him.

“Improper things?” he asked you, his voice leveled as much as possible, but you caught the hitch. “Do you think the Lord would accept this confession… if you can’t even say what sin you’re thinking of?”

Your throat bobbed as you realized he was right. You were a sinning coward, unable to tell God what He needed to forgive you for. Your hands left sweat marks on the seat, palms raised to grip the rosary around your neck. The marks on your knees from groveling for God had started to sting, as if the Devil himself scratched down your legs. Reminding you of who you thought of and who you wanted to be on your knees for.

“I think of someone… touching me. Their hands against my skin, defiling me in a way that-”

A sound, guttural and desperate, left Remmick’s throat. His hand had continued to press against him, thick tendons and veins straining under his skin. His eyes opened, pupils nearly flooding his entire iris. All that was left was a ring of red on the outside, the color of blood stained on satin white sheets. He was silent, marinating in how you gasped at the sound he’d released. You were so deliciously untouched.

“And who is that you think of?”

The question lingered in the air, heavy and charged with something dangerous. It felt as if the rosary in between your hands were being tugged from your grasp, until you looked down and realized that it was just you releasing it, letting it clatter onto the floor.

The point of no return. Letting the Devil take you by the hand and dance you into Hell. You’d called to God so many times and He’d never answered, but Remmick was here. Real, tangible, beautiful. You dug your nails into your palms, prayed for your soul one last time before diving into the deep end.

“...I think you know, Father.”

Silence, at first. Something that made the air hot, that made your breath catch in your throat. 

The wood groaned as Remmick shifted, his feet scuffing against the floor. You could hear the screech of metal rings against a rod, Remmick pushing the curtain open. 

He didn’t ask for permission. He pushed your curtain open slowly, filling it with his broad frame and slender fingers. His fingers gripped the velvet, and a brass ring around his finger caught the light. He was a wolf in wolf's clothing, teeth sharp and bright in the dim light. 

One hand left the curtain, reaching out to touch the lines of your collarbone. He ran his nail up your neck to rest the pad of his finger against your pulse. 

“I do know,” he hummed, applying pressure to the pulse, just enough for you to feel him there. “And I always knew you’d come.”

His other hand flew from the curtain with a speed that didn’t seem human, fingers gripping your hair and tugging your head back to expose your throat. 

“God.” You moaned low in your throat, breath ragged as Remmick lowered himself enough to be straddling your lap, thighs warm and solid on top of yours. He leaned forward, his mouth finding your ear. You felt his tongue run over the shell of it, something long and cold like a serpent.

“Not sure your God is here, sugar.” His voice was low and sweet, rattling the inside of your body. “He woulda saved you by now, right?”

Remmick looked down into your nightdress, lip caught between his teeth. He was quiet as he raised his hands to the fabric, gripping it tightly before tugging. The nightdress split apart as easily as tearing paper, your skin prickling with goosebumps as the cold air hit your naked chest. He looked at you like a sinner did the cross, eyes nearly glowing. He waited; waited for your invitation to touch you, thick drool rolling down his chin like a rabid dog. It dripped onto your chest as you nodded, your hand shaking when you wrapped your fingers around the white clerical collar at his throat. You tugged it off, letting it fall to the floor beside your rosary. 

“Touch me, Father.”

Remmick was on his knees in a second, tearing away the rest of the ruined nightdress from your body as he nestled his shoulders between your thighs. The only thing that remained between you and him was a thin pair of underwear, lacy trim at the edges that he ran his fingertip over with a twitching smile. 

The pad of his rough fingertip pressed over the fabric of your underwear, firm against your clit. Your body jolted forward, legs falling open for him as the pleasure traveled up your spine. 

Remmick laughed, his head thrown back and mouth open wide.

“So wet for having never been touched, little lamb.” Remmick’s fingers hooked into the waistband of your underwear, tugging it down your smooth legs. “Do you want to be worshipped, as your God is…” He tucked your underwear into the back pocket of his black pants. “Or ruined, like the Devil would do to you?”

“I want…” Your words cut off with a whimper as he pulled his finger from you, only to open your legs wider. “I want what you want, Father…”

Remmick hummed, weighing his options. “Lil’ bit of both then, I reckon.”

His head dove in between your legs like he’d been starved of water for years, and you were the first drop of salvation he’d found. He groaned, deep and low in his throat, that sent a vibration through you that had your hands flying to the dark waves on top of his head, pulling him against you.

His hands gripped your thighs hard enough to bruise as he licked against your cunt, long tongue rolling around your clit like he’d been made to worship it.

“So sweet,” Remmick smiled against you, warm and wet for him. “Like the Lord made you just for me.”

Remmick’s hands left your thighs, palms searching the floor as he continued to suck on your clit, pushing his tongue into you, curling it up in a way that didn’t seem possible. When he found what he needed, he pulled away, looking up at you through half-lidded eyes and your wetness dripping from his lips.

His hand raised, your rosary beads tangled between his fingers. With careful precision, he lowered the necklace against your cunt, the coolness of the beads making you shiver and scratch marks into the leather seat beneath you. As the beads pressed on either side of your clit, your head fell back against the wall, heat traveling up your neck as if the flames of Hell were already licking against your skin. 

“Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.” He cocked his head to the side, eyes penetrating and sharp on your face. He could sense your impending release, the way your heartbeat quickened, your back arching off the seat.

“Don’t.” 

Once low and ragged in the dark, his voice had become clear. He closed your legs with one large hand and dropped the rosary beads back to the floor so he could lean forward, pressing his other hand against the wall next to your head. His face was inches from yours, and his breath was hot on your neck. 

“Not yet, darlin’. Not ‘til I say.” His lips found the pulse point on your neck, nipping before kissing tenderly. “The Lord teaches patience, lamb.” 

Remmick’s hand left the wall to grip your hair again, tugging your head back. It made your scalp sting in a way that made you want more, your mouth parting to whimper against him.

“That bein’ said,” A crooked smile - lips baptized in your essence. “I’m bettin’ you sound real pretty beggin’.”

His tongue was long and rough against your cheek as he tasted your sweating skin, a deep rumble in his throat as if he was tasting the sweetest nectar. He stopped at your temple, placing a gentle kiss there. His lips remained there, teeth grazing skin.

“So go on, darlin’. Pray for me to fuck you.”

Your breath caught, your entire body going hot from his words. He laughed against your skin, like he could feel the very chemistry in your body change, the way you grew slicker from his twisted request. The way you knew that you would do it for him. You’d pray to be spread open by him, explored in a way not even God could do.

“Oh, you will do it, won’t you…” 

It wasn’t a question. Remmick knew you’d beg; he knew how far gone you were. He laughed against your skin.

“Doesn’t matter how good of a girl you are… how much you love Him. You’ll give it all up just to get off, won’t you?” 

Remmick pulled back, hands sliding down to hold firm on the flesh of your hips. He lifted you from the seat like you weighed nothing, turned both your bodies around until you were straddling him. Your naked core rested against the rough material of his pants and made your body shiver. He smiled.

“Go on… hands together in contrition. Do it right…” His rough hands grabbed your wrists, pulling your hands flat together between your bodies. When they were pressed together to pray, he let his fingers linger on the bare skin of your thighs, fingers just too long and nails just too sharp against your skin. 

Your lips were dry, and Remmick’s eyes drifted to them like he wanted to lick across them, make them wet again. 

“Heavenly…”

 Remmick hummed in glee already, just from a single word. His head bowed, as if to join you in prayer, his eyes slipping shut.

“Heavenly Father… forgive me for what I am about to ask of you. I know I do not deserve such a blessing as being touched…” Your words faltered as one of Remmick’s hands slid up your thigh, gathering the slick in between your legs. His finger pressed against your clit, and you gasped, hands pressing together tighter. “As being touched by someone so good, so…”

Remmick’s finger pushed inside of you, pressing up to a spot that made your throat close up, the only sound coming out a pathetic squeak of a whine.

“Aww, darlin’, that’s so sweet of you. But you don’t have to lie.” His body leaned forward, his wet mouth pressing against your ear. “Tell your Heavenly Father what I am. What you know I am.”

“I’m…” You continued the prayer, voice deep and rasping. “I’m going to fuck the Devil… and Lord, I beg you to have mercy on my wicked soul.” 

Remmick laughed against the skin of your neck, drawing thin beads of blood with the sharp points of his teeth.

“Are you now? Going to fuck the Devil?”

All you could do was whine at the pleasurable pain in your neck, your hands shaking with the desire to pull them apart, to grab at his skin and his hair. 

Remmick hummed to himself, pulling his finger out of you with a slowness that made you bite the inside of your cheek. His cold hands slid up your arms, pulling your hands apart from their prayer. 

“Get up.” He said quietly, with that same thick, gooey voice he’d had when you’d shaken his hand for the first time. You did as he asked, spreading your legs and backing off his lap. His eyes traveled up your bare body as he stood, towering over you inside the booth. With a firm hand on your hip, he nudged you toward the curtain.

“To the altar.” 

Remmick’s breathing was heavy behind you, his gaze burning holes into the bare skin of your back as you slowly walked to the altar. You looked to the cross just above, and you felt no remorse, not anymore. Whatever God could do to punish you, you were sure Remmick could do worse. Maybe you wanted him to. 

You ceased walking once you had reached the altar, your belly just close enough to feel the cool wood against your skin. Remmick was behind you, his breath hot and wet on your neck. His eyes ran over your skin, from the top of your head to the balls of your feet. The expanse of a human body that he was now free to ruin. That he’d be begged to ruin. 

With one swift movement, he grabbed your wrists, raising them and placing them flat on the altar. Your fingers brushed the closed Bible there as your breath hitched. Remmick made no effort to remove it. He only slid one hand down your body, as soft and languid as a serpent, and pressed down on the arch of your back. 

“Look at you…” Remmick murmured, fingers sliding into your folds, finding you warm and wanting there. Your legs quivered at his simple touch, so his other arm found its spot under your belly, assisting in holding you upright. “So nervous… shaking. You must honor God with your body, little lamb.”

Two fingers entered you, pushing in and out with a torturous speed. Your legs spread wider, your nails scratching into the leather-bound fabric covering the Bible before you. 

“Please..” Your voice quivered as you tried to keep it level. Your head fell against the Bible, leaving sweat marks. “I need you inside me, I need it more than I need God.”

Remmick’s fingers pulled out of you, and you heard the faint sound of his lips licking his fingers clean. He moaned at the taste of you, his other hand pulling the clasp of his belt buckle apart. “Aw, sweetheart, that’s so kind of you.”

By the press of him against you, hot and pulsing, you could tell that Remmick was big. But nothing could have prepared you for the way it felt when the head of his cock began to press inside you, hardly able to breach your entrance. He pulled back, body lowering to press lips against your sweat-slick spine.

“Gotta open up for me, baby.” He said against your skin, running the length of himself against your folds. His tongue was cold and barbed as it ran up the expanse of your back and to the shell of your ear. “Take me all at once, and maybe I’ll make you see Him. Denying yourself would be the true sin…” Remmick tried once again, his cock slowly able to start stretching you, inch by torturous inch. Only babbles came out as your mouth fell open, tears beading at the corner of your eyes from the sheer size of him.

“Haven’t even fucked you good yet,” He groaned as he pushed in. “And you’re already speaking in tongues.”

When he’d bottomed out inside you, pressing deep on a spot inside you that only made a guttural sound escape your throat, his large hand pressed against your belly. 

“Feel all that pain, lamb. You’re just getting used to me… your body will learn quick.” He slid back slowly and pushed back in with just as much resolve. Your legs nearly gave out, hands scrambling for purchase on the lectern as he fucked into you. “Soon, all you’ll feel is me.”

Remmick was right. 

Soon, the only feeling that remained was deep, wicked pleasure. Every thrust of him inside of you felt like another ring lower into Hell, the souls eternally damned there shaking their heads at you as you made the same mistakes they did. But the problem was - you didn’t fucking care.

A whine escaped your throat as Remmick picked up the pace, just a little bit. One hand on your belly, the other gripping your hip so hard you were sure you felt the cold prick of blood on your skin. Every thrust was hitting something inside you that somehow made you wetter, something that had you dripping onto him like some kind of deranged baptism.

Remmick was grunting, getting louder with each thrust into you. He tried to hide with honeyed words, but you felt too good around him.

“So easy, aren’t you?” Remmick was grabbing one of your arms, pulling your hand into his to press onto your own belly. You felt the bulge of him with each thrust in, and the pressure on your stomach made your cunt flutter around him. He groaned, words faltering as you squeezed around his cock. “You…” He nearly whined, hand gripping yours on top of your belly. “Just a few words about your corrupt God and you... you spread your legs for me?”

He laughed, hand leaving your stomach to grab at your hair, tugging until your head reeled back just enough to see him. He was beautiful like this, pupils blown out, and the first few buttons of his clean shirt popped open. Blood streaked down the corner of his mouth from the wound on your neck, and his tongue was unnaturally long as it unraveled out to wet his lips.

“Do you know something, sweetheart?” He asked, dark eyes meeting yours. “Your God isn’t here.”

A whine broke through your mouth as he rolled his hips in a particularly torturous way, hitting the spot in you that he’d found with his fingers in the confession booth. There wasn’t anything you could do but let your body go slack against him, head kept in place only by his grip on your hair. 

“What would your God say, hm?” Remmick asked, pressing into that spot again, making your vision go white. “If He saw you split open for me?”

Remmick released you, and your head fell forward to the altar. He leaned forward, and you felt the cold press of something against your neck, a chain or something of the like.

“Do you still believe in Him?” He asked against the nape of your neck, pressing deep into you. He nipped at you again and lapped the blood up with his tongue with a soft moan. 

“Maybe you should apologize to Him, hm? How does that one go again?” Remmick pulled out, almost entirely. You felt the cold air hit the wetness of your cunt, and you whined at the loss of contact from him.

“Forgive me my sins, Oh Lord,” Remmick spoke, moved both of his hands to your hips, and thrust in with one swift move that made you cry out in shock, in pleasure, in shame. “The sins of my youth.” Another deep thrust, and back out again. “The sins of my soul,” Another. “And the sins of my body-” 

The last push inside of you made you see streaks of color in your vision, your mouth hanging open, and your lips wet with drool. You felt something like a spool form in your stomach, desperate to unravel. It was an odd feeling that you’d never felt before, akin to the feeling of nearly wetting yourself, and it made your face burn with embarrassment.

“Father,” Your voice was gone, raspy and unrecognizable. “Father, I feel…” You whined as the feeling grew, doing everything in your power not to let the spool unravel. “I think I‘m gonna pee… it feels like-” Remmick chuckled, increasing the speed of his thrusts. 

“Oh, my poor baby.” 

You could hear the smile in his voice. He was the Devil himself.

“You don’t even know what your sweet little body can do, do you?”

 And with that, Remmick was reaching around your body, pressing two of his fingers against your clit and rubbing, coaxing something out of you. The more he coaxed, the tighter the spool wound.

And then it snapped.

You didn’t recognize your voice as you came, nails scratching into the altar so hard that the wood began to splinter, piercing the tips of your fingers. Remmick was laughing as wetness coated him, the front of his pants and the fingertips at your clit. You’d provided an entire baptism for him, and he wouldn’t let it go to waste.

He pulled out of you, gripping your hips tightly and whipping you around so your back hit the altar. Remmick’s knees hitting the floor and his tongue diving inside of you happened in one action, in one second. He licked up everything you gave him, your essence leaking onto his face and dripping down his chin. 

His cock remained hard, long, and red below you as he sucked on your clit. You wet your lips, a shaking hand lifting from the altar to grip at his auburn waves.

“Touch yourself,” You whimpered, voice coated in overstimulation. “Please… let me see the image He created you in…” 

Remmick’s eyes slid open, peering up at you needily. His nose brushed your clit as his tongue pushed up inside you, and he grabbed at his cock with a strong, blood-covered hand. Immediately, he was moaning, the vibrations in his throat traveling through your entire body and making your head feel airy. His hand was so beautiful pleasuring himself, pulling up and down the length of his cock and making himself leak. His hips thrusted up into his fist, and you found yourself longing to see the muscles that flexed beneath his shirt. 

Your trembling hand scratched at his scalp, and Remmick sighed happily underneath your touch. He wasn’t even eating you out, not anymore, just nuzzling his face into your skin and breathing you in as he touched himself.

“Beautiful…” You whispered to him. “Like an angel.”

Remmick growled, hand tugging on your thigh and yanking you to the floor. Your back slid against the altar as he pressed the head of himself against your cunt. His forehead pressed against yours as he came with a groan. The warmth of him spilled against your clit and downward, and Remmick’s fingers gently pressed into you, making sure it stayed tucked away inside you.

Your body trembled as Remmick pulled his forehead from yours. His thumb came up to brush against your lips, and for a brief moment, he pushed it inside, humming as the pad of it pressed against your warm tongue. He leaned forward, replacing his thumb with his mouth. A small squeak sounded in your throat at the feeling of his tongue pressing against the roof of your mouth, licking away the last of the prayers that stuck there.

Remmick’s lips remained connected to yours as he helped you stand on shaking legs, his hands pulling you up effortlessly by your waist. His hand reached behind him, grabbing the underwear he’d tucked in his back pocket as he’d prepared to stick his tongue between your legs. 

He leaned down, untangling the delicate material and holding it out.

“Step in, sweet thing.” He peered up at you through half-lidded eyes. “Gotta keep everything I gave you inside… keep you close to me.”

Your hand gripped his strong shoulder as you stepped into the holes of your underwear. Remmick pulled them up slowly, leaving soft kisses on your skin as he went. When they were fully up, getting soaked with the mix of Remmick’s and your release, he straightened. His lips pressed against your forehead for a brief, sweet moment.

“I’ll see you at Sunday service.” He said as he pulled back, his voice just as fucked out as yours had been. 

“Front pews. Don’t think you can hide from me in the back.” 

His hand grazed your arm, almost innocently.

 “Or anywhere, for that matter.”

pls comment if you’d like to be tagged in part 2 <<3