morvantmortuary - Tumblr blog

morvantmortuary · 11 days ago

Text

light the sky and hold on tight --

(Rora Morvant x transmasc!plus size!Reader, 18+)

summary: Rora asks you to accompany her on an errand one summer afternoon.

warnings: discussion of alluded transphobia; thigh riding; fingering; necromancers committing arson; brief discussion of using human skin as accessories

general notes: Reader uses he/him and Rora uses masc pet names; brief appearances by the boys and their readers as well; otherwise, no use of y/n and all mentions of hair/skin avoided (though if I can do anything to make it a more seamless experience, I'm open to suggestions.)

I thought this could use a re-upload and a fresh moodboard for Pride Month. No major changes besides some grammatical tweaks. This was originally a request by an anon -- whoever you are, I hope you liked it! <3

She’d been entirely too sweet when she asked you to drive her somewhere. That should’ve been what tipped you off.

You’d been minding your own business with your work for the day, tapping away at your exceptionally tiny keyboard, when you’d felt the familiar extrasensory stroking of a gaze between your shoulders.

You knew who it was before you turned around in your office chair, and saw her leaning against the doorframe like a languid vine. Though her hair somewhat obscured her face, there was no mistaking the little smile she wore.

That was the “trouble” smile.

“Sweet little bee,” Rora said, tilting her head to look at you. “Are you too busy for me?” She sauntered in before you had time to answer, slow like she had all the time in the world to cross your room.

“…No?” you said just as slowly, watching her come closer and closer to you like a rabbit would watch a hawk - an exceptionally pretty hawk, sure, but you imagined the feeling was about the same. “Just, uh— doing the usual.”

You blinked as she stopped directly in front of you, taking your face in her cool palms.

“And you’re so good at… that, too,” Rora said, her gaze drifting to your computer for a moment like she wasn’t sure entirely what it was you did. But when it met yours again, her smile widened. Her fingers ran up into your hair, catching slightly at the roots like she knew you enjoyed.

This was calculated; your brain was already shorting out just a little from the contact and the smell of her sweetly floral perfume (magnolia, jasmine, and white sandalwood - you’d looked it up one night when you couldn’t sleep for it driving you insane). It wasn’t that her sweetness or affection was a mask, per se - quite the contrary, you knew they were as real as anything.

Realer than lots of things in just how intense they could be, sometimes.

But this was an unspoken appeal, and you couldn’t help the quiet, curious voice at the back of your brain even as she made it fuzz over.

“Did you…” You blinked, trying to re-focus on her face, rather than the low neckline of her dark dress at your seated eye level. “Need something, love?”

She’d chosen to stay with you at your place today, insisting she needed a break from the Mortuary. But she’d been oddly unsettled all morning, flitting restlessly from room to room when she thought you weren’t looking. You’d thought at first that was because she’d only brought a skeleton kit of her usual tools for her project in progress, but you wondered now if it wasn’t something else.

“…Well,” Rora demurred, glancing askance. That meant ‘yes,’ but she was trying to be polite. “Only if I’m not taking you from anything urgent, sweet pea.” She glanced over your shoulder at your monitor again.

“No.” You shook your head, drawing her attention back to you. You lifted your hands to gently pull hers from your hair, kissing the backs of her palms before loosely holding them in your own. “What’s up?”

Rora’s smile softened at your affection, and for the briefest second, you saw her look away again - as if for a moment, she was hesitating. “I hate to ask,” she began, her teeth catching at her lush lower lip. “But I need a ride.”

“Sure,” you said immediately, still fiddling with her fingers in your own as you swiveled slightly from side to side in your office chair. “Into town? Did you need to grab something for the, uh,” you paused, trying to remember what you’d seen her working on this morning. “…Possum in a tutu?”

“No,” Rora shook her head with another smile. “Mademoiselle Paulette’s almost done, she just has a final string of pearls waiting for her at home.”

“Of course.” You nodded, your face mock serious. “As every sophisticated marsupial must have this season.”

Rora giggled, and you couldn’t help but grin — you loved that sound. You’d do anything to hear that sound. Maybe even fight a bear. An undead bear.

“Silly, handsome boy.” She reached up with a finger, gently booping your nose, and you felt your face flood with heat. “You’re delightful, you know that?”

“Yeah, well…” You trailed off, unable to come up with a retort as you gazed into her eyes. You knew the green like the color of your own bedroom walls, by now, but that didn’t mean that you couldn’t still get lost in them: dark, like the mossy entrance of a cave. Sometimes, if you looked too long, you felt a slight tug somewhere inside your gut.

Like Orpheus standing at the threshold, descending to search for Eurydice.

“Little Shoot?” Rora tilted her head to look at you, and you snapped back to reality. “You still with me?”

“Yup!” You nodded too quickly. “Yeah, sorry, just, uh. Work brain.” You blinked hard again, fighting the urge to shake your head. “…Where did you need to go?” you asked. You realized she’d never told you. Or hadn’t told you yet, you corrected yourself. …Right?

Rora’s smile thinned, and for the briefest second, it whittled itself into something oddly curved and sharp. “It’s not far,” she said, the smile vanishing and her eyes widening innocently quick enough to feel like whiplash. “And what I need will only take a few minutes, I promise.”

“Sure, no worries.” You nodded, then felt your own head tilt just slightly. “I’m done with this, and I don’t have anything else to do today.” You shrugged, and, briefly, something felt a little… odd, when you tried to smile. “Did you want to grab dinner or something afterwards?”

“Hmm.” The tip of Rora’s tongue darted out, running over her lips. “We’ll see how you feel after my little errand, first. Okay?”

“…Sure, Ror,” you said again, your smile feeling even stranger now. “Whatever works, we have all evening.”

“You’re so agreeable,” Rora cooed, ruffling your hair affectionately before kissing your forehead. “My strong little succulent, so sweet.” And just like that, she turned, her hair a fragrant black veil flowing behind her. “I’m just going to get my scarf and some things, and then I’ll be ready!” she sing-songed.

You blinked one last time as if emerging from a daze, one of your hands reaching up to check and see if she’d left a soft pink lipstick stain on your forehead.

Your fingers came away from your skin looking like they’d crushed a rose petal. You sat there, wondering just why it felt like your true love was being a little too vague about this… errand, and absently rubbed them against your thumb without noticing you were smearing the pink even further.

Your car wasn’t a lemon, per se, but it definitely felt too shabby for the woman in your passenger seat.

Rora had her window down and her elbow resting on the frame, looking like a starlet from old Hollywood with her hair tied back in a sheer black scarf and her huge sunglasses on despite the sun getting lower in the sky. You knew she did that because she was still a little paranoid about being recognized in town, even with her established cover as her twin brother and estranged cousin’s even more distant cousin, but you thought it only had the opposite effect - how could anyone not want to look at her, mysterious and glamorous? You’d seen her all of once in the little shop where she sold her taxidermy tableaux, and you’d spent the rest of that first afternoon thinking about her, after only the briefest exchanged glance.

Granted, maybe it was just because you were super gay, but still.

You had the radio on a specific station you saved for when you were with her - one that played mostly ‘90s alternative. While Rora didn’t seem to mind listening to the newer stuff, you noticed that she seemed to recognize the songs on this one more often than most, occasionally sitting up a bit more at an opening chord, nodding her head in time, or even singing along under her breath when she was especially distracted. It had been merely cute, until you’d realized (after Rora had finally broken down one drunken night and told you the whole story of her resurrection) that this was probably what was she heard most often before she died the first time. Now it was almost compulsory for you to turn it on whenever she was riding with you — between the wind in her hair and the sunset out the window, if you could give her one more thing to help her pretend she’d never died at all, you did it in a heartbeat.

Not that you even knew that was what she pretended, really. After she’d given you the initial explanation, she generally didn’t talk about it, much less how she felt about it. But you imagined if you were in her shoes, you might like to forget you died, even for just a little while.

Sure enough, Rora sat upright when an ad wrapped up, and the first jangly tunes of something like a banjo or a mandolin played over the speakers. “Oh, perfect,” she said, grinning and turning it up a notch or two.

You couldn’t help but smile at this rare display of eagerness, glancing briefly at the display window (one of the only modern things about your car) to get the name of the artist so you could remember it later - not for a cheesy playlist you were planning for your anniversary or anything. No, definitely not that.

The singer was a young woman with a soft, breathy voice; girlish, maybe relatable to the Rora who would’ve first heard this song. The song itself sounded vaguely familiar, maybe it was something you’d heard when you were younger, or that your mom had been into. Not that you would ever say that to your girlfriend, of course.

“— Sunny came home with a mission.

She says ‘days go by,

I’m hypnotized,

I’m walking on a wire.

I close my eyes and fly out of my mind’ —“

“Make a right here, baby,” Rora spoke up suddenly, pointing to a right turn with poor signage. You managed to brake and turn a little quickly, but given you’d been the only ones on the road for a while - going the opposite way of Greymoon proper, you’d noticed - it wasn’t that big a deal. You drove down the little backroad, still half-listening to the song as the oak trees around you grew somewhat thicker in their clusters. Eventually, the road beneath you felt more paved than not again, and you realized the backroad had been a shortcut into what was starting to look more and more like a residential area. One of the bougie-r ones on the outside of Greymoon itself, set aside from the typical smaller houses around the town for enclaves of more expansive properties. Expansive and expensive, you noticed - you glanced out the window, seeing that for each house on this street, it took up what would’ve been three yards for three separate houses in your neighborhood, with about two houses’ worth of space between each yard. The houses themselves tended to be large and bone white in the last dregs of the day’s sunshine, with horseshoe driveways of fresh concrete. As dusk ambled after you down the street, you saw gas porch lights starting to flicker to life in your rearview mirror.

“…Are we visiting someone, babe?” You glanced at her, feeling your forehead wrinkle slightly in confusion. “Old friend of yours?”

But that didn’t make sense. Rora didn’t keep in contact with anyone from… Before. She’d told you that herself. Hell, there were days she barely talked to Maxi and Hector, and the three of them lived in the same house.

“Mmm.” Rora’s tongue darted over her lips again, and she pulled down the sun visor on her side to flip open the mirror on the back. “Not quite, dandelion. Not in a neighborhood this new, anyway.” She took a tube of lipstick out of - somewhere, you’d looked away for a minute to watch the road - and applied it as if the car were sitting perfectly still.

You noticed, curiously, this was not the blush-y peony color she’d been wearing earlier at your house.

This was red. Deep red, like brutalized poppies.

Like blood.

“…You’re gonna wanna make a left, pretty boy,” Rora said, glancing at you out of the corner of her eye.

Your eyes snapped back to the road, clicking on your turn signal, and you heard her chuckle quietly as you felt heat again rush to your face.

The road you turned on seemed to pull away from the larger houses, the oak trees thinning out again to a wider expanse of land where the dusk already seemed to be waiting for you. There were fewer inhabitants out here, you noticed, but the houses, when you did encounter them, seemed a good few decades older than their counterparts a street over. Though less ostentatious, there was something about them even more stately. Older money, if you had to guess.

“Just keep drivin’ right to the end, here,” Rora said, leaning her head slightly out the window as if to get a better look.

You continued down the street, the other houses falling away one by one, until you realized the street beneath your tires was less a street and more a private road.

A house loomed at the end of it, squat and staid. The windows, though the blinds were up, seemed ominously dark. Even from this distance, you could see the little front garden was positively choked with weeds and brambles, the rose bushes now overgrown thorny monsters.

The closer you pulled to the house, the slower you felt yourself going. Something felt… odd. There were no cars ahead of you on the curved driveway. The grecian pillars supporting the porch were discolored by the frothy green moss that grew around here if left unattended for too long. A singular bench swing on the porch swayed just enough to be perceptible, its paint chipped and peeling in strips.

Someone either hadn’t been here for a while, or they hadn’t been able to take care of it for even longer.

“…Is this the right place?” You frowned. “I don’t think there’s anyone here, Ror.”

“There isn’t.” Something about Rora’s voice sent a feeling ricocheting up your spine before you could quite put your finger on what it actually was.

It was only when you looked at her out of the corner of your eye and saw her grin that you realized it was a chill.

When you finally put on your brakes at the edge of the driveway itself, the house seemed to stare you down from its wide front windows, like the hollow sockets of a skull. When you shut your engine off, the only sound for what seemed like miles was a swelling overture from the evening’s crickets.

“…Rora,” you said slowly, eyes still locked on the empty windows. “What are we doing here?”

Rora opened her car door and got out, closing it before she leaned down to talk to you through the still open window. “Be a good boy for Mommy,” she purred, looking at you over her sunglasses. “And wait here while I get the gasoline.”

“…The what?” You whipped around, looking on as you heard her walking towards your trunk. “Rora? What gasoline?”

“I’ll just be a minute, baby,” she called, as if she was simply stepping away to powder her nose.

You turned entirely around in your seat, peering through your back windshield as you watched her lift the trunk door. When she slammed it back down again a moment later, you noticed she had a bright orange container of gasoline her left hand, and a small silver lighter she was tucking into the front of her dress.

“Ror!” You opened your door after she passed by you, still somehow looking delicate and lady-like in her scarf and dress despite her cargo. “Rora, what the hell?! Tell me what’s going on!”

Rora rolled her eyes, the gas can dangling loosely at her side as her other hand came to rest on her hip. “Mommy told you to wait, young man,” she said, arching a dark brow at you. “You know what happens if you disobey an order.”

“I—“ You had to force down the part of your brain that was a sucker for Mommy mode, shaking your head quickly. Rora had a bit of a wild streak, but this was beyond the pale. “The hell I’m getting back in the car, Ror, what the fuck?!”

Both of Rora’s brows arched now, sitting up high on her nearly perfect forehead. She clicked her tongue against her teeth with disappointment.“We’re going to need a discussion later about remembering our manners, I see.”

As if she were about to water her plants, she picked up the can of gas, opening it before resuming her path towards the porch—

Only for you to sprint across the remaining distance, catching the handle of the can in your palm as you planted yourself firmly in her path. “Aurore.” You straightened up, giving her the sharpest look you could muster. “Tell me what we’re doing here. Now.”

Rora paused, her free hand pulling her shades off entirely so you caught the full brunt of her emerald glare. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, her voice soft despite her prim facade wearing dangerously thin. “But I don’t care for your tone.”

You took a deep breath, keeping your eyes locked on hers despite the chill that again shot down your spine. “Please tell me,” you insisted. “What the fuck you brought me here for.”

“You brought me, thank you very much,” she pointed out, tilting her chin at you haughtily.

“Because you asked me to!” You gestured frustratedly with your free hand, the other still gripping the gas canister. “Because you knew I’d say yes without question! Because I’d do—“

“Anything for me,” Rora said, her honeyed accent shaving off the ends of her gerunds. “I know. Just like I’d do anything for you.” She looked you over once, her gaze cool. “So here I am, asking you to.” She cocked her head to the side, and you recognized the careful curtain she drew over her face until it was a studied nonchalance. “Or was I wrong about you, lover boy?”

“I— No, I just…“ You stared at her, agape, before quickly scanning the horizon as you realized how this looked: the two of you, with a gas can, in front of an abandoned house that might soon be nothing but ashes. “Jesus, Rora, we’re gonna get caught—“

“There’s no one for miles,” she said coolly, as if knowing exactly what you were looking for. “No one to see. No one to care. Well,” she paused, shrugging. “Unless it spreads. But we’ll be long gone by then.” She examined her nails, as if bored.

“But why?” You looked back to her, eyes wide. “Why here? Why— this?” You jerked your head at the gas can still hanging between you. “Whose house is this and why are we burning it?”

“Do you not trust me?” Rora asked, dropping her hand back to her side.

“Of course I trust you!” You looked back to her, somewhat hurt. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve some answers before we just— I don’t know.” You looked between her and the house again, feeling the panic growing in you. “I’ve never burned down a house before,” you hissed at last. “And I’m assuming you need a pretty good reason!”

“What’s a ‘good’ reason, really?” Rora waved her free hand as if discussing the merits of different types of mulch. “If I told you I was just doin’ this for shits and giggles, would you be getting cold feet on me?”

“No,” you said, unable to not sound somewhat defensive as you did. “But arson just because you’re bored doesn’t… seem like your M.O.,” you finished, feeling a bit sheepish.

“No?” Rora raised an eyebrow again, this time looking dryly amused. “And how do you figure, Mr. Detective?”

You swallowed, hoping she couldn’t see now that the dusk was fully settling in. “Because I know why you did it, the last time.” Even in the dying light, you could see her expression shift, taken aback. “And that wasn’t just for fun.”

The two of you were silent for a moment, the pause heavier than the gas you both were still holding.

“…Who told you.” It wasn’t a question, really. Her voice was too flat for that, an odd mix of defeat and annoyance.

“Hector. …And Maxi. And FT, a little. Querida mostly listened.” You dropped your gaze to the ground immediately, guilt for selling the gang out sucking at your stomach. “But only because I asked them what had happened.”

“Those chatty little—“ She cut herself off mid-grumble, something you said sinking in. “Wait. How did you even know about that to begin with? That was decades ago!”

“I don’t know,” you lied. You reached up, rubbing the back of your neck as you felt her gaze burning a hole in you. “…Okay,” you sighed. “We’d just started going out, and I googled you. Your name popped up on a few… interesting articles from the Greymoon Gazette.”

“Fuckin’— does everyone do that now?!” Rora threw her hand up. “Goddamn, when I was doing this the first time, we waited until folks dug their own skeletons out of the closet. Like civilized people!”

“They told me because they knew I liked you,” you cut in quickly. “And they didn’t want me to… think otherwise, I guess. Because it was a good reason,” you said, only to pause for a moment. “I mean, maybe not what came after, with the casualties and- like- look, I get why you would start the fire to begin with, okay?”

“Oh, do you?!”

You blinked at the acidity with which she spat the question, fighting the urge to step back a little. “What?”

Rora shifted something in her stance, and in her fervor, her eyes shone with the sharp, reflective light of some crepuscular predator. “Do you really ‘get it?’” She was leaning up towards you, and your eyes were drawn to the faint pulsating green coming to life under her skin and racing through the delicate veins that trellised across the bone lattice of her skull.

You noticed how her face seemed to fit a little too tight, suddenly. How suddenly it seemed almost translucent, white as bleached bone even as it was still wrapped around her flesh. How her eyes looked just a touch… too dark, something about them perhaps not quite human. You weren’t sure if it was her rage suddenly coming to the surface, or something much more fundamental in what she was. The part of herself that all of her family kept firmly in metaphorical chains until they couldn’t any longer.

You let go of the gas canister as some dormant, ancient part of your brain seemed to keen intensely, back in touch with its frightened primate roots. Danger. Get away.

Death walks, and it’s beautiful, and it’s here.

Rora stood stock still, seething, her accent thickening as the anger built in her like a storm. “Do you know what it’s like to have everyone know what you are, and hate you for it? To not be able to change anything at all about it, even when you’re just… wrong, all over?”

That made you pause, the warning in your brain sputtering out in surprise. “…What?” you repeated, feeling powerless still.

Rora bristled, a ripple of new fervor crossing her features. “What would you know? About being the opposite of everything everyone wanted, and knowing you can’t do a damn thing about it? That you’re a constant disappointment? Even when you do nothin’ but hope and pray to someone who won’t listen that you wake up one mornin’ exactly like they want you to be, so they’ll finally just leave you alone?”

It was the way her voice cracked a hairline fracture’s worth on the last word that suddenly brought reality crashing down on you. This was anger, sure — but more than that, it was hurt.

“…Ror,” you said softly, your eyes searching her face. You saw what you had missed earlier: the slight quivering of her lower lip, despite her bared teeth. The way her free hand, clenched into a fist, still seemed to tremble. “Rora, honey, wait.”

“I will not!” She drew her shoulders back to hide the slightest sniffle. “I’ve been dead for twenty years, goddamnit, and I’ve had it up to here with these fucking loose ends. I’m doing something, because no one else—“

“Rora,” you repeated, walking forward to close the distance between you. You watched her eyes flick hurriedly from your face to your hands as you lifted them, holding your palms up for her to see. You moved slowly, as if trying not to scare a startled animal, setting them lightly on her shoulders until you were sure she wouldn’t pull away. You let the full weight of your palms settle on the delicate bones beneath her skin, squeezing as if trying to keep them from falling out of their sockets. “Look at me, okay?”

“You are not talking me out of this,” she began, her teeth gritted.

“No, I’m not,” you agreed, shaking your head. “I’m not going to talk you out of this, you’re right. But just look at me. Really look.” You felt yourself smile, although it wobbled on your face. “Of course I know what that’s like, angel.”

Rora stopped, her righteous fire flickering for a moment into confusion.

You laughed, but the sound was half-broken in your mouth. “Did you forget who you’re talking to?” You swallowed for a different reason this time. “Of course I know what it’s like to feel… wrong. And not know how to change it.” You kept your hands on her shoulders, but your eyes fell to your shoes. “I know what it’s like to feel like a disappointment, and wish you could wake up… wake up different.” You let your eyes meet hers again, still trying your best to keep your smile in place. “I felt like that for ages, you know? …I still do, sometimes. On bad days.” You shrugged, your confidence wavering. “I know they’re not the same, obviously, but… I know how that feels. At least a little.”

Rora stared at you, her brow furrowed… before her eyes widened, and she dropped the gas can with a ‘thunk’. “Oh. Oh, fuck.” Her hands, still smelling like gas, spasmed anxiously at her sides before they flew to your face. “Honeybee, I wasn’t— oh.” She bit her lip, her anger gone entirely and replaced now with concern.

“No, I know, it’s not…” You felt your words die on your lips as she leaned up and captured you in a hug, nearly making you lose your footing with the strength of it.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She was somewhat muffled as she hid her face in your shoulder, her dark hair an impenetrable fragment of night sky. You felt her take a long, deep breath against you, and when you heard it shake ever so slightly, something in you melted.

You hugged her back tightly, kissing her head before nuzzling her cheek with yours. “Ror, it’s okay—“

“No, it’s not.” Rora leaned back, shaking her head to clear her hair away. “It’s not okay. I got so…” She exhaled again, seeming to release some of her earlier fire. “I got so caught up in my own… anger, my own memories,” she said slowly. “That I forgot people had made you feel that way, too. And that’s not fair.” She shook her head again as her eyes met yours, back to their usual mossy green and cool seriousness. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t mean to,” you soothed her, kissing her forehead.

“It doesn’t matter if I didn’t mean to, cherie,” she said, looking at you intensely. You felt her hands clutching at the back of your shirt. “I discounted your hurt for my own, and that’s not right.”

“Rora,” you said quietly, reaching around to take her hands in yours and kiss the backs of them as you had earlier.

She blinked, as if caught off-guard by this sweetness.

Your eyes fell to your fingers as she intertwined hers with yours, and you sighed, choosing your words. “I just didn’t want you to feel… alone,” you said, looking back up to meet her eyes. “You still have every right to feel hurt about what they did to you, my love. I didn’t say that to make you think otherwise. I just didn’t want you to feel like you were the only one still carrying that around.” After hesitating for a moment, you placed her hands over your own chest and held them there. “I still carry mine too.” You smiled a little, less wobbly now. “And I’ll help you carry yours, if you let me. Okay?”

Rora gazed at you, her eyes softening into something that looked almost… shy, on her. Or as close to shy as you’d ever seen her get. “…My sweet boy,” she smiled, reaching up to run her hand over your hair. “You’re far closer to Prince Charming than I deserve, you know that?”

“Of course you deserve that,” you said softly, looking at her. “You’re the closest thing to a fairy tale I’ve ever seen.”

Rora blinked, taken aback in another short span of time. You wondered, briefly, how long it had been since she felt like she didn’t have perfect certainty at her fingertips.

Her eyes dropped. “Well,” she tried to smile, but you could see the touch of a grimace lurking underneath it. “I won’t deny, I make a damn good witch.”

“I don’t see you locking any pretty girls in towers,” you said, leaning so you caught her eyes with yours. “Or fattening kids up to eat. …Though,” you added, your brain skimming through a lifetime’s worth of old stories. “You might very well demand someone’s firstborn as payment if they stole lettuce from your garden.”

Rora’s nose scrunched in the way you adored. “Mm, no. Kids are so messy.” She looked askance, thoughtful for a moment. “…I might take their eyes, though.”

You laughed, as you always did at her particularly dark strain of humor. “Eyes for lettuce, huh?” You nodded in a faux-sage way. “Sounds perfectly fair.”

“I’ll have you know certain breeds of heirloom lettuce are very rare,” she said archly, but you could see her aloof mask starting to slip as her lips twisted into a smile against her will. “Demandin’ someone’s eyes would be the minimum of what they deserve.”

“I’ll take your word for it, Princess,” you said, kissing her forehead. You didn’t miss how the green that had been pooling in her capillaries now seemed to diffuse across her skin in something softer - if she were living, something almost akin to a blush.

Before you realized quite what you were doing, you leaned down, picking up the gas can by the handle and holding it out to her as if it were a rose. “Do you want to do the honors?” Seeing her gazing at you, the death’s blush deepening on her cheeks, you couldn’t resist a wink. “Or do you just want to point and tell me where?”

Rora didn’t answer right away — her head tilted slightly to the right as she simply gazed at you, seeing something in you that she had only just noticed. Her smile was softer now, but still with that twist to her lips that reminded you of the vines winding around the porch of the House.

“As much as I appreciate the offer, handsome,” she drawled, her hand closing next to yours on the can’s handle. “I’ve been waitin’ too long for this to let anyone else do it for me. Even someone as charming as yourself.”

She returned the wink, and your heart stumbled over itself in your chest.

“Go wait by the car, baby,” she said, lifting her chin towards it behind you. “Mama’s gonna need a couple minutes, and I don’t want you getting singed.”

You nodded, your face flooding with heat at these simple words. “Sure.” You leaned forward first, kissing her cheek delicately. “You let me know if you need a hand.”

“Oh, don’t you worry,” she murmured, half to herself as you walked off. “I got this.”

The air was filled with a staining scent that made your nose ache as Rora took her time spreading the contents of the gas can along the overgrown gardens, the chipped siding, the rotting boards of the abandoned porch. She did so almost as lovingly as watering her own roses, watching the accelerant seep into the wood and plantlife with a look that bordered on pride.

After disposing of the empty can in a crawlspace under the porch, she stepped back, pulling the lighter from her cleavage.

From where you leaned against the hood of your car, you saw her profile illuminated by the spark at her fingertips. You watched, transfixed, as she gazed at the little flame for a long moment — like she was lighting a candle in the old town church, or a younger version of herself about to blow out the candle on a birthday cake.

And then, she leaned down, the light coming closer and closer to the ground like a falling star.

The conflagration wasn’t as immediate as it looked in the movies, but it also didn’t take too long. It ate through the weed-choked garden before it really began to chew its way up the porch, devouring the rotting columns in longer and longer licks until they were pillars of light framing Rora’s figure against the surrounding darkness.

The sound was quiet at first. Barely audible over the crackling of the collapsing wood. It was a dry sound, a rattling almost, and for the earliest moments, you thought it was just the last desperate sounds of a house sinking into oblivion.

And then Rora threw her head back, and you realized it was her laugh. Rasping and sharp in her throat, with a rust-like quality to it that made you think of things hidden away in dark spaces for years on end. Her hair fell back like a curtain, allowing the scar tissue around her face to reflect faintly in the violent light before her. Her eyes were the wildest, brightest green you had ever seen, and as Rora’s cackle climbed further, to a frightening peal of vicious glee, you swore you could see sparks scorching the grass at her feet.

Except those sparks were definitely her shade of green. You could see the grass that came into contact with them withering up in a way that had nothing to do with the flames lapping at the front of the house.

Like all the life had been sucked out of the blades down to their roots.

You watched the paint peel into ashes, the shudders smouldering and falling from their hinges. The tinkle of breaking glass felt like a purposeful accompaniment to Rora’s wild, uproarious laughter, oddly echoing off the dark that surrounded you now. The expression on her features was a mingle of delight that crinkled around her eyes and relief around the corners of her mouth - as well as a particular set to her grin that looked like she was tasting the sweetest variety of spite.

Though you didn’t have the context for it, you knew that some sort of score had been settled here. Something had finally - perhaps after decades - come to a close.

It was only when the roof began to cave in that Rora turned back to you, panting slightly as the full gale of her laughter died away. You were quietly amazed the corners of her mouth hadn’t split - but you watched her eyes, reflected in the headlights of your car, and the way she moved loose strands of her hair away from her face with a sweep of her hand that bordered on queenly.

“Come on,” she said, her somewhat-mad smile still in place — one that made your stomach twist in both fear and delight as she beckoned to you with an elegant finger. “Take me home, would you?”

You had to keep yourself from sprinting the short distance to the car in your eagerness, opening the passenger door for her immediately. Partially because you were desperate to be out of here, sure, but also — well. You couldn’t stop looking at her.

Rora took her time walking back to the car, surveying the destruction with a smirk of deepest satisfaction. As she passed you, she paused, sweeping her hand from your cheekbone down along the line of your jaw.

“That’s my good boy,” she nearly purred, clutching your chin in one slender, chill hand. She leaned forward, and you smelled flowers amidst the smoke and gasoline as her hair fell over you both when she kissed the corner of your mouth.

You couldn’t help but a couple times blink as she pulled away, descending into your car like royalty. You only remembered to close the car door for her when she tilted her head to look at you, laughing softly to herself.

After making sure the empty can was secure in the trunk, you hightailed it to your side of the car, the engine roaring to life as you twisted the key. As you backed up and then pulled away, praying you didn’t leave tire tracks on the lawn, you saw Rora adjusting the rearview mirror so she could watch the fire recede from sight.

Watching the firelight reflected in her eyes, you wondered if you had ever seen anything more beautiful.

Her eyes still on the mirror, she reached over, squeezing a place high up on your thigh. “Do me a favor, baby,” she grinned. “And drive like you stole it.”

Despite the fact that you’d never stolen a car in your life, as if under some sort of spell, you obliged. You tore down the rest of the gravel drive as she laughed anew, rolling down her window and leaning out to watch the burning house drift further and further away into the night.

She didn’t move her hand from your leg once as you swerved around turns and careened up roads you’d never seen, changing directions whenever she indicated so you wouldn’t be taking the same route twice. Despite the fact that it was pitch black outside, you felt fearless, even when your lights were the only source of illumination on the road.

How much that had to do with the fact that her hand was traveling slowly but steadily upwards, you couldn’t say. Or wouldn’t.

You’d been driving maybe twenty minutes when you’d moved out of the neighborhoods and back into the slightly wilder part of the road, the trees closing overhead and seeming to shield the car from the night sky. Where there had been moonlight, there was suddenly just darkness and branches, with the occasional hole where the light crept back in.

As if she had been waiting for this, Rora squeezed gently but firmly at the very top of your thigh, nearly making you veer into the other lane. “Pull over.”

Her voice was like velvet, but it was an order.

You looked over at her, searching her face. “Something wrong?”

“No,” she said simply, and you felt another curious, hopeful twist in your gut. “Pull over.”

As soon as you found enough shoulder space to do so, you obliged.

You’d barely put the car in park before Rora took her seat belt off like it burned her, then clasped your face in her cool palms. You just saw her eyes, and the sheer want in them, before she crushed your lips in a clashing kiss that spoke only of hunger.

Somehow managing to get your own seatbelt off, you couldn’t help but return it, a soft sigh slipping out when she bit down on your lower lip. Your hands found her hair, her waist, trying to figure out how to get closer.

Before you could fully process what was happening, Rora had let you go, and disappeared into your back seat. After a moment, she grabbed you by your shirt, insistently tugging you with her.

You followed without hesitation and only a little stumbling, falling into the middle seat. Rora practically pounced as you sat down, settling herself so she was astride one of your thighs with a leg between yours.

For a moment, you could only stare up at this divine creature looking down at you, her eyes alight as though they were still burning themselves, her hair darker than the night around you both.

She kissed you again, pushing you back into the seat, and when she pulled away to let you breathe, her laugh was low in your throat.

“You taste like smoke,” she teased, her nose barely an inch from yours. “I like it.”

“You’re so beautiful,” you said, your voice little more than a whisper.

You saw the green eyes blink, and she pulled back just slightly, as if in surprise. A fission passed over her expression, a flurry of tiny knits of her brow and shifts in her eyes, like she couldn’t quite decide how to feel about the compliment.

Your hands found her hips and held them there, determined to keep her from moving any further. “Please believe me,” you said softly. Your thumbs smoothed over the fabric of her dress, almost soothingly. You swallowed, not sure why you were suddenly nervous. “I love you, Ror.” You smiled up at her in the dim light. “You’re… god, you’re terrifying,” you laughed a little, unable to help it. “And beautiful. And I love you, so much.”

Rora gazed at you, her eyes openly searching your face. Your heart ached when you saw the tiniest touch of hesitation there, like she was looking for something that would prove your words wrong.

And yet. In her eyes, a spark other than anger, than embers —

Something that almost, to your untrained eye, looked like hope.

So slowly it was almost imperceptible, Rora leaned forward, closing the space between the two of you again until her forehead was touching yours.

“I have never,” she whispered. “Loved someone like I love you.” Her hands found your shirt, fiddling with the buttons, as if she was nervous herself. “And if I had to drag myself out of my family’s crypt again, crawling through their ashes, bare skin against the cold stone… I would do it,” she said. “In a heartbeat, if it meant I never had to lose you.”

Your hands found her face in the fragments of moonlight, your thumbs ghosting lovingly over the scar tissue that surrounded her cheeks and jawline. “I’ll go wherever you go,” you said softly, your eyes moving from her lips to the bright glowing green again. “However it works - the Veil, and all that.” You wet your lower lip, your heart feeling like it was going to beat through your chest. “I’ll follow you to whatever’s after this life. I swear.”

Rora chuckled. “You don’t know what you’re asking, little bee.” She smiled, but there was still something melancholy to it.

“I don’t have to know,” you said, and you had never been more certain of anything in your life. “I just want to be wherever you are.”

Rora’s eyes were wide, and for a moment, she seemed frozen. Like she was overwhelmed.

And then the fire seemed to return again despite being miles away now, her hair smelling faintly of smoke as she less unbuttoned your shirt and more ripped it open.

You reached around her back for the zipper of her dress, watching it slide down her sides like water — and realizing she hadn’t worn a bra.

Your eyes flew back to hers, and you weren’t entirely sure what it was about her being so vulnerable while being so destructive that made you feel like some embers were starting to catch at the center of you.

You jumped a little at a pressure there, before you realized she was pressing her thigh to your heat. You couldn’t hold back a soft noise, your hips seeking more friction to get to the softest part of you.

“You’ve been so good for me today,” Rora murmured, rocking her knee against you — and, in turn, grinding herself lightly against your thigh. “You did everythin’ I asked, you were perfect.”

Your eyes fell, watching her breasts move in the light, the Y-incision down her chest gleaming like silver.

She laughed, soft in her throat. “You’re such a boy.” She took your jaw gently in her fingers, tilting your head up to look at her. She watched your face as you bit back a whine, the rhythm of her pushing against you sending a bolt through your center. “You’re my boy,” she said, kissing you like she was trying to taste you. “My good boy.”

You felt fingers at the fly of your jeans, and you arched into them, already greedy.

“Eager, are we?” Her hand floated away in the dark, hovering, and you almost moaned. You felt her grind herself harder against your thigh, her head falling briefly back. You heard a sigh that was her biting back a groan, and you felt a shiver like summer lightning. “You’ll just have to be patient, handsome,” she breathed, looking back again to grin at you slyly.

You nodded without thinking. You would’ve waited all eternity if she asked you to.

You tensed your thigh, pushing harder against her cunt, and she nearly growled. Her hands fell to your thigh, her nails digging at your muscle through the denim.

Your hands seized at her hips again, where her dress was still clinging to her, and you impatiently shoved her skirt aside, making sure there was nothing between her and you but the fabric on your leg. You pulled her forward, wanting to watch her face twist as she fell to pieces.

Her hand fell to your fly yet again, and with a dexterity that would’ve impressed you if you were more focused, she undid the button and pulled the zipper down with just one motion.

She shoved her hand under the waistband of your underwear, her fingers stroking down the length of your slit, and you hissed through your teeth, feeling like the center of you was sparking flint.

You moved her skirts further back, finding the black lace waiting for you underneath the fabric, and you glanced up at her. “How—“ You paused, biting back an unholy sound. “How attached are you to these?”

Rora blinked, her sharp gaze softly blurry, and she tilted her head in an unspoken question.

“Cool,” you rasped, and your hands dropped to the waistline. With a strength you didn’t know you could pull off, you ripped them at the waistband, watching the fabric split all the way down her cunt.

Rora looked down, and after a moment’s pause, she laughed in what sounded like delighted surprise. “You been holdin’ out on me, lover boy?” She looked back up at you, grinning like a knife.

You shrugged, the fire spreading up your chest to your face. “I— got lucky?”

“You’re damn right you are,” she said, her teeth glinting in the moonlight as she leaned forward, kissing down the column of your neck as her fingers sank into your folds.

You kept your mind long enough to yank away the scrap of fabric before your hands fell to her hips again, pulling her now-bare sex against your thigh. For as cold as she was everywhere else, all the heat seemed to pool here, like her life all seemed to coagulate in one place. You felt the liquid heat soaking through the denim as she dragged herself against you, and her fingers curled against the place that made sparks illuminate the back of your eyelids.

Your hand pushed itself between your thigh and her slit, and you pressed your fingertips to her clit, circling like you were trying to write a prayer in a language you only knew when you dreamed.

The hand that had been clutching your thigh spasmed, and she wrapped her arm around your neck, pulling you closer as you moved against one another.

Your skin felt like neon. Her breath was on your neck, somehow still light despite the way she groaned like she was going to break open. She kissed the corner of your mouth, then your mouth proper, sucking at your lower lip like it was candy. You pushed your tongue into her mouth, wondering if this is what it felt like to kiss a goddess.

She kissed you back just as fervently, her fingers curling again and again against that spot, her desire trickling down your palm towards your wrist like honey. Your thigh began to shake, and you had to fight the urge to close your eyes. You didn’t want to miss her. A moment of this.

You pulled back, just enough to see her eyes, the black of her lashes against the space of her skin, the deep green as her lids fluttered open.

“Beautiful, brave boy,” she whispered, and it sounded so adoring. “My oak, my love.” She clenched around your fingers, her eyes hazy. “M-mine.”

You came apart first, your world green as the fire she lit in you set every nerve ablaze. You leaned forward, almost not able to bear the heat of it, your forehead touching her cool one and your skin confused but thankful by so many sensations at once.

Rora watched you come almost avariciously, clenching tighter around your fingers until she let go, leaving your hand soaked. You fucked her through her orgasm, stubborn in your rhythm even as she pulled your face to her chest, her head back as she let out a cry you thought they could hear all the way back at the ruined house.

When you sat up to look at her, both of you still panting, you studied her face like you wanted to tattoo it on the inside of your eyelids.

Rora brought her free hand to your check, and you brought your fingers to your mouth, not wanting to go without a single part of her. She giggled softly at your eagerness, before she linked her arm with yours and mirrored your gesture. When she pulled her hand away, her lips reflected your orgasm back at you, and you felt your heart stammer in your chest.

“You’re perfect, you know that?” she said softly. She leaned forward, kissing you gently, and suddenly you could taste both of you at once, together. She only came up when she needed air, looking at you still. “You’re perfect exactly as you are. Right now.”

You laughed quietly, not good at these kind of compliments. “I’m so glad I found you,” you whispered.

Rora smiled, and it was like one of her own roses. “Good,” she murmured. “Because I’m not about to let go of you. Ever.”

You lingered there, head light as air, under the leaves for what felt like ages.

When the two of you finally drove away, you weren’t even thinking about sirens, or gasoline, or fire.

Just her.

You came to underneath the soft darkness of Rora’s silk sheets, not entirely sure when and how you’d arrived at her room in the Mortuary, or when you’d had time to change into your pajamas. You remembered faint snippets of the night before: speeding away with the windows down, Rora’s laugh echoing into the night over the radio and the wind. The faint smell of smoke that seemed to linger no matter how far you drove. Huddling together in a diner outside town as you watched fire engine lights tear down the street in the night, Rora clutching your hand under the table the whole time.

For all the chaos, the unanswered questions, the brief moment of doubt… you were glad you’d been there. You were proud, in a weird way, that she had asked you to take her. That she knew she could trust you so implicitly, even with this act of devastation on her past.

You remembered the way her eyes glowed with the reflection of the growing flames, her grin that felt like a serrated blade, and you felt, for an instant, the stomach-twisting awe of those who had seen the sublime. Like you had gazed over the edge of a cliff at its farthest point and heard your brain whisper for you to jump, or seen a storm over the sea tease a wave into something colossal and inescapable.

You were in love with a force of nature, and she loved you just as fiercely.

This thought was interrupted by the feeling of something paper-y colliding with pillow right next to your head, and you flinched, grumbling softly to yourself.

“Now what in the name of Everythin’ Belowdo you call that, Rorabelle?”

You blinked, still groggy - was that Maxi? It was his voice, but you’d never actually heard him sound pissed before.

“Did I not specifically say ‘hey, guys, maybe we should lay off the non-essential felonies for a bit’? ‘We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves’? Because that sure looks like fuckin’ arson right there on the front page of the mornin’ paper. Goddamnit, Aurore, it’s hard enough tryin’ to keep some dipshit magician from They Who off our tail, we don’t need extraneous—“

Your brain took a sleepy second to process all of this information, but when it finally seized on the phrase ‘morning paper’, you bolted upright from under the blankets in a mix of alarm and - if you could stand to admit it to yourself - morbid curiosity. “Holy shit, we made the paper?”

You scoured the bedclothes for the copy in question, finding where it had landed next to you and snatching it up in interest.

Maxi’s voice choked into a surprised squeak, and you glanced up to find him in his waistcoat and rolled-up shirtsleeves, still standing with his hands on his hips at the end of the bed.

You couldn’t help a smile at his expression. “Morning, Maxi.”

Maxi’s face was flushed, startled and clearly mortified. “I— Oh, no. I’m so sorry, you’re definitely not my sister.” He gave you an apologetic grimace, but couldn’t quite bring himself to hold eye contact with you in any sort of undress. He fixed his gaze on the intricate antique wallpaper and folded his arms over his chest, clearly flustered between his instincts of being a good host and immediately excusing himself. “I apologize, man, I didn’t realize you were stayin’ over. I would’ve knocked first, I swear.”

You couldn’t help but smile a little, shrugging casually. “It’s cool bro, it happens.” You looked back to the front page, seeing a photo of the charred remnants splashed wide over the fold. “So this place we torched must’ve belonged to someone important, huh?”

“I— wait, you were there?” Maxi turned to look at you in surprise and immediately looked away again, pulling his glasses hurriedly off his face. “Shit, sorry. But when did—“

He was cut short by Rora’s bedroom door bursting open, Hex sliding in in his usual hoodie, ripped jeans, and sock feet. He threw a second copy of the paper onto Rora’s bedspread with a flourish. “Girl, you are so busted, Maxi’s gonna have an aneur— Oh, fuck!” As soon as he noticed it was you, Hex immediately spun around to face the wall opposite you and nearly smacked into the doorframe in the process. “You’re not Rora.”

“Well spotted, Hex,” Maxi drawled.

“Man, shut up,” Hector muttered, glaring over at Maxi before nervously looking over his shoulder at you, also determined to not make eye contact. “Sorry, bro, I didn’t know—“

“We got in late,” you said, fighting a laugh at both the Morvants’ obvious discomfort as they tried to avoid witnessing you in a vulnerable state without your permission. “It’s all good, dude.”

“Well, still,” Hex mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. “I woulda knocked first — wait, what are you doing in here?” He turned, pointing accusatorially at Maxi.

“Don’t look at me, I intended to have a chat with my dear sister,” Maxi snapped, his tone one of politely strained frustration on the last two words. “And I seem to have beat you here, at any rate.”

“Does this mean you all regularly burst in on each other dramatically?” you asked, leaning back against the pillows as you raised an amused eyebrow.

“Well, Rora’s usually still in her pajamas by now,” Maxi said with a shy shrug. “It’s before noon.”

“Or she’s at least decent,” Hex added. “How about we just, uh—“

“What,” came a voice like ice from the doorway. “Are you idiots doing in here?”

The three of you looked around in unison to see Rora looming just outside, holding a tray bearing two coffee mugs and a small vase with a single white rose. She was indeed still in her pajamas, but her glare betrayed any sense of sleepy relaxation she might have projected. If looks could kill, you got the feeling both Maxi and Hector would be foaming at the mouth and twitching on the ancient rug.

“We just came in to talk to you, we didn’t know he was here—“ Maxi said, holding up one palm and the hand holding his glasses in a peacemaking gesture.

“Huge misunderstanding, we were just leaving,“ Hex agreed, nodding furiously and backing up a step.

“You’re lucky I have my hands full or I’d have both your hides for lampshades,” Rora said, her voice eerily calm despite her clearly clenched hands around the tray. “Or worse.”

“There’s worse than being made into lampshades?” you piped up, deeply curious and also somewhat dreading the answer.

“There is… when you have senior year photos like theirs,” Rora said with an eerie smile and a forced sweetness. She strode in and calmly set the tray on the end of her bed in front of you, before facing her family with her hands clasped behind her back. “Isn’t that right, boys?”

Both Maxi and Hex had merely ignored the lampshade threat, but this seemed to strike a chord with both of them; Maxi put his glasses back on with clear consternation, Hex visibly bristled.

“You wouldn’t,” Maxi said, his voice carefully level.

Rora pulled her phone out of the waistband of her paint-splattered shorts and held it up tauntingly. “I’ve had ‘em both in the… the…” She paused, her lips pressing together as she struggled to remember. Slowly, her head turned just enough to get you within the corner of her eye. “…On my phone, somewhere.”

“She has them saved in a folder to be unleashed on the Mortuary groupchat,” you filled in for her, selecting one of the coffee mugs for yourself and watching the boys over it as you took a slip. “As deemed necessary.” You gave them a smile, unable to resist. “I helped.”

“Man, I wasn’t even going to school in the States anymore, come on!” Hector pouted, shoving his hands in his jeans pockets.

“At least we have ‘em,” Maxi said dryly, trying to seem disaffected as he surveyed Rora over the frames of his glasses. But you clocked the way his arms were still folded tightly over his chest, the way he shifted slightly on his feet. “Helps when you’re not six feet under in leak-proof linin’.”

You looked immediately to Rora, trying to figure out if her brother had crossed a line and you needed to intervene. Maxi and Rora were often cutting to each other — especially about the subject of Rora’s teenage demise, now acting like it was something as simple as a bad haircut or a case of braces. But there were moments between the two on both sides that, if you didn’t know them better, you would’ve mistaken for mean. Not that Ror pulled her punches, but you still couldn’t help but feel protective of her.

Rora only rolled her eyes in response. “God knows you still could’ve used a shot of embalming fluid to give you some color.” She mimicked his folded arms, and the resemblance between the two was stronger than usual. It was often easy to forget they were twins until they argued, when suddenly it was impossible not to see each as the other’s dark reflection despite Rora’s ‘new’ body.

You wondered abruptly just how closely they’d resembled one another when she was in her original. Seeing them in photos was one thing, but you had a feeling seeing them in the flesh would’ve been downright eerie.

You heard your name out of Rora’s mouth, which suddenly brought you back into the conversation. “—Should be able to expect a modicum of privacy when they’re staying over, it’s part of the House Rules.” She flipped her hair off her shoulder with a scowl. “FT was the one that made such a big to-do about making some to begin with, so where do you, in particular, get off—“

“No one’s disagreein’ with that, Rorabelle, but that doesn’t change why I walked in here originally,” Maxi interrupted, his gaze steadfast. He pointed to the newspaper Hex had thrown at the end of the bed. “What the hell were you thinkin’ last night?”

“What is it the kids say nowadays? ‘It’s my Death-iversary and I get to pick the coping mechanism.’” Rora waved him off, her perfect mouth a pout.

You froze, nearly dropping your coffee mug. “Wait, it was your what?” Your mind suddenly kicked into overdrive. You knew it was coming up, but you hadn’t been sure of the exact date. You’d been pondering flowers, maybe dinner— whatever it was you got for a pretty lady back from the grave. “You didn’t tell me,” you said, unable to keep the hurt entirely out of your voice.

“I was going to.” Rora couldn’t quite meet your eyes, pretending she was still having a stare-off with her brother even though he was looking at you with the same amount of confusion. “…Later.”

“I offered to bake you a cake! Cook something nice!” Hex chimed in, his doe eyes wounded “You said ‘No, Hex, I don’t wanna talk about it, Hex,’ and then you run off and burn shit down without me? The hell?”

“Hector, you’re not helpin’.” Maxi sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose under his glasses. “Ror, we talked about this. I know you know better.”

“We get it, Maxi, you do a great impression of Mama,” Rora rolled her eyes again.

“You think I wanna spend what free time I get bossin’ my grown sister around?!” Maxi threw a hand up in the air as his other fell back to his hip, frustrated. “If you’d just act your real age and stop usin’ highly flammable accelerants as an emotional outlet—“

You raised your hand sheepishly. “Hey dude, I’m the one who drove her there.” You didn’t want Rora to take the flack alone, though you admitted to also having worried about how this seemed to be turning into a pattern.

“But did she tell you where you were going first? Or why?” Hector raised an eyebrow as he turned to look at you.

“You leave him out of this,” Rora hissed, turning on Hector.

Hex threw his hands up. “He brought himself into it!”

“And that’s another thing,” Maxi said, glaring at Rora. He paused, looking back to you with a gentler expression. “Look, man, you’re obviously an adult, I’m not about to tell you what choices to make, but also,” he looked pointedly back to Rora. “I woulda told you first.”

“Oh, like FT hasn’t straight up murdered a guy because you asked them to?” Rora’s hands went to her hips.

You blinked, looking to Maxi curiously. You’d never heard this before.

“They knew what we were doin’, it’s different,” Maxi insisted, though you caught his ears turning the slightest shade of pink.

“I don’t think you get to be on a high horse about askin’ your Final to stab a dude when all I got Petal involved in was some light arson, that’s two totally different prison sentences,” Rora shot back.

You opened your mouth, about to ask how prison was involved in this and if this meant you’d also have to stab a guy, when a figure appeared in the doorway.

“Why don’t I ever get to do anything fun?”

Hector’s partner — clad, you noted shyly, in what looked like just one of his more oversized, worn out hoodies — was leaning in the doorway with two mugs that smelled heavily of cinnamon. They were looking at Hector specifically, though when they noticed you, they waved as best as they could with one mug. “Oh, hey buddy!”

You raised your mug in return, smiling. “Hey.”

You’d been introduced to the boys’ partners the longer you’d hung around the Mortuary, and by now, the three of you had what you considered a pretty chill acquaintanceship, even if your circumstances were… unusual. Perhaps especially because of that, as there were certain parts of your relationship with Rora you were less likely to bring up in casual chats with your own circle of friends.

The whole her-being-undead part, for example.

They looked back to Hector, eyes sweetly wide. “But for real, why am I getting left out? I want to do fun illegal stuff.”

“Because I know better,” Hector said smugly, holding out his arm for his partner to come join him. “And I wouldn’t ever stoop so low as to endanger my baby. Unlike some people.”

Querida — or Q, as they sometimes went by now for something more gender-neutral — looked confused as they walked over, frowning slightly as Hex took a proffered mug and kissed their temple. “But weren’t we just saying last night that we were gonna try—“

Hex made a show of slurping his coffee louder than you would’ve thought possible, drowning their question out. “This is fantastic, mi amor, thank you so much. You know just how I like it.”

The twins loudly scoffed in unison.

“‘Know better,’ bull-fuckin’-shit,” Maxi said, irritated.

“Hector, you little lyin’—“ Rora snapped.

The twins both were arguing with Hex and each other, and you and Q could only look at one another with an awkward shrug and a grimace over your respective mugs. Necromancer business was hard to get involved in from your standpoints as mortals, so when it came to free-for-alls, there really wasn’t much either of you were able to do.

“Don’t we have a rule about inviting everyone to House meetings?”

The cacophony of justifications paused as Maxi’s partner emerged from the shadow of the doorway. They were still in a torn-up old concert t-shirt and faded cotton shorts with their hair slightly mussed, sleepily rubbing an eye as though they’d just woken up despite Maxi already being dressed for work. “And one about no new business before noon on weekends, unless it’s—“ They had to pause, trying to muffle a soft yawn. “An emergency?”

The three Morvants glanced at each other and then at FT, with some mumbles of agreement in their direction.

You perked up, sipping your coffee again. The three of them and FT had a fascinating relationship, if you were being honest. You suspected that was because they had been around the longest, and because they were the one who had established the precedent for mortals being accepted into the family. While FT was still mortal - you were pretty sure, anyway - they were the only one who seemed comfortable getting in the middle when all three were annoyed with each other. More importantly, all three of them seemed to willing to listen… to a degree, at least.

You weren’t sure when, if ever, you’d feel comfortable enough to waltz up and tell the three of them to chill out.

“I’d argue this counts,” Maxi said quietly, though his eyes were soft as he waited for FT to join him. When they made it to his side, he leaned down to kiss their forehead before folding them into a hug.

“I’m sure you do, you big Goody Two-shoes,” Rora grumbled, without any real venom to it. She examined her nails pointedly. “It’s just my brother bein’ my brother, doll face, you know him.”

“I do,” FT agreed, more sighing the words than speaking them. But it was a contented sigh — one you understood well.

You felt the same thing seep into your chest and color your breath whenever you watched Rora concentrating at her workbench, or putting on makeup at her vanity, or even just staring out the window.

A pang like the sweetest kind of bruise.

FT hugged Maxi’s waist, and for a lingering minute, the two of them just rocked slightly back and forth, staring intently into each other’s eyes.

But you realized there was something more going on there than just their usual gushiness — you managed to catch the barely imperceptible flicker of a literal spark between them, jumping off Maxi’s fingertip as he traced it down the skin of FT’s arm towards their elbow.

Something changed in FT’s eyes, and you saw them lock onto a spot in the distance, focusing on something you couldn’t see. When Maxi finally let go to stand back up, FT just stretched, yawning again as though it hadn’t happened.

“Anyway, if you guys are done warming up your vocals,” they teased. “I think I’ll take the other mortals with me to the kitchen, if I can borrow them for a bit.” They glanced at Querida and then at you, smiling a little. “See if we can’t agree on something for breakfast, huh?”

Rora’s eyes narrowed. “What’d he tell you?”

“He didn’t need to tell me anything, Ror, I heard y’all through the bedroom floor,” they said breezily, walking back towards the doorway. “We’re just gonna go stare at the pantry while you guys take a minute.” They leaned against the doorframe, glancing to you and then to Querida again. “If you guys don’t mind giving me a hand?”

Querida gave Hector a sidelong look, and he squeezed their hip with his free hand, his eyes briefly darting from FT’s and back to theirs. They shrugged, taking a long drink of their coffee — and doing something with their hand behind Hex’s back that made him startle slightly, giving them an annoyed yet affectionate look.

“We should probably do something with the eggs soon,” they agreed, leaving Hector’s side to stand against the other side of the doorframe. “I’d hate for them to go to waste.”

The two of them looked expectantly to you — but you hesitated, turning back to Rora.

Rora’s gaze was locked on her relatives, her arms still resolutely folded. You recognized the set of her shoulders, the steady tug at the corner of her mouth from last night. When you noticed her glare was already a brilliant green, and you knew, with a sinking feeling, that there was no talking her down from this one.

But the spell was broken for just an instant as she seemed to feel your gaze, and she paused, the fury in her eyes dimming just slightly as she looked your way. “…It’s fine, little bee,” she muttered, trying to give you a smile that came out more a grimace. Her eyes returned almost immediately to the other Morvants. “Give me a minute to sort out my family, would you?”

You looked instinctively to Maxi and Hector, unable to quash the desire to check for potential threats.

Maxi’s face was deliberately, frustratingly neutral, his gaze fixed on Rora. Hex seemed to be absently sucking on the inside of his cheek as if almost… amused by the whole situation.

At last, you rose from the comfort of Rora’s bed, already longing for the warm softness of her sheets again as you drained your coffee cup in a last gulp.

“I’ll just be outside,” you murmured, nudging her affectionately as you walked by.

Rora barely nodded in acknowledgement, still staring down her relatives as if lying in wait.

“C’mon,” FT said quietly, giving you a reassuring smile as you headed towards the door. “We need all the help we can get, making the Waffles vs. Pancakes vs. Crepes decision.”

“I’m always for pancakes,” Querida said with a wink.

You gave them a small smile, but couldn’t help but look back over your shoulder as FT waved to the Morvants and pulled the bedroom door shut behind the three of you.

Before the door had even shut all the way, you saw the three necromancers nearly lunge at each other, all talking at once in fierce whispers.

You looked back to FT and Querida, only to see that Q seemed to also be looking concerned.

“…Should we be worried?” they whispered.

FT rolled their eyes, but there was a playfulness to it. “No, trust me,” they whispered back. They slung their arms around both your and Q’s shoulders, giving you both a half hug before heading down the hallway. “They’re all at least half Cajun with untreated anxiety and attachment issues they’re still in the process of healing. They’re gonna hiss and growl and cuss each other out for a few minutes, and they’ll be over it before we even finish brewing more coffee.” They gave you an especially pointed look. “And the boys would die before they ever upset Rora on purpose, I promise.”

You felt your shoulders lighten a little as you followed them, the gloom of the House starting to similarly lighten up as you headed down the stairs to the first floor. “You seem… used to this,” you muttered, unable to help your curiosity.

FT shrugged. “Before you two came around, dating Maxi was kind of like dating the whole family for a bit. Metaphorically, of course,” they added quickly, looking first over their shoulder at Querida and then at you. “Nothing weird - well, weirder than usual, I just mean…” They paused, their eyes searching the ceiling as they chose their words. “…Being a third party, even a biased one, meant I was someone they all tried to make their case to at times. Just for the sake of having someone around who wasn’t blood.” They shrugged. “You can imagine the three of them trying to sort their shit out by themselves before that. I must’ve made for a nice change of pace.”

“Weren’t Maxi and Hector not speaking for, like… a decade?” Querida asked, raising an eyebrow.

“My point exactly,” FT pointed to Q as they bumped the kitchen door open with their hip, leading you all inside. “And the version I heard was a decade and change,” they added, lowering their voice despite the necromancers being a whole floor away at this point.

As they opened the cabinet where the mugs were stored, you leaned your back against a far counter, and watched Q rest their elbows on the kitchen island.

FT held up a finger while they poured themselves the remnants of the current pot and took a sip - then looked to Q out of the corner of their eye with a sly twinkle. “You and I ought to compare notes sometime.”

Q’s lips pressed together thoughtfully, shifting slightly where they were leaning as though they weren’t so sure about that.

FT waved their free hand casually. “Not to start anything — you’ll stand by yours,” they said, nodding towards the second floor. “And I’ll stand by mine. I know that. That’s how it’s supposed to work. I just mean…” They paused, taking another sip as they chose their words.

You wondered if it was obvious that you were leaning just the tiniest bit forward, curious.

They took a breath, before glancing from Q to you. “I love them,” FT said softly. “But sometimes, as well-meaning as they are, they can… forget what normal thresholds are. For mortals.”

You tried to keep your face in check as you remembered Rora saying FT had straight up murked a guy, throwing it out there like it was common knowledge amongst the family. As casually as if it was just something especially wild at Mardi Gras.

“And while they’d never do anything to hurt us,” FT said, their face serious. “It can be… helpful,” they continued. “If the three of us are all on the same page with what we know.” They looked meaningfully between the two of you, holding each of your gazes for a minute. “As a barometer, of sorts.”

“A touchstone,” Q said quietly.

FT smiled wryly, gesturing to Q with the rim of their coffee mug. “Exactly.”

Q nodded, their eyes falling to where their elbows rested on the counter as they pondered this.

FT looked to you, their smile softer now, and seemed to be genuinely waiting for a response.

You sucked the inside of your cheek, your arms folded over your chest. You couldn’t pretend you didn’t still have the faintest lingering trace of gasoline and smoke in your nose.

“I only mean it as a place to check in,” FT said, drawing your eyes back to them. “Another way of keeping things in the family. No narcs or anything like that - Jesus, obviously,” they said, laughing slightly and gesturing to themselves, like they’d picked up on your earlier thought. “And obviously again, if something was wrong, you’d talk to yours about it.” They flicked a hand back up towards the bedrooms. “I’m just thinking…” FT bit their lower lip, trailing off again.

You could kind of see why Maxi and FT fit so well together; you’d never met two people who took such pains to say something the right way. Like they had seen exactly what could happen when those words misfired.

FT finally let out a low chuckle, almost like a sigh. “I guess when I was still getting used to the - y’know,” They indicated the basement and Everything Below. “I missed being able to tell someone about it who hadn’t grown up with it. Who had an outside perspective.” They looked between the two of you again, almost shy now. “Does that make sense?”

After a second, you found yourself nodding.

It wasn’t like you could tell your friends from home about this any time soon. Much less your coworkers.

‘Say, what’d you and your girlfriend get up to this weekend?’

‘Oh, committed an act of arson she still hasn’t totally explained the significance of to me; probably against someone who wronged her before she died super traumatically at eighteen and then came back from the dead. The usual.’

Yeah. You couldn’t see that really going well.

You couldn’t help but notice the relief around FT’s eyes - that made you pause. Had they thought you were going to say no?

“…Yeah,” Q said after a moment, looking up from the counter. They nodded slowly, still mulling it over - Q, you’d noticed, was someone who took their time swishing things around in their head like they were tasting wine. “I see how that could feel… lonely.”

FT gestured to Q again, their relief deepening. “Yes. Yeah. I mean, as lonely as you can feel with the three of them always around, y’know.”

You couldn’t help a smile; Rora was quite the presence in and of herself. She had a way of being felt through the room, even if she was silently threading a needle or de-boning a found dead nutria. Three Morvants at once must have felt like a crowd. A very peculiar crowd.

“It doesn’t have to be, like, right now,” FT said quickly, looking between the two of you. “I just figured, since they need to have their own… little chats, sometimes.” They shrugged, finally relaxing as they leaned back against the counter. “We might as well have ours. …And I’d like to be there,” they added, quietly. “For y’all. If you need anything.”

“Final, you’re such a sap,” Q grinned.

“Yeah, I know.” FT shrugged, grinning themselves now. “It’s why I got Maxi.” They tilted their chin up towards the second floor with a slightly dreamy smile.

“Aw, Hex can totally be a sap,” Q teased. “You just have to know how to get him there. He acts all spacey-spooky and disaffected, but when he has his feet on the ground, he’s mushy as hell.”

You chuckled a little at this, and they both looked at you.

“What’s Rora like?” FT asked, curious.

“Yeah, for real. Not gonna lie,” Q said, angling now to face you. “Rora seems… like, she’s cool,” they hedged, holding up a hand. “But she seems like she could be…”

Q glanced at FT, who looked equally not sure about the right word.

You smiled. “She’s intense.” They both relaxed slightly, as they were apparently going to choose that word themselves. “Even when she’s soft, she’s…”

You remembered her eyes shining in the dark, green like the sky before a tornado, like a distant planet the ancients would have associated with the goddess of death. How her kiss felt like stealing the breath from your lungs.

“She’s like a storm,” you said softly, your eyes somewhat unfocused. “But also like when the rain slows down, and its warm and humid. There’s just so much of her, all the time,” you went on. “But I always want to be in the middle of it. Of her.” You looked back to them at last. “The world feels more alive when I’m with her than I’ve ever felt otherwise. Like suddenly I’m in it, when I’ve spent so many years just watching.” You glanced between the two of them. “You know what I mean?”

It took you a second to realize that they were both smiling, seeming to hold back quiet laughter. For a moment, you felt just a tiny bit perplexed - hadn’t you all just been talking about confiding in each other? - when you realized they were both looking between you and something just over your shoulder.

You realized what, exactly, when you felt two cool, solid arms wind themselves around your waist from behind you.

“Well.” Rora’s voice was quiet in your ear, like distant thunder. She rested her chin your shoulder, pressing her cheek to yours. “Go on. Don’t stop on my account.”

“Wow, dude,” you heard Hector laugh from behind you, and felt him cuff the shoulder Rora wasn’t leaning on. “This is the earliest in the day I’ve ever seen her blush. Go you.”

You closed your eyes briefly, realizing all three of them must have been looming there. You’d forgotten how much they liked to loom.

“Shut up, Hector,” Rora muttered. But the way you felt her face dip further towards your shoulder made you wonder if there was maybe some truth to it.

“I think it’s sweet,” Maxi chimed in, he and Hector coming around you and Rora on either side to enter the kitchen. He settled next to FT by the coffee machine, whereas Hector walked over to the kitchen island and hip-checked Q.

“And it saves me from havin’ to have the ‘you hurt my sister and I’ll make your skin into shoes’ talk.” Maxi looked back to you, smiling amiably. “It’s old-fashioned and paternalistic, I know,” he said, with an apologetic shrug. “But I’d feel remiss in my brotherly duties if I didn’t.”

You smiled, a bit perplexed. “What is it about this family and making people’s skin into things?”

“Mm.” Rora kissed your cheek. “It’s a tradition that goes back generations. Don’t ask.”

“Yeah, you really don’t wanna see what’s in the attic,” Hector said, his own smirk grim. “Let’s just say don’t trust anything here that looks like it’s leather and older than…” He scrunched his face slightly, doing some mental math. “I don’t know, thirty years?” He looked to Maxi. “Our dads kinda started leaving off, right?”

“‘Cause Mama kept complainin’ about the smell, said it was givin’ her migraines,” Maxi said, nodding. “And it’s just fuckin’ weird.”

“And I’m sure it would clash with your design sensibilities for the House,” FT added, nudging Maxi gently in the ribs.

“Well… that too,” Maxi agreed, after a moment.

“And you guys haven’t made any progress on the breakfast question at all, have you,” Hector said, looking to Q.

“None whatsoever,” Q confirmed with a nod.

Hector threw up his hands in mock frustration. “I get no help around here! Nada!” He moved to the fridge, Q just behind him. “Did you even look at the eggs?”

You watched the pair of them immediately debating between themselves as to what looked good, whereas Maxi and FT were chatting idly as Maxi refilled the coffee machine.

You just stood in the middle of it all, reaching up to hug Rora’s arms as she continued to lean against you.

“For the record,” she said softly, still speaking in your ear. “The world feels more alive with you in it, too.” She pressed her lips to your cheek again, petal-soft. “Or at least, I do.”

You leaned back against her chest, and she stroked your upper arm, swaying gently together as the morning burned brighter around you.

if you've read this far, I hope you find a summer romance that makes you feel like you're driving away from a house your crush burned down /positive 🖤

#queer original horror #queer slasher oc #bi slasher oc #slasher oc/reader #slasher oc/you #morvant mortuary #rora morvant #aurore marie morvant #non-binary reader #trans masc reader #queer reader #bi reader #fat reader #plus size reader #curvy reader #no use of y/n #eva green fc #monsterkisser fics

4 notes · View notes