#Honkai star rail reader insert

[3rdgymbros]

━ 𝐉𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐮 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐖𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧 !

— pairing; jing yuan x reader (ft. jingliu)

— summary; in which jing yuan has a crush and jingliu tries to help

— notes; this is my very first honkai fic so please don't be mean or i will cry. please donate to my kofi if you like my work. and know that i am mentally smooching everyone who reblogs my stuff.

❋ Jingliu is not blind.

❋ As sharp as her sword, Jingliu immediately notices the way Jing Yuan looks at you — sickeningly sweet, like a love-struck puppy. How he straightens up when you walk into a room, his subtle efforts to impress you during training ... It’s painfully obvious that her young disciple is nursing a crush.

❋ And to her surprise, she doesn’t disapprove. You're a noble, which means you come from good stock. You may not be a warrior, but you have elegance, poise, and kindness — things that Jing Yuan, with his quick wit and charisma, would pair with beautifully.

❋ And unlike some of the other aristocrats Jingliu has dealt with, you're neither arrogant nor insufferable. You're quite pleasant to be around. She decides — fine. You meet her standards. She approves.

❋ The problem, therein, lies with her boy.

❋ Jing Yuan is utterly useless. For someone with boundless talent in swordsmanship and strategy, he’s completely inadequate regarding matters of the heart. He’s reduced to nothing but a dreamy, lovesick fool the moment you walk into a room. His relationship with you (if it can even be called that) consists of stolen glances, lingering stares, and tongue-tied silence.

❋ Pathetic. 

❋ So, Jingliu — not a woman of romance but very much a woman of action — decides to take matters into her own hands.

❋ Whenever you visit, she makes sure to sing praises about Jing Yuan, with all the grace of a bull in a China shop.

“Jing Yuan, my beloved disciple! He is truly remarkable. Such skill, such intelligence — ah, and he’s only going to get stronger! The most promising of his generation!” “Truly, he is the beauty of the Xianzhou. Have you ever seen such radiant hair? Such impeccable form? Such effortless grace?” “He’s also intelligent, responsible, and — Aiya, Jing Yuan, don’t just stand there! Smile at them, you fool!”

❋ Jing Yuan wants to die.

❋ Every time Jingliu speaks, he wants the ground to swallow him whole. His face is redder than the finest Xianzhou wine, and he looks as though he’s in physical pain whenever she opens her mouth. He tries, desperately, to get her to stop. His dignity is at stake.

“Shifu, please.”   “Aiya, please what? I’m doing you a favour! You think they'll talk to you if you stand there like a decorative vase?” “Shifu, I can handle this myself —” “Handle it how? By doing nothing? By gazing at them like a lovesick fool for the next five centuries?!” “This is embarrassing. For me. I trained you to be decisive, not to act like a bashful maiden in a romance play!”

❋ Jingliu is exasperated. If she had a slipper, she’d be brandishing it at him like a disappointed mother. She considers finding one just for this occasion.

❋ As for you . . .

❋ You know what’s happening. Jingliu is trying to “sell” her disciple off; if her lavish praises are anything to go by. You don’t tease Jing Yuan (he’s already suffering enough), but you start smiling at him more, trying to coax him into a conversation.

❋ Maybe . . . Just maybe . . . You’ll save him from any further humiliation and take the first step.

[love-of-the-red-star]

That time I got reincarnated as an Aeon

Chapter One: Fuck it we ball!!

(Series)

Obligatory chapter warning: Violence (there’s a gunfight), description of blood, reader being a liiiitle dubious.

Maybe you shouldn’t have wondered how the crew even knew.

You had asked in the “acktually☝️” type of way— in layman’s terms, rather awkwardly.

Who could blame you? You were stuck in space with no human interaction for god knows how long with only your fellow eldritch horror looking gods that occasionally passed by for company.

Your brain may be incredibly big and fast now, but it didn’t mean you weren’t any less awkward. (Though you’re pretty sure you speak better than most of the Aeons— however, that’s just your opinion.)

“We could feel your energy.” That’s what Himeko said. “Well— our system did.”

“Okay?” You blinked, but then went cold when you realized having your energy levels out as Himeko told you meant that you were basically walking out with your fly open.

“The influx of energy isn’t allowing us to jump.” She added, and you understood now, it was like coming across a stellaron infested planet, except it’s worse because it’s God— one of them anyways, and not just some random piece of space cancer.

“Sorry.” You blurted out, then had an idea, wondering if that one bit in the show you watched in your world would help. “Can I get out of the train and excuse me for a bit? I’ll be right back, I’ll just uhhh… suck the energy in, if you know what I mean.” You pointed to the open door, and the stop that thankfully no one is occupying.

“Go ahead.” Himeko nodded, and you made your way out.

You took a deep breath and exhaled, then looked side to side to see if anyone is going to see what you’re pretty sure is going to be an embarrassing looking spectacle. Seeing as the coast was clear, you took a deep breath again and scrunched your face in concentration, adapting a kamekameha pose like Veldora had.

You then grasped at your energy that you now saw around you and crumpled it, until it became smaller and smaller to just enough to thankfully pass like a normal Joe.

A Joe that can fight, but a normal Joe regardless.

What you did was just basically return some of the energy you’ve poured into this projection back to your main body, not exactly holding it in. You’ve managed to succeed, thankfully without having to accidentally explode a planet.

You weren’t Nanook, and you weren’t going to plan becoming a 2.0 very soon. And now that you thought about it, you’re pretty sure they hate you— but when do they not hate anything enough to not destroy it?

Brushing your thoughts away, you returned to the parlor car, and Himeko blinked in surprise. “That was quick.” She told you.

“I know.” You said. “It was surprisingly easy.”

If she had seen what the hell you just did outside, she wasn’t going to say anything about it.

(You’re pretty sure she saw that, much to you wanting to shrivel on the inside like a raisin.)

“So uhh… anything else?”

Himself shook her head, then the parlor car door closed.

It was only the start of your journey.

————————

Seeing the stars through the window of the express had been a surreal experience. It’s strange, to be inside of a room— you almost forgot how it felt like to step on the ground or not smelling the radioactive scent of space. The parlor car smelled nice, nostalgic almost.

It was funny that you only took notice of that now when you were left to your thoughts in your projected body.

“I can’t believe I’m missing the smell of air freshener of all things.” You mumbled as you watched Pompom sweep the floors of the parlor.

Welt and Himeko were talking about something behind closed doors— probably about you. Honestly you can’t fault them for that, because even though you’d like to deny it, you were in fact a big deal.

A very big deal. An elephant, an obnoxious colored elephant, in the room.

You just hoped they’d come to a conclusion to give you time just enough to prove you mean well. And you really do mean well.

In the next 168 hours (god, that was such a weird way to call an entire week), you were assigned a room of your own.

In the game, you recalled there were only four rooms, but in this one, in reality, there were more. It would make sense, you thought as you observed your own room that’s still rather barren of decoration.

You could just think of what to place into it later.

Another 168 hours go by and you’re entertained by either the little music player in the parlor, or helping Pompom. You spoke to Himeko and Welt from time to time, but it felt Ike you were a bit… out of place. Now that you thought about it you realized they were far more mature than you were, and it wouldn’t be lie either.

While it was nice to have something close to a parental figure, you knew they couldn’t entertain whatever it was that you craved. You realized you’re surprisingly a bit more childish than you thought, especially for a cosmic entity.

You were starting to feel a little antsy though, and decided you’d go back to your main body for a while to fuck around— yeah, you should do that, you thought as you nodded to yourself.

You stood from your bed and made your way out of your room to find either Himeko or Welt so you could tell them you’d be leaving for a while.

Pompom seemed to pout a little at the thought of your absence when you spoke to them about it, but their emotions were quelled when you had mentioned promising them trinkets.

You bid the three farewell, and your body eventually dissipated.

———————

“What the fork are you looking at me for, darlin’?”

Oh wow. You thought as you blinked. “Nothing, I just thought you look rather… interesting, that’s all.” You said. You meant to say handsome, but you didn’t want to be creepy to the cyborg as much as you loved him. It was a little embarrassing to admit now, considering that he was just as real as you were, that you were probably his biggest fan.

“What brings someone like you in a place like this? You don’t fudging look like you’d be into the shady business, unless…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, taking a swing of the strong smelling shot of whiskey handed over to him by the bartender.

How did you even end up here? Simple, you got bored in the parlor car.

You left the express, went to your body, chose a random planet and saw Boothill and decided to make an appearance because why not? It wasn’t exactly everyday you would get to interact with a cool cowboy (probably the coolest space cowboy), so you made the spontaneous decision to simply appear as you were in this little.. town and entered the tavern.

“I got bored.” You said, swirling the drink on your hand that would undoubtedly send you to a hospital for alcohol poisoning had you been an actual human. You took an entire gulp and made a face afterwards. Boothill laughed.

“How do you even enjoy this? It tastes like battery acid and fire.” You grimaced, but you took more sips of the drink despite your own comment. “Anyways, I was bored, and I saw this place and thought: hmmm why not? It feels weirdly liberating in a way.” You confessed.

“Not that much of a stickler for rules despite being dressed like a goody two shoes huh? That’s fudging funny.” The glass clinked, and Boothill’s attention still remained on you funnily enough.

“I’m not nice.” You frowned. “I just dress like this because it’s nice to pretend to be a pretentious bastard sometimes. Plus, it’s cute.” You bristle, and he only smiled at you.

You found that Boothill’s surprisingly way too easy to speak to.

“Sure, sure.” He waved a hand. He doesn’t believe you, and in the far corners of your mind you heard Aha’s laughter. Great, you inwardly groaned, but at least it was just Aha. Then you realized they might just fuck around with you AND have people know you’re an Aeon so they could look at you— maybe not today, but at some point in time.

You felt your lips thin at the thought.

Your attention snapped back to Boothill when you saw him glance at a few people, probably lackeys, in a way that you could describe as nasty. Then you suddenly remembered the posters outside in passing.

“Hey darlin, you might wanna hide your pretty face under the table right now. There’s about to be fork load of bullets, don’t want any one of them grazing your face.” Boothill muttered over to you. And you realizing what was happening and what he was going to do, you played along, slowly sliding under the table as he took out a gun. “‘Bout time these motherfudgers showed up.”

It didn’t take two seconds and hell broke loose.

You felt bad for the bartender.

Patrons screamed and some women ran out as you heard gunshots, and suddenly you felt the urge to poke your head out of the table to see the action. It wasn’t like you’d die if a bullet hit you, it would be embarrassing for an Aeon to die by a mere bullet.

You whistled, then gaped as you witnessed this absolute unit of a man literally moonwalk his way out of the bullets. You felt like a little kid watching an action movie, except you had front seats, and this was very much reality.

“Behind you!” You warned Boothill, and he made a show of shooting the lackey (that you now recognized was an IPC grunt) in a way that got you clapping with joy. “Beat their ass mister! Fuck ‘em up!” You cheered, and one of the grunts tried coming for you instead. You weren’t a coward though, and instead grabbed a chair and threw it as hard as you could.

You heard a grunt and a really ugly crack that you know that definitely wasn’t the wooden chair. “Eugh.” You cringed, feeling a little bad about co-signing the man’s obituary but coming for you with a weapon in hand was just natural selection waiting to happen.

Now that you were out of the bag, you grabbed another heavy chair and decided you’d give Boothill an easier time by helping. “I don’t know what’s going on, but damn I feel bad for the owner of the establishment.” You said loudly through the sound of gunshots, Boothill laughed again as another man had been shot down.

“Yap later darlin! You should worry about the side of your fudging head first!” Just as he said that, you threw the chair at one of the final three lackeys. And like the other one who you took out, this one too went out to board his one way ticket to god.

The establishment had gone completely quiet aside from your breathing and the sound of Boothill’s engine quietly whirring.

“Is it over?” You asked, hopeful.

“Yep.” The cyborg drawled.

You released a sympathetic “oof” at the state of the tavern though. “This place is a wreck.” You said flatly.

“Don’t worry too much about that, they’ll take care of it.”

“Okay….” You exhaled. “Wow.. that was.. a lot.” You eyed the bodies, frowning as you prayed your default appearance won’t end up in a wanted poster. Scratch that, it probably would.

“Didn’t know you’re darn crazy like that though.” Boothill spoke, patting off the nonexistent dust off of his pistol.

“Yeah sorry.” You muttered, then clearing your throat. “I felt bad for them but I realized they’re capitalists for a certain corporate office. They can go die in a ditch.” You shrugged, you don’t grieve this time, maybe you would at some point in the future when you’re wiser.

“Also, it wouldn’t hurt to help a friend out I think.” You said, though you’re uncertain as to how Boothill would react to such a sentence.

“Oh fudge me sideways, care to shake my hand? The name’s Boothill.” He grinned, teeth sharp like a shark’s as he held out his metal hand for you to grasp.

Oh I know very well who you are, you thought, not that he would ever know that. You grasp his hand and introduced yourself, happy that he actually likes you.

You eventually had to part ways with him for the day, having each other as contacts through the phone (Welt was kind enough to give you one of your own) so you could keep in touch.

You ended up spending the remainder of your time in that little town looking around for souvenirs to pocket just for Pompom. Now where did you get your money? It’s a little mean, but you looted them off of the IPC bodies.

It’s blood money, but it’s money regardless. And if the people who initially owned it were rich and dead? Then you don’t have to feel bad about pocketing it, you were free to do as you wanted.

Getting back to the parlor car was easy, making your presence known to the beloved little conductor who very much anticipated your presents.

“[Name], where’d you get the money to buy all this?” Welt asked as he inspected the personalized mug you gave him. (It was a neat wooden mug with his name carved on it, Himeko had one of her own too.)

You merely smiled innocently.

Welt sighed, he shouldn’t have asked.

———————-

Part I, Part II (HERE), Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII….

AAAND THATS A WRAP UP FOR THE CHAPTER FOLKS! And yes, reader is a litttle unhinged (curse being a cosmic entity, they’re a little dubious as a treat). And YES they’re a big Boothill fan (like me), like come on who doesn’t wanna hang around a cool space cowboy who has a censored vocabulary of a COD lobby?

[rottenmeatsack]

Melatonin || Welt Yang x AFAB Reader (NSFW)

Prompt || You can’t sleep, you’re out of melatonin, so this is day 4 of fucking that old man until he crumbles to dust - NSFW UNDER THE CUT / MINORS DNI

Warnings: Unprotected sex, implied age gap (inevitably, again), not letting Welt pull out, fucking someone ot the point of exhaustion (literally), top Welt, messy kisses, light breeding kink if u squint, good lord someone get grandpa his arthritis pills he’s gonna be sore by the morning

***

���Mr.Yang?” She asks, and he looks surprised to see her up although he’s guilty of the same crime.

“___,” He says her name in question, she’s still in her sleep wear, her hair is disheveled, and she looks down-right fatigued. She'd been working with the rest of the Astral Express Crew for some time, after everything was said and done Welt had expected her to want to rest the second they got back. He presses his lips into a fine line, glancing at the clock hung just above her head before turning back to her. “It’s rather late, did something happen?” he asks her, standing up from his desk and going to meet her at his door. She shuffles uncomfortably in front of him, “You know those really good supplements we got from the Xianzhou? The ones that help me sleep?” she asks, Welt’s shoulders slacken in realization, she doesn’t need to finish her sentence. “You’ve run out?” he asks her, and she nods her head in a miserable response. "We can ask Himeko to order some more if they help, but they probably won't arrive until a few days. Delays in shipping have become all too common." he tells her.

“Well, I was hoping you could help me sleep,” she says, looking up at Welt with her tired gaze. Welt perks up, a small smile graces his lips, when he grins it makes the wrinkles on his aged-face more pronounced and known. “Of course,” he agrees rather quickly, reaching one gloved hand up to adjust his thick-framed glasses before turning to his desk. He opens one of his drawers, rummaging around the small snack-bin he kept hidden away in the privacy of his office. Small goodies and some sweets hidden well from the others who might have prying hands (Namely March 7th) but he's sure he has a spare box of tea tucked away somewhere in the depths of his desk. “I believe I still have some tea from our last expedition, how about I make you a cup and then—”

He’s interrupted as she curls over his back, her arms wrapping around his torso and gripping onto his jacket. She’s hugging him from behind, he can only catch a glance at her from over his shoulder. He calls her name out again, and she peeks up at him with those same tired eyes. “I want you to help me sleep another way,” she mutters into the crook of his back, and only then does Welt notice that her hands have wandered closer to his belt, it clicks while her fingers are already working to unbuckle it from its hold around his slacks. 

Welt knows what she means now.

-

Welt took her back to her room on the express.

His glasses are folded on the nightstand beside them, his clothing long forgotten and abandoned on the floor. The bed creaks and groans, although she’s trying their best to be quiet in fear of waking the others, it’s hard when Welt’s cock feels so damn good inside of her. He presses her down into the bed with his hands on either side of her head, her legs are on either sides of his hips, dangling and bouncing by his waist each time he drives down into her. He rests his forehead against hers, his eyes closed and sweat speckling his skin. It’s hot in the room, even warmer underneath the covers, to the point it’s near suffocating and she’s stealing the breath right out of him. She leaned up, catching his lips in a brief kiss, but he followed after her and slants his mouth over her own.

The kiss is longer, more intense, and it’s mostly teeth and tongue. He groans low in his throat, his gravelly voice catching itself at the end of a soft moan while his tongue rolls and twists over her own. He pulls away for air, trying to catch his breath through his teeth. He’s already close and he knows it, maybe if he were a younger man again he’d last longer, but he's much older and time had long eroded away his stamina. Right now all he could think about was how good and warm she felt around his throbbing dick. He really is close. He knows he should pull out, this was a hasty decision and he’s not wearing a condom, there’s nothing here on the express that could serve as a preventative— Aeons, he should really pull out. He’s already seeing stars, he knows he’s so close and it’s just a matter of time.

He calls her name, “I’m close,” he warns her, “I’m too close,” he sounds absolutely breathless, and despite her whines and protests he begins to draw his hips back. She frantically claws at his shoulders, her arms wounding tighter around his torso until she scratches up his back. “N— Nooo—” she protests with a reedy little whine, and before Welt can pull out he’s shocked as her legs wrap around his waist, her heels push on his lower back and it drags him deeper into her tight little cunt. He gasps, his hips once again pressed flush against her own all while he is dangerously close to his high. “Please,” she practically sobs, “Please, please don’t pull out— want you— I want you to cum inside.” she pleads with him, and Welt practically trembles atop of her. He’s never been so aroused in his life, but he knows he shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t.

No condom, no protection, no preventative, the rational part of his mind repeats, but deep down something inside of him wants nothing more than to bury himself as deep as he can go and give her what she wants. “___,” he says her name through a tremble in his voice, all while she’s kissing his face, lips, and jaw, desperately and greedily rocking her hips up into Welt’s in an attempt to get him to start moving again. “I— I shouldn’t—” 

But he’s already moving his hips.

He’s already fucking her again, he’s already balls-deep inside of her, the sound of skin on skin is flooding his ears and he knows it’s already much too late for him now. Her nails scrape the arch of his back, leaving hot pink streaks in his pale skin while she sobs with delight into the crook of his shoulder. “Mmf— yes, yes, keep going, cum, cum inside me—” she pleads, and Welt can’t refuse her. He's given in a long time ago. Foregoing self restraint and abandoning his common sense he's determined to give her exactly what she's begging for. Her hips roll and buck into every thrust with fervor, showing just how eager and ready she is. She wrenches her eyes shut as she bites into his shoulder, once again sinking her heels into Welt’s lower back and dragging him down to the hilt as he reaches his end. Any attempt to muffle his voice is futile, he finds himself moaning with his weight falling over her. They’re chest to chest in the bed now, with his cock buried deep in her soaking wet cunt and his pelvis is flush against hers. 

His face is flushed red while he fills her, he’s left speechless and absolutely consumed with how good it felt to spill everything he had inside of her. Rope after rope of his cum stains her deepest part, the sensation was almost so overwhelming that he doesn’t even notice that she’s cumming too, not until he feels her legs tense and tremble around his midsection. He gives a few pathetic little thrusts, barely leaving her warm cunt but instead grinding against her. 

By the time he’s done the bed sheets feel unbearable, the fabric clinging to his back that’s tacky with sweat and becoming near suffocating. Yet he doesn’t move off of her, he remains atop of her with his cock buried to the hilt inside of her, not letting a single drop of his cum leak out of her pussy. It takes him a minute to catch his breath and when he does he sighs, leaning back until he’s able to hold his weight on his forearms and gaze down at the wrecked woman beneath him. 

“Well?” he mutters to her, “Feeling like you can sleep now?” he asks her. He stills when she shakes her head, “I think I’ll need another round, I think I'll be able to sleep after one more.” she emphasized with her ankles locking behind his waist.

Welt knew it was going to be a sleepless night for the both of them now.

- Himeko stares at Welt's slouched over body in the Express's bright red passenger chairs, if they were going by time in Penacony then it should be mid-afternoon but the old man is absolutely knocked out and napping out in the parlor car. He has one hand still grasping his cane while the other is slack by his side, Himeko's never seen him so worn out. Pompom looks at Himeko from where they stood beside her calf, "He's been sleeping all day," they said in a whisper. "Huh," she mutters as she makes an effort to walk past him slower than before, if only to muffle the click of her heels against the ground. "I guess Welt isn't sleeping too good," she wonders to herself, she wondered if ____ still had those sleeping supplements from the Xianzhou, maybe that could help Welt get some rest if he was feeling so tired. 

[mayaree-darling]

A Never Ending Journey (Prologue) // Honkai Star Rail Isekai AU

from Mayaree: a star rail isekai au i've been thinking about for a while now. might not make the fic yet because i'm busy with other things, but have the idea for now. consider it a prologue.

There is a secret lost in the Astral Express Archives: Akivili is merely a regular human. Akivili is not a name pertaining to a single being. It is a title passed down from one human - one being - to another, hidden under the guise that Akivili is merely an Aeon that has a penchant for shape shifting into a mortal form. It is a well-guarded secret among Trailblazers of past days.

Perhaps there really was an Akivili at one point, at the very beginning of it all. A journey is meant to start somewhere, right? But even at the very beginning, it was a mere human who built the train. Not all beginnings are loud, thunderous, and special - sometimes a journey begins from a small dream to see the great heavens and beyond. That one small dream from one small human passes the dream to another.

A guiding light for the other Nameless to believe in, to follow in their footsteps.

When outsiders ask why Akivili changes forms so frequently, the answer is simple - a journey does not end with one person, it does not end until the dream dies, and Akivili's constant change is a symbol of that. Or so they say. The trailblaze continues as long as someone carries the dream.

But at some point in history, in a forgotten Amber Era, the Akivili name is not handed over. There is no longer anyone to accept the title. The last Trailblazer - the last Acting Akivili, in a way - takes the name with them in their departure. Lost to the cosmos.

As Himeko restores the Astral Express and takes on the Path of the Trailblaze, the passing of the Akivili name is a forgotten art. Or maybe an unneeded one. As the Astral Express takes on more passengers, the Nameless know where they need to go - they have chart their own course.

However, the Name of Akivili is also a calling. A need for guidance in traversing the vast stars and tied fates. And at the addition of a Nameless carrying a stellaron in their core joins the trailblazing journey, Akivili is summoned once more.

This new Akivili carries the face of the original, of the very first. The face of the Player. After all, a game only truly begins when the Player starts their journey in this new world. And in that way, did you not build the Express with your own hands?

Once more, Akivili is a passenger of the Astral Express, meant to lead the Nameless.

Welcome home, Akivili.

Oh, how the Trailblaze has waited for you.

from Mayaree: I'll be calling this AkiviliPlayer!Reader AU for easier hashtag

✨ Masterlist ✨

Disclaimer: Characters are not mine and belong to their respective creators. Their portrayal is merely my own interpretation of them and may not be accurate to their intended characterization. I stake no claim to the original works, only to the ideas and plot of the fictitious stories I’ve written them int

[blissfullyapillow]

┃Blade + “only for the mission”

₊˚⊹♡ Blade x fem reader

₊˚⊹♡ wc: 1,555~

₊˚⊹♡ Warnings: self inflicted injuries + scars (Blade), only one bed trope, fake marriage that develops into very real feelings, totally legit Stellaron Hunter mission, a meddling Kafka & Silverwolf 

₊˚⊹♡ Summary: Blade needs someone to play the role of his wife for a mission, and who else would be a better candidate than yours truly?

₊˚⊹♡ Pillow Talks: I had a random moment of inspiration as I imagined what Blade would be like if he was in a similar situation as Loid Forger. I could see it. (I'm being delusional)

₊˚⊹♡ Masterlist 

‧₊˚ ┊When Blade has to “marry” reader for a really obscure and totally real Stellaron hunter mission he was assigned to

𓆩♡𓆪

⋆〃You wonder why he chooses you of all people to be in a fake marriage with, but his reasoning is solid

⋆〃“We’ve worked together before, and we tolerate each other. I see no better candidate.”

⋆〃 If only you didn’t secretly harbor a crush on the unattainable man

⋆〃 Surprisingly a really great fake husband

⋆〃 Takes care of you and pays attention to details

⋆〃 He typically hates being cared for, but for you, in this instance, he’ll let his walls down and allow you to dote on him

⋆〃Cue a long pampering session where you unnecessarily give him a head to toe massage on his rare day off work

⋆〃He only allowed you to do it for the mission, though. Just to ensure you’re happy with your “relationship”

⋆〃Typically busy during the day; he gathers intel and often finds himself getting caught up in one too many altercations

⋆〃He starts to feel guilty when he returns home one evening and you fret over his many bleeding cuts, most of them of his own doing

⋆〃He can’t find it in himself to refuse your offer to patch him up. He has to swallow the lump in his throat as you delicately clean and bandage his fresh wounds.

⋆〃A soft, unexpected noise of surprise leaves him when he feels the soft press of your lips against his old scars

⋆〃“It’s only for the mission. I have to be in a suitable condition to continue fighting..” is how he reasoned with himself

⋆〃Yet his heart squeezed in his chest when he returned home the following day, with notably less self inflicted scars, and your radiant smile greeted him. He took notice of the unconcealed relief present within your irises

⋆〃He doesn’t know why, but it makes him feel good

⋆〃He has no idea of just how much of a hold he has on you

⋆〃One evening he brushed past you, squeezing by with just enough room, yet he used his hand to briefly squeeze your hip in passing

⋆〃the way your brain just shut. down.

⋆〃Your legs literally felt like jelly as he glanced back at you, only to send a little smirk your way before he entered your shared kitchen

⋆〃If you didn’t know any better you’d think he was flirting with you.

⋆〃… well, maybe he was.

⋆〃On a different day, when you two are in the process of tailing a person of interest, you wind up needing to share a bed. 

♡⸝⸝

“I can’t believe I slept so well last night.” You whisper. You yawn as you stretch your limbs, your butt bumping against something as you stretch your body in a cat-like manner. “Well, that makes one of us.” Blade groggy voice immediately erases any fog of sleep you had clouding your brain.

You yelp, craning your neck back to look at Blade.

He’s visibly tired, an arm around your waist as you’re suspiciously close to him, even after your stretch.

You make an effort to move away, but he simply drags you back. He won’t admit it, but he couldn’t sleep a wink last night since you both shared a bed for the first time. He almost offered to sleep on the floor when he saw the look of sheer horror on your face when you realized the predicament you were in.

You two got the last available room of the gaudy hotel you were forced to reside in, all to continue tailing the person of interest, but there was only one bed in this room. It was late into the night and Blade was ready to sleep. He wasted no time stripping until the only thing left was his pants, before he snuggled under the covers.

You would’ve found the scene cute if you weren’t too busy freaking out.

“If you don’t get in I’ll drag you.” You know that tone. He isn’t joking. His eye pierces through the dark and you can see them narrow at you. When you still don’t move, he gets up. He ignores your flustered protests as he simply picks you up and plops you on the bed.

It seems you have no choice in the matter.

In that instance, you quickly go through your night routine before joining Blade in bed.

You expected to be kept all night as you tried to retain your composure, but you fell asleep almost as soon as your head hit the pillow.

Lo and behold, Blade was unable to fall asleep.

Your body heat permeated his skin, and he found the sensation to be… pleasant?

He didn’t know how fond he was of the thought, but he knew it was true. Your body unconsciously moved closer to him, and his entire body tensed. You stopped moving for a few minutes, and Blade found himself slowly drifting off.

Unfortunately for him, you wind up inviting yourself into the comfort of his arms.

The content sigh you released melted his heart, and he couldn’t find it in himself to push you away.

And so Blade held you throughout the night, rotating between drifting off and being abruptly awakened when you shifted in his arms.

Since when was his body so hyper-aware of your presence?

𓆩♡𓆪

⋆〃When Blade inevitably realizes that you hold more importance than just being his lovely ‘wife,’ his attitude begins to change

⋆〃It’s subtle, but you know Blade well enough to catch on to the little hints

⋆〃He’ll return home with little trinkets or gifts, things that caught his attention on the way home. They reminded him of you in a way.

⋆〃What really caught you attention is when he returned home with a beautiful hairpin. He instructed you to turn around before placing it in your hair. “This suits you, and it can be used as a weapon.” His simple explanation makes your heart race.

⋆〃You cherish that hairpin. Every time your gaze lands on it, a very obvious smile lights your features. Blade notices this and it elicits an oddly pleasant feeling within him.

⋆〃Soon the end of your mission draws near, and you find yourself longing to continue the charade. Being Blade’s wife has honestly been a lovely experience for you, as surprising as it is to say.

⋆〃Unbeknownst to you, Blade holds similar sentiments.

♡⸝⸝

“It’s not like we’re going to get married and live happily ever after.” Blade’s grumbled words serve as motivation for your fierce retort.

“Why not?”

His head whips around, his wide orbs stare deep into yours.

You hold his gaze.

His lips part in surprise. Honestly, he didn’t expect such a response. A strange part of him likes the idea, and his cheeks flush at the mere thought.

“…Pardon?”

You start, blinking your eyes owlishly at Blade.

The ‘Pardon’ was very uncharacteristic of Blade, and the pure shock in his tone is borderline comical.

It causes you to break character, and soon you’re giggling as you clutch your stomach. Blade is not amused; he closes his eyes as his arms wrap around the shattered blade he carries everywhere.

When you finally stop laughing, Blade is the one to say something first.

“Is marriage with me something you seek?” His question is knowing in a way; it’s almost as if he’s seen right through you, and your breath hitches at the terrifying thought. Were you becoming too obvious in your affections? Well, that question has a blatant answer, but still!

“U-Um..” “Be honest with me.” His words are rough. His eyebrows are furrowed as his eyes slowly open to peer at you. His orbs hold your gaze. You couldn’t think of a believable excuse even if you wanted to.

“I… yes…” You squeak.

You think you see his shoulders visibly relax once he hears your answer, but you must be fooling yourself.

He quickly closes the distance between the two of you. You squeal as he harshly pulls you into him, and your voice is soon muffled by the rough caress of his soft lips.

Your arms instinctively wrap around his neck.

He groans; your touch ignites something within him that has been dormant for far too long.

He quickly pulls away, only to say, “I’ll make it happen. For real this time,” before his lips seal yours once more.

...

Well, this was an unexpected outcome.

But an entirely welcome one nonetheless.

𓆩♡𓆪

⋆〃When you both return to the Stellaron Hunter HQ, hands intertwined, Kafka and Silverwolf are the first to greet you.

⋆〃Upon the sight of your intertwined hands, Kafka’s smirk only deepens. Silverwolf rolls her eyes as she releases a dramatic sigh. You watch in confusion as Silverwolf fishes for something in her pocket, before she hands Kafka a stack of credits

⋆〃“Welcome home lovebirds. How did the mission go? Judging by the looks on your faces, I see it was successful.” Kafka is all too pleased with herself.

⋆〃Blade is a bit confused, still in the dark, but he acknowledges Kafka’s statement.

⋆〃”What of it?” Is his gruff reply. Kafka only smiles, a knowing glint in her eyes, and Silverwolf has a similar look of content on her features

⋆〃Who knew the Stellaron Hunters loved to play matchmaker?

𓆩♡𓆪

[iceunhie]

— PUSH AND PULL : honkai star rail.

premise. as someone who's always believed in the term “try and try again,” (peak delusion, you know) rooting yourself in their heart has always been your goal, no matter the cold rejections and curt declines you receive. however, even you have your limits; perhaps this little push and pull you two have going isn't worth your time after all... but what happens then, if the chaser becomes the chased? (oh, how the turns have tabled.)

...or, when you play hard to get with them.

— ft. sunday, aventurine, jing yuan.

warnings: angst n fluff, messy messy, these boys are in love but are wayyy too chicken to admit they actually adore you, genderless reader.

a/n. inspired by @/xiaowhore's playing hard to get headcanons! my holy trinity 😇 n MY FAVES RAHHH

NEXT : BACK TO MASTERLIST || ASKBOX

SUNDAY is perplexed. very much aware of his qualities which enlists him as one of the finer (finest) bachelors of Penacony (he was the Robin's one and only blood, and was also the head of one of the main guiding forces of the Family, after all), sunday isn't sure he's ever come across someone as.... tenacious as you.

foolish, to be more precise, for he cannot for the life of him comprehend exactly why you are the way you are with... him.

no matter his respectful declines of your invitations to promenade around Penacony (re: going on dates), you really didn't know how to leave him be. though he hasn't exactly said he hated it, sunday was, admittedly, rather... affronted. your gifts, in particular, were your loud declarations of your affection (that make his wings flutter more rapidly than he'd like); but sunday was rather inconvenienced at the whole thing.

nonetheless, he does still accept them. reluctantly, mind you. not because he was fond of your constant shower of affections, which seemed so permanent that he began to look forward to them got used to it. to your credit, your gifts were very much to his tastes. (Robin once gave him a rather soul-searching look when he found himself wearing the gloves you gifted, light blue and white in color. he still uses it, just not when his sister is in the vicinity.)

in fact, perhaps he may have gotten too comfortable. little by little, your constant intrusions on his time have thawed a way to his heart; making sunday look forward to your jovial greetings and grandeur elaborations on your day, and such a thing makes him feel scared sunday needed to nip this in the bud, and fast.

so he confronts you, abruptly one day as you give him his newest gift—a jewelry box for his earrings. (surely, the rapid thumping of his heart was due to his irritation at your constant persistence, right?) “i'm afraid this can no longer continue. i am flattered by your... fancy for me, but i do not wish to enter a relationship in the near future.”

the utter silence that follows is torture to him—but he endures. he tries not to look at the momentary flash of hurt on your face. you seemed to quickly recover, though. giving him a simple smile (it didn't reach your eyes. it shocks him how his chest ached at the realization) and shaking your head when he returns the gift to you.

“i understand, mr. sunday.” the formal usage of his name instead of your chipper ‘sunday!’ makes his face twitch. “but please, keep the gift. think of this as my last declaration. it... would do me a great comfort, just this last time, if you accepted it instead.”

(if he had grabbed your hand at that moment as you left for the door, would he regret it?)

when you leave, sunday thought it would put the conflicting feelings in his mind at ease—but it doesn't. a week and two days counting, true to your word, sunday receives no flagrant gifts, nor little messages on his phone that tell him to take care of himself, to eat, and to make sure to remember to check up on Robin.

instead, contrary to the feeling of ease, regret follows him instead.

it's at two weeks and five days counting when sunday could no longer stand the sight of papers that stacked atop his desk and the image of you leaving for the door replaying in his head far too many times for him to count, that he contacts Robin.

and she, once hearing about the situation, gives him a very, very enlightening talk. (of course, not without giving her brother a lecture of the lifetime. part of him felt shame to know that his sister knew of his... turbulent love life, but she was the only one who he could trust, anyway).

“absence makes the heart grow fonder,” she says. “but in your case, brother, your heart has already decided it's course, right?”

sunday eyes the smooth velvet of the jewelry box you gifted, ruminating. his earrings lie there, carefully pristine and beautiful, gold and silver intertwined. he has worn them without fail, clean and spotless. (of course it was. such a design so intricate was only chosen by you. the thought makes his ears warm).

the next days are agonizing. vigor renewed and epiphanies well-spent, sunday spends the rest of his time after finishing his duties researching and painstakingly finding the best jeweller he can find (even employing the suggestions of a certain gambler, much to his dislike), and spending a god awful amount of time revisiting and rechecking which spots you like, which places you enjoy, to the point it comes up in Penacony's headlines that sunday is interested in someone.

surely, it should've reached your ears by now, yes? sunday panics. your preferences are well-accounted for, and he's sure the Bloodhound family members that report to him have to tell you that the person he had in mind was you. even Robin, who was your closest friend, has probably told you already.

it's embarrassing to admit, but; to hell with it, the day he meets you after three weeks and sees you having a pleasant chat with aventurine, of all people, sunday thinks his heart had shattered into little pieces and stabbed themselves into his body. not so much as sparing him a glance, moreso.

so when, finally at his wits end, sunday chooses to corner you at the dewlight pavilion and spills out how he has royally screwed up in the worst way possible, no one is surprised. at this rate, you would be swept up in the charms of that wretched gambler, and what sunday lacked in, aventurine more than made up for.

“wait, don't go to that gambler just yet.” he's breathless, he's chaotic—and something in his heart squeezes when you finally look at him. “i... i wish to take up your time now, if that's possible.” (he wishes he would take up your time forever, really, but that was still too early).

you eye his getup. all of your gifts, lined on the man you spent so long chasing after—you see the gloves you gifted, the tie with not so much as a single crease, and the earrings that shine more brightly in the light of the pavilion. (it suits him. like you) it was as if sunday had completely surrendered himself to you, had all but decided to proclaim that he was yours, and this was nothing short of a plea for you to hear him.

“please.” he says. almost begs. “i can't bear not seeing you anymore. allow me to correct such a damning mistake.”

and if you were skeptical, the way sunday looks at you would dispel any doubt you could ever have. (his wings, they were fluttering.)

(months later, after a nerve-ending confession, many days of dinners, shared gifts involving matching jewelry and promenading to your wishes, it dawns on sunday he was absolutely dancing to your tune. did he regret it, though?

....no, most certainly not.)

if AVENTURINE were to be honest with himself, he saw you as a useful “friend” rather than a romantic interest. was it bad of him? of a sort. but risk cutting himself open and letting someone he might grow to care for know about all the ugliness that follows his life? no, he's fine as it is, thanks.

the first thing he notices is that you're kind—though he distrusted most of his colleagues and preferred none to get close to him, aventurine, in some morbid moment of curiosity, instead allowed himself to bask in your attention. instead of curtly disparaging you, he flirts back at your compliments (the way your face heated up in return was far too endearing that he can't help but want to kiss you he finds it amusing) and consistently texts you a “did you get home safe” or a “i bought you this because it reminded me of you”; at this point, it was like you two were dating.

was it leading you on? yes, but he supposes it was a win-win; he could send you those tiny bits of validation that was enough for you to stay respectfully at a distance while he probed at your intentions. unlike others who attempt to garner his favor, you're genuine, and you seriously take the time to know him. because you always text back with hearts, always reassure him, tell him to stay safe and wish him luck at every gamble, every high stakes bet he finds himself in. you even complimented his perfume once (and, if he had to be honest, he could not stop thinking about it all day—because that perfume he commissioned exclusively was based off of your own favorite scents and it was extremely embarrassing that he loved hugging you knowing that you loved the way he smelled and that it felt extremely domestic).

(sometimes, he doesn't reply. for months on end. suddenly the golden-haired man you love goes cold and you know then that aventurine ghosts you and then returns when he's in need of a friend—never a lover. it hurts you, but at the very least, you know he cares in his own way.)

and, if aventurine had to be honest, it was killing him from the inside bit by bit. as if to drive the knife deeper, you never danced around what exactly was going on with you two. you never ask why he ghosts you, then sends you a bundle of gifts all of a sudden and then rapidly spends time with you and repeating the cycle. no, you were consistently by his side, so warm and so caring—so unlike him—that aventurine wonders if it's really all right to open his heart to you.

if, by some chance, he actually wanted to be with you, would you treat him even more sweetly than before? aventurine thinks you would—you were beautiful in your entirety, and he was practically undeserving of you. he imagines himself kissing your hand and having you in his arms—and that feels like ice cold water being dumped onto his head, because you could do so much better and yet, why him?

so when aventurine hears about how a certain doctor was visiting you for some unknown reason, his already fragile sense of security in this little will-they, won't they crumbles.

and when he finds out that you were staying over with ratio? something twisted lodges itself in the little brushes of his heart, coiling and coiling—making him feel green. aventurine is aware you and the doctor are good friends, and ratio was the one who even told you to make a move on him! how could he just—suddenly interrupt?!

(was it dramatic? extremely. but knowing his friend and the person he secretly adores might end up together? you can't really blame him.)

he supposes this can be attributed to him. it was an egregious mistake, a blunder aventurine made—he never gave you a clear sight of whether he truly loved you or not and now you're slipping away from him.

so, he does something very unexpected.

at 3:00 AM in the wee early morning hours, aventurine practically barges into one Dr. veritas ratio's home, demanding what the hell was going on between you. and as if he had expected it, his doctor friend merely gives him a shrug in return.

“perhaps they were simply getting fed up by a certain IPC member—who is clearly head over heels in love with them—giving them mixed signals.” ratio's tone is stern, and aventurine definitely knows that the look he gives him is the one he gives only to fools.

you idiot, the doctor seems to say. yeah, yeah, he is; aventurine ignores the clear pinprick at his dignity.

yes, he supposes he is the fool here. “ah.”

“yes, ‘ah,’ indeed. now, let me propose a question.” the purple-haired man says. “will you react in such a way when i tell you that in order for my friend to stop their anguish, i managed to get them to fraternize with one of my colleagues?”

“...what?”

“they will be having a meet-up seven system hours from now.” ratio shrugs. eyes aventurine, who's looking at him like a gaping, stupid fish. “i can only hope that no one would dare to disrupt.”

...it doesn't take him long to be rid of the gambler by then.

(a few hours later, you stop by the Intelligentsia Guild to see one veritas ratio with a smug smile, eyeing the fur coat draped around your shoulders, and the flushed and happy expression written on your face.

“did it work?” he asks.

you laugh, “splendidly.”

indeed, that gambler was a fool, and there's nothing more than dr. ratio loved than to educate such fools to shape.

“that will teach him.”)

as a quote unquote ‘old man’ who knows that he's well up in his years for a relationship, JING YUAN finds you to be quite amusing.

it doesn't take a detailed analysis to know that you were smitten with him, really. you're a complete open book by his standards—if your heated face and slightly airy voice whenever you were even placed in the same vicinity with the Dozing General was anything to come by. while flattering, he also shares the similar mindset of being too old for any love his way—and he could be mara-struck at any given time, and jing yuan does not wish such a life filled with anguish and pain for the one who may steal his heart. but, worry not, brave suitor of the Arbiter General! unlike the other two above, this man has the experience of millenia, and is open-minded and aware that you truly wish to be perceived as a potential lover.

in fact, jing yuan's recent favorite habit is sneaking off the Seat of Divine Foresight purely to freak you out, watching you scramble up your words, seeing the heat crawl up your nape and bloom all across your face. adorable. you certainly knew how to appeal, that's for sure.

(“heh, it seems i've found a new place to stay in so that the Diviner Fu won't grill me alive when she sees me.”

and when he's rewarded with a bashful and speechless look in return, a smile and your, “i'm glad, general.” it surprisingly lightens up his mood by more than he expected.

that, in turn, gives him a frightening 30% energy boost; fu xuan was utterly shocked to see the languid man actually working and looking like he enjoyed it, for once.

“did something good happen today, jing yuan? why so enthusiastic?”

“i just felt like working more than usual, diviner Fu. i seem to have my energy levels at a high.”)

now, jing yuan is considerate and perceptive first and foremost, so there's a high chance that out of all the men here, he is the most open to giving you the chance to pursue him. he does inform you beforehand that he has no plans of accepting your confessions in the future, and that is where the ‘hard to get’ part comes in.

it's like playing a confusing romance visual novel with a fickle love interest—you never really know what you're doing, whether it's something jing yuan would like or not, and you don't know if he even thinks your attempts are moving his heart. (tldr: he friend zones you).

he maintains the same distance no matter his banters with you, no matter how many times you tell him that you'd help yanqing out with sword lessons. it's like he was just... treating you as he would a friend, and that you were basically stuck in the friend-zone forever.

(he keeps it to himself, but something warm stirs in his chest when he sees yanqing sleeping on your shoulder after training practice, with your arm protectively around the boy's side.

your sleeping face didn't make it easy to look away either; it's one of the few moments in which jing yuan shows just the slightest bit of reciprocating your pursuits; he brushes back the stray hairs covering your face, and drapes a blanket over the two of you.

of course, perhaps to tease yanqing, he also takes the calligraphy brush and makes a work out of his face, doodling all over it.

when you wake up, there's a lingering scent of ink and yellowed paper that fills your senses. when you turn to the boy beside you, you almost giggle out loud.)

it's a little disheartening—and while jing yuan did acknowledge that you were slowly, slowly burrowing yourself in his heart, he doesn't act on it fast enough, and instead lets the realization sit in his mind for a while.

it gets to the point where it feels as though he were preparing to distance himself, and even yanqing had asked if he was well. your visits with the Arbiter General also decrease, as he suddenly buried himself in his work even more than before.

he doesn't get to see you all that much afterwards, despite the lingering feeling of missing you filling his heart.

....that's until jing yuan hears word of a recent mara-struck incident involving the Sky-faring Commission; with your name listed among those heavily injured.

when he visits Bailu's clinic after yanqing urges him, jing yuan takes in the sight of you, littered in injuries from head to toe. your life, about to snap. he never even told you that you won; you did manage to steal his heart and for the first time in a long time, jing yuan allows himself to love.

so if, after three weeks later when you're finally healed up and ready to go, jing yuan brings you into his arms and drags you to let him sleep in your lap, you can't really blame him now, can you?

a/n: i love yearner hsr men,,, might do a pt 2 though. thinking of mayb ratio, jiaoqiu and f/heng next time...... sighs dreamily

@ ICEUNHIE: do not repost translate or plagiarize my works.

[milksnake-tea]

━━ fear not the road untaken .

Sunday hadn't spent long with the Stellaron Hunters before boarding the Express, but the memories he'd made with them were priceless. One quiet day in the Express's cabin, while reflecting on his experiences with the Hunters, you appear to visit him.

astral express!sunday x gn!stellaronhunter!reader

contains: sunday used to be a stellaron hunter, teasing, FLUFF FLUFF FLUFF THIS IS THE CUTEST THING IVE WRITTEN SO FAR, SUNDAY IS DOWN BADDDD AS HE DESERVES TO BE BITES FIST I MISSED THIS SO BADDDDD, not established relationship sunday just has a massive crush on you

word count: 2.06k

a/n: happy drip marketing yall. you all get a sunday fluff piece. as a treat. also yes i am completely and totally sane. (THIS IS THE MOST SELF INDULGENT FIC IVE EVER WRITTEN I AM SO SORRY GUYS)

taglist: @sh0jun , @themoderatelyawesomeninja , @xphantasmagoriax , @rainswept , @lucensei , @akutasoda , @naraven , @scribs-dibs , @apathicace , @flurrina , @tragedy-of-commons , @cakechase , @kiiyoooo

“Sunday, we’re going out to Belobog for a bit. Wanna come with?”

Heeled boots still in the midst of a step. Feather-like hair shifts and tousles as he turns his head. At the invitation, gold melts, sapphires glitter, and a gentle smile warms his lips.

March is a blessing, he thinks. She is bubbly, kind, and always manages to light up whatever room she steps into - in that regard, she is not too unlike his beloved sister. Although her ability to plan ahead leaves much room for improvement, he cannot deny that it was her presence that made his transition into a Nameless much easier than it would’ve been.

Although, truthfully, he’d expected more resistance from her - out of everyone, she seemed to be the most traumatized by the Charmony Festival Disaster, and she also had more of a distaste for Stellaron Hunters than the others. But surprisingly, she’d come around to him, and welcomed him into the Express with open arms - and a lot of food. He swears, every time she’s come back from a trip, it’s another sweet or drink shoved into his arms - not that he’s complaining, though.

“Thank you for the invitation,” he begins, then rests a hand over his chest as a reflex. “But I’m afraid I’ll have to refuse. The last expedition has left me rather exhausted - and as you know, I don’t fare well in cold weather.”

Dan Heng nods in understanding. He’s never been a man of many words, and for that Sunday appreciates him. He rather likes straight-forward people, who aren’t afraid to say their mind - perhaps that’s why he’s grown to adore both the Express and the Hunters so much.

“Is there anything you want us to bring back?” pipes up the Trailblazer, dog-like eyes shining as they lean over March. “Like, sweets or whatever?”

Sunday bites back a chuckle. Somehow, word had gotten around that Sunday had quite the sweet tooth. He doesn’t know who started it or how they found out (he has his suspicions on March), but ever since the trio has been dragging him around to various planets and encouraging him to try the local desserts.

He wonders if he’s gotten cavities yet. He hopes not.

Maybe he should check again, at a later time.

“That Rye Bread Iceberg you brought last time was rather enjoyable. I’d like to try it again.”

March and the Trailblazer brighten at his words. “Okay, on it!”

Dan Heng only hums his acknowledgement before turning to leave the parlor car. “Let’s go,” he advises the others. “You know Seele doesn’t like to wait.”

Sunday has never personally met this Seele (the Trailblazer describes her as a crass but kind-hearted warrior), but her fury is enough to whip both March and the Trailblazer into shape. It isn’t long before the trio is waving him goodbye as they descend into the frozen planet, and he also bids them farewell.

And then it is just him, and the conductor.

A small sigh leaves him as he sits down on one of the many couches. He wasn’t lying when he said he was exhausted. Fighting - or any physical activity, for that matter - isn’t exactly his strong suit. Even during his time with the Hunters, he’d stayed behind the front lines, acting as a pseudo Kafka with his carefully crafted words and tuning abilities.

That’s one of the few things about the Hunters that he prefers over the Express - they didn’t force him to hike through deserts and jungles and mountains and Xipe knows what else. All they did was throw him off a skyscraper in the name of the script (he’s pretty sure Elio just wanted to see if he’d actually fly or not).

Sunday blinks, realizing just what had just passed through his mind. Then he sighs with a smile, leaning back into the red plush of the couches.

Only a few months since his fall, and he’s already beginning to think as weirdly as the rest of them.

“Sunday, are you alright?”

Sunday glances down to see the conductor waddling by his feet.

Pom Pom is… strange, no doubt - for whatever reason, Dan Heng fears them and has advised Sunday to not anger them at all costs. Their past is shrouded in mystery, but Sunday finds himself drawn to the conductor. Perhaps living most of his life in a fever dream like Penacony has warped his perception of what is normal and what is not.

“I’m fine, thank you.” He shifts on the couch to make room, but the conductor shakes their head.

“Are you sure? Pom Pom saw you laughing to yourself,” they fret, tapping their nubby hands together anxiously. “Have you been sleeping enough?”

Sunday crosses one leg over the other, and rests his hands over his knee. “If you’re concerned about my transition from Penacony to reality, be at ease. The Hunters have practically beat a proper sleep schedule into me.”

Pom Pom yelps in shock. “B-Beat?! They beat you?”

“Not literally,” Sunday hastes, instinctively reaching out a hand to calm the conductor. “It was more akin to… ominously threatening checkups. Although, there was this one time-”

He sees the look on Pom Pom’s face, and decides to stop it there. He fears they might break out sobbing if he continues.

“Nevertheless, rest assured that I am sleeping at an appropriate time,” he finishes reassuringly. His practiced smile pays off as the conductor gradually calms down, albeit worry about the Hunters’ methods still lingers.

“Alright, if you say so, Sunday.” They look around uneasily. “Do you want anything to drink?”

Sunday waves his hands hastily. “No, I am alright, thank you-”

“He’ll have some tea.”

Pom Pom jumps with a shriek and Sunday’s wings puff up. A familiar laugh ghosts his ear, and immediately Sunday’s face brightens.

“What- What are you doing here?!” Pom Pom quickly hides behind one of Sunday’s slender legs, hugging it like a lifeline. Sunday places a hand on their head to calm them as he turns to the hologram with a warm smile.

“At ease, conductor, they’re a friend.”

Your holographic form glitches in and out of reality. There’s a thin blue filter over your appearance, but other than that, everything is the same as he remembers.

“Hey, angel,” you coo, leaning your elbow on his shoulder as you sit besides him. Its weight is not the same as it would be in reality, but the presence is enough - a small, barely noticeable tingle that has his heart fluttering and his wings following in suit. “How’s life as Nameless? Do you miss us yet?”

Sunday laughs gently. “It has only been two weeks since I left the Hunters. I’m afraid I haven’t had the time to miss you all.”

You pout playfully, sticking out your tongue.Even though parts of you chip away and reappear, and your form isn’t stable, Sunday can’t help but be as captivated by you as he was when he was still among the Hunters’ ranks. Where the projection fails, his tinted memory fills in.

“Silver Wolf misses you, although I doubt she’d actually say it,” you say, taking a lock of his hair and twirling it around your finger. “Has she visited you yet?”

Sunday stutters a bit before weakly batting your finger away with his wing. “No, I’m afraid she hasn’t.”

“Hm.” You smile at his attempt to brush you off. Letting go of his hair, you instead opt to tug lightly at his cheek, earning a squeak from the Halovian. “That’s weird. Maybe she was too shy to speak up.”

“I-” Sunday rubs his cheek when you finally let go. Embarrassingly, his wings jump to shield his face, an unfortunate reflex he’d yet to curb. “I suppose she was…”

He hears you hum, and he lifts a wing to peek at you. His cheeks feel hot - no, that’s an understatement, the entirety of his body feels as if he’s in a fireplace.

“Give her my regards,” he finally breathes out, thanking the Aeons for his training in keeping his composure. Sure, it ultimately fails whenever he looks at you, but at least he’s able to fix himself quickly enough… or at least, he hopes that’s what it looks like.

“You didn’t answer my question though.” Propping your elbow on his shoulder again, you rest your cheek in your palm. “How’s the Nameless life treating you?”

“It’s chaotic,” Sunday admits with a fond sigh. He relaxes into the couch once more, feeling himself sink into the plush. Briefly, he’s tempted to lean his head on your shoulder, but given that you’re a holograph, he holds himself back. “But it’s fun. The Nameless have been kind, and the planets I’ve visited… It’s nice, to see the universe as someone other than a wanted criminal.”

“Wow. Thanks.”

Sunday would apologize, but considering that it’s you he’s talking to, he doesn’t feel the need to. After all, you’ve said worse to him, and him to you.

“You know what I mean,” he chuckles. “To be honest, though, the Express and the Hunters aren’t so different.”

He hears Pom Pom squawk indignantly, and again he ruffles their fur to calm them. Turning ever so slightly to your hologram, he gazes at you with adoration and fondness swelling his heart.

“To the both of you, I am forever grateful. If it weren’t for your kindness, I’d be rotting away in an alley somewhere. I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

All distaste for the Hunters fades from Pom Pom as they giggle bashfully. “Aw, Sunday… You don’t have to thank us. We were just doing what the Nameless do.”

You nod in agreement, reaching through his wing and poking his cheek again. “Conductor’s right. No need for thanks, birdie.”

“Still-” Sunday makes a sound like a startled bird as you poke his cheek harder, squishing it against the rest of his face. Underneath his coat, his primary wings strain with the urge to flutter and twitch, while his secondary wings are held back by sheer willpower. The only sign that they want to flap so badly is with the tiniest of tremors.

“None of that,” you chide him gently, tapping him lightly on the plush of his lips. “We’re just glad you’re happy - right, bunny?”

“Who’re you calling bunny?!” Pom Pom protests, steam puffing out of their head while steam threatens to escape Sunday’s face for completely different reasons.

Before you can reply, however, your form begins to glitch out, flickering in and out of reality at a higher frequency. With an annoyed click of your tongue, you stand up.

“Looks like Silver Wolf isn’t happy,” you comment, brushing off imaginary dust from your clothes. Taking one step so that you’re fully in front of Sunday, you lean in so that your projected nose barely brushes against his. “I have to get going now. You have my number, so text me if you need anything, okay? Or if you want to catch me up with your travels, you can always call me.”

Sunday’s voice feels lodged in his throat. With a subtle gulp, his Adam’s Apple bobbing ever so slightly, he manages to speak with an even voice.

“Okay,” he whispers, his voice almost a whimper. He wants to explode.

You smile fondly, and duck in to peck at the corner of his lips. The buzzing of your holograph morphs into electrifying lightning, surging into his veins, puffing up his feathers and making all of his hairs stand up and sending his already tapping heart into a frenzy. His body freezes into a statue, and all coherent thoughts melt away into a haze that is both ecstatic and shocked.

By the time you pull away, his wings are flapping erratically and his entire body is dyed in a rosey red. His mouth opens and closes like a fish, but all words die on his tongue and he is left blabbering like a fool.

You laugh again, eyes crinkling so beautifully he swears he’s ascended.

“If that’s how you react, I wonder how cute you’ll be when it’s the real deal.”

And then you’re gone, vanishing like a sweet dream in a flurry of pixels, leaving Sunday there to dazedly touch his lips, and then where you’d kissed him.

And then he smiles, giddily, and his halo practically glows as soft, love-stricken giggles begin to leave him.

reblogs w comments are appreciated !!

[aventurineswife]

[m1ckeyb3rry]

Series Synopsis: When the husband you’ve never met returns from the war you’ve never understood, he comes bearing a strange and inexplicable gift — a prince in chains who he refuses to kill.

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Mydei x F!Reader

Chapter Word Count: 17.0k

Content Warnings: pls check the masterlist there is. a lot. and i’m not retyping all of that LOL

A/N: okay so two things a) sorry for the wait (i thought i would get this out quicker but then my professors decided to kin reader's husband and trapped me with a multitude of exams...) and b) i am. truly shocked by how many people ended up reading/enjoying part one?? like it's crazy to me SLKJFH i hope you guys don't hate where i go with this 😭 and like ik i gave a ton of ooc warnings in the main warning section but they bear repeating LOL so. PLEASE DON'T HATE ME IF BRO IS OOC IDEK HIM LIKE THAT 😓💔

The Southern Sea was unsettled again, thrashing against the shore like a bird tangled in netting, beating itself into such a frenzy that the waves broke silver on the sand. This was atypical of the cerulean waters, and you crouched, fragments of seashells digging into your bare heels as you ran your fingers through the tide. Expecting your father to reprimand you for putting yourself in unnecessary danger, you glanced up, but his mind was clearly preoccupied, as distant as his soft gaze.

“Father,” you said, standing and taking a step back, clutching his arm to steady yourself against the wind. “The sea is strange as of late, isn’t it?”

“They say it knows more than we do,” he said, staring at the horizon, where ships gathered like thunderheads. “Perhaps this is its way of protecting us.”

“I thought the empire was friendly,” you said, narrowing your eyes at the crest painted on the coming boats. “Do we not have some understanding with them?”

“I wonder,” he said. “My darling…you know, sometimes, I wonder.”

 You lay in your bed, a sheen of sweat glistening on your skin as you stared at the ceiling. The blankets covering you were suddenly overwarm, though you could not bear to cast them aside, and your eyes welled with scalding tears that threatened to spill out of their corners. Swallowing and turning over, you used the edges of your pillow to blot at them before they could fall, burrowing further and further into the confines of the tangled furs which padded your bedding. 

Your vision often swam nowadays, for you were dizzy with exhaustion, but you could not bring yourself to sleep, not when your mind had taken up this new form of torment for you. As if it were not enough that you were imprisoned here in your waking hours, as well! Over and over, it would replay that same scene, everything clearer in recall than it had been when it had actually occurred, the colors brighter, the details sharper, stabbing into you with their cruel poignance. 

There were some things, however, which were blurred, the image fading at the edges with time, and this was worse than the remembering, because these were the only things you wished to recall, and this thieving empire would not even let you have that. Even your memories were not safe from their pillaging and their curses, and so their crest was burned into your mind while the rest of it slipped away like river-water through reeds.

You had known as soon as you had awoken that you would not be able to fall asleep again, but that did not stop you from yet another futile attempt. Your lower lip trembled as you waited, fisting your sheets and holding them to your heart as you tried in vain to ease its panicked thumping, which kept time with the furious crash of waves on a far-off shore.

You wanted your home. You wanted to sleep. You wanted your father. You wanted the sea. You wanted to go back. You wanted to have never left in the first place. You wanted, wanted, wanted, but only that which you could never get. Your husband, who was so wealthy in so many ways, who had given you the prince of Kremnos himself, wrapped in chains and delivered at your feet, would never grant you those few wishes which you truly desired, had neither the fancy nor the ability to do so.

Taking one of the lighter blankets and swaddling it around yourself like a shroud, you slid from your bed and fumbled around in the dark for a lantern, which you lit with the embers of the kept hearth. Holding it close to yourself, for luminance and for warmth, you tiptoed through the hallways, your previous flush fading in favor of shivers, which ran up and down your spine the farther you got from your chambers.

There was some invisible force which tethered you to the prince. Certainly there must’ve been, for you could not fathom any other reason why your feet were tracing that familiar path down to the cellar, the blanket still tossed over your shoulders, your stomach wringing itself out from the weight — both of the palace above you and the prince before you.

You thought he might be asleep when you came, but he was as he typically was, as much of a statue as the one you had stood across from on your wedding day. His eyebrows knit together when he saw you, and it was such a sweet, dear expression that you were taken aback, for you had in truth believed him incapable of anything but that dark, glowering scowl which he maintained as if it were the sole representation of the few shreds of self-regard he had left to his name.

“You’re back,” he said carefully. You set the lantern down in between the two of you and, as he always did, he crept closer to its meager incandescence. You pretended not to notice, affording him the grace of ignorance to his innate instinct, and then you nodded.

“Yes,” you said. “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything. It’s still late at night.”

“I thought as much,” he said, nodding at your empty hands. “Time is different here, but even then, I think that I know the difference between a few hours and an entire day. Has there been some development, then? Is your rotten husband finally freeing me?”

“No,” you said, and though he disguised it with a blank frown, you noticed how his face fell. “I don’t have news in any way, for better or worse. Sometimes, I think my  husband is entirely determined to forget that you exist at all.”

“If I were to guess, he means to deprive me to death,” Mydeimos said dispassionately, as if he were talking about someone else, a distantly historical figure whose fate had no bearing on his own. “Should I face a proper execution, I will haunt him from beyond the grave as a banner for Kremnos to rally behind. As it is, he must be hoping that I will fade quietly from the annals of history — the last in another line of princes subsumed by his empire.”

You folded your arms over your chest, a shield against his blunt line of thought. “He is prone to it, I suppose.”

“Is he?” Mydeimos said, like you both were sharing some private joke. He spoke daringly, slyly, as if he were attempting to nudge you into honesty, and you imagined that if you were somewhere else, in a place where the sun shone and the tides eddied about your feet, you would’ve found his manner a temptation. Yet you were here, in this dark cellar, and so all you could muster was a kind of mournful heartache at the impossibility of it all.

“I am sure it is what he intends for the kingdom from whence I hail. Though neither death nor deprivation are required there; the princes are still young, and so if it comes to it, they will…” you trailed off, overcome, before you steeled yourself to continue once more, though a bitter resentment crept into your tone like poison when you did so. “Anyways, the eldest child of the kingdom is a daughter, and she is a spoiled, brattish thing who cares for little but her jewels and her dresses. She will pose no trouble to such an empire as my husband’s.”

“I see,” he said. 

“Ah, but regardless,” you said. “It matters little. I shan’t allow him to kill you in such a way.”

“And your word, of course, is law,” he said, and you wondered at his constitution, which allowed him to scorn you even when he was, in a sense, nothing more than a corpse, a vessel bound for funeral and finality. Was he like this with the others, too? The many men who came to gouge at him with their glares and their abuse, did he strike them with his whip-sharp tongue? Or was it that you were the only one — the only one who deserved it, or the only one who took it with your tail tucked and your head bowed?

“Do you ever sleep?” you said, for if it was the case and you were the sole person he dared to rail against, then how could you take it from him? When it had been taken from you, how could you turn around and do the same to another? “You are always awake when I come to see you.”

He stared at you incredulously, as if you were quite mad. You waited, thinking that he must be choosing his words carefully, but when he finally did speak, it was with a breathy laugh, like he could not quite believe that he had to say it aloud.

“Do I ever sleep?” he parroted. “If I sleep, dear lady, I am certain that I will never wake again. How many men would happen upon me and not dare to slit my throat in such a state, when they can be assured that I will not be able to retaliate? Do I ever sleep, indeed!”

You wished you could tell him that it was the same for you — different, because that which spelled your end came to you only in your dreams, and so you were chased from repose as surely as he ran from it, but the same nonetheless. The bruises carved into the hollows of his cheeks and painted under his dark lash-line were identically replicated on your face, although you were better about hiding it, staining your skin with all manners of concoctions so that your husband did not question what ailed you.

“It will kill you regardless, won’t it?” you said, furrowing your brow. He shrugged, and despite the atrophy of his mind and body alike, it was a powerful gesture, all the more intimidating for its halfheartedness.

“Who will weep if it does?” he said.

“Every manner of thing in this place is meant to kill you, in fact,” you continued. “It is as you said, then: they mean for you to meet death by deprivation, to suffer until your very end. You cannot sleep, nor can you eat…but as I have brought you food, so, too, shall I bring you rest.”

“And how do you imagine you’ll do that?” he said.

“I will stay here,” you said, the strength of your conviction shocking yourself. You hadn’t known until you had said it that you would, but as it left your mouth, you became utterly sure that it was the right decision. “I will watch over you, prince of Kremnos, and should — should someone else come, then I will wake you before I flee, so that you may defend yourself.”

“Why would you do that?” he said. “What good does it do for you to protect me when my end is decided?”

He said it with curiosity, not deprecation, although there was an edge of despairing anger to it. Why? Why do you extend your hand to a doomed man? If I must die, then let me die now instead of later. If he were more honest, then perhaps he would’ve said something like that, but instead he only gazed at you levelly and waited for your response.

“If we both are to meet our deaths in this palace, then let at least one of us meet that demise with a head held high,” you said.

For a moment, it seemed like he might question you. You prepared rebuttals that you could never make but which would swish around in your mind like an impenetrable defense — a death of the body is not the only way to die, after all — but then, miraculously, he only hummed

“You think that it must be me?” he said.

“The Kremnoans are known for their pride, aren’t they? It isn’t the same for my people, who roll over and show their stomachs at the slightest incitement,” you said, taking the blanket off of your shoulders and holding it out to him. “I have made my vows already. What can I do but accept this fate? Yet it needn’t be the same for you.”

He peered at you with eyes that saw far more than they should, far more than you had allowed him or anyone else to, and then he nodded. Shortly, curtly, but he did it, taking the blanket and unfurling it like a war-banner in the meantime.

“I understand,” he said.

“Do you?” you said, for you could not tell what, exactly, it was that he understood. He did not elaborate, however, tucking himself away in the corner, draping the blanket over himself like a mantle and resting his head on his arms. Although he did not close his eyes, watching you even still, you could see them fluttering against his will, and you knew it would not be long before he succumbed, whether he wanted to or not. There was only so long he could survive without sleep for, after all — at the end of the day, he was still a man, and thus prone to humanity’s shortcomings.

“Turn around,” he said gruffly. “Watch the stairs, not me. I will not be the one to bring you harm.”

You apologized, sitting with your legs crossed and your back to him, watching the shadows cast by the lantern as they flickered and danced, waltzing about to the soundtrack of his breaths, which slowly evened into a soft rhythm of inhales and exhales as the time dragged on.

Minutes or seconds or hours passed, you could not be sure, but when your legs grew numb from inactivity, you shifted so that you were hugging your knees to your chest, muffling your face in the fabric of your nightgown.

“Are you asleep?” you whispered.

He did not respond, and when you glanced over your shoulder, you saw that his eyes were closed, his face smooth with innocence as his chest rose and fell under the thin blanket. It was as if he were another person entirely, a more forgiving person, a kinder one, the sort of gentle prince that stories were written about instead of the violent beast who killed as many men as were thrown at him.

“That’s good, then,” you said, a weight on your tongue dissipating now that you were, in effect, alone. “Huh? I didn’t realize…”

Even your vows could not police your thoughts, or, if they could, they had not yet attempted to. Your stream of consciousness was still unfettered, and now that Mydeimos was asleep, you could say what you pleased, could tell him everything you wanted without fear of reproach. It nearly brought you to tears, the mere thought of it, and you had to take a deep breath to steady yourself.

“I understand you more than you think,” you admitted. “You know, just as they’ve taken the sun from you, they’ve taken something precious from me as well. I speak of the sea — oh, but I never told you that, right? Nobody here knows, or at least they pretend that they don’t, but it’s true that I am from the shores of the Southern Sea, where the sky is always clear and the people are as beautiful as the tides.”

You half-expected him to startle awake and snap at you, or for your voice to suddenly die away in protest at your rebellion, but when neither of these things happened, you slumped down in relief.

“It’s often said that the Southern Sea is beyond compare, the closest to paradise that can be found on the living earth. Perhaps I’m biased in agreeing, but I really think it’s the case. I love it, I love it as much as you love the sun — and how you miss the sun, so, too, do I miss the sea. Daily anew I ask myself how it is that I am still alive when I have been so far from it for so long, but somehow I persist, though there are times…ah, but I digress. It isn’t your concern,” you said.

If he were awake, he would’ve jeered at you. How dare you, who were the empress of this entire place, speak of struggle? When he was locked away like this and you were left to your own devices, how dare you pretend as though you understood him? You were suddenly grateful that he could not hear you, or else whatever opinion he had of you would be irrevocably lowered.

“You would find it strange and inexplicable, as Kremnos is entirely inland, but for me, the sea is parent and friend and confidante alike,” you said. “You see, I was my mother’s first child, and so my birth was rife with difficulties. For two days and two nights she labored, until a wisewoman recommended she be taken to the Southern Sea.

“Of course, my father was frightened, for who would trust a wife and a babe to the treachery of the currents? But it’s an odd thing…the waters have never been calmer than they were that day, when my mother was taken to a cove where the seaweed held her hands and the monk-seals played as her midwives. You know, the whales sang when I was finally born, a clear-eyed slip of a child cradled in my father’s arms.”

The mention of your father made you pause, for you had not said that word in so long that it was all but foreign. Father. Your father, your father, you would tell the sleeping Mydeimos all about your father if you had the time and the energy for it. But where would you start, and where would you end? 

“I miss the Southern Sea in the way a bride must miss her mother,” you said. “My actual mother never had much time for me, far too preoccupied with the rearing of the younger ones, and so I was left to the waters and my father, both who cared for me with great consideration, and both who I — who I miss most ardently.”

Your chest felt near to caving in, and you tightened your grip around your knees, as if by holding onto yourself, you could prevent the further spread of the burrowing sensation emanating from your heart, which would dig and dig until there was nothing left of you but blackened, gangrenous innards that rattled around in an empty carapace. 

Mydeimos awoke some time later, though you only knew because he cleared his throat, prompting you to turn and find that he was crouched on the ground, folding the blanket with a neat precision, matching the corners with mathematical accuracy. You watched him in bewilderment, the exactness and nigh-domesticity all but jarring, and in turn he ignored you, fascinating himself with the work so that he could avoid your gaze.

“You stayed,” he said when he could no longer pretend like the blanket required his attention. Dropping it in your lap, he looked down at you with arms crossed, a silent and clear refusal to offer you his hand in the way of a nobleman. You did not insist, taking the blanket and scrambling to your feet on your own.

“Yes, I told you that I would,” you said. “Did you sleep well?”

“‘Well’ is a stretch,” he said. You averted your eyes, lips tugging into an involuntary frown, and he sighed. “But at least I slept. For that, I am…grateful.”

“I didn’t really do anything,” you said, in an attempt to disguise the disproportionate pleasure the simple acknowledgment brought you. “But since you found it to be of some help, I will come back tomorrow.”

“If that is what you will,” he said, albeit lacking his typical sardonic bite. “By the way, you referenced your home.”

“I did?” you said, trying to think back to what you had said before he had fallen asleep. It felt as though you had lived very many lifetimes since then, and everything jumbled together in your mind, so you only blinked at him expectantly, waiting for him to elaborate.

“You said that the people of your home are known for their yellow-bellied cowardice,” he reminded you, and dimly you recalled saying such a thing, though you hadn’t expected him to latch onto such a random, stray line. 

“That’s right,” you said. “Why do you mention it?”

“Where are you from? I haven’t heard of a place so opposite to Kremnos. It’s unfathomable, the thought of somewhere with people who do not burn for the glory of their egos and esteems. What — what is it like?” he said, attempting to sound entirely unaffected but incapable of camouflaging the sheen of curiosity glazing over his irises, childish inquisition melding with a more mature, scholarly interest. 

“It is an ordinary and unremarkable place,” you said, pursing your lips and turning away from him again, your blanket over your back in the way of a shield, a barrier in between yourself and the kindly prying that you might’ve called uncharacteristic of the prince, if you were someone could claim to know anything about him and his character. “That’s all I can say.”

You lingered for a moment longer, thinking — or perhaps just hoping — that he would say something, that he would poke and poke at your dull, wounded answer, that somewhere deep in his beastly heart, he would understand what you really meant. But he only exhaled, bidding you farewell with the same inflamed terseness that he typically infused into his every word, and the moment was lost.

In the daytime, your husband’s voice had this quality of cheerfulness that, at least to you, seemed specifically designed to grate at your nerves. This was an especial cruelty, as the mornings were the worst for you, worn from the toils of the night as you were, but your husband remained blissful in his unawareness and so continued to chatter on without heed. 

You sat curled into your chair, the sun bright in your vision and his voice bright in your ears and everything all so bright, bright, bright. You considered gouging your nails into your eye sockets for the slightest bit of alleviation, or maybe scratching your fingers into your ears deep enough to bleed and drown out the speech he was giving about his plans for securing the Kremnoan border.

“...they have been severely weakened without Mydeimos, of course, but naturally that doesn’t mean they are entirely defeated; stubborn bastards, those Kremnoans, never know when to quit—”

“My lord, have you decided what you will do about him?” you said, your voice dragging on the vowels as you muffled a yawn. “The prince, I mean. Mydeimos.”

The name dallied on your tongue, sweet as the fruit you chewed on, syrupy like the juice of it on your lips. Your husband raised a brow at you, and you cursed him in your mind, cursed him for being so oblivious to so many things but this familiarity, this delicacy, this one thing you had left to savor.

“How flattered he would be, to know that you are so concerned for him!” he said. “I doubt he has ever had such a beautiful woman fawning over him so devotedly. I am sure his face would be as red as those crude markings of his if he heard of it.”

“Don’t be a boor,” his cousin interjected, the quiet control of his voice a welcome reprieve from the variances in your husband’s tone. “She’s only wondering, right, lady? He is her prisoner, after all. Why should she not ask?”

“Her prisoner,” your husband said, with a particular and unprecedented emphasis on the possessive nature of the word. “Yes, he is, at that. Fear not, dear lady; as I have said before, and so I will say again, I shall execute him when the time comes, but that time is not yet. Believe me, you will be the first to be told when it comes to it.”

“Very well,” you said, for there was no merit in further discussion of the topic. You understood when to back off as well as anything, and anyways, as you had told the prince, the people of the Southern Sea weren’t the confrontational sort. You were the worst of them, once, a barbarous lionfish in a sea of picarels, but now, by virtue of your vows, you were just like the rest, as pliant as a clamped oyster buried in the sand.

“Anyways, brother,” your husband’s cousin said when there was an awkward lull in the one-sided conversation, which was really more of a monologue on your husband’s part than anything but was still uncomfortable in its absence, “I was thinking.”

“Were you, now? And was it incredibly difficult?” your husband said. His cousin, who was one of the great military minds of the empire, smiled politely, well-used to the jabs that your husband doled out with a fraternal frequency. 

“On the contrary, your lady eases my mind. There is no difficulty when she is the one my thoughts tarry upon,” he said coolly, just serious enough that he was almost definitely in jest. “I thought she might find some amusement in visiting the elephants from Kremnos; they do not have those where she is from, I am sure, and seeing such rarities might be of some benefit to her health. Certainly the air will be.”

“You speak with wisdom…but I do not have the time to supervise such an excursion,” your husband said. “I have war-councils to attend, and an empire to manage besides.”

“Isn’t that what I was born for?” his cousin said. “I am your second, brother, and at your disposal entirely. If you cannot accompany her, then I will surely do it in your stead.”

Your husband’s eyes narrowed, so imperceptibly that it could easily be dismissed as a trick of the light or a defense against the sun. You ran your tongue along the back of the teeth as you waited for his response, a natural symptom of fretting that you could not help, but it came to nothing, as he only reclined back in his chair with an imperious nod.

“Who else can I rely on but you, hm? Thank you, then,” he said. “Dear lady, I hope you are not opposed.”

He phrased it as a question but meant it as a command; you were not so stupid as to think otherwise. Anyways, it might not be so horrible, so you only hummed in agreement and pretended like the berries in your mouth were the reason you did not say anything aloud.

The path to the stables where the elephants were kept was made of packed dirt, looping through the gardens in a meandering route far from the palace and any onlookers. For a while neither you nor your husband’s cousin spoke — he was lost in thought, and you busied yourself with admiring the scenery you had thus far only seen through the windows of your room. It was not the Southern Sea, could not be further from it, but there was a pastoral, picturesque charm to the blooming bushes regardless. Honeysuckle climbed over wrought-iron trellises, the slender vines curling in between the twisting leaf motifs of the metal, and the blush-white flowers perfumed the air with a melancholic sweetness.

How lovely you would’ve found it, if it did not all belong to you. If you were a visiting dignitary, a guest of the empire’s…if you walked alongside your husband’s cousin as a companion or friend instead of a sister-in-law…how lovely it might’ve all been. 

The sun beat down on your back nearly to the point of discomfort, but instead of complaints, all that came to your mind was Mydeimos, who you thought might’ve luxuriated in these things that you were irked by. So you bore it in his stead, the suffering, the burning, drinking it in with zeal, imprinting the sensation into your skin instead of shrinking away from it, a punishment to yourself as much as a favor to the prince that might never again wear the crown of day upon his handsome brow.

“I remember that first letter my brother’s advisor wrote to us about you,” your husband’s cousin said, ripping you from your reverie. There was a hint of shrewdness to his voice, one that you had never heard from him before, and it made you instantly wary, though he had never given you reason to doubt him before.

“Pardon?” you said.

“It was all such a surprise,” he said, though of course it had not been anything of the sort. “To think that you were to marry him. What a solution to the problem at hand.”

“Yes,” you said, picking at the frayed skin of your cuticles absentmindedly, ripping at them until they stung. “And here I am, having done just that.”

“Indeed,” he said. “It was about time he found a wife, anyways. Heirs are not born overnight; as of right now, all he has in the way of succession is me, but of course that’s not sustainable, is it? He needed a wife to beget a son most of all; everything else you have brought us is a perquisite.”

“Yet it was those very perquisites that made it all so much easier, I am certain,” you said.

“Who would not marry for as many advantages as they can come by?” he said. “You cannot blame us for that.”

“Perhaps,” you said noncommittally before shifting so that your shoulders did not face him. “But these are old things, which have long since happened. The elephants. Tell me about them.”

He wasn’t the last person you wished to discuss your past with, but if there were a list, then he was definitely near the bottom. It was conflicting in a way, nonsensical, almost, but you were sure that even if you could talk about it, you would not, for as much as you longed to, you also could not stand the notion. There was a sort of fortitude in your isolation, in your knowledge that in this place, the Southern Sea belonged solely to you. Not your husband nor his cousin nor their armies and their advisors; you, you, you and only you. So even if you had the means to speak of it with a loose tongue and ready words, you would not —  you would guard it instead, guard it and its people, keep them close to your chest, folded into your swooping collarbones where the empire could not cast its filthy gaze upon them. 

“There are three,” he began, holding up three fingers for emphasis. “The cows, Dromas and Lucabos, who were used only for the transport of goods and have taken well to their new keepers.”

You had reached the elephants’ temporary stabling by this point, and he pointed at the twin elephants in turn. Their tusks were short and blunted, and their trunks waved in the air as they reached for feed from their troughs; keepers milled around their feet, but neither Dromas nor Lucabos paid them any mind. There was an enduring temperateness to the depths of their dark gazes, and even to you, who knew nothing of elephants, it was obvious that these were not creatures of war but benevolent pack-animals in the way of your homeland’s donkeys.

Separated from the cows, the third elephant stood alone, sullen and unmoving. If the keepers dared to so much as look at him, he would rumble out a feral challenge, and unlike Dromas and Lucabos, he was tethered to the ground by ropes braided around his legs and torso. Faded red paint swirled on his forehead, a universal symbol of protection which was flaking off but had not yet turned illegible, and there was a mean slant to his eyes, his ivory tusks honed into swordpoints that he brandished before him.

“Verax,” your husband’s cousin said when he noticed that your stare had not budged from the savage bull. “The war-elephant of the prince himself. After we captured Mydeimos, he fell to his knees from grief and was easily corralled, despite his inordinate strength in battle. A loyal creature, to be sure, albeit a foolish one — you’d think he’d have ceased his struggling by now, when it so clearly will come to nothing! But still he fights, though I know not what he hopes to achieve. Even if he does somehow free himself…he must know that the one he loves has gone to a place he can never reach.”

“Perhaps he seek comfort in refusal,” you said. “There is courage and heart to be found in intransigence, after all.”

“Would you know very much about that?” he said, leaning with his back to the fence surrounding Verax, who stared at you with barely-concealed hatred, the expression so utterly human it made you shiver. 

“Should we stand so close to him?” you said, neatly avoiding the question by posing one of your own, batting your eyelashes in an attempt at naivete. For a second you thought he might not fall for it, that he might be possessed with a keen enough intellect to see through the farce, but if he was, then he did not display it, only waving you off dismissively.

“He may charge at us, but he will trip on his restraints before he reaches,” he said, and then he extended his hand towards Verax, waving his fingers at him teasingly. “See? They’ve taken every precaution; I wouldn’t have been permitted to bring you if they hadn’t. Nothing can happen to my beloved brother’s wife.”

“Let us go,” you said, tugging his arm with far more familiarity than was earned. He raised his eyebrows but did not reprimand you, allowing himself to be pulled along as you set course for the palace proper once more. “This is doing nothing for my health. I don’t wish to stay here any longer.”

“I know that Verax is frightening, but Dromas and Lucabos are as meek as horses,” he reassured you. “You needn’t fear when it comes to them. Don’t you wish to pet them?.”

“No,” you said. “No, I don’t. I am spent, and I think it’d be best if I retire until dinner. Thank you for accompanying me; I appreciate that you thought of me and my wellbeing, even though nothing much came of your attempts.”

“I will keep searching,” he said, a smile playing on his lips, taunting you as he had taunted Verax, waving the feigned gravitas he afforded the situation in your face as boyishly as he had waved his fingers at the elephant. “Until I may find what cures you, I will keep searching.”

“I wish you luck in your endeavors,” you said. “You will need it, I am sure. I do not think this ailment is one which will easily be alleviated.”

“Were you so feeble before you came here?” he said.

“On the contrary, I was healthy and strong,” you said as you passed Dromas and Lucabos’s enclosure again. Neither elephant took note of you, and you found they were easy to ignore, melding into the background like mountains on the horizon. They did not have the same demanding quality of presence as Verax, who commanded one’s attention as surely as his counterpart, Mydeimos, did.

“Perhaps there is some clue to be found there,” he mused. “I will earnestly reflect on it, and if I happen upon some answer, I will surely tell you.”

“Very well,” you said. “Though I—”

Before you could tell him that he would not find much if anything in his reflections, a fact which he most certainly already knew but was pretending to be ignorant to, a commotion broke out. Men’s voices layered over one another while Verax trumpeted and swung his great head about in a panic before lowering it, his ears flat against his neck as he strained against his constraints, his eyes focused on you and your husband’s cousin as he dug his feet, each the size of a chariot-wheel, into the muddy, rutted ground.

“Stay back, lady,” your husband’s cousin said, his arm barring your path forward and his brow knitting together in alarm.

“I thought you said he couldn’t do anything,” you said as the keepers swarmed about Verax, waving bullhooks and bindings at the elephant, who took no head of their warnings, his frenzied stomping causing the ground to shake and his bellows rending through the sky itself. 

“Would you like to find out if that’s the case?” he said. “He’s never been so belligerent before, at least not to my knowledge. I know not what he is capable of, not in such a state, and it seems as though we are his targets at present, so we must make haste and return to the palace at once. Allow the keepers to manage him, for they have been trained in the art and are doubly qualified for it!”

Was this what Mydeimos’s enemies had seen? When he took to the battlefield, had they recognized him as a harbinger of their destruction? For Verax must’ve shaken the earth then, too, the very world itself bowing to the combined might of their arrivals, to the power which was rumored even as far as the Southern Sea.

They say he is more of a god than a man, the prince who sits upon the throne of Kremnos, people would whisper in the streets. All we can do against that strength is pray that he does not turn it towards our shores.

Verax shrieked, and you paused, a terrible thought crossing your mind, unsolicited and unwelcome yet more and more appealing as the seconds mounted. How horrible would it be? You might die quickly, at any rate. One more burst of suffering, as acute as the final glimpse of your home when it vanished over the sunset, and then you would be reunited with the tides, turned to seafoam and silt by the elephant. Whether your end came at his tusks or his tread, wouldn’t it be better this way? 

“Lady?” your husband’s cousin said, and he reached for your hand, but you continued as if you were in a dream, a fog creeping over your mind as you took one step and then another towards the staggering Verax. “Lady, don’t—!”

The pulsing march of your heartbeat resounded in your ears like a wardrum, and as you grew nearer and nearer to the fearsome beast, whose tusks were already stained with crimson at their tips, a fist clamped around your stomach, squeezing and squeezing, yanking on your spine in a desperate attempt to halt your momentum. Fear, that must’ve been its name; you were no battle-hardened general, to be able to face your death without such a steadfast companion. You were only a girl, and you were afraid, but more than afraid you were weary, the kind of weary which seeped into your bones and resigned you to your fate.

“He recognizes scents!” one of the keepers shouted at you. You were aware of it in the way that a drowning man was aware of that which occurred above the surface; thickly, faintly, muddily. “He recognizes scents, lady — if he smells his majesty the emperor on you, he will — you must leave at once, or you will surely die!”

Verax stood with the sun behind him, his sides heaving as he regarded you with an imperious animosity. You stood and waited for his verdict, finding the anticipation to be more excruciating than the action itself but trusting his deliberations, trusting that whatever decision he arrived at would certainly be the right one. They were wise creatures, elephants, even the ones like him who were trained only for war.

He swung his trunk towards you like he meant to knock you down, and you did not flinch away from it, closing your eyes, wringing your hands to stop yourself from shying away, from running to the safety of your husband’s cousin and the elephant keepers. You could not let such a basic impulse impede your freedom, the freedom that you could only win through this agony, this tribulation, this death.

Yet instead of a crushing, bruising impact, he brushed it against you delicately, fondly, a featherlight kiss of a touch. You held your breath, but when nothing else happened, you cracked your eyes open, your brow pinching together as you looked at the elephant.

Verax exhaled out a rumbling whine of a breath, and then he fell to his knees, his trunk winding around you in what you could only describe as an embrace and was surely the tenderest affection you had received since coming to this bleak, cheerless empire. For a moment you did not understand it, and then, as surely as anything, it came to you, and you stroked your hand along his rough grey mouth.

“Does it cling to me even now, the spoor of that cellar, that prince?” you whispered in amazement. “No, you are not mistaken, Verax, it is him. Even now, Mydeimos lives; I swear to you that he does.”

“Lady!” your husband’s cousin said, wrenching you from Verax, his nails carving half-moons into your upper arms. “What foolishness is this? Have you a death wish? What would become of me, if something were to happen to you while you were under my care?” 

“It’s irrelevant, isn’t it? I’m unharmed,” you said.

“A small miracle,” he said, clicking his tongue. “You and my brother were right. It is for the best that you remain in the palace until you are in your right mind. Do forgive me for assuming to know you better than you knew yourself.”

“What will they do to him?” you said as he guided you away, his arm hard, unyielding against your waist. The keepers had set upon Verax, who, in the reverse of his earlier demeanor, only lay there and took it, as if the faintest traces of Mydeimos which he had picked up from you had been enough to soothe him into yielding. 

“To Verax?” he said. “I hardly know. You shouldn’t concern yourself with it; likely he will end up in the same way as his former master.”

“In the way of Mydeimos?” you said. “What do you mean by that?”

“Dead, of course,” he said. “What else?”

You turned for one final glance at Verax. He had nestled into himself, his cheek in the dirt and his legs tucked neatly against his enormous body. His ears fluttered weakly against the clangor of the many rebukes, but this was all the resistance he showed. The fight had left his eyes; they were now glassy and torpid, twin whelk-shells which sparkled at the corners with something that, if you were not more learned, you would call tears. But who had ever heard of an animal that cried? Still, as you left him behind, you could not shake the feeling that, whether from sorrow or jubilation, he was most assuredly weeping.

That night, you did not bother with ceremony or announcement when you returned to the cellar. You collapsed to the ground with a huff and slid the plate over to Mydeimos’s feet. Unlike the first few times you had done such a thing, he did not hesitate to sit across from you, using the silver cutlery you offered him to cut the meat into small pieces that he nibbled on with a daintiness which was almost pretty to watch.

“I saw the elephants today,” you said. He froze mid-chew before increasing his pace, swallowing it down in a gulp and canting forward, his expression feline, intrigued. It pinned you in place, staying your tongue and any retorts that might come to life by the sheer force of it. 

“The elephants? Then Verax—?” he said, so hopefully that all you could do was nod.

“Yes, him. Dromas and Lucabos, too,” you said. 

“Is he…alright?” he said. “Verax, I mean, though of course I worry for the others, too. But Verax is special.”

“Because he is yours?” you said. “You rode him into battle, did you not?”

He cocked his head at you, and for a long time he was silent, measuring the length and breadth of your mettle with his sweeping scrutiny. You did not move, afraid of what would happen if you failed this test, although he had proven so many times over that he had no intentions of harming you — just as you could not brave Verax without that old friend, however, so, too, could you not brave the searching, seeking Mydeimos.

“It is not customary for princes in Kremnos to ride elephants,” he said finally, evidently judging you worthy, though you knew not what you had done to deserve such a designation. He continued to eat in between sentences, every phrase constructed with a painstaking accuracy that he mulled over as he chewed. “We have cavalrymen for that. An elephant is a grand mount, but for a nation that thrives on bloodshed and conflict, such grandness is an extravagance that is frowned upon for those of us who are meant to be the ideal of that very turmoil.”

“Ah,” you said. “So it is that sort of place, then. I see.”

“Verax’s mother died as he was born,” he said. “So he was meant to be culled, for there wasn’t a soul in Castrum Kremnos, our fair capital, that had the time or the temperament for such an involved undertaking as raising him from infancy.”

“Culled!” you said, your hands flying to your mouth in surprise. “Such a small, darling creature, having just lost its mother, and they could only think to cull it?”

“They are without mercy,” he said, and unexpectedly he did not chide you for interrupting him as you thought he might’ve. In fact, he seemed to welcome it, your interest spurring him to continue instead of faltering into surliness as he often did. “Only those with the wherewithal to grasp at survival with both hands are deserving of this life, or so it is said; oh, don’t make such an expression, of course I don’t believe in the school of thought myself. Who do you think raised Verax? To my father’s eternal dismay, it was me.”

“You raised Verax?” you said, trying to envision it and finding you were unable. Was he capable of such parental warmth, this menacing, hulking figure sitting across from you? Had he handled the young calf with the hands of a warrior, coarse and unsympathetic, or had he managed to palliate them, so that they might resemble the compassion of the mother that the elephant had lost? Was that the extent of the love Verax knew, and was that why he mourned the prince so deeply, so consumingly? 

“Every night for a year, I slept in his stable,” he said, his eyes faraway, a small smile hovering at his lips — not entirely there, his frown still resolute in its position, but threatening to manifest at some point in the future. “He would follow me around in the daytime, a toddling, awkward mess of limbs that attended my lessons and watched my sparring matches with a sagacity that even most men can never hope to attain in their lifetimes. We were young together, Verax and I, and when the both of us ventured forth to the battlefields beyond Kremnos, we became men together, too. He is my child and my brother alike; thus, he is my particular concern. Tell me anything. Do they treat him well? Is he agreeable in his new situation? He is difficult, I have always scolded him for it — well, he is an elephant at the end of the day, so there is only so much he can understand, but I like to think he knows what I am saying more often than he doesn’t. They aren’t riding him, are they? His back is sensitive, in truth; I would not take to it for more than a few minutes at a time even if I were a simple cavalryman, for despite his size and strength, he does not have the necessary muscular development to carry a man for much longer than that. I could not bear to train him, you see, as I always found the methods of breaking too harsh to inflict on another in good conscience.”

“He…” You bit your lower lip. Would it be better to give him the truth, or would it be worse? How could you tell him that death, too, he would meet with Verax at his side? Yet how could you lie and say that he was alright? Because that false hope also seemed like a cruelty. When he had bared himself to you in this small way, when he had drawn back just one corner of his past in exchange for nothing of your own, how could you repay him with blithe misdirection? “I think that he longs for you.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Then he is as he always is. Thank you, dear lady. I am relieved to hear it.”

This time, you had brought him a better blanket, the heaviest you owned that was not overly unwieldy as you dragged it down the stairs behind you. It was large and quilted, scenes from a hunt embroidered into it, the vibrant threads dipped in woad and madder, a pack of hounds chasing after a saffron-stained lion as he lay down and pulled the swath of dark wool over his shoulders. Tonight he did not stall or argue, only giving you a halfhearted reminder that you had sworn to be vigilant before rolling over without waiting for your response.

“You sleep so quickly,” you said. “I am almost envious, though of course for me to say I envy you in any sense is…in poor taste, as the case may be.”

He had left a little bit of food untouched, as tidily cut as what he had eaten but portioned and kept away from the rest. You didn’t want to be presumptuous, but skipping dinner every night was taking its toll, and so the pangs of your stomach insisted that he had left it for you, that he pitied or sympathized with you and so had given you this unsaid gift. You had no reason to think that he would do such a thing, of course, but eventually you could not deny yourself any longer, not when it was so tantalizing, so fetchingly plated.

“I wonder if I will ever understand you,” you said, chewing on the cold, pearly rice, rolling the white grains around on your tongue and squinting at his motionless form. “How many strange habits you have. What would the people of this empire say, if they knew that the prince of terrors was also the mother of elephants?”

You laughed under your breath for the both of you, finding refuge in the brief, catty amusement you had allowed yourself. You had no idea if Mydeimos would find it entertaining; likely he would not, considering the joke was at his expense, but you comforted yourself with the image of him sharing your humor, of one other person in this entire desolate place finding some value in straightforward repartee instead of conniving witticisms.

“But speaking of elephants…” you said, sobering immediately, all traces of levity leaving your body. Now that he was asleep, you could tell him the truth, could allow the burden of your earlier reticence to be alleviated by confessional honesty to his body, if not his waking mind. “Oh, Mydeimos, the situation is so horrible I could not stand to say it aloud to you, not when you were so — so sincere in your anxious querying, but Verax’s fate is not so dissimilar to yours.”

You pushed the plate, now empty, away from you, turning your attention to the stairs, both so that you could fulfill your promise to him and so that you did not have to acknowledge his presence when you spoke. Even his sleeping frame held a sort of judgment to it, an accusation to his silence, as if he were blaming you for everything that had yet occurred to him. You supposed he wasn’t wrong to do it, but you ran from that blame regardless, unable to take it, your back as unused to the task as Verax’s.

“They might put him down soon. They thought he was going to kill me, after all,” you said, tracing circles in the dust on the ground, coughing when it plumed into the air, blinking rapidly to clear your irises from the irritation. “I thought he was going to kill me…but, you know, I think that I wanted him to, a little bit. Or maybe a lot. I don’t know, I don’t — I don’t want to be here anymore, I never wanted to come at all, and if death is the only way I can go home, then—!”

You broke off, shame enveloping you, unable to fathom what you had just blurted out. Weren’t you self-absorbed for it? Weren’t you miserly for seeking out something that had been thrust upon him unwillingly? Something he would surely meet if it were not for you? His life, his existence, it was all tethered to yours, and yet you had tried to throw it away for your own brief deliverance.

“It was the worst season of my life, Mydeimos,” you recalled. “And, also, the last. I speak, naturally, of the one with the storms, when the empire’s ships first cast anchor in the Southern Sea.

“Once, my husband’s empire was a genuine ally of my home. We were friendly enough, or maybe a better way to describe it would be that we had an understanding with them: as long as we continued to trade with them, to bow to their whims and their prices, they would protect us from the abominable — ah, well, it was your people we feared most of all. I am sure you are not surprised by it? Maybe you are even glad that stories of your deeds precede you so far…but I should not continue to assign such reactions to you. I don’t know you any more than you know me, after all, so for all I know you find this offensive.

“Anyways. The empire was always a foreign, distant consideration, especially for me, who was always so sheltered, so guarded. I knew of them — who does not? — but they were not an immediate concern.

“My father was always suspicious of them, however. He was always suspicious of everyone, in fairness, it’s a characteristic of men like that, but against such an enormous entity, what could he do about it? For as wealthy as we are, the Southern Sea has little in the way of an army. Our men are either too young or too old or not brave enough for fighting, and that is our greatest secret, which even my husband does not know for certain but, I believe, has long since guessed at. 

“You know how covetous he is. When he came to conjecture that we were so defenseless, he sank his teeth into our underbelly, unflinching as he throttled us in the coils of his strength. It was wealth he wanted, my father’s vast stores of gold and jewels that he eyed with a feasting hunger. I do not doubt that he was fully prepared to bleed us of it, and indeed as the ships grew closer and closer they sent us a messenger on a small wooden boat.

“‘Each ship contains five hundred men, all ready to die for their empire. Surrender your greatest treasure to us, and we will spare you.’ That was what we were told. My father had no choice; he would rather give up all the gold in the world than let anyone suffer for a moment longer than they needed to.”

You bit the inside of your cheek until you tasted salt, so similar and yet so different from the sprays of brine that had infused the air by the beach on the day the messenger had come. You could recall even now what a sinewy, aquiline man he had been, his flat blue stare affixed on your damp features as he recited the emperor’s words in his stead. He is busy in Kremnos, the messenger had explained. A bloody crusade to defend you from that loutish prince of theirs. Yes, yes, I am speaking to you, lady — pray that that brute never lays eyes on you. Such a pretty little bird, so beautiful…he will most assuredly hunt you down and tear into you with rapturous vehemence.

“My father scrambled about, offering them as much as he could. Chalices of gold coins; jewels from my mother’s dowry; a hundred of the finest Eastern horses; spices that only grow in one place, for one week; yet all of these were refused. ‘You think the emperor will be satisfied with something so paltry?’ We were at a loss. It seemed as though nothing short of the entire kingdom would be enough to please them, and despite how generous my father is, he could not give them that.

“I was the one who understood first. At least, I accepted before the rest what it was that the empire truly sought out. The tides, the kingdom, these were all unreachable — even if they conquered us, we would never do their bidding, not in any way that lasted. Thus, they needed a more concrete claim, a child born of sand and sea. My child, which, upon its conception, will have a right to the empire and the ocean alike, uniting both under my husband’s name for good.”

You wrapped your arms around yourself in a facsimile of a hug, pretending like your father was there, clinging to you as he had on that final night. The wind had howled and he had cried and you had sat there, stoic, your expression motionless but for the faintest sheen in your eyes. You had refused to let yourself waver, knowing that if you showed any hints of hesitation, your father would never release you from his arms, and so the Southern Sea would fall to the fire and brimstone of the ceaseless empire.

“He didn’t want me to leave anymore than I wanted to go,” you said. “My poor father. He would’ve given up the world to keep me by his side, so I made the decision for us both and insisted upon it. I promised him that I would find love here, even in this loveless place, and whether he truly believed me or if it only soothed him to do so, I do not know, but regardless he eventually allowed it. So I boarded that wooden boat with that wooden messenger, and as the sea tossed about in lament, I came to the ship which would take me to my new home, to the statue I would wed the moment my feet touched the ground.”

You laughed again, but it was resentful and acrid, scalding the back of your throat in the way of vomit. Flexing your fingers and digging them into the gaps between your ribs, you waited until you could feel your pulse, feel the proof that you, too, had not turned to stone in the time since you had come here.

“Yes, a statue,” you said. “A real-and-true block of marble. That is what I wed, and that is what I swore to my father I would come to love. What he would think, if he could see me now…”

You yawned, your eyelids heavy, spots painting your vision as it blackened at the corners. Eventually your body would repay you for your weeks of insomnia, for the massive debt which you had incurred and kept increasing day by day, but pinching yourself, you sat up straighter, for if it was here that you conceded, you would never forgive yourself, and neither would Mydeimos.

“Lady.” The firm address cut through your daze, and you shifted to see Mydeimos at the end of his tether, holding the blanket out to you, his forehead creased into something a little kinder than a grimace but still expressing that same distaste. “Will you be able to survive for much longer in this way?”

You shook your head to clear it, swaying a bit from the effort you put into the gesture, taking a hold of the blanket to disguise your momentary lack of balance. He did not let go of it, watching your charily, as if you were wont to spook or collapse, and you would’ve protested, but what he did not know was that you really might’ve fallen if it weren’t for his stolid grip on it and, by extension, on you.

“I will be alright,” you said. “Do not fuss. If you can endure such conditions without becoming disconsolate, then should I not do the same?”

“I am hardened to it from years of campaigning on the battlefield,” he said. “I will not grouse until the last.”

“You are…” What was he? Estimable? Laudable? There were not words enough in this language for you to describe it, and you did not think that he would appreciate them, anyways, so you merely held him by the shoulders, your fingertips stressing to him all that you could not say aloud. “If it were you instead of the princess, perhaps things would not be so dire for my home. You would not have absconded as she did, would not have forsaken your people for wealth and wedding. If it were you…if it were you…”

“Do you have some vendetta against her?” he said. “This is not the first time you have spoken ill of her.”

“She had everything I could ever want,” you said. “Yet she threw it away at the slightest provocation, prancing off to her new husband without care for all that she was leaving behind. I hate her for it, in truth. What if she had had a stronger will, a prouder spirit? If she had been from Kremnos, as you are, then instead of capitulating immediately, might she have fought?”

His eyes widened slightly, and then, inscrutably, enigmatically, they softened, twin suns on a summer evening settling into a comfortable, radiant twilight. You were enthralled by them, by their vast, golden tranquility, and for the briefest moment, entirely unbidden and illicit though it was, the notion of taking him into your arms crossed your mind.

“There is honor in concession, too,” he said, lifting your hands from his shoulders and setting the blanket in them before turning away. “Sometimes it is more difficult to live than it is to die; is persisting regardless, then, not bravery? At any rate, it’s a lesson the Kremnoans, many of whom do not live until they are dying, could stand to learn. Perhaps that princess of yours has more tenacity than you give her credit for after all.”

You held the blanket to your chest; it was still warm, the heat of his skin lingering in the wool even now, transforming it into a cinder which flickered against the hearth of your breast, coaxing a smoldering, dormant fire back into feeble life even as you attempted to outrun the effect. You stumbled up the stairs with the poise of a drunkard, like the proximity to him was what mattered, like there was some distance you could put between yourself and Mydeimos which would cure you of this new revelation, which you had not experienced before but could nevertheless recognize to be unwanted, dangerous, despicable.

What was its name, this clawing, rending sensation that took root in your stomach and fought desperately to tear out? Was it another version of consternation, made delicious and tangible from its immediacy, its familiarity? Had you grown so used to him that your fear had matured into something else, something that you sought out for its nigh-pleasurable thrill? Or was there another explanation, an aspect that you were missing in your callowness?

“Lady, were you listening to me, or shall I repeat myself?”

You startled at the voice that yanked you from your contemplations, which even so late into the next afternoon had not come to a satisfactory conclusion. Your husband’s cousin was staring at your expectantly, wisps of steam from his teacup billowing in his serene face, and when he realized you were blinking at him, he set it down and folded his hands in his lap. Your face growing hot with shame, you placed your own across from his and nodded to indicate he could continue.

“Are you still perturbed by what happened yesterday, such that it even disturbed your sleep?” he said. “Rest assured, if you are so troubled, then I can command them to halt their efforts at domesticating the recalcitrant animal and slay it for its crimes posthaste.”

“Verax?” you said. “No, no — it was my own — it was my own mistake, it definitely was, and I would hate to see such a valuable treasure destroyed for my foolishness. Please ensure that he is kept soundly and well; an elephant is not easily obtained, especially one such as Verax, who is worth ten each of those pack-types like Lucabos and Dromas. We mustn’t let him go to waste.”

“How forward-thinking,” he said. “Is this how your family’s wealth has accumulated? Perhaps we ought to learn from you, if you have the mind for investments and returns.”

“No, my father was the one who managed those things,” you said, swallowing back a yawn. “I was not privy to it, nor did I have much interest. I think that this is just an example of what my people call common sense.”

As soon as you said it, you realized how rudely it had come across, and indeed you were surprised that you had been able to do it at all. Of course, it was easier with others who were not your husband, the easiest of all when it was Mydeimos, but he was not Mydeimos, and was the closest person to your husband besides he himself, so you were in truth taken aback that you could speak as you willed. Perhaps it was the intention, or perhaps it came down to the fact that no matter what, he was not your husband, and so as long as you kept that basic little decorum, you were free to do what you liked.

“There is also that explanation,” he allowed. “But the fate of that elephant is not what I wish to discuss with you.”

“Then?” you said. 

“I am speaking to you, of course, as a family member — a relative of your husband’s, with a natural concern for the fate of his line and his empire,” he began. “You know that my brother is ever-busy with his celebrations and his councils, so the task of broaching this sensitivity falls to me.”

“You are his second, are you not? Who else would it be?” you said, raising your glass to your lips and peeking at him over the rim.

“That is exactly what we must discuss,” he said. You cocked your head at him; he cleared his throat, picking up his teacup, stirring in a lump of sugar and putting it back down without taking even a sip. Steepling his fingers, he pursed his lips at you. “He has been home for long enough that there should be news of an heir’s impending arrival by now.”

Fragments of crystal flew into the air with a crash of protest, scattering and embedding into the rich weave of the carpet below your feet, the stain of tea spreading dark and bloody over the cheery floral motifs. You immediately dropped to your knees, pressing the ends of your dress to it in a desperate attempt to soak it away before the damage was permanent, but all your efforts awarded you were cuts littering your hands and knees, translucent shards digging into your palms and slicing thin, stinging streaks which might, if they scarred, change the read of your fate-lines permanently.

“I am sorry,” you said. “My hand slipped — I didn’t think it would break — and now I have ruined it! I have ruined it, I did not mean to, please forgive me, I am so very sorry—”

“Why do you apologize so incessantly?” he said, helping you stand and picking the glass out of your hands with academic precision. “This carpet is yours. You can do what you want with it.”

“It is my husband’s,” you corrected. “As with everything in this empire, it belongs to him. By destroying it, I am destroying a small piece of him, and I do not want to do that. I am not permitted to do that.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, if you are apprehensive about learning his reaction, don’t be. He will forgive you. He has finer carpets than this one, and needs more excuses to use them. Anyways, he won’t know of it unless you or I tell him, and I shall keep my silence if you swear to as well. Does that pacify you? Then let us continue with the earlier subject.”

“Yes,” you said. “You are commanding me to fulfill my obligations to him. I know I must, but…”

“Allow me to finish,” he said. “I understand that you have no desire for my brother. You needn’t affirm it, I know you cannot, but I am sure when I say that you cannot deny it, either, not if you are being honest with yourself. You hold neither love nor lust for him, and so any children born of your union will be puny, perhaps not even surviving past infancy.”

“How can you be so certain of that?” you said.

“It is enough of a trend in our family that some wonder if it is a genuine curse,” he said. “Those kings who are born of joy are robust, vigorous men, while those of withering wombs are invalid and infirm from the start.”

“I see,” you said. 

“You will not come to love him,” he predicted. “He pays no special attention to you, and the only gift he has ever given you is a ghastly prince you are forbidden from so much as seeing. What basis is there for love? So there is only one thing which can be done: you must find someone else, someone who will lie with you knowing that they will lose their life for it, and then you must pretend as though the ensuing child belongs to my brother alone.”

“You mean for me to commit such a sin?” you said incredulously. “You would endanger three lives for the sake of one? For you must know that my husband would not spare any of us — myself, the father, or the son — if he were to discover that he had been deceived in such a way.”

“He will never discover it,” he promised you. “I personally ensure that he won’t. Choose someone beneath notice, or someone who you trust with your entire being, and he will never come to know of it.”

“There is no one like that,” you said.

He smiled at you, dropping your hands and calling for a servant to fetch a broom. You eyed him, taking a skittish step backwards, but he did not match it, did not chase after you with an insistence that you listen to his idea, which was so far-fetched as to be closer to genuine fiction than probability.

“Don’t be so sure,” he said amiably. “You might be surprised at what suitors you will find, if you only think to ask.”

How was it, that in this entire palace, this entire empire, so filled with noble, genteel lords and refined, elegant ladies, you could only find sanity and solace in the cellar? How was it that until the sun set and you ran down those stairs, the stone slick and dense beneath your racing feet, you found yourself living in the type of delirious dream characteristic of fevers, and it was only there, in that dark, contained world consisting of nothing but yourself and Mydeimos and the chains which bound him, you could, for even a second, wake up?

“You wish to ask me something,” he said when he was about halfway finished with the food you had brought him. You were sitting on the blanket, the one with the lions and the hounds, and although you were pretending to be engrossed with flipping the corners up and down like a child with a new game, you had indeed been observing him from beneath your lowered lashes. “If it is so, then you should just ask. I will answer as best as I can.”

“Do you have a wife?” you said, deciding that if it had plagued you for this long, there was nothing to be lost in asking, especially as he had given you the permission for it.

He choked on the piece of fish he had just bitten into, thumping on his chest and coughing to dislodge it.

“What?” he said.

“A wife,” you said. “Do you have one? I mean, are you married? 

“No,” he said. 

“Really? But you are a prince,” you said.

“So?” he said, sneering as he regained his composure. “That doesn’t mean anything. I have spent my entire life far too busy with the care of my people to pay any mind to such a trivial construct as marriage.”

“Then you will not be able to understand my dilemma quite as well,” you said, both because it was the truth and because you wished to hide that you were, for some reason, relieved by this development. “But I will tell you anyway.”

“Your dil—you intend to seek my counsel regarding your marriage?” he said. “Surely you jest.”

“If you did have a wife,” you said, ignoring the scoff he let out at that. “If you did, and she bore a son by another man, what would you do to him?”

“I suppose I would put him to death, as would be expected of me,” he said.

“What if it was not his fault? What if your wife was the one who begged him to do it?” you said. “Would you kill them both?”

“No,” he said, sliding the still half-filled plate over to you and wrinkling his nose when you tried to give it back. “I would not kill her. Even if she were entirely to blame, I would not. It is easy to give the order for a nameless, faceless man’s death, but when it is someone you love, it is difficult.”

“Say you do not love her,” you urged, giving in to his unspoken behest and spearing a cooked vegetable through with the silver fork he had left atop the plate.

“Then I would not have wed her, and so she would not be my wife, in which case this entire situation would never occur in the first place,” he said, and rather smugly at that. “There you have it. Is that all, or must we continue this game? I thought that you were in some genuine trouble and required proper advice.”

“I…” you trailed off into a sighing exhale, suddenly finding yourself entirely foolish for expecting something like condolence from him. “Never mind.”

“Fatigue can drive someone to the brink of madness,” he said, and behind the gruffness was a note of solicitude. “Why don’t you sleep?”

“I can’t,” you told him. “I try, every night for a few hours after I have returned to my chambers, but inevitably it ends the same: I am caught in the throes of a nightmare which leaves me more debilitated than before. I cannot escape anguish, it seems.”

“Sleep here,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and sticking his sharp nose in the air — an affected show of haughtiness that even a child would not fall for. “You have given me much, so in return, for just this one night, I will guard your dreams and defend you from that which troubles you.”

“Here? You mean the floor? What sort of proposition—” you broke off, wilting at the dull look he gave you. “Er, my apologies. I meant no offense, and really, I am appreciative that you would offer to do such a thing, but I am sure it will come to nothing, so let us not waste any time with an attempt. My woes are self-inflicted, after all, and thus undeserving of pity, of your pity especially.”

There were many mysteries contained within this prince — of terrors, of victory, of sacrifice and of subjugation — you knew this well, so well that by now it should have ceased to surprise you when he did something odd, when he proved himself to be so opposite to the philistine warrior everyone claimed he was. Yet that did not stop perplexity from washing over you when he exhaled heavily, extending his legs and leaning his head against the wall.

“Come,” he said. You narrowed your eyes at him, not from anger but out of a genuine desire to understand his method.

“Where shall I go?” you said patiently. “I am already here with you.”

“You will not sleep on the floor,” he said. “I do not know — well, I mean, one of my legs has this infernal chain about it, so it’ll hardly be any better, but perhaps it will be enough of an improvement?”

“Pardon?” you said. “I must confess I am still confused.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and when he elaborated, it was through gritted teeth, each word bullied out with a diffidence so at odds with his imposing posture and broad physique.

“You may use me for your own measures,” he said. “You will meet your end if you do not, and then what? So let us make this one attempt. Lay your head in my lap if you cannot accept the floor, and, even if it is fleeting and fraught, come to sleep.”

Your mouth opened and closed soundlessly, and then you were laughing, burying your face in your hands as you giggled helplessly, because wasn’t it such a joke? All the vows and magic that your husband had needed in order to tie your tongue, and yet here was Mydeimos, his greatest enemy, who had managed to steal your voice with merely the offer of his lap for you to lay your head upon.

His thigh was hard, muscular against your cheek, and although he was abnormally hot, it was not in the way of a fever; rather, it seemed natural, as if he were born to run at this temperature, a streak of fire that had deigned to coalesce into the shape of a man for some time. In comparison, the links of the thrice-blessed chains were freezing, and you shifted so that they did not push into your forehead, wanting nothing of the empire to touch you, wishing that nothing of this place would touch him, either, even if that could never be the case.

“Why do you trust me so much?” he said after a while. “You have from the beginning. I could have killed you so many times, dear lady, in so many ways — I even told you that, and yet you have not faltered.”

“Hm,” you said, rolling over so that you were on your back and could peer up at him. “I don’t know.”

His palm met your stomach with the lightness of a butterfly, splaying over it as he used his other hand to cover your eyes so that you had no choice but to close them. Your breaths grew shallow from that same ache as the other night, that ache which you were beginning to think did not originate from fear but another source entirely.

“The fork you give me to eat,” he said. “I could tear you asunder with it. It’s good silver, and sturdy — of course, it’s no spear, and I am nowhere near my full strength, but against you it would be more than sufficient as a weapon.”

He traced a path up your sternum, and then he encircled your neck with his fingers, placing no pressure upon it, only rubbing up and down along the furrows between your tendons.

“There is enough slack in my chains,” he said. “I could draw you close, throw them around your neck, and pull them taut until your throat is crushed.”

He hummed, and then his hand slid to your heart, which pounded and pounded until you thought it really was a puzzle that it did not burst forth and make its home in his fist.

“But all of these accoutrements are superfluous,” he said. “If I want, I can tear your heart out with only my hands — or, if your husband is to be believed, my teeth. I can do it now, and all too easily.”

“Yes,” you said. “You could.”

“You are frightened,” he said rhetorically.

“I’m not,” you said.

“Your heart is beating so fast,” he said. “And I have just explained to you how simply I could kill you, as well as how frequently I have considered it. Surely you are.”

“That isn’t why it’s beating,” you said. 

“Then?” he said.

“It’s because you’re here,” you said. “I can’t explain much beyond that, but I do not think — I do not think it would beat like this for anyone else.”

“No one has ever said that to me,” he said. “I am the one who silences hearts. Never have I been accused of accomplishing the inverse.”

“That is the reason,” you repeated. “I feel that it must be.”

He lifted his hand from your chest and patted your cheek, refusing to move the other from where it still soothed over your sore eyes.

“Well, no good will come of pondering it any longer,” he said, and if you strained, you could hear the faintest traces of a smile in his words. “Sleep now, and do not worry about your nightmares; the savage prince of a savage land is far more frightening than any visions your mind can come up with, and as you have conquered me, so, too, can you conquer them.”

You did not even have the wherewithal to ask him what he meant by that before the darkness and the warmth he afforded you lured you into the deepest pits of unconsciousness, where you had not been since you had come to this empire. And whether it was his presence or his reassurance or some magic — well, likely not the latter, the gods of this empire held no love for either of you — you really did not wake for many hours, sleeping, for the first time in months, without a single dream to haunt you.

“I apologize, brother, but it really is impossible to secure the south from the sea,” your husband’s cousin said from position at your husband’s right. “I have consulted with the best naval captains this empire has to offer, and they all give the same answer.”

“Consult them again, then, or find some better advisors. How is it that the kingdoms by the Southern Sea have flourished for as long as they have, and yet we cannot so much as make a foothold without it being swept away?” your husband snapped.

They had been going back-and-forth in this way for some time now, running in circles and saying the same thing over and over, neither satisfied with the other’s perspective. Ordinarily, you would’ve been brought to tears by the grating, cyclical nature of the discussion, as well as the rapidly rising volume, but today you were far too content with the bliss that a proper night’s rest brought to let them sully your happiness.

“Perhaps we should ask your darling wife,” his cousin suggested. “How about it, lady? Any maritime wisdom or common sense you’d like to share?”

“They say the sea knows more than we do,” you said, alarmed by the sudden address but disguising it well. “Perhaps it’s sending a message.”

“A message?” your husband said. “About what, exactly?”

Leave this place. Never return. The sea is not yours. The sun is not yours. I am not yours. He is not yours. Leave, leave, leave, you damnable man, leave these waters at once, leave me at once, leave and rot in the eternal winter of your solitary empire. The sea is not yours. The sun is not yours. I am not yours. He is not yours. Mydeimos is not yours, he’s not, he’s not. Leave while you still can. Leave while I still allow it. You thought it might be something like that.

“I cannot say, my lord,” you said, bowing your head so he did not notice that your eyes smarted when you were, once again, rendered mute and dumb before him. “But might I recommend that you turn your attention elsewhere for the time being? The season of the storms approaches rapidly once more, and the waters will only grow more and more treacherous. It may be better if you wait until it is over.”

“Let us concentrate our efforts on Kremnos and leave the south for now,” his cousin said. “We will be all the better for it.”

“Kremnos,” your husband repeated, his countenance unreadable, everything about him carefully neutral. “I do not foresee them being a problem for much longer, but if you both think that we should withdraw from the sea for the time being, then who am I to continue in my mulish refusals?”

“Have you come up with some new strategy?” his cousin said. “I thought that we were at somewhat of an impasse with the Kremnoans, our last victory being the capture of Mydeimos.”

“It is not new, necessarily, but finally nearing fruition,” your husband said. “Patience, brother; as I tell you and my dear lady so constantly, all will be revealed in time.”

“You preach patience far more than any man endowed with so little of it ought to,” his cousin said, although he said it more to you, flashing an innocent grin that you did not reciprocate in the slightest. 

Ever since he had recommended you find another to father the first of your sons, you had begun to see your husband’s cousin in a new light. Your husband was the more obvious of the two, so charming that he could not be anything but false, his comeliness in the way of a brightly-petaled flower, warning those who knew the signs that he was a peril, something to be avoided or, if touch was inevitable, then treated carefully, with the utmost of prudence. His cousin, on the other hand, did not have that same showmanship, that flair — he didn’t need to, not when he could somehow wheedle out one’s greatest secrets without ever divulging any of his own. 

He did everything with the sort of deliberate scrupulousness that only a second son would, and the more you thought about it, the uneasier you grew that you were an object of some contention between the two of them. Neither your husband nor his cousin would ever say it, but you could tell from their wily, duplicitous exchanges that they both wanted something out of you, and furthermore that whatever it was each wanted was different, at odds with his counterpart’s desires, setting them against one another even as they continued to behave as though they were true-born brothers of blood and body and mind alike.

“There’s news from the Southern Sea, by the way,” your husband said, his hand on the small of your back as he walked with you to your chambers, where you would spend the day as you always did, with idle amusements that did little to occupy your mind but would at least pass the time until you could go to the cellar once again. “About the king. Do you wish to hear?”

“The king?” you said. “Yes, yes, what is it? Of course I wish to hear. Is he alright?”

“They say he is gravely ill,” your husband said.

You thought you had known despair. You thought you had known anguish. You thought that pain and suffering were things that you were deadened to, that you had learnt how to live with, but everything you had ever experienced paled in comparison to this. It was as if a million needles drove into you at once, the tips a scorching white, melting away at every carefully constructed layer of armor you had drawn over yourself, boring into the veneer of magic that prevented you from screaming and wailing and shaking your husband until he let you go home.

“What is it?” you said. “What has beset him?”

“The southerners are such silly, high-strung folks,” he said, shaking his head in amusement. “Believe it or not, but apparently, his physicians say that his affliction is none other than grief.”

“Grief?” you repeated, and then you were grabbing his arm and you hated yourself for it, but if you did not hold onto something you would crumple to the ground, you would crumple and never get up and you couldn’t — you couldn’t — “Grief? What do you mean?”

“His eldest daughter,” he said. “She has left him, and now he is dying of his longing for her.”

“I—” Your hands came to your neck, and they felt so different from Mydeimos’s, which had claimed that very same place only hours before — a constraint instead of a consolation, a sentence instead of a supplication. 

“He never loved anyone the way he loved that girl, after all,” he said, his eyes sparkling, like he was daring you to say something and finding exorbitant glee in the way you couldn’t, in the way your throat closed whenever you tried to curse him. “It’s a sorry thing, really. Perhaps seeing her even once might be enough to cure him…but we both know that’s not going to happen, is it? Oh, we have arrived at your chambers! Good day, dear lady. I shall see you for dinner.”

The worst was that you could not bring yourself to shed even a tear. You lay in your bed on your back, staring blankly at the ceiling, numb to the world as the scene played over and over in your mind. The king. They say he has taken ill. At one point, your husband’s cousin knocked on your door and told you it was time for supper, but you ignored him, or maybe it was more accurate to say that you didn’t even hear him in the first place. Perhaps seeing her even once might be enough to cure him…but we both know that’s not going to happen, is it?

You couldn’t move. You couldn’t cry. You couldn’t breathe. The sun set and the moon rose and still you were immobile, because what did it matter? The Southern Sea was lost; it had been from the start, you supposed. Your marriage had only been a delay of the inevitable, but you had known from the start that things would end like this, had known that the empire would never settle for anything less than total suppression.

Yet if that was the case, if you would meet your end regardless, then why could you not at least meet it at your home, as yourself? Why instead were you here, metamorphosed into this soulless doll, removed from all you had ever loved? Maybe you deserved it. Maybe this was your punishment for taking the easy way, the simple route, for caving to the empire instead of staying true and fighting as your father had wanted to. Maybe you should not have been surprised, and maybe you might’ve tolerated it if you were the only one bearing the consequences — but it was not just you, it was everyone, and this was what hurt you the most, what felt like twenty consecutive blows to your stomach, to that vulnerable flesh which would so easily rupture, which you thought really might rupture the longer you spent ruminating on the throwaway conversation which had irrevocably changed the course of your day, of your life.

Where you found the strength to stand, you could not say. It was instinct at this point, the act of sliding out of your bed, gathering a blanket and whatever food you had stashed away for Mydeimos before trudging down to the cellar where he awaited you. This must’ve been the reason, then — you were so accustomed to the work that your body operated even in the absence of your mind, such that you were handing his plate to him before you even realized where you were.

“Thank you,” he said before tilting his head at you. “Would you like some?”

“What?” you said. He held up the plate, and a second later, you registered his question. “No, I don’t want to eat anything from here.”

He raised his eyebrows but did not comment on it further, and so the two of you sat in quietude. You had so much you might’ve told him but could not; as for him, you guessed it was the inverse, in that he could say whatever it was he pleased, but there was just so little he wanted to say that the effect was the same.

“This empire has such finicky gods,” you said finally, focusing on the red of his throat, the way it crested and then ebbed with every swallow. “They will grant you any wish, as long as it is done in some form of three. Creation, preservation, death — father, man, son — this world has a propensity for the number, it seems, so doesn’t it make sense? And what amazing things you can do when you understand that. Repeat a phrase thrice over and think of the messenger lord; he will afford you the ability for it to be heard anywhere in the world, as long as you have been there once. Make your wedding vows three times under a portrait of the lady of matrimony; you will be bound by them until death.”

“We don’t believe in these miracles in Kremnos,” he said. “They are explicable by coincidence and cunning.”

“Even where I am from, we only recognize one god, and it is less god, more entity,” you said, speaking, of course, of the sea. “One we do not worship, but who loves us regardless. It is a more sustainable approach in my mind.”

“That is how it is for us,” he said. “Our religion is found on the battlefield, and victory is our only prayer. Sometimes, I wish it were not the case, that our devotion was not so violent, so all-consuming…but that is how it is.”

“Perhaps it is violent, but at least it is fair,” you said. “Not like here. Not like these gods, who will enforce even cruelty if it is asked of them.”

“You resent them,” he said. “You cannot confirm it, I am sure, cannot speak ill of them any more than you can of your husband. But I have come to understand your ways, and so I am sure you resent them.”

“If only there were something I could do to them,” you said, reassured immeasurably by his comprehension. “Some way I could — some way I could —”

“Rebel?” he completed for you when you clearly could not. You nodded, and he pouted in thought, pushing his now-empty plate away and reclining back against the wall the way he always did when he was finished. “I am sorry. I am a heretic in these lands; I do not know their traditions well enough to blaspheme them.”

“Oh,” you said. “Oh, that’s it.”

“Hm?” he said, watching you as you shuffled over so that you were sitting beside him, the blanket covering you both, his arm all but scalding against yours. “What are you doing?”

“You are the antithesis of this empire,” you said. “You are everything my husband hates, everything he wishes to destroy. With your mere existence, you imprecate his gods, and so I shall force those deities to defend your every sacrilegious breath. Those celestial beings who bore silent witness to your capture, to my wedding…by my will, for how much they have cursed you, they will now be bound to defend you with threefold the vigor!”

Mydeimos was motionless as you combed your fingers through his hair, his expression reverent like you were not just channeling a divinity you had no claim to but in fact were that divinity yourself. Your movements were careless, your knuckles banging against his chin, your palm skimming along his neck, but he did not complain, only staring at you with that same gentle admiration that would’ve made you flush with heat if only you were not so terribly focused on remembering everything you had ever read on the religion of your husband’s empire.

Brushing the rest of his hair over his shoulder, you took a lock from near his nape, twirling it around your finger and then holding it to your lips, murmuring words from a language neither of you held claim to but which you had memorized before your wedding, words which opened the both of you to the surveillance of the gods that would fulfill your commands.

“Integrity,” you said, separating the tress of hair into three sections and pulling the leftmost taut. “May your causes be ever strong and true; may you always be just and forthright in your actions; may you never waver from the path of honor.”

You crossed it over the middle strand, and then you took the rightmost, which was like silk in your grasp, dancing like sunbeams in the lamplight. 

“Loyalty,” you said. “May your people never betray you; may your men follow you until the bitter end; may you always have the might of your kingdom at your back.”

This, too, you crossed over the middle, the careful weave of a braid beginning to form, the neat v’s that would mark him as forever blessed, forever watched over by gods, by you. 

“Love,” you said, swallowing as you took the final piece, finding that your mouth was dry from more than overuse. “May you alway be loved, prince of Kremnos.”

A knot in your stomach unraveled as you worked, your fingers remembering the motions despite how long it had been since you had played with the hair of a friend or cousin. It was the knot of repression, of every single thing you had shoved down in the name of propriety, in the name of all the vows you had sworn, and as the warmth radiating from him sank into your bones, warding away the cold of this place for the first time since you had come to it, your vision began to swim with tears.

“I wish it were you,” you said, tucking the braid back amongst the rest of his hair, mussing it up so that it was as wild as a lion's mane, allowing your hands to fall into your lap as you wept in earnest, the break of your voice as much a product of your compounded grief as it was a supernatural effect. “I wish it were you, oh, how I wish that you were the one who had — who had —”

Married me. That was what you wanted to say. How I wish that you were the one who had landed upon the shores that day, how I wish that you were the one I had met with the sea at my feet and the sun on your shoulders, how I wish that you were that one who had married me.

“Don’t cry,” he admonished, holding your jaw with the care one might afford to a sculpture made of glass, using his thumbs to wipe at your cheeks and eyes. “Y/N, Y/N, don’t cry. Please don’t.”

You froze, and then you were grabbing his wrists, holding them in place, holding onto him like he was the only thing keeping you in this realm. It must’ve bruised him, the weight of your fingertips against his veins, but he still gazed at you with that same mildness.

“What did you just call me?” you said.

“Y/N,” he said. “It is your name, is it not?”

“I never told you, so how…?” you said.

“Even in Kremnos, we have heard of the princess of the Southern Sea,” he said. “I was very young when news of your birth came, but I remember it as if it were yesterday, hiding behind my father’s throne so I could hear the announcement. Y/N L/N, they called you, a fine babe who will grow into the most beautiful girl the sea has ever whelped. I loved you then, I think; I loved you as soon as they said you were born to seals and whale-song.”

“Say it again,” you demanded. “My name, which no one else in this wretched place knows or cares to learn �� say it again.”

“Y/N,” he said.

“Again,” you said, and then you were sobbing, viscerally and searingly and pathetically. “Say it again, please say it again, I miss it, I miss my father and all these things I cannot speak of, you do not know but I miss them so much I sometimes think I will be ruined by it—”

“I know,” he said, and then he was prying your hands off of him and gathering you in his arms, holding you to his chest and stroking your hair as you bawled. “Y/N. I do know. The sea, who is your mother; the king, who is your father; the home, which you left to protect. I do know.”

“How?” you choked out. He pressed his lips to the crown of your head.

“I am not such a sound sleeper,” he said. “Everything you have ever wanted to say to me, I have heard. I know you, Y/N L/N. Beloved princess of the Southern Sea, if nothing else, I swear to you this: I know you.”

taglist (comment/send an ask to be added): @mikashisus @ivana013-blog @mizukiqr @shehrazadekey @simp-simp-no-mi @reapersan @casualgalaxystrawberry @secretive3amramenmaker @academiq @chokifandom @voiddance @qwnelisa @duckydee-0 @anti-social-fox @iwumrndbm @elenaishere05 @belovedoftheanemoarchon @lannnu @ariichive @nightmarewasheree @seyboo @moons-and-mistakes @she-yaa @nayukiyukihira @sillykawa @yoyach @sugilitez @guineverewaves @pe4rlple @celestial--atlas @4acoffee @itseightamineedsleep @sunnywrites101 @moonskins @yourfavoritefreakyhan @fleuriion @luvether @lum1nesc3nce @your-sleeparalysisdem0n @lasrlo [if your tag does not show up in grey, that means tumblr had an issue with it, sorry! sometimes it does that sadly]

[generalsmemories]

Homecoming

✧ jing yuan x gn!reader

✧ synopsis: the general of luofu awaits your return home into his arms

✧ contents: established relationship, fluff, jing yuan's inner monologue about his dear lover

✧ a/n: kicks down door, GUESS WHOSE BACK! I HOPE. this was word vomit so if there's anything wrong or amiss, no there isn't. I wanted to write a lil fluff before going back to my self indulgent fic (and writing for phainon too) im sorry wife i left you alone for MONTHS!! anyway i hope you all just like this fluffy piece where an overthinking jing yuan eagerly awaits your return home <3 this is just mostly jing yuan monologue cause the reader doesn't appear before the end but <3 i hope you enjoy it nonetheless! thank you all for your patience !! hopefully i'll update a bit more from now!

If you were to tap a Xianzhou citizen on the shoulder and ask for their opinion on the dozing general of the Luofu, they would describe him as a wise and benevolent general, a bit too easy-going for his position, a cat lover and an advocate that everyone should have 3 hot meals each day.

They would never describe the general of the Luofu as someone who would openly show his emotions.

And yet, on a seemingly normal sunny afternoon on the Luofu, tucked into a corner of Cloudford in what should be a normal port for any ship carrying cargo from other worlds to dock for the day - stands the general of the Xianzhou Luofu, alone.

It’s a weird sight, the general has nothing to do with cargo transportation - let alone overseeing any new ships coming to dock upon the Luofu for the day unless it was a fellow general or the marshal themselves.

Yet here he was, often times leaning a bit too close to the edge of the dock to scavenge any new ships coming to land in this specific area that’s unoccupied, his free hand that’s not propping his whole body on the railing is busy fiddling around with his phone - he occasionally unlocks it to re-read the message that’s been left open ever since this morning, scrounging for anything new - to see if you’ve edited the message to another location.

But it’s still the same, even after the 7th time he’s read the message.

“There’s a bit more cargo than we expected from the marshal, so instead of landing at the usual dock at Starskiff Haven, we’re going to dock at the northernmost dock in Cloudford. We should arrive before the delegations from Zhuming and Yaoqing, but remember to greet them if they come here before me!”

Jing Yuan let out a long sigh, stuffing his phone back into his pocket before looking around the dock. It’s hardly an appropiate place to greet you back, surrounded by boxes upon boxes of either different furniture or weapons for the Cloud Knights - maybe even some souvenirs from the various traders that have settled in Luofu.

You should be greeted by the vast open sky that you’ve loved to see in Luofu each morning when you wake up by his side, watch the various starskiffs soar in the sky while the wind graces you with the various leaves adorned throughout the Luofu - all while glancing back at him with the same gentle smile you’ve greeted him for the past hundred years.

The ever so aloof general lets out a sigh, bringing a hand up to run through his more than usual messy bangs to keep his mind away from the thoughts of you, “You would’ve nagged me for letting my hair become even more unruly if you saw me now…”

It did not work at all.

Maybe he can convince Qingzu to arrange a specific port in Cloudford just for you, but that would only make both you and her regard him with disappointment at where he puts the resources of Luofu at - although he can see the glint of affection that crosses your eyes whenever he jokingly suggests building your entire private port so that you’re not mobbed by the citizens each time you come back from your own delegations.

Jing Yuan takes one more glance towards the phone he had just pocketed, how can that it’s only been 2 mere minutes after he last checked? He swears it must’ve been a system hour at least since he’s arrived at the dock.

Maybe something had happened, you’re usually on time after all. Is the traffic to enter Luofu bigger than the usual? Granted the Wardance was just announced and a lot of people from all over have come to finally step foot into Luofu again after the stellaron incident. But you usually predicted this and would arrive even earlier to be on time. Maybe he should contact Yukong and see if there’s any-

His racing mind comes to a screeching halt when he hears the familiar roar of the starskiff engine turn to a mere hum near him - the sound much closer than the starskiffs flying above him.

For some reason, he did not dare look up - Of course the northernmost dock wasn’t just meant for your ship to land, numerous others had already landed here before. Aeons above, he had greeted another cargo ship who were pleasantly surprised to see his appearance when he had first entered the area after all.

Jing Yuan could feel his palms sweat the tiniest bit, and suddenly he was actuely aware that he kept bouncing back and forth on his heels - something he even thought to himself was unknown behaviour from him. He had after all, never been this giddy or nervous to meet someone at all.

But then again, ever since you’ve arrived in his life - he’s shown sides of himself he didn’t know was there at all.

Oh dear, I’ve sure been spoiled by them.

Before he can derail even more into his thoughts, his downcast gaze is suddenly locked with your own curious ones, a raised eyebrow and lips jutting out a tiny bit in concern.

And suddenly, Jing Yuan feels his entire body relax, his tense shoulders finally slack and he exals deeply - which in turn makes you even more confused. “Jing Yuan? What are you even doing out- woah!”

You’re not able to even finish your question before your lover lifts you up with seemingly no effort, a gleeful smile paints his lips and his eyes crinkle the tiniest bit at the corners. The sudden upwards movement makes you yelp a tiny bit, immediately putting your hands on his shoulders in reflex while a light dust of red covers your cheek at the display of affection, “Jing-!”

But you can already tell he’s not listening to you at all, gently setting you down on the ground again before his arms wrap around your lower waist, fingers pressing against your lower back to press your body further into his own - completey ignoring the snickering Cloud Knights behind the two of you who have become used to the general display of affection towards you.

“… How was your trip, dear?” he finally asks, resting his forehead against yours for a brief second to let you breathe. You let out a sigh in return, raising your arm to place a hand on his cheek - Jing Yuan immediately leaning against it before turning his head to peck your palm, “You already know how it’s been, no? I’ve sent you updates each morning and night after all.”

Jing Yuan merely hums, gliding his lips down towards your wrists before he leans his body closer to your own to nuzzle his face into your neck, inhaling softly, “Dear, you know I appreciate hearing about your day rather than reading a bunch of text.”

The little laugh you let out makes Jing Yuan let out a little giggle himself, but you feel his hold tighten around you when you try to squirm away from him, “Now, now - I haven’t seen you for months now, beloved. Don’t try to run away now.”

“Jing Yuan if you haven’t noticed we are still in public-” you try to reason, but your lover doesn’t listen, reduced to a mere overgrown cat in your presence as he tries to get even closer to your own body - there’s barely any room between your for air to even pass between the two of you.

You raise an eyebrow in confusion, gripping the arms around your waist to at least make him lessen the grip he has on you, "Jing Yuan, at least let me-"

“I missed you,” he finally whispers silently, and all your previous squirming comes to a halt when you feel the slight tremble in his voice. And it’s only when you register that tremble do you realize that his hands that are splayed by your neck to keep you in place are shaking ever so slightly, “… More than I thought I would.” he confesses, to your ears only.

You let out a light huff, finally wrapping your arms around his shoulders and threading your hand into his hair so you can tuck his face further into your neck, leaning your cheek against his hair, “I’m home, Jing Yuan.” you confirm, turning your head to peck the top of his head once.

Like he understood your request immediately, Jing Yuan leans back to face you once again, a slight guilty look on his features for subjecting you to a situation he knows you deem a bit uncomfortable. But the smile you give him relieves him of his troubling thoughts. You shake your head silently, a quiet answer to his equally silent apology before you cradle both his cheeks in your hands to keep him in place before slotting your lips over his own. He lets out a small sigh into your mouth, pressing his lips firmly against your own before parting slightly, the gentle, easy-going smile you're used to seeing back on his lips. “Welcome home, my dear.”

[rottenmeatsack]

Girls on Film || Boothill x AFAB Reader (NSFW)

Prompt || The life of a galaxy ranger is one where you work alone, so Boothill wants a little something to keep him company on the lonely nights (Can be considered a continuation of Phone Call) - NSFW UNDER THE CUT / MINORS DNI

Warnings: Filming during sex, masturbation, penetrative sex, general weird cyborg anatomy (again), AFAB reader so she/her is used once again, slight belly bulge reference but nothing extreme, creampies yet again, I’m sorry all I write is Boothill so far 3 Duran Duran if ur out there I’m so sorry I used ur song to title my freaky robot smut forgive me.

***

Boothill is lucky to find shelter.

Tracking down the scumbags of the universe comes easy to him, but it’s only at the end of the hunt when he could finally find some rest.

As a Galaxy Ranger, he knows that he should be thankful for any place he can lay his head down, although this body of his no longer tires. It doesn’t sleep, it doesn’t need to eat, and it certainly doesn’t need a bed to rest in. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t indulge, this is a luxury and he knows it. 

So he truly relaxes when he finds some shabby motel to hole up in for the night, the bed is nothing to brag about but it does the job when Boothill sits back and kicks his heels up. Although deep down maybe he’s grown spoiled, because he notices how the bed creaks underneath his weight and it makes his nose wrinkle. He knows there’s somewhere else— someone, else —he’d much rather be giving his company too right now. 

“Her bed is always comfier,” he mutters, but it doesn’t matter, it’s one of those lonely nights and he’s itching for just a taste of luxury again. He reclines back on the mattress that dips beneath his metal’s weight, his hand reaching into the pocket of his chaps and prying out his red-cased cellphone. In this new life there are only a handful of things that truly give Boothill the warmth of the living again, the burning taste that comes from whiskey, the acrid smoking scent of gunpowder, and most of all the special companionship from another person’s body.

He mutters her name as he unlocks his phone, the blank screen coming to life and illuminating the mostly-dim motel room. He can’t help but grin as he opens his albums, and in that moment he misses her more than anything.

He can’t say he has a home to come back to, but if he had to say he’d call that girl of his the closest thing to it.

Although he’s left her behind for days now, the path of a Galaxy Ranger is one walked alone, he couldn’t take her with him even if he wanted. It would be selfish of him to even think of it. She has her own life, her own career, her own cozy home— and it makes Boothill jealous in a way, because while her door was always open to him he couldn’t dream of settling down with her. Not when he had this path to walk. 

The separate roads they take doesn’t stop him from indulging in the luxury of her warmth, and on these lonely nights where his only company isn’t her but instead the stars, he likes to remember her— and yearn for her. 

He opens a certain album on his phone, it’s only unlabelled like the rest of them, but he knows it’s the one he’s looking for when he sees her smiling face looking back at him. Her ___ eyes gaze at him tenderly through the phone screen. There had to be dozens of photos of her by now, taken by him, sent by her, it didn’t matter so long as he got to keep them. He stops, finally finding the one video he was looking for, “There it is.” he murmurs, his thumb pressing down on the small thumbnail, when he releases it the video expands to full-size and fills the screen. It automatically starts playing without him so much as pressing anything else.

-

The camera-work is amateurish, shaky at best, but it does the job. When the blurry lens finally fixes on her face, her skin is flush with sweat pebbling above her brow. She’s entirely bare, for a second the shaky camera’s hold catches a glimpse of her clothes on the floor before the camera focuses on her and only her once again. She looks at the camera, her gaze flickering down to the ground for only a moment before turning up to the person holding the phone itself— she smiles at Boothill. “It’s still a little embarrassing.” she admits, but she leans back against the bed and spreads her legs. “But I don’t mind, if you want to keep recording,” she says, tucking one hand underneath her knee and raising one of her thighs up to her chest.

The camera focuses on her dripping cunt, she’s already soaked, it’s obvious that they’ve already been going at it for a while before she reaches her free hand down and spreads her pussy apart, revealing her hot and wet hole to the camera. Although her bashful expression is still caught on film, her eyes are unable to stay locked with the phone as she glances away.

From just out of frame Boothill’s own hand reaches in from behind the phone and traces along her jaw, she leans into his palm, resting her cheek in his touch while his thumb traces along her bottom lip. She gives the digit a brief kiss, before his thumb slips into her mouth and pressed down on her tongue. She closes her mouth around the intruding metal, “You spoil me too dang much,” Boothill’s static-laced voice says from the film. "You sure, baby?" he asks, and she nods her head, giving a little "Mhmm," in turn.

He shifts his weight on the bed, and presses his cock up into her dripping pussy. He rubs it against her for a moment, grinding the fat underside against her swollen clit all while catching it on camera. The way he thrusts his hips up against her is slow and languid, he takes his time as he adjusts himself with his one free hand, pressing the tip just slightly against her wet hole. He makes sure to savor every inch sliding into her warm cunt, slowly but surely stretching her around the thick girth of his modded-cock. She cries out around his thumb in her mouth, her head tilting back into the sheets beneath her as she’s overwhelmed with the dull burn of being filled all over again.

Whatever patience Boothill had disappears, he immediately begins a vicious pace of fucking her into her own bed. Her body rocks up and down, the sound of metal hitting flesh mixing with her soft little moans and the bed creaking, all emphasized by the bed frame groaning in protest.

-

In the motel room Boothill’s chaps are opened, it’s haphazard and sloppy, but it’s enough for him to slip his cock out and immediately begin pumping it desperately. His metal hands aren’t comfortable, but they’re warm enough that if he tries to keep his focus on his phone in front of him he just might be able to finish. His eyes are trained on the screen, his lips curled as he grunts and groans along with the audio coming from the speakers. He’s watching himself fuck her all over again, and he can’t tear his gaze away from their joining. Watching and remembering the way it felt to fill her cunt up with his fat cock had him drooling, and by the Aeons, he could see the slight swell in her navel from how far he reached— he groans, the hand between his legs increasing its furious pace while the other grips his phone a little tighter.

-

She’s crying out, her sweat slick body bucking up into his hips just as desperately as he’s driving her down into the sheets. Her thighs tremble and twitch, hands uselessly clutching onto anything they could before Boothill’s free hand— the one not recording —reaches down and grabs her thigh, making it join the other against her chest as he begins to drive into her with everything he had. She’s a wreck, hair splayed out beneath her while Boothill relentlessly pounds her poor but well-loved cunt. “Fudge, you’re so pretty.” He says in the recording, although it’s nearly buried under the grunts and groans that fill the room. “So, so pretty, baby.” 

“Mmfh— Ohh—” she slurs her words around his thumb, he slips it out of her mouth and runs the spit-soaked metal over her bottom lip. “I’m gonna— cu— cum—” she pleads, and Boothill responds by giving her a hard slap of his waist against hers, making her whine as their hips are pressed flush against the other. “Right here is where you like it, right?” he mumbles almost to himself, tilting his hips and driving deep until he’s sure he’s slamming into her g-spot. Her eyes go wide before she’s tossing her head back into the pillows, chest pushing out and towards the camera while she cries out from his relentless pace. He lets go of her thigh only to press his palm flat against the bulge that’s pressing up against her navel, he can feel himself through her tender  flesh and her hips jolt and she screams through her teeth. 

Boothill continues to fuck her through her orgasm, now desperately chasing his own to the point the camera shakes near violently until he has a better grip on his phone. He curses— at least he tries too, tracing the shape of himself through her navel before his hips still against her own. He presses as deep as he can, muttering censored curses thanks to his synesthesia beacon, but before he knows it he’s filling her up until she’s absolutely dripping from the seams. Streaks of blue translucent fluid begin to drip out of her stuffed cunt, until Boothill pulls his slick cock out of her now open hole with an especially wet ‘pop’. She gasps as each inch drags out of her, groaning when he finally slips out.

Her hips are twitching in the aftermath of her orgasm, and it doesn’t take long before his cum spills out of her and stains her bed sheets. He reaches down between her stained thighs, using his thumb to spread her pussy apart and she whimpers at the contact. He focuses the camera on her fucked-out cunt, making sure to catch every second that his cum drips out of her in thick globs. He runs his metal digits over a thick strand that spills out of her, only to press it back inside with his middle and index fingers. 

- The video ends just as Boothill does, his phone is thrown aside while he continues rutting up into his hand. It’s messy, the blue fluid running down his fingers and staining his own navel, but he doesn’t care in the moment so long as he can chase that fleeting high. He drops into the bed with a huff, the heat in the room is suffocating but he’s sure that’s his own systems being near overload. He uselessly thrusts his hips up into the air, wishing that it was her that he was fucking this desperately and not his own hand. He can almost taste her warmth on his tongue all over again, the idea making him groan before his hips drop into the bed and he’s left in his own mess.

It takes him a moment, but when he finally comes down from his high he finds himself slack in bed with his cock limp against his lower-stomach plating. He'll have to clean himself off later but right now all he cares about is how good this shitty motel-bed feels, there's a bang on the wall behind him, whoever is neighbor is in this rundown lodging is surely going to complain about the noise coming from Boothill's rented out room. Boothill could care less, he lays in bed with his eyes closed and his phone laid by his side. The video plays on repeat automatically, "It's still a little embarrassing," he can hear her voice from the speakers again. That soft, sweet, voice of hers.

“Fudge,” he breathes out in between ragged panting breaths, face red with blush and his cables buzzing with heat that still had not been dispelled from his frame. “I need to pay her a visit again.”

[lexsssu]

Repopulate (Dan Heng | Imbibitor Lunae)

TAGS: Dan Heng/Dragoness!reader, breeding, impregnation, smut, drabble Ao3 ver. | Ko-fi | Commissions (OPEN)

Dan Heng has never been a promiscuous man.

As far as he can remember, from his first life up until his current one, the pleasures of the flesh had never been a priority for him like most of his kind. Considering that they were all essentially sterile, most of them refrained from taking part in such carnal acts except in rare times when they needed some form of release.

“Take it…take all of it…”

The wet slap of skin smacking against skin, and your whimpers are like a lullaby for his ears. It wasn’t enough that he was driving every inch of his cock into your tight cunt and practically fucking you into your shared bed, but even his normally translucent and immaterial tail had responded to his heightened emotions and was given material form. Now it embraced your own, coiled together and seemingly impossible to break apart.

“...m not stopping until I’ve put another clutch in your belly…”

You tightened involuntarily at his heated promise, because aeons knew that your womb had been aching to feel Dan Heng’s seed flooding your womb again until it grew heavy with your newest clutch of young.

“I knew you’d love the sound of that. Don’t think I didn’t notice how you’d gotten sadder once Hàoyú and Yúzé became more independent…”

He was right. 

And as you feel his knot inflate and lock you together once more, you purr gratefully as his cum paints your walls with his virile seed. At the rate you were both going at it, you might end up repopulating the entire Vidyadhara race by yourselves.

[blissfullyapillow]

┃"I’ve missed you."

✧˖°. Blade x fem reader

✧˖°. wc: 1,393~

✧˖°. Prompt: When a character desperately misses their partner after being apart for far too long. 

✧˖°. Warnings: smut/explicit (18+) & poetic cheesiness lol 

✧˖°. Pillow Talks: I need Blade so badly.ᐟ.ᐟ Anyway, I’ve returned (temporarily) to deliver something that’s been sitting in my drafts for far too long now. I hope you enjoy .ᐟ (,,>ヮ<,,) <3

✧˖°. Masterlist

Credits: @/sillyakito on pinterest

The first time I heard Blade murmur “I’ve missed you,” I thought I’d imagined it. Blade is not someone who openly expresses his thoughts and feelings through words, rather he prefers to portray his feelings through meaningful actions.

I quickly realized I hadn’t imagined the shy words that left his lips, since his sharp eyes reflected uncertainty when they met my gaze.

I wasted no time pulling him into my arms, just so I could whisper my response against the shell of his ear.

“I missed you too.”

𓆩♡𓆪

Now it’s become something of a routine. Every reunion I celebrate with Blade, typically after one too many nights away from the comfort of his arms, the first words out of his mouth are always the same.

“I missed you.”

Those words never fail to warm my heart.

To reiterate; although Blade has his moments, he tends to favor action over words. So, it feels all too natural when innocent touches shift to something akin to a burning flame that lights my skin ablaze.

𓆩♡𓆪

The familiar caress of his rough palms cease in favor of gently lowering me beneath him. Now, I lay before him on my back as his imposing figure hovers over me. Eyes redder than the leaves on a maple tree hold my gaze. He conveys the ardent passion that resides within them through the fierce grip he has on my hip.

His intense gaze threatens to steal more than just my breath; my heart yearns to make a home in his rugged palms, my body surrenders to the eager strokes of his fingers along my inner thigh, all while my soul craves nothing more than to be forever intertwined with his, if only to experience his love in every life of mine.

His hand releases my hip so his arm can wrap around me, pulling both my body and my lips into his expectant embrace.

He takes his time to savor the taste of my lips. I feel the muscles within his arm tense. His body curls over mine as if he’s about to fall, yet his free hand rests beside my head to support his weight.

His lips release mine from its tantalizing captivity. A desperate gasp escapes his lips; my eyes eagerly open to witness his strained breaths and flushed cheeks.

I feel the muscles in his arm flex, the sensation eliciting a noise of surprise from me.

He smirks.

A well known sight that never fails to set my heart ablaze.

He lowers himself to press his weight against me, his free hand moves to rest on my lower back, flattening his palm against my feverish skin.

His mouth makes a slow descent, languidly savoring the taste of my skin as it memorizes every dip and curve. His lips linger on every mark and scar he happens upon, pressing endearingly long kisses against them.

The attention my body is receiving borders on being too much to bear. My heart hurts; it’s a surreal feeling, to be held so delicately, as if everything he’s ever come to love is held within his strong, unrelenting grip.

“I love you.” The words sound strained coming from my lips, perhaps due to the tears that wet my lashes.

His flattened palm moves, unhurried, ascending from my back to my face before it cups my cheek.

"love.. that word isn't enough to express how I feel about you."

Our kiss tastes a bit salty; his heartfelt admission broke the dam that held my tears at bay.  

His mouth is reluctant to leave mine, avidly pursuing after my attempt to part for air.

I submit to the heady emotions Blade’s actions and words impose upon me, succumbing to everything that is Blade.

It’s… intoxicating.

My body burns with the passion Blade’s love inflicts upon me. His arm firmly holds me in place to prevent any possible chance I have of escaping.

Not that I’d ever want to flee; I find the very thought abhorrent.

When he's finally satiated, temporarily, his mouth pulls away. I desperately gasp in an attempt to acquire the oxygen my lungs have been denied.

I struggle to open my eyes, lost in my desire for the man holding me so close to his heart. Even so, my eyes reveal themselves as they naturally search for his gaze.

I’m met with an alluring sight.

His eyes are intently focused on my every move, devouring every subtle twitch of my muscles with his fervid stare.

It nearly causes me to shy away.

He dips his head, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear. In almost an inaudible murmur, with the deepest voice I’ve heard from him to date, he groans.

“Tell me what you want, baby."

An embarrassing high pitched whine leaves my lips.

When the sound reaches Blade's ears, he emits another deep groan as his hips hotly buck against mine.

Unbeknownst to me, the sound of my desperate whine only stoked the fires of the urgent zeal that threatens to consume his very being; He’s afraid he’ll perish if he can’t savor the taste of his heart’s desire this instant.

So, with a newfound sense of urgency, he murmurs his question once more.

“Tell me what you want, baby."

My answer is so immediate I almost talk over him.

“You.”

A loud, breathy whine escapes me as his hand swiftly moves from my cheek to my thigh, effortlessly lifting my leg to rest upon his shoulder. His arm finally releases me from his firm grasp to lift my other leg onto his unoccupied shoulder.

Now, both my legs rest upon his shoulders as he cages me beneath him.

He unhurriedly drags his mouth down the expanse of my torso, playfully nipping at my skin as he travels to his destination. Now, between my legs, he presses a lingering kiss to my inner thigh. I jolt with a start when I feel his tongue lap at my arousal.

𓆩♡𓆪

I’m a moaning mess under him moments later, and his muffled grunts fuel my longing for him.

“Fuck, you turn me on so much with the noises you make,” he groans, thrusting his hips up into mine. I whimper softly, caging him in as my legs wrap tightly around his waist.

“Look at me.”

His request surprises me, but I’d be a fool to deny him. With great effort I open my eyes to look at him, and the rapture within his gaze captivates me like no other.

“Kiss me.”

His simple statement sends an electrifying jolt to my heart.

My lips are drawn to his like a magnet; our lips create a tight seal as his hips follow a relentless rhythm against mine.

I have no control over my voice as we reach our climax together. He holds me close, so close I can feel his heart pound against my own racing heart.

Blade slowly fills me up to the brim.

I swear nothing I’ve experienced prior has ever felt more satisfying.

Our tired bodies heave in unison as we catch our breath. Blade dips his head down to rest his forehead against mine.

I admire him as his chest slows its previous rapid rise and fall.

Aeons. He’s a sight for sore eyes.

His love presents itself in the soft smile on his lips, in the tender way his hand cups my cheek as he, too, admires my features. It manifests in the way he reaches over for the glass of water he kept nearby for this very moment.

The water slides down my throat with ease, it’s as rejuvenating as it is refreshing.

“I missed you.” His voice is a little hoarse, brimming with an uncharacteristic amount of emotion.

My hands delicately brush his hair aside.

He hums quietly, expressing his content with my actions.

“I’ve missed you too.” My voice drips with emotion, and Blade emits a pleased sound at this revelation. A soft noise of appreciation slips from my lips when he shifts his position so we can cuddle comfortably.

Sleep finds us easily that night. It acts as a warm blanket, while our dreams are the pillows beneath our heads.

Yet, the love I feel in my heart derives solely from the man sleeping in my arms.

Blade, the man who cherishes the heart that he holds so tenderly in his hands.

[strawberri-yan]

Trailblazer x fem yn ft. Sweet oblivious march

[a-sorrowful-tune]

I’m currently obsessed with this tweet. It’s so real

[if-loves]

goodbye, my king 

// Mydei

sum: you knew this day was coming, that your time with him was ticking; but you'll always wish you could've had him for a little longer.

wc: 991

warnings: 3.1 story quest spoilers, ooc mydei, written before mydei release

a/n: ok maybe i did have stay a little longer and die with a smile playing when i wrote this

likes & reblogs are appreciated :)

You had a dream once, a long time ago, around the time you and Mydei had first unofficially gotten together. Most of your memory of it has been eroded by time, but you remembered one part of it quite vividly. Mydei had left, and he was never coming back.

The days following it were plagued with a relentless anxiety that took hold of your fragile state of mind, waiting anxiously for his return from his latest battle. You know death evades him now and forever, but you also knew that if death could not take him away, then he'd be the one to do it himself.

However, even before this dreaded dream, you felt as if you already knew deep down that he was going to leave you one day, even before you would die. You knew the weight of the crown that yearns to rest on his head and the burden he carries for being unable to lead his people home, and that one day he'd finally allow himself to bear its weight atop his head. You just didn't expect it to be today.

On your way back from grocery shopping at Marmoreal Market, you had overhead some gossip that started floating around. 

“I heard Mydei will be leaving Okhema.”

“Leaving? As in, permanently?”

“That's what the rumours say, that he is bidding farewell to all those dear to him.”

It had frozen you in your steps, the crowd fading into nothing but muted sounds. You could see your hands starting to shake, and you suddenly felt as if you were drowning. Your vision had started to blur, the telltale sign of tears blurring your line of sight. With your head down and anxiety clawing up your throat, you make it home and break down into silent sobs the moment the door closes.

~~

Mydei had thought long and hard about this decision of his. He could accept leaving behind most, in the name of reclaiming his home and protecting what remains of his people and the Okhemans, but if he had one regret that truly gnawed at his immortal existence, it would be leaving you behind. You, who loved him sincerely, with every beat of your mortal heart, who always waited for his return regardless of how much time had passed, who always cleaned his wounds gently even if he insisted that it was of no use. You, who did it because you loved and cared for him. And now, he has to leave you too.

The walk to your house is agonising. He finds himself taking his time, taking in the sights of Marmoreal Market, the eternal sunlight and the bustling crowd one last time. He thinks he can take the silence in Castrum Kremnos, but he doesn't know if he can take the lack of you. 

Mydei stands in front of your door, hesitant. He wants to, he has to, knock on the door. He needs to see you one last time, to feel your lips on his again, to say goodbye even as it devastates both you and him. Because you deserve at least that much.

He raises his hand, and finally knocks. You don't answer, but he opens the door anyway. He knows your schedule like the back of his hand, and he knows you're home right now. He's proven right when he sees you standing in your kitchen, your back towards him as your arms rest on the counter. You don't turn to face him, and it hurts. He deserves it.

“(Y/n),” your name leaves his lips in a sound that's all too pleasing to your ears, but you resist the desire to turn around, to see him standing in front of you. 

“Mydei.” His name leaves your lips, and he wishes that he wasn't going to do this. 

Silence settles over, Mydei not daring to push you and you not daring to face him. 

“...It's true, then? That you're leaving forever?” You force yourself to speak, desperately holding back the sobs that threaten to shatter your voice. 

“Yes, that's why I've come to see you, one last time.” He is straightforward with his answer, because he knows that time is not and never on his side. He wants you to turn around, even if your face is stained by tears.

He takes a tentative step forward, unbecoming of a king like him. Gently, he takes you in his arms again, in a silent apology. You finally let your tears go, turning around to bury yourself in his chest, your tears running down your cheeks only to land on him. 

You don't know how long you've stayed there, crying like a child in the arms of your lover. When your sobs finally calm down into hiccups do you speak.

“Stay a little longer, please?” You plead in your broken voice, your watery eyes meeting his. “Please, just until I fall asleep.” 

Mydei has never been one to deny your requests, and he doesn't plan to start. He leads you to your room and settles on your bed, pulling you on top of him and holding you with a tenderness only you have had the privilege of seeing. 

Even as your tears continuously fall, he doesn't say anything. All he does, and all he can do, is to just hold you one last time. 

“Goodbye, my king.” You murmur, before he hears your breathing even. He waits a few moments before he manoeuvres himself out of the bed, taking great care to not wake you. He pulls the blanket over you and looks at you, trying to carve your every feature into his head. You'll always be beautiful to him, your visage forever home in him. He kneels by your side one last time, and lays a gentle kiss on your lips, savouring the feeling.

When Mydei steps out of your house and finally starts his path back home, he allows a tear to fall.