#Rafayel I blame you

[littlestgamer]

My DeepSpace Trials experience so far (I've reached lvl 70 on Open and 63 for all three of them):

Rafayel: Easy mode. Him making himself the center of attention for my 5 star pulls has paid itself forward. (Both Myth cards obtained)

Zayne: Pretty simple. A challenge now and then, but usually cause one card is a 4 star. Nothing a slight level up can't fix now and then. (Both Myth cards obtained)

Xavier: WE'RE FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES OUT HERE. THE ONLY SAVING GRACE WAS PUTTING HIM IN THE COP OUTFIT CAUSE OF ITS EFFECT. RAFAYEL WHY DID YOU STEAL SO MANY 5 STAR OPPORTUNITIES FROM HIM??? I CAN'T EVEN USE ALL OF THEM AT ONCE. (only half of the mythic cards... it is pain)

[lunar-alden]

Rafayel. Sweetheart. I appreciate the thought behind it… but I’m lactose intolerant. If anything it would make the stomach pain worse 💀

[jxaeri]

i keep seeing ads for love and deep space everywhere and that exhibition (?) in china (i think?) with the cosplayers, and I have to say… I’m tempted but the english dub of the voices kind of puts me off idk

[icypopz]

bathing with them ♡

↬ request from anon ; Hiiii may I pls request the love and deepspace boys with a reader who loves taking baths with them??

↬ notes ; rafayel, xavier, zayne x gn!reader

↬ from ice ; ice active era?! jk we all know i'm lying atp HAHAHA but here's my annual post which is also my first post for LADS :> i changed the prompt a bit but i hope u enjoy !

↬ warning(s) ; tiny spoilers for rafayel's backstory, xavier's is like microscopically suggestive

please reblog ! it helps a lot :)

[ rafayel ! ]

rafayel absolutely adores taking baths with you, even though he loves to tease you about being too clingy (he's actually the clingy one, but he'll never admit it for the world). he loves just chilling in the bathtub with you, especially on winter nights where he'll pull you closer in the hot water, complaining that "i need more warmth! protect me from the cold, miss bodyguard!"

he would get playfully annoyed when you joke about wanting to see his mermaid tail when he gets into the bathtub, scolding you about how lemurians also have powers to lure humans in and he'll be doing that to you if you don't get in the bath with him "right now!" also rafayel doesn't really like rubber ducks, he says it's weird that humans like to put toys like that in the water when they could just go swim in a lake if they wanted to see ducks. but! he does love bubble baths, he loves to put the bubbles in your hair, and when you make a beard for him with the foam, he finds it the cutest ever.

rafayel definitely has like several hundred bottles of soap, shampoo and conditioner in varying scents, claiming that their fragrance was so inspiring he just had to buy all of them. (the truth is, he wasn't sure which one you'd like so he just bought everything.) it's really helpful for when you stay over at his place though, you don't have to worry about packing a vanity case because he keeps everything ready for you, from your favourite toothpaste to a spare toothbrush. he also loves seeing you wrapped up in a towel, he thinks you look so adorable.

more content utc !

[ xavier ! ]

xavier isn't picky, he doesn't mind using either a bathtub or a shower, but after you visit him a couple of times, you definitely tell him he should use the shower instead. he always ends up falling asleep while he's soaking in the bathtub! he definitely loves showering with you though, he'll always do stuff like scrub your back or help comb through your tangled hair without you needing to ask. but it's almost impossible for both of you to bathe quickly, because you always end up getting distracted. who can you blame you though? it's not your fault xavier is so muscled from all his training!

xavier is the type who showers in freezing cold water, but he's willing to compromise if you don't like that. he ends up realising that hot water is more fun because he gets to write silly messages and draw hearts for you on the glass since it gets fogged up from the steam. also xavier's brain would totally crash the first time he showered with you, it would be that one tender night card all over again except better LOL. he's just that obsessed with you, you're the prettiest person with the best personality he's ever seen!

xavier would be one of those guys that has like the '10-IN-1! SHAMPOO, CONDITIONER, SOAP!' soap bottles. it's not that he isn't bothered about hygiene, he just finds it a lot simpler to use one single bottle for everything, and it evidently works for him since his skin is so clear and his hair is so fluffy. but ever since you've started staying over, xavier takes note of your favourite soaps and stocks up on them (especially after you tease him for that pitiful bottle of soap in his bathroom - he's the type to squeeze out every single last drop of soap from the tube so the bottle definitely looks like it has been through The Horrors).

[ zayne ! ]

zayne would usually prefer showering over bathing usually, because he's used to maximising time for work in his schedule, so he likes everything in his personal life to be extremely efficient. but once he starts dating you, that does kind of change. on days where he doesn't have to rush into work for urgent cases, or nights after a hectic day, he enjoys relaxing with you in the bathtub - it's a little slice of heaven for him to have you pressed up against him in the warm water.

zayne likes using his evol to tease you while you're showering. though he isn't usually a playful person and his humour is quite dry, the intimacy of being in such close proximity to him makes him act up a little LOL. so when you ask him to soap your back or anything like that, he'll purposely make his fingertips cold so you shiver when he touches you. "zayne!" you'll scold him, and he'll just let out a soft chuckle before doing what you actually asked him to.

zayne would just have the bare minimum essentials in his bathroom, but i also think he would be the type to buy in bulk so he only has to go out shopping once in a while. this way, when his soap runs out he can just get a new bottle from his cupboard. he likes going into his bathroom and seeing little traces of you all over the room, like your toothbrush in his cup or your favourite soap on his shelf - it makes him happy because it's like a reminder of you even when you aren't there.

✧ thank you for reading ! if you have a request, feel free to send it in 🌠

© icypopz 2024. do not repost or modify in any way.

[tbaluver]

hi!! i was wondering if i could ask for some angst with all the guys ٩(◕‿◕｡)۶

smthing like mc (gender neutral if possible!) going to a mission and not coming back and the guys' reactions to that ?

ty in advance (≧▽≦)

When You Don't Come Back From Your Mission- The Love And DeepSpace Men

parings in order: Xavier x Reader, Zayne x Reader, Rafayel x Reader, Sylus x Reader genre: angst no comfort a/n: hi anonnie! i hope this was okay and that you enjoy ! i'll post a part where mc/ reader comes back from the mission after a long time and maybe that would be a comfort part of this angst reaction (๑>؂•̀๑) i know a couple people from my inbox have requested me to write something about that and i'll get it out soon it's just sitting on my drafts but it'll be out so so soon ദ്ദി ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ ) sorry lovelies i just get distracted a lot any likes and reblogs are always appreciated! enjoy!

⋆｡‧˚ʚ♡ɞ˚‧｡⋆

Xavier:

You and Xavier weren’t assigned to this mission, which was a bummer given how often you two have been always paired for similar tasks. Your extensive training together, countless sparring sessions, and numerous times you two have spent together have created a deep bond and sense of confidence in each other’s skills. Although it was unusual to not be paired in a mission, you both trusted in your abilities and didn’t think much of it.

As he returned from picking up snacks at the convenience store, he walked into the Hunter’s Association office and was struck by the sense of panic that had been overtaken in the room. The frantic energy was evident as he overheard that your team has not given any responses or updates regarding your location. The news hit him like a jolt, nearly causing him to drop the snacks he was holding.

His gentle demeanor shifted to one of deep concern. The usual calmness in his eyes was replaced by a serious and troubled look. His universe felt like it had dimmed, knowing that the brightest star was missing from his grasp.

He demanded immediate access to the latest mission’s location, coordinates, or any relevant information. He insisted that he would take charge of the situation himself and offer no objects as they recognized the intensity in his voice.

He internally blamed himself for not coming sooner. Every path he takes as he travels to find you, only fuels the sense of urgency and concern to find your and ensure your safety.

Zayne:

Zayne has always trusted in your abilities and knew what you were capable of. Each mission, he knew you could handle it with ease and he had faith that you would come back. As always, before he left he would always remind you, “Stay safe and don’t do anything reckless. I don’t want to see you back in my office with another injury.”

Normally, your absences were brief and he would patiently wait for your return, eager to hear the absurd stories of your missions, but this time something felt different. Something he couldn’t quite place. The days dragged on longer than usual and the silence from you was unsettling.

He tried to distract himself with paperwork and tending to patience but his anxiety gnawed at him, thinking of what had happened to you. A mission shouldn’t take this long, especially for someone as skilled as you. 

Every day he would send a text and sometimes they were random. Sometimes they were filled with encouragement or updates about small things in his life, in hopes to get a response from you. However, each message he sent was always left unanswered which fueled his growing concern. He began to doubt if you were ignoring him or if something far worse had happened.

Unable to contain his worry any longer, he drove to your house and knocked on your door unannounced. The minutes stretched into an agonizing wait and when there was no response. His heart that had been warmed by your presence has now gripped by icy fear.

Each day he has desperately waited for any responses and any updates from the Hunter’s Association about your well-being. The longer he had to wait, the more he was determined to join the battlefield himself in desperation to find you again.

Rafayel:

Ever since you departed on your mission, he would be counting the seconds, minutes, and days until your return. It’s something he would usually do when you leave for a mission. Time passed by slowly in your absence and he tried to distract himself by visiting the beach or working on new sketches, hoping to find a spark of inspiration for his next piece. Yet, inspiration was difficult when his greatest muse was missing for a few days

A few days. What began to be a few days stretched into a week and more. His concern grew as your silence and absence in his life persisted. Normally, you would have responded to any of his texts or calls even amid the chaos of your missions. But now, this mission was different. His phone never lit up from any notifications from you and your absence gnawed at him.

His distress was evident. His meticulously groomed appearance had unraveled. His hair was disheveled and his outfits mismatched. The studio that was usually a bright haven of creativity had become a reflection of his inner turmoil. The room was shrouded in shadows, and canvases were marred with erratic splashes of paint and frustrated strokes.

'Missing you comes in waves and tonight I am drowning.'

He was spiraling and grew relentless, digging up any lead and rumor of information about your mission. Whatever happened to you, someone was going to pay. He doesn’t care if the bounty on his head catches up to him. He’ll try to find you no matter what, even if it takes him another 800 years.

Sylus:

He knew you were a skilled Hunter so initially he dismissed your absence as just another routine mission. He assumed he would see you again soon in a couple of days and began making plans for the two of you to relax and enjoy when you returned.

However as days turned into a week without any responses to his text or voice messages, his calm demeanor began to crumble. Your status on DeepSpace hadn’t been updated since the last time you had talked and it never showed that you read his messages. His unease deepened when Mephisto reported that he had been unable to locate you.

The growing anxiety and frustrations were impossible for him to contain. He had tried to rush to the location of your mission only to find no trace of you there. His office became a battleground of his conflicted emotions. He cursed himself for being so careless about you.

Luke and Kieran could only witness the storm of anger and worry from a distance. They dared not to approach him during the moments of his intense agitation. They understand as they miss you as well but they could only wish they could do so much to help find you.

He figures he has to take matters into his own hands no matter the cost. Your little Hunter’s Association could only do so much but many do not understand how much power, influence, and resources Sylus has at his disposal. He doesn’t care if he has to get his hands dirty, he will have to do anything to find his little dove back in his arms again.

[blaire-apricity]

Hii, can i request the LADs boys reacting to mc avoiding them after they kissed for the first time?? Thank youu

First Kiss

ʟᴀᴅs ʙᴏʏs x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

ᯓ❅ ┆ 𝘴𝘺𝘯𝘰𝘱𝘴𝘪𝘴 ┆ : 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘈𝘋𝘚 𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘬𝘪𝘴𝘴?

ᯓ❅ ┆ 𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘴 ┆ : 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘵, 𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘧𝘧, 𝘴𝘰𝘧𝘵 & 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘖𝘖𝘊

─────────────── ˗ˏˋ ❅｡˚ ☁︎ ˚｡⋆｡˚☽ ˎˊ˗ ────────────────

𝐗𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐫

The first kiss with Xavier was featherlight and gentle, imbued with a tenderness that was unmistakable. You could see through his body language how his tensed shoulders eased the moment your lips touched; his hand intertwined with yours while the other cupped your cheek with delicate care. He was cautious, ensuring he didn’t surprise you or cause any discomfort.

You melted into the kiss, feeling the warmth and sincerity behind it. As he pulled away, those tender eyes gazed at you with a softness that made your heart flutter, the corner of his lips curving into a small, endearing smile. Overwhelmed by the intimacy, you felt a rush of embarrassment and flusteredness, instinctively turning away to excuse yourself. Your heart raced wildly, threatening to burst from your chest.

Xavier stood there, a flicker of surprise crossing his face. He processed the situation, momentarily worrying that he had done something wrong to provoke such a reaction, unaware that your response was born from sheer flustered-ness.

You didn’t avoid him outright, but whenever you spoke, you averted your gaze, the memory of his lips lingering each time you met his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said, his voice tinged with guilt. He felt he might have made you uncomfortable, and though he cherished that first kiss, he was ready to restrain himself if it meant ensuring your comfort. His expression was akin to a bunny with drooping ears, vulnerable and earnest.

Xavier’s tendency to blame himself led to numerous apologies, but as you explained your side, his eyes gradually lit up. Hearing you admit that it was embarrassment and not discomfort that fueled your reaction, his imaginary bunny ears perked up.

He didn’t mind your initial avoidance, and knowing your true feelings now, a genuine smile spread across his face. The fact that he could elicit such a flustered reaction from you made him quietly elated.

𝐙𝐚𝐲𝐧𝐞

Zayne’s kiss was surprisingly intense, a stark contrast to his usual cold exterior. Many assumed his gestures would be distant and minimal, but his kiss was the complete opposite. His hand gently supported the back of your head while the other cupped your cheek, his lips pressing against yours with a passion that was almost overwhelming. His kiss was full of emotion, conveying a depth of feeling that his reserved demeanor often hid.

You were utterly flustered, even more so when he pulled away and his eyes softened, examining your dazed expression. Everything went blank in your mind, the intensity of your emotions making it hard to process anything.

For hours, you were lost in that moment. Even when he tried to speak to you, waving his hand, you barely responded, leaving him to think you were deliberately ignoring him.

“Y/n, are you angry?” he asked, his direct gaze snapping you out of your trance momentarily.

“W-What? N-No,” you stammered, trying to gather your thoughts. He remained silent, staring at you with an expectant look, prompting you to confess your feelings.

You explained that it was a pleasant but overwhelming feeling, not something you could immediately process. His expression softened, and you swore you saw the corner of his lips curve into a rare, fond smile, making you blush even more.

“Next time,” he began, “let me know.” His tone was calm, but his words carried a gentle insistence. He wanted you to communicate better for the sake of both of you.

𝐑𝐚𝐟𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐥

Despite his bratty nature, Rafayel’s kiss was calculated and surprisingly tender. It was both of your first kiss, yet it felt like he instinctively knew what to do. You expected his gestures to be limited to holding hands, but his kiss was a revelation. He seemed to hold himself back, his longing and devotion palpable in the way he kissed you. It felt like he was pouring his heart into that kiss, desperate yet controlled, as if he was trying not to overwhelm you.

The rush of emotions took you by surprise. Your wide eyes, cheeks tinged with a pink blush, and racing heart betrayed your astonishment. As he pulled back, Rafayel scanned your expression, frowning slightly, unsure of your reaction.

“…What?” he asked, his confusion evident.

“…I…” You trailed off, struggling to form coherent words. Rafayel’s brows knitted in curiosity and confusion.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t like that,” he said, his signature annoyed expression appearing as he crossed his arms.

“What? No! I did!” you quickly reassured him, knowing how dramatic Rafayel could be.

He turned away with a huff, unconvinced by your words. In the end, it was you who needed to explain your reaction. Before you could avoid him, Rafayel would confront you, demanding clarity.

Despite his bratty demeanor, which you found endearing, Rafayel took full advantage of your reactions, using them to his benefit. His charm lay in his ability to be both frustrating and utterly captivating.

𝐒𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬

Sharing your first kiss with Sylus was an intense, straightforward gesture. Once he had your consent, he held nothing back. He intertwined his fingers with yours, making you feel his dominance as he crashed his lips against yours. His kiss was deep and demanding, his grip on your hand tightening as he leaned in further. It was rough and aggressive, leaving you breathless and taken aback.

When he finally pulled away, his grip on you loosened slightly. You excused yourself quickly, feeling the embarrassment and the pounding of your heart. The encounter left you flustered and speechless.

For hours, you avoided him, feeling awkward whenever you crossed paths in the manor. You gave him no explanation, leaving him puzzled and annoyed.

Eventually, he cornered you, pulling you close so your chest pressed against his. His towering figure and intense gaze made you even more flustered.

“I don’t appreciate being ignored, sweetie,�� he said, his tone slightly annoyed. His hand wrapped around your waist, pulling you closer. “If you didn’t like it, you can simply tell me.”

The close proximity made you stammer, but you managed to explain your reaction despite your stuttering. His frown slowly eased, replaced by a smirk as he realized the effect his kiss had on you.

“I should increase that effect then,” he concluded, his gaze narrowing in amusement.

·❆　　　❆　❅　　　　•　　　　.　　　　　❆❆• 　·　.　　　❅

𝐴𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑟'𝑠 𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒: 𝐼 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑓𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑙𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡! 𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑘 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒, 𝐴𝑛𝑜𝑛~ 𝐼𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑠𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑒𝑥𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑖𝑒𝑐𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒, 𝐼 𝑒𝑛𝑗𝑜𝑦𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑡 𝑎 𝑙𝑜𝑡!

[jenchan-writingmultis]

Sylus SFW/NSFW Headcanon/s

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

A/n: I genuinely couldn’t resist. I’m sorry.  This is also my first time writing headcanons that are NSFW! I hope you like it! And I based Sylus on that anonymous man that Rafayel was talking to, while it’s definitely inaccurate, I didn’t know where to base him from aside from the leaked trailer, I hope you like this one!

Masterlist

Pairing: Sylus x AFAB Reader

Warning: NSFW Up ahead! This is for 18+ readers. Stockholm Syndrome, TOXIC! Obsessive love, unhealthy relationship. Degradation

Tell me if I left a warning out, I’ll update this immediately.

Credits: The line dividers are from Kaomoji; the art is from Love and Deepspace ⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

SFW: ✧ He’s the kind of person who won't hold back. After you were handed to him like a free meal, he decided that whatever you discussed with Xavier and Rafayel would fail, and he’d ensure it. Even if the plan was to infiltrate Onychinus, he would absolutely make sure it failed.

✧ When Rafayel handed you over to him, he was so elated that he ordered his men to take you to his home as soon as you were drugged, where you’ll be kept trapped. Unlike the other male leads, he isn't upfront but rather lurks in the shadows, stalking your every move.

✧ Even though he acknowledges your capability and doesn’t see you as a weakling, he will ensure you remain completely obedient to him. If you try to escape, he will isolate you further, providing only food and water to keep you alive. In his view, isolation is the most effective method of punishment, especially if it means breaking your spirit to force your obedience.

✧ He despises you. He hates how you make him feel like he's dependent on your presence, while you, on the other hand, don’t even know him, to himself, you were his whole world. Sylus won’t tell you how easy it is for you to have him under your thumb.

✧ You may hate him for your own reasons, and he can see it in your eyes. Yes, he might have been responsible for the explosion that took your childhood friend and grandmother, but it wasn’t entirely intentional. He didn’t expect you to come home so early that day; it was a miscalculation on his part.  He won’t tell you that though, he likes seeing you so focused on him with an emotion you would never feel for the other men in your life. The hatred fuels him.

✧ Now while he’s lenient with you growling and squirming like a mutt, if you try to bite and hurt him back, he’s going to make sure to put a collar around your neck, you’re being a bad pet. He’ll make sure that you drop that disobedience before he’s forced to make it leak out of you instead.

✧ If you start to relax, or simply get tired of trying to escape, he will reward you by letting you go out with him. However, if you try to speak or ask for help, the collar around your neck will inject you with drugs that will turn your brain to mush, ensuring you won’t betray him in public. Not that anyone would dare to save you; he’s confident a few people recognize him.

✧ Oh, don’t take him as someone reckless though, he takes extra measures to prevent you from acting out. Once he implements those safety measures, he’ll be happy to buy you outfits that fit his aesthetic, or anything you’d like really. Sometimes he’ll be nice to you, only sometimes.

✧ I think it’s obvious how he shows his hatred and love for you in these headcanons, he’s going to make sure to tear down that confidence you have, he’ll break you. One of his methods would be to have you be eaten by guilt till you start blaming yourself instead of him. He’s good with his words, he wouldn’t be gaining such loyal followers without it. ⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

NSFW:

✧ BRAT TAMER TO THE FULLEST, he wouldn’t let you act out at all, if you tried, he’s gonna have you bent over the wall while he smacks your ass, making sure his handprint stays marked there. Till you can’t sit down comfortably, actually he won’t even let you test if you can sit down properly,  cause he’ll have you sitting on his lap, it can be during a meeting with his trusted companions, imagine a console table with almost 10 people along with him in front, while people are discussing their plans, you can’t even hear it properly cause of how deep his fingers are pumping in and out, his thumb pressing on your clit. If you let out a yelp he'd chuckle before nipping on your ear.

“Quiet, you’re distracting them” he’d murmur while squeezing your waist as a warning.

✧ While he gives off a vibe of being a dominant top if you want to ride him, he’ll let you, however with the condition that you make him cum before you do, which fails! Cause he has a pretty good endurance, you poor girl. Once he wins, he’ll flip you down, pinning your arms up while spreading your legs further, hand pressing on your soft tummy.

“Can’t even ride properly huh? You want me to do all the work pretty girl?"

✧ HATE SEX is one of his favorites, once you get the privilege to go out, if he ever sees you try to speak to another man aside from the bodyguards, he sent to watch over you while he’s busy, he’s going to use that as a reason to leave multiple marks on your body, specifically your neck. You can’t even hide it, along with the bite marks on your thighs. Oh right, not like anyone can see it, you’re forbidden from going out till he milks you of every orgasm he can pull out of you for the next few days.

✧ The type to finger you while you’re in public, if you’re wearing something short, like a skirt, he’ll lift it up, sliding his hand underneath your panty before fingering you. Make sure you don't make too much noise now, or people will notice, slut.

✧ He’s messy, the type to eat you out like a man starved, watch him suck on your clit while he pushes his fingers on your sweet spot, he had his arms wrapped around your thighs just so you don’t try to run away from his skillful tongue, the type of man to make you squirt and once he does he gets drunks over your taste, pulling away a bit just to look at you,

“One more, I know you can take it” he’d say before giving your puffy clit a kiss."

[strwberri-milk]

Oooh could you give reactions of the LaDS guys when MC rescues them?? I can imagine their stunned faces followed by intense worry for MC

Zayne didn't think that disaster would strike the hospital but here he is using his Evol to try and help patients and their families escape. Anybody who had an offensive Evol was part of this shoddily thrown together front lines, desperately trying to buy time until the authorities arrived.

He thinks he's about to be closed in as the roof comes down, doing his best to try and lessen the damage when he sees you come to the rescue. Somehow you manage to push him out of the way, rolling the two of you to safety as you get up to continue your path. He immediately grabs you by the wrist, wordlessly asking if you're okay. You offer him a quick nod before running off to continue, both of you understanding that time is of the essence.

When he finds you again later he's giving you a full physical, wanting to make sure that you're okay despite the accident. He can only rest once you're safe, holding you close.

If you sustained a life threatening injury he's there the entire time. He's making sure that you're okay, monitoring your progress as much as the doctors will allow him to. They don't want him getting in the way, knowing that he's especially emotional because it's you despite never having seen him like this before. He knows he shouldn't be interfering but honestly, he can't help it. He's worried and he's going to blame himself for the rest of his life if you don't get better.

Xavier lost his mind when he lost sight of you, trying his best to fight while also looking for you everywhere. When he finally sees you after you took out a Wanderer he pulls you into his chest, hugging you tightly as he asks you if you're alright. He does his best to appraise your current condition, doing whatever he can to mitigate any pain you feel and trying to convince you to rest before things get worse.

The attack doesn't seem to be letting up at all and you know that the two of you have to split up to continue no matter how much he hates it. He decides fuck the orders and follows you anyway, knowing that he won't be able to focus if you're not there with him.

He hears the Wanderer too late - turning around and drawing his sword half a second later than he should when he hears your guns going off. The Wanderer immediately turns to you, giving him an opening to strike back. It's faster than either of you thought it was, the scream he hears from you shutting him down.

He's glad you saved him but not at the cost of your life and he wastes the creature, knowing his body will suffer the consequences from how powerful his attack was but that doesn't matter if it means it saved you. He immediately takes you to get help, refusing to leave your side until you're actually 100%. He promised himself he'd protect you and he's going to be even more protective of you from now on.

Rafayel didn't think that his studio would be ambushed like this but he was more than capable of handling it - or so he thought. He was close to burning down his whole studio if he needed to in order to escape the assailants, surprised when they suddenly start collapsing without him doing anything.

When you emerge with your weapon drawn he's happy to see you but immediately worries about how you got through the other people they said they brought with them. You were able to take them down thankfully but he's not convinced you're alright, securing his studio with you to ensure that the two of you have nothing else to worry about.

If you sustain a life threatening injury he's immediately calling for help but also takes care of you right then and there. He doesn't want to lose any time to waiting for medical staff to arrive or your fellow hunters - he knows how to take care of you and his fire Evol is thankfully good at cauterising wounds despite how awful he feels about you trying to be brave as he burns your skin. The scars that linger upset him deeply because to him, they represent a time he failed you but in spite of them he doesn't let it drag him down. He knows it'd just make you more upset to know that's how he feels so he just focuses on making sure his skills stay sharp enough to protect you.

Sylus doesn't normally get attacked when he goes out on a job but this was a first. He was a little underprepared, thinking he'd have a quiet evening but the fight wasn't too rough, thankfully. He turns, preparing to leave without realising that there was another figure hidden in the shadows, ready to strike him down when he hears someone fall behind him. You stand over their unconscious body, a little worse for wear but nothing some TLC couldn't solve.

Sylus insists on taking you home, knowing that while you look fine there was always a slight chance that something was being overlooked and he did not want to be negligent in your care. He doesn't like the fact that you got attacked most likely because of your association with him, telling you that you need to be more careful to avoid things like that happening.

When you do get attacked because of your connection with him he has no reservations killing the person who had the audacity to hurt you. He takes you back home, patching you up and making sure you're okay in the comfort of his house. You have round the clock care and you think that Sylus isn't too shaken about your near death experience until you realise his sleep is even lighter one night. He can't sleep properly and probably won't for a while. He'll always be even more alert, constantly having either Mephisto or himself on your trail to ensure that nothing like that happens again.

[janumun]

A Bond Everlasting (LaDS Rafayel - NSFW)

Rated: NSFW/18+ Pairing: Rafayel/Reader Words: ~17k

Tags: soulmate AU (the red string of fate, with a twist), college setting (and they were roommates), angst with a happy ending, mutual pining, minor violence and action, scent kink, blow job, oral and vaginal sex, facial, multiple orgasms, vaginal fingering, overstimulation, merman knotting, sexual rut/Lemurian sexual cycle

Summary: Rafayel tries — and miserably fails —  to forget the one his red thread weaved against once upon a time, even a decade after its break. Finding her, once more, years later, and residing within the same place as her doesn’t help his cause. 

A/N: A happy very belated birthday gift to you, @chibamari. With all of my love and all of our favorite heartbreak, I hope you enjoy this, darling friend.

I. EBB 

The red string of fate. Rafayel found he truly loathed the concept.  

What was it, truly, if not just the Fates contemptuous scorn upon them?  

Forcing kinship and eternity in between a pair that did not mould against the other. That would, if time given, drift apart as mere bottled wishes left traversing, lonely, across the seas.  

And yet, the manacles remain celebrated, since time immemorial. As legends of the rare, and lucky few, destined to be bonded in harmony.  

Rafayel used to be — once upon a time — part of the same foolery brigade as the rest of them, the day his red thread spun and found itself interweaved against his first, and last, love. To her, he promised a Lemurian’s vow of faithful eternity. 

Until the day that blood-red thread quivered and ruptured apart, weakened by her absence.  

Leaving to Rafayel only the hollow remains of a heart rejected. The brand of its mockery left behind as indelible remains of the severed — useless — string wound against his finger.  

II. FLOW 

Deft, practiced digits streak a brush across canvas; the truculent quality to his paint lines reflecting the agitated knot of Rafayel’s brow and the hand he scrubs through his hair in chagrin at constant-wheeling thoughts. Bold strokes; an amalgamation of bright colors — gentle turquoise and oceanic azure — setting into paper to shape unconscious form to his muse, for his current class.  

It is only when he hears the ripple of applauding gasps behind — “You’re amazing, Senior Rafayel!” — is he knocked back into his senses, angling a stupefied gaze up at what he’s made of his project: originally an interpretation of the depths of the sea, the topic he’d presented his class for the day.  

He notes, in no small proportion of growing aversion, the strokes of his brush having shaped form of a delicate back — hers — against the backdrop of a vast sea, reminiscent of home. His thoughts — he muses in self-derision — having lent unconscious connection in between his place of most comfort to the person who stood as his entire comfort. 

Rafayel’s head throbs with heat, as if knelling the oncoming of a particularly harsh fever. Perhaps his less than perfect health was to blame for his momentary lapse of concentration.  

“Is the lady underwater inspired by anyone in particular, Senior? Your brushwork for her seems particularly passionate.” 

Rafayel’s mouth twitches into an insouciant, cool smile, he directs at his students. “Hmm I’m not sure. Perhaps, she’s inspired by that one mermaid movie they’re currently playing in theatres.”  

“Oh, ‘Aquatic’? I’ve seen it!” 

“Me too! It's really good.”  

“The part where she turns to sea foam—” 

A seamless lie; he lets it steer the focus of conversation away from him and his lapse in concentration. Turning back towards the board to proceed with his lecture.  

Opting to teach a fine arts course to a bunch of junior year students, for extra annual credit, was clearly shaping to be one of the worst decisions he’d ever made.  

Especially so, when the subject in question, he’d offered to teach for, in the first place, remained starkly absent throughout the duration of the lecture.  

III. EBB 

Shouldering open the door to their shared apartment, Rafayel steps inside, staggering under the weight of his stack of the newest arrival of deliveries. The apartment is silent, devoid of the sound of her characteristic pattering footsteps.  

Depositing his packages down against the side of the sofa in the living room, he collapses back into the cushions, tuning a distasteful frown towards the empty kitchen counter. Recounting to mind, the events of this morning, having shepherded him into an entire day of distraction at the University.  

“Ouch.” She hissed, a sound of surprise, wrenching her arm back from the sizzling frying pain at the spits of oil it spewed.  

Rafayel released an exaggerated sigh at the sight, ambling over towards the kitchen. “Let me help.”  

“You know, I’m perfectly capable of fixing breakfast on my own.” She attempted heroic reassurance, even as she easily treaded backwards to let Rafayel replace her at the stove.  

“Yes, yes, I believe you. I'd still like to ensure you don’t burn our apartment to the ground while I’m away at work. My paintings are priceless treasures, you know.” He deftly takes the eggs off the stove and plates them before shoving her share at her. “There you go, Miss All-Capable.” 

“Stop making fun of me.” She smiles in relieved gratitude, moving to set cutlery across the table. “And thank you.” 

Rafayel swivels a puffed smile her way. “Whatever would you do without me?”  

She shakes her head at him, attempting no effort to refute him. “Indeed.” Her fingers brush against his as she moves to pass him his share.  

“Rafayel.” She sweeps a sudden grab at his hand, digits entwining in between his. “You’re a bit warmer than usual. Are you feeling sick?” She smooths a gentle hand across his forehead.  

He feels his face burn darker at the sudden intimacy of their contact. “No, I don’t.” Instinctively jostling away from her touch. “I’m just tired, is all. I was up the entire night, after all.”  

“You really need to fix that terrible habit of yours. A healthy body leads to a healthy mind!” Rafayel can’t tamp back the grin from his face at her chiding. 

“Take better care of yourself. I can’t be here to keep you in check round the clock, you know.” She sighs in resignation.  

“Yes, yes, my noisy Mistress.”  

“Speaking of which,” She begins, just as Rafayel seats himself at the table. "I'll be out late tonight.” 

Rafayel feels his smile frost over; a dreaded, sour feeling immediately spurning at the base of his belly.  

“I have a study date with Caleb.” She does not meet his gaze, forking at her egg.  

Rafayel hears himself speak before he can tuck back his impulsive thoughts. “You sure you should be trusting the man this much? I don’t—” 

“’Like him.’ I know. I don’t know why you’re so biased against him, he’s a good person.”  

The praise dredges bitterness across his tongue; ashy and tepid. His fork nearly stabs at his own food, a disapproving moue he knows is dark upon his face. “Sure,” he intones at last, grappling against his desire to ask her not to go, to spend her day with him instead. “Have fun.” An unfair burden he knows he throws onto her shoulders; he does not possess the right to dictate who she chooses to associate with.  

And yet— 

Rafayel’s gaze deliberately treks the line of red thread adorning his ring finger — treacherously cut off a few centimetres in and dissipating into nothingness. Following the absent line of it; her own finger sits vacant against the wooden table-top. An immeasurable dejection he isn’t able to shuck off, no matter how many times his eyes have witnessed its emptiness.  

Perhaps she is right and he is sick, an inscrutable tremor setting into his fingers as they continue on with the rest of their meal in silence.  

IV. FLOW 

The oncoming dawn encroaches a gradual shell-pink spill of color across the velvet skies as Rafayel’s feverish gaze drags, listless, to the view past the patio windows, the bone-deep ache from the day past yet to recede.  

The angry scrapes of charcoal rushed across paper, forgotten as the unfinished sketch drifts purposeless down onto the floor to join the rest of its discarded predecessors.   

She has yet to return home — Rafayel had stayed up the entire night and remained planted, firm, within their lounge, to make sure he would be there to greet her on her return. She'd never been away from their apartment overnight.  

Rafayel knows because he had — on more occasions than he could count and didn’t wish to acknowledge — found himself crumpled within cool sheets, self-confined to the privacy of his room, listening in to the comforting sounds of her padded, soft movements around their apartment.  

She'd often slip back through their door, close to midnight — she made it a point, always, to return home, no matter the hour — after slaving away hours at the library for her Hunter exam. She'd try for quietude; he knew, so she wouldn’t disturb his absent sleep.  

A gentle clink of mugs at the kitchen counter as she’d make herself a cup of a coffee in preparation of burning the midnight oil.  

Despite having the physical structure of their apartment — a shelter and comfort in name — his room’s four-walled sanctity, it didn’t truly feel warm as a home until the moment she stepped past the threshold and into their shared space.  

And only when he’d hear the soft crinkle of pages turning steadily as she’d settle herself onto the living room sofa to study, would he find himself beckoned into slumber. As if she too, knew on instinct, how her presence aimed to soothe, choosing to make space for her studies right where he could hear her, in the lounge, instead of the confines of her own room. 

Yet now.  

Midnight had come and gone, dawn scraping indigo for approaching light, and no signs of her return.  

A long day behind him endured in feverish unrest and the toll of another sleepless night, doesn’t help disentangle burgeoning thoughts of her within the embrace of another man at that very moment, one not him. He can’t help but sorely curse himself for his ill-thought decision of staying the night up, waiting for her like some sorry love-struck fool.  

Not that he would’ve been able to sleep, either way; a part of him mocked in muted whispers.  

His thread throbs; a nipping bite of rejection and along with it, his body. Languid gaze absently trekking the severed thread, flickering incandescent against his ring finger. The constricting heat of it, as if traversing up his veins along with the fever within his body. Colluding against his heart, as if it wishes to eventually wither him up instead. A slow, bittersweet poison.  

Rafayel feels nauseous.  

He’s beginning to contemplate on retiring for the meagre, precious hours before his upcoming classes for the day — perhaps that bitterly strong liquor she’d stowed into the fridge earlier would help do the trick — just as the door lock clicks open.  

The sound violently startles Rafayel out of winding, unheeded thoughts enough, he springs off the sofa just as she steps foot over the threshold.  

Opening his mouth to put words to turbulent emotions — a million queries — before his questions wither off the tip of his tongue when he fixates a good, long look at her.   

She appears downright exhausted and an instinctual, foreboding spurts forth in him. The look on her careworn face, light-snuffed gaze meeting his — Rafayel thinks, mirrors the state of his own affairs — before it dissipates into stifled surprise. “Rafayel, what’re you doing up—”  

And before he can tamp himself back into composure, Rafayel’s striding the few paces it takes for him to reach her, dragging her into his embrace.  

She stiffens at the contact on instinctual reflex, it chips away at another piece of his heart. Tightens the strangulating hold of his severed thread against his soul.  

He hedges her tighter into his embrace, regardless. Head pitching down onto her shoulder; a hand he smooths down the line of her quivering back before she relaxes into him, at last.  

“Rafayel—” Arms twitching by her side and up as she circles him within her own comfort, returning his warmth in the cling of desperate digits against the back of his shirt.  

“You’re late. You're so late.” he gripes, half-hearted.  

A beat. Two passes. 

“Yeah, I’m sorry.”  

A peculiar relationship; she calls them friends — close — inappropriately so and he’d agreed to be one, to her, if it were the sole thing that allowed him to be by her side. For her to not abandon him once more. A relationship edging something far gnarled than friendship.  

He doesn’t believe even she has a name for what they share, in moments as these, where Rafayel forgets himself and the boundaries he holds himself to. Turns blind to pretenses and masks he fixates, so delicately crafted, for her benefit and the safety of his own heart. 

He is not, however, a man strong enough to ignore the strain of his beloved’s gaze, tiredness rimming her entire being, she feels so brittle in his arms, and it ruins him to not know the cause of it.  

“...Got something on your mind?” He murmurs into her hair. 

“Perhaps.” Her response is slow, halting.  

“Want to tell me what it is?” He breaks away from her, enough to let his eyes scour her face in stern scrutiny.  

A whispered laugh escapes her at his inspection.  

“...Rafayel, how do you feel about an early morning stroll with me?”  

V. EBB 

The shores of Whitesand Bay stretch empty within the wee hours of dawn, quiet, save for the twittering song of birds cutting across the sky and the gentle wash of waves at their bare feet as they amble along the sandy belt. She hasn’t uttered a word since, absent gaze trekking the gradual rise of the sun above the horizon, light flittering its diamonds across the lap of waves.  

The easy access to the sea — and by extension, the remarkable view — was one of the reasons they’d jointly agreed upon renting an apartment this close to Whitesand Bay, two years prior. On any other usual occasion, Rafayel’s fingers would’ve been upon pen and paper, soaking inspiration up and through rough strokes, sketching across paper.  

Now, however, his focus is all but entirely removed from his environment, vision honed in on her by his side.  

“It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it?” She murmurs, gaze still fixated upon the horizon. “I’m not an early riser like you are so I’ve never seen the sunrise here up this close.”  

She's skirting the issue, Rafayel has no mind to force her to spill her heart when she does not wish to. 

For her, he is willing to remain patient.  

Regardless of the consequences to his person.  

He joins in on her flimsy facade.  

“If only I wasn’t a little too aware of the fact.” Tapping a light fist against her temple, he angles a skewed smile down at her. “Despite my very arduous efforts to get you out of bed on multiple occasions, you’ve persisted in your terrible ways, Miss Hunter.” Heaving an exaggerated sigh. “You’re far too stubborn for your own good, I fear.” 

That gets her breaking a smile, the tensed knitted worry within her gaze easing just that tiny bit; Rafayel plucks it up for the small reward it is. “A classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. Like you’re any less bull-headed.” She defends. “Don’t make me recount all the times you nearly gave poor Thomas a heart attack because your paintings weren’t ready even mere hours before the exhibitions they were supposed to be featured in.”  

His mouth pulls into a distasteful moue at that. “Don’t tell me you’re on his side. He refuses to understand the world of difference it causes in between using cherry red or wine on a canvas. If it were up to that simpleton, he’d have me besmirch all my works, just for the sake of those trivial exhibitions.”  

She chuckles. “Now, no need to get so worked-up. You know Thomas cares for you and wishes to have your talent recognized like it deserves to be.” She moves to seat herself by the shore, close to where the waves lick up at the sand. Rafayel follows suit.  

“I know how much passion you pour into your paintings.” Crinkling a gentle smile up at him. “That’s exactly why I love your art so much.” 

Rafayel’s heart catches at his throat at the easy slip of her compliment.  

She's never been sparing with her appreciation of his artworks. 

Ever since she’d chanced upon them a few years back when they’d only shortly been re-united at the time.  

She’d always been generous and open with her admiration.  

His heart, however, wasn’t immune to its traitorous stuttering, every single time at her attentions and praise.  

Perhaps she discerns the look on his face, tapping into his emotions, or realizes the curious intimacy of her statement, she wrenches her gaze away from his. Rafayel swiftly feels the keen loss of it.  

Silence sweeps once more between them, her gaze having drifted back into the seas and with it, the steady droop of her shoulders as she curves in tighter against her huddled knees. “It was a place, similar to this one, where we first met. A lost little human meeting a young Lemurian washed ashore.” Her voice barely hikes above an octave. “I didn’t think Lemurians existed for real before that, and to know I shared a red fate with one...”  

His throat closes against a sharp inhale at her whisper, the first time she’s chosen to address their past severed bond, ever since their reunion.  

Why now. He means to ask. A question that dissipates off the tip of his tongue, un-uttered.  

“We were so young back then and I inadvertently hurt you. Ever since I moved away, and time just passed, regardless...” She pauses. “You must’ve really hated me for that, huh.” She angles a cautious smile at him. 

I did not. Rafayel means to refute and yet his tongue refuses to cooperate.  

She continues on, as if she had long perceived his answer and made peace with his supposed resentment of her, unperturbed by his lack of response. Her reaction vexes him.   

“I’ve hurt someone dear to me again. Caleb—” 

The familiar name spurns bitter within his chest. “Did he do something to you?” His fingers jam against coarse sand, snagging his thread tight against his ring finger. 

“No! No. Caleb’s a good man, he’s been nothing but kind to me.”  

Deep within the recesses of his heart, Rafayel knows it, he knows it only too well; he only wishes he could truly bring himself to hate him.  

“He...” Her fingers tense harsher against her arms. “Last night, he asked me to be his girlfriend.” 

His ring finger throbs; the missing line of its thread seeming to constrict against Rafayel’s neck.  

“I turned him down.” 

A quick, involuntary bite of wicked relief thrums at the back of his breastbone. And yet— 

Why do you look as if your heart is shattering into a million pieces? 

Rafayel’s mouth seems to form words on its own as if he wishes for his own demise. “Do you regret it?” 

Her silence is a dagger that digs pointed, deep in between his ribs, the longer she lets it steep.  

She meets his gaze, a turbulent question within hers, beseeching. “I don’t know… I don’t know if I should.” She looks as if she has more to speak, restive teeth biting into her lip to hold back unsaid thoughts.

Rafayel dares not parse the emotions he sees flittering within her eyes, dares not hope for what he cannot have. Not again, for his heart to fracture once more by setting up false narratives. He has loved and will love still for eternity — he doesn’t, however, have the tenacity to bear being abandoned again. 

And so, he shutters himself, gaze wrenching away from hers, a frown knitting tight against his brow. “Whatever it is that you want, if it makes you happy, I want you to grab onto it for yourself.” Fingers brushing against hers from where they rest within the sand, index and middle lingering longer against the base of her ring finger. Before he moves, carding hesitant digits through the fall of her hair.  

For it is the only way he knows how to love — regardless of broken vows — in her happiness, even if it would never be found by his side. 

VI. FLOW

The dream stirs vivid beneath restless lids — Rafayel hasn’t dreamt of that time of theirs together in so long, a welcome awareness of his mind’s conjuring, he embraces in that moment.   

Perhaps by-products of an exhausted, sick mind. 

Or yearning for an unfulfilled wish.  

A sweet sting of desire, just as the first time he remembers it. He lets himself drown deeper into the abyss of its calling. 

He’d cut a boring class during first semester at college — he could no longer remember the subject — in lieu of chasing the path of an ambitious sparrow within a secluded spot. Located far back along the grounds of the college and protected further underneath the dense foliage of the overgrown greenery as he’d sat perched upon a bench, motionless and silent.  

Save for the smooth rush of his pencil across his journal. Detailing the quest of the bird as it leapt across the grass towards a lazing cat, blissfully dodging the feline’s half-hearted attempt at pawing it away.  

Tranquility rippled only at a surprising intrusion; she’d walked into his private space — she always seemed to find him — and he’d startled at her presence.  

“Oh! Sorry. Rafayel, I thought I—” 

Their relationship on strained ice at the time — neither of them choosing to dig up unfulfilled childhood vows or the break of their fated thread. 

 A hastened apology she’d tripped over, for disturbing him before her eyes had flickered to the open journal in his lap and she’d breathed an awed sound. Called it beautiful — a slip of the tongue, he could tell, from her demeanor.  

They'd gotten back into conversation — albeit halting — after that.  

The moment, a pivotal one, in Rafayel allowing himself to accept her back into his life, both emotionally and physically. 

He recalls the citrus notes to her perfume as she’d tentatively seated herself by his side. The way her hair curled delicate against the curve of her cheek, beckoning Rafayel to dare a hand out and slip it back against her ear. 

The unconscious brush of soft digits against his as she’d moved to accept the proffered journal from him, when she’d asked for permission to view more of his artworks.  

The relief that had sunk into his marrow, body strung far too tight for so long — he felt each ache settle and ease, when she returned to his side. As if their bond still remained.  

As if it had never fractured in the first place. 

She moves to tug the curtains close, clipping back the last shafts of light from Rafayel’s room; his damp brow now decidedly relaxed in restless slumber, after being exposed to the heat of the sun for so long.  

He’s made a habit of drawing his windows open at night, perhaps to relieve the fevered pitch of his body off the cool breeze wafting of the sea. Restive sleeplessness; keeping him tossing until near close to dawn, when she often catches him falling, thankfully, into exhaustive sleep at the end of his long, disturbed nights.  

Rafayel had been out of sorts for nearly two weeks now; a distracted gaze and a listless stride his constant companions. Adamant and mulish in his response, at inquiring of his health, every time, that he was perfectly alright and merely plagued by the weariness of sleepless nights spent on his paintings.  

Barely a day or two into that ridiculous spectacle of his before her patience with him had expired and she’d hauled him off to his room and strong-armed him into bed.  

A rueful smile tugs at her mouth at the recollection of their silly argument then.  

“Hey, ow. Easy, you’ll break me! Aaah... too late. I think I’ve already dislocated my wrist. My life as a painter is done for. Ow.”   

“Rafayel. Shut up unless you want me to gag you as well.”  Forcing the covers over his body; she glowered at him for obedience while she hastened to take his temperature.  

Rafayel’s mouth soured deeper in distaste the longer she fretted over him. Opening his mouth, surely to protest, before she cut him off. “You’re running a low-grade fever.” 

Pressing a gentle hand over his forehead, “Please, rest now.” 

A knot twisted in between Rafayel’s brow at her plea. Threading his fingers against hers. “Alright, alright I will,” he murmured, a gentle thumb he smoothed against her furrowed brow. “So, stop making that face now.”  

His agitation at his prolonged ill-health, however, had manifested in numerous half-finished drafts and rough sketches, he’d filled sheets upon sheets of paper with, littered upon his bed.  

The subject matter of most, inexplicably similar in features; a fact that surprised her, for Rafayel had always been one for continual exploration of a wide variety of subjects in his artworks, rather than one stationary objective.  

She reaches for one such sketch now, discarded by his bedside. Predictably, it is the same subject her eyes have grown accustomed to: the graceful arch of a person’s — a woman’s — back, the cascade of her hair shrouding her gaze from view. It is ethereal, haunting. Lonely.  

And. 

She exhales an unsteady breath. Although a mere unpolished sketch, she feels Rafayel’s longing in the hastened strokes of charcoal across her visage.  An inscrutable sprout of emotion twinges at her chest each time she looks upon this faceless woman, a desire to tear her gaze away from the care put into the strokes and never look at them again and yet, it’s as if her hands are not her own, each time they sift through his sketches to reveal a new one made. She despises it, and the feeling of her selfish loathing itself. Not when she bears reason nor right to feel the way she does.  

The ring finger of her right hand throbs, an echo of her turbulent emotions manifesting in the faint red restraint flickering against the base of her digit before it winks once more out of existence. 

No.  

Her gaze instinctually jumps to Rafayel, his prone form still deep in sleep.  

She'd nearly forgotten the other reason for her undue distress these past couple of days; worry for Rafayel occupying each of her thoughts, leaving little space for much else.

She sinks, weak-kneed, onto the bed, right next to Rafayel. Carding her fingers through the soft brush of his hair, gently thumbing a line down his temple.  

She’d thought her mind was conjuring illusive tricks the first few times she’d caught that fleeting flicker of red across her finger. 

Impossible, for it had been nearly twelve years since she’d lost her bond after being forced away from Rafayel. And then, her eyes had insistently tried tracing the line of it, every time it shimmered against her finger, hoping that it would perhaps.... 

Just maybe, if a miracle were to occur— 

That it would re-connect. Back to the only person she’d ever loved. Back to him, her beautiful Lemurian. That perhaps, he’d grant her another chance. That perhaps there was a sliver of hope that Rafayel would love her back once more.  

Once more. 

 Her yearning dashed in the brutality of a truth, far too incomprehensible to her mind. 

On the day her grandmother caught sight of her glimmering thread before she’d informed her with much joy; a red thread of fate, if once severed, made an appearance once more, within the lifetime of rare, chosen… fortunate individuals. If Fate ever ordained for the individuals to find new love once more. Another love so great, it changed Fate’s threads and course itself.  

“You’re blessed, my darling girl. Most people are happy enough if they get to enjoy even one fated love throughout their lives. But you've found two in your lifetime. It is a joyous thing, my love, do not be sad. Do not weep.” 

“...Perhaps, it is time you let him — let your past go.”  

Like ice curdling within her veins. As if Fate itself were playing upon her a cruel jest. She could never. How could she ever? 

And then, her denials had crumbled entirely, shortly after that dreaded truth.  

Her oldest friend, her sole pillar when she’d lost Rafayel. The person who’d held her close and kept her heart safe—  

When she’d lie in bed all day during her earliest days, screaming from the deluging fever of her bond withering. 

—It was the day her childhood friend, her Caleb confessed.  

Even without the evidence of a corporeal bond connecting them, that had been her last straw.  

She presses her lips against Rafayel’s cheek, overwhelming emotions threatening to surge, unable to resist or hold herself in control. “I could never.” she vows under her breath, fingers stroking down the line of his cheek. “Even if you have let go of me, Rafayel, I’m—” 

She feels the roughened pads of his digits against where she touches his face, perturbed at the sudden movement. His eyes flitter, restless, beneath his lids, grasp tightening upon her wrist. “My beloved bride.”

She tries and yanks herself away from his touch, startled at his unconscious murmuring. Rafayel does not let go, nudging his cheek against the crook of her captured palm.  

“Rafayel.” She urges, her heart stuttering over its beats. “Rafayel, please wake up.”  

At long last, he listens; that beautiful, florid gaze misted with the callings of sleep still, as it focuses on her. He makes an indiscrete sound. “Is it morning already? Agh, my head hurts.” He continues to nuzzle his face against her palm.  

“R-Rafayel! Hey!” She winces, hand unbearably hot within his hold. “Let go of me now. If you’re up, have some breakfast instead. You need the energy, dummy.” 

“Don’t want to let you go. Pamper me more.” And yet, he refuses to heed her lukewarm pleas, extremely wilful in his post-sleep, feverish daze.  

She huffs out a breathless laugh, her apprehension ebbing, gentle, into silence the longer she feels his warmth against her.  

Maybe she is allowed to indulge just a bit longer.  

 VII. EBB 

An errant thread and an inexplicable long spell of heat, as if trudging up a steep path, burgeoning fast towards an inevitable destination he could not quite clutch at. Unsolicited suspicions, as to the true nature of his predicament, incessantly rapping at his thoughts.  

Rafayel feels that dour twist to his brow; darkening his features at the wheeling course of his mind. 

 She’s caught him in similar moods since his “illness” commenced, more times than he can count. The endless time afforded his way, involuntarily threading his thoughts to places he doesn’t wish to visit. He doesn’t wish, ever, to alarm or upset her, setting to ease her thoughts the moment worry mars her features, testing index and middle against the sharp knot at her forehead before his attentions — and hers — are compelled entirely her way.  

That is also something that has shifted in between them, into something entirely different. He’s been unusually attuned to her for the duration of his peculiar period of ill-health.  

She has always been his primary muse, the focal point where all of Rafayel’s tangled thoughts find eventual and inevitable convergence. However, somehow, all of those sensibilities have turned sharper, impossibly aware of... her.  

Unconsciously turning to placations the moment he comprehends her distress. Choosing to bury, in turn; soothe the heat of his body within the scent of hers. Her hands on him when she fusses to take his temperature, her clothes, he takes a surreptitious, lungful breath of, when she moves close to towel the fevered sweat off his body. Truly, he does not understand what is wrong with him.  

Two weeks in now and his need for answers has driven him to near madness. He’s loathe to admit he must consult one, perhaps, more knowledgeable on the subject than he.  

He paces into the lounge, heavy in thought, fingers worrying at the phone in hand. 

“Oh, you’re up. Are you feeling any better?”  Just as she calls over to him from the kitchen counter.  

“Of course,” he fibs, tucking the phone back into the pocket of his trousers. He ambles over to her, dressed neat in her trainee uniform as she works a paring knife around an apple. “What’re you doing?”  

“You should have something healthy to eat while I’m away.”  

“Ah.” He plucks a piece of fruit off the plate next to her, eyeing the peculiar shape. “So, you decided to cut me some apple bunnies.”  The corners of his mouth drag into a skewed grin. “I am not a child, cutie.”  

She makes an inflated motion of surprise, pressing a hand against her chest. “Really?”  

And when he rolls his eyes at her, “Of course you aren’t,” she grins. “I’ve never met any children as stubborn as you.”  

“Cheeky.” He flicks a gentle hand against her forehead.  

His eyes skim towards the wall clock and back towards her neatly pressed outfit. “You have an on-field Hunter’s exam this afternoon, don’t you? You’ll be late if you dawdle any longer. Besides, I can feed myself just fine.”  

She startles a bit as her eyes, too, take note of the hour. Hastily shoving the plate of her fresh cut fruit into his hands. “Alright, I’ll leave. You better eat, then rest up. Don’t exert yourself, alright?”  

She steps past the counter. “Come, Kiki.” A white dutiful ball of fur capers up to her as soon as she calls. Rafayel hedges further against the counter just as the white ball tumbles into her waiting arms.  

“There, what a good girl you are!” She croons over the cat, petting at that little fiend pet of her friend’s. She rises to her feet. 

“I’ll drop her off at Tara’s before heading to the centre.”  

“Good riddance,” Rafayel mutters, blenching just as she moves closer with the cat still in her arms.  

“Rude, I’m sad to see her go so soon.” She pulls a glum face at him.  “Do you want to pet her goodbye before she leaves and you start missing her?”  

“I won’t,” He dissents, even as he braves the tips of his fingers against Kiki’s head in a cautious scritch before snapping his hand right back. “Bye, white menace.”  

Rafayel’s moue of specious disapproval turns deeper with her knowing grin. “Let’s go now that you’ve said your farewells to Uncle Rafayel.” She kisses the top of the cat’s head as it purrs in elated satisfaction at her attentions. 

He quirks a flippant brow at her. “All affections for the furry feline, I see.” 

She laughs, the sound an aching balm against long-wrought nerves. “Why, is my fish jealous of a little kitten? Come here, then.”  

“I am not—!” He sputters, just as her hand curves about the back of his neck and pulls downward, pressing a quick kiss to his forehead.  

The previously simmering, barely tamped warmth of his body bursts forth with a brilliant vengeance, his skin set ablaze at just the graze of her touch. Rafayel has to actively constrain himself from keeling over entirely on the floor from his sudden deluge of emotions. Has to curb the quiver of his arms from wanting to steal that heat back against his body.  

She draws back, just as swift, on her feet. The pink of her cheeks is infectious, enticing. Rafayel stares at her, mute and slack-jawed, even as she backs out of the kitchen and through the front door. “I’ll see you tonight, my little fish!” And then he’s left to his own spiraling thoughts.  

Ah. Rafayel scrubs agitated palms down the length of his face in the ensuing silence of their home. His scarlet thread burns incandescent in his hind-vision, flittering in its sporadic expansion. If only she knew how entirely ruined he was at her feet, alone.  

VIII. FLOW  

“You rejected Caleb’s confession?”  

She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t anticipated Tara’s baffled outburst.  

It was part of the reason why she chose to reveal the ‘news’ to her this unceremoniously, as she gently eased Kiki over into Tara’s arms while they stood at her open front door. She adored Tara but was of no mind to be sat down at length while her best friend grilled the details out of her.  

Not ready for the difficult conversations that would ensue; of her past grievances, the break of her fated thread and how she dreaded, within a dark crevice of her heart, that Caleb might turn out to be the one her Fate was once more, trying to bind her to. How could she even begin to delineate it wasn’t what she wanted?  

No, she wasn’t ready for that conversation with Tara, at all.  

“I’m going to be late for my exam, Tara.” She gives her a contrite smile.  

“Yes, I know, sorry, darling, but… why? I really thought things were well between you too. And I was sure there was something going on—! I— can’t you say?” Her friend’s gaze is weighty, imploring. “Is there... someone else?” Her eyes widen. “Is it—” 

And the longer she’s met with terse silence, the heat of her gaze wanes in gradual realization before, at last, she retreats her onslaught, a troubled groan leaving her lips. “At least tell me you’re alright. I’ve been worried about you.”  

“I know, Tara, I’m sorry. I’m perfectly fine.” She gives her free hand a squeeze before withdrawing back a few steps. “I should really go now.”  

Tara loses another sigh. “You really should. Promise we’ll catch up later?”  

“I promise.” She raises her hand in farewell, jogging down the few steps to her house.  

Tara calls out to her just as she reaches the foot of her stairs. “Good luck, girl! I’m cheering for you.”  

She flashes her friend an appreciative smile.  

With Tara, she really can’t be sure if she meant her encouragement for her qualifying physical exam. Or something else entirely.  

Knowing her friend, it was probably both.  

She reaches the examination centre just under the wire, right as the towering gates to the grounds swing shut behind her and two other late-comers.  

Toggling open her Hunter’s Watch, she hastens to join the formation up ahead of several other students, already lined in neat rows for their on-field Wanderers exam. Sidling in place, into her empty spot, just as the instructor in front drones on the list of rules for the exam, from upon his podium. “You are to form pairs of two, as per your roll numbers and enter your designated Protofields, to commence your exam. Before you begin, make sure...” 

He goes over the structures of the regulations one by one, detailing what actions would mete them points and what would deduct them in case of improper conduct.  

“These Protofields have been simulated under intensively controlled environments and contain a plethora of C and B-grade Wanderers you are to deal with, within the desired time limit. Coordinate with your partner, watch each other’s backs and follow all routine safety regulations. Violators will be disqualified on the spot.” He continues. “Keep within bounds of all marked fields, maintain your senses and you should do well. Lastly, trust your education and the skills you have acquired over the course of these years via means of your perseverance and hard work. May you reign victorious, young Hunters!” With his final words, the crowd disperses, heading towards their designated spots for their exams. 

She taps her fingers against her Hunter’s Watch, pulling up the specifications of the Protofield she is to clear, before setting out. 

 

“Gabriel? Hi.” She calls to her team-mate as she moves to join him, recognizing the man from the same class division as hers.  

He returns her greeting, the two setting to sync their data via their watches within the final minute countdown before their exam commences. The flux nexus, in front, pulses to life upon confirmation of both their identities, filtering its pre-programmed wavelength to project upon the barren field. A kaleidoscopic flitter of energy wheeling across the space once is their only indication of a protofield activated, before the two step forwards, cautious, weapons at the ready.  

“No.” Rafayel’s jaw steels in chagrin, hearing the resigned, gentle finality of the words on the other end of the line.  

“Rafayel...” Talia coaxes.  

“I said no. You’re wrong.” He gnashes out, even as the heat simmers, muggy and suffocating, within his body. Even as he continues to deny the indubitable truth of her words.  

For if he did, he would have to face the looming fate of another horrifying possibility.  

The regret of asking for Talia’s help sits heavy within his throat. Facts she utters in such certitude, it leaves Rafayel irrationally agitated. He knows it is not her fault.  

 He hears her soft sigh on the other end of the line. “You told me you’ve been suffering these bouts of ‘fever’ since the past two weeks, an ‘illness’ that refuses to abate and that your...” She pauses, as if seeking words best to voice her next. “incomplete thread has been showing sporadic signs as of late.” 

“Yes.” His voice is quiet, stiff. 

“Rafayel, you’re experiencing early symptoms of an oncoming rut and you know it. You feel it. You didn’t need to call me, when you’re well-informed on the matter yourself, even if you’ve never experienced it before.” She pauses.  “The only reason you reached out to me is that you wanted me to validate your suspicions, isn’t that right?” 

He does not respond to her astute observation.

“An unmated Lemurian cannot experience sexual cycles the same way as a bonded Lemurian. And as you are well-aware, my thread was long severed.” He refutes, contemptuous. “You know what, forget I asked. You clearly don’t understand what’s wrong with me any better than I do. Sorry for crashing your honeymoon. Goodbye, Talia.”  

“Is your thread truly severed, Rafayel?” Her voice rings, solemn, from the other end of the line, just as Rafayel moves to disconnect the call. He pauses, gaze involuntarily skewing towards his lengthening line of red thread. The frown in between his brow turns severe, as if being coerced to witness a sight against his will.  

“You’re experiencing a re-connection and you’re not allowing yourself the happiness that comes with new love. It’s a rare and beautiful thing, for your red fate to find itself weaved against a new person you would cherish.”  

Rafayel does not have the resolve to discredit her words despite his vehement disagreement; having known her experience the loss of her first love, the agony of her days after. And only years later, had she allowed herself to love once more, a happiness Rafayel was content to stand in observance to, glad at her well-deserved peace.   

He, however, was different from Talia. He’d rather his Fate dissipate entirely than for it to wind itself against a stranger. He was different, for Rafayel knew he would never love again, never cherish another, no matter the decades in between.  

For him, there would never be anyone else. 

A transitory pressure curdles heavy about her shoulders as they pace past the barrier and into the protofield. The familiarity of their training grounds dwindles away, large looming falls of thick trees rising, ominous, to blot the skies. Blanketing twilight, instantaneous, overhead. A slow, sweeping curl of gray, mists about their feet, soaking into the dank ground beneath. 

Beside her, she hears Gabriel’s apprehensive breaths. “I can never get used to this.”  

Weapons at the ready, they trudge a slow, cautious path through the simulated wilderness. Gnarled branches seize and snick at their clothes, the craggy mire beneath, a strenuous trudge to keep upright through; as if the forest itself were alive with wicked intent.  

Gabriel’s firearm is the first to go off in a thunderous shot, breaking a flock of obsidian birds to startle into the skies. She follows suit, breaking into a dash along with him; the dark, hunched figure of a fleet-footed Wanderer she aims her gun at and fires, the shot catching it right against its head. The creature lurches forwards onto its body in a seething screech of sound, following its crackling demise into a spoor of pungent smoke.  

The two maintain their steady pace of weeding the area of Wanderers, most they’re able to dispatch with ease. Reflexes and hard ingrained years of training coming into play, the more battles they win through, setting into an easy rhythm of partnership.  

The Wanderer Gabriel skews his sword through in a final thrust, disintegrates into smoke with a rattling gurgle.  She pauses to survey their surroundings, the deep, metallic skies yet to dissipate entirely: indication of a cleared exam. Up ahead, she spies a peculiar forking at the path, the protofield seeming to disperse into dense, murky mist past the intersection. Gabriel flicks the blood off his sword, moving to join her. “Strange.” 

“Yeah. I don’t think low grade Wanderers can distort protofields to this extent.” She agrees. 

“Likely an A grade, at least. Shouldn’t be harder than what we’ve handled so far.” He pauses. “Besides the fact that this one seems like it can replicate itself into weaker copies, judging from the splice it’s created in the field.” 

She frowns at his conclusion, likely accurate. There shouldn’t be an A grade on the loose within a junior hunter’s exam, to begin with; a Wanderer class reserved only for the final year senior field exam. Signals are, as expected sparse, this deep within the protofield, and with an A grade, at hand, tampering the protofield, the possibility of communications being established sits non-existent, at present. She drops a distress signal onto the Hunter’s site, regardless, moving to join him at the fork.  

“We’ll have to clear out the Wanderer, either way, if we want to leave this protofield.” She swipes her empty magazine for a new one, securing it fast back into her gun.  

“Right.” Gabriel’s own fist tightens against the hilt of his sword. “You take the right, I’ll take the left? The distortion should be obliterated on its own once we eliminate all of its copies. I’ll see you soon, partner.”  

“Right back at you. Good luck.”  

Gabriel flashes a flimsy grin at her before treading onto the left path. A swift heavy oppression belts massive across the field, the compression settling a deafening din to her ears. “Hah, Gabriel, wait—” 

But it’s too late. Her partner’s form, long digested by the roiling clouds of black before she can call him back.  

Something’s not right. An A-grade Wanderer shouldn’t be able to exert that kind of pressure. 

An electromagnetic resonance tremors across the space, as if something rattles at the confines of the protofield from beyond. Wanting in.  

Sweat gathers clammy and unpleasant across the back of her neck, her eyes skittering back towards where Gabriel vanished into the murk.  

She firms a hand around her gun, steeling her spine for courage. Whatever anomaly has occurred within the premises of their exam can be dealt with later. Her first priority; to help Gabriel out in eliminating all of the A-grade's clones and dissipating the distortion in front before they planned their next move. And help would arrive soon, once transmission allowed her distress signal to go through, they just had to hold on until then; she reassures herself.  

Moving forward to stride past the muted obsidian barrier at her right.  

The dark cloak of the Wanderer’s protofield washes across her skin like skidding, frigid fingers of emptiness, it spills an involuntary shiver down her spine.  

The cold, metallic spires of the protofield taper off into the void overhead as she steps onto the main field. A skittering figure, one, two, three; lunge, whip-swift, towards her as soon as they spot her, gaping maws and needle teeth poised to tear into her before her fight or flight reflexes jam in. She empties a volley of bullets into their bodies, sieving clean through the approaching Wanderers. Lobs of inhumane flesh, dissipating as soon as they hit the ground.  

Several far smaller figures melt out of the darkness to aim their attacks at her; one after the other she takes down in swift shots. Breaths trembling harsh and hot, her heart hammering over its frantic beats the longer the fight persists.  

A fatigued mistake; being mere seconds slow to switch her empty gun for another, costs her a hard, long gash sliced through the sleeve of her shoulder by the remaining Wanderer. Fire licks up across her arm in a sudden shock of pain, muted instantaneously underneath the roiling pump of adrenaline. She wrenches a dagger off her leg strap. Twisting her torso about to bring her uninjured arm up in a sharp arc, furiously tearing a split through the last Wanderer with a fierce yell and the remnants of her fraying stamina.  

The Wanderer’s remains snivel into a fire just as it hits the ground, the cool, metallic gloom giving way to the unraveling edges of the original forest once more. 

And just as her eyes adjust to the shadows of the protofield once more, she catches sight of a figure slumped upon the grass, unmoving. “Gabriel!” She yells, forcing her limbs underneath her through the pained grit of bared teeth. Clutching hard at her arm to stopper the slow rivulets of blood flow seeping from the gash before she stumbles across the grass towards the man.  

Her Hunter’s Watch blinks, in indication of a transmission successful — her distress signal. Collapsing to her knees at Gabriel’s side just as her watch flares to life in blaring red, an ominous warning running across the screen.  

S-Grade: Deluge Wyrmlord.   Protofield type: Memory Distortion Solo Hunters, do not engage.  

Her mouth runs dry at the far calls of her name—  

“Special Grade—!” Gabriel’s voice resounds just from across the field. “—Run!” 

The collapsed figure at her feet assimilating into thin air, a trick blanketed over her weary mind, by the workings of a high-class Wanderer.  

She feels that intense bone-crushing pressure creep across her back once more, her breath coming through in fits of raspy air. Fixing the barrel of her gun back across her shoulder, she fires, just as a great, dark talon comes across her face, drowning her in darkness.

The call has barely disconnected when Rafayel tosses the phone aside, staggering onto his feet under the heated weight of his body. His eyes drift — an involuntary reflex — towards that squeamish glow of red, his thread flickering in and out of sight, the extended length of it, an alarming sight. Vexation ticks harsh at his jaw.  

Before he’s able to reign control, the spits of a brilliant vermillion fire spurt forth from tapered digits, rushing across the incorporeal red string, in an effort to blaze the blasted thing off of him entirely.  

The fire dissipates, harmless, as expected, with the absence of a pure solid medium to burn. His thread glimmers to life once more, as if deriding Rafayel with its presence.  

Beyond agitated, fervent digits pluck upwards, summoning his Evol to life for a stronger burst of energy —   

A sudden inundating contraction pierces in vengeance across his heart, sending a bolt of excruciating pain lancing through his chest. Rafayel flounders; violently pitching to his knees from the intensity of its sensations. His breaths are hard to smother past lungs that burn for oxygen and yet refuse to inhale. 

Red throbs, vivid and urgent, across his ring finger, as if the call of a terrible siren, knelling of ill-fate and destruction.  

His own fire, begs to consume, hurtling across his skin, a throat that chokes from the fervid heat of his bond, threatening to annihilate him entirely. He feels his humane features molding against the translucent glimmer of cerulean scales, his human form scattering in response to the irrefragable call of his bond, his mate.  

She’s in danger. 

Alarming apprehension dawns upon his mind, the sole thought of her throttling his mind, his oath promised, urging to call upon the one person her thread connects to, a Fate irrefutable, a bond everlasting.  

No. 

A savage inferno tears across Rafayel’s body — scarlet and florid licks of fire — until it engulfs him entirely, leaving nothing in its wake.  

Silence is all that remains behind. 

IX. EBB  [TW for this chapter: passing mentions of domestic abuse]

White peels back from her field of vision; slowly revealing to her the dreary, stifling atmosphere of an incredibly familiar room. A young girl stands amidst a crowd of mourning adults, some in loud tears. Others who secrete their faces into handkerchiefs and shake their heads in dismay at the “poor orphan”. Nausea wrestles pungent within her belly at the sight.  

Her gaze, involuntarily shepherded, past the throng of mourners and towards the picture of the deceased — she knows that face before she sees it — her absent father who had often left her to her own devices, save for the times he was not actively trying to assault her with stray bottles of alcohol, laying in plain sight or the utensils and plates she used to serve his meals, on days he wore down all of their expenses for another swig of tepid, cheap alcohol.  

She knows the child in front of her now feels neither sadness nor remorse as people who call themselves her relatives step over, one after the other, offering words of specious pity and solace she has no use of.  

It was also the day she’d met her Grandma for the first time.  

The scene in front falls out from beneath her feet, traded for the sounds of defeated shrieks and futile violence in the tiny fists that try and shove off the social workers, from bodily dragging her away from the familiarity of her old house. The young girl screams and screams for Rafayel, begs them not to take her away, that she doesn’t want to live with her Grandma several cities across the seas; a gap so wide, how would she ever find the only person who had meant the entire world to her, once more? She hadn’t even told him she was leaving. They wouldn’t let her leave the house, for fear she might run away.  

Her head throbs in vicious pain, ominous tendrils of rooted fire curling through the recesses of her brain as she watches the girl’s — her — futile resistance. 

A gibbering shadow skates past the edges of her vision. She feels like she’s forgetting something direly important, skirting just past the edge of memory. 

The young girl never told the adults around her of the young Lemurian boy — bonded though they were. She knew of the dark whispers that coiled through the cesspool she lived within, how the Lemurians were a species, well-coveted for how steeply priced their bodies sold for, within the black market. 

Her fierce possession and numbing worry for her vulnerable Lemurian had kept her from ever revealing her thread in another’s presence. For how had any of the adults stepped up to be her protectors, ever, in the young girl’s life? She trusted no one, save for herself and her sole mer-friend. She'd promised him they’d stay together forever; she’d vowed upon the sole pair of glimmering seashells, they’d found sanded within their beach, that she’d marry him when they grew up. She had— 

Obsidian smoke curls about her limbs, seeps into her lungs; a slow, poisonous ingestion. The deep, dark dreary roar of a beast sounds from afar, within the recesses of her memories.  

“You abandoned me.” She whips on her heel, coming face to face with her young Lemurian, eyes listless, lightless.  

“No.” She totters away from the horror of her nightmares manifested.  

An ice-cold hand wraps about her torn sleeve, digits digging deep into her wound. She cries out in instinctive pain, wrenching at her arm in an effort to free it. Her wild gaze meets Rafayel’s. Older, far frigid; the present Rafayel looks at her with an insouciant emptiness, it tears at the heart bruising within her chest. “You abandoned me,” he repeats.  

His hand jams about her throat, lifting her clean off her feet. She throttles violently within his grasp, breaths coming in rapid, tapering hisses. “And then, like the rest of those shameless humans, you thought it wise to appear before my eyes once more.” The pressure upon her wind-pipe increases, bit by bit, forcing tears into wide, panicked eyes. “You wanted to capture me too, didn’t you? You're just like the rest of them.” Rafayel’s just ire, cleaves like knives shoved right beneath her breastbone, bleeding out her heart. 

It’s an illusion, Rafayel would never. A stray whisper catches at her ears.  

“Would I really never? Well, aren't your thoughts so convenient. Admit it, you’ve always known.” Rafayel’s gaze is dark in barely tamped wrath and disgust. “I despise you, you and all your kind.” 

“R-Rafayel...” The dull, grey curl of smoke — previously shifting in wait at the edges of her vision — approaches nearer, her defences swiftly waning underneath his assault. Fingers, she scraps bloody against his grip upon her throat, and yet he refuses to relent.  

“It would be better for you to perish here, no? You'll leave me free to live my own life then. I would no longer be shackled to you like some pet.”  

“Y-You were never—” 

A furious scarlet fire splinters a path through Rafayel — his body distorts out of existence for a moment before he gathers form once more. A surprised brow he raises in question at the interference.  

“Snap out of it!”  

Rafayel?  

Her swimming gaze hones in on her beloved, from across the indifferent Rafayel’s shoulder, surely another wraith of her mind; wide blown panic, turbulent within his gaze.  

“What do you think you’re doing believing that sham?” Another burst of Evol sparks across his fingers, aimed at the other Rafayel.  

“You must trust me, believe in me alone.” Another volley of enraged fire skewers through the Rafayel holding her captive — cleaving past him harmless — the latter views him as if he were an offending impediment. “That thing is not me. It’s trying to devour you!” 

“Shut up,” the colder Rafayel speaks, hand jamming tighter against her throat, causing precious breaths to come through stuttered wheezes.  

The other Rafayel steps forward, a desperate hand he holds outstretched for her; an electromagnetic interference rippling about his body, stalling his further motions. “You have to believe the truth in front of your eyes — believe me — to be free of its prison. I have never, not for a moment, held our past against you.”  

“An imposter,” the cruel one says.  

Rafayel drives another step forwards, through the whipping waves of the scape’s resistance, snicking wounds across his jaw, tearing at his clothes. “I don’t regret meeting you.” The gentle azure of his gaze sparks vivid in a deluge of emotions; misery, panic and hopeful sincerity commingling. You were — you have always been my greatest joy, my only muse.” 

The Rafayel that holds her captive bites out an inhumane bark, eyes fading swiftly into obsidian. “I hate you, I’ve always hated you.”  

“Do you remember,” Rafayel urges, heaving another step closer. “the seashells you used to weave into necklaces and put on me when we first met? You told me they made me seem as brilliant as a Sea God, your Sea God, when you did.”A splintered laugh escapes his mouth at the recollection. “Even when I told you the ocean’s gods didn’t wear necklaces made of shells.” 

His voice breaks, emotions raw and desperate within the throaty catch of it, dragging her down the spiral of fond memories. “And the songs you used to hum for us in that odd, off-note voice when you were happy, you’ve retained that silly habit long even into your adult years now.”  

Emotions spurt and tumble free-fall from the inky desolation of her heart, tearing open at the seams of doubts and guilt.  

“And when you are mad, the reckless storm that gathers at your face is endearing. When you forgive me just as easily, the smile that lights your face...” 

A distant rumble sounds through the scape of your illusions, world crumbling apart at the seams.  

“I remember it all, like irreplaceable ornaments, treasures. Without you, I—” He bites back, harsh, at his words. The curious blue sheen across his face, glimmers. 

Eyes that glisten in moisture that threatens to seep past damp lashes; Rafayel’s eyes fall shut in a scraped plea.  

Emotions fueled by the catch of a distraught mind though he were, his words snag, painful, at her throat, springing tears to flow free-fall, at the comfort of his tender confessions. She, too, remembered all there was to know about him, her Rafayel, because of how she adored him. His words and steadfast affection seeping gentle into her mind now, in swift recollection. 

The great, dark beast in front has long shed its false skins, rattling useless in the face of her realization; it wrenches away from her body as if burned. “Pestilent humans.” As it flees entirely from the scape of illusions, great, dark fractures spilling up the space with its departure. 

She drops towards the disintegrating floor, once released, heaving in great lungfuls of air. Rafayel — the wraith of her mind — lunges forward, snatching her body mid-air against his as they fall, with the demolition of the Wanderer’s illusions shattered from her mind.  

A deluging rush of remembrance; the exam, the Wanderer, of being dragged into darkness by the Deluge Wyrmlord tumbles back into a now clear mind. 

And this Rafayel, having stood witness to all her memories.  

He lands on nimble feet, upon the now revealed protofield of the Wanderer; the weight of his Evol, she feels, scatter into the air.  

“You’re injured.” He mourns softly, fingers glancing gentle against the abrasion of her throat from where the Wanderer choked her, down her bruised arm, the blood long staunched in dark red across the cut. 

“I’ll be fine.” She cradles his face within a careful palm, face softening in overwhelming gratitude. If only she, too, could tell him how much she truly loved him. 

Rafayel makes a skeptical sound of disapproval. A hand, he sifts up into her hair and curls about the back of her head. “Hold still.” And before she can finally think to question why a figment of her mind still persists outside the cast illusion, Rafayel is pressing his lips against hers, mouth moving to part hers until she feels warmth flow into her, the shock of his actions making her throat swallow around him on instinct. 

The dull throb at her arm, the cuts and bruises across her aching legs — breaths that seep in easier, with the patched abrasions of her throat — give way to strength as she witnesses her wounds stitch up, in disbelieving surprise. 

“A Lemurian’s essence holds healing properties,” He breathes, heated against her lips. “our tears, saliva—” He pauses. “You’ll feel better soon.” The fever of his skin beneath her grasping fingertips, his shallow breaths come in quick; the flush across his cheekbones feels much too corporeal to be mere figment of her imagination. 

Her eyes widen in disbelief, mind refusing to comprehend his presence. Restless hands tracing the shape of his firm body underneath hers; his neck, the strength of his shoulders, down the unyielding expanse of a solid chest. 

It just couldn’t be. 

“Are you... real?” She slips a palm about the curve of his cheek, index and finger pinching at the flesh. “You can’t be real, you can’t be here.” 

Rafayel chokes on an incredulous laugh. “What an inane question, can’t you tell, silly girl?” He sounds offended. 

A plethora of questions tumble within her mind as Rafayel bumps his forehead up against hers, moisture glistening like pearls upon his cheeks. “I can sense you. And I felt it, when I nearly lost you.” He grits out the words, chagrined; breath hitching in pain as if reliving a nightmare. 

Her heart shrivels at his admission, aching gaze tracing the outline of his Lemurian features. “But, I... I don’t understand. You look so different, Rafayel, what—” 

A great ominous roar sounds from the center of the protofield, the Wanderer now having recovered from its short rebuttal of having been torn away from its prey.  

Rafayel lets her down onto her feet cautiously. Taking her hand in his, his skin sits unbearably warm against hers, “Questions later. We have to get rid of that Wanderer right now. Come on.” 

She nods at him, the two turning to face the Wanderer before they fixate their stance. Hurtling forth in tandem towards the approaching monster; weapons materializing within firm fists. 

They rush, as one, at the large winged creature, aiming right against the base of its great talons. A shield thrown upon the Wanderer, comes half-way down with their first assault.  

Back against his, she feels him tackle down the monster’s onslaught of weaker Wanderers, unearthly fire blazing away at its minions. A shimmering, amethyst line of fetters gathers form with his Evol, to grasp about the Wanderer’s body as it rages. She feels his breaths coming in harsher, feels the way he tightens his body through each motion of offense against their enemy — in no condition to be fighting off a high-class Wanderer with the weight of his sickness slowing him down.  

She captures Rafayel’s wrist in hers, jolting him backwards. Lunging in front of him to take the Wanderer’s next full-bodied assault. “Rely on me, I’ll fight for us both!” She calls to him over her shoulder. 

She catches his mute moment of surprise, out the corner of her eye before he bursts into quiet laughter. “What a reliable bodyguard.” Curving a palm about her shoulder, his Evol, she feels resonating against hers in harmony. “But if you insist.” Weaving their Evols together to strengthen; the dark fetters that plunge forwards this time, chain about the Wanderer’s girth, firmer, breaking clean through another of its shields.  

The Wyrmlord screeches in crazed agony, ramming a heavy appendage straight for them. The two lunge in opposing directions to avoid the assault; Rafayel, a split second too slow to dodge as its claws catch at the side of his abdomen, tearing at his shirt.  

He hurtles heavily onto the ground, body rolling across the Protofield before he swiftly catches himself, teetering back on to unsteady legs. His pants come in harsher, the scales across his face glimmering in fevered sweat; his body’s condition holding him back.

“Rafayel!” She calls for him on an urgent shout, rushing the Wanderer from its side, to cleave clean through its shield of defense. “Don’t push yourself anymore and stay back! You aren’t well!” 

He shakes his head at her, holding his body high once more. His shallow wound, she sees, stitch up soon after, the incandescent cerulean glow of his scales striking against his features. “It’s not what you think it is.” Rafayel streaks forward just as the Wanderer attempts to take flight for a sweeping offensive. 

He springs for the monster, using the momentum of his run, punting hard off its body; vicious chains of static purple zipping through it, to bring it crashing down onto the ground. The Wanderer’s remaining shield shattered in one critical hit, bringing it down in a violent collision of great, dark wings and a massive scaled body, vulnerable to damage.  

“Now! Rafayel instructs. Coalescing the bulk of his powers into the clench of a fist, he lunges for the Wanderer; her own movements, complimenting against his. Raising their weapons up high, their Evols converge against the other’s in a final, galvanic purple blast of energy. 

The Wanderer screeches one final sound of agony before it skitters lifeless at the ground, its disintegration setting into tattered fragments of energy.

The protofield around them begins to wane, jagged shards of breakage appearing across the domed surface of it, as soon as the Wanderer falls. 

“It’s over.” She exhales, relief plucking sharp across the back of her breastbone.

“Let me take… a moment to catch my breath.” And with the sheer adrenaline of the fight holding him up now, gone, so too does Rafayel’s strength ebb from him entirely, as he pitches onto his feet. “Rafayel!”  Just as she dives forward to catch him within her arms before his body hits the ground. “Hey!”  

Rafayel’s breathing harder, the sweat that dampens his brow far more pronounced with the appearance of his Lemurian features, glimmering scales gradually fanning wider across his skin. “Stay with me, it’s over.”

And then she sees it, the flittering of vivid red, burning against his ring finger. Pulsing harsher with each labored sound of breath he endures through and her breath frosts within her lungs.

She feels the distant pattering of approaching footsteps just as Rafayel’s hot palm curves about her wrist in a possessive hold. “We have to get out of here. I need to get home.”  

The frantic calls of her name echo across the field; she lifts her head to catch sight of a pale-faced Gabriel, waving his hands at her from just across the area. She shouts at him to stay where he is, cradling Rafayel closer to her torso for fear of his scales being seen. 

In this moment, she cannot bring herself to care for anything except providing what Rafayel needs; the frenetic urgency to his words enough to have her obeying without questions asked.  

Calling for her teammate, once more, to let the others know they were both alright and that she’d be back at a later time before Rafayel urges her thoughts back to himself.

“That’s... enough. Come now.” He moans within her embrace, just as Gabriel utters an unintelligible question of confusion. Her Lemurian’s fingers spasming against hers, “Hold tight.” he grinds out, before they’re both engulfed in a florid sea of fire.  

X. FLOOD 

The two of them come crashing onto a hard, polished surface; Rafayel’s arms tightening about her body in protection, just as his shoulder connects with the floor, with their fall. Deposited into the empty safety of his room — she notes in shock — by his Evol already shriveling out of existence.  

He shudders in visible pain beneath her, just as she scrabbles to get off his body. “I’m sorry—” The ferocity of his strength, however, hauls her back, bodies crushed against each in a firm, searing line. 

Rafayel’s pants rattle hot against the skin of her neck; the harsh rise and fall of his chest, she feels burn against her own, even through their clothes. He keeps them enclosed within that sweltering space of silence for several, long moments. 

Reaching her fingers out to comb through his unruly hair, in comfort, the adrenaline of their fight having fast shifted into worry for his health.  

Why had he decided to come after her in the fevered state he was in? How had he even known to come for her? The questions, unanswered, careened about in an endless cycle within her mind. 

Her Rafayel shifts, face sinking deeper against her breasts. Nosing, delicate, at the space exposed by her open collar as he inhales, long. His previous labored breaths seemingly soothed in her proximity, as he continues to breathe her in.

Her next gasp soughs past her lips on a catch of barely tamped sound, Rafayel’s gaze rolls up to meet hers — hot and piercing.  

“Rafayel,” She cups a hand about his warm cheek. “Let’s get you off the floor now, you’ll worsen your fever.”  

He knocks his cheek further into the space of her palm, lashes quivering shut, in comfort. “I told you... it’s not a fever ruining my body.” He repeats the words he’d uttered to her back in the Protofield.  

“It’s you.” Her mind jostles to a screeching halt.  

“What?” 

Rafayel’s body tightens beneath hers, the lean strength of his arms coming about to lift, with an ease entirely unexpected of a sick man. He moves them both onto the expanse of his bed, seating himself down, with her firm on his lap. “I’ve been going through these feverish bouts because you’ve been calling for me.” He heaves. “I’d never experienced them before because we’d never—” his words break. Rafayel’s fingers slip a slow, cautious path along the base of her spine, it makes her shiver above him. “I could’ve lost you,” he murmurs, “back there.” Hauling her close once more to sink his face into the crook of a tense shoulder as he breathes her in deep.

“I’m here now, I’m fine.” She soothes a gentle palm down the line of his back, the mild quivers that take it, muted into rest with her strokes. “Thank you for coming for me earlier.”

“Of course I did.” His grip upon her body tightens. “You called for me.” 

She rakes her fingers through his hair. “I... did not call for you, Rafayel. Even if I did, it’s impossible for you to have heard—”  

“Silly girl.” He captures her hand within his hair, entwining his fingers in between hers. “Do you not see?” Bringing their palms up close together for her to witness—

Red flitters about her ring finger, vivid — her heart jostles over its beats — the line of it longer and far corporeal, glimmering within the dark of his room, spiraling an undulating path up, up.  

Finding its other half, caught against the base of Rafayel’s finger. Her breath seizes within her throat at the sight, wary gaze tracing the line of the previously absent thread against their fingers. Not daring to believe the implications of the sight and what Rafayel too was saying. “How could this— I thought we were—”

“A Lemurian’s very being is set to perceive their beloved, in their entire capacity. Without exception.” He brings their entwined fists up to his mouth, feathering a kiss onto her knuckles apiece. “And I have not changed since the first moment I met you.”  

The heat of his words is within her head, the frenzied hammering of her heart within her throat. She dares not breathe too loud, dares not speak for fear of this precious moment shattering. The inference of his words could not be clearer and yet. A fleeting recollection of the Wanderer’s cast illusion comes to mind, the cold Rafayel’s unforgiving gaze flashing against hers.  

“Has your heart then... changed?” He asks, the wavering azure of his gaze fixated firm upon hers.

She caresses the back of her fingers against his cheek, down the line of his jaw. “It has not, not for a single moment in all these years but—” She whispers. But could you ever forgive me for leaving you on your own? 

“I’m not asking you for anything beyond that. I don’t care for it.” He shifts a thumb against the line of her lips dampened with a nervous swipe of her tongue. “I’m asking to know if the woman I love is willing to accept me again.”  

Her breath hitches within her throat. Turbulent emotions burst forth within her chest at his words, a sweet ache quivering at the back of her breastbone, the magnitude of his words she isn’t able to comprehend. Unable to believe the words she’s been wanting to hear him say, all this time, leaving that beautiful mouth. 

She surges forward onto his lap, desperate to answer the man who’s entrusted his heart so keenly into her hands. “I never stopped in the first place.” She speaks, adamant. Her fingers brush at his face, down the length of his neck to hold. The pads of them grazing the beauty of his scales, glimmering within the moonlight that shafts into the quiet dark of his room through the gauzy curtains. “I’ve loved only you all these years and by god, Rafayel, I don’t think I could ever love anyone but you.” She’s out of breath and dizzy in love, it’s a feeling she never wants to clamber out of, if it means he’d continue to look at her, just the way he is now.

She hears the audible throttle of his breath; a low, anguished sound, as if she’d told him something he’d considered entirely impossible. Rafayel had seemed so sure of her feelings, and yet, he looks at her now, with a relieved sort of devotion and desire. “Which god?” His whisper is sultry, his gaze along with the heat of his skin beneath have her feeling faint within his embrace, the flex of his arm tightening its hold about her waist.  

She tips her head closer, her lips shaping her answer a mere breadth from his. “My Rafayel, my own Sea God.” She braves a kiss against his mouth. “I love you.” She confesses, “I love you so—” 

Rafayel heaves forwards, filching the rest of her words right against the desperate tongue he sweeps into her mouth. Lips moving against each other in a mesh of reckless teeth and tongue, refusing to release from each other. Her fingers catch at the fabric of his collar, in a bid to drag him closer. Rafayel’s palms, a stable hold about the flare of her hips as she bucks against him in instinctual desire at the feeling of his tongue sweeping into her mouth. Her core grazes against the distinct line of his stiff arousal, straining beneath the placket of his trousers.  

Rafayel moans a low, throaty sound against her damp lips. “This is your fault,” he whispers, feverish. “You’re the one who has left me so vulnerable.” 

The turbulent seas within his gaze burn luminous, the gentle florid pinks of his irises swallowed within the blue that takes them. The scarcity of his scales now fleshing a path from his face. Down the graceful arc of his neck and across the expanse of his clavicle. Disappearing just under the line of collar of his shirt. She treks a reverential path about his beautiful Lemurian features; a shuddered exhale leaving Rafayel, in his inexplicable state of heightened sensitivity. “Do you know what’s wrong with me?” He seizes her exploring wrist within his gentle hold, halting her movements. His chest heaves once more in vehement, anguished pants, his skin impossibly hot beneath hers.

“No, tell me what’s happening to you. Why are you—” 

“—so sexually aroused?” He supplies, mouth skewing into a smile with the hot flush of her cheeks.  

“...I was going to ask about your humane features unraveling but that too. You're... burning up.”  

He sighs against her glancing touch, at the scales of his neck. “Each year, when the moon shifts phases and the tides ebb from the shores, bonded Lemurians go through an inevitable period of increased sexual activity. We are,” he pulses a delicate kiss to the inside of her captured wrist. “extremely vulnerable during this time, our base appetites, near insatiable, unless we bear it through with our bonded mates.” 

A streak of desire spurts within her chest, seeping down into her abdomen to pool in between her legs. “So then, all this time, you were...” 

“‘Sick’”, he continues, “because I wasn’t funneling my desires with my mate.” He tugs her close by her imprisoned hand, murmuring, hot, within her ear. “within my mate.” 

A low moan of desire breaks from her lips at his licentious provocation.  

“I’ve never experienced one before.” He confesses heavily. “I wasn’t sure what it was, when it started; the time of the year seemed to coincide with my symptoms but we weren’t bonded... not to my knowledge.” Rafayel’s gaze treks against the shimmering line of their thread, re-connected. “It’s a rarer miracle for it to find itself weaved against the ones it broke in between, more so than it is for the thread to re-emerge in between new lovers.” He laughs; a low self-deprecating sound. “Fate really played me for its fool.”

She murmurs his name, gathering his hand closer to press a reverent kiss against his ring of red at his finger. “I love you, Rafayel.” she reiterates, dragging his wide, wavering gaze back towards herself, letting the irrefutable truth of her words sink in. That it’s not Fate that tugs at the cogs of their bond now, but her feelings, unchanged as they’ve remained.  

“Promise me,” he implores. “Promise you’ll continue to see me the same, no matter how many years pass us by. Promise you’ll stay by my side this time?”  

Her answer rushed, eager, yearning to soothe. “Yes. Yes, I will. I want to stay by your side.” Stealing her arms about the broad strength of his shoulders, to pull closer.  

“Don’t let me go.” Rafayel breathes. Their mouths crush against each other in a consuming kiss; an urgent prayer he makes of her name. 

Each time she squirms atop his lap with the force of his kisses, her increasingly damp core shifts in glancing strokes above his clothed length. Her fingers jolt about Rafayel’s shoulders, sinking harsh into the skin through cloth, with a particularly ruinous lap of his tongue into her mouth.  

Her fingers fly for the clasps of his shirt, rushing down the length of buttons, generously revealing the unyielding expanse of his chest, the line of his toned abdomen. Briefly trekking the warmth of his skin with the pads of inquisitive digits before her mouth follows suit, drifting from Rafayel’s to kiss a path across the firm expanse of his chest. Slicking a gentle tongue right above his heart in devoted gratitude for the one who loves her so wholly. 

She glides a slow palm down his abdomen, appreciating the tremulous clench of muscles, underneath her touch. Her coveting digits pause at the metal clasp of his belt, gaze canting up to meet Rafayel’s in silent request.  

“Yes,” he grinds out, through arduous pants of her name. “It’s yours, I’m yours, do as you please.” She pushes off his lap, dropping onto her knees in between his legs at his affirmation. Rafayel’s breaths hitch higher within his throat, at the snag of her fingers reaching to swiftly undo the fastenings of his belt, pulling it clean from its confines to discard it onto the floor of his room. Her palm slips down the line of his zipper, stimulating him impossibly harder as she works to release him from the confines of his trousers.  

Until Rafayel sits there; her devastatingly alluring Lemurian, near-naked, save for the shirt that sags against broad shoulders, and the remaining modesty of his underwear. She takes a moment to control her shaky breaths before her thumbs slip under the waistband of his final barrier, keeping him from her gaze. Sliding the garment in one careful stroke, down the strength of his legs until she tosses it off to the side. His cock springs to full length, freed from its confines, hard; it curves, slight, towards his abdomen, the gentle slick of minute bluish scales running along the underside of his shaft. A thing of beauty, just as its owner.

The twitch of his length within her grasp is palpable as she moves to work an admiring fist about it. A lone bead of pre-cum sits upon the flared head of his cock; her tongue darts out in instinctual rapacious desire to sweep it into her mouth. The sweet-salt tang of him she hums against, in a soft moan, “I love how you taste.” 

Long, tapered digits thread through the fall of her locks, curving a loose fist at the back of her head. Her eyes traveling up his torso to meet his, bright in aroused impatience. It makes her want to flip that expression over into something entirely different. She tips forwards, lips falling apart to take the head of him into her eager mouth, just as Rafayel rewards her with his first approving groan. Tongue slicking about the head of him to lick, down, at a vein just underneath the flare of his head. His hips judder up into her face with the action, slipping more of him into her welcoming throat. “What’re you doing to me?” He moans, in gravelly rapture. “Your mouth feels divine.”  

She feels the clench of her own abdomen at his praise, wetness seeping further into the cloth of already damp panties. Her mouth slips further down the thick length of him, working him deeper into her throat as she tries and relaxes against the instinctive gagging intrusion of him. A shuddering string of words, he makes of her name, in overwhelming arousal, help her along on his cock. Until she is sliding about the length of him, back and forth, tongue drooling its spit down the expanse of his cock she cannot fit into herself.  

His fingers have tightened into a near-spasm within her hair, not nearly enough it hurts, holding her fixated in place; the pads of his digits tracing soothing, encouraging circles about her scalp as she sucks at his cock. “You’re doing so — agh — so well.” The fingers of his free hand, Rafayel brings to curve, delicate, about her jaw, tipping up; her eyes finding his, on silent instruction.  

He looks entirely gone, the rugged flush of his cheeks enticing as it dashes across his ears. Springs down the crescent of his neck and across the firm expanse of his chest. Rafayel’s cock hits the back of her throat on her next intake; she swallows against the heady swell of him, deliberate, measured, refusing to relent her gaze as she does. It immediately has the effect she desired; Rafayel’s next breath rattling out of his chest on a wrenched groan of pleasure, the blue of those inhuman eyes glistening brilliant as he propels his hips into her, in a reflexive bid for more.

His fingers skid along the underside of her jaw, where mouth meets throat, grazing for the place he knows she has him settled inside. A long, tapered index, he flicks down the line of her neck — she swallows on instinct, dragging another choked moan out of him as reward — before it comes to rest at the buttoned collar of her shirt. “Off.” He murmurs, hazily. Deftly unfastening open the first few buttons before he curves his index beneath her collar to tug. “Take it off. I want to see all of you when I come.” Pooling a blush into her cheeks at his sweetly sensual appeal. 

She pulls her shirt over her head, lured along by the nimble hands that drag her close, reaching around her, to undo the clasp of her bra before he coaxes that too, off her body. Mouth falling slack, cerulean flashing vivid, in flared arousal and want; to witness the heaving tremble of her breasts as she descends on him once more. 

Rafayel eases stray locks of her hair back against her ear to better afford himself the view of pink, moist lips parting to swallow around him once more in renewed enthusiasm. 

Her hands flitter about the length of him, slick slide aided by spit and pre-cum as she moves to work her tongue around the tip; the broad of it she teases at the slit, making Rafayel shudder above her. Slipping, slow and sure, down the generous length of him, insatiable desires flooding in the clench of empty walls, for the brimming taste of him within her throat.

Rafayel’s pants have turned far harsher, sporadic in impending release. She continues to ease her tongue about his length, her palms soothing down the tense muscle of his thighs before she moves to cup her fingers about his balls. “I’m—” Rafayel snaps.  

The skin beneath her fingers tightening, as she sucks about his shaft, to help him along the final stretch of his incoming release, swallowing up to the base of him in one forceful go. Her throat constricting in protest at the rough intrusion. Rafayel groans out loud — frenzied palms pressing at either sides of her head to force her off of his cock, just as he comes in thick, spurting strokes, across her cheeks, her nose; down the curve of her chest.  

“I can’t take it any longer,” he rasps. Hauling her onto her feet by her arm, he tumbles her back onto the cool, crumpled sheets of his bed. 

She barely has but a single moment to catch her breath — more from the surprise of his vehemence — before the shorts of her uniform, are being wrested off her body in the fervent catch of desperate fingers. Rafayel gets the material half-way down her thighs before his long-frayed patience snicks off entirely; a cool rubescent fire licks up clean across the material, blazing the offending cloth away entirely.  

She’s left dumbstruck, pleasure-addled mind wrung in between faint amazement at his precise Evol manipulation and mild offense at his ruination of her uniform. “We’ll get you a new one.” He heaves — as if he’s read her mind — in between kisses laid onto the instep of her bare leg, working up across her calf. “As long as you let me have you right now, I’ll do whatever you want.” 

Her breath seizes within her throat at his sultry request. Rafayel’s palms trace about the shell of her hips, curving about the sides of her abdomen before he caresses them up her stomach, pressing, light, into the yielding flesh. Her body shudders beneath his testing caresses. One of his hands steals down the cusp of her clothed mound, index and middle stroking at her labia above panties, before he skates them in between her folds. The two moan in unison; to feel how drenched she is for him.  

Her body squirms against his, begging for more of that sweet friction. Hips bucking up into his hand to force more of him against her aching slit. Rafayel towers above her, the delectable flush across that slack, sensual expression has her fluttering in on emptiness, her hole aching to be filled completely — as if she too has taken on the fever of his desires, writhing in phantom heat. Her drifting mind wonders for a fleeting moment, if a human bonded to a Lemurian could experience the mind-numbing lust of their cycles, along with their partners. That stray thought, she believes, with each passing second he riles her up in delirious rapture.  

Holding himself above her upon the crook of a folded arm, Rafayel descends for her mouth, covetous tongue savoring a moan against hers. She feels the hot, wet strength of his cock — already firmed to stone once more — rolling against the inside of her thigh. Just as he slips a long, tapered digit past her underwear, to curve it directly against her soaked opening. Her hips jump violently at the contact, her squeal of arousal Rafayel pilfers against a throaty chuckle. “You’re so wet.” Pressing up into her to make his point, the audible squelch of her slick, loud within the quiet night. “Are you enjoying this, my love?” 

“Isn’t,” she gasps, heat gathering, strong, into her face. “isn’t the answer obvious?” 

Rafayel hums, the skew of his smile tugging higher; a slow, relishing tongue he runs across his upper lip, end to end. And before she can think to parse the intention behind that wicked gaze, Rafayel’s palms are cupping about the soft of her ass —  digits pulsing into pliant flesh — to shear her underwear off, lifting her hips up to shove his tongue in between her legs. 

Her next sound leaves her on a shriek of pleasure, blaring stars wheeling across her field of vision. Fervid digits she convulses into the yank of his hair, in a manner that has to hurt and yet Rafayel makes no move to budge back, mouth sinking deeper against the wet flood of her heat. He curves his tongue up against her fluttering walls, sweeping at the slick. Nosing a stifled hum against her clit and that is all it takes for her over-sensitised body to break, spasming into a prompt, violent orgasm that siphons the breath from her lungs and the voice from her throat.  

Dazed in her floating awareness of the scrupulous mouth that continues to suck at her folds, laving away all of her released desire for himself. And when she sinks a quivering hand into tousled locks in whimpered protests of being too sensitive, all Rafayel offers her is an impish chuckle pressed into the soft of her thigh, right beside her mound. “You had your fun, didn’t you? It’s my turn now.” 

With that sensuous warning uttered, his mouth returns its attentions to her weeping slit once more, lips closing about the nub at her apex, sucking gentle at the bead. The jump of her hips Rafayel conquers, in the indolent arm he shackles about her waist, fingers reaching to hold hers across the quivering pliance of her stomach.  

The broad of his tongue laps a path above her entrance, catching at any stray slick that leaks from her before he eases the tip of it back into her slit, relishing the clench of her walls in a throaty groan. He continues to prolong that titillating torture of his, edging his tongue at just the entrance of her pussy, till her body burns once more within the kindled flames of a cresting orgasm.  

“Rafayel, there — hah — right there. Rafayel.”  Sliding that tormenting tongue into her walls once more, to her relief, to the mewls of his name flooding like rain from a parched tongue, the spasm of her fingers she smothers against their entwined digits at her abdomen.  

“Sing higher,” his stuttered groans smothered enthusiastic, into the drench of her slit. Tongue curling up against her frontal walls, in a drag that has her fracturing under his mouth once more. Tears sprung to lust-hazed eyes from the overwhelming arousal wrought upon her body under Rafayel’s dexterous tongue.  

He exhales a pleased sigh against her mound, each heated breath causing shivers to jump across tender skin. A kiss, Rafayel lays right against her swollen clit. 

“Once more.” Her walls clench in wrecked protest, a whimper leaving her throat at his whispered words. “Give me just one more.” He entreats. “I need your taste in my mouth again.” A flitter of kisses he strokes against the line of her pelvis, her mound; dark gaze rolling up to meets hers from in between her legs. She flushes at the intensity of their contact held, without mercy. Her wordless squeeze about her hand given, is all the permission her hungering Lemurian requires to sink back towards her wet heat.  

Tapered digits reach to shape a path about the sensitive bead of her pleasure, pinching in between steady, pleasurable strokes. Before they descend lower, coveting towards her fluttering entrance. Rafayel presses up, gentle, into her walls to coax wetness onto his digits with each drenched thrust of his fingers into her.  

His hand releases from hers, palm drifting up across the plane of her body to cup about a pliant breast. Fingers caressing a circular path about her areola in soft, stimulating strokes and she quivers at the sensation, breaths coming in short, stifled bursts of air.  

Rafayel’s mouth closes about her clit, just as the arch of his fingers hit at a particularly hot, sensitive spot within her pussy; walls spasming about his fingers, swallowing him in. His name soughs past her lips on whimpered gasps with each steady thrust of him up into her walls.  

The pads of his digits tweak about the puckered bead of her breast, thumb denting gentle at the bud, sending a jolt of arousal straight in between her legs.  

Rafayel continues to lap her up, dutiful; his lashes descending in pleased satisfaction just as her third, mind-numbing release crests through her body, leaving her skin a drenched, ruined mess Rafayel sucks at, in throaty moans of delight.  

“Rafayel,” she urges, unable to stand the searing desire he’s put inside her, body hungering for the heat of his cock in desolate emptiness. The overwhelming desire to feel his heat flooding into her, with how long he’s strung her dry for himself. She catches his face in between tremulous digits, pulling him from in between her legs to meet his gaze, dark in fervent desire. “I need you inside me now.”  

Heated obscurity scatters momentarily from his eyes at her fevered request, hips rolling against hers so she feels the hot strength of his arousal brush against her inner thigh; her gasps breaking into the air, at that brief second of contact. Burying her next moan in the vicious bite of teeth at his clavicle, when his cock ghosts across her mound, so close to where she wants him. “If you’re sure you want this...” He groans in ardent murmurs against her mouth.  

Her clambering response is swift and eager. “I want this, I want you.”  

“I’ll let you have me,” he relents in between their wet kisses. “this time, all of me. So drown with me, my beloved bride. Love me.” 

Just as he snaps his hips forwards, the head of his cock pressing her open for himself. The delectable stretch of him, so easy within the drenched warmth of her body as it ravenously sucks at him, all the way in. Rafayel’s searing groan of pleasure, he breaks against her jaw; mouthing, mindless, at the taut skin.  

The union of their bodies, have left them both winded, without breath to draw into aching lungs; several moments they take in between heated gazes and consuming kisses, unmoving. Growing accustomed to this new, exquisite feeling of being so deeply intertwined into each other, she feels she could live like this against him for the rest of her life.  

Until Rafayel begins to move and her world explodes into turbulent sparks of blinding pleasure, unlike anything she’s quite experienced before. His hands are upon her body, covetous digits flittering in between them to touch at dewy skin. Testing his touch against the trembling give of her breasts. Mouth capturing a pert nipple into his mouth, to suck until she keens underneath him.  

Her ankles hook about the base of his spine, dragging Rafayel’s propulsions deeper into her. A stuttered moan, she throttles out of him, at the stimulation before his hand steals about her ass to lift her lower body entirely off the bed. Angling his hips, Rafayel’s thrusts turn impossibly deeper, with the assistance offered in their new position; his pelvis grinding flush against hers on each fevered plunge. “You’re perfect around me, so very — hah — warm,” he grinds out in heedless praise, hips snapping against her harder, in rising intensity, in chase of a hovering orgasm.  

She moans in appreciation around the tongue he slips into her slack mouth in yearning want. “Rafayel,” she chokes out. “I’m so close.”  

“Me too,” he groans, shifting his weight forwards to lean against the crook of his arm at her side. His fingers trek up a path against her slack arm, digits entwining through hers, the line of their red thread flickering in between them both as they approach the crest of their combined pleasures.  

“I love you,” she sobs in between quivering gasps; his gaze crinkling in warmed affection and desire so acute, it drags another whimper out of her.  

“I love you.” Rafayel declares, into the catch of his kisses against her mouth, her cheeks, down the crescent of her jaw. Laving a kiss into the curve of her neck in a worrying bite of teeth, marking her for his own. He switches his pace once more, cock spearing up against her frontal walls in frenzied thrusts. “Come for me,” he beseeches. 

Jaw falling slack in a daze of undulating desire when she obliges at the heated scrap of his words, tumbling over the edge in an orgasm so vehement, her spine arcs clean off the bed. “You’re so good for me.” He worships.

Cresting waves of pleasure, she rides in the hard clench of her walls against Rafayel’s throbbing cock, pulsating hot within her until he too follows soon after. An incomprehensible swell of his cock inside, rising with its pulsations, has her gasping out a low, keening sound at the aching stretch of her pussy, it prolongs her high onto wondrous, searing moments of dizzy elation. Her toes curling into the sheets as the steady bulge of him catches at her walls and snags inside, hot spurts of cum surging into her, so much of it, she feels light-headed from how stuffed he has her. Just as Rafayel’s head falls low, on a loud, long groan of release.

Their damp breaths break against each other’s mouth for several moments that follow after, as they try and muster their senses back to themselves. Her fingers tracing absent, soothing circles along the curve of Rafayel’s spine until his trembling body stills to a gentle lull above her, quieted in the wake of their vehement orgasms.

A strange, fascinating imprint, throbs scarlet right above his heart — in the fleeting likeness of a fish — just as Rafayel’s rattling breaths abate. Captivated fingers she ventures, to trace against the edges of the mark. “...What is this, Rafayel?”  

“A sign of Lemurian loyalty.” A quiet smile tips across his face at the question.

The swell of breathless surprise, she knows is upon her face. “My devotion, here on, it’s yours to do with, as you please.” A kiss he buries into her palm in overwhelming affection. “I’m allowing myself to be trapped by you.” 

A low sob of adoration breaks from her throat at the words, just as the proof of his vow fades fast into his skin. A hand, she brings about his neck, to haul him down against her, to treasure a kiss right above where his heart thrums its beats, elated desire burning warm within her chest.  

Rafayel moves above her, maneuvering their positions until she rests at her side, within the circle of her arms, bodies still conjoined. His cock — she realizes with dazed shock — is still hard within her body. “Are you afraid?” He asks, gentle fingers carding through the mussed tresses of her hair. “I’ll need you much more times before I’m sated, you know.”  

She shakes her head at him, palm moving to cradle against his cheek. “I want all of what you have to give me, Rafayel. I’ll take it all.” 

He drags her closer by the hips at her affirmations; his touch along the back of her ass tending a slow fire back up within her weary body, as he moves to hoist her leg up against the cut of his hip.  

And she lets him show her just how profound a Lemurian’s devotion to his beloved truly runs, throughout the entirety of the night and into the greeting of dawn — a depth as unbounded as that of the Oceans.

End Notes: Tagging as requested: @samanthagnicole , @catboi-anon , @bitches4lifebro

If you’d like to be tagged in my future stories, you can fill this short form here.

You can also find me on Ao3 and twitter, if you’d like to scream with me about hot characters.

[jennifer-jeong]

Smut | AFAB!Reader Voice Message

SUMMARY He's on a work trip and you decide to record him a little gift

CONTENT NSFW, 18+, smut, assigned female at birth (AFAB) reader, m and f masturbation, sex toy usage, orgasm, implied relationship, ALL CHARACTERS ARE 18+

WORD COUNT: 1278

GOJO SATORU, KAMO CHOSO, AVENTURINE, RAFAYEL, MARIUS VON HAGEN

It was a nice evening, the sun was just setting and there was a nice breeze coming through the window of your apartment that you shared with your lovely boyfriend. He was on a work trip so you were feeling a bit lonely and also a bit… needy. Yeah it had only been a week but could you really blame yourself? You were ovulating, of course you kinda needed him. So, sitting up in bed and feeling a bit cheeky, you decide to record him a little message. A video message felt like a bit too much of an endeavor so you settled on an audio message. After preparing your favorite “materials” you pressed record.

He was only a few time zones away so it wasn’t too late at night for him yet. He heard the notification come up on his phone and read it over.

Heyyyy, I’ve been missing you so I made this for you cuz I thought you might be missing me too pookieee <3 enjoy with headphones ;)

Your boyfriend raised an eyebrow and then smiled, realizing what you had probably done. He was in his hotel room for the night so he figured he’d get ready for bed and take a little listen and indulge himself.

After situating himself in bed in his pj’s (sweatpants and a white t-shirt), he replied to your text.

Hey pretty girl, miss you too <3 I’m about to give it a listen 😏

You liked the message and waited for his response, having already finished yourself.

After seeing your reaction, he put in his earbuds and turned off his light, setting his phone down on the nightstand. He pressed play, closed his eyes, and your pretty voice filled his ears.

“Hey baby” you said out of breath already. “I miss you- mmmphff” his eyes shot open and his cock twitched. Your heavy breathing and light moans sending a wave of lust through his body as he swallowed hard.

“hah ngh… miss you a lot… hah- wish you were here- mmm!” His eyes started to roll back into his head as he clenched his jaw, hands sliding down to palm his already half hard cock.

“Wish this was you inside me,” you said, followed by moans. “You always fill me up s’gooood… nothing feels the same.” He could hear your vibrator buzzing in the background of the audio, turning him on even more knowing that you were actually getting yourself off just thinking about him. He threw his head back, pushing it into the pillow thinking about how you were fucking yourself with a dildo and upset that it wasn’t his dick. He let out a light moan at the thought and touched himself through his pants, painfully hard at this point.

“Only you make me feel that good baby, I really need you,” he could hear your small “ah’s” and the occasional “mmph” between your sentences. “I’ll make you feel s’good when you’re back,” that made him roll his eyes back again, blinking slow and with lidded eyes thinking about you.

“Sorry this is all I can do for you now baby,” he started pulling down his sweats and boxers, “...the only way I can help get you off.” He groaned when he finally freed his cock out of the confines of his pants.

“Bet you’re already all hot and bothered hm?” you giggle “not that I mind.” He moaned at your slight teasing. “Thinking about it actually turns me on more- ngh,” he started to stroke himself, his tip sensitive and leaky because of you.

“Mmmmm fffucckkkk” you moaned lowly “m’ close daddy.” He let out a shaky sigh hearing the pet name, it was so fucking filthy that it was erotic to him but he still loved it and you did too.

You continued to edge yourself closer and closer to the edge in the recording and he followed suit. Your moans got more and more whiny and loud, barely able to think of more dirty talk for him because your brain was in overdrive focusing on all the stimulation. He adored this part of the recording though, just listening to you pleasure yourself, saying the occasional “feels s’good” or “yes” between needy whines.

Your already fast breathing picked up a minute or two later and he noticed it, knowing that you were already close. “P-please cum with me,” you sobbed out, “I need ittt… hgnhh.”

Your boyfriend cursed under his breath trying not to let out too much noise in the hotel room. But it was so difficult when you made him so sensitive and you weren’t even here. He sped up his hand, having it now well lubricated with a mixture of precum and saliva he spit onto his hand. The erotic wet sounds of him stroking himself paired perfectly with your recording to turn him on to the absolute max.

“I’m thinking about you,” your voice starts again, clearly shaky. “How it feels when we cum t-together mmm,” you say through labored breathing. At this point you’ve managed to bring him to the edge with you, he’s bucking his hips upwards, fucking his fist imagining it was your gummy pussy squeezing him so heavenly like you always do. His hair is starting to stick to his forehead slightly as his body continues to overheat from all the pleasure. He grabs his shirt and pulls it up to hold between his teeth preemptively, not wanting to stain his shirt and also to muffle any moans that escape.

“Fuckkk- ugh- mmm!” you cry through the phone as his body tenses, abs spasming as he fucks his fist and free hand gripping the sheets. “G-gonna… gonna cum!” you babble as you breathe heavy into the mic, each moan rising in pitch until your breath hitches, letting out loud groans as your waves crash over you. “hh- ah! c-cumming! hmmnnnnn cummingg nghhh” he hears in his ears, throwing him over the edge with you as he thinks about how your walls clench and twitch on him when you cum. How you gush arousal all over him when you finish on his cock. His own breathing has sped up at this point as he bites down on his shirt and lets out a strained “f-fuck!” and moans your name quietly. Ropes of cum cover his torso as his hips stutter upwards into his hand. His legs are shaky as he comes down from his high, riding through it with slow strokes, almost overstimulating himself since you were still coming down.

Slowly your breathing slowed and you ended the recording with a quiet “love you baby.” He took his earbuds out and blinked a few times, taking deep breaths as he lays there, enjoying his afterglow and also thinking a bit of “wow… well that just happened.” He stays in that moment a while longer before grabbing the nearby tissue box to clean himself up and run to the washroom quickly before settling back down in bed to text you a reply.

Holy fuck I’m saving that Omg did you like it I fucking loved it wow You really just made me that for free LMFAO mm hmm just for you baby Don’t worry I’ll be sure to give you a payment in another way plus the tip of course Idk if the pun makes that better or worse. ANYWAYS ilysm babyyy I’m glad you liked ittt :) I love you sososo much too pretty girl, can’t wait to see you so I can love you properly in person For now sleep well though, good night <3 Hehe MWAH I’m looking forward to it sleep well too baby, good nighttttt <3

|| MASTERLIST ♡ || Thank you for reading! ||

[chaos-in-deepspace]

L&DS Boys: Suspected Smut | 18+

Eeeeeeey my first written request for this blog homies! The request was asking for a scenario with the boys where they walk in on the reader either reading or writing a smutty novel that's based off their myths. Also make it crack. So here we go. I'm going to post a small, separate one later that has a Zayne attempt (had to write his twice) since I managed to make it slightly angsty somehow and it was such a stark contrast when read with the other two boys.

♡(ᓀ‸ᓂ)♡ Disclaimer: This is an original fan work for “Love and Deepspace”. Do not repost on other platforms or plagiarize. All characters shown in this fic is 18+. ♡(ᓀ‸ᓂ)♡ Warnings: Erotica Novels, Teasing, Crack Treated Seriously, Suggestive Scenarios, Mentions of Monster Fucking, Dark Romance Mentions, Reader ♡(ᓀ‸ᓂ)♡ Pairings: Zayne x Reader, Rafayel x Reader, Xavier x Reader

Blog Information | Masterlist

Xavier

“What are you reading?” The voice made you scream as you slammed the book you had out shut. Your heart racing as you turned to Xavier in shock. He seemed just as surprised as you, his eyes now wide as though he had been the one caught doing something he shouldn’t.

“Words.” You said with a shrug. Now Xavier was curious, trying to see what you were reading. You hid the book behind your back and cleared your throat, “Seriously, it’s nothing important.” You tried convincing him.

He stared at you for a minute longer, then his posture relaxed. “If you really don’t wish to tell me, I won’t pressure you.” Xavier looked away dejectedly and oh goodness does it make you feel bad when you see him like that. Those pouty little eyes of his made your heart beat without fail, and they were now trained on the floor as he was prepared to leave you alone.

You let out the longest, most annoyed groan as you took the book out again. Xavier perked up, looking to see what it was. He read the title “A Luminous Lover”, his face was confused as he flipped it around to read the description. As his eyes skimmed the back recognition seemed to finally cross him.

Xavier turned to you, “Are you reading a romance novel involving Lumiere?” He said and you sighed, glad that the back of the book didn’t have anything too explicit on it. 

You sucked in your lips and nodded your head, “Ya, ya I am.” Your voice cracked a bit as you said this. Xavier seemed to be perplexed, his eyes shining in confusion and hurt. You then watched in horror as he opened the book up to read a bit.

He opened it to a random page, however with the contents of the book you just knew there was a 50/50 chance he’d see it. With how his eyes widened and mouth opened slightly, you knew he had found a scene, “You’re reading an…erotic novel about Lumiere.” He corrected himself.

You let out another groan, “Fuck, fine, yes I am.” You said, going to grab the book, “You can’t blame me for wanting to be railed by Lumiere on a rooftop while he tells me how I’m being so good for him and absolutely destroying me until all I can do it moan is name several times and cry while looking at the stars because it feels so good!” You said all in one breath, panting at the end of your long sentence.

Xavier stood shocked for a moment before smirking, “Then why read a book about it?” He asked, his eyebrow going up as he looked down at you, “You have something better at home, there’s no need to read this.”

You whined a bit, “But consider some of these things are downright impossible or…not plausible I should say. Things that can only happen or are acceptable in a novel like this.” You tried explaining. You managed to finally snatch the book from him and held it to your chest.

“We won’t know if it’s impossible until we try.” Xavier said, his hand ghosting over your waist now.

“You gonna put on the Lumiere costume?” You finally asked and he seemed to be almost offended.

“You'd rather be in Lumiere’s bed?” He asked, looking away.

“Xavier, you adorable dork, you are Lumiere.” You huffed, “And it’s called roleplaying. You’d be playing the role of Lumiere, and I’d be playing the role of a whore who worships your dick. Sound good?”

Xavier took a moment and just shook his head, “You truly are something else, starlight.” He said as he pulled you closer, “I won’t put on the costume, however if you’d like to be railed on a rooftop while staring up at the stars, I’d be more than happy to make that fantasy come true.” He said, leaning closer to you. You let out a small whimper as his mouth pressed a kiss against your neck.

“Fine…but later tonight. I wanna finish this chapter.” You said and Xavier huffed. He grabbed the book out of your hand and you watched in horror as he tossed it.

“No, perhaps I should give you a preview of tonight. It’ll be far more enjoyable than a book.” Xavier grumbled. Oh you adored this man, even if he did get jealous of himself in book form.

Zayne

“Might I ask what you’re writing, my beloved?” You paused for a moment at hearing his words, your head slowly turning to him. Your laptop was on the bed while you sprawled out, typing away like you didn’t have a care in the world. Your now wide eyes stared at your boyfriend, who had clearly been reading what was on your screen.

“Well…you see.” You started before realizing something, “Okay ya I have no defense for this. You’re not allowed to judge me though. You love me.” You pointed at him sternly then looked back at your writing. You went to close your laptop, but Zayne’s hand prevented that.

“You never answered my question.” He said and you groaned, wanting to crawl into a hole and die. You looked at him with a small pout, hoping he would give up questioning you. It didn’t work this time as he waited for an explanation.

You let out an annoyed groan, “Okay so like…I had an idea about a serial killer, but like he’s a good guy who dresses in all black and like kills for a good cause. And uuuuuh…” You said, thinking about what had initially sparked this. You had seen a yandere in a show and you had thought ‘But what if Zayne?’ which led to you writing this. The main character was based on Zayne, clearly. Hopefully he didn’t catch onto that though.

“And all that led to…this scene on your screen?” Zayne said, motioning to your writing. Honestly you hadn’t even gotten to the steamiest part yet. You had only started your debauched writing.

“Okay maybe I wanna get railed by a man who’s a lil scary and not very expressive but also will kill if someone looks at me wrong. It’s just a fantasy. If it were real life no way in hell would this be fine, but the thought of a hot man breaking into my window and then fucking me into the mattress is just so…sexy…” You trailed off from your rambles, looking at Zayne then to the floor.

Your dear boyfriend, in his defense, managed to recover from your small confession pretty fast as he looked at you. “That’s truly what goes through your head?” He finally asked and you swallowed a lump in your throat.

“I mean…sometimes…” You finally said. You noticed there was a conflicted look in Zayne’s eyes, almost like he was realizing something in the deep recess of his mind. He just shook his head, shoving whatever thoughts or memories he had as he approached you.

“And this type of situation, you’d only ever want it in a fantasy setting, correct?” He asks, as though making sure there was some semblance of sanity left in you.

“Obviously. If someone actually broke through my window I’m waking you up to deal with them.” You said, crossing your arms. You could see the small, subtle twitch of a smile on Zayne’s face.

“Even if in the fantasy I’m the one breaking through the window?” He asked and you paused. You looked at him suspiciously.

“Why would you think it was…you I was writing about?” You murmured. Zayne walked over to you, pinning you in place by putting his hands on either side of your thighs as he leaned in.

“I shouldn’t have to remind you that you named the male lead after me. I can see my name on your screen.” He paused, “Along with other things.” He said and you didn’t know if you should feel bashful or turned on at the moment…perhaps both.

“Well,” You cleared your throat, “since you know.” another quick pause as you fluttered your eyelashes, “Hey Zayne, I’m having some trouble writing this scene.” You said, trying to give him a cutesy expression.

“And?” He murmured, getting closer to you.

“Think you could give me a helping hand at…testing out a few positions and kinks to see if they’d work. For inspiration of course.” You said, your hands trailing his shirt until they got to his tie. You played with it as you looked at him with needy eyes.

“Thought you said they were only good for fantasies, why would you want to play out a scene?” He teased and you chuckled.

“Well sir, perhaps some things don’t have to remain a fantasy.” You said, tilting your head. You gasped as you felt Zayne’s lips on yours, pressing closer but before he could leave you breathless, Zayne parted.

“I do apologize, I have something important I need to do.” He said and you huffed, feeling like you got doused in cold water suddenly. There was always something.

“What do you need to do?” You bitterly said, pouting at you gave him a half assed glare.

“I need to call a psychologist for you, snowflake.”

You paused, gathering your thoughts but there were none, “Um why?”

“Because I’m fairly certain you need help psychologically. You realize you shouldn’t be placing guns-” You cut Zayne off by covering his mouth.

“I hate you…” You muttered. You felt his lips kissing the palm of your hand with amusement swimming behind those hazel eyes.

“And I adore you…most of the time.”

Rafayel

You almost screamed when you felt cool, wet lips kissing the back of your neck. You clutched your phone to your chest, your cheeks warm as you looked behind you to see Rafayel. He was smirking, looking you over; he was clearly proud at having startled you.

“Raf…” You warned, but the man in question just threw his hands up in mock surrender.

“I do apologize, my dear bodyguard, but I feel like you shouldn’t be so distracted when you have a job to do. If I was able to sneak up on you, imagine what could happen to me.” He said, placing a hand over his chest.

“Rafayel, we are in your art studio. In the middle of the day, no less.” You point out, “I think you’re safe.”

“You never know, what if someone breaks in and kidnaps me while your nose is in your phone?” He was pouting as he then looked at said object being clutched to your chest, “What ended up distracting you? It wouldn’t be anything naughty, now would it? The blush on your cheeks are telling.” Now he was just teasing you.

“It’s important stuff…research if you will.” You said and now he seemed even more intrigued.

“What are you researching?” He asked and you bit back a blush, willing your body and the gods to help it go away. 

“Stuff.” You murmured. This wasn’t doing it for Rafayel as he looked down at you with a frown.

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll just assume you were up to no good.” He said, leaning closer to you, “The only way to prove your innocence is to tell me, my pearl.”

You let out a groan and averted your eyes; you didn’t want this man to see the guilty admission in them. After all, your fish boy was right. You were up to no good, reading ‘naughty things’ as he so eloquently put it. Apparently you were silent for a moment too long though, because you felt his hands trailing up your sides and under your shirt.

Before you could ask him what he was doing, he pinched your hips hard. You let out a yelp, and at the moment the grip on your phone loosened enough for Rafayel to steal it from you. When you saw it, you flushed and tried to swipe it back, “Rafayel, you bastard man, give that back!” You hissed.

Sadly the man knew your password and he was soon looking at exactly what you were reading. A small story about a sea god…that happened to be extremely explicit with some monster elements to it. Rafayel’s face went from curiosity to burning red in an instant.

“You were reading naughty things!” He accused; you let out a groan, trying again to swipe your phone back. He wasn’t done though as he continued, “Wait…is that even possible? And he only has one? Now this certainly isn’t lore accurate.” He teased with a large, toothy grin.

“Rafayel, stop teasing me. Am I not mortified enough?” You said before pausing, “Wait…what do you mean he only has one?” You said and Rafayel seemed to realize his mistake. His eyes widened and he sucked in his lips for a moment as he tried to think of a way out of this.

“Raffie, do you have two dicks in your other form?” You said, your eyes twinkling. You guys hadn’t slept together while he was like that since it was such a rare treat for you to even view his other form. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

“Wait, you’re into that?” Rafayel finally asked after realizing what you said.

“Babes, if I knew I could be a double stuffed oreo with you, I would’ve been begging you to take me in your fish form more so than I already do.” You said, not bothering to stop your language. Rafayel choked on air at your confession and tried to regain himself.

“Double stuffed oreo?” He echoed, “I don’t think I have ever heard someone say that in such an unsexy way.” 

“Is that a challenge?”

“No, it absolutely isn’t…wait, so were you researching…” He began but you were already willing to give him an answer.

“Wanted to figure out what positions might work best, so I was researching. Plus the male lead described in this book sounds like you so it was pretty easy to put myself in the place of the main character…which by the way do you think you could fuck me in the ocean while doing the little mermaid rock pose and calling me a-”

“That’s enough.” He said, and noticed you attempted to speak once more, “Ah ah ah.” He chided, “Not. A. Single.” He leaned closer, “Word.”

To which you replied with a moan.

I hope you guys enjoyed this! It's dumb and fun! I enjoyed writing it (tbh I've been wanting to write it but gah so many things to write, so little time)

[lovexdeepspace]

l&ds boys + their nicknames for you

summary; what sweet name rafayel, xavier, and zayne reserve specifically for you !!

warnings; none. complete and utter fluff under the cut

!! divider by @cafekitsune !!

༊*·˚ . RAFAYEL - "my love"

the first time rafayel tests out the nickname, it takes a moment or two for it to register in your brain that he's talking to you. there's no cocky undertone, no snarky remark to pair it with — just genuine, unfiltered adoration.

"my love" because that's how deeply he feels for you after you chose to stick by his side and not only deal with his shenanigans but also partake in them from time to time. "my love" because he can think of no higher honor than to be his love (he had to find some way to make it about him, after all). "my love" because saying the words with you in mind feels so right to him, like anything else would be doing you a disservice.

"i need a break before i chuck this painting into the ocean. care to join me on a walk, my love?"

༊*·˚. XAVIER - "princess"

funny enough, xavier found this nickname to suit you during a back-and-forth the two of you were having. you were being quite stubborn about how to approach an upcoming mission and wouldn't let xavier's input sway your decision.

"alright, princess, have it your way," he said dismissively, picking up his mug and taking a sip from it. when met with stunned silence, he peered over the rim of the mug with raised brows. your cheeks were a rosy red and you gaped at him, the rest of your argument dying on your tongue. xavier smirked and set his mug back down, resting his elbows on his knees.

"don't you — "

"oh, you did this to yourself," he interrupted, "princess."

༊*·˚. ZAYNE - "sunshine"

something so sweet, so gentle, it only makes sense for it to come from zayne. you first catch it murmured on a lazy sunday morning, his lips inches from your ear as he rests his chin on your shoulder so he can be as close as possible while staying out of the way as you make breakfast.

"good morning, sunshine," he mumbled, voice thick with sleep. "did you sleep well?"

you blinked and tried to blame it on him being sleepy, waiting for the ever stoic dr. zayne to clear his throat and ask again sans nickname. you could no longer deny what you had heard when he tilted his head ever so slightly to catch your eye, confused.

"what? do you not like being called sunshine?" he inquired. "i think it suits you."

[ay-chuu]

We Could Be The Same

gn!reader. The lyrics are from 'we could be the same' from MaNga. 4th wall break and devoted love. A little of angst. This is also for my pretty star girl, @senpaiofotome

-☆-

Your tears were piercing his heart. Nobody could break his heart this much. Or nobody could unite his heart so much.

"I can love you more than they hate" he whispered to you as his hands come to your face for cleaning your tears. When his hand came to your cheeks, you gently pressed it to your face and smiled sadly as your lips kissed his palm.

"I know... I can see it in your eyes. It doesn't come as a surprise."

While placing his other hand on your other cheek, he slowly pressed his forehead to yours and whispered, this time in a harsher voice. "Doesn't matter who they will blame. I dont care anyone. Just call me, just want me as much you do want do. And i know that we can be together if try enough. "

He shouldn't have done it or say it, he knows... that he shouldn't have drawn you into this universal madness. But instead of seeing you sad in a world where you live with strange people you don't want, he could pull you into a dimensional response with him.

Maybe you would run away from everywhere. But together. Maybe it would just take a lifetime. Maybe it would only take a few years. Maybe it would only take a few months or weeks. Damn... maybe this promise would only last a night.

But a day where you are together. And maybe you two could dance like a star. Not matter how different you two are.

He looked at the sky, he closed his eyes before opening them to you to see them filled with determination.

"For all this time I've been loving you, don't even know your full name..." He kissed your forehead silently. "For just one night, we could be the same no matter what they say..."

~♡: JASON TODD, Damian wayne, Dick grayson (DC; Batboys) KUNIKUZUSHI, NEUVILETTE, Childe, Diluc, ALHAITHAM (Genshin Impact) CHUUYA, SIGMA, DAZAI!!, Tetchou (Bsd) Simeon, SOLOMON (Obey me) MALLEUS MALLEUS MALLEUS! OML. , Silver, Leona (Twst) Shoto, hawks (Bnha) ZAYNE, Rafayel, Xavier (LnD) +your fav characters...

[scribeofnight]

⸝⸝ ꒰ 𝐑𝐀𝐅𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐋, 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐇𝐔𝐒𝐁𝐀𝐍𝐃. 🫧ㆍ₊⊹

✦ 𝗉𝖺𝗂𝗋𝗂𝗇𝗀 ;; rafayel x gn!reader ✦ 𝗀𝖾𝗇𝗋𝖾 ;; fluff, pure fluff and brainrots, not fully coherent thoughts ✦ 𝗐𝗈𝗋𝖽 𝖼𝗈𝗎𝗇𝗍 ;; 0.7k ✦ 𝗌𝖼𝗋𝗂𝖻𝖾'𝗌 𝗇𝗈𝗍𝖾 ;; obsessed and thinking about husband rafayel 24/7 - so a little filler drabble while i finish up the zayne oneshot and before i go to bed. enjoy my seashells <3 (currently can't add my yellows - i'll edit the format tomorrow)

✦ 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘦 𝘢 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘵 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘮𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘦 (𝘧𝘪𝘤/𝘩𝘤𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘲𝘴 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘯!!) ♡.

⟢ husband! rafayel who makes sure there's always a place for you to sit or lay down on when you're in the room watching him paint

⟢ husband! rafayel who smears paint on your cheeks while you're sleeping, only to feel bad and paint a small sunset or ocean or sunrise or the sky or anything, really, across your cheeks

⟢ husband! rafayel who will trace miscellaneous shapes on your collarbones and shoulders - connecting every freckle and mole

⟢ husband! rafayel who looks at your stretch marks and kisses them gently, tracing every curve and smiling up at you, stopping to only tell you how much they look like stardust

⟢ husband! rafayel who would cave when you give him puppy eyes and a pout - he's weak for you, he knows

⟢ husband! rafayel who once reserved a whole restaurant because he remembered you saying you don't like eating in front of a lot of people, just so you would be comfy on your date night

⟢ husband! rafayel who would collect seashells everyday as he walks on the beach with you, telling you stories about his adventures when he was a little kid in lemurian waters; placing them in a tiny jar that he gives to you - and his grin is so blinding and hug so warm and kiss so tender when he sees it on your desk and in your bag.

⟢ husband! rafayel who thinks you look exceptionally pretty in pearls, but he thinks you're ethereal when you're in his bed, curled up around him, bed hair and sour breath and all

⟢ husband! rafayel who grew fond of cats because of how much you love them - who fell in love with the way you looked and loved cats, and could never think of cats as harmful ever again (especially when you look at them like how you look at him)

⟢ husband! rafayel who buys you dresses upon dresses, if only to see you wear them and spin around like the disney princess you deserved to be but couldn't affort to be

⟢ husband! rafayel introducing you to little fishies during a swim in the ocean, calling you his wife and watching with awe as the fishes boop your nose and circle you two, guiding you both through the waters to the prettiest coral reef ever

⟢ husband! rafayel who lets you see his silvery scars from fighting for his kingdom, letting you trace them even though he flinches from the memories - only soothed by your fingertips and gentle kisses to his skin, your calloused thumbs wiping away falling tears

⟢ husband! rafayel dedicating a whole exhibit with every painting of everything you've ever loved and liked, with the centerpiece as both of you dancing at the banquet, with the words "for my ocean" as its caption

⟢ husband! rafayel who has never thought of having kids until he took one look at you with your nephew, and decided he wanted some then and there

⟢ husband! rafayel who brings you trinkets and tidbits from wherever he travels to, be it in Linkon or overseas, because every little thing reminds him of you (he'd rather live with your memory and you by his side than have to lose you again)

⟢ husband! rafayel that would not let you go anywhere without him - he knows you can defend yourself, but he wants to be able to see you and touch you just in case; he likes protecting you (if only to make up for all the time that he wasn't there to protect you - could you blame him? he wanted you to forget, he was sure you would)

⟢ husband! rafayel that would cook for you when you return home from work, shit-faced and weak, wobbly, exhausted legs - who would feed you and hold you close as your words slurred, a fond smile on his face as he squished your cheeks, watching you fall asleep, your features so beautifully calm and peaceful

⟢ husband! rafayel who never wants to see you cry, but would sit there on the bathroom floor at 5am, wiping your tears away when memories of you both together centuries ago flooded your mind, his heart aching as he watched you cry over not remembering him when it really was his fault

⟢ husband! rafayel who would hold your hair back when you didn't like the way it felt, tying it up into a bun and decorating it with little seashell clips so you felt pretty

⟢ husband! rafayel who would see his child hold a paintbrush, painting a very wonky looking apple and sing with glee - who would frame the apple painting and title it "[child's name]'s first painting"

⟢ husband! rafayel who would tell his child how wonderful of a mother you are, spinning the baby around before he tucks the baby onto his hips, holding her close

⟢ husband! rafayel who would rest his forehead against yours at least 5 times a day, loving the peace and love that radiates from you, seeping into him and soothing his bones, a quick kiss on your lips sealed the deal

⟢ husband! rafayel who always tells you that he's glad to finally be yours, to kiss you and hold you close

⟢ husband! rafayel who looks at you like you hung the moon and stars when you tell him you love him

⟢ husband! rafayel who is just so happy you come home to him everyday

♡. head empty only husband rafayel.

✧˖°. header creds ;; @editshan <𝟑

♡₊˚ 🪼・ copyright @scribeofnight all rights reserved ;; do not copy, steal, plagarize, reword or repost to other platforms without proper permission || all credits to original owners and creators of the characters from the media + pictures that are not my own.

[hatsunemitskislobotomy]

˚◞♡ ⃗ ❝ 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙠𝙞𝙨𝙨 𝙢𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙗𝙞𝙩𝙚 𝙢𝙚 ❞* ೃ༄

↳ ♡₊˚. ❝ ¡love and deepspace sorta kinda spicy! eluding headcanons lolz! ❞

·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙

something about those boys and ripping pantyhose’s… sigh

sure it’s attractive, quite attractive actually but more often than not the boys seem to miss the mark as to why you’re wearing them (and why it’s not okay to suddenly come back not wearing them) until one day you overhear tara and some of your other female colleagues discussing a durable pair of pantyhose’s perfect for the summertime where the typical deepspace hunter pants tend to be a little bit on the heavier side.

however your interest was piqued either way— might as well do the girls a favor and test how really durable they are

xavier

you two are so in sync with once another, gentle touches and heightened breathing— your reactions from each other drove each other crazy, it was perfect

which is why he looked like a kicked puppy when he realizes that the pantyhose’s you were wearing were NOT coming off with the hook of his finger

“i… i dont understand…”

oh poor thing they never do

you explain to him that the other female deepspace hunters wanted to test out their durability— you just happened to know a good test for them

he understands, but he still doesn’t know why you’re wearing it with him

you sigh, the initial test was a success but now he was really trying to make you spell it out for him

you pull out the small dagger out of its sheath that rested on your thigh

he looks at you in confusion as you wrap his fingers around the hilt

“i’m sure you can figure out your way around this obstacle.”

and then it clicks and his face of confusion is no more

it’s safe to say, the same trick won’t work on him twice

rafayel

this man takes it as a personal attack— like you might as well have had called him a lemurian slur

“so you want me to die?”

you loved him, but this man was always doing the absolute most but he won’t admit it

if anything you’re getting ALL the blame, you got him all worked up and then you stroll up wearing the indestructible pantyhose’s from hell

he flickers a flame in between his fingers

talking about some “i wonder if they’re fireproof”

you was not about to let him find out— YOU WERE STILL WEARING THEM

“what? can’t handle a little fire?”

and he had the nerve to act like you did an attempt on his life meanwhile this man was scheming as he poked and prodded the thick mesh around your thighs

you two practically start wrestling until he has you pinned

“fine we’ll do things your way, but promise to let me burn them after they’re off.”

zayne

you had been a brat obnoxious all evening it was no wonder he was itching to put you in your place

as per usual it was attractive how he’d reach over your body to pin your arms against the bed as face to face with your torso looking absolutely starved

but right when he was about to tear into you (figuratively and literally), that pesky pair of mesh you always sported were NOT budging

he had to pause and take a minute to reflect

my man was ready to ravish you like how a predator would to their prey but he was being bested by fabric

you were trying so hard not to laugh because you can see the cogs turning in his head

“it seems that i’ve played into your hands.”

you chuckle, innocently claiming that you were getting a tad bit tired of all the pantyhose’s that he’d tear into, it was a lot of money wasted

he insures that it’s never a waste he keeps a collection of all the ones he’s torn

the entire situation is too funny to you, you really can’t help but giggle at him

he really can’t stay annoyed at you, he also did find it a lot funnier than it should’ve been

he still wanted to have his way with you

“it’s no matter, all this is to show that i’ll have to be the gentleman you deserve.”

sure your pantyhose’s were spared that night but you weren’t

❀° ┄───╮

a/n: y’all this idea literally fell from the damn sky— well actually i just saw those instagram promo stories about those hella thick and durable pantyhose’s soooo thank instagram ig?

it’s nothing crazy— i can’t write smut without having a visceral reaction sooo uh… i salute the girlies on here who can bc PHEW 🫡🫡🫡

also i wrote this on the bus lolz, thank god for privacy screen protectors

okay love you all mwah mwah MWAHHHH

╰───┄ °❀

[shoccolatine]

their reactions if MC was fatally wounded by wanderers and passed away

⚘pairings: xavier x reader, zayne x reader, rafayel x reader

⚘tags: sfw, gender-neutral MC, established relationship, loss and grief, ANGST, alcohol consumption (in xavier's part), very slight chapter 7/8 spoilers (in rafayel's part)

⚘a/n: sorry xavier's is shorter, i'm still figuring out his character! also can you tell i have a bias um hehe,,,

╰┈➤ ❝ XAVIER. ❞

is devastated by the news, and blames himself for not being there as their hunting partner to protect them and keep them safe

he drowns his grief in liquor at The Nest—the bartender worries for his sudden habit, but xavier's lips are locked tight, and so he doesn't pry. the best he can do is cut him off before his veins are more alcohol than blood

he also takes it out on the wanderers he fights from then on, hoping that the next one's throat he slits is the one who took his precious MC away from him

on calmer days, he brings flowers to their grave whenever he's able—he'll sit and chat about everything and nothing in the hopes that somehow, somewhere, they're still listening

╰┈➤ ❝ ZAYNE. ❞

would be in the ER doing everything he can to save them

....but it's not enough

the guilt of their life slipping through his fingers weighs heavy on him. but he never lets it show

he already spends a lot of time at work, but after they pass, he throws himself fully into his job

he's even more clinical and impersonal than ever and fully embodies the "cold and distant dr. zayne" title everyone else thought of him (everyone but MC)

he doesn't allow himself to get close to anyone anymore—after all, the ones he opens his heart to always get taken away from him

he keeps himself busy 24/7. if he allows even a moment's break, he starts thinking, and thinking is bad

his already frequent nightmares worsen, and he finds himself pulling even more all-nighters than usual to avoid them

bonus extra angsty alternate ending: his lack of sleep and inner anguish affect him to the point of messing up a delicate surgery. he resigns that same day.

╰┈➤ ❝ RAFAYEL. ❞

thomas is unable to contact him for days. texts and voicemails remain unanswered, deadlines are fast approaching with no updates... but, isn't this normal behaviour from the antisocial artist?

it's not until finding out about MC's passing a week later that thomas realizes he should have been more persistent with rafayel. but would it have even mattered? when rafayel is in a mood, it's near impossible to find/reach him, nevermind pull him out of it

weeks pass with still no word, and thomas regrets his last conversation with rafayel—pressing him to finish his latest painting, with an eager buyer already waiting

thomas does his best to manage cancelling rafayel's many interview and art show invitations without stirring up concerns. rafayel is already known to be dodgy with such things, though, which thankfully buys him some time

rafayel is finally spotted some time later on the beach just off his home studio, drenched to his bones and wandering aimlessly barefoot along the coast

he hasn't touched a paintbrush in ages, and has completely forgotten the inspiration for his last unfinished piece

he's spent nearly the entire time in the sea. the rocking of the waves and the rush of his heartbeat in his ears keep him distracted more than painting ever could

his muse is gone, and with it his flame. he spent all this time to find them... just to lose them again. his poor heart just can't bear it

one day he leaves one last cryptic message to thomas, dons his scales once more, and returns to the sea forever