#Well except for Harry Potter | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jomiddlemarch · 9 months

Text

to be two chaoses

The nightmares began after Rose was born.

Resumed was the more accurate term, as Hermione had nearly become dependent on Dreamless Sleep within a few weeks of Harry’s victory over Voldemort, when the multiple years’ worth of trauma, especially the torture she’d experienced at Malfoy Manor, had come bearing down on her like the Hogwarts Express on steroids, an expression Harry would pretend not to understand and Justin would shrug at in commiseration. Her parents, sequestered in Mugglish obscurity in Melbourne, would not have been any help if she’d been able to get to them and restore their memories, something she repeated to herself as a mantra, since she couldn’t get to them and it turned out she couldn’t restore their memories, orphaned in a way no one around her grasped. There was a nightmare about that, but it wasn’t in the top tier, such that she almost welcomed its arrival; it was the only way she saw her parents when they knew who she was to any degree. Though it ended in devastation, it always started with her mum smiling at her.

If Ron hadn’t been able to help her, they never would have stayed together. She knew that in some deep, indefinite part of herself, just as she knew not to tell him. There had been lust, initially fierce and apparently unslakable, and the affection of their schoolyears together, the shared jokes, the homely memories of jacket potatoes and Madam Longbottom’s horrific flower-pot hats secured with jeweled pins that were nearly as deadly as a wand, the scent of the first snow, and so many recollections in candlelight, but none of it would have been enough if he hadn’t taken her into his arms and held her the first night she woke breathless from a scream she’d swallowed, the arm Bellatrix had cut burning terribly, the scar from Dolohov as heavy as the weights they’d used to press witches with in Salem. He’d said her name completely, not dropping a syllable, Hermione, and then I’ve got you and nothing else, letting his heartbeat and his breath be the only sounds she could hear. He’d grown into his frame that last year on the run when she’d starved in the woods, losing her period and handfuls of her brittle curls, and he’d somehow known how loosely to hold her so that she was able to nestle against him. The fragrance of the herbs his mother used in her laundry spells was faint but present, familiar. There was nothing sexual about his embrace then, but there was an intimacy greater than any fucking in the way he reacted, the inviolable memory of the agonized way he’d cried out when he’d heard her being brutalized that lived between them, as potent as the delight he took in her ecstasy.

She’d wondered that first night if it was a fluke, his ability to comfort her, and had told herself not to expect anything the next time but she’d been glad to be wrong. She put aside the sedative potions in their battered flasks and let herself fall asleep with a book in her hands, her hair still damp from the bath she’d taken, able to rely on his presence in the dark, the slight gleam of bronze in the moonlight that was his hair, the nearly grey blue of his eyes. They didn’t speak of it during the day, other than the infrequent mornings he greeted her with all right then instead of a nuzzled kiss to her temple or collarbone. The nightmares began as an onslaught and they waned slowly, slow enough Ron didn’t even ask when she might consider having children, though Hermione recognized the Weasley impulse to obscure their losses with babies, Fleur glowingly enceinte within a few weeks of Victoire’s birth, Ginny’s hand lingering over the small matinee sweaters her mother knit by the dozen. Percy’s return to the fold was eased by his hand at the small of his bride Penelope’s back, her radiance reflected in Molly’s face when they announced they expected a set of twins by the solstice. Ron gave Hermione what she needed to sleep and he gave her time to let the past become the past, her bloody, broken youth a shore increasingly distant. He couldn’t give her everything, but what he did was enough she’d been willing to let herself conceive the future he wanted so badly. He’d wept when she told him, burying his face in her shoulder, wrapping his arms around her instead of laying one large hand on her belly. It was his hands on either side of her spine that reassured her she’d been right.

The pregnancy was ordinary enough. Her only real dilemma was how to satisfy her cravings for Branston Pickle and Hobnobs without offending Ron’s mother or drawing too much attention from his father, whose fascination with the miscellany of Muggle life hadn’t declined with the end of the war. Ron, displaying the thoughtful observation she’d first found impossibly attractive while watching him play Wizard chess, maintained a calm affection towards her in company, a quiet tenderness when they were alone that made her worry sometimes he was trying to be someone he wasn’t just to please her. And then there were the times she found him gazing out a rain-streaked window at the Burrow. She knew he was thinking of Fred, of Tonks and Remus, of the scars on Bill’s face, the brother Ron most resembled, and she knew he’d been forged by grief as much as by victory. Hermione ate, she slept, she complained of heartburn and was told she must be carrying a ginger with curls as wild as her own. She read what passed for child-rearing books in the Wizarding world, nearly decapitated Harry chucking the third book across the sitting room in an only-partially hormonally mediated rage and bought every glossy paperback on the display at Foyles, which gave her some idea of what she might expect if she’d been a Muggle and included the concept of a birth-plan. Plans, as ever, held an irresistible appeal and were nearly as tranquilizing as Professor Binns.

When she mentioned that bit about the birth-plan to Ron while they were visiting his parents, George hanging about as usual, Percy working on some document at what passed for a desk over in a corner Hermione couldn’t remember previously existing, her mother-in-law just managed to keep from saying “Nonsense.” Hermione could clearly see that was what Molly had wanted to say and that she decided against it at the last minute after taking in at the book gripped tightly in Hermione’s hand and then Ron’s blue glare. Arthur kept fiddling with an immersion blender the way a Muggle child would handle a Rubik’s cube.

“A birth-plan is a very good idea, dear, but you’ll need to follow a witch’s plan and I do think, with the number of other witches you’ll require, you’ll be more comfortable at home or here at the Burrow,” Molly announced. Hermione glanced around and saw everyone present agreed with her mother-in-law.

“I’ll need to—or else what?” Hermione asked, curiosity outweighing her annoyance at Molly’s declaration.

“It’ll be too dangerous, for you and the baby,” Molly said. “Wild magic’s always an issue during delivery. For a witch as powerful as you and the baby likely to be the same—”

“It might be a boy,” Hermione said.

“Yes, I suppose it might,” Molly replied, her tone now entirely humoring-the-pregnant-daughter-in-law. She was convinced Hermione was carrying a girl, though Hermione and Ron had declined to find out when offered the chance at St. Mungo’s. “I meant the baby is likely to be magically gifted, considering her, that is, their parents. You’ll need at least four witches and seven would be safer. Obviously, Ginny and I will be there but you must decide who else you’d like.”

“I don’t know,” Hermione said. She’d never imagined childbirth to be organized like a tea-party. “I hadn’t thought to have anyone with me except Ron. And a midwife.”

Would she have wanted her mother with her, if she’d had the choice? She didn’t let herself wonder.

“If you don’t mind, dear, I’d suggest Augusta Longbottom,” Molly said briskly, making it clear that the if you don’t mindwas merely pro forma.

“Neville’s gran?” Hermione said.

“She’s a very powerful witch and she’s quite fond of you,” Molly said. “She’s got better control than Minerva, though I’ll never admit that I’ve said that, and she’s no little experience with a laboring mother.”

“I’ll have Luna,” Hermione said. Ron gave her a quizzical look but knew enough not to say anything else, though she could see the effort if took for him to keep from mouthing nargles? at her. “That’s four, that’s enough.”

“Seven would be less dangerous—"

Who else would she ask? Part of her longed to throw up her hands and tell Molly to stuff it, she’d rely on the NHS to see her through, she still had her card, but then the baby kicked, sharpish, as if to scold her for being an absolute ninny, and Ron was still holding his tongue when she knew it cost him to be quiet. He worried about them both, she could tell he’d be a good father, and Molly was only trying to make sure they both came through it, privy to knowledge Hermione couldn’t easily learn from any book.

“I’ll have Luna, but I’ll ask Andomeda, in case Luna isn’t able to come,” Hermione said. “There’s no trouble with five if they both show up, is there?”

“No. There might be a wobble, but nothing Augusta and I couldn’t manage between us and Andromeda’s a light hand,” Molly said.

“A light hand with pastry?” Ron asked.

“That too,” Arthur put in. “I believe your mother meant in channeling a magical surfeit, but she does make a very satisfying treacle tart. Not a patch on your mother’s, but close. Quite close.”

Molly was right.

Seven would have been safer, but Hermione and Rose bloody well squeaked through, as Ginny put it, earning herself a sharp glance and then an approving nod from Augusta Longbottom. The toucan-adorned hat had come off as Hermione entered transition and Madam Longbottom had had to exert herself to contain the burst of near Fiendfyre Hermione had unleashed. Luna had commented, with clear admiration in her usual dreamy tone, that Hermione was very equitable when it came to her elemental wild magic, as they’d had to contend with not only flames but a gale, a wave that overwhelmed Molly’s hastily conjured hip-waders, and a trembling underfoot that had made Arthur pop his head in and ask whether he ought to firecall St. Mungo’s or the Department of Mysteries. The gnomes had all cleared out and there was an ominous odor of brimstone seeping through the latched windows.

It was terrifying. What she was capable of and how proud they all were of her for it. She nearly burnt down the Burrow and Molly was as red-faced as she’d been battling Bellatrix Lestrange at Hogwarts by the time the baby was crowning, but she had a smile Hermione had never seen directed at herself before, a deep satisfaction that only grew more pronounced when Rose was delivered and discovered to be a little ginger witch, complete with a birthmark shaped like a phoenix’s tail-feather at the nape of her neck. Every peach on the trees Neville had painstakingly espaliered on the south wall withered in an instant and Augusta Longbottom only remarked, “Well done, you.” Luna had almost suffocated before she’d thrown up a Protego and her eyes were bright as she patted Hermione on the shoulder and Ginny had let out a long whistle, as if Hermione had captained the Harpies to a world championship when the Burrow had rung with the sound of the good china shattering.

A new marker appeared on Molly’s clock, the hand for Hermione pointing to “A Mortal Danger” instead of “in.”

Ron grasped Hermione’s dismay, but he was more concerned with her health and Rose’s. Once reassured, he kissed her softly and then asked to hold his daughter. Something about seeing his big hands cradling the swaddled baby and the tears in his eyes when he looked back at her made Hermione think everything would be all right.

That was probably the hormones and the residual magic kickback.

She chalked it up to sleep deprivation, since she was nursing and Rose was a little colicky and Molly said, no, believe it or not, dear, there wasn’t a spell that was safe to use to help settle a colicky little witch. Hermione knew this meant there was some Dark magic that would do the trick, but she’d probably be sacrificing her pinky finger or years of her life or Rose’s, so she gritted her teeth and reminded herself she’d get to sleep again. At some point. Likely before Rose went to Hogwarts.

The first dreams to return were from her earliest days of Hogwarts. The troll, the bathroom, the terror of being alone in her curtained bed and hearing Parvati and Lavender chattering away, but now there was an overlay of Rose’s crying to mix with the tears Hermione had swallowed back or sobbed out silently. In the manner of dreams, the smallest details were vivid—the nap of the velvet bed curtains, the shimmer Moaning Myrtle made in the mirror above the sinks—and yet Hermione woke with only a sense of dread, no memory of the lengthy half-imagined conversations she’d had with Harry or Ron.

Those were the easiest dreams to deal with.

Days turned into months. Rose grew, her silky ginger hair showing a decided curl, her eyes the same warm brown as Ginny’s. She babbled and scooted, crawled and stood and ran, and only Hermione hoped it would be a little while longer before her magic manifested. Hermione’s dreams grew darker, more terrifying. There were a thousand Horcruxes. Harry didn’t survive the final battle. Ron turned away and didn’t come back.

Snape bled to death in her hands.

Fenrir Greyback took her in the flight of the Harrys.

Azkaban. Gringotts. The Room of Requirement.

Bellatrix, laughing, singing, coaxing. Cruciatus until Hermione woke with tears in her hair, afraid it was her brain leaking out. Ron calling out for her under the chandelier, Dobby whisking her away, the knife in Harry’s back.

Everything impossible that had never happened.

Everything possible that had.

They became less gruesome, more disturbing. She thought she might be losing her mind. She worried about having another child and leaving Ron with two children to raise alone, being locked up in the Janus Thickey ward. Not knowing she was locked up, trying to play the out-of-tune piano because she had once wanted to play Liszt’s “La Campanella” at Carnegie Hall. She couldn’t decide which would be worse.

She spent as much time doing Arithmancy as she could and walked away when the conversation turning to curse-breaking or the old days. Hugo was conceived, carried, and delivered with far less fanfare and commotion than Rose and he was a solemn-eyed baby who needed a lot of rocking in the night. She dozed but didn’t sleep deeply enough to dream. It was a respite.

She grew used to it. She perfected her glamour for the shadows beneath her eyes. She learned to manage her hair after a jaunt to a Muggle stylist in London who scolded her for using a brush and sent her off with a bag of oils and conditioners and advice on a silk head-wrap for sleeping in. She worked her way up in the Ministry and Rose levitated herself to their roof along with the seemingly immortal Crookshanks. Hugo made the apple trees bloom at Yule. She lived. She dreamed. She considered the alternatives she’d dreamed and tried to be satisfied with silence.

Rose began to resemble Hermione’s mother.

Hugo hummed off-key under his breath like her father.

Rose turned eleven, got her letter, found Hermione’s old copy of Hogwarts: A History and packed it first along with a set of Extendable Ears from her Uncle George.

They went to the station platform.

Hermione saw Draco Malfoy for the first time in over a decade. His wife fussed with their son, the strap of his satchel. Ron reminded Rose that the Hogwarts pumpkin pasties wouldn’t be as good as Nan’s but she wasn’t to let the house-elves know or that would be all she had to eat for a week.

Draco looked back at her.

He knew.

He sent the letter to her office at the Ministry and not their home, the thoughtful tact therein encompassed being the primary reason she responded.

Yes, she would meet him at the coffee-shop he’d specified. The time was agreeable. No, she did not need directions in Muggle London.

She didn’t tell Ron about the letter or her answer. There needn’t be anything to tell. She knew how much omission was required for their marriage. She loved him. There was no betrayal.

She wore Muggle trousers and a cashmere jersey that hadn’t come from Molly’s needles beneath robes she Transfigured into a Burberry knock-off trench. It was a kind of armor, like the wand holster strapped to her forearm, the leather charmed to feel like silk and be stronger than dragonhide. She left early, to get there first. She wouldn’t be taken by surprise again.

Draco was sitting at a table off to the side when she arrived. He’d left her the place backed up to the wall, leaving himself the vulnerable party, the nape of his neck bare, his kidneys neatly framed by the slats of the chair. When she got close enough, she saw his eclipse-bright hair had begun to turn grey. The cufflinks at his wrists were malachite, neatly secured.

There was a tea-service set between them. The steam smelled of bergamot and smoke, an Earl Grey made with lapsang souchong. Her favorite but not a secret, something it would not be difficult or intrusive to discover, something that showed attention, discretion, and care. Slytherin, as always. He rose when she approached, waited to sit until she’d settled herself. His old-fashioned manners were exercised without any awkwardness, the politeness he would have shown to any witch.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet, Madam Granger,” he began, using the title she had decided on after completing her Arithmancy mastery via correspondence under Professor Ergodic. When Bill had pointed out the more traditional address was Domina Nimue Granger, Ron had nodded and stopped making his incipient fuss.

“Do we need to be so formal?” Hermione asked. “We’ve known each other since we were eleven.”

“Whatever you prefer, Hermione,” Draco said, his voice giving a slight upward inflection to her name. She couldn’t recall him ever using it before, only Granger said with a sneer, but the boy who’d smirked seemed long gone from the solemn, careful man sitting before her. “You are the one doing me the favor—”

“Am I? What exactly do you mean?”

“You read my letter. You responded. You showed up,” he said. “You didn’t need to do any of it.”

“I read the letter you sent after the trial,” she replied.

It had been delivered by a splendid eagle owl she did not recognize, the parchment hand-written in a perfect copperplate hand. The opening section had been rendered in ancient Etruscan, indicating the gravity of the statement, a Pureblood ritual she’d had to ask Ron, Molly and finally Neville’s gran to explain to understand the significance thereof: there was no greater level of ceremony invoked, the abasement of the writer compleat. If it had been a final examination paper for a mastery, it could not have been more exquisitely and thoughtfully written. It was a letter than required no reply and sought none, a detailed acknowledgement of Draco’s transgressions against her. Still, it went across her inarguably upper middle-class background to fail to send some kind of response, so she’d managed to find some monogrammed stationery her Aunt Judith had given her for a birthday gift and had penned a quick note in her crabbed hand to say Draco’s apology was duly noted and accepted. She had balked at wishing him well in his future endeavors, but to be fair, she had been eighteen, effectively orphaned, unable to sleep more than three hours in a night, and had been known to hold a grudge.

“Yes, I know. I didn’t mean that letter however,” Draco said. “I meant the one I sent last week. After the train station.”

“You didn’t say what you wanted to talk about,” Hermione replied.

“I thought you would be more likely to show up if I didn’t,” he said. “Your curiosity remains renowned—”

“Are you insulting me?” Hermione asked, without any of the heat of her girlhood.

“Not at all, though I should be able to express myself more skillfully than this, if you’re wondering,” he said. There was a wryness in his tone that was new to her. “I wrote because of the dreams—”

“What dreams?” she interrupted.

“I have them too,” he said gently.

“I don’t know what you mean, why you think we have anything in common, it’s mad—”

“They are a torment,” he said. Like four notes, the Tristan chord creating the opening between them, leaving her struck by the misery in his voice, the utter candor.

“I—they don’t—” She could not finish the sentence, could not think of what to say next. Draco picked up the teapot and poured them each a cup, stirring a lump of sugar into his own, never once hitting the china with the spoon’s lip.

“You’re not going mad,” he said.

“I know that,” she snapped.

“Then you’re ahead of me, as per usual. I’ve wondered, worried, for years. When Scorpius was born, I thought, maybe I’d be locked up in a straitjacket somewhere by the time his magic emerged. If it did, if he wasn’t a Squib,” Draco said.

“You were worried your heir would be a Squib?” Hermione said.

“I was worried the son of two Purebloods with known genetic disorders and curse-damage would be a Squib. I was worried I wouldn’t be there to defend him from the rest of the family,” Draco said. “You wouldn’t have had the same worries. Hybrid vigor, brightest witch, and the Weasley-Prewett line—”

“They thought we might both die in childbirth from my wild magic,” Hermione said. Draco cocked his head to one side and nodded. “We should have had seven witches present.”

“I did hear something about it,” Draco said. “My mother was quite impressed, though she did say they should have let the Burrow and all its tat burn to the ground and start over with the Ministry money.”

“What?”

“There’s money set aside for those situations, a fund. It’s because it only occurs when there is a surfeit of power. It’s in the Ministry’s interests to make sure a family with such a witch remains properly housed,” Draco explained.

“Oh. I thought maybe I’d die when she was born,” Hermione said.

“And then the dreams would be over,” Draco finished.

“Yes,” Hermione said. She took a sip of the tea, the universal panacea, unsurprised when once again it did nothing for her. It was properly steeped, she’d give him that, since he hadn’t been able to use magic in the Muggle café.

“It was Bellatrix,” he said. “You and I, I believe we’re the last sane survivors of her spells. That’s why we have the dreams, why they don’t attenuate.”

“Dark magic then,” Hermione said.

“Not exactly,” Draco said. “There was something wild about her even before she turned to Dark magic and you know the Blacks are given to madness, throw off restraint like a stallion bucking the bridle.”

“Is that all, then? I suppose it’s helpful, to have some idea why, though it’s not much of a relief,” Hermione said. She refrained from pointing out he was also of the Black line.

“Master Mamu at Uagadou has a theory we’ve been corresponding about,” Draco said. “Oneironautika, whether a charmed potion could function as an inducer, what a traveler could reliably affect within the dream structure, it catalysis is the only viable intervention. But Neville—”

“Neville knows? He’s been writing to Mamu?” Hermione exclaimed.

“They prefer to Floo. Such a mess, all that ash, but I suppose it’s nothing to the greenhouses and Bubotuber pus,” Draco said. “Neville’s been quite helpful, even though it’s not his area of interest. But his parents, well. He and his grandmother have years of observation to draw on.”

“Does Neville know about me?”

“Only if you’ve told him. He may have put two and two together, he’s quite brilliant for someone who was such a duffer,” Draco said with such fondness Hermione could not be roused to irritation. “I can’t imagine he’d ever speak of it to anyone, even if he suspects. Though if your glamour starts to fail, exquisite work, that, I shouldn’t be surprised if he sends along his alternative to Dreamless. He uses heather honey in it, it’s a revelation, but it’s not as much dream-lessening as muting.”

“You want my help,” Hermione said, having figured it out. It was what anyone ever wanted from her. “With Master Mamu, Neville, you want me to work the Arithmancy, perhaps to interpolate the runes—”

“No,” Draco said. “Rather, if you wish, you are most welcome, a witch of your caliber could only be a tremendous asset, but that’s not why I wrote you. That’s not what I wanted.”

“What do you want? Pardon me if my directness offends your Slytherin sensibilities,” Hermione said, tired, the tea in her cup cold, the broken night beckoning.

“I want to help you,” Draco said. “To make you feel better.”

“No one can do that,” Hermione said. Ron did what he could, steady now as he hadn’t been in their youth, astute enough not to speak of it.

“I can,” Draco said.

“You can,” Hermione repeated. “You can do something no one else can and beyond being able to, you additionally want to. There’s no life-debt between us, Draco, even if I believed you, there’s no reason for you—”

“I didn’t protect you when I could, Hermione,” he said. Had his eyes been lighter when he was a boy or had they always been this stormy shade, grey clouds over a grey sea?

“She would’ve killed us both,” Hermione said.

For a moment, she was lying on her back looking up at the chandelier, the bare outline of a girl around nothing but pain. She couldn’t not have told anyone her name if she’d been asked. Ron had been screaming but his voice had been distant, as distant as the future and the past, while Draco’s eyes on her had been a tether. They’d been bound in that second, in hopeless, blameless recognition and agony, and there had been some tiny, inviolate spark of herself that loved him then in a way she could never love anyone else. “You do mean when Bellatrix cursed me, don’t you?”

“I didn’t protect you then. Not before. Not after,” Draco said.

“Well, we were enemies,” Hermione said. She waved over a waitress, asked for a fresh pot of tea and a plate of lemon biscuits while Draco stared down at his hands. They were well-made, beautifully shaped, the hands of a sculptor or a pianist. Neither was the career a wizard would undertake, certainly not an aristocrat like the heir to the Houses of Black and Malfoy.

“No, we were schoolmates. Rivals. We were children and then teenagers,” Draco said. He rubbed a hand across his eyes, bowing his head. “I liked you—”

“You liked me?” Hermione snorted. “Is this revisionist history? Are you going to tell me you wanted to take me to the Yule Ball and buy me sweets at Hogsmeade weekends? Were you terribly fond of Harry and did you think Ron was a good chap whose family was just a bit down on their luck?”

“I liked you, Hermione,” Draco repeated, his voice low. “I wasn’t supposed to, wasn’t allowed to, but I did. I do.”

“You’re married. I’m married,” Hermione said. “Handfasted. Your family isn’t the only one to follow the Old Ways.”

(She would have married Ron at the Ministry, but Molly wouldn’t hear of it. Hermione’s own parents wouldn’t hear of it at all, so she’d acquiesced to the whole thing, the ring in the garden, the saffron yellow veil, the woad, the unsalted cakes she and Ron had had to bake in a solar oven without any magic. The only part she’d liked had been laughing together as they looked at the ugly lumps of dough, the gleam in Ron’s eyes as he’d told her they’d only have to choke down one bite each.)

“I know. I’m not trying to interfere. Weasley’s a good man and I would never dishonor Astoria,” Draco said. “But he can’t do this for you. You know that. He’s done what he can and you’re still suffering.”

“You’d be my Healer then? Without any certification, Healing mastery, apprenticeship?”

“Your friend. A fellow-traveler,” Draco said. “Whatever you’d allow.”

“My friend,” Hermione said.

“You are the same person who pledged her friendship for life to Potter and Weasley after being brought together in a bathroom by a troll,” Draco said. “It shouldn’t be that great a stretch for you.”

“Perhaps I’ve changed,” she replied.

“Perhaps,” Draco agreed, then hazarded a very small smile. “I don’t think so though. Not in this regard.”

“Will it help you with your own dreams?” Hermione asked.

“That’s not relevant,” Draco said. “That’s not why—”

“It’s relevant to me,” she said firmly.

“Of course it is,” he said, under his breath, as if he could get away with it sitting across from her, the café much quieter as the late afternoon rush had ended.

“Well?”

“I don’t know. Possibly,” he said. For the first time, he sounded put out, frustrated. It was the throughline to the boy he’d been and she found herself liking him for it. “Before you ask, it’s very unlikely to make anything worse for me. This isn’t some grand Gryffindor gesture of sacrifice on my part.”

“I think we’re beyond House identification, Draco,” she said.

“Is that a yes?” he asked.

“It’s a tell me more about how you mean to proceed. What this dream-walking entails precisely,” she said.

“Will you let me show you something?” Draco said. Hermione considered. They were in a public place and she had faced greater horrors than a prematurely greying Draco Malfoy in his Savile Row suit. She nodded. Draco pushed the teapot and their cups to one side, reached over and took Hermione’s right hand in his own. His palm was warm against hers, his grasp charged with the familiarity one had with their wand, the tenderness of a long-awaited reunion. Hermione looked at their hands and then up, to find Draco watching her.

When she didn’t pull her hand away, he reached out with his left and took her other hand. Something surged between them, electric and yet sustaining, soothing. Something that was not magic but was of it, an ardent affection that sought only to give, to cherish, some fundamental realignment. Later, she would puzzle over it, scribble equations, then manipulate them with her wand, with an incantation of runes. She would find a way to explain it to Ron so that he’d understand. When he did, she might.

“Yes?” Draco asked. She could tell what he hoped for and that he would wait as long as she wanted. She could tell he would let their hands fall apart if she refused.

“Yes,” she said. He held her more tightly then and the brightness in his eyes was like moonlight, like the first time she had cast Lumos and banished darkness. Between them, it was as if a cup was filled, spilled over. She could not, however, resist poking.

“You must’ve worked some part of it out. I’ll want to review your notes.”

“Certainly,” he said.

Master Mamu authored the definitive text on oneironautika, but Draco wrote the introduction and Hermione the acclaimed chapter on runic expansion.

Draco insisted Hermione be the editor of the journal. He provided the funding for the first five years. After that, as he’d predicted, no financial assistance was required.

Ron wasn’t remotely put out, though he did scold her a bit for worrying he might be. “You the one always telling Rose and Hugo love’s not a pie. Well, that means you can’t get too full or lose your appetite for it.” At the service for Astoria, Ron told her to go over to Draco and played a three-hour game of Wizard chess with Scorpius he worked hard to throw stealthily enough the boy didn’t notice.

They weren’t one big happy family. But they could be happy and they could be a family.

When Kimah was born, there were seven witches present.

Draco collected a handful of knuts warm from Ron’s pocket when Scorpius announced she had red hair, Transfigured them into a bouquet of apricot tea roses, and gave them back to his son for his daughter-in-law.

Hermione, who had been up all night, slept.

And dreamed.

@artielu you are my main Dramione mutual so I hope you enjoy this atypical offering!

27 notes · View notes

aeyumicore · 2 months

Text

please & thank you

━ .ᐟ✧ PAIRING: sylus x female reader (afab)

━ ✧.˖ GENRE: smut, porn with very little/no plot, porn with feelings

━ .ᐟ✧ WORD COUNT: 7.5k

━ ✧.˖ WARNINGS: mdni, explicit sexual content, SLIGHT spoilers to the lore (with some of my own interpretations and theories), oral m!receiving, fingering f!receiving, face/throat fucking, finger sucking, kinda rough, size difference, cuffing/tied up (m!receiving), sylus kindaaaa/degrading mean but in a tasteful way, he’s also very soft for reader, sylus has a FILTHY mouth, orgasm denial (f! and m!receiving), mirror sex, improper use of Evol, use of Y/N, cute petnames hehe (little dove, little bird, sweetheart, doll, etc), slight predator and prey, choking (kinda breath play??? not really), some references to lore (main storyline + midnight stealth), kinda sub!reader, dom!sylus, THIS IS FILTHY YALL IDK WHAT ELSE TO SAY

━ .ᐟ✧ LINKS: ao3

━ ✧.˖ A/N: hi guyssss she is here <3 MY FIRST ever sylus fic, first of many me thinks bc i am so utterly infatuated w him im sorry zayne LOL

i did NOT end up making this connected to ‘midnight stealth’ OR ‘no defense zone’ (although some midnight stealth plot is referenced a tiny bit in the beginning). any resemblances to these two memories are purely coincidental, mostly similar because there’s use of cuffs/restraints in all three. this is purely a standalone filthy fic

this has veryyyy little plot, i decided to keep it that way so im sorry to those who wanted to see plot in this ;_; i didn’t want to burn out, which i likely would’ve because pivoting from what i had (5.6k words) to a more plot based fic would have taken me a few more days and probably double the words and i just couldn’t do that to myself.

i appreciate you guys for supporting me and i really respect each and every opinion so i hope i didn’t let anyone down by not doing the plot version. there will be plenty of opportunities for that i promise <3

pls enjoy :) any comments or reblogs r greatly appreciated (and loved) by me <3 they help me keep motivated to keep writing and truly make my whole week.

THIS IS MY ONLY ACCOUNT. I WILL NEVER POST MY FICS ON OTHER TUMBLR BLOGS. I WILL ONLY POST ON THIS ACCOUNT AND ON AO3.

✦ . ˖ ✧ .ᐟ ˖ nsfw | minors dni | 18+ only | minors dni | nsfw ✦ . ˖ ✧ .ᐟ ˖ .

You were playing with fire.

Actually, what you were doing was definitely more dangerous and infinitely more idiotic than playing with fire.

It was downright deranged.

It appeared the silver haired man beneath you agreed, his jaw ticking dangerously as his deep crimson eyes crinkled in warning, “Are you sure this is a game you want to play?”

You knew the answer was definitely no. But the mere glimpse of the Onychinus leader beneath you, at your mercy, was enough to make you push through the thrilling fear coursing through your veins.

With Sylus’s chiseled body unwillingly sprawled out before you, you situated yourself in between his thighs. Though his words and expression were laced with a cautionary edge, his legs spread open for you.

His wrists were bound with the two silver cuffs you’d purchased at a novelty store on girls day out with Tara, each hand simultaneously locked to the steel beams of your bed’s headboard. With his arms bound above his head, his button up shirt rode up to expose his pale and scarred skin and the defined outlines of the chiseled pelvic muscles that lead to his manhood.

It wasn’t a stretch to say you’d planned this, after all you did buy the cuffs with Sylus in mind. And you’d never forget what Luke and Kieran had told you, in what felt like a lifetime ago.

“Boss is most vulnerable when he’s sleeping.”

Except now you weren’t binding him for the purpose of incapacitating him to find that damned brooch he’d taunted you with. Now, when he’d dozed off after you’d forced him to marathon the Harry Potter series with you, you tied him up with only one goal in mind.

Well maybe two. To tease and to punish.

Snapping out of your thoughts, you watch the way Sylus’s naval rises and falls irregularly, a subtle sign of his boiling anticipation. His exposed pelvis is dusted in a faint path of hair, trailing to where his pants hang dangerously low on his hips, after you’d taken his belt off.

Sylus watches you with a careful eye as your hands find his waistband, tugging his bottoms and his boxers down in one motion. He tuts disapprovingly, even as his body lifts every so slightly to assist you in undressing him, “I’ve already warned you once. I won’t warn you again.”

And yet, there’s an undeniable amusement in his voice that lets you know it’s safe to keep going. Your eye contact never breaks as you tug his clothing all the way down, until they rest at his ankles. His hardening cock springs free as you do so, the thick mushroom head already leaking a shiny streak of precum. As it slaps against his abdomen, Sylus’s carmine irises darken, but he refuses to make any sounds. The screech of steel rattling against steel is loud in the tense air, the formidable man’s fists clenched so tightly his nails threaten to break his skin.

You bend down slowly, torturously languid, until his masculine scent invades your senses. You shiver in pleasure, positively addicted to every part of him. Sylus’s stomach heaves as he curses you inwardly; you were the only devilish minx that could even fathom rendering him into this vulnerable state. The only person he’d ever allow to see him like this.

“You’ve become quite bold, little bird. Perhaps I’ve been too lenient with you.”

His cocky attitude makes you want to shiver, but you find the strength to retort back, “Perhaps you have.”

Not wanting to give him a chance to respond, and a chance for you to lose your courage, you let your tongue run over the thick tip of his erection, collecting his arousal on your tongue. You make a show of savoring his taste, letting your eyes bat at him while you lick him clean.

Sylus is hypnotized, crunching up to watch you. His wrists pull against the metal restraints, growing irritated with being held back. Of course, if he’d wanted to, he could snap the cuffs with a mere tick of his fingers, but he found it amusing to watch his mischievous little bird believe she had control.

When you take his head fully into your lips, Sylus’s hips involuntarily buck up into the heaven that is your mouth. Though surprised, you do your best to accommodate the extra inches, tongue twirling around his leaking slit as your jaw unhinges to take in his fat girth.

“Fuck.”

Sylus’s dark eyebrows are scrunched as he fights the urge to destroy the cuffs to get to you, wanting nothing more than to sink his fingers into your hair and push you down until you couldn’t breathe. But he prided himself as a man of patience, even if he despised being tested.

And you were absolutely testing him. Your puffy lips caressed his sensitive veins, tongue assaulting every flaming nerve of his massive length, delicate and soft fingers leaving no inch of him untouched. Yet you moved so languidly. Deliberately testing how far you could push him, testing his resolve. Not that he would ever beg, but he desperately wished you’d move faster, take him deeper.

“My love,” he purrs, deceptively calm even as your filthy tongue lathered his most sensitive parts, “I implore you to release me. While I’m still feeling generous.”

Doing your best to shut him up, you take him into the back of your throat, fingers shifting from the base of his manhood to his heavyset balls. You’re only half successful in your antics, as you do cut off Sylus’s demands, only to be replaced by an inexplicable string of curses. The daunting leader of the Onychinus, whose name evoked fear itself to most, unraveled at your whims. A man who had no weaknesses, save for one.

You.

With his head thrown back, hair tousled and matted with a thin layer of sweat, he began to pant heavily. His neck bobbed deeply to the rhythm of his gasps, hands pulling against the restraints you’d locked him into. The sound of metal clashing against metal is almost deafening, your head snapping up to his arms bound above his head.

For a second you’d feared he’d snapped the steel cuffs, his biceps rippling and forearm veins bulging with the sheer strength of his arms. But fortunately for you, his wrists were still firmly bound, a red angry circle forming where the metal met the pale skin of his hands.

“Do you really think – hah – this will end well for you, dove?” Sylus considers this your very last warning, crunching up once again to watch you, your mouth full of his cock, saliva dribbling down your chin as you try to accommodate his thickness. He swears under his breath at the sight of you, his woman, the only person he’d ever even consider letting his guard down around, pleasuring him so sweetly and enthusiastically. Even if you were so foolish that you thought you could get away with typing him up.

You look up innocently at him, fluttering your eyelashes as you fuck him with your mouth. Though you let him hit the back of your throat every time, your rhythm is intentionally and torturously slow, edging him without making it obvious enough for punishment. And although each intentional motion elicits the most mind numbing grip from your gag reflex on his throbbing erection, he’s losing his mind from how much more he wants. How much more he needs.

“Faster.”

You nearly choke as you giggle at his demands, releasing his cock with a resounding pop. Of course, even tied up, Sylus didn't use the word ‘please.’ The man of unthinkable power was absolutely used to getting what he wanted without even batting an eye. It was a habit that he rarely relented on, and when he did it was only for you.

“What’s the magic word?”

Sylus glowered at you, jaw twitching dangerously as he did his best to hold himself back, “Watch it.”

It was truly taking every ounce of willpower he had to not rip the cuffs off the steel beams of your bed, taking your headboard apart with it. All so he could have more.

“Sylus,” you pout, still using your hands to gingerly stroke him with a featherlike touch. Nothing intense enough to get him off. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you to say ‘please’ when asking for something?” You give him a pointed squeeze, thumb stroking the underside of his swollen head.

He curses, pelvis thrusting up into your fist to try and chase the pleasure you’re withholding from him, “Fuck, if you’re going to act like a brat, I’m going to treat you like one.”

“I just want to hear the words ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ Please. See how easy that is?”

“Y/N, my heart,” Sylus purrs lowly, eyes glinting dangerously, “I won’t tolerate any more disobedience.”

“Well then you don’t get what you want.” As soon as the words left your mouth you knew you’d regret them.

Before you can even blink, you find yourself pressed firmly into the mattress, your head hanging off the side, hair dangling freely. The air feels strangely brisk, and you can vaguely feel your nipples hardening. It’s then you realize you’re naked. But you hadn’t felt Sylus lay a single finger on you.

His Evol.

You’d become so accustomed to Sylus’s Evol that you no longer felt its slightly suffocating invisible web when it touched you, unlike when you’d first met him in the N109 zone. The countless times he’d use his Evol to guide your lips to his, your hand into his larger ones, or to undress you, had actually made you quite fond of the touch of his Evol.

Little did you know that Sylus had actually been practicing lightening up the intensity of it, for you. He’d always detested seeing the uncomfortable scrunch of your eyebrows, the hostile goosebumps that would raise where his Evol touched you. So he’d absolved himself to train the claws of his Evol to soften, instead becoming that of a gentle caress. Only for you, of course. For everyone else, they got the skin-shredding talons that parents warned about in cautionary tales to their children.

Hanging upside down, the glint of the ceiling light against the silver cuffs hanging off your headboard catches your eye, snapping you from your thoughts. The metal loops were still completely intact, but unlocked. Of course you knew he’d use his Evol to escape eventually, but it still surprised you how he managed to do it so effortlessly. Graceful in everything he did.

You try to sit up, but Sylus’s hand wraps itself softly around your throat and holds you back down. He tsks scornfully, a playful warning in the swirling glowing cerise of his eyes. His grip is gentle enough where you can still speak normally. Rough enough where you want more.

So you pout childishly, “It’s just like you to use your Evol for such cheap tricks.”

From beneath his towering frame, you can just barely see him raise his perfectly arched eyebrow. Most of him is obstructed by his massive erection pressed at your nose, menacingly imposing before you. “Cheap? Doll, there’s nothing cheap about me. And nothing cheap about the things I’m going to do to you.”

You shiver involuntarily at his threats, your thighs clenching together in anticipation. Sylus’s words were always harsh, but when it came to you there was always such a profound sincerity and gentleness behind his actions, even when he was brutally devouring your body. So the danger edged into his words only served to excite you, fueling the dampness that had formed between your legs.

And of course, his perfect cock dangling in front of your lips, still glistening with a sheen of his arousal and your saliva. Hanging so closely to your waiting tongue, but never touching. That definitely did not help the throbbing ache in between your thighs.

“I think you’ve had enough fun, don’t you agree?”

Feeling daringly bold, you playfully curse him, “Screw y–” But before you can finish getting the words out, Sylus grips your jaw, shoving himself into your waiting mouth. The force he uses is enough to make your eyes roll back, the feeling of being full of him making you forget what you’d wanted to say to begin with. You’re careful to pull back your teeth as he finds his way to one of his favorite places, the back of your throat.

“Let’s give that mouth something to do, other than run itself, hmm?”

You groan in response, letting the vibrations of your throat speak for you. Sylus grunts, removing his hand from your throat and weaving it into your hair like he’d wanted to earlier. His grip is strong, just hard enough that you feel an immense pleasure from the stinging pull. With a firm hand on your scalp, he fucks into your face, his meticulously groomed hair brushing against your nose at every thrust.

His speed and vigor is relentless, not that you’d complain even if you could. The feeling of Sylus driving in and out of your throat, like you were a fleshlight, had your body vibrating with need, clit throbbing in ecstasy. How you could feel this good just sucking his cock was beyond you. Your unrestrained moans were an absolute orchestra to his ears, the vibrations running through every nerve ending in his erection, causing him to release a string of his own sounds

“You’re so – hah – exquisite like this, dove. Choking on my cock instead of your words.”

You whine at him, so unbelievably turned on by the filthy way he speaks to you. His skin slaps against your wet mouth, and an obscene amount of drool mixed with precum drips off your cheeks and onto the carpeted floor beneath you. You loll your tongue out to try and catch his copious dribbles of precum, not wanting to waste any part of him.

“I can see my cock in your throat, sweetheart,” he cooed, using a hand to brush against your throat, where his erection bulges against your neck each time he fucks into you.

Tears streamed from your eyes as Sylus’s pace increased, gripping onto your hair for even more leverage against your beautiful face.

“Crying already? Not feeling so bold anymore, my love?”

You ignore his patronizing words, trying to focus instead on your own pleasure. With one hand still gripping the hard muscles of his bubbly rear, your other hand wanders to the quivering area between your thighs, fiddling with the bundle of nerves that was slick with your arousal. You desperately seek to relieve some of the tension building up in your gut, all from just Sylus’s cock in your mouth.

But before you can give yourself any inkling of pleasure, you feel a familiar force of energy pulling your hand away.

“I don’t recall giving you permission to touch yourself.”

You nearly sob at his words. You want to speak, plead with him to touch you, or at least let you touch yourself, pride be damned. But his unbelievable girth makes it impossible to do anything but devour him repeatedly.

The white haired man above you watches you carefully, swearing at how your tear soaked face makes his resolve to punish you crumble ever so slightly. Taking pity on you, he brings your hand to his, weaving his long fingers into yours. You hold his hand tightly, enjoying the way his much larger hand clasps into yours, fingers digging into your sensitive flesh.

“Good girl,” he coos in praise, voice tinged with a condescension that makes your skin crawl in excitement, “You don’t touch what’s mine, unless I say, hm?”

You look up at him with wide wet eyes, nodding obediently as he continues to ravage your face. He pressed your hand deeper into the mattress, his thrusts becoming so intense that you knew you’d have a hard time speaking tomorrow, your throat battered and bruised.

From your position, you don’t see the glowing light that emanates from your joined fingers. But Sylus does, and he watches in a concealed wonder at the way you can so easily resonate with him now. You didn’t even need to try, a single touch was all it took. It was a testament to how much you’d grown to trust him.

No, it was a testament to the deep love and respect you’d both come to hold for each other. You’d both definitely come a long way from when he’d captured, or when you let him capture, you at the N109 zone all that time ago. The thought of that threatens to make Sylus shiver as he continues to ram himself deep into your warm wet throat. He watched the way you took him so eagerly, hand gripping his for dear life, your other hand coming up to stroke his heavyset balls as they slapped against your face. The way your poor little throat bulged every time he thrusted into it, the bump so visible to his hungry crimson eyes.

Oh, how you ruined him. He’d fucking marry you.

Your jaw ached, having been open as widely as possible for far too long now, but you did your best to continue to take him. The feeling of him using your mouth was more than enough to keep you growing wetter, needing more. Your thighs squeezed together, as you rocked into nothing, wanting nothing more than to feel any friction between your legs.

Sylus watched as you pathetically tried to find pleasure in the empty air, nearly growling at how arousing the sight was. He was fueled with such an intense desire and love for you, nothing like he’d ever felt before. And that love and desire was enough for him to concede, if even just a little bit, for you.

“You’re lucky I’m feeling…charitable today, my dove,” he murmurs, releasing your hair and bending over your body. His erection never leaves your mouth, but he hovers so that your sight is filled with the view of his solid abdominal muscles. You cry out against his member when the familiar feel of his fingers finds your clit. You gasp out, choking on him, your hips jolting up eagerly to meet his torrid touch.

Sylus chuckles, a satisfied smirk making its way onto his unfairly gorgeous face, “Look at how eager you are…all this just from the taste of cock?”

Not able to respond, you hump up into his hand, squeezing your eyes shut in embarrassment of how desperate you were for him. Sylus only gives you a pointed thrust into your throat, making you gag deliciously around him again.

“Such an insatiable little bird,” he murmured, fingers expertly toying with you.

“You’re so beautiful, sweetheart,” his skilled ministrations never stopping, “I wish you could see how lovely you look with your mouth full.”

Your eyes rolled back when he entered you, one finger at a time. He cursed at how tightly you gripped just one of his fingers. He had half a mind to just bury himself into your perfect cunt right then and there. And that’s just what he’d do. He was never used to not indulging in what he wanted, why stop now?

You felt the familiar shift in energy, a gentle hold on your body, until you found yourself laying on the middle of your bed, Sylus situated between your knees, fingers still toying with you. Your neck screaming in relief at the plush surface, mind reeling from the sudden shift.

The white haired man bends to hover over you, free hand caressing your jaw, his frighteningly beautiful face before yours, “Hello, my love.”

Your voice is hoarse, sounding unfamiliar, “Hi.” It’s nothing more than a pitiful squeak.

Sylus chuckles, his chest rumbling warmly at your adorably vulnerable state, “How’s your throat?”

You glare at him, trying to steady your raspy voice, “Don’t patronize me.”

He smirks, not the least bit apologetic, but says, “Forgive me, love.” He doesn’t give you a chance to sass him further, instead bringing your chin up to his. His lips slot onto yours, deceptively slow at first and quickly progressing to a vigor that matched the way he’d rammed himself into your throat.

The bruising intensity of the kiss made your mind muddle, your hands coming up to grasp his neck to ground you. You gasped at the feeling of his heartbeat pounding so forcefully in his neck. The familiar feeling of an earth shattering orgasm edges into your numbed mind, every heightened sense filled with Sylus and only Sylus.

You finally break away, propping yourself up on your elbows to watch him scissoring in and out of you, enough to have you on the brink of climaxing, “Sy-Sylus, I’m–”

Sylus reads you like the back of his hand, withdrawing his fingers and roughly grabbing your face to look up at him. You sob at the loss of friction, looking up at him with teary questioning eyes.

The ceiling lights illuminate behind Sylus, forming a halo like ring atop his head. He was so hauntingly and terrifyingly beautiful. Not unlike that of a fallen angel, whose sole purpose was to ruin you.

And just as you’re admiring him, Sylus looks down at you. Unbeknownst to you, he also considers you to be his very own angel sent from the heavens. Bringing light and salvation to the shadowed crevices of his soul.

But even then, he can’t help but tease you, the urge to see you ruined at his hand. An angel with tattered wings, so utterly spent with lust. “You don’t cum until I say, hm?” As if to punctuate his point, he puts his fingers, wet with your slick, in between your parted lips. The taste of you is strong on him, enough to distract you from Sylus, who’s lining up his more massive than ever erection with your weeping slit.

“Come on, sweetheart. Suck. I know you can do better than that.”

He presses his fingers harder onto your tongue, relishing in how warm you feel around him. At your adorable pouty glare, he pushes his leaking tip into you.

You yelp in surprise, biting down on his fingers in your mouth. Sylus hisses, but the pain only further arouses him, making him shove into you suddenly. Your hands come up to grasp his forearm, the veins bulging under your touch.

The feeling of him entering you is so overwhelming, the only thing grounding you to the present was the way his fingers felt and tasted against your tongue. And so you devoured him in earnest, much to his satisfaction.

It’s not long before he bottoms out, his head kisses your cervix, just enough to have your eyes rolling back, sparks of hot white pleasure clouding your vision.

Sylus removes his fingers from your mouth, bringing his thumb to his own lips and brushing it across his parted mouth, his other fingers outstretched as he licks across his thick thumb. You whimper at the sight, so unbelievably seductive he has to be doing it on purpose.

“You always taste divine.” His movements have all but halted completely, his thick girth just sitting inside of you, brushing against your womb. And even though the stretch is enough to practically compress your lungs, you want more.

“D-Don’t tease Sylus,” you whine pathetically, “Fuck me.”

The smile on his face is as cocky as ever, the corner of his lips curving up, as sharp as his edged jaw.

“So bold. Do you really think you’re in any position to make demands?”

He gives you just one pointed thrust, cockhead nestling so deliciously into your sweetest spots, but stopping just at that. You cry out, fingers gripping the comforter so tightly your knuckles turn white.

“If I recall correctly…someone once told me something about saying…what was it? ‘Please’ and ‘thank you’?”

He grins down at you, bending forward so that he hovers right over your face. He would never let you know but the pouty grimace on your lust glowing face was nearly enough to have him caving into your every whim, punishment forgotten in the wind.

“Hm? So what do we say, sweetheart?”

With his cock situated so perfectly in you, it’s impossible for you to do anything but follow his every command, no matter how much it bruises your ego.

“P-Please?”

His smirk deepens, fingers cupping your chin up to face him, “You can do better than that, Y/N.”

You groan as he shifts, giving you just the tiniest bit of friction where it mattered. You do your best to find the confidence, “Please Sylus.”

There’s the faintest flicker of darkness in his eyes, a twitch of unraveling at the way you effortlessly purr his name. If you had any idea the things you did to him, the mighty and fearless leader of the Onychinus, it would be his absolute undoing.

“Please what, my dove? Come on, use that beautiful voice of yours.”

Before you can let out your snarky response, his fingers travel to your neck, stroking your sensitive pulse gently before pressing down to compress your airway.

“Or is this throat only good for taking my cock?”

You whine at his words, patience absolutely gone. You wrap your legs around his waist and force him closer. A pathetic attempt to get him to thrust into you. Your hands come up to the back of his neck, and your tear glistening eyes search his pleadingly. He’s taken aback by the sudden shift, a small gasp escaping his parted lips. In his surprise, he lets himself be guided to you, his forehead falling to lay atop yours, his breath fanning against your own.

“Please Sylus, please fuck me. I’m sorry, I’ll be a good girl. Please.”

The curse that leaves Sylus’s voice is barely perceptible as he drinks you in. Your cheeks were still streaked with tears, your eyes wide and glassy. Your lips were puffy from his bruising kisses, and cheeks heated with desire. There was absolutely nothing in the universe that could match how utterly gorgeous you were. His gorgeous woman. His to ruin.

His voice low with longing and hunger, “Fuck, okay love. I’ll give you what you want.”

He manipulates the energy around you, raising your arm above your hand. His slender fingers dance up your exposed skin, until they find your fingers. His nails graze your inflamed skin, fingers toying with yours. For a brief moment, he enjoys how much smaller your hand feels in his. His delicate little bird.

“Hold on tight.”

Your fingers grip his, your nails digging in when he finally pulls his cock out, leaving only his head still snuggly inside. Without giving you a second to breathe, he’s plummeting himself back into your sopping cunt. Your combined slick ensures there’s zero resistance, only the sounds of wet slaps filling the space between you.

Sylus’s forehead still rests against yours, his free arm bent above your head, helping support him as he fucks you with a painfully delicious intensity. Your cunt milks him perfectly, the warmth far too inviting and the tightness much too constricting. His fingers grip yours forcefully, trying to offset the way your pussy tries to suck the living soul out of him.

“Sy-Sylus,” you cry out, nails digging crescents into his skin, your other hand coming up to rake red scratches into his back, “Slow – ngh – slow down!” Your brain is a jumbled mess, confused at the words your tongue lets out when your body only wants more.

Sylus’s chuckle is low and almost sinister, his pace never relenting, “That’s funny. I recall you saying you’d be a good girl.” He shifts his weight to his knees, moving his palm to your naval, pressing down. You squeal at the feeling of his palm pressing into your stomach, your sensitive walls being compressed into his cock spearing in and out of you.

“And good girls take what they’re given, hm?”

Moans and whimpers are the only thing you’re capable of producing, his pace brutal, like he was trying to find his way into your throat from your cunt. You don’t notice his hand traveling further south until his thumb presses into your swollen clit, flicking hard. You screech, your back arching off the bed, giving him further access to your dripping cunt.

“Answer me when I speak to you, sweetheart.”

“Yes! Yes, I’m a good girl, I can take it!” you all but screamed, spine so arched you felt like you were levitating.

The erotic cries that leave your lips make it difficult for Sylus to think straight, so he doesn’t. He fucks you with a ferocity that was nothing short of animalistic, the only thing he can think of is how many different ways he can and will make you cum.

He presses your joined palms deeper into the mattress, eyes searching yours desperately. For what, you were unsure. But as his scarlet irises bore into yours, you felt an overwhelming sense of emotion catch in your throat.

Propping yourself slightly on your elbows, you pressed your forehead to Sylus’s, his sweat dampened bangs fluttering against your eyelashes.You reach up to cup the back of his head, pulling him towards you. His right hand never leaves your clit, his left staying tightly clasped with yours.

He takes the opportunity to press his lips to yours, forcing his tongue into your mouth. You moan into him as he claims you fully, thrusts moving in tandem with his tongue. It’s a torrid clash of tongue and teeth, enough passion to have the Aether core in your heart throbbing dangerously erratically.

“Syluuus,” you slur as you pull away to breathe, “I-I’m..I’m gon–” You can’t get the words out, the tip of his cock against your cervix and fingers on your clit bringing you into another dimension, one filled with him. The scent, the sound, the feel, the sight of him.

“I know. Getting so goddamn tight,” he grits out, jaw locking as he tries to steady himself against your vice grip. Sylus was a man of boundless stamina and restraint, but when it came to you… When it came to the absolute heaven that was your body, he could hold nothing back.

Just as you neared your orgasm, Sylus stops again. You find your body being moved again, but this time Sylus’s hands are lifting you, and not his Evol. His strong arms lift you so that you’re sitting on his lap, your back pressed against his muscled chest, and his back leaned up against the bed.

He does however use his Evol to drag over the gold arched full-length mirror you had propped up against the corner of your bedroom, so that it sits right in front of the bed. Your vision is filled with the gleaming reflection of you, naked on Sylus’s lap, his arrogant smirk right by the top of your head. His muscular arms are draped over your thighs, spreading open your glistening folds, fully exposing you before the mirror.

“Sylus s-stop. It’s embarrassing,” you whine, averting your gaze at the lewd sight, and the even filthier sounds of his fingers against your copious slick. But he grips your jaw firmly, turning you back to the mirror.

“Look how beautiful you are,” he murmurs, lips pressed against your ear, “Look.”

You puff your cheeks, fighting against his fingers.

“Look, love. Or you don’t get to cum,” he purrs in your ear.

You mutter sulkily, knowing full well his threats are anything but empty, “You’re evil.”

But you obey diligently, letting his fingers guide your face forward. The sight before you is so unbelievably filthy, Sylus’s long fingers digging into your thighs to keep them spread open, his other fingers playing with your swollen lips. Even on his lap, he was a head taller than you, His soft white hair is matted with sweat, his cheeks dusted a peachy red with how vigorously he’d just been fucking you.

As your eyes meet in the mirror, Sylus lifts you from underneath your thighs, and spears you onto his cock. You cry out at the feeling of being stretched open again, Sylus’s own ecstasy fueled grunts in your ear.

With you atop him, his cock reaches so unbelievably deep inside you that you feel the tears returning. Your eyes screw shut as his tip repeatedly brushes against your cervix, the familiar pain quickly dulling into an intense pleasure.

Suddenly you feel Sylus’s teeth at the crook of your neck, and arm coming across your chest to enclose over your entire throat. His sharp canines dig into the area where your neck meets your shoulder, biting just hard enough to make your eyes fly open to face his in the mirror. His eyebrows are quirked at you, amusement evident in his sharp ruby eyes.

He doesn’t speak, instead keeping his mouth attached to your pulse point. But the dark sultry heat swirling in his eyes that you can see reflected in the mirror is a clear and wordless command.

Watch.

And who were you to disobey him, when his body brought this much pleasure to your own.

So with your eyes locked on his in the mirror, Sylus begins to bounce you in earnest on his lap. And while you moan and whimper as he springs you so effortlessly on his cock, like you weighed nothing more than a mere toy, his own noises are muffled by his teeth that are sunk into your fluttering neck.

His eyes never leave yours in the mirror, darkened underneath his eyebrows, glowing with red hot lust. The way he watches you is so intimately primal, like a predator toying with its prey before the kill.

With his hungry gaze locking yours in place and the lewd wet sounds of slick skin pounding against one another, you feel the alarmingly rapid tightening of your abdomen that signals your orgasm. Sylus feels it too, your walls tightening so intensely that the outline of his veins might imprint into you. Your grip coaxes his own cock toward release, his jaw tightening as to keep himself in check.

He releases your bruised skin, admiring how breathtaking you look with his marks on you. His hand leaves your clit to rest on your tummy, stroking the skin there. You can feel him use his Evol to keep you in place, only the raw strength of his thighs and abs keeping you in steady motion on his length.

“Look,” he croons in your ear, teeth grazing against your sensitive earlobes, “Can you see where I am, dove? I’m allll the way here ” His husky voice drawls, hand on your abdomen pressing down. You can definitely see the distinct outline of something large thrusting in and out of you. Your eyes widen at the mirror, mesmerized at how your bodies connect, almost resonating on their own. Sylus’s eyes are also glued to the way the base of his cock, shiny with a ring of arousal, forces your tiny fluttering cunt to take him in all his glory.

“Tell me how it feels, hm? Tell me how I make you feel.” When you don’t respond, too lost in the sight in the mirror, his fingers come back down to squeeze your clit,

“Sylus! – ngh – feels ssoo so good,” you simper, panting through the hold he still has on your throat, the pressure quickly becoming far too addicting, “I-I…”

“Hah,” he groans into your ear, “You what baby? Tell me.”

“M’gunna cuuum,” you wail as his angle shifts just slightly, cock driving into your g spot. Sylus knows just how to play with you, his fingers sending you to heaven and back repeatedly. He was so thick that you felt like he'd split you in two, your cunt and thighs being stretched to their limits against the sloppy friction.

“Hmmm, is my beautiful girl going to make a mess on me? Does she deserve to?”

The mere thought that he might deny your climax again has you sobbing, tears of anguished ecstasy rolling down your face as his pace picks up even further.

“P-Pleaaase – unghh – please let me. I’m a g-good girl, I’ll be so – hnngh – good, I promise.”

Sylus had no intention of denying you again, but now he physically couldn’t. Because now, watching the fat tears roll down your cheek and hearing your beautiful pleas, he too could feel himself pulse with the ache to fill you up. As he watched your breathtaking form in the mirror, he cursed the Gods for sending the only thing that could ruin him.

You.

And yet, being ruined by you felt so damn good.

“Good for who, my love?”

Your vision has become clouded by your tears and the black spots that blot your eyesight. But the possessive purr in Sylus’s voice reaches you, through all the blinding pleasure, and makes butterflies flutter in your chest.

Your hands come up behind you to grasp behind his neck, and you strain yourself so that you turn just slightly to face him. For a second Sylus looks taken aback, but he quickly composes himself, the confident smile returning to his lips.

“Nggghh – for you, Sylus.” The sincerity of your shaking voice wipes the cocky smirk off his face, his thrusts faltering ever so slightly. For a brief second, Sylus can’t feel anything. He can’t feel the way your cunt, on the precipice of release, squeezes so forcefully that it threatens to break him in half, the way your soaking thighs ripple against his lap as he pounds into you, the way your fingers play with the hair at the back of his head.

Fate had played a cruel trick on the two of you. Two tragically entwined Aether cores. Two birds of a feather, trapped in the cage destiny had built.

But now, there is only you and him. Fate and destiny be damned.

“I’m yours Sylus. Always yours.”

Your words, delicate and simpering, pull him back to reality. All the sensations he’d briefly been numbed to came crashing back. The torturously delicious way you felt around him, atop him, and against him swarmed back all at once. And to top it all off, the sight of your fluttery wide wet eyes, hazed over with a fog of lust, staring at him with such wonder and adoration. Your eyes alone were practically making love to him.

It made him absolutely feral.

You squeal, thighs doing their best to grip against Sylus’s lap as he bounces you with an unprecedented vigor, his hand holding your throat to keep you somewhat steady. You watch his muscles bulge, his much larger frame very much on display behind you. Powerful and imposing – a true god-like glory.

“That’s fucking right, you’re mine,” he hisses in your ear, jaws clenched to hold back the moans your pussy threaten to pull from his body.

“Gonna cum in you, yeah? Would my slutty girl like that?"

“Y-Yes!” you squeal, so close to coming undone, “Pleeease Sylus! I-I’m s’close, I’ll do anything please!” You were quickly losing your voice amidst all the screaming and vigorous activities.

You can see Sylus devilish smile, releasing your throat to tilt your chin towards him.

“Anything? You’re making a deal with the devil, little dove.”

With your face so dangerously close to his, he can’t resist. He doesn’t give you a chance to respond, his lips crashing onto yours, locked in the sweltering passion of your bodies. The feel of his tongue claiming every inch of your mouth is just enough to send you headfirst into the orgasm you’d been on the brink of for so long.

And because of that, your body couldn’t hold back the gush of excitement that squirted from where Sylus was connected to you. It’s so messy you can’t help the way your cheeks burn in embarrassment, even amidst the short circuiting of your pleasure-numbed brain.

“Jesus fucking christ,” Sylus bites out, the tautening of your orgasm stricken cunt nearly squeezing him into unconsciousness. He fucks you through your blissed out state, and it isn’t long before he follows your lead.

Like everything Sylus does, the way he cums is frighteningly powerful. Your body involuntarily shivers at how hot he is, but more so just how much there is. You can both clearly see the thick milky white seed seeping down Sylus’s cock, even as he continues to fuck into you. His thrusts are slower now, but more intentional. Conveying every ounce of passion into the way he rocks into you. Overstimulation quickly grips you, and you weakly tap at his thighs.

“Sylus, no-no more. S’too much.”

“M’not done,” he groans into your ear as he continues to thrust into you, and it’s then you feel his cock still shooting ropes of his hot spend inside you. He does, however, release your clit, shoving his fingers in your mouth, knowing it'll give you something to ground yourself amidst the sensitivity while he rides out the waves of his climax.

You gladly accept his fingers, grasping his forearm and sucking like his arm was a dessert. The taste of your mixed slick helps distract you from the intense aftershocks that wrack your body. It’s all enough to have Sylus spurting out everything he has, drained completely empty, milked utterly dry.

When you feel him finally still, you crack your eyes open, almost scared to see the aftermath.

The waning sun bounced beams of golden sunlight off your sweat, tears, and cum slicked bodies. Your own body was also littered in pretty little bruises, in the shape of Sylus’s teeth and fingers. Bruises in places you hadn’t even felt Sylus sink his teeth into. They quite literally looked like swirls of paint against a blank canvas.

Your hair was a mess, and your tear stained face was no better. The area between your thighs was red and puffy, leaking an obscene amount of white cream, all the while still stuffed to the brim with Sylus’s softening member. Even half hard, he stretched you absolutely full.

On the other hand, the man in question looked absolutely ethereal as he loomed above you in the mirror. His hair sat lusciously soft, gently blowing with the breeze entering through the cracked window. His muscles still flexed gently as they recovered from the vigorous activities, strong chest rising and falling rhythmically with his steadying heartbeat.

And finally his eyes that watch you back so carefully, the carmine orbs half lidded with satisfied bliss. His lips stretch into that signature Sylus smirk when he catches you staring, nothing short of heart stoppingly arrogant.

He’s so unbelievably handsome, your cunt quivering again just at the sight of him. Wincing at the feeling of his cock inside you stirring back to life at your involuntary throbbing, you panic and tap furiously on his thigh.

“Sylus, put me down.”

Sylus chuckles, mischief coloring his scarlet eyes, “What, no ‘please’?”

You whine, not able to withstand the feeling of him stirring back to life in your absolutely spent core. Yet you can feel yourself fluttering in anticipation. And you know he can feel it too.

You silently curse your traitorous body.

“Please.”

He laughs warmly and obliges. His strong hands grip the underside of your thighs, lifting you off of him. You cry out at the feeling, your cunt clenching at nothing, seeking him once more. Sylus inhales sharply, craving your tight warmth again. But he holds you gently against his chest, shifting so that his erection rests between his abdomen and your thigh, with you sitting sideways on his lap.

You nuzzle your head into his chest, and Sylus’s lips come down to the top of your head, breathing in your scent and ghosting kisses into your hair. Your hands reach up to weave into his silver tresses, playing with his soft locks and delicately massaging his scalp.

“Thank you,” you murmur, voice muffled against his skin.

When Sylus doesn’t respond, you pull away from him and look up at him expectantly. He appears to be lost in the feeling of your fingers.

“You never said please, you could at least say thank you,” you tease, poking his soft cheek with your finger.

Sylus looks down at you, amused danger flickering in the deep orbs of crimson. His hand leaves your thigh, slowly and tortuously crawling up your skin until he cups your face. You shiver, suddenly feel like you’re staring into the face of danger.

“Hmm, isn’t it customary to say thank you after eating?”

You crinkle your brows in confusion at his cryptic words, waiting for him to elaborate further. Sylus’s smug grin widens, his thumb brushing over your bottom lip, basking in the excited fear brimming in your bleary eyes.

“I’ve yet to finish my meal, little dove.”

.ᐟ✧ THIS IS MY ONLY ACCOUNT. I WILL ONLY POST ON THIS ACCOUNT AND AO3. i am not @/aeyumicores or @/aeyumiicore or any variations of my blog name.

✧.˖ i do not permit translations or reposts of my work on tumblr, ao3, or others. please do not reuse my blogpost headers, dividers, or layouts. these are original designs of my own.

11K notes · View notes