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#carrion x reader
luxthestrange · 2 months
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TIGRAAS Incorrect quotes#64 VIP only-
You Invited your Favorite People who aren't from the federation to a tea party with bakery goods you made, from your life back on earth
Frey*Holding a thing called "Banana bread" and sniffing it curiously*So...It's bread made from Bananas
Y/n*Smiles and nods*It is
Frey: YOU made this bread
Y/n: I did!
Frey: You can put stuff on it?
Y/n: I meaaan i wouldn't recommend making a sandwich with it but knock yourself out!~
Gazel*Is happily chewing at a bread but he is confused by the taste*...This one doesnt taste like bananas...
Y/n*Gleams seeing him eating it* That one has Oreos on it
Gazel*Stares at the bread and spots the white n black thing you called "Oreo Cookies" that you shared with him once...and that he found very delicious, pupils dilating, and gives you a smile*...I like Oreos...
Y/n:Me too!
Carrion*Looking at his own bread that is different from Frey's and Gazel's*...What's in this one?
Y/n: Chocolate chips!
Carrion*On brooding stare at you*...why?
Y/n*Shrugs, looking back at him with a derpy grin*Why not?
Carrion*Stares longer at you*Your invited to my birthday party...
Y/n*Gleams knowingly but spots the Ramiris*??
Ramiris*Putting slices of meat and cheese...and making a sandwich with the banana bread*Y/n When you say you wouldn't recommend making a sandwich out of it, this is a suggestion, correct?
Y/n: It's not illegal-
Ramiris*Putting the things you call Chips into it and closing it,drooling*Good...Imma need more of this, okay?
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just the idea of big-shot rulers ...eating cute pastries and drinking tea from heart-shaped teacups with you-
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master-muffinn · 1 year
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That time i got reincarnated as a slime
When their s/o sitting on their lap in public.
The first time you sit on their lap they get extremely nervous and blushing. They look around them to see peoples reactions “What will they think? Is this really ok?” are their thoughts. Poor souls aren’t used to this kind of thing. They probably tell you it is inappropriate but they don’t have the heart to push you away, they love you too much for that. Where are they going to put their hands? On your shoulders? On your thighs? Around your belly? Or should they first ask for your permission to even touch you? Help them s/o!! Try not to do it around too many people or even in front of their friends/leader, they might die of embarrassment!
Even when you have done this a couple of times they are still blushing and are a little nervous, but now they can put their arms around you and be a little more confident.
^ Benimaru, Souka, Geld? ^
These people LOVE it when you sit on their lap! You can do it whenever you want! When they sit and talk with their friends? Yes! While they are working? Of course! During the meetings? No problem! They will basically drag you to their lap and hold you with such pride and happiness. If you decide not to sit on their lap they might even look a little hurt and pout, but it gets over quickly.
If anyone questions it, they will be greatly offended. Like “How DARE you question us?” Is pretty much their reaction. (They might even start a fight, depending on who it is). They will continue to hold you anyway, it’s none of other people's business, they do as they want. 
^ Veldora, Milim, Shion, Rimuru, Ranga, Rigurd ^
They get surprised at first and blushing, but they adapt pretty quickly. They don't mind at all, in fact they think it’s cute and nice that their s/o want to sit on their lap. It makes them feel happy that you trust them enough and want to protect you even more. It’s fine anytime, as long as it’s not in the way of work or during meetings. These people are pretty confident so they don't care what people think and say, what are they gonna do? Push you off? Then they must be very brave. However if their leader (if they have one) would tell them it’s inappropriate then they would simply tell s/o so, but if not then they would continue holding their s/o and looking at them with that loving and found smile of theirs. 
^ Souei, Diablo, Shuna, Treyni, Guy, Kaijin, Shizu, Rigur, Carrion ^
“No dear s/o! No PDA, all cuddles and lap sitting is only for privacy!” They probably told you already from the start. If you decide to do it anyway, they will push you off and give you a glare that pretty much says “Not now. Later”. Teasing won't work either, sorry. BUT when it is finally just the two of you, they go all out! They hold you while they work, giving you a little peck sometimes. Putting you on their lap and might even feed you little sweets <3. If anyone disturb them while they have their bellowed alone time with s/o they will glare at however disturb them, still holding on tightly around their s/o. “Is it very important? Someone dying or what? No? If so, please leave”. 
^ Leon, Gazel, Luminous, Hinata ^
These people are most likely the ones who are sitting on YOUR lap. Don’t get me wrong, they LOVE it when you sit on their lap, but they prefer to be the little spoon and getting ALL their s/o attention. They don’t care if people stare, in fact they get a little cocky and get a confident/ego boost. “Yes this is my s/o, aren’t they amazing?! And only I get their attention. It’s fully understandable if you get jealous”. They would most likely be a little jealous if you pay your attention to someone else but them.
^ Gobta, Milim, Gabiru, Ramiris, Rimuru? ^
Thank you for reading! If liked, reblogs are very appreciated! :) 
I do not take requests.
Post made by @master-muffinn
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michaela-o · 3 months
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A little fan art gift of Carrion for my lovely mutual @callsign-relic !!😻❤️
I really hope you like it !🥹❤️ i had so much fun drawing him and i abolutely LOVE his design !! (I also decided to add lil of myself bc i love your mean boi so much🥹🥹)
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cordeliawhohung · 5 days
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you're an angel // i'm a dog [2]
masterlist | read on ao3 | alpha!Gaz x omega!Reader
captain's orders
cw: omegaverse, hormone suppressants, kyle is down bad
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“Seriously, sir?” 
John Price stares up at his sergeant with a cocked eyebrow. His freshly printed — and redacted — report sits in his hand on an extended arm. Kyle stares at it like it’s carrion. Meat rotted and decayed too much to feast on. 
“Scared of a papercut, Garrick?” John asks, half serious. 
Scoffing, Kyle grabs the report from him. It’s thick: a good fifty pages, if not more. He can see the look on your face already. Your pursed lips and heavy huff — the way your chest dances beneath those silk blouses you always wear as you groan. Sighing, he hits the stack of paper against the palm of his hand, coolly looking back at his captain with as bored of an expression as he can muster. 
“Don’t want you getting used to me being your errand boy is all,” he replies with heavy sarcasm. 
John hums as he leans back in his chair. The old leather stretches and cries beneath his weight before it settles against the curve of him. “Strange. The others are all too eager to visit the new pet they have in the office.” Pausing, a cheeky smirk curls along his lips. “Though, suppose that doesn’t mean much to you. Not if you’re still takin’ those suppressants.” 
“Course,” he confirms. 
“Well, then”— John waves him off —“unless you need me to hold your hand.”
Truth is, Kyle hates visiting you. Hates how much he enjoys it — how his body enjoys it. Craves it like a treat. The last time he saw you, you were so close to your heat he could feel the change in his bones. This insatiable desire to hold you, to wrap you in his embrace. You looked wounded — sounded wounded as you said his name in a strained greeting. He’s never felt that desire before, never coveted something as much as he does you. It’s… unfortunate. Frustratingly confusing. 
You’re on the tail end of your heat. Kyle can smell it before he even turns the corner into your office. That needy aroma wafts like incense heavy and thick in the air. It’s so strong it nearly stops him in his tracks — as if it’s manifested into a tangible wall warning him he’d do well to stay away. Cotton fills the sudden vacancy in his skull, and his throat constricts around the pulse throbbing next to his Adam’s apple as he pushes past the barrier and into your office.
Just drop the papers off and run. 
Kyle hasn’t known you for long, but you’re the most exhausted he’s ever seen you before. Drooping eyes, a heavy slouch in your posture; he doubts you’re fully comprehending the spreadsheet pulled up on your monitor. As he approaches your desk, he tells himself he’ll do you — and himself — a favor by getting out of your hair as quick as possible, but he stumbles when you greet him with a smile. Soft; almost pitiful. His fingers instinctively flex to the point he nearly crumples John’s report. Holding his breath, his tongue darts out to wet his lips. He’d lick your wounds if you let him. Lick you clean until your unbearable wave of hormones settled —
— for his own sake. 
“Hey Kyle,” you greet. 
“Hey pet.” He sets the report flat on your desk. There’s no way he can stomach even indirect contact with you. “Everything alright?” 
“Oh, yeah just… just tired.” Your words are slow. Deep; as if holding back a yawn. 
Kyle gathered as much just based on your appearance alone, and he’s swarmed with… warmth. Something uncomfortable. Scathing. He’s… angry — unrightfully so — yet he looks at you in this state and can’t help but think to himself that you belong in bed. Swaddled up in a fluffy nest where you can rest and recover. What a strange thought, he realizes. He’s never felt such an urge before, and he doesn’t think he likes it. 
“And, of course, here you are. Right on time to give me… what is this, fifty pages of work? Twenty minutes ‘till five?” you tease. 
“Sorry doll, captain’s orders,” Kyle attempts to humor. He hopes you don’t hear the tightness in his throat. 
Despite your fatigue, your giggle is canorous as you retrieve the report off your desk. “Well, wouldn’t wanna upset the captain, would-” 
Clever words die on your tongue as your free hand clasps over your mouth and nose. A wave of musk washes over your body and you feel something squirm inside of you with ferocious want. It worms its way into you, burrowing deep as it leaves nothing but empty holes in its wake. Without a second thought, you toss the report to the edge of your desk. Items scatter, and the papers nearly flutter to the ground. It’s strong — John’s scent. So strong it haunts the pages. 
“I… I’m sorry, I-I can’t, uhm. This- This is gonna have to wait until tomorrow,” you stutter. 
Trembling hands absentmindedly paw at the side of your neck, and Kyle’s eyes drink in the view of your skin. Something lurches and buzzes in the back of his brain when he notices how pristine it is. Unmarked. Untainted by an alpha. 
Poor thing. Just gone through a heat without anyone to take care of her. 
What the hell are you thinking? 
“Don’t sweat it. I’ll let him know. Make sure he gives you proper time to process it.” Kyle’s already backing away from your desk as he speaks. The tepidness of his voice would have you believe he’s level headed, but there’s a tempest swirling in his mind; one so strong he knows he needs to leave fast before you catch wind of it. “Should go home and rest. Don’t think anyone’ll mind if you leave early.” 
You’re hardly able to express your thanks before he’s out the door. Kyle has never run from a single thing in his entire life, and yet here he is now, running from this sweet — unclaimed — omega sitting pretty in the main office. 
His skin crawls with sensations and urges he’s never felt before; ones he desperately tries to shake off as he marches through base like a madman. Have you brought out this beast in him? His suppressants have always worked this far, and yet now it’s as if he’s been forcefully weaned off of them. The scent of you grows faint the more space he puts between himself and you, and he’s under the impression that it’ll help, but he couldn’t be more wrong. That indescribable ache only festers further. He’s gotten the vaguest taste of you and he’s already addicted. Suffering through withdrawals. 
Taste, feel, feel, claim, bite, bite, touch, feel, hold, claim, bite, bite, bite—
“You broken, Kyle?” 
He blinks and he’s back in John’s office. He’s standing face to face with his captain, who he’s been rudely blocking the exit for the last few seconds. Pawing at the sweat lining the nape of his neck, Kyle clears his throat and nods. 
“I’m good,” he assures. “Pet down in the office still coming out of her heat. Probably won’t get your report processed until your scent is off the page. Poor thing should probably just go home.” 
Ignoring him, John tilts his head and not so covertly leans forward. It’s a sign of strength, of power; of his status over Kyle. John sniffs and then quietly mulls over the concoction of scents that fills his nose. Kyle’s skin begins to crawl — he’s being tested; judged — and he wants to bark. 
Instead, he bites his tongue. 
“Sure it wasn’t your scent that got the poor thing all worked up?” John challenges. 
“What do you mean?” Kyle grabs the collar of his BDU and pulls it up to his nose. He doesn’t realize it’s a terrible mistake until he gets a whiff of you. 
“Thought you said you were still taking those suppressants.” 
“I am,” he assures. 
Things grow stilly as Kyle steps back — both to let John leave his office and to get away from the looming alpha — and for a moment he is convinced he’s mistaken. Has he missed a dose and forgotten? Corrupted memory; has he been recklessly endangering others this whole time? 
Eventually John frees Kyle from his unrelenting gaze as he huffs and stares down the hallway. “Check in with your doctor, alright? Get yourself a stronger dose. You’re sweating harder than you did in Urzikstan, and I don’t need any of my men brazenly claiming some poor pet in her office. You reek of desire, Kyle.” 
John’s tone is even but Kyle can clearly read between the lines. He needs to be careful. More than careful. Getting too intoxicated off of your scent to the point it makes his suppressants ineffective would throw him in a world of hurt. It’s been so long since he’s let his biology take course, he doubts he would survive such an intense hormone dump if he doesn’t take the change with caution.
And if his teammates can’t count on him, well… then he’s worse than useless. 
“Yes sir,” Kyle confirms. 
Nodding, John gives him two quick pats on the chest before sauntering down the hallway. “Good man.”
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delfiore · 1 year
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—LIKE REAL PEOPLE DO.
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pairing: leah williamson x reader
synopsis: a collection of private moments from a relationship between two public figures.
word count: 3.4k
warnings: IMPLICIT SMUT
a/n: this fic was proudly sponsored by hozier’s entire discography and my need to get a gf
SEQUEL: DO YOU THINK I HAVE FORGOTTEN ABOUT YOU?
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ONE. As It Was.
As it always was, London was raining when you came home.
The pitter-patter of the rain hitting the window panes reminded you of childhood, when it was autumn and smelled like the earth, and burying yourself in the piles of dry leaves in the backyard was like swimming in the clouds.
The rain reminded you of love and hot cocoa and scented candles.
The apartment was bathed in an orange hue from the three candles placed neatly on the coffee table when you dragged your suitcase inside. You could still hear the rain when you saw the way her eyes lit up and felt her heart pressed against yours.
You let yourself smile like it was the easiest thing in the world; because it was. You were home because you were with her.
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TWO. Eat Your Young.
“Babe! What d’you want for dinner?” You heard her call from the living room.
You had just finished a chapter from your book. “Eh . . . pasta?”
“We already had pasta last night, love.”
“More pasta?” You smiled sheepishly, seeing the way she rolled her eyes but went along with your idea.
To her, there was never anything she could have the heart to deny you from, especially now that she had you back after having lent you to your work for so long.
You were supposed to be halfway across the world filming your new movie. It was only because of the writer’s strike, an unforeseen event, that gave you back to her. You had flown back from a shoot to be there for her in the days after she ruptured her ACL and when she had her surgery, but she found herself missing you the moment you left for work again.
Music played softly from the speaker on the kitchen counter as you chopped the cherry tomatoes while she boiled the noodles since that was the only thing you were okay with her doing without burning the entire building down.
“Remember to let the water boil first,” you said without turning around.
“I did,” she whined, her words trailing longer than necessary if she was telling the truth.
You stopped chopping and glanced behind your shoulder with a deadpan. “Leah.”
The water was clearly not bubbling, and yet the poor rigatoni noodles were already dunked in the pot.
“I’m sorry, I forgot again,” the girl smiled sheepishly.
You rolled your eyes at her and shook your head as she sidled up behind you with her arms around your waist.
You could never grow tired of being held in her arms like this, the warmth created by her chest pressing up against your back, and the anticipation of her timid kisses against your neck. The knife in your hand had long been set down in fear of injury by your trembling hands. Your footballer always liked to tease you until you had no choice but to submit.
“Am I forgiven?” Her voice was husky in your ear.
You were quick to regain your composure before you turned around. “Depends on if those noodles are edible or not.”
“Or we could just ditch dinner and eat each other instead.”
“Cute,” you grinned and pressed your lips against hers. You heard the slightest whimper when you gathered her bottom lip with your teeth and lightly tugged on it. “Needs some seasoning. Otherwise, good enough.”
“That’s what I meant, obviously.”
In the end, the pasta was long forgotten, and you had to order a pizza instead because, by the time she was done, you could barely walk to the other side of the kitchen.
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THREE. I, Carrion (Icarian).
You had always been uncomfortable with silence. It was why you brought your speaker everywhere, why you preferred the city over the countryside, why you always felt the need to fill the silence in a room with conversation where there were other people. To you, silence meant a weapon, a way of waging war without actually doing it—the cowardice of dishonesty. So any chance you had to snuff out a glimpse of it, you did. Most of the time, though, the only war waged was the one you did to yourself in your mind.
But whenever you are with her, none of those threats present themselves. She has made silence enjoyable and something you wish you had learned to appreciate earlier, not fear it.
She had put on a movie for the both of you to watch on the couch. You usually felt the need to provide commentary were you with friends, but you were content with enjoying the movie in silence, occasionally looking over to your blonde lover to admire her on the other end of the couch. Your left leg was currently stretched across the cushions, as Leah gave you a foot massage whilst watching the movie.
Sometimes she didn’t feel real, like it was all a sick and twisted dream waiting to drop you on your head when you wake up. But it never did, because every time you reached for her, she was always there; even when you were timezones apart, she would find a way to be there for you in spirit.
“Babe, watch the movie. I like this one,” she spoke, pulling you out of your thoughts.
“I feel like it should be me giving you a foot massage,” you said, lifting your chin towards her healing knee.
“Nah. You were the one sitting on a 12-hour flight to get back here,” she put pressure in the center of your foot.
With your arm on the backrest, you lifted it to brush the tips of your fingers against her hair, inching closer toward the skin on her neck. She noticed, of course, and sent a cheeky grin your way.
Your lover smiled and laughed like a child does. You loved it whenever she showed her teeth when she smiled, stripping down the front of the stoic and reliable captain of European champions that she had to be. You hated that she always lifted others up, yet put so much pressure on herself. You wished that she would be selfish sometimes, for when you weren’t there to pick up the pieces.
You never fared well, being away from her for long, which was why when she pulled you towards her and closed the distance between the two of you on the couch, you obliged.
“I love you,” she whispered after pressing a slow kiss on your lips.
With a lovesick sigh, you caressed her cheek and repeated her words. You loved the way her blue eyes narrowed watching you when you were so close to her face. The movie was running on the TV, but the only one you wanted to watch was her. You’d have to rewind it later.
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FOUR. To Someone From A Warm Climate (Uiscefhuaraithe).
There was a simplicity in all of it. This aspect of your life that, amidst the chaos and complications and unfairness in the world, was just that. Love. It was simple, it was sweet, it was yours.
It reminded you of a quote you read once: “He is half of my soul, as the poets say.” If anyone asked you why you loved her, you wouldn’t be able to answer. It would simply be that because she was she, and you were you.
Maybe Zeus never intended for soulmates to find each other. He was the one who split them up in the first place because he knew they would be impossible to part if the two halves merged.
She is half of your soul, as the poets say.
There was something so transcending about loving someone, and having it reciprocated. Every part of it; the good, the bad, the ugly. But you wanted all of it. You wanted to experience everything with her, because she was half of your soul, and it was the only way you could ever feel close to whole again before Zeus split you into two.
Your lover was panting quietly on top of you, her golden hair falling over her face like a lion’s mane. Her eyes fluttered close, her lips parted, her skin was hot to the touch. You watched, seeing the slightest shift in her face as she pulled your legs to her chest, the friction of her rocking slowly turning palpable as it fell into a rhythm. You would hold onto her, your fingers pressing down to create temporary craters into her skin, treading lightly, not wanting to disturb her pleasure, like a lone astronaut exploring a rogue planet.
You sighed contentedly hearing her quiet whines, an indication of an impending release. Your lover has never been loud, like she was saving everything she was feeling for you like everything would only be contained in these four walls, only for the both of you to share.
At some point, she had mumbled something and leaned down to flip you on your front. Even while her movements were restricted by her healing knee, she still liked to be as rough as she could, and you liked it, when she was always so sweet and gentle out of bed. It made you feel wanted, the way she pinned you to the bed and pressed herself against you, the way she intertwined your fingers and coaxed you through your high and kissed you until your lips were bruised and pulsating.
She made you feel wanted, even after you both had given each other euphoria, her frantic kisses to your skin always managed to elicit short giggles out of you. You would whisper in her ear after she had rolled over, the bedsheet warm and damp where she lay, holding her lean body close to yours, just like before Zeus had split you in half.
You are half of her soul, as the poets say, and unless a primordial god physically grabbed you by the waist and tore you away from your soulmate, you would stay here, one moment after another, until infinity. After that, you’d wake up the next morning and do it all over again.
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FIVE. Wasteland, Baby!
Your lover was a light sleeper. You had discovered that within the first few months of dating. The way she stirred awake was not dissimilar to how a fussy baby wakes up at the slightest of noises. Usually, she would be quite grumpy as well.
Your circadian rhythm looked more like arrhythmia with the jet lag you were experiencing, in addition to the irregular hours you slept due to having to adjust for filming. Which was why you were in the living room, reading, so your tossing and turning wouldn’t disturb her sleep.
Once again, whenever you were with her, the silence didn’t bother you. Not when you were bathed in her scent wearing her sweater and the premise of her resting a room away from you.
It was around two in the morning when you heard the bedroom door open and close, and the sound of quiet feet shuffling on the floor.
“Hey, you. Why are you awake?” You asked gently, extending a hand out to her.
“I woke up to use the bathroom and you weren’t there,” her bottom lip jutted out like it always did when she wanted your attention.
You stifled a giggle and a coo at how adorable a 26-year-old woman could be. “I just thought I’d leave you be since I couldn’t sleep.”
Without prompting, your lover made herself comfortable on the couch and snuggled into your side. “You’re wearing my jumper.”
You continued reading with one hand while the other rested on her head, and stroking it lightly. “Yeah, found it lying around.” You placed a short kiss on her hair.
“I love this, Y/N,” she said, her words nearly unintelligible from mumbling into the fabric of your sweatshirt. “I made a Pinterest board the other day for our future home.”
“Ooh, tell me more.”
“I’d like to live in the countryside somewhere, with like a farm. It’ll be a cottage with vines all over the walls and everything, wooden kitchen set, a sunroom.”
“I can see that,” you said, “what about the city? You ever dreamed of living in New York? Paris? Hong Kong?”
“I’d feel like a fish out of water. I can barely stomach London. You’d been to all those places.”
You have, but nowhere felt like home unless you were with her. You could make a home in Antarctica if she was there with you.
“All of them are overrated anyway.” You hummed. “I like it wherever I’m with you.”
Her nose crinkled whenever you’d say cheesy stuff like that. You never knew how much those words made her heart skip a beat, as she buried her face in your neck.
“I realized as I said it,” you scrunched your face too.
“Working with Wes Anderson made you a sap now, hasn’t it?” She quite enjoyed this side of you. “It’s fine. I like it.”
Sleep found her again shortly after. In the morning, she woke with a sore back, but her heart was full, realizing she had been tangled in your arms all night.
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SIX. Swan Upon Leda.
To know pain; the kind of pain that cuts through your flesh and leaves you bleeding dry. A stinging sensation that soon turns into agonizing hellfire and the knowing that there are several more spirals of hell still waiting to make you bleed. It was to witness someone who was half of your soul be in pain whilst you were powerless against the evil, and all you could do was pray that it would spare your soulmate and take you instead.
Your hand clasped around hers like iron chains, rubbing her back soothingly, as if the warmth from the back might manifest in her front and assuage the pain. She lay on the bathroom floor, her breathing slow and hard, like she was grappling with the evil that, by the looks of it, was winning. Clutching the heating pad to her stomach, her only lifeline, she curled away from you and into herself even further.
“Love, let’s move you to the bedroom where you can lay comfortably, yeah?” You asked gently.
She huffed and grunted. “Can’t move. Hurts.”
Your lover, your Lioness, Queen of Europe, falling apart by an invisible evil, immobilizing her like a wounded deer. The coldness of the tiles couldn’t have helped, but she couldn’t move.
Spare her. Give me the pain instead.
You leaned down, lowering yourself slowly to the cold, until you were flat on the floor too. Gently, you pulled her to turn to face you. Your Lioness was clenching her jaw, a vein splitting her forehead from how hard she was trying to pretend it didn’t bother her.
And it stung even more when she let out a choked sob.
Then she said with a trembling sigh, “Don’t want you to see me like this.”
Her face was stained with streaks of silent tears, a sign of the raging battle she had to endure for years finally getting the best of her. But the evil had never seen the best of her; she reserved it all for you.
“Oh, baby.” Your hand came up to cup her face, the frame that held the entire world.
It didn’t matter that your lover was curled up on the bathroom floor, she was still your bravest girl, your strongest soldier, and your fiercest Lioness.
“You’re the strongest person I know,” you said sincerely, “and I’m not leaving you, not now, not ever.”
Your lover beamed tearfully like sunshine in the rain and clung herself onto you.
Young love was the thing of fairytales. You would never claim to have it all figured out, but if what you had wasn’t love, you didn’t know the half of anything.
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SEVEN. Like Real People Do.
As serious as your lover made herself out to be, she was the biggest goof on the planet the moment a drop of alcohol entered her system. Never acted out of line, never said anything that she’d regret in the morning, just the rowdiest thing that considered waving her arms in the air while wobbling back and forth dancing. It made a spectacular scene to watch, especially whenever she was with her best friend, whom you had to thank for bringing her into your life.
Even the people in her life who knew her as responsible and trustworthy would be concerned at this entirely different side to her, to which you only waved them off with a laugh, and said, “She’ll be fine.”
She would always be because she always had you to take care of her.
“Water, babe?” She knew to listen to you and chugged the whole thing in one breath.
“Come dance with me?” She offered when the DJ slowed the music.
She looked too good not to, so you took her hand and followed her to the dance floor. Once there, she wrapped her arms around your waist and pressed a kiss on your forehead. “Come closer. You smell so good.”
You laughed. “Creep.”
“This is our song,” she chuckled.
The familiar melody elicited distant memories of shy ‘hello’s and stolen glances, her best friend pushing her towards you, and her keeping your number on the phone all night until she finally gathered the courage to press on it.
It was the first song on every playlist you sent each other, like a stamp, a greeting, a confession.
It was the song that played when it was just the two of you alone after she became her country’s pride and joy.
“I remember,” you said, brushing a strand of her hair back from her blue eyes, dazed ones that looked at you like you held the world in your hands. “I thought you’d be more confident, just from seeing how you are on the pitch. It was very endearing.”
“I was nervous, okay?” She groaned, laughing quietly. “I didn’t wanna embarrass myself in front of a movie star.”
“I’m glad you asked me to dance, even though—”
“I’m shit at dancing, yeah.”
You giggled, and bumped her nose. “I feel so lucky to have you in my life.”
She was swaying you back and forth, humming to the song gently, a far cry from the first time you had asked her to dance, and she panicked and said her legs were made for football and not dancing.
“I’m still shit at dancing,” she chuckled.
“I don’t care,” you shook your head. “I still love you.”
“Even if I’ve got two left feet?”
“Mmhm.”
She grinned and kissed you, inhaling deeply. “I can feel Alex taking pictures of us—Yup, her phone is out and it’s pointing at us. Very subtle, Alex.” You laughed when you turned around to see your lover already flipping the bird at her best friend.
“We do have her to thank for getting us to meet.”
“That’s ‘cause she beat me to it first. I would have found a way to you.”
“You didn’t even know me then, babe.”
“Yeah, but I’d still find my way to you.” She was giggling because you had pulled a face. “What? It’s true.”
Leah loved deeply, and boldly. You made her feel special like she was the only person in the world. You also made her feel ordinary, like she wasn’t the face of a nation and only any other stranger walking down the street. Inside the little bubble you were both in, you were just Leah and Y/N, two people in love.
The song had come to its end, and yet she still hadn’t let you go. Three little words sat on the tip of both of your tongues. You pressed a kiss to her lips first. She kissed you back, on the lips, then on the neck softly.
I love you.
I love you.
What you didn’t know was that she planned to make you a promise of forever, with a ring hidden in a drawer waiting at home.
Simple. Sweet. Ours.
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EIGHT. De Selby (Part 1).
“Lee?”
“Hm?”
“Would you still love me if I was a worm?”
“Mate, honestly like—“
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randomshyperson · 1 year
Text
Mess is Mine - Milf!Wanda Maximoff x Reader
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Summary: Being divorced from Wanda Maximoff implies never getting over her.
Warnings: (+18), language, brief smut, divorced ladies who are very still much in love with each other, unspecified age gap, marriage going wrong, hopeful ending, mild angst, fluff.| Words: 3.949k.
A/N-> There's this divorced couple in a Brazilian soap opera with so much chemistry in their scenes together because of the intimacy gained during marriage (even though that didn't work out) and they won't leave my tik tok ; at some point, my brain thought about this fic. I would love to write more of this trope in the future.
General Masterlist | AO3 | Wattpad
--//--
Wanda had a persistent migraine, and the pile of work in front of her was not helping.
Still, all her stubborn brain could focus on instead of her real job was the stupid headline of the gossip magazine on her desk.
A cheap and badly angled photo of her ex-wife with colorful captions that read 'The newest business killer couple?" and dozens more insinuations about a secret high-society romance made her stomach churn.
Wanda tried not to be affected by the gossip, but you looked so happy in the photo that she couldn't help it.
The sudden opening of her door made Wanda jump in her seat, in one quick pull close the magazine and sigh with relief when she saw it was only Natasha.
"Why are you here?" Her long-time friend and co-worker asked. Wanda frowned in confusion.
"It's still my company..."
Nat rolled her eyes, walking into the office and taking long strides to her desk. "I meant in here, smarty-pants. The event is starting in an hour, the staff wanted some words of encouragement or something."
Wanda sighed wearily, massaging her forehead with one hand. "Can't you do that for me, Nat? I gotta make some calls."
Nat hummed in agreement, but her gaze caught the closed magazine on the table and she raised a brow at her friend. "One of those calls includes your ex-wife, I suppose."
Wanda chuckled dryly, taking the magazine out to one of the drawers and adjusting herself to reach the desk phone. "There's nothing else for me to say to her."
Her friend hid a smile that said that she didn't believe this one bit. "Okay, whatever you say. See you later, boss."
Wanda waved goodbye, with the phone to her ear. Her immediate instinct was to dial known numbers but she shook her head to push that ridiculous idea away and went back to work.
Several hours after the peak of the event when the company was filled with guests, from potential clients to journalists looking for any news like vultures at the carrion, Wanda was at her second glass of champagne, trying to keep the rest of her patience intact after having answered so many questions for gossip magazines regarding the headline from earlier in the day.
She absolutely did not want to discuss a possible romance between her ex-wife and the heiress of Bishop Industries. 
Years before, any of them would have been afraid to question her about something so ridiculous, but that was before you came along. And melted your way into the Business Ice Queen, the untouchable Wanda Maximoff, or whatever insensitive nickname they invented about her back then. Before breaking down all of Wanda's walls, making her a better person, and of course, before you left her.
It was definitely the alcohol's fault that she was thinking about this, and with these stupid tears welling up in her eyes. Wanda swallowed all the emotion, burying it deep and making sure that no one had noticed her broken expression. With an excuse to a group of investors who were boring her into a corner, she retreated to an area far away from the company's outdoor gardens, taking a deep breath to calm herself. The beautiful view of the state lake was most welcome.
So of course the reason for her almost minor breakdown had to show up wearing her favorite suit.
"Are you running away from your guests, Maximoff?" Your tone was casual, the smile provocative. She snorted to herself, crossing her arms and keeping her eyes on the lake. You didn't mind, walking over to her at a slow pace until you were beside her on the edge. 
"I just needed some air." She merely replies. With one hand in your pockets, you adjust your own hair, and Wanda hates that she can smell the shampoo, her body betraying her and shuddering as if your scent were addictive. 
"You're avoiding me today." You comment lightheartedly, studying her face. "I arrived an hour ago and it took me almost all this time to find you."
Wanda forced a smile, finally facing you back, but her angry look made you hesitate. "I thought your chaperone was keeping you busy."
You glanced back at the party, stealing a quick check on Kate at the food stand, chatting with a blonde girl, before turning your attention back to Wanda.
"I forgot how hot you get when you're jealous."
Wanda huffs away, her cheeks burning which she tries to hide by staring at the lake. "Don't even start." She warns between teeth. 
You chuckle, rolling your eyes, but don't insist. You turn your attention to the lake as well. "I wanted to let you know that the boys have already arrived in King Cross. I spoke to them and Charles on the phone."
"I know, Pietro texted me." She retorts more harshly than she meant to and bites the inside of her cheek as she sees you lower your head in upset. With a sigh, she mumbles, "I meant, thanks for letting me know."
You smile, nodding before turning your gaze back to the party. "What do you think of Miss Bishop?" 
Wanda locks her jaw; How dare you honestly. A list of curses lays ready on the tip of her tongue, but she remembers where you two are, and takes a deep breath. You were clearly trying for some kind of reaction from her, and she's not going to let you have this victory today.
"She's beautiful." Wanda replies. "As young as you were when I met you."
You chuckle shortly, raising an eyebrow at her. "What are you implying, Maximoff?"
Wanda shrugs her shoulders softly, turning to leave. "You're quite clever, Y/N, I'm sure you follow." She hits back, but you step forward into her path. You are suddenly too close, and Wanda finds herself holding her breath. She needs to take a step back to avoid stopping breathing for good.
Your eyes stare into theirs. "Not that this is any of your business, darling, but my relationship with Kate is strictly professional."
You assure her in a low tone, and Wanda swallows hard as your gaze moves down to her lips for a long moment before focusing on her eyes again. A smile forms on your mouth next. "Besides this, I've always had a thing for older women."
Wanda sighs heavily, using all her mental control to pull away at once. "Go pay attention to your chaperone, Y/N. Especially if she's a potential client."
You roll your eyes at the business tip; you already know them by heart, the vast majority learned from Wanda. And your ex-wife makes mention of leaving, so you slide your hand down her forearm gently, taking some amusement in seeing the way she shivers.
"I wanted to talk to you about something, Wanda." You let her know, with a serious tone but a tender look. The redhead swallows dryly at the closeness of your faces now that you're standing side by side, your hands connected. "Later, after the party, okay?"
"I-I..."
"It's important." You assure her, knowing her hesitation is so as not to break your agreement about relapses. With a gentle expression, you insist, "Please, it won't take more than five minutes."
She licks her lips, and you almost kiss her. Lucky for her she agrees and walks away because God knows you would have done it, right there in that garden for all the New York reporters to have a week's news about.
Without Wanda's perfume around you, you take a deep breath and try to clear your mind, having to wait a few more minutes in the garden for your heart to stop beating so fast.
As the event nears its end and Wanda needs to give a closing speech, you say goodbye to Kate before the parking area. You ignore all the journalists who try to insinuate something about you having taken the girl to the car and exchange a glance with Wanda in the small crowd before moving toward the elevator.
Wanda has always known you so well, and with a nod, she knows exactly where she has to go.
Her work floor is completely deserted as she makes her way to her own office. But she still closes the door as she enters, letting out a tired laugh at your figure sitting on her armchair.
Her smile fades when she sees what you are reading.
"Headlines nowadays are getting creative..." You wryly chuckle, laughing at your ex-wife's caught expression. "It says here that I might have an eye to the Bishop's fortune. How silly, you gave me almost half of yours in the divorce, why would I need more money?"
"Very funny." Wanda dryly retorts, reaching up to snatch the magazine from your hands with a tug, and raking the item into the trash afterward. She crosses her arms as she looks at you. "What did you want to tell me?"
You flashed a small, sideways smile. "You used to be more polite when you wanted to sleep with me. At least offer me a drink."
Wanda chuckled dryly, rolling her eyes and begrudgingly moving to the personal bar in the corner of the room. If she leaned over more than necessary to grab one of the whiskey bottles, aware that the position in the chair gave you a full view of her ass, neither of you said anything about it. She hid her satisfied smile as she heard your breath hitch at the image, and you hid your own reaction as you cleared your throat and looked away.
Shortly thereafter, two shots of whiskey were served on the glass table in front of you. But before the toast, you declared:
"I'm leaving."
Wanda frowned, and when you made mention of taking the glass, she placed her hand on your forearm. "Speak."
You chuckled, staring her in the eyes. "I closed a contract with the Ten Rings folks. They want me in Korea for the next four months."
Wanda lets go of your arm as if she had been burned and steps away from the table with an indecipherable, but very disturbed expression.
"B-but the boys.." She tries to formulate, but you rise from the armchair with a sigh.
"They'll be at school." You retort, even though firm, your gaze is almost pleading. For what, Wanda doesn't have the heart to wonder. "It's not as if they stay with us all the time, Wands. The boarding school takes up this time quite well. It will only be four months, and they've already invented the telephone and internet, you know?" You try to joke, but Wanda hugs her own body and faces you.
"Why are you here, then? You've traveled before."
"Not for that long." You say, taking steps toward her, and mentally thanking heavens that she doesn't pull away. "And not... not since we made the divorce official."
"Y/N..."
"I know, I know." You murmur with a sad smile, raising your hands to her arms uncovered by her dress. "Maybe it's stupid, but I wanted to make sure we're okay. That it won't be something...I don't know, that hurts us."
"More than a divorce? I find that difficult." She replies with restrained emotion in her husky voice. You sigh.
"Wanda..."
"No, you're right. It was stupid." She cuts off, pulling away so you don't see the tears welling up in her eyes. "Of course it's okay. But I appreciate that you respect the concept of shared custody. I imagine the kids already know?"
"Yes, I told them before I took them to the airport." You mutter upset, watching Wanda walk away to the window. "But Wands, I wanted to tell you in person..."
"And why is that, huh?" she retorts with an impatience that makes you flinch. And for this, Wanda loses it for good. "You know, I don't understand you! You left me! You filed for divorce, you wanted to break us up. But you keep showing up here, and at home, and everywhere, and now you want to come here and say you care-"
"I care, Wa-"
"Then why did you leave me?" she shouts back, almost regretting it when she sees the tears in your eyes. You laugh tearfully, shaking your head.
"We've had this conversation dozens of times, Wan." You say, much calmer than she is. "But you just can't accept that you're wrong, can you?"
"Right, I forgot that I'm the villain in your story." She sneers, wiping her face with the back of her hand. You give another sad laugh.
"I wish it were that simple, darling." You tell her, taking slow steps toward her. "If you were just the villain, the bad wife, the evil boss, everything would be easier. I could hate you, curse your names to all my friends, and spend all the divorce money on expensive, empty things out there, but it's not like that. You forget the part that I love you and tried to fight for us until the last second."
Wanda sobs quietly, looking down at the floor, "Don't do that, Y/N."
"But it's true, baby, you know. I'm not the one who broke any promises, Wands. I just got tired of begging for crumbs of attention from the person who swore to spend the rest of her days with me."
Wanda lifts her chin, and the determination in her gaze doesn't do justice to the tears. "You knew how much my career meant when you said yes."
You smile sadly, taking one last step to get close enough to hold her face. Wanda shudders as you wipe away her tears, as you have done so many times before, as if no time has passed and everything was fine.
"I am so proud of you, Wands, for all you have accomplished with your work. I only wish I had been as important as this building." 
You place a long kiss on her forehead, pulling away afterward. You offer her one last sad smile before closing the door on your way out. Wanda starts to cry as soon as you have done so, even though she tries very hard to keep her tears away.
–//–
You burned a pancake to answer the door, but all the irritation over the ruined dish vanished when you saw Wanda standing in front of you.
It had only been a few days since you had last seen her, and now all the furniture in your apartment was already packed away and covered with rags, prepared for the time you would be away. Wanda's party dress gave way to a casual suit that made you swallow dryly and become self-conscious of the sweatpants and sports top you were wearing. Wanda wouldn't have picked anything better.
"Are you going to let me in, detka?" Wanda asked with some teasing for your moment of shock. You immediately recovered, making room for her to enter and closing the door once she was in the hall. "Sorry for disturbing your breakfast. I wanted to see you before your flight."
"Oh, don't worry about it. And I'm not going until the afternoon." You clarified somewhat clumsily by her presence, one hand still holding a spatula and the other adjusting your hair. "I made pancakes if you'd like..."
"I would love it." Wanda assured with a smile that made your stomach twist. It wasn't fair that your ex-wife got more beautiful every time you looked at her, honestly.
Wanda followed you back into the kitchen, and to both your surprise, you fell into a light conversation about work and the boys while preparing and serving food, completely different from the tone of the conversation the last time you had seen each other. 
But it was a time bomb, of course, so you weren't surprised when Wanda suddenly bit her lip, assuming a more tense posture. 
Finishing chewing your pancakes, you asked:
"Why are you here, sweetheart?" 
Wanda raised her eyes to you, and you stared back at her, patiently for her to clarify. 
"I wanted to say goodbye to you properly." She said, spinning her own stool around first before tipping her hands around yours to spin you toward her. You raise a brow in curiosity, but the question of what she was doing dies in your throat as she leans in and brings your lips together. 
It has been exactly three months, eighteen days, and sixteen hours since you last kissed Wanda, and you only realize how much you missed the feeling when she does it again. It's as intoxicating as it is overwhelming, and you gasp into her lips, breaking the kiss at once as you stand up, taking good steps away from the countertop.
"Wanda, we talked about this." You remind her in a husky voice, pressing a hand over your face. It's ridiculous how much your skin is burning and your heart is racing for something that lasted less than three seconds. "No relapses. You promised-"
"It's not a relapse." She assured, reaching up and grabbing your hands to place them around her waist. You grunted at the sensation, closing your eyes as Wanda slipped hers over your shoulders, too close for you to think about anything other than her. "It's a parting gift. So you'll have a reason to come back."
"W-what...?"
Wanda presses closer and brings her mouth to your ear. "Just stop overthinking it and accept the gift, detka."
With encouragement, she bites the lobe of your ear, and you give up resisting.
With a tug on her waist, you bring your mouths together in a kiss much hungrier and more passionate than the first, which elicits loud, almost primal moans of need from both of you. Wanda pushes and pulls, and by the time you stumble to the back of the living room couch, your pants are already open and there's nothing covering your torso; much like the woman in front of you, who as soon as she throws you sitting up against the cushions, your breathing out of rhythm and your lips swollen from kissing hard, makes a show of removing the rest of her clothes.
She has time to smile mischievously at your look of pure adoration at her completely naked body in front of you before you pull her onto your lap by her thighs. Wanda climbs on you with a needy grunt, burning from the inside out in anticipation for you to touch her again.
Your touches are almost desperate, your kisses mark her skin. It is your gift, but you also seem determined to make sure that Wanda has the memory of this morning for quite some time. 
When your mouth closes around her nipples, she whimpers to the ceiling, arching her back and steadying her hands in your hair, a soft plea that you not stop.
"Yes, baby, just like that." She encourages over the stimulation on her nipples, breaking into an excited whimper when you simply use your free hand to masturbate her. At any other time, you would have taken your time to work her up until she was begging for your touch, but now, in the urgency you two were sharing, it wasn't necessary. She was ready for you. 
Your fingers penetrate her without delay, and Wanda digs her nails into your shoulder, breaking into a breathless moan. You give one last hickey on her hardened nipple before you move your face back up to hers, kissing her with intensity as your fingers dance inside her walls with the mastery of one who has done this a dozen times, one who knows her like the palm of the hand she so deliberately grinds against in the intention of relieving herself.
"G-god, detka! Right here!" She breaks the kiss into an affected moan, practically meowing as you repeatedly hit that sensitive spot inside her. The wetness grows in your palm, Wanda oozes into you, and to help her, you bring your free hand to her hip, coordinating her movements as she begins to fail. "I-I'm going to..."
"Don't talk, show." You interrupt her with a proud little smile, moving your mouth down to bite the sensitive spots on her neck. "Come to me, baby, I've got you."
That's all she needs to reach the first climax of the morning, and she is not surprised that you don't stop at the first. Or the second, or the third.
You are on your knees on the living room floor when your first alarm goes off. Breathing as out of breath as Wanda, on the couch with her torso exposed and her legs spread from which you against your will need to remove your face to turn off the alarm when you pull away.
She covers herself when you disappear to the kitchen because she knows it's because of the flight, and when you return, the cell phone goes on the coffee table and you sit on the floor next to her on the couch. 
There is a long silent pause, where only your breaths can be heard. Wanda skirts a hickey on her own thigh and you sigh.
"We shouldn't have..." But you can't complete, it because your voice fails you as if you are going to start crying. You look away, and Wanda lets herself fall to your side on the floor, where she reaches for your hand.
"Detka, look at me." She asks, and you have to wait a moment until you sniffle and do so with difficulty.
"I told you it hurts me, Wands. I can't-" You take a deep breath. "I can't heal if this keeps happening. There’s no getting over you if we keep doing this”
She shakes her head. "I don't want you to get over me." She says and you huff, trying to pull her hand away, but Wanda squeezes. "I love you, you know I do."
"Love is not enough." You retort bitterly, your eyes filled with tears. "Loving me doesn't mean you won't hurt me. Nor that you won't ignore me. Those are just words, Wanda. I haven't felt loved by you in a long time."
She releases your hand from the shock of your words, and watches you create a physical distance between you as you walk away. You slip away to the bedroom, muttering that you need to get ready for the flight, and she tries to make a decision the whole time you are in the shower.
When you return to the room, wearing a set of travel clothes, Wanda is wearing your sweatpants and her own dress shirt. Your chest aches to see her wearing your clothes again.
"Wanda, you'd better go, my flight-"
"I love you, detka." She cuts you off with eyes bright with determination as she stares at you. You swallow dry, but can't resist when Wanda reaches up to touch your face. "I will make sure you know it. You'll know it so deeply that you'll be able to feel it in your bones. And you'll never doubt it again."
You sniffle lightly. "Wanda..."
"Don't worry about it now, detka." She interrupts you more gently, caressing your face. "Have a great trip. I'll be here when you come back home."
You sigh, and Wanda doesn't let you say anything more, kissing you in a calmer, but somehow much more intense way than before. 
She leaves the apartment before you, with a wink and a request that you call the boys before and after the flight. 
And even before she gets to the first floor, Wanda has already texted Natasha about her early retirement procedure after her well-deserved family vacation.
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tacticaldiary · 11 months
Note
You are so talented?? Hells bells!!! could I please request Simon Riley x Wife!Reader where Simon is “pronounced dead” for a mission and it has to seem real enough so like price shows up to your shared home and hands over dog tags? And then like months later he shows up at the house and they reunir?! Like all just very very sad and very comfort/ hurt??
please and many thanks , sugarbean
Till Death Do Us Apart
Pairing: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Reader
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
"Love..." He finally breathes out, and she realises that she hasn't said a word in a full minute.
The single word tears a gasp out of her throat, makes her take a small step back. The rasp of his voice, the scent of him as she breathes in...
It's him.
Death itself couldn't stop him from crawling home to her.
Masterlist
Song: I, Carrion (Hozier)
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It's funny how fragile the illusion of safety and content is.
Her life had seemed so unshakable, so sure and sturdy and promised. She'd fought for what she had with her husband, made a home with him, gone through years and bumps and ups and downs all because the chance of having him was better than giving up without ever having tried.
Truth be told, she'd never really liked the silence of their home when she was the only one living in it. Simon had asked her a couple times if she got lonely, whether it was too much. He'd asked her about it pretty much every time he packed up and left for a mission halfway across the world. Brows furrowed and voice lilted in concern late at night with his arms around her.
He's met with her smile and a reassurance that the silence was worth his arrival back home. Distance makes the heart go fonder, doesn't it?
And so Simon took it in stride, let the knowledge settle the creep of doubt in his heart beacuse this? Them?
It was more than he'd ever hoped for himself.
Never did he think he'd be the reason someone smiled at him like she did, not once did he consider himself one to want something so cliche as a home until she came around with her warmth and promises of unshakable devotion.
And God had he tried to shake her off. His indifference had only fuelled her determination to worm her way under the cracks of his armour. Once she'd reached inside and pulled out a part of himself he'd long thought was killed by 'Ghost', Simon had found himself letting go of his carefully crafted distance and crumbling under her hands. The best decision of his life.
It's why his breathing is ever so ragged as he watches Price console his hysterical wife from afar, a pair of bloody dog tags with his name engraved in them clutched in her shaking hand.
Simon Riley. Deceased.
If he didn't feel like his world was off kilter he might have made a joke about how it's the second time.
Simon barely manages to hold himself back from running to her, to their home, their bed. It's his instinct to protect, and right now seeing Price let her clutch onto him in grief, everything in Simon is telling him to go, to run and hold her, console her, assure her that he hasn't broken his promise of coming home to her.
It had been a vow whispered against her lips in the dead of night after she'd aired out her fear under the light of the moon. The fear of losing him. Of opening the door to Price instead of him.
Just a few months, he repeats in his head over and over again, because it's the only thing keeping his legs from moving. Just a few months and he can fix this, go back to how everything was. He feels like a jackass, making her go through this, but there was no other option.
And fuck if he hadn't tried to argue.
Death itself couldn't stop him from crawling home to her.
But his line of work could.
                               · · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·  
Four months and it still feels like yesterday.
Nothing felt...right anymore.
She felt guilty sitting at the kitchen table where the use to eat together, the sheets on their...her. On her bed had long since lost the subtle scent of him. The living room where she'd curl up in his lap, snicker at him complaining about her choice of movie even when the bastard was just as enraptured and into it and she was.
Everything felt off.
She sets down the half eaten plate of food in the fridge and swallows down the lingering emotion.
When she'd opened the door that day, she very nearly slammed it back shut.
It seemed surreal. Her Simon, her untouchable husband gone in the line of fire. An accident, Price had phrased it as.
She missed him so much it fucking hurt.
Taking a deep breath, she grabs the shopping list she'd scrawled last week onto the fridge and tucks it in her pocket. The dog tags clink against each other around her neck, tucked into her sweater as she moves.
It had taken weeks for her to even look at them.
The doorbell cuts the search for her car keys short.
It's been a while since she's seen anybody, really. Her friends come over every now and then to keep her company, bring her homemade foods and gifts to cheer her up and it does work, but only for a few hours. She appreciates it, she really does, but the small periods of relief are only followed by the guilt of trying to forget and the pain of remembering all over again.
She'd tell them to come back later, she decides. Today was worse a day than usual and she's not in the mood-
Simon.
Simon...?
Her knuckles pale with the grip she has on the doorknob, it's all she can do to stare up at the figure that she only held in her dreams nowadays.
He's so familiar, with that hair she loved to rake her hands through, the slight downturn of his lips, the scars that scatter across his face that she loves to trace in the dark. He's looking down at her with brown eyes so tortured and serious, and...and a little anxious?
This is a cruel joke.
Here he is, bare faced in front of her just like how she'd dreamed about for all those weeks. How often had she cried at night, hoped that this was all a joke and she'd pull open the door to him one more time?
But he wasn't here, was he? No, there was no way. Her fingers touch cool metal and distantly she realises she's clutching onto the piece of himself he left behind, looped around her neck.
"Love..." He finally breathes out, and she realises that she hasn't said a word in a full minute.
The single word tears a gasp out of her throat, makes her take a small step back. The rasp of his voice, the scent of him as she breathes in...
It's him.
It's him.
Something akin to a sob tears its way out of her throat as she lunges towards him, tangles her hands in the fabric of his uniform. She only cries harder when his arms circle around her just as tightly, crushing her to his chest.
"You...you're home?" She manages to push out between stuttered intakes of breaths and sobs. "No, you're...you were-"
"I'm here." He hooks his chin over her head, sways her a little from side to side. If she hadn't been trembling she would have noticed the slight shake of his hands. "Said I'd always come back to you, didn't I?" He walks them backwards, shuts the door with his foots.
"You died!" She exclaims, choking on the words as she pulls back, not far but enough to meet his own red eyes. "You died, I thought you died-"
"Mission," He rushes out, "For a mission, yeah? Wouldn't ever leave you alone-"
"You did!" She suddenly pulls away from him barely out of his grasp and it takes everything in Simon's willpower not to pulls her back in.
Beneath the worry and the grief and the sadness, there's a hint of running anger.
"Four months, I thought you were...were dead." She wipes away her tears, still crying but angry. "And you show up now? Just like that? What the fuck, Simon I thought I was a widow!"
"I'm sorry." It's all he can say. It's pathetic and desperate and he feels frustrated and angry at everyone and himself but it's all he can say to her and he'll repeat it as many times as possible.
They stare at each other for a second, grieving and angry and crushed and hopeful...
And she falls back into him with the promise of an explanation later on, a tangle of limbs, muttered apologies and kisses.
Not because she forgives him. Not because she's willing to brush past it and move on, but because this crushing wave of relief feels better than the last four months of suffering. Because they'll always find their way back to each other.
Because she has her husband back, in one piece, and for the first time in months...
Something in her life clicks back into place.
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(20/10/2023)
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rookthorne · 11 months
Text
⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂ 𝐁𝐢𝐠 𝐁𝐚𝐝 𝐖𝐨𝐥𝐟
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Little Red Riding Hood never stood a chance against the Big Bad Wolf, not when the wolf was a honed predator with skills he’d perfected over the centuries.
A little game of chase would bring out the beast in your Incubus, and you just had to hope he’d kept some semblance of his charming self.
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჻჻჻჻჻჻჻჻ 𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 ☽☾ Incubus!Bucky Barnes x F!Reader
჻჻჻჻჻჻჻჻ 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕 ☽☾ 3.4k
჻჻჻჻჻჻჻჻ 𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 ☽☾ The Filthiest Filth. ჻჻჻ SMUT: Monsterfucking, unprotected, possesive, rough piv, primal, breath play, multiple orgasms, use of appendages, tail fucking, double penetration in same hole, so much dirty talk (that I need to go to church) ჻჻჻ KINKS: Daddy, chase, praise, degredation, dacryphilia, slight blood
჻჻჻჻჻჻჻჻ 𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒓 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒆 ☽☾ I have nothing to say in my defence, except that I am so sorry for the filthiest thing I have ever written.
჻჻჻჻჻჻჻჻ 𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎𝒔 ☽☾ Where Is Your God Now by Rok Nardin ☽☾ Supermassive Black Hole by Muse ☽☾ Carrion Flowers by Chelsea Wolfe ☽☾ Easy by Sun Lux, Lorde
჻჻჻჻჻჻჻჻ 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒂 ☽☾ @smutconnoisseur — chaos kittens, I almost killed SC off, if that gives you any implication of just how much this fic is.
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჻჻჻჻჻჻჻჻ 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒕 ☽☾ @rookthorne's Fright Night — Masterlist
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𝐃𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐡𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭
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“Are you sure about this?”
Bucky looked at you, eyes narrowed and a slight tilt to his head. There was a glint of something you couldn’t place in his eyes that had become black depths, reflecting only the light of the moon. “Honey,” he purred, and his tongue, long and slick, ran over his lips and then his fangs. “All you have to do is run.”
“But what if I get lost?” The words weren’t quite enough to cover the entirety of your hesitance, if you were honest, but it was what you had. “It’s dark, and all I have is this cape,” you said, holding out the thick, soft material of your cape – coloured crimson with golden hems. 
“You won’t get lost, sweetheart,” Bucky said simply. His wings that had been furled against his back shuddered and stretched out, the tips brushing the ground as he shivered through the feeling. You could see his tail wrap around his calf and then sway and twitch.
“But-” 
“We’re jus’ playin’ a little game of Red Ridin’ Hood–aren’t we? You’re the poor little girl, lost in the woods and runnin’ from the big,” Bucky paused, stepping closer, “bad,” another pause, and you sensed the tension that the words carried – it made your skin prickle with electricity. He kissed you full on the mouth, forcing his tongue past your lips to run coaxingly along your own, when finally, he pulled back. “Wolf.”
He grinned and his fangs shone in the light of the moon, and he tilted his head again. “Can’t be that dumb for me yet, Angel, c’mon.” He stepped back and you bit down the quiet whine in your throat. “Go on. Daddy wants to toy with his prey.”
“But-” You tried again, reaching for him.
A shadow replaced the moon, a dark film of red and black. It was Bucky’s wings – twitching in the eagerness to take flight. “I said run.”
The dust cloud from the flap of Bucky’s wings made your cloak ripple around your body, exposing the thin dress you wore beneath the cover of red. With your final warning uttered, you took off to the tree line, darting between the pines and holding your dress up off the ground – branches and thickets of thorns cut and tore at your shins and hands, but you pushed on. 
Darkness covered the entirety of the forest – shadows danced on your path. They gave the illusion of a pursuer, but you knew for sure the only creature hunting you was airborne, more than likely watching you from a perch in the trees. 
Paths wove and twisted between the trees, and you trusted your instincts. Well before you had agreed to play this game, Bucky had assured you that you would be alone with no chance of a lone predator or bystander to encounter, and that had been the truth – there was not a single sign of life in this forest aside from the pounding of your heart in your ears and of your feet over the forest floor. 
A sense of foreboding settled over you then – since you were truly alone, with an Incubus after you, what would stop something else, another demon perhaps, deciding to join the game you were playing? Was that even a possibility? 
You grimaced and ran off in another direction, sticking to the trails as your cloak whipped behind you. There was a fork amongst a small clearing just ahead, and you slowed to walk, then a standstill; just to catch your breath. 
To the right was the way to the darker side of the forest where the canopy was so thick with branches no light pierced through. To the left lay the way to the streams and rivulets that trickled through the forest to the lake on the opposite side. 
Moonlight flooded the clearing as you panicked and fumbled with your decision.
The heavy beat of wings in the distance made you flinch and cower, you had stood still too long. “Dammit,” you muttered, observing your surroundings for a place to hide. A tree trunk, wide and covered in creeping moss, stood rooted to your right, and those wing beats were nearing faster than you could outrun. “Shit, shit–here.”
Your feet slipped over roots and vines in your scramble, and it was not a moment too late. A loud thump sounded a few feet from where you had been standing, and you peered around the trunk of the tree. 
Bucky was standing there, head tilted up to watch the skies. His horns reflected the moonlight, but it was nothing compared to the voids of his eyes – inky blackness swallowed all light that would bounce off what used to be his icy irises, and he was breathing heavily, as though scenting the air. 
“Oh, Angel! I know you’re here, sugar!” he boomed, and his voice – it had transformed into something guttural, primal with the rasp and tone. It called to your baser instincts and you struggled to not let a whimper fall from your lips, instead, your body twisted the arousal and pooled it in your cunt, making it throb. 
Your breath left you in a sharp exhale as Bucky turned so his back was now facing you. The skin around his wings was mottled red and blood trickled down from the weeping wounds, and as you watched, the muscles and sinewed skin of the wings themselves twitched and jumped. Black tendrils of something curved down his spine and followed the contours of his back and waist, before they stopped at the very top of his tail – the tip of which swished with eagerness, a playful action that was offset by the entirety of his body language. 
It was a haunting sight. Never before had you seen Bucky in his full form. He looked twice as large, as though the very transformation of uncloaking his monstrous form had made him grow a few feet both in height and brawn. 
Oh, God, you thought, clenching your thighs.
“Where is your God now, Angel?” he asked, deceptively calm. “Don’t think I can’t sense His name being invoked at the sight of me, which means…” The moonlight shadowed his form as he turned again, this time, he was facing you – but it seemed he hadn’t caught you staring. “That means, honey, that you are so fuckin’ close, and you’ll be screamin’ to the Heavens, soon enough.”
You shuddered and gulped, and then, those deep, black eyes were on you. Bucky had shifted slightly to the side in your daze, and he was staring straight at you. His wings raised up slightly as he grinned, all teeth and tongue, and his tail thrashed side to side, as if it could no longer restrain itself. 
“Oh, no,” you breathed, blinking once, twice, and then you turned to run. The sight of Bucky had kickstarted the instinctual fear that had laid dormant. “No!”
Branches whipped against your cheeks and arms this time as you took off, deeper into the forest without a care for where you were running, only that you put as much distance between the two of you. 
A loud howl tore through the night and you came to a halt, completely against your will. You panted and tried to force your legs to move, but nothing worked as it should – you were rooted to the forest floor just as the trees around you. 
Footsteps crunched over the leaves and twigs behind you, followed by the sound of something being dragged along. “Well, well, well,” a deep voice drawled. You couldn’t turn to face the source – instinctually, you knew it was Bucky, in whatever form he was in. “Who knew the sweet, little Angel could run so damn fast, huh?”
The clawed edge of a wing was the first thing you saw in your peripheral vision, then a horn, then Bucky’s face. He looked smug, a wide smirk pulled at the corner of his lips and his eyes glinted with mischief. You were unable to open your mouth, so you just stared at him, eyes wide as he neared. 
“I’m impressed, sweetheart,” he cooed, and his hand cupped the side of your face while the other traced lines over your neck with a sharp claw. “What’d you think of that new trick? Got you pretty good.”
A finger snap sounded, and you could move. You gasped for air and slumped where you stood. “What the hell!”
Bucky grinned. “Don’t sound so shocked, sugar,” he purred, tilting his head. “Daddy would do anythin’ to make sure his Angel does as she’s told, right?”
It was either an irrationally foolish surge of bravery, or pure spite that fuelled your next move, and as you looked back in hindsight, it would be the moment that changed the game. 
You rose to your full height and defiantly set your jaw, looking at Bucky through narrowed eyes. “Fuck you, and fuck your game of cat and mouse.” And you bolted off, panting from the adrenaline. 
There was a peel of harsh laughter behind you, but you didn’t slow down, not even when you heard heavy footsteps trailing after you. Your feet pounded over the floor as you ran as fast as you could manage, and before long, you were in another clearing. It was much like the last one, only the canopies of the trees were sparser and allowed moonlight to wash over the dewy grass. 
“You can’t run for long, Angel!” Bucky called behind you, and to your horror, you realised he was far too close for comfort. “Daddy’ll get what he’s owed–shut that pretty mouth so you can’t insult ‘im no more.”
For the first time that night, terror flooded you. Bucky would catch you, and while you had previously discussed what he could and could not do, it didn’t stop the instinctual fear of being prey to an angry demon – one that could overpower you with brute strength and magic. “Fuck,” you cursed, heaving for breath. “No, no, you wo-”
The air was slammed from your lungs as a much larger body collided with yours, and you grunted with the pain of being pressed against someone’s chest with such force. Your back was slammed up against the trunk of a tree, and you blinked several times as needles and twigs fell from above, landing at your feet that dangled off the ground. 
Your eyes finally focused on the face in front of you, and you gasped sharply. Bucky was smirking, and his eyes held an aura of danger that made your stomach flip in fear and arousal. “Got you, little bunny. Did you really think you could run from me?”
“No,” you squeaked. “No, no–I didn’t, daddy-”
His hand moved to cup your throat, squeezing the sides enough to make you lightheaded. “You have a real fuckin’ funny way of showin’ it, honey. What was all that?”
The pressure of his hand around your throat sent the very last of the thoughts in your mind southwards, leaving you struggling to even form a sentence. “I-”
Bucky clicked his tongue and sneered. “I think this costume needs to go–best believe you’re keepin’ that cape on, though.” His claws flashed in the light and then the thin fabric that kept you modesty vanished with a swipe of his hand. “Tha’s better, baby, isn’t it?” He inhaled sharply, letting his nostrils flare, before he looked down at your thighs. “Seems runnin’ has made my Angel all hot an’ bothered.”
You whined and gripped his wrist with one hand, while the other scrambled over the bark of the tree. “Daddy- Please, please, I need you.”
“How cute, my sweet lil’ Angel beggin’ for her daddy to fuck her,” he purred, and his mouth trailled up and down your throat, licking and biting hard enough to draw blood. “Now, tha’s somethin’ I can oblige. Force you to take my cock while you squirm and cry–fuck, I wanna see you cry for me, honey.”
Unable to speak, you just nodded vehemently, staring into Bucky’s face. The ache in your cunt throbbed and pulsed, the pain of it unbearable and it left you feeling open and wanting. “Please–I need you, daddy, just-” You hiccuped and swallowed at the feral expression that pulled Bucky’s face taut. “Just fuck me, make me yours.”
“Oh, baby.” Something in his tone made your eyes become unfocused, and you moaned as his face came so close to yours that you could feel his breath over your lips. “I’ll do so much more than that. I’m gonna fuck you ‘till you cry for nothin’ but for who you belong to–and even then,” he whispered, and your hooded eyes stared into the dark abyss that were his eyes. “Daddy won’t stop. You’re mine to fuck, mine to use, and you’re fuckin’ mine to keep.”
“Yes,” you moaned loudly, tipping your head back. “Give it to me, daddy.” The grin that Bucky flashed you with made some semblance of thought swirl in your mind, and you cried out, “Wait! Wait, I-”
Bucky froze, but his hands remained where they were, securing you against the tree. “What is it?” he asked softly. “What’s wrong, honey?”
You shook your head, and stared at his mouth. “Oh, what sharp teeth you have.” The words came out as a breathy whisper, carrying an intention that made Bucky’s expression darken even further.
“Oh, all the better for markin’ you up, sugar,” he growled, nipping at your bottom lip. "Gonna use ‘em to claim you as mine–force the lower demons from the rings a’hell to bow before my queen."
It was your turn to grin, and you did so dazedly as another throb went through your whole core. “Oh, and what a beautiful tail, mister wolf,” you teased, watching through half lidded eyes as it moved and curled in the air. 
“All the fuckin’ better for keepin’ your pussy on display, baby,” he purred, moving the appendage until the very tip of it brushed your inner thigh. “These gorgeous thighs jus’ wanna keep my pretty girl hidden, ain’t that right? Need somethin’ to keep them open.”
You shuddered and moaned as Bucky pressed forward, hunching in on himself to suck at your pulse point. His knee came to rest against your heat and you ground down against the tight muscles of his thigh until you whimpered. “Wait, wait, mister wolf,” you breathed, and Bucky pulled back to look into your face. 
“Yeah?”
“What a gorgeous cock you have,” you whispered.
A deep, guttural growl rumbled through Bucky’s chest, and you felt him force his cock into your cunt to the hilt with a single thrust. You cried out as he grit through his teeth, “All the fuckin’ better for fillin’ this perfect pussy with, Angel. Hold on while daddy takes what he’s owed, baby.”
The rhythm Bucky set was punishing beyond belief. Every stroke of his cock over your walls made you whine and moan for more, desperate for the first climax that was cresting so fast you could barely warn him. 
“Can feel you squeezin’ me,” Bucky growled into your ear, and it sent a shiver down your spine. “I only jus’ fuckin’ started and you’re gonna cum for me? Are you that fuckin’ desperate for daddy?”
“Yes! Yes–need t’a cum daddy,” you begged, clawing his shoulders and shaking with the force of his thrusts. “Please!”
“Good fuckin’ girl–tha’s my girl, go on,” he grunted, “give it to daddy. Let go–’m not done with this tight cunt yet, baby.”
Your first climax hit you with the force of a devastating earthquake – it tore through your core with such ferocity and heat you could have sworn you were burning from the inside out as your thighs clamped tightly around Bucky’s hips. The deep, harsh thrusts he fucked you with drew out the pleasure until you were keening. 
“Tha’s it, honey, tha’s it. Good girl. Good girl, let it out–need to make room for daddy, don’t you?” Bucky coaxed, brushing a thumb over your cheek. “Fuck, you’re so pretty. Wan’ you to cum again, need you so bad.”
“I ca- Oh! Bu- Daddy!” You cried, throwing your head back. In your haze from your first orgasm, Bucky had moved his tail from your inner thigh up to your clit, where it thrummed so fast over the bundle nerves that it blurred. “Fuck! Fuck, feels s’good, daddy!”
“I know, sweetheart, I know,” Bucky cooed, rocking his hips faster. “But you’re not cryin’, and you for sure as shit still able to speak.”
You whined and choked on air as his cock started to fill you again, it felt as though it had gotten bigger while inside you and the barbs were threatening to expand and latch on – Bucky was close, for all his talk, he couldn’t resist. “Daddy, daddy–yes, need more,” you begged, and he groaned. 
“You want more, honey?” Bucky asked suddenly, and his wings shuddered as they expanded out again. The clawed tips dug into the earth and the bones that lined the top of the sinew stiffened just as Bucky snarled, “Then fuckin’ take it.”
His thrusts, while powerful before, breached the line of what was possible as his wings tensed and he fucked up into your cunt with such force it pushed you up the tree, tearing your cloak on the ragged bark. “Yes! Oh my- Yes! Don’t stop, don’t stop-”
“I won’t, don’t you worry,” Bucky panted, and he made his tail push into your cunt as he dragged himself out. “You’re gonna be fuckin’ gaping when ‘m done with you, Angel–you feel so fuckin’ good on my cock, gonna be even better with my tail.”
The foreign pressure of his tail snaking itself in with his cock made you cry out and sob, but it moved in a hooked gesture and started to thrum against that spot, and in time with the thrusts of his hips, you were sure you were going to pass out in his arms. “I’m gonna cum! Daddy–Daddy! Please!”
Bucky growled as his hand slammed against the tree, and his claws scraped roughly against the bark. “Cum for daddy, baby–give it to me, now,” he groaned, and just as your orgasm crested, Bucky shouted into your neck. “Fuck! Oh, Angel–’m close.”
Your mind had melted from your ears as your climax took your breath away, and with a shaky breath, you felt tears run down your cheeks as you stared into Bucky’s eyes. “Daddy,” you rasped, cupping his jaw tenderly in your hand. “Cum for me–fill me, make me yours.”
The way Bucky’s breath hitched in his throat made you smile softly, and you watched, entranced, as his climax took its roots. His eyes, black as ebony, flashed in the light from the moon and his lips upturned into a snarl. Pleasure was sparking through your core at his continued thrusts that grew harsh and bruising, but you kept your eyes on his face as a ragged gasp choked him. 
“Oh, fuckin’ hell, yes–yes, you feel s’good, baby,” he praised, making you moan and preen. “Gonna fill this perfect pussy up–make her leak me so everyone knows you’re mine. You are mine.”
“Yours,” you breathed, and you gasped sharply at the feeling of the barbs swelling, latching into place and forcing Bucky to thrust hard into your cunt to keep himself there. “Give it to me, daddy, wan’ it so bad.”
Bucky whined and forced himself forward, pushing his barbed dick into the hilt when a warmth bloomed in your cunt. “Fuck! Fuck, baby, ‘m cumming, please-” Bucky rasped against your lips. To tease and prolong his release, you squeezed him rhythmically with your walls. His breath hitched and the hand that had slammed against the trunk of the tree seized. 
A loud crunching sound came from beside your head, and you glanced over to see Bucky’s fist tearing the bark from the wood with his grip. 
Moans and praises fell from his lips like sweetened honey, and you kissed him as his climax tapered off. “That’s it, daddy, good boy.”
“Fuck,” he murmured. You couldn’t help but giggle at his blank expression.
“I think you fucked yourself dumb, Buck,” you said quietly, and he narrowed his eyes at you, displeased with the insinuation. 
“Who said I was done yet, huh?” His hands grabbed your thighs and he hefted you close to his chest. You squealed and gripped hard onto his shoulders. “Still have’ta take you home–fuck you on every surface. I did say you won’t be able to fuckin’ speak when I was done with you.”
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you still with me? good — good girl.
⠈⠂⠄ 𝐢𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐱 | 𝐥𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐲 | 𝐚𝐨𝟑  ⠄⠂⠁
⠈⠂⠄𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 ⠄⠂⠁
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luxthestrange · 3 days
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TIGRAAS Incorrect quotes#72 Convert me
Milim: Are you religious? I'd like to introduce you to my religion!
Carrion & Frey*sighing*What is your religion, Little one?
Milim*Shows picture of You fighting with a cat for a yarn ball...the cat is winning*
Carrion & Frey: I'm interested...
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therenlover · 1 year
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Always For A Second (Usually At The Start) - A Helmut Zemo x Reader fic
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"And when I imagine life when it's mine / I can try to picture faceless folk to love a thousand times / But always for a second, and usually at the start / You're in the image posing with a cradled beating heart" - Katie Gregson MacLeod, i'm worried it will always be you
Synopsis: Leaving Helmut for good had been the biggest, most final choice you'd ever had to make. Two years later, he's in your living room again. This time, though, things are different.
Tags: Explicit Smut (+18), Exes, Getting Back Together, Enemies to Lovers to Exes to Lovers, Enthusiastic Consent, Switch!Zemo, Oral (Fem Receiving), Service Top!Zemo, Aftercare, Bucky is Mentioned Too Much
Rating: E (+18) Minors DNI
Warnings: N/A
Word Count: 8,600~
-------------
“I didn’t expect you to come crawling back so soon, schatz,”
The restaurant was crowded enough that nobody heard Helmut’s words, curt and cloying and so fucking familiar. Still, my face heated. It always would for him, no matter how much my common sense protested by body’s reactions. How dare he be so damn effective at getting under my skin? 
Some over-expensive brown liquor sloshed against the rim of the glass in my hand as I lifted it less than gracefully from the table, dribbling down the edge of my mouth as I guided it to my lips and drank deeply. “For one, two years isn’t soon,” I started, swallowing. “Two, you’re the asshole who showed up in my apartment like a robber, which makes you the one who came crawling back. I was just nice enough to let you take me for a free meal to get you the hell out. Three,” I set the glass down sharply, “don’t call me that. We’re not friends. We’re not anything. I still haven’t forgiven you,” 
“Apologies,” 
He didn’t mean it. 
“Still, it’s too soon to expect any sort of kindness from you,” he continued, “If I recall correctly, you said you’d rather die than suffer through another night with me for the rest of eternity. I believe an eternity has yet to pass… and yet, here we are,”
His matter of fact tone left little up for debate, unless I wanted to reach for my fork and maim his smug face. Instead, I bit my tongue and swallowed another mouthful of whatever I was drinking.
For once I was glad to be surrounded by the kind of noisy, faceless jumble of humanity that usually made my skin crawl. F. Scott Fitzgerald was on to something with his theories on large crowds and intimacy; there was no better place for two war criminals to meet than the corner booth of a hazy restaurant, lounging and drinking, covered by the blanket of sweet anonymity. Anyone who glanced our way would see two normal human beings sharing a meal in peaceable silence, sharing sparse conversation between bites of this and that. 
They would see lovers.
The thought left a lump in my throat. 
Maybe I looked uncomfortable enough that they would presume, correctly, that we were ex-lovers. I wasn’t hopeful about it, though. 
Helmut noticed, of course, but I knew he would. He had always had an almost supernatural sense for these things, like he could tune into my emotional radio on a frequency I didn’t even fully know myself. Enemy or ally or… otherwise, it was a constant to be seen through and picked apart like carrion. An appetizer for the fights to come. Thankfully, though, he chose to have mercy on me this time in a rare show of respect. Instead of wrapping his lips around another snide comment- even though I could tell it was burning a bitter hole into the tip of his tongue behind his clenched teeth- he chose to pick up a ring of calamari from the plate between us. He held it up to examine the crust in the dim lamplight before placing it delicately against his lips, pulling it from the fork in one bite. Still, he couldn’t be too gracious. Helmut held eye contact as he went.
I could only managed a disgusted sigh but found myself mirrored as his teeth sunk into the squid and his brow furrowed. 
“Bad?” I asked.
He chewed for a good while before managing to swallow the offending clump down, gagging all the way. “Despite my recent diet, that might be the worst thing I’ve eaten in a long while,”
A laugh escaped me before I even knew it was there. “You managed to pick a restaurant where our appetizer is worse than prison food? Serves you right for ordering seafood in the midwest,” 
“I suppose it does.” He nudged the plate towards me with a growing smirk, “See for yourself. I’d hate to see it wasted, and as you said, it is ours. I can’t be expected to finish it alone,” 
As if under the spell of his charisma all over again, I followed his instructions without a second thought. It was just as bad as I anticipated. 
Things were off to a bad start from the moment the tines of my fork hit the batter. The breading seemed to squelch under the pressure, sagging and giving way into meat that was somehow both rubbery and gelatinous, if that was even possible, and if the texture seemed bad outside of my mouth it was even worse inside. Somewhere between its fishy tang and the overly salted batter, there was a bitter, almost sour note that seemed to permeate further with every chew. I spit the macerated glob into my napkin before even attempting to swallow down the remaining spit. 
Across the table, Zemo grinned at my misfortune. “Let’s hope our entrees are less offensive to our palettes,” 
“Fuck off,” I muttered, lips turning up at the edges. 
“You can curse all you want at my poor choice of venue, but I can tell you’re glad you’re the one who ordered the pasta instead of the steak,” 
I went for my glass again, letting the liquor with a name I couldn’t pronounce burn all the way down my throat and into my chest. “I hate that you’re always right, Helmut. Can’t you be wrong, just once? Leave some correctness for the rest of us,” 
Maybe it was the lighting, soft and amber against the dark wood of the table to mask the bloody steaks that would sit below, or maybe it was the music, something old and swinging that I couldn’t quite put my finger on but knew from the radio in my grandmother’s car as a child, or maybe, just maybe, it was the crows feet that popped up around Helmut’s eyes when he smiled that hadn’t been quite so prominent the last time I’d seen him, but no matter the cause, the solid iron wall I had put up around my heart when I walked out of the Baron’s life those two year sago seemed to soften. Weakened, somehow. It was like someone took a blowtorch right to the center of my defenses. Something in me screamed that they had never been all that strong to begin with. 
I only noticed I’d been staring when he looked away, clearing his throat and wiping his thin mouth with the napkin from his lap. 
There went my hand. Helmut, 1. Me, 0… Well, 1, if leaving him those years ago counted for anything, and I refused to believe that it hadn’t. That the blow to his ego hadn’t given me at least a slight upper hand compared to the naive girl I had been in comparison when I first met him. There had been so much good in the world then. 
The silence dragged on as if the structural flaws of my guarded heart could patch themselves up with the defenses created from just a few silent moments between us. That’s all it would take for me to remember all the reasons this would never work: all the pain, the sleepless nights, the snide comments that turned into biting replies that grew into massive, earth-shattering fights that exploded into days or weeks or months living alone in a house with him. One by one, the memories flooded back, reminding me exactly why it had taken me almost two years to find enough peace within myself that I wouldn’t decide to shoot the man in front of me on sight. My heart hardened by the second.
“I saw your concert,” 
I was simultaneously thawed and frozen all over again. “How did you-“ 
“James mentioned it,” 
“You still talk to Bucky?” 
“Here and there,” 
The conversation lapsed into silence. 
He had… been there? I didn’t even bother to think about the talk I’d have to have with Bucky about my privacy, too focused on the more important matter at hand. 
The venue was grungy, a basement bar with a small stage serving the communities aspiring comedians and desperate punk-rock garage dwellers just waiting for their big break. I had barely had the guts to pay the booking fee, though. It was just me, a piano, and my guitar for an hour and a half set of mostly cover songs that had gone better than I’d expected, but hadn’t been anything crazy. The crowd was appreciative and respectful. Several people had left tips, even more giving me a congratulatory clap on the back as I left the building that night, promising to “stream my EP” whenever I released it, despite the fact that I had no plans to do any such thing. Still, I couldn’t imagine that I hadn’t seen his face in the crowd. I couldn’t name what I was feeling as I imagined it; visualized his face on the other side of the smoky room, leaned against the bar with his dark eyes catching hold of mine…
“You came and you didn’t say anything? Not even a hello?” 
Helmut laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “And risk my life over a free concert? No.” He paused, “Despite my tendency to sometimes be… less than kind, I knew it would rattle you to see me. I didn’t want to throw you off before your performance.” 
I didn’t have much of anything to say in response. Instead, I picked at the paper straw wrapper in my lap and tried to look anywhere but in his direction, shoving down whatever was welling up in my chest. He wouldn’t let things go, though. He never could. That was half of why we’d never work. Every time I tried to drop an uncomfortable subject he’d be there to pick it up with a snide comment or two. It was an easy rhythm. Too easy. I had never wanted to fall back into it and yet, here I was, almost excited to snipe his next words down. 
“Cain misses you,” He continued. 
I folded the straw wrapper in my hands, pulling at the crease as I thought about the doberman puppy I had left behind. He would be so big now, as big as the one I’d taken with me was now. My heart ached at the thought. 
“I doubt he remembers me after all this time,” 
“Of course he does,” Helmut’s voice was low. It was almost hypnotic, the way he carried himself. He could fool anyone. I realized, with a sinking feeling in my stomach that couldn’t have been the calamari, he could still fool me. “He’s quite the troublemaker. More times than I can count he’s evaded me in the house, only to be found asleep in your old closet. I think he remembers your scent,” 
“Thats…” I sat quiet for a moment, pursing through choices of words in my mind, mulling over the sharp accented way he pronounced the t in scent, “Sad. Really sad. Makes me wish I could’ve taken them both,” 
“And what of Brutus?”
“He’s good,” A smile crossed my face. “Big, as you saw tonight. I remember when we got them, they told us they’d be 60 pounds at most, but I swear Brutus must’ve snuck in with the rest of those puppies, because he’s massive. Headbutts me every time I walk through the door wondering where I was. He’s a good boy, though. Keeps watch while I sleep, just in case.”
“Just in case I decided to let myself in through the window one night?”
I let myself laugh without judgement this time, reaching for my water. “Looks like it was all for nothing, then. Who knew he’d just let intruders come waltzing in off of the fire escape?” 
“Am I truly considered an intruder in your home?” He asked it as if the answer wasn’t obvious. As if there were any other answer I could possibly give. As if I could’ve wanted him there. His earnestness almost hurt as much as his taunting did, maybe more, because even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself, there was a soft ring of truth to his words. 
I took the cowards way out. “I don’t know, what do you think?” 
It was a vulnerability to not give a straight answer, the kind of weak spot that Helmut would catch wind of in an instant before using it to unravel someone piece by piece. Not a no, but certainly not a yes, and the fact that it hadn’t been a resounding yes was enough to glean that maybe, deep down, I wasn’t hating this dinner. He would see through me. Rip me to shreds for the subtle admittance that I hadn’t hated seeing him waiting for me on the couch when I walked through my door, even if I hadn’t expected or wanted him there in the first place. 
I found it was better to lie by omission than to fully lie and let him see through me to the more important truth; For as much as I despised everything about him, I had missed Helmut Zemo. I had missed his stupid expensive taste and the tilt of his stupid head and his stupid shiny white smile. I had missed seeing his coat hung up beside the door and knowing what waited for me inside. It was sick how I had loved him. How I had loved every minute of him picking me apart by the seams and putting me back together. Who could possibly crave their own destruction? Who could live knowing that to be loved was to be deconstructed down to the bone and laid bare as something lesser, something so small compared to the great destroyer I devoted myself to. 
How could he let me live like that if he truly saw through me? 
And that was why I had to leave. 
Loving Helmut Zemo was no way to live. I knew that. I had known that the day I picked up my dog and walked out of our home with nothing but my wallet, car keys, phone, and a polaroid picture of his silhouette. Somehow, I knew that he knew that too. Why else would I move on so suddenly, so sharply, removing every piece of the life we’d built to start myself fresh? A new me, I had said. A new chapter. Yet here I was across from him, shredded bits of paper littering my lap as he puppeteered my heart right back into his arms. 
No. I couldn’t let it happen. 
Not again. 
“Listen, baron,” I didn’t let him answer my rhetorical question. It wouldn’t be wise to let him gain the upper hand again. It wouldn’t be smart to let myself stay weak. “I appreciate dinner. It’s been surprisingly lovely to catch up with you. I’m glad to know you’re not dead, and its great to know Cain is doing well, but I know you weren’t here to tell me that over a plate of mediocre pasta,” 
Helmut smiled, his head in its signature tilt, and swished his own glass a bit. The ice was all but melted giving the liquor an almost clear quality as it diluted. Not a sip had been taken. “Ask the question, schatz,” 
“Why are you here? Why did you stalk me here and break into my apartment when I made it clear that you weren’t welcome in my life?” My words came out so matter of fact even I almost recoiled at them. Not unemotional but detached. 
“Um, who had the chicken alfredo?”
I could feel the blood drain from my face as I looked up at the poor waiter, hot plates in hand, as he took in our table at just the wrong time. Five minutes earlier he would have walked in on polite conversation about the dogs or the shitty appetizers. Now, though, he stood between a man who was known to kill for the things he wanted and me, the one thing he could never have again. 
Surprisingly, though, Helmut waved a hand towards me as I froze. There were none of the usual dramatics, just polite chatter with the waiter as he set my plate in front of me and left Helmut with his, taking the offending calamari plate away with him as he scurried away, surely to tell his coworkers about the crazy exes at the corner table. Helmut didn't even carry on with his answer. He just started tucking in to his steak and potatoes, not sparing me a single glance. If I didn’t know better, if I hadn’t memorized the way his eyes looked in the low light of a restaurant across from me, I would think he’d been replaced by a skrull.
Where was the tearing? The shredding? The utter evisceration of my waiting throat as he drank deeply of my darkest, most shameful thoughts only to spit them out for the world to see. Where was that shame? In the before times, in the times that the two of us had been a we, he never would have paused to mind a waiter. The world would have revolved around him as he laid me bare, no matter who watched or waited in the wings. What changed? 
How had I not noticed his docility until now?
The pasta was decent. It was better than anything I would’ve made at home, at least. I barely thought about it, though, letting my body go through the motions of eating mechanically while my mind went over a million things I could say. What could I say? There was nothing left to. We had gone over every possibility before I had left, at least I thought we had. Whatever we were was dead. That was certain. But what we could be…
I swallowed hard before I could choke on a relatively large piece of broccoli I neglected to chew in my trance. 
Helmut seemed to be in a painfully similar situation. One look at his plate showed a steak cut into tiny pieces. Almost none of it looked eaten, just diced into a pile and shuffled around a bit on the plate to mix with the potatoes, smashed down from their neat ice cream scoop globe and spread with the back of a fork. 
With a sigh, I set down my fork, pasta already forgotten. 
“Lost your appetite?” 
He paused his fiddling with his fork and knife, mirroring me and letting the utensils rest on the table beside his plate. It was odd to see him rattled. Strange to watch his eyes roll up to the ceiling and pause there, as if he was searching for the right words to say. He always knew just what to say to cut the deepest. Maybe it was foreign for him to not want to cut; To find a soft word, instead of a sharpened one. His mouth opened one… two…three times. Open and shut, open and shut. I couldn’t help but hurt for him. The man of many words was finally struck dumb. 
Finally, it came. 
“I’m sorry,” 
I had anticipated a selfish reply, a demand for me to come back and put the past two years behind us, but time had changed him. It had changed us both. He was no longer the man he had been when he was first freed from behind bars, vengeful and biting and so deeply afraid of being alone again, but I was no longer the lost girl I had been either. I did not need to be destroyed to breathe. I could feel tears pricking up in my eyes as he reached a hand across the table to search for my own. It was such a familiar sight in a time of uncertainty. I kept my hands firmly in my lap, though. I would not give him the satisfaction. 
More, I would not give him hope.
“Come home, schatz,”  
There it was. 
I couldn’t hold in the bitter, wet laugh that bubbled up through me, more at my own foolishness than at anything else. He had changed, yes, but some things never would. 
“Helmut,” The word hurt to say. It was altogether both familiar and unfamiliar, covered in a thick layer of dust from time, but nothing could erase the fact that it had once been used over and over, like a prayer, as easy as breathing or saying my own name. “You know I can’t,” 
He let his hand slink back to his side. “I had to try, you know,”
“I know,” The words were a whisper. 
So this was closure? 
The table was quiet. There was no desperation from Helmut’s side, no attempts to sway me or sudden outbursts of resentment. It was almost peaceful. His voice was sad but there was no manipulation in it. We laid our cards of the table as the game we’d played for years finally came to an end. 
“You were right about us, when you left,” he laughed, “I was, as you so aptly put it, a massive ass. I was still so deeply disillusioned about this world and the horrors of it. It was as if everyone around me was just another cog in it all, even you. I thought if I could puppet it all, make things go my way, everything could just be quiet. The horrors would finally stop. The memories would finally stop. I took it too far, though. I took it out on you. For that, I will never be sorry enough,” 
I put up a hand. “Helmut, you don’t have to do this-“
“I want to,”
His voice was delicate but didn’t waver. For the first time I wondered if this was more about what he needed to say than about what I needed to hear. I nodded him on. Without me even thinking about what I was doing, my hand caught his across the table.
“I wanted to run after you the same day you left. I nearly did, too, before I thought better of it. Then I really thought of what you said. What I did. It was then that I decided I had to change for the better, not for you but for myself. Only then would I allow myself to try again. So I did. I spent my time deconstructing the things I had seen and done and finally facing my own demons. I’m not perfect- believe me -but there are many things I have… worked on, for lack of a better word. James was surprisingly helpful throughout it all,” 
“Is that why you’ve been talking?” My thumb stroked over his knuckles, pausing on a scar. 
“More or less. I needed advice on how to overcome my atrocities, and I owed him an apology either way. He told me about your concert because he thought I would be ready to make amends, and yet I found myself unable to speak to you because I knew that if I did, I would have to beg you for forgiveness, and that is not something I will allow myself to do from anyone. Not now, nor ever,”
I let myself pull away. This was not a movie. There was no happy ending for the two of us at the end of this conversation. It was a chance to clear the air and let go of our grievances before going our separate ways. Treating it any other way would only hurt us both. “Why break in, then, and drag this all out over dinner? Why not just knock on my door, apologize, and leave?”
“I couldn’t have you slamming the door in my face and leaving me to apologize to the wall, now could I?” 
We shared a sad smile, a knowing one. “I guess that’s true.” 
“I needed to know you would hear what I had to say until the end,” he paused, “And one last confession. I must admit, I could not walk away without sharing dinner with you one last time. It’s selfish, as I am selfish, but I could not see you again without truly seeing you, more than just as you shouted at me and threw me to the curb,” 
“You think so little of me?” I asked. There was no bite in it. 
“No, I think so little of myself,” he finally took a sip from his glass, “Any anger on your part is warranted,” 
We did not speak again for a long while. Helmut methodically went through the bite-sized pieces of steak on his plate as I finished the alfredo, which had grown cold in the time it took to sort things out. There was no quiet conversation, no jokes or shared stories in the glow of the lamps overhead. Instead we sat in peaceable silence and breathed in the finality of it all. I was almost grateful for it. I never would have imagined sharing a meal like this with him in all of the years I had known him and loved him. If it was to be the last, and it was, we would savor every moment of each others company. Every moment not spent on my meal was devoted to memorizing the line of his jaw and the shape of his eyes as he did the same for me. 
By the time the waiter came to ask about dessert, I could have written sonnets about his face alone, and by the time he returned with the check, paid discreetly with a 40% tip for his troubles on Helmut’s card, I had committed the sound of his breathing to my mind. I could only hope the memory would last this time.
Realistically, I knew it wouldn’t. 
I wondered if he was thinking the same thing as we approached the front of the restaurant together, pausing awkwardly outside the door as we exited out onto the street. 
“So, this is it,” My hands found the pockets of my coat as I rocked onto the balls of my feet. 
Helmut smiled softly in the lamplight. “Let me walk you home,” 
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” 
“Says who? I have to follow you either way, my car is parked down the block,” He offered me his arm. 
I took it far quicker than I should have, relishing in the scent of his cologne. Even after all these years he had never switched to another brand, and I refused to admit to anyone else but myself that I was grateful for it. Instead I leaned into his warmth. “Well, it’s only a few blocks anyways. I guess it couldn’t hurt,” and with that, we were off. 
The night was cool. Summer had given in to the pull of a lush fall, the temperatures dropping to a comfortable but windy chill when the sun fell below the horizon. The leaves were not yet falling but they’d begun their slow transformation from green into a mosaic of reds and yellows and greens, forming a rustling canopy above the sidewalk that allowed a flash of stars and moon through the foliage every few steps. 
We were not the only pair walking through the streets that night, but if you had asked me about it later I would have said we were the only two people in the whole city, matching each other step for step under the flickering streetlights. Helmut’s crows feet were in full force as he laughed at my terrible jokes, and I couldn’t help but feel warmth rush through my neck and cheeks as he recounted the moment we first met. 
It had been fall then, too. A brief, chance encounter in the streets of Paris was all it was, a night spend with a stranger, until I had seen him again in Sibera, and again in Germany, and again on the Raft, and again, and again, and again, and again…
He had been younger then, much younger, and still raw with grief, but I had loved him even then.
I was so lost in my own memories that I almost missed the stairs up to my apartment, but Helmut paused there, keeping me rooted with him even though the look in his eyes told me he almost kept walking past, hoping to gain one more turn around the block before he had to let me go. He didn't, though. This was the end of the line. 
My arm slipped easily from its place against his own, hand catching briefly on the crook of his elbow. “Walk me to my door?”
His laugh felt almost nervous, a paid mockery of my own earlier reticence. “I don’t think that’s wise,” 
“Aren’t you supposed to be a gentleman, baron?” 
“I have never claimed that,” For a moment, when he paused, I thought that would be that. I would turn my back, ascend the stairs, and turn around to find he’d shifted back into the shadows from whence he came, but then the moonlight caught on his soft, wet eyes. “But for you, schatz, I try to be,” 
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find the words I wanted to say as we walked up the front steps and into the building. 
It had been so angry last time. I had vomited up every hateful, raging, repressed thought that I had shoved down into my chest over the course of our turbulent time together all at once and left without a second glance. This time, though, it felt wrong to end things without giving him credit for all of the other things, the things I had forgotten in the midst of all the chaos that surrounded us. How could I thank him? How could I tell him every wonderful thing about himself only to close the door in his face a moment later? I spent the whole trip up to my apartment trying to find a way to express even an ounce of what I felt, and then it was far too late. 
We stood there on my novelty doormat, boots settled over the dirty cartoon chickens, hands in our pockets, and breathed in the stale hallway air. 
“Thank you for dinner,” I said. If I shut off my heart and my mind and every other little betraying ache in my bones it was like it had been all those years ago. We were just meeting. This was the end of our very first date. There was a future instead of a past in the time that lay beyond us. 
Helmut averted his eyes from mine. I could tell he was pretending too. “Of course,” 
“I’ll see you again,” I lied, “I mean, it’s inevitable. We’ll end up at Bucky’s place at the same time,” 
“Or run into each other at a busy cafe,” he offered. 
“Exactly! Or our cells will end up next to each other in maximum security prison,” I laughed, but it caught, pathetic, in the back of my throat.  
He took a step back, boots leaving my doorstep. “I look forward to it, whenever it may be,” 
My shaking hands found my keys, an autopilot motion I had done a million times, and the door to my apartment swung open. I could hear Brutus in his kennel, beginning to whine the moment he heard me come home, but I paused there for a moment, one foot in and one foot out. 
“Goodbye, Helmut,” 
“Sleep well, schatz,” 
I stepped inside and locked the door without turning around for a last look. 
My tears came quicker than expected as I took in the room around me. It was the antithesis of my home with Helmut, all whites and beiges and grays from the sparse walls to the lonely couch against the wall. There was one great shock of black, though; a solid footprint on the windowsill. One last souvenir to remember him by. 
I had done the right thing. 
I had to have done the right thing. 
Life with Helmut was hell. It was exciting and lush and romantic and alluring but it was destructive and painful too. It would mean being seen and unseen for the rest of my life, living with the ghosts of those lost in Novi Grad. He would never stop being the man his grief had created. He was just too broken… wasn’t he? 
All at once I knew I had to see him again. This wasn’t going to be the end. There were still so many chances to make it right. 
Before I knew my own feelings, I was undoing the latch and throwing my door open, only to find him there, feet planted solidly on that stupid welcome mat and fist raised to lift the knocker. Our eyes locked. 
We didn’t need words then. 
No, all I needed was his lips on mine and my hands in his hair. It was a need easily rectified. 
He didn’t pull away as I grabbed the edges of his ridiculous fur coat and dragged him in for a kiss, letting the remains of that day’s lipstick smear against his chapped lips as the parted and made way for me. It was like a piece of my puzzle fell back into place, like the thing that had been lying dormant in my empty chest for the past two years had jumped to life and jumped into my throat. The tears weren’t coming anymore, though Helmut’s cheeks felt wet when I guided one of my hands to rest against it, dragging him closer. I needed him urgently. I needed all of it. Every moment I had missed. 
At least one time in my entire tiny, useless life I needed to know him as he had always known me. I had to see him through eyes that would know every atom of him by heart. 
It could have lasted second or hours. I was lost in it; lost in every heartbeat and the messy clack of teeth on teeth as we remembered exactly how our mouths locked into each other. There was no need to breathe. I would happily drown in him if he would let me. Through the passion I distinctly remembered this fervor, the endless need for him. It wasn’t frightening anymore, though. I knew how to walk away. We both did. 
This time I didn’t want to. 
Helmut was the first to pull away. His mouth was wet and red as he panted there, just a breath away from diving in for more, but he pulled away when I advanced again, instead choosing to speak between placing kisses on my cheeks and down my jaw. “I couldn’t let you walk away from me. Not again,” his voice shook as he kissed me, “Does that make me a bad man? Does that mean you can’t love me?” 
I could only breathe a laugh as I pressed my chest to him. No measure of closeness was enough. I needed him to cover every inch of me. “I don’t think I could stop loving you if I tried, and I’ve tried,” 
“Please, stop trying,”
With that, he caught me in another kiss. 
“We should probably go inside,” I panted, gesturing towards the apartment with my head and Helmut nodded, maneuvering us over the threshold and into the barren entryway of the home  I’d made without him. It didn’t matter, though. That wasn’t what I was focused on. Instead, my hands were more focused on pulling his coat from his shoulders and discarding it loosely in the direction of the coat rack between fevered kisses. 
The old Helmut would’ve pulled away and make some snarky remark about keeping the place clean. This Helmut, though- my Helmut, as I had selfishly started to refer to him mentally in the past few moments -just dragged me in closer after his arms were freed, letting his hand drift to the small of my back but not even an inch lower.
Suddenly, though, things seemed to cool. The kisses grew shorter, softer. His arms still held me but seemed to loosen their grip. 
“Tell me you want this,” He whispered softly against the shell of my ear, “That you want me,” 
Ah. So that’s what this is. 
“Helmut, of course I do-“ 
“That’s not enough,” his voice was laced with a rare seriousness as he pulled away to look at me properly. His brown eyes glowed a million honeyed colors under the shitty, flickering overhead lighting I should have replaced months ago. They flitted from my swollen mouth to my cheeks to my watery eyes as his hand came up to cup my cheeks again. “Tell me this isn’t a mistake or a bad decision you’ll regret the second we finish,” 
The rest went unsaid. 
(Tell me you’ll stay. Tell me this means something to you, even if it doesn’t mean as much as it does to me. Tell me I won’t wake up alone tomorrow morning. Tell me anything and everything except the cruel reality that neither of us really knows what the future looks like once this is over)
I simply nodded my head, coming in for one closed mouth kiss. “I want this. I want you. Whatever I choose to do next, you’ll be a part of the decision. No more running away,” 
Like a shot, we were off to the races again. 
It was hard to detach our bodies long enough to give Brutus a treat to quiet him down, harder still to lead him to the bedroom and drop his hand long enough to turn on a nearby lamp, but somehow I managed. For all of the small things I’d forgotten about Helmut in the two years we’d spent apart, his bitten nails and the silhouette of his nose and the sound of his labored breathing as he took in my body with something akin to animalistic hunger, it was easy to fall back into the rhythm we’d always found ourselves in intimately. 
His shirt came off first, exposing the soft curve of his stomach. I kissed down from his neck to his chest, letting myself pause on each and every pinkish scar that graced his flesh. I made a mental note to ask him about a few new ones, including a wicked one across his collarbone that still puckered into an inch long divot in his flesh. My fingers followed my mouth, mapping every inch of his flesh. They caught on every soft yielding place he offered, a worship on the altar of his body, dragging his flesh ever so slightly but never enough to leave a scratch or bruise. 
I would not mark him any more than the world already had. It was not my purpose to remold him into my image. Instead I would venerate what he was, what he had become. 
Helmut had put so much effort into changing himself, rebreaking the things that had never healed correctly and setting them right again. I refused to let him break down to splinters again. Not on my watch. 
He shuddered at my attentions. 
“Let me see you?” It was a question, not a demand, and how could I deny him when he asked so nicely? 
I stood up again, relishing in the feeling of his fingers against the hem of my t-shirt, the gentle scratch of nails on skin as he lifted it over my head. When he looked at me, it was like he was looking at the most precious thing in the world. Usually he was so hungry for it that there was never a pause once my shirt was discarded. My bra would be thrown off with it, then my pants, then my underwear, all in such quick succession that I barely distinguished one article from the next in the order of things. This time, though, he paused, hands just inches from my bare flesh. 
“My sweet girl,” he whispered to me like a prayer, a confession, “I don’t think I can hold back much longer,” 
Slowly, deliberately, I stepped forward and pressed my body into his awaiting hands. He squeezed my hips once, gentle, and twice. Then they were roaming up to the clasp on my bra with that usual hunger again, freeing my breasts for his attentions. I don’t exactly recall how he manhandled me on to the bed, I was too busy feeling the hard press of his bulge through his crisp dress slacks. The first thing I was fully cognizant of was his hot breath on my sternum as he hovered over me, still standing but bent at the waist, boxing me in with his knees. 
“So fucking sweet,” he whispered before taking one of my nipples between his lips and laving his tongue over the hardening tip. 
I felt like a live wire. Heat was building everywhere. Dazzling electricity shot through my head and fingers and toes and cunt and gods especially my breasts. They were always my weak spot, and how he knew it, how he knew me. I wanted to thrash against him, to buck and gain his attention where I really needed it, but his body above mine held me fast, keeping me right where he wanted me, vulnerable to him and his specific brand of torture. With a particularly sharp pinch and a well timed suck he had me keening against him, curling into his every move. 
How had I lived without him? It was hard to imagine a night not spend here with Helmut, wherever here was, not that that mattered. I was embarrassingly wet. The slickness had gathered enough that I could feel it on my thighs despite my jeans. When I tried to relieve myself, though, the baron caught my hand, tutting softly. 
I expected to have to ask permission. Soft begs escaped my mouth. I needed him. I had no patience for games. Instead, though, he lifted up off of my chest and smiled, pulling my hand to his lips. “Let me help you, love,” 
There are no words in the human language that could adequately represent the sound that escaped my mouth. I could not even begin to try. It continued even as I lifted my hips to shimmy free from my jeans and underwear in one fluid motion, only ceasing when Helmut was on his knees with his face buried in my cunt. I was making different noises then. Loud. Guttural. If I had any mind left at all I would worry what my neighbors thought, to see me out on my doorstep desperately pawing at a man only to hear the noises we were making in tandem now. Thankfully, any sensible thought I had left seemed to fly out the window with Helmut’s first lick to my cunt. 
It was clear that he hadn’t forgotten me, and if he had, the muscle memory was coming back quick. His tongue was deft as it worked its way over my aching nub in a pseudo-figure eight; circling once, twice, and three times before dipping back through my folds. I held him in place this time, though, rocking into his mouth. At some point my hands found their way into his hair. It was so soft between my fingers, so pliable as I pulled against him, desperate for more of him, anything he would good. 
Every time he relented to me. Each sharp jolt was rewarded with a kiss against my thigh or a muttered curse in Sokovian, hot breath teasing my glistening mound. 
He was so giving, so attentive to my every need. He had always been a generous lover, never leaving me wanting for anything, but this felt… different. The way he sucked bruises into my thighs, relenting to each and every sobbing please that escaped my soft lips, was a new and devastating experience. There were no power games left to play, no lording his sexual prowess over me as he brought me slowly closer and closer to the ever distant goalpost, just his mouth on me over and over and over again as he wrung the first orgasm of the night out of me, then the second in short measure, barely ceasing from one to the next.
By the time he decided I’d had my fill, my legs were a trembling mess against his shoulders and my cunt was a sopping mess. 
He grinned a crooked grin at his masterpiece.
“How was that, my love,” 
I could barely catch my breath enough to speak. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, thrumming a frantic drumbeat even as the room quieted. “So good- really really good, Helmut,” 
Slowly, he rose up from his knees, undoing his belt. “Please say my name again, schatz,” 
“Helmut,” My voice was hushed. Reverent. 
He undid the button at his fly, pulling at the band of his boxers. “Again,” 
It fell from my lips like a prayer. “Helmut,”
His cock bounced free, bobbing as he took a sharp, steadying breath. He placed his hand at the base and squeezed slightly. 
“Again,” 
“Helmut,” 
“Fuck, that’s good,” The trance broke momentarily as I gazed up at him, watching the sweat roll down his forehead in shining rivulets despite the chill in the air. He wiped at them with the back of his free hand and smiled sheepishly. “Scoot back and get comfortable, please. I don’t think I’ll last long,” 
I did as he asked, settling against my pillows on the still-made sheets. “Neither will I,” 
“Where are your condoms?” 
“Bedside drawer, way in the back. I’m on the pill too, so no worries,” 
He moved quickly, grabbing a foil package from the small pile I’d accrued, just in case. 
It felt odd to have him be the one using them. 
There had been a few other men who had been invited here, fewer still that made it to the point that Helmut and I were at now. Every time, though, I hadn’t been able to go through with it, because every time they had finally settled themselves above me, I would close my eyes and, just for a moment, see Helmut in their place. It was unsettling the first time, enough so that I sent the guy home right away. The next time, though, it was more thought provoking than anything. I chalked it up to him being my longest lasting sexual partner and left it at that, but now, watching him roll the condom onto his length and crawl into his position over me, I knew. 
I would never get over him, even if I tried for years. My heart had a space carved out in the shape of his own. No matter how long I stayed away, I would never find something quite like what we had. He was it. This was what people dreamed about. And to think, I had almost let it slip away…
He slid one hand into mine, lacing our fingers together in the gentle lamplight. “Are you ready for me?” 
“More than ready,” My thighs spread as I canted my hips up.
Physically and mentally and every other possible way I needed him. I was prepared. 
So Helmut pumped himself once with his free hand before guiding himself into my wet heat. 
It was impossible to last long once we were finally complete. 
Feeling him inside me was like knowing the truth of the universe. It was comfortable, and thrilling, and so deliciously enough. He filled me well, finding his rhythm as he swore and released my hand to prop himself up more comfortably. We were linked together like the final pieces of a puzzle. I closed my eyes at let myself relish in it. 
There was nothing left to worry over while Helmut was inside of me. All thoughts that weren’t of him were banished. It was something to be cherished, every thrust paired with a whispered confession of love from one of us, a fleeting kiss, a curse, a plea… We laid ourselves bare. I let my legs wrap around his warm, soft hips as he rutted into me, bringing a hand between us to circle my clit once more. Even after everything he refused to leave me behind while he chased his own pleasure. It didn’t take much to send me tumbling over the edge into oblivion. 
As always, Helmut followed me down. 
His thrusts quickened, then stilled as he came to rest upon me, panting and heaving and begging for breath. I didn’t care much. He smelled of cologne and sweat as I buried my face in his shoulder and closed my eyes. I could feel him soften inside of me but I was far too spent to urge him to move.
We only shifted apart when he slipped free of me.
Helmut quickly kissed my forehead and gathered himself up, shuffling to the trash can to discard the used condom and grab a tissue to wipe himself up. I didn’t let myself move an inch. If I moved, would the bliss run away? Would I realize what I’d done? I let myself lay instead, eyes closed, panting in the autumn chill as my lover approached and wiped up our beautiful mess as gently as he could manage. With one last kiss to my thigh, he discarded the rag, opened the window, and crawled back into bed with me. 
The process was indelicate, a lot of awkward shuffling of sticky limbs, but we were settled beneath the blankets soon enough. Helmut stroked his fingers down my arm languidly while kissing the back of my neck. 
I broke the peace between us. 
“I don’t… I don’t know what this means for us,” 
He sighed gently. His breath was soothing and familiar against my shoulder. “That’s not something we have to decide at this very moment,” 
“But I just don’t want you to think this means something… or at least something more than it does? If that makes sense? I don’t know,”
“Schatz, please,” 
“I want to keep my own place, at least for now. I don’t know what that means for when I’ll see you or if we’ll keep doing this,” I gestured vaguely to my nude body beneath the sheets, “or if we’re even a thing anymore, bu-“ 
Helmut reached his arm around us, placing a quieting finger over my lips and another soft kiss against my shoulder. 
“I swear, your mind sounds even louder than mine,” 
“Sorry,” 
“No reason to be,” His hand left my lips, running down to my stomach and pulling me back towards the softness of his chest. “As for your questions, I shall respect your wishes about distance and housing and labels, whatever they may be. That being said, as long as you’re still up for… this, as you put it, I will never deny you, no matter the distance. I would cross oceans for you,” 
A cum-drunk, half-asleep giggle escaped me as he nuzzled in, kissing my ear. 
“Thank you,” 
“No, thank you,” he matched my laughter with his own, “I believe this is what James would call post nut clarity,” 
“Now you ruined it!” I huffed. The faux anger only lasted a moment, though, before I was rolling to face him, cheek pressed to the soft, downy hair of his chest. “I love you, Helmut.” 
“I love you too, sweet girl. Now sleep. I’ll get up and deal with the dog once you’re resting,” 
For the first time in two years, I breathed in the scent of Helmut’s cologne before lapsing into a peaceful sleep.
---------
A/N: Thank you for reading! This is my first foray into smut in literal years, and it was literally all written within a 12 hour period, so I hope any mistakes weren't enough to take away from your enjoyment. Comments are always appreciated, but never expected. See you on the next authors note!
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alavestineneas · 5 months
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and if you are there, why do i feel alone in this room?
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pairing: Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen x fem!reader summary: The woman—a siren, some kind of sea beast lurking in deep, salted waters—sits near him with the ottoman under her feet that still seemed to deny her the comfort of rest, her eyes glinting with mischief when she notices his stare. Taunts, even, forge obliviousness to the spells she casts. Strange, otherworldly—redundant. Everything about her, down to the light gown and a headdress that showed little of her face, Feyd-Rautha was not used to seeing. warnings: mentions of death, violence, implied/referenced child abuse, religious symbolism, mentions of sa (!), blood and other parts of body, very non-healthy relationships chapter 1 - chapter 2 !this work is part 2 to the i can feel the soil falling over my head; no people are here, just the void in my chest! word count: 7,3k
author's notes: hi beautiful people! today, I have finally finished this chapter! be aware that this piece of literature is explicit and touches on some very heavy themes, including sa and child abuse. Please be mindful of it! As always, your opinions, suggestions, and critiques are welcome in the comments. Love you, and have a tasty read!
There are a lot of books stored in her memory, locked in the neurocytes safely. They are tucked into the cortex with love and tenderness that YN otherwise taught herself to suppress as a sign of her weaker self. But papers were non-living, so she felt like it was less dangerous for her to show warmth towards them; after all, if the objects can not acknowledge your love, does it really count as real? She read everything, mostly in an attempt to prepare herself for something she did not know the face of; she read to build the shield around herself, in desperate hope to be able to help at least her future self. YN read even now, although her foolish childhood desires were long gone, just to get a glimpse of the girl she was before the monsters escaped the pages.
The book she re-read the most was nothing special, nothing suiting the image she moulded herself into—a giant, relatively old encyclopaedia of animals inhabiting the furthest corners of Known Imperium. The letters inside, although faded a little, were left almost untouched by eyes—maybe it was what drew her in in the first place—to cherish something seen as unneeded. YN learned the small paragraphs almost by heart; she liked the idea of someone taking enough time to observe something as small as a roden to know its habits. She liked the idea of it happening to her one day. As it always is, it did not.
She chose her favourite animal without that much thought. Although even the notion of having something beloved was foolish, YN was made to choose; she and her sisters played the game of forest most often. The game was simple: pretend to be a creature you are not, forgetting the countless rules they had to follow. Pretending they have claws and teeth; pretending they can protect themselves not through intrigues and hidden motives but through open, bold force. Irulan was always a Katanga Lioness; she liked it because of the proximity to their house's symbol. YN did not; the grey pages of her beloved book described them as "observed to also scavenge on carrion of animals that were killed by other predators or died from natural causes''. What king of the animals steals the work of others simply to feed themselves? She did not tell Irulan that, of course—why would she?
YN chose a mountain lion for herself. Sure, she may have made a mistake thinking it was just another type of lion, but the game went too far to change anything, so she stuck with that. She even grew to love it—the drawing of the mountain lion on her character sheet, the way it prowled through the forest in her mind's eye. It had many names and many homes. Adaptive. Captivating.
She does not know why it came into her mind suddenly—maybe it was the dim light of the closed arena. The air circulated here freely, cooling through the complex systems of vents, even though it seemed to be deprived of any life—just a mechanical circle of the same molecules moving around her seated figure and returning to the hidden openings again and again. YN looked straight ahead; the two men were still sparring.
From her bench, they looked like one—two bodies moved so swiftly that one was unable to differentiate where the lines of their limbs ended. YN squinted her eyes; she was alone in the seating area, and still, she dared not move closer. The taller, thinner figure possessed skin so white it looked almost translucent underneath the cold light—YN wondered if she would be able to see the structures in his body through his clothed stomach. He moved well, almost too well for her not to press her lower row of teeth to the top one, hiding the tongue in a cave of pearl bones—she had hoped he was worse with his bare hands. YN had counted four hundred and five seconds before he made a mistake in his steps; it was a lot more than her own results, but for a man, he was good.
Feyd-Rautha had style; she had to give him that. He fought like a serpent would: calculated, precise. His fists knew the most effective targets, and his legs knew how to escape the blows of his opponent. If YN was to guess, he relied on muscle memory less than a usual fighter would, preferring to dwell in the moment instead. It made for a good show, sure, but it was not practical. She smiled to herself; of course, the na-Baron could not know what the real battle was like. How unfortunate for him—how delightful for her. YN still can't believe he let her watch his training every morning—was he really that stupid not to realise her motive? Was he too confident to consider having weaknesses?
Regardless, she saw what she needed to do - for three hours every day, she set unmovingly on the third bench in a small fighting ground, imprinting his every move in her mind. There are so many moves you can use and so many tricks you can do before she learns them all. YN did not care for the cold gaze thrown in her direction when Feyd-Rautha collapsed on the ground, taking a moment to rest before lurching onto his opponent again. She can wait.
Mountain lions are stealthy predators.
-
The days she spent here changed into months, their slow steps morphing into each other until time became a blur, a concept she did not grasp. Feyd-Rautha was a hard one to warm, but before she would mould him into something she wanted, YN needed to heat his DNA to a certain magnitude; otherwise, he would simply break. She would've gladly accepted this turn of fate too, but right now, keeping na-Baron alive is far more convenient for the Bene Gessarit. For her.
A concubine. A slap in the face: it seemed like life was determined to dissolve the small bits of her dignity in its endless pool of secrets. She was not a wife to Harkonnen na-Baron; no, she was to be his whore. If she was not too tired, she would've felt a pang of fear on her rising with oxygen lungs; a concubine's position is even lower here compared to one of a lawful wife's. YN remembers the words of her teacher as she prepared her for the union: Harkonnen concubines are killed after their first night in a position; if one is lucky enough to escape the fate by being with a child, she bears him until it's time for the baby to be born. One of the greatest honours for a Harkonnen is to take the life of his mother as soon as he enters the world.
She was to join na-Baron for breakfast today—a proposal YN waited long to receive, but part of her wishes she never did. It was worded like an invitation; YN knows it was not. Harkonnens rarely spoke when they did not give orders—a creature of habit, she supposed. So, she did what she had to: follow the slave to the chambers designated for the meal. The hem of her dress shone with a colour so foreign to the fort around her; YN needed to make herself stand out. Men are much like children, she learned—the more colourful the toy, the more likely they will want to play with it.
The walls were heavy here. They didn't bend in the shapes she was used to, preferring to stand tall. They didn't have to hide their strength underneath a complicated facade—quite the opposite. They paraded it, wearing it like the honour it is. Staying unremorsefully unbending. Maybe it's the air or a different measure of gravity; maybe it's her habit of soaking up the surroundings and letting them poison her insides, growing rotten in between the folds of her stomach tissue, but her legs are metal, stone-cold, pulling YN deeper and deeper into the floor. She tries so hard to ignore the three creatures in the corner.
They are hairless, much like the man in front of her, and dressed in matching black. YN would've mistaken them for Harkonnen royalty if it were not for the iron collars on their necks and the glowing black eyes that seemed to follow her every move. She would've been happy to have some company and not be forced into solitude with na-Baron if it were not for a still convulsing body on the floor. A body she did not recognise, but it could've easily been her own.
The creatures seemed to enjoy the involuntary moves of the soon-to-be corpse; they closed their eyes in delight and bared the sharp, black-coloured teeth in sheer pleasure as they lurched into the white flesh. They ripped it apart with only their hands, not bothering to use the prepared knives for more than a big incision from head to stomach. The sounds of chewing and gnawing filled the room, echoing off the walls and sending electric impulses down her body. YN was used to the metallic smell and the bright colour of arterial blood, but this was not a simple death. It was a show, and she was the long-awaited watcher.
Feyd-Rautha seemed unbothered by the sight near him. His hands, covered in thick streaks of blood, were deep to his elbows in the body. He dissected the corpse with precision, his eyes focused and his grip steady. He looked calm, even peaceful. Na-Baron was in good humour today. ''I must say, your arrival has graced us with much more than just the dowery; nothing could've made this union more auspicious—such a rare bird you are, daughter of our generous Emperor. A princess, yet treated no better than a common slave.''
Here it was: the thing she was thinking about all the way to this strange, garbage planet in the dress that pokes bleeding holes in her abdomen with each glass she downs. From his lips, it sounds even more bitter; even savages found the way the Emperor sold one of his daughters so easily strange. "Both of our houses have traditions far beyond our understanding," YN shrugs, scaring her thoughts away like annoying flies. Here, in a room so far from the comfort of her home, they moved too fast, bringing nausea to her throat.
She is here to secure the bloodline of House Harkonnen, to ensure the balance needed in the Imperium. YN does not notice how suddenly her gaze darkens or how tightly the hands that rested on the chair are now holding the pleated velvet of her ruby-red gown. Oh, the baby. The tiny creature inside her womb, the future head for the Baron's crown to be placed upon. The yet unconcieved child she could not feel love for. She was given no other choice but to risk its life before even giving it a chance to obtain its gift.
''Then you will find my present to be quite fitting.''
YN watches in silence as na-Baron reaches inside the rib cage of the corpse. He reaps out an organ with one swift motion, almost like plucking a harmful sprout from the garden. The organ is broun and rosewood, a weird mixture of shades that make it harder for her to focus on anything but the thing in his large hand. The gift he meant to give was a human heart.
She feels his walk long before she sees a figure departing from its place at the table; she guesses the end point of his manoeuvres too easily. It's almost funny—a cruel, senseless joke; how obvious the slight tremor in her hands is; how heavy her eyes become at the sight of Harkonnen black. The body positions itself near; if she squints, she can hear the hot breathing somewhere between her shoulder blades. His hand snakes around her neck quickly, positioning the organ right in front of her mouth. YN can detect the smell hitting her nostrils before she closes the receptors in them. She wants to scream, but the notes die in her throat. Who would she scream for? She hears the creatures hiss and whisper—the heart is a good part, from what she can make out. It did not need to be wasted on people like her.
''Will you not accept it?'' Feyd-Rautha's words are mocking, but his dark blue eyes stay virgin to the laughter. They drill small spots on her neck from behind with such force that YN can almost feel the burnt smell of her sweat-covered skin.
She takes a breath. Her own heart shrinks, its vessels beating with intensity twice as much as needed. Still alive, she notes absently. Still breathing. The feeling is natural and easy; the forced calmness in her body tingles the muscles, braiding her nerves into a pattern similar to the netting. Then, she opens her mouth.
"If I shall lick the blood of your hands, Feyd-Rautha, dare to make it your own."
That's it.
Maybe the Emperor was right to spare her none of the Sardaukars and a quarter of her dresses. She did not need more; she was not expected to survive long enough to use half of her clothes. YN chucked under her breath. Dead over diet preferences—how profound.
After a moment, the pale face behind her also twists, allowing the blackened teeth to escape the grip of thin lips. Like this, na-Baron looks less human and more like the evil he was said to be. He throws the heart to the creatures—they catch it greedily—and places a bloodied hand on her shoulder, the droplets of crimson going unnoticed on the brightly coloured cloth. ''Very well, then. Let us eat.''
YN nods. She looks around almost instinctively; nothing could make her eat a thing after the sight she just witnessed, but she refuses the na-Baron once; she is not about to do it again. The food is a lot, but her plate is almost empty: only a small amount of salad is here, sadly staring into the hunger in her eyes and a now featherless creature in an unnatural pose, suggesting its non-poetical death. The bird is small, almost delicate; its wings are pitifully glued to the body. YN does not want to let her mind draw the comparison, and does not allow her brain to admit a direct analogy; she dissects the bird with a dull knife and puts a piece in her dry mouth. The creature tastes good—almost too good to be expected in this brightly lit hall.
Most often deer is the mountain lion’s staple diet. However, they can survive preying on small animals as well.
-
The night covers Giedi Prime rather quickly; it never lingers, politely waiting for its masters to finish their daily affairs; it hits like a coward, from behind, trapping those not careful enough to hide before its arrival. The harsh, toxic waves of lazy winds hit the walls of the halls coldly lighted with a few sphears; they look like deep forest clearings, forming a system of endless options, ultimately leading to one, inevitable, end. His work chambers aren't big; he does not visit them often for them to be. The solitary metal desk before him is filled with letters, drafts of laws, and official documents, all waiting for his approval. It exhausts Feyd-Rautha to no end, the sheer stupidity of most of the advisers here; almost half of the documents were riddled with errors and inconsistencies. The forever present in his head dull migraine grows stronger when he opens the shortest letter; he almost busts his skull open when the pain heavies.
He ponders too much—the type of thoughts you can feel running on your tongue but never escaping. He is not used to being in the mist; all of his life is so painfully contrasted that no doubt of its nature can survive the sharp edge of his mind. There are things he can escape—forget, even—but some linger in his ribcage too long for them to vanish. Soon, they grow into his lungs with small, unbreakable threads, becoming him. He used to try to get them away from his heart, as if it held some value. Now, he is smarter, older, and more indifferent, he lets them pierce yet another piece of human flesh with no sorrow.
Of course, he remembered her face. The same face that haunted his sleep ever since she dared to appear before his eyes. Feyd-Rautha, naturally, found her little frolic that day. He spent an entire evening studying her work, analysing every move she could've made with her blade to achieve such outcomes. Sure, some things he would've done differently, but the sheer brutality of an animal he would not have guessed the girl possessed charmed him. Feyd-Rautha was a proud man, but he, too, held a love for beautiful things. For that, he hadn't told the Baron of the sight he discovered in the reading room. For that, he is now willing to pretend to believe her eyes when the fear fleshes in them.
Feyd-Rautha curses; she sickens. Like a bone stuck somewhere down his throat, not letting him live without a pang of mocking. She lurks, and whispers—Feyd-Rautha wants to smash her pretty head against the wall just to reveal the secrets she hides from him so he can finally understand the hold she retains. He is no stranger to the desire to own, or devour, but the fear in the back wall of his stomach is an alien in his body. He tries to hide it—to paint over it with anger or violence—but it remains a constant presence, gnawing at him from within. It's no use; the woman is a shark, designed to sense the fright. Maybe that's what brought him in in the first place—the steel eyes so similar to his own in a narrow hall all those years before. Maybe he was so used to the danger that he craved it subconsciously, looking for it to make him feel like himself again. A reoccurring childhood nightmare he can't escape; he doesn't want to escape.
Feyd-Rautha finds the chair to put his weight on and waits until the tingling, spinning sensation spreads from his temples down his neck, finding its way into his bloodstream and passing his organs one by one, until none are left uncorrupted. Of course, he expects it. The woman slipped into his brain and now chews her way into it like a parasite downs the rotten body. He knows he should be terrified, but instead, he feels a strange sense of relief. Feyd-Rautha can hear the whispers of his own mind fighting to remain the only owners of the secrets and desires buried within. He feels his eyelids heavy; a second later, the whites of his eyes are staring at the ceiling, the blue eye lenses dissolving in light.
Water. The first thing he feels is ice-cold water dripping onto his face, filling his lungs, and sending a shock through his arms. This body does not feel like his; it's too small, too narrow. His eyes are trying to adjust as fast as they can, jumping from one blurred spot to another until finally catching a glimpse of the surroundings. His brain does not have time to process the picture; his nose is filled with fluid again, and his open mouth is gasping for air but only taking in more liquid. He tries waving his hands around, but the stronger grip is firm on his nape, pulling him further down into the depths. The hand yanked him out just as he was about to fall into darkness again, the sound of water changing to loud screeching.
''How dare you hit me, devil child? Let the water wash away your dirt. Repent; beg for forgiveness for all of your rotten nature.''
The voice is unknown to him; it is harsh and filled with fury. The woman's face is twisted in anger; splashes of water on it match his. He can't tell if they are from his antics or tears. The woman's grip tightens, her nails digging into his skin. The black clothes on her figure make her status known - a Bene Gessarit witch. Feyd-Rautha tries to lurch forward and hit her back, but her strength is overwhelming. He feels panic coursing through his veins instead of oxygen—a sensation he did not think he could experience anymore. He wants to bark a response to show her that he is not afraid, but his voice catches in his throat.
Feyd-Rautha has no time to wonder what the woman wants; she brings his face to the bathtub again, and he opens his mouth involuntarily, frantically begging not to do it anymore. He says everything she wants to hear; he cries out and promises to wash his sins away. The voice does not sound like his at all. He is desperate to end this nightmare now, but some force holds him here. The woman is not satisfied; her ears are deaf to his pleas.
His face ends up on the water surface a moment later, his nose hitting the wall of the bathtub as the woman holds him down. He feels his body go limp with utter horror; this time, the shouting woman won't stop. Her voice grows quieter, replaced by the sound of small waves hitting the brim and spilling; from right to left, the water turns red, and his tongue tastes the iron he knows from sliding blades into his mouth.
''Echidna, what the fuck are you doing? Let her go; she is going to choke!''
''Get that spawn to me, for I will not let her ruin my life anymore! I must finish what I have started!''
Feyd-Rautha's head is filled with oxygen once again; his lungs take a desperate breath in, sending too much air to his blood system. He falls on his back, the world spinning. He does not care for the weeping woman in black or the chaos unfolding around him. His only thought is that everything is finally done and that the white floors are a magnificent place for drops of liquid to fall from his normally bald head's waterfall of hair.
He wakes up suddenly, the sensation long gone. His steps are heavy again; the body he inhibits no longer feels like a cage. The voices have left him for now, and the only thing on his forehead left is small drops of sweat and a pathetic, frightened, beating heart. The cold breeze from the darkened sands surrounding the city wishes to prove otherwise—it heavies and plants its spikes into his reddened cheeks. The horizon gleams at him, almost taunting; not a single star is to be seen under the imposing clouds. He will kill her; maybe he will even enjoy it. Feyd-Rautha can handle a lot, but not the shame of being seen. Not the guilt of being caught wanting.
There are only three ways to hunt a mountain lion: tracking, waiting in ambush, and with dogs.
-
The gliding motions of heavy fabrics across the wooden floors created a strange pattern of a song now centuries old. Here, in a room so long that the wind travelled through the hollows, her careful steps seemed to almost fall silent. Nothing was there for the preying eyes to see. YN closes her eyes; with that, even for a moment, the world stays still. She knows where the hollow staircase will lead her; she feels it in her stomach with every step she takes. YN knows nothing about the future, but the past lives deep in her memories, haunting her every move. She knows she shouldn't have done it. Travelling through one's mind is a sin she can't escape; she will pay the price for it in her blood, but the Bene Gesarit did not send her here to survive, so it's of no use to be afraid now. It makes no difference for the dead if you weep at their grave or not.
The burning sphere of light in the hall stops spinning; the doors open without any noise, although if the pounding eardrums had not stunned her hearing, she could've noticed the faint thuds. YN waits; there are no flashes of her happiest memories or the faces of her loved ones in her drained mind. No, in what seems to be her last moments, she thinks of what she could've been if the world had not given her a sword to turn into.
Feyd-Rautha appears in the hall; his steps aren't rushed, and his expression is stone-cold. She eyes him shamelessly: nothing. She sees nothing; she senses it deep in her crying bones. He drags her by the hair like a mother would with her misbehaving child; roughly, he pulls her towards the exit, his grip tightening with each step until the door behind them closes and her knees meet the cold ground with a nasty thud. The bruises will stain them soon, not that it matters now.
''You should've known better than to cross me,'' he hisses, his voice gruff. It's cold, chilling—the way his lips part to reveal a sinister smile. ''Now, you can think yourself vanished, little witch.''
YN does not answer—what fool would beg the deaf? The blade against her chin is sharp; she knows how attentive he is when it comes to inflicting pain. It pokes right into the Omehyoid muscle, a dull pain shooting through her body. If she has got to die, it may as well be from his skilled arms. How beautiful he is in the twisted pleasure he finds in her suffering. Unearthly, almost too perfect to be made of simple flesh and bone. Something was unnerving, unforgettable in the net of veins under his pearly skin; it was as if he were a work of art, meticulously crafted to bring physical pain and optical pleasure in equal measure. A silver glint under the defined cheekbones, a redness of lips filled with blood vessels. For a second, YN wonders what it would be like to bite into it, like an apple that lay too long under the golden sun; would the blood slip as generously as the sweet nectar? Handsome as poison, as a black sun on his forsaken planet, as death.
''Go on. Kill me, then; let me escape you once and for all.''
Under the deep sea of his eyes, something moved; his eyes dipped into her, part by part. Like the slow, deliberate dance of a predator stalking its prey, his gaze lingered on her, calculating and intense. YN lowered her head to push the knife a little deeper into the flesh. A strange thought lingered in her brain; she found herself on her knees in front of him, almost willingly. She has worshipped God all her life; who, if not her, can recognise his creation? The Devil. Lucifer. Satan. The man with horns so big they once touched the skies; a corrupt angel, fallen from grace so long ago he couldn't remember way back if he tried. They have warned her about him, but is it her fault that God has disowned her earlier than she could? Did it really matter to her, before whom to kneel, as long as she felt a sense of power and control in her submission?
All that mattered now was that he wanted to hurt her. He wanted her.
She sees the recognition flicker on his face. Caught. The blade slides quickly across her exposed neck, the blood sprouting out in a weak, painfully quick stream. Feyd-Rautha kissed her, biting her bottom lip till the stream of boldly coloured blood trickled down his chin. He did so like an animal would, baring his teeth and dragging them across the pulsating vein on her neck. YN's laughing cry echoes in the empty room; she is forced to admit that he felt good.
Never approach a mountain lion; most mountain lions prefer to avoid confrontations, so never approach them and make them feel cornered.
-
The woman—a siren, some kind of sea beast lurking in deep, salted waters—sits near him with the ottoman under her feet that still seemed to deny her the comfort of rest, her eyes glinting with mischief when she notices his stare. Taunts, even, forge obliviousness to the spells she casts. Strange, otherworldly—redundant. Everything about her, down to the light gown and a headdress that showed little of her face, Feyd-Rautha was not used to seeing. The beautiful substance of her hair caught the light from the sun like a mirage in the desert, reflecting in his eyes with painful hits. The jewels, too, have found their way onto her clothes, but they were hidden beneath the layers of fabric. They shined brightly, impertinently, framing her figure in a glow that seemed to come from within.
To his surprise, the skills woman possessed spread out to politics as well, with her witch training proving useful in court. Feyd-Rautha did not miss how his advisors grew more uneasy when she entered the room, her careful eyes scanning their faces for even a hint of betrayal or deceit. Like a proud discoverer, he ached to share his new-found wonder with the blind audience, but something in him protested in a mare thought of showing the precious jewel of his eye to the cluster of unworthy. So, Feyd-Rautha did the only thing he knew how— all of his secret observations were done from afar, masterfully hidden behind the facade of casual indifference.
As he drags yet another blade across the surface of the whetstone, he thinks about her delicate hands on his neck, her ringed fingers tracing the lines of his jaw. Harkonnen men rarely wed; they just take what they capture—men and women—and turn them into slaves. Some, if particularly sweet, are reserved for fucking. There are no special songs for that; there isn't a specific word in their native tongue for wife, either. It doesn't matter; YN is nothing of the sort. A concubine, a possession, a tool for pleasure and procreation—the Harkonnen way was simple.
''Are you done eye-fucking me now, or do you need more time with your blade?'' she sneers, her voice mocking. Only she could get away with such bold defiance in his presence, but she does not seem to care for the unusualness of it.
YN motions for him to come closer, her eyes studying the way his legs move. Feyd-Rautha has no control over them; the steps make themselves. She plays the game very well; the chase fuels something primal within him. Thirst. Hunger. It was the Harkonnen training talking to him—the wild, ancient sensation taking over his insides and imprisoning his mind in a cage of helpless desire. It spread its tentacles down to his fingertips, nesting in his abdomen. He positions himself in front of her, his body betraying him as he leans in closer, drawn to her like a moth to a flame. Feyd-Rautha's hands repeat the ritual almost instinctively, rolling the hem of her deep purple dress up to her waist.
''Stop for a second,'' she whispers against his ear, her breath warm and inviting. ''Can I give you a piece of advice?''
Feyd-Rautha can feel the anger creeping into his body; he does not like to be refused. ''No,'' he grumbles, turning her around forcefully. "I don't need your advice," he snaps, his grip tightening on her arm.
YN does not seem to care for it. ''Don't do it. It will only lead to trouble.''
''What?'' He stops, his eyes narrowing as he absorbs the woman's words. The doubts that had lingered in the back of his mind suddenly grew louder, echoing through his mind. He releases her arm, his expression stoic. ''You are insane, woman. What are you talking about?''
''You know what I mean.''
The unease boils in his stomach. How could she know? He was careful not to slip anything; she wasn't able to cast her spells anymore either. But her knowing gaze tells him otherwise. ''You can not know the future,'' he pronounces.
''I don't need to know the future to see the truth, Feyd-Rautha. Your judgement is clouded by rage, and your mind is not as sharp as it usually is. You are not as invincible as you think you are.''
She is bluffing, he thinks. He hopes she is. Feyd-Rautha almost wished there was no cloth covering her face, nothing to hide her expressions as she lay beneath him. He catches her flamed eyes and the way they circle his face in one swift motion before settling on the ceiling above. It unnerves him, but he refuses to show it. She is no master here; she is simply a servant. That is not what power looks like, if he ever recognised one, and Feyd-Rautha knew power.
''Get out, now.''
Nothing was portrayed on her face as she curtseyed; nothing was there when she turned and walked to her rooms, leaving nothing but the ghost of the human body's warmth.
Mountain lions are more at home in brushy areas than in open prairies.
-
And then, he disappeared. Like the sound of the morning birds falling silent in the cacophony of voices of the city on her home planet, there was no trace of na-Baron in the entire Harkonnen fortress. YN thought she was slowly but surely going mad; no one but her noticed the usual place by the window empty, and no one but her seemed to care enough to know where he went. She caught strange looks from a few, and frankly, she thought they were right. She looked like a mad woman, her hair quickly plated and her dress hurriedly laced, her eyes darting around the room in search of any sign of Feyd-Rautha's massive figure. Noon was dragged into the evening, and then night, for three, long days until she heard the long-awaited news: na-Baron Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen had tried to usurp his uncle and had failed.
She has told him so. A fucking brainless ram, with stubbornness bigger than his cock—why did he think he could outsmart the Baron? He will pay for his dumbness with his blood, perhaps even his limb—the thought brought nausea to YN's throat. She was lucky the Baron did not consider her important enough to be knowledgeable of such schemes; she lowered her head in the desert, hiding from the sand storms of Harkonnen politics; she waited for two long weeks until the announcement was made; Feyd-Rautha was forgiven. The celebration in honour of this news is to be today; she is to attend it. Not like his concubine, YN supposed, but more like the princess she still was.
Now, she took her time. YN chose a gown she wanted long enough to make even a tireless slave yawn, savouring each moment before their meeting. She was a victor now, in their small game of cat and mouse. He was a cat, but the mouse could still outwit him with grace and style. YN smiled at the wondering attendants; she looked good, and she was going to meet him.
The walk from her chambers to the Grand Hall wasn't too long; she would've walked a thousand more stairs if it was needed. The doors opened without a sound, revealing nothing but a mere celebration of yet another year under the reign of Harkonnens. The lines of slaves changed one another, the uneven circles of people dancing appearing and fleeing to the cheerful tone of strings. She was set somewhere between two Harkonnen lords she had no chance of knowing; she felt a sense of unease creeping up her spine as she tried to maintain a polite smile. Their gazes didn't look right; something sinister lurked inside them—hiding a secret she had no chance of knowing.
One of them turned to her, a chilling smile spreading across his face. "How are you finding the evening, lady YN? Or, what should I call you?,'' he mastered a fake confusion. ''Perhaps, darling? Concubine has a cheap wing to it; quite unworthy of a face so lovely as yours, don't you think?"
Dirt. The thing that crawled under her skin at his words was like dirt, making her feel unclean and exposed. She forced a laugh, trying to brush off his comments, the crown of her hair moving with muscles underneath her skin. "I am a princess, my Lord. Address me as such."
It would be enough every other noon, but today. The man's face twists, as if he just remembered something; he turns, the wine in his goblet splashing on the tablecloth. ''I think na-Baron wouldn't be too angry if I stole a princess for the night," he sneered, his eyes darkening with malice.
''Does it matter to you either way?''
YN watches as the smirk, so similar to Feyd-Rautha's, appears on the men's lips, although it doesn't feel the same. She fights back disgust as the man nods, biting into a hefty chunk of prey. His eyes, once focused on her, drifted away. YN chose to follow them; the string of fat streaming down the man's mouth onto the silver tablecloth made her nauseous. She looked from one unfamiliar face to another, until the cold feeling in her abdomen crept its way onto her chest.
There he was. His figure is unusually crouching as he sits on the podium reserved for members of the dynasty. The dark blue eyes are red now; the thin blood vessels in them are torn and emptied. His body seemed to suck the light out of the hall inside, casting a shadow over the room. There are no scars on his smooth face, but the sunken cheeks and hollow eyes spoke of a suffering that went beyond physical wounds. YN almost wished she saw him dead; whatever this was, it was surely much worse. He raised his eyes slowly to meet hers; something flickered in them before turning back to their empty state. Feyd-Rautha parts his dry lips to say something to her—she can't understand a word he draws with his breath.
From the place nearby, the Baron's voice booms, his low, almost whisper-like vowels mending into one. His face, covered with layers of skin and dead cells, twists into what was meant to be a welcoming smile—the corners of his paper-thin lips dance, lowering themselves only to jump higher, and his eyes travel from one corner to another, unable to be still even for a moment. He speaks of things YN knows nothing about court intrigue, power struggles, and alliances that shape the fate of their world, heavy with hidden meanings and unspoken threats. She does not listen until he gestures towards her, a scent of spice and decomposing flesh lingering.
''Sergeant Voss has served me well, and his loyalty at the right time is not to be forgotten. Here, I bestow upon him the highest honour of all; what was once mine, is now his. Do not let go of her if she screams, Sergeant; the girl is a fine one.''
No. YN almost does not recognise the hand as her own as the man drags her to the bed that appeared out of nowhere, freezing with horror as the people around her continue to watch in silence, their eyes devoid of any emotion or empathy. The tradition, she notes, is the one she learned so much about bedding in front of the entire court as a symbol of unity. She choked on her own tears as the man smiled at her pleas for help; they seemed to make him even more pleased.
YN looks, frantically, to the place she saw Feyd-Rautha sitting just a moment before. He would help; surely, he would not let them do it to her—his servant, his concubine, his. But the seat is empty. The scream echoing through the hall does not register as hers right away; he has sold her. For his own freedom, for a chance to be free from the consequences of his own stupid actions. Surely, the Harkonnens could not get rid of her openly—it would mean war—but she was not immune to the man who now owned her. His hands travelled her body with such audacity that YN wanted to cut them off—to cut her chest just so she could not feel the fingers digging into her skin. A sole reminder she was a woman first and a human second.
Mountain lions are solitary hunters.
The man undressed himself quickly; all of the soldiers were trained to do so. She should run; she should fight back, but the pair of unmoving hands pinning her wrists down was a stark reminder of her helplessness. The man lowers himself closer, his hot breath against her neck making her shudder in fear. She can feel him against her skirts; she can feel the weight of his body pressing down on her. The adrenaline is pumping through her veins; she will survive. Whatever it fucking takes, even if her body is bruised and broken, she will survive.
They prefer to ambush their prey from behind by swiftly and cleanly breaking the neck.
She bites—her teeth launch towards his cheek, feeling the warm flesh give way beneath her. She sinks them deeper, making holes big enough to draw blood. It's hot, and sickening on her tongue, but she does not have time for these thoughts; her next blow is in his stomach, with his knee jammed into his gut. She can feel his body convulse in pain, giving her a chance to throw him on the bed, his broad back facing her.
If they haven’t broken the neck, they will suffocate the animal.
There is nothing around that could serve as a knife; her captors made sure of that, and the sheets are too thin to wrap around his neck. She looks around the room, desperate for something to use, but the space around her is empty. YN curses as the man regains his composure and begins to struggle against her hold. Her elbow meets his nose with a sickening crunch, causing blood to spurt out. She takes a breath in; her hand wraps around his neck, forming a tight hold as she goes into the headlock. She chokes him, so desperately trying to live. And the man trashes against her grip, his white face turning a deep shade of purple before finally going limp in her arms.
Shame.
A thing that followed her after every life she took is now absent. Maybe the Giedi Prime's cruelty did have its effect on her; YN feels nothing but a sense of emptiness as she stands over the lifeless body.
''Do you have any more men to gift me to, Baron Vladimir? The night is still young.''
Her voice has changed. It holds a certain hiss now, a rasp that wasn't present before; it has matured and bloomed into half an octave deeper tone. It bites through the noise easily, cutting sharply.
The Baron laughs. His eyes gleam with amusement as he gestures towards the door. "Plenty more where that came from, my dear, but it's enough for today. Here,'' he throws something in her, a smirk ghosting on his lips. ''You've earned it.''
YN catches it and inspects the object in her hand. A small, golden broche catches the light, glinting in the dimly lit room. A head of the Bighorn ram stares back at her, the symbol of House Harkonnen. The taste of victory mingled with the metallic tang, leaving a bittersweet sensation in her mouth. Joy courses her veins—she isn't afraid. Finally, she is not afraid. Finally, she can look at her blood-stained hands without humiliation. Is it her fault she was born a better knife than a person?
Bighorn sheep are not a primary food source in most areas. However, when a lion does kill a sheep, they typically will continue to do so over and over again, until the herd is depleted.
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irenadel · 2 months
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And if the devil… 10/10
Aemond Targaryen X Maid!Reader TW: For the aftermath of DV Thank you to @barbieaemond for letting me use her beautiful gifs to make this lovely fic banner. As promised am tagging @prettyduckling22
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9
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It is raining heavily when the queen finds you. The lantern she holds aloft barely lets her and her father see you and they dare not come any closer. Her son’s dragon is wide awake, making a dreadful rumbling sound somewhere deep in her gullet. There is a soft, hazy glow all along the beast’s underbelly, like dying embers, like a fire you make the mistake of considering dead.
Alicent feels like her entire body has been turned to lead, soft and infinitely heavy. She hears her father hold his breath and knows, at least, she is not alone in her terror.
He does not leave her. He holds her shoulders steady and Alicent is grateful for that.
“Aemond…”
When Vhagar picks her head from the ground, moves it like Alicent imagines avalanches must move, she is still making that wrathful, rumbling sound. The ground shakes with it. Her legs feel like they will not carry her weight and she wants to weep, like a child, when the dragon opens her mouth to breathe hot and humid and carrion-like upon her.
She wonders if this was the last thing her son saw with both eyes, before that terrible night where it had all begun to go wrong.
“Try again,” her father whispers in her ear. Always try again. Never a moment’s rest.
“Aemond please,” she croaks out, the feeble light of her lantern trembling in the wind. “I’ll be quick.”
The dragon makes another noise and Alicent finds it to be the most awful of all, for she feels it, to the bottom of her belly, a heavy, nauseous weight, a near human moan of pain. When Vhagar cocks her massive head to better look at her, Alicent nearly cries in fear until she sees those eyes. Always they had seemed beady and lizard-like to her, predatory and unknowable, but now they just seem miserably tired.
For a moment she feels ashamed.
I trusted you with him, the ancient, watery eyes of the dragon Vhagar seem to say to her. I trusted you with him and always you have failed me. First the eye and now this…
She breathes the words between near-clenched teeth and it is a wonder to her that the dragon seems to understand as she turns from her and to her father behind her. She advances without him, without even looking back at him, unable to explain the price of going under the great dragon Vhagar’s wings to him.
He would not have paid it anyway. He has never paid it for her.
When she finds you and her son laying against the wall of stinking, warm scales she almost pays it again. She covers her mouth and traps the words behind her fingers. 
I’m sorry, she wants to repeat, but finds she cannot. Not when confronted with her son’s bloodied face years ago, not now that he doesn’t look at her, you in his arms, wrapped in his green cloak, kept warm by dragonfire, dry by one leathery wing held close to the dragon’s body. She barely recognizes you in the gloom under Vhagar’s shadow. Ugly, scrawny thing that you had been. Remarkable only for your strange coloring and the princess’s favor. You had made Helaena happy and thus the queen had tolerated your ill manners. You had been smart and obedient and made yourself scarce when you had become a problem and Alicent had been grateful for the discretion if for nothing else.
Now she feels ill looking at the blood upon your dress. She cannot tell much else with her single lantern’s light and she almost doesn’t dare whisper it: “Is she alive?”
Aemond’s hand stops, halfway through caressing your short, matted hair. There’s dried blood all over one side of your face, your temple and cheek having already swollen black and blue. Your eyes are closed, your hand holding onto the prince’s neck is swollen too, white-knuckled and clenched.
He still does not look at her.
“You can leave now,” he answers and Alicent does not know his voice in that moment. Wants to shake some sense into him as she has done to his brother so many times. A man’s voice, with a petulant boy’s demand.
“She needs a maester, Aemond,” she tries again, not even knowing if it would not just be wiser to let this all die down. Let things take their natural course and help her son mourn, later, once the danger is over.
Aemond is speaking to you, low and gentle, in a soft, kind tone Alicent hasn’t heard from him since he had both eyes. Some of it must be High Valyrian, the rest Alicent cannot recognize. There is a cadence to it, like music. Through it, she hears Vhagar howl again, sees the pebbles on the floor jump with the monstrous vibration of it all and knows she cannot.
Who knows what would be left of her boy if she lets him lose one more thing?
“I’ll bring the maester here,” she capitulates, kneeling down besides the two of you, just to get a better look at you. A fever, she feels when she dares put her hand on your ruined cheek. But you breathe at least. When she gets up to leave, she feels the tug of her son’s hand on her wrist, terrifyingly strong and uncaring, but is glad that he should at least look at her now.
“It was a lost babe,” he says, his voice that of a man, she realizes now, because all emotion is gone from it. Alicent’s heart turns to ice. “A beating and a punch to the gut.”
She had not fled Vhagar when the hoary old thing had turned to her, but she flees her son now. You and her son.
Things have a price, the septons had said sometimes, when she was young and naughty and free. She thinks of Aemma Arryn and her own four living children. She thinks of her daughter, white-faced and grim in spite of the healthy, beautiful babe she had borne. When she ignores her father’s imprecations, when she drags a young and discrete maester to the seaside cliff where Vhagar nests, when together they try to pry you from Prince Aemond’s arms and succeed only in getting him to carry you gently, ever so gently, back to the Red Keep, she thinks of the price of things.
An apology she will never speak to her child but only to his dragon.
A girl’s life. A boy’s soul.
She is done letting her son pay the price and she tells her father as much. He can handle the gossip and the angry lords. It matters little. If he cannot, then perhaps her son’s dragon will.
The prince waits.
He watches a young, redhead maester unstick the clothes off your body and sponge the blood off your skin. Grand Maester Mellos is too important to bother with you.
He listens and seethes. His mother behind him, eyes moist, looking to him though he cannot answer them.
The young maester tells you the blows to the head are the most worrisome. That and your coming cold. He does not use the word babe when he says there should be no lasting damage, it was an early pregnancy. He gives you willow bark tea for the pain and makes you sweat out the rest of your fever. Rest and food should put you to rights, he says to you. He speaks only to you, firm but gentle, not to the prince standing besides your bed, sword-straight and impassive. He is too cautious and well-mannered to let more than pursed-lips betray his anger at whatever royal mistreatment has befallen you. He has no qualms in telling you to call him if you were to have need of moontea, even with the queen and prince balefully looming over him and his patient. Aemond almost likes him.
The queen tries once to suggest moving you out of the prince’s quarters. She does not try again.
The prince waits.
He will allow no servants to tend to you, no one but the queen and maester. When necessary, he will change the linens on his bed himself while you sleep, the way you had taught him to do with his own royal father. It frightens him, how deep your slumber is.
The prince sleeps as close to you as he dares, curled up like a dog at the foot of his own bed. He crawls in it when you are asleep, unwilling to give you the chance to chase him away, soaking up your lingering warmth, too ashamed to ask for it, too desperate to forgo it entirely. He almost thinks he need not bother.
Because the prince waits and still you will not speak.
Your face has gone from black to green to a sickly yellow. You sit in a prince’s bed. You eat the bread he gives you and drink the stew he spoons into your mouth. Sip the warm tea he brings you while you stare at the sheets and say nothing.
Aemond is too miserably aware of how low he is willing to stoop for your voice to attempt speaking to you himself. He has considered it all. Shaking it out of you, with a shout and a curse. Dragging his brother to this room and killing him for you, for himself. Bringing his sister here. Her children. Taking you in his arms again and taking you to Vhagar, flying across the sea, to anywhere that will make you speak again… smile again…
You are slipping from his hands, as far away as you were during those first few days when he would skulk outside closed doors and steal away snippets of your voice, low and husky, singing foreign nonsense to his niece and nephew.
But he is too tired now to summon the outrage he used to feel, at you owning comfort he could not reach.
So the prince waits… until he can wait no more.
“Please,” he says to you, as you sit and stare. “Please…”
You still say nothing. But you do look at him. You reach for his hand and he lets you have it, for as many hours as you need it, even as it grows numb in your grasp. You hold its warmth to your belly, as if the blood of the dragon could thaw the cold residing in there now.
He looks at your glassy eyes, your white-knuckled hand and his own on your belly and he knows what he must do. He should have done it long ago, the first time he had ever seen the blood on your split lip, the bruises on your pale skin. He should have known better than to let himself be distracted by the beauty they revealed to him. He kisses your forehead before he does, trying not to tremble at the brief taste of your skin. He is a man starving, with hunger’s implacable ruthlessness.
When he returns, he drops your cousin’s severed hand upon your lap. The hand that took a prince’s son from him. Prince Aemond One-Eye himself, a bruise of his own on his face, hair wild, eyepatch and dignity forgotten. What he will never forget again is the sound a man makes when Valyrian steel cuts through his flesh and bone.
You do not understand. For a moment you are so stunned and angry it knocks the numbness right out of your lungs. You look at your prince, watch him fall to his knees, lay his head on your lap, besides your flesh and blood, and almost forget to make sense of the words when they come out of him. Westerosi is only your second tongue after all.
“I would have you sing again,” he says with the hoarse rawness of a man who has just discovered all his cruelty to be bravado. “I would have you laugh again.”
And it is awful, to think Aemond would not know that there is no blood that could buy back your soul. Awful but not surprising, that he should not know pain and sorrow could only beget more of themselves. You had known this of him, the first time you had ever seen a sapphire hiding pain. You try not to think of Angus, still a boy, still as much a boy as Prince Aemond himself. You try not to think of what a hand means to a working man and not to a prince. You try not to think of the bridges he has burnt or the ties he has severed for you forever more, when he severed tendon and marrow.
Because if you start thinking of it, you will find yourself fiercely glad that he did.
You will find within your breast a cry of vicious triumph, that sounds to your mind like a Dothraki screamer. Nothing that could ever bring you comfort. Nothing that could ever pay for the death of your dreams, or your hopes, or your love for a boy who had been your boy until he wasn’t.
Nothing that would help.
But still, Aemond had done it for you. Useless, the mother you had barely known had called it in the far reaches of your memory, when men beat their breasts and swear death to you.
Useless perhaps, but he had done it for you.
He lets out a sob when your hand runs through his hair.
“You have no coin,” you say to him and he near cries in relief at the sound of your voice. “To buy back my joy. There is no joy left for me in the world. I have nothing.”
You’ve taken it all from me, you do not say. With black steel and my kinsman’s blood. No hope now, to go back home.
Good.
You think of getting up and not looking back. You think of sailing the poison water and finding your way back to the land of your father, to endless grass and sun-baked earth. You see life unfurling before you, empty and safe. A man maybe. A strong rider who would give you strong children instead of moontea and grief. Small, boring children that do not eat your insides with fangs and claws and fire.
Aemond burrows his face into your lap and crushes your borrowed shift and sheets in his bloodied hands.
You know you cannot. You have no home left but him.
“You’ve nothing I want, Aemond One-Eye. Nothing to pay me with but one thing.”
You see him whip his head off the bed to look at you, the nightmares and dread written clearly on a face too young and beautiful to bear them, warring now with desperate hope. You take this face into your hands, this face you have cherished and cursed, and hold it close to yours, grip tight enough to keep your hands from shaking.
“You,” you breathe and he reaches back for you, hands flying to your neck and gripping you as close as you grip him, choking back a cry of savage joy. “You are the only thing I will ever want again. The only coin I will take. I have nothing but you, nothing. So you will pay me with your life. Swear to me… swear you’ll live forever.”
Easy promise for a king’s son, you think. Easy to think you would go first, of toil or hunger or sorrow. As long as he lived it would be alright.
“I swear,” he answers as he lets you taste the tears off his lips. “Forever.”
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I almost cannot grasp I am done with this. It's been consuming my life for the last couple of months. I've been virtually possessed by the idea and I am just glad I was able to surf the wave until I could finish it. Extra chapter and all. I think I've got a couple more Aemond porn one-shots in me that I've started and will probably try to finish. Some Helaemond X Reader and some Aegond X Reader if anyone wants to hear a little bit more of this verse... or at least the shoddy AU I have to conjure to get the pretty Targaryen people to fuck without killing each other. Thank you so much to everyone who commented and left likes. ...not that I will ever admit to obsessively refreshing AO3 and tumblr for likes but yeah... You guys are the best T_T thank you
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cordeliawhohung · 16 days
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simon riley x reader | drabble | fluff | artists
written as a non-canon addition to in limbo but can be read by itself
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If it wasn’t for the porch light, the thick umbra of the new moon would have swallowed you whole. 
The crisp night air bites at the back of your neck with icy teeth. It was a welcomed feeling when you had first exited the sweltering oven that Sapori grew into during service. Something that licked away the thin beads of sweat that clings at the base of your skull. Now, it’s incessant. Its jaw clenches until it digs its canines deep enough to break skin, and your fingers tremble too much for you to properly sort through the keys on your chain to escape it. 
Snowy fur brushes against your knuckles as your arctic fox keychain dances with your stiff movements. The sensation coaxes a smile to your lips as glittery blue eyes catch the soft illumination of the bulb above you. Soft like a kiss. Gentle like a lover. 
Eventually, you find the correct key. It flashes beneath the light as you gently slide it into the lock. Freshly oiled, the door hardly makes a sound as you swing it open and embrace the warmth swirling around you to welcome you home. Well, almost home. Your name isn’t on the mortgage, but your clothes linger on the floor, and you know just how far to turn the knobs in the shower to get the water temperature just how you like it. 
You shut and lock the door behind you as your shoes slip off your feet with an unceremonious thud. Amber light seeps into the entryway, and the quiet murmur of the late time news beckons you closer. You follow its call with a heavy body. Every tendon is tightly wound within your body. Shrinking until you curl inward on yourself like a decaying leaf wasting away in the bored sunlight. 
Simon is sleeping on the couch. Swathed in warm light, his hair illuminates as if it’s captured the essence of the sun. He’s faced away from you, head propped up on the arm rest closest while his feet rest on the other. You tread lightly on the pads of your toes, curiosity piqued as you close in on him like a skittish cat sniffing out a good meal. A scavenger ready to feast on just the faintest scent of carrion. 
His arms are crossed over his chest, flattening and widening his biceps to fill out the width of his sleeves. You gawk, eyes glued to the ink that paints his skin as his chest quietly rises and falls with his breaths. Dreams — or perhaps it’s your presence? — forces his eyelids to flutter, and you’re drawn to his face. Thick scars. Some thin. Silvery and light, or rough and red. You’ve never seen his face like this; upside down. You soak in the view. The texture of his skin. The bump of his nose and the… 
… curve? 
You’ve never noticed it before, but there’s a slight sway to his nose where the tip isn’t exactly in line with the bridge. It deviates from its intended path, going right instead of straight (or… technically it’s his left). Curious fingers extend, tips gently grazing against his forehead before traveling along his nose. Butterflies flutter in your stomach as you paint him with your touch. You feel and savor every bump; every angle. 
“You were supposed to call.” 
His lips part and dance without warning, and it has your hand retracting from him as if he tried to nip at you. Squeaking, your fingers lock over your mouth as if you can keep the temporary fear bottled up inside of you, but it still rips through your throat. Smirking, his eyes flutter open to soak in your surprise for himself. His lashes are thick enough that they nearly obscure his irises, but you’d recognize the color of home anywhere. The butterflies that were swirling in your stomach a moment before now lay in the unforgiving acid with shredded wings. 
“I didn’t realize you were awake,” you divert. 
“Am now,” he hums. 
Grunting, Simon sits up properly. Thick fingers dig into the back of his neck as he reaches for his phone. The screen flickers to life, proudly displaying 2:03 AM and a lack of messages from you. He turns to you, shaking his phone like he’s shaming a cat for scratching furniture. 
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asks. “Better not’ve walked ‘ere. Don’t want you doin’ that this late.” 
“You know I’m too chicken for that,” you giggle. “Bee gave me a ride. 
Once again he hums. The grasp of sleep still clings to him in the form of heavy eyes and lethargic movements, but his limbs act as if they’re full of helium. Airy and floating, he places his phone on the coffee table before pushing himself to his feet. For a man half awake, he moves fast. Arms snaking around your head, he pulls you close, nearly smothering you in his embrace. He’s warm enough to melt the frost still clinging to your clothes; you can feel the way it thaws and drips on the floor at your feet. 
“Still shoulda called me,” he reiterates. His words rattle your skull as his lips press against your forehead. Whatever ice still left on your body sublimates within a second. 
“Worried about me?” you tease. 
“Always.” 
Arms still wrapped around you, he begins to walk. Your legs stumble backwards as you giggle and chastise him, demanding he unhand you so you can walk properly. He refuses to relent. Just pushes you along with him like he’s herding you; corralling you in until you’re right where he wants you. 
Right where you belong. 
Simon falls back asleep the moment his head hits the pillow. Greedy man, you think to yourself. Sapping all your drowsiness and using it for himself. He’s snoring. Light and quiet enough that it wouldn’t keep you awake if you were tired. Something that fills the air with white noise. Mellow shadows softly veil over his body, but you can still make out the features that adorn his face. 
Wandering fingers eventually make their way back home, and you are once again tracing his nose. Every bump, curve, angle; it’s all memorized. Ingrained in your being just like the road back home. You anticipate the change. The turns. Simon is your childhood house. You know every crack in the ceiling and the coziest spots to perch. His snoring stops abruptly with a snort. Each inhale and exhale is nothing but a gentle wind against the palm of your hand. 
He nuzzles into your touch like a dog begging for more and it isn’t long before he’s cradling your head into the side of his chest. You’ve been tracing his features — painting him until every inch of him is loved — and now he returns the favor with music. It’s all thick drum and bass against the shell of your ear while the quiet melody of his lungs weaves between the beats. The ringing in your ears cease — drowned out by devotion and life — and your achy mind quells. 
In the morning it is not the warmth of the sun that wakes you. It is the placid caress of weathered fingertips against your knuckles. Roused from your sleep, you do not stir. Instead, you stay still; the perfect canvas to be adorned with art. Each other’s muses, each other’s masterpieces, you’ll wear his love until the paint he brushes you with dries and cracks.
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itsokbbygrl · 22 days
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If The Wind Turns
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moodboard by the incredibly talented Freya @almostfoxglove
🪽 Fallen Angel!Joel Miller x Fem Reader
🪽 Rating: T, there’s some language, no other warnings apply
🪽 Summary: You have me floatin' like a feather on the sea while you're as heavy as the world that you hold your hands beneath. Once I had wondered what was holdin' up the ground, but I can see that all along, love, it was you all the way down. Leave it now, I am sky bound. If you need to, darling, lean your weight to me. We’ll float away, but if we fall, I only pray, don’t fall away from me.
🪽AN: Freya made this moodboard weeks ago and I wasn’t able to stop thinking about it and Icarian (Carrion) by Hozier. The brainrot was too much and eventually this got written. It’s just a Drabble really, hardly anything to shake a fist at, but my dear friends @luxurychristmaspudding and @almostfoxglove gave really positive feedback so I decided to share it. It’s not edited, mistakes are my own, etc etc etc.
☁️•🪽•🪽•🪽•🪽•☀️•☀️•☀️•🪽•🪽•🪽•🪽•☁️
“Darlin’ you don’t understand,” he pleads. “You shouldn’t be attaching yourself to all this. You should—”
“Joel,” you cut him off succinctly, drawing his gaze back to your own. You use his momentary pause to step into his space, eyes confidently locked on his. His head tips down as you stand toe to toe. You lift your fingers to his chin, guiding him until he’s once again your equal. You hold him there. Your hands frame his cheeks, his scratchy beard lightly tickling your palms, thumbs stroking softly over his cheekbones. You feel him melt, if only a little, in the only way he’ll let himself have vulnerability—in microdoses.
“You know the myth about how the world is held up on the back of a turtle,” you start.
Joel huffs a half snort and the left corner of his mouth quirks up the smallest bit. You might not even catch it if you weren’t so attuned to every minute contraction and release of every sinewy strand of muscle that makes this being in front of you. But you were, and so you see, and you know he knows, and you’re hoping he’ll humor you. “Heard a thing or two about it, yeah.” And your heart nearly ruptures forth from its cradle in your chest.
“So this myth is recursive in a bunch of different cultures right? And it varies slightly. But my favorite is the problem of infinite regress, turtles all the way down,” you continue. “And that got me thinking about flying, leaving the world and seeing once and for all the turtles and their infinity, and that got me thinking about Icarus and Deadalus,” you lock onto his gaze, eyes true as they’ve ever been, wanting him to hear you as you say, “about how painful it must’ve been for a father to watch his son fall like that. And for the son—to have no recourse, no reconciliation, to simply be gone, forever, over one misstep.” It’s gone so quiet you wonder if his god has stopped time to listen. You hope he has. You have some choice words for him.
“Joel,” you soften your tone, “there is nothing wrong with you. You made a mistake. Isn’t it even written in the holy book or whatever that no being but god himself is perfect anyway? How could you be held to that standard?” You’re imploring him to believe you, branding it into his flesh with warm caresses of your thumbs over his cheekbones, under his eyes, over his brow. You lean your forehead to his and stay there, simply holding him and breathing in his calming scent.
Your next words are soft and unpracticed, “I’ve never been forcefully exiled from my home by a man who professed to be my father, I won’t ever know exactly the pain you feel. But Joel, I know the weight of shame that you carry and I’m asking you to let me help you carry it.”
He shudders a breath, just a small trembling thing, and then his lips are on yours, and this time, it’s you who melts, who falls into the gravity of him. You’ve never felt such a freedom or such a tethering. Love, you find, is full of contradictions. You swim in the ocean of his mouth, crest the wave of his tongue with your own. Push and pull and crash, again and again and again.
“For the record,” you get out from beneath the current you’ve created, “if you asked me,” you leave a gentle, lingering kiss to the corner of his jaw, “in my Icarian fall from grace,” a kiss to his chin, “I have a sneaking suspicion I’d find you there, down and down, forever, holding up the ground I used to walk on.” Joel’s jaw ticks, his eyes glassy and deep, and you pray to whatever god might be listening that you never forget this moment. “It was always you, it always will be you. Joel, whatever you’ve done, you’re not irredeemable, and I’ll spend the rest of my godforsaken life showing you that, I fucking mean it.”
He lets your words float on the air. Then he sighs. “Ok then,” he relents. Joel never understood holy wars until he met you. Now he wouldn’t hesitate to battle against all of the angels above and demons below if it meant protecting you. Maybe that would be enough to save his soul—laying down what’s left of his earthly life in defense of the closest thing to true divinity he’s ever known.
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to leave the blood stay in the veins
monster!könig x f!rcursed!reader (no use of 'y/n') 6.6k words NSFW!
DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT‼️CW: extremely NSFW, descriptions of gore, implied consumption of human flesh by a non-human monster, mention of necrotic curse, monsterfucking, vaginal sex, unprotected sex, knotting (no omegaverse), outdoor sex, ambiguous ending, pre-established relationship, 0% proofread, könig and reader are both fucking unhinged.
Day 01 of the Haunted Hoedown Challenge by @/inklore
taboo au (monsterfucking) + "i'll be your dirty little secret, if that's what you're into." + oh no i'm dating the town serial killer
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There is a beast in the woods, and it leaves so little meat on the bone that not even carrion birds find value in the corpses it leaves behind.
It’s a strange town in the foothills of the Austrian Alps, full of little sicknesses hiding in the corners, and you learned them well when you moved here. No one goes past the treeline at night. Hardly anyone is outside of home if they can help it. Tourists are the beast’s fodder.
Your boyfriend thinks it’s funny. 
König, under his ever-present hood–a not altogether uncommon sight in your town, people come here when they have something to hide, something they are uncomfortable with or find hideous in themselves, and he has given an unimaginable amount for you out of love–laughs, sharp in the tooth.
“Anyone dumb enough to head into the trees is dumb enough to die,” he teases, but there is an arrogance and a contempt swimming deep in his bloodshot blue eyes. 
“That’s coldblooded, but not wrong,” you tell him, from behind your own mask. Plain thing, blank in expression, modeled from the one from Eyes Without A Face. It covers the ravages of a curse, numb necrosis slowly spreading up your face through the years. “I still want you to get me a gun.”
“What’s a gun going to do against a thing like that?” he asks, tilting his head, the hood bagging off the curled horns that start at his temples and sweep back over his ears. “Something like that, you need silver. I’ll get you a knife. Big one. Nice and fucking sharp, Schatzi.”
The knife isn’t a comfort when the beast begins to hunt in town. It stalks from house to house, preying on people in their beds, their living rooms, their bathtubs–there is no rhyme or reason, not a whit of discernable pattern. 
Only teeth-gouged bones and viscera ground into wall, tile, and carpet alike. Your neighbor falls victim, and you watch the police from your window, flinching when a veteran officer stumbles out into the fall-frosted grass to vomit, sobbing and pulling his hair.
“It got Emil,” you say, still watching through your sheer curtains. 
König nearly cackles from your bed, lounging as he visits. “Good. Emil was a piece of shit. Depperte Fut.”
You glance at him from the corner of your eye, over your shoulder, before returning back to the circus in the yard next door. “‘Stupid cunt’ is a pretty strong insult. He was an asshole, but I don’t think he deserved to die like that,” you mumble.
“You don’t know all that much about your neighbors, Schatzi.”
You begin to rock side-to-side on your hips, the enormous silver blade König gifted you turning over and over in your hands, the point digging lightly into your palm. 
It’s insane, the way you begin to tell yourself that you’ve seen König’s face nearly everyday for the last two years—you can see it right now. He lies on your bed, pointed teeth gleaming under his split philtrum in the soft yellow light of the bedside lamp and the red-blue flash of the cruisers. You know there is a man under the hood, however odd and satyr-seeming.
And yet. And yet.
The blade digs a little too deep, drawing a curse-blackened bead of blood. König’s eyes burn into the back of your neck, and you can only guess his horizontal pupils dilate into black holes. 
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Just quit your job. I’ll take care of you.
It’s a simple enough promise, and one you know König will keep, but not one you’re willing to make. You have few shreds of independence, hard-bought through years of fighting back against misfortunes and setbacks, and, no matter the depths with which you love him, you’re not willing to trade your shit wage on faith for love of a man. It doesn’t matter how helplessly besotted he is. 
It’s this molar-cracking grit that delivers you right to the beast. Because you were forced to pick up an extra half shift at the hotel to fold towels behind the front desk, because you needed the money, because you wanted to pay back your beautiful, bloodthirsty boyfriend for the ridiculous blade he begat you. 
The god forsaken thing lumbers down a deserted street, blocks from your little rental, and something fucking horrendous seizes you. It’s enormous, walking on cloven hooves and back-bent legs. Its arms are too fucking long, clawed, jagged. And worst is the skull, bleached white and glowing like a beacon in the dark, an enormous rack of brutally sharp horns dripping trinkets of bone and gold that glints in the street lamp it approaches. 
A horrible fact hits you. It’s not lumbering, it’s wandering. Putting a massive, craggy hand on fences and peering into houses, taking its time, evaluating. You swear you can almost hear it humming. 
You don’t know when your hand found the handle of the silver blade strapped to your belt under your coat, but the leather on the grip bites your palm with the force of your grip, a nauseous, cold sweat terror tearing apart your ability to think. 
It’s a primal fear, one that makes you want to protect your soft, vulnerable neck, even if the blood that warms it runs venomous. 
It’s a bad choice, but there are no good ones. When the beast lifts its head and scents the air, skull snapping your direction and shaking its grisly trophies, you run. You snap the huge blade off your hip and drop into a dead sprint, cutting between yards, trying to escape the horrendous bellow that reverberates through the bony chambers of the monster’s skull.
Choosing to run instead of freezing maybe bought you a few extra minutes before death decided it was time to seize your pulse in reclamation, and it hurts. The physical exertion it takes to bomb through the last stretches of suburbia before the forest closes in feels like you are breaking every bit of your body by forced choice, listening to that awful fucking thing chase after you. 
Your blade makes a slicing sound cutting through the air at your side, the monster’s hooves pound the dirt as it digs in and chases after you, but, good god, it doesn’t sound like it’s even trying.
You don’t dare look back, pushing your body past agony, your lungs shredding in your chest. You’ve never moved this fast, you’ve never run this hard for this long. Your body is TV static—hissing, popping, distant—and, insanely, the urge to cry drills into your eye sockets.
You’re going to die. You’re going to die. You’re going to fucking die, stupidly and dumbly and pointlessly, because you wanted to pay your boyfriend a stupid sum of fucking money, for a stupid fucking knife that he bought you on a stupid fucking joke. 
Two meters from the second worst decision of your life, the monster snaps out, rough hand between your shoulder blades, crashing you into the goddamned dirt. Your eyebrow splits on a tree root, your eyes roll in the back of your head, your hand stays manically tight on the blade, slicing your other arm. 
“Schaaaatzi,” the miserable fucking thing hisses, pressing that same hand between your shoulder blades, pinning you into the freezing dirt. 
Oh, god, no, it has König’s voice. It’s—it’s not him, but it has his voice, thin and washed out as low-hung fog, but you would know that voice. In hell, in high water, in the dirt with a massive, bark-rough hand grinding your skin raw through your coat—you - know - his - voice. 
Furiously, you slash the blade over your head, behind your back, screaming and digging your feet in the dirt. For a brief second, as you hack at the wood of the monster’s hand and wrist, you’re even able to push yourself off the ground by mere inches. The beast growls and shoves you back down twice as hard, knocking the wind out of you, spasming your hand open. The knife drops, and you begin to blindly try digging and dragging yourself away. 
“Stop…hurting…me,” the beast lows, still in your boyfriend’s voice, and you imagine a bathtub full of gnawed bones, a living room with scattered body parts, your kitchen smeared with blood like cave wall art, and you start to scream as loud as your lungs will allow, your mask filling with dirt in your horrendous and futile bid to escape. Bloody murder bellows, filled with rage, wanting to kill and consume and conflagrate.
If König is dead, you will take your pound of flesh. You will either die fighting, or win, and you will hack apart this freak-fuck’s corpse to burn in your woodstove to warm your home. You’ll mount its fucking skull on your front door, so anything else in these woods will know you won’t hesitate to make trophies of them either. 
Bone, warm to the touch, presses against the back of your head. When it breathes, the air is as hot as exhaust, almost scalding your back. “Schatzi,” it bids you slowly once again.
“I’LL KILL YOU!” it rips your throat raw to shriek it, reaching back and almost dislocating your arms to rip at anything you can. Your hands fall on the dressings attached to its horns, you tear off a vertebra, and a gold wedding band, and a bracelet of rave kandi in plastic beads. “IF YOU HURT HIM, I’LL YOU FUCKING KILL YOU!”
The head presses harder, driving your face into the dirt. There is something desperate in the pressure. It spits all at once, grating and wide in a voice you know better than your own, “You pissed off a fucking witch, because you ran out of riddles to tell her, when she was ransoming you to your arshloch grandmother. She never paid. That’s why you were cursed—no one gave a fuck. But I gave her my face for you, to stop it halfway, better than fucking nothing.”
Your rage freezes immediately, your chest heaving under the weight it presses down on you. 
No one knows that. Only König. He’s the only person who would know about his lonely and quiet climb up to the Scottish highlands. Besides you, and the witch, König is the only one who would know why his human face was distorted, malformed, made animalistic. 
“Lee?” you pant, unleashing part of his first name, the only one he ever tolerates. And, fuck, instantly the pressure pulls away, the skull rubbing against your back to soothe it.
“It’s me, Schatzi,” the slow voice promises, nuzzling you. There’s rustling above you that you don’t dare turn to see. “I’m not going to hurt you.” 
A tinkling piece of jewelry lowers in front of your eyes, and you can see that it dangles from an enormous, ligneous finger. You’re being shown a sterling silver charm bracelet. You’re being shown your bracelet, the one you thought you had lost months ago. 
Your hand shoots out, wrapping around the finger, the peeling bark shearing off under your grip. You find instantly that you can pull yourself up on your hip, sitting, caged and protected under the beast’s massive body—under König’s massive body. 
He shifts back onto his digitagrade haunches, holding himself over you, still offering your bracelet. He shudders at your touch on his hand, and you imagine that he may’ve never been handled with kindness in this shape. Which makes a certain amount of sense. Because he fucking kills and eats people.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you snap, staring dead into the hollow sockets of his eyes. He shifts uncomfortably, turning his head. “Why—you have me so fucked up—what have you been thinking—?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, do you have to—”
“Yes, I have to, fucker.” It’s impossible to wrap your head around the magnitude of what a simple secret and a silver bracelet has done to your understanding of the world. A complete unraveling—upheaval, utterly. 
You take the bracelet from his finger, on which it fits like a ring, and push it into your wrist, sitting up on your knees and grabbing him by the underside of his jaw. Though it puts you in his blind spot, staring dead center at the sinus dimples between his eyes, it feels like you have a mote of power over him. 
(If he were asked, he would say the power you hold over him could corrupt, absolutely. He would badly like you to ask someday.)
“Why are you—what are you? Have you always been like this? Or was this new, with the fucking witch? Are—Jesus Christ—why are—the monster isn’t supposed to come into town, why are you in TOWN?” you run off at the mouth, words stalling and crashing and fusing together as your thoughts overwhelm just how quickly you can speak. 
And up from that impossibly deep throat–simultaneously from the center of your brain, and from all around you all at once–crawls König’s pitchy hyena-laugh, edged, always, with cruelty. He butts the jagged end of his nasal cavities into your stomach, catching on the threads of your sweater. 
“Leshy, Schatzi, say it for me.”
Your hands pull his jaw closer, digging the bone into your stomach, wondering if he can feel the pressure of your deep breathing. Oh, fuck, you could crack. This is your König. You start to wonder how many of his perverse buttons you can hit, the part of you that felt shame for your attraction to what the world discarded as ‘ugly’ long ago removed from your emotional bank.
“Leshy,” you say, really leaning into the word, saying it deep in your chest. One of your hands travels the long length to the hinge of his jaw, gripping tight, directing his head to turn so you can meet one of his empty eyes. “Answer my fucking questions.”
The laugh doesn’t come this time. In its place is a near-violent whole-body shudder that wracks through you. 
“Old! Alwaaays been this way,” and even in the strange disconnect of his voice from his physical form, you can tell his arousal is eating away at him in big bites–clipping his speech, broiling his brain with body heat, “can’t remember ever being young, haa-haa. And why do you think I’m hunting in town?”
Another trap, a stupid pop quiz, wanting to test your knowledge of him, or a gotcha! to check your observations and what you had missed.
Your hands get tighter, and you pull his jaw open, marveling at the sharp grooves ground into his teeth, like nightmarish, ivory rook pieces, tall and straight in the dry sockets. His chest begins to heave, his breath fogging into steaming clouds over your hands, and, remarkably, it smells like nothing at all apart from pin needles and snow.
You’d thought you’d smell decaying flesh or rotten blood. The only blood you can smell comes from your own busted brow and sliced arm, crusting black on your skin and in the fabric of your sweater as it coagulates.
“If I was working on a hunter’s instincts, I would say that Schladming has become too good at keeping people out of the forests. Even during daylight hours. It cuts down on prey,” you say, ice cold and clean as a slit throat. Your eyes flick back up to the socket, surrounded by the feeling that those glass-blue eyes of his humanoid form are drilling into you. He’s waiting for you to hit the hook. “But I’m working on your logic.”
“Oh, yeeaah,” he drawls, his hips shifting, and you feel as if he would bite his lips in anticipation now, if he could. 
“Oh, yeeaah,” you echo him, “the logic of a fucking crazy asshole.” He feels like a huge grin, hands on his muscular, bunched, and flexing thighs. That detail is not lost on you. “You’re hunting in town because you’re pissed off. You reached a limit, and you got tired of sitting on your fucking reaction.”
You swear to god he moans a little. Just softly. It could be a breath, but you know him too well to dismiss it out of hand. 
“That’s good, Schatzi. I like that. I like that you figured that out,” he says, definitely panting in rhythm now, his fogging breath giving away the rhythm secondary. “People are looking at you too much. I don’t fucking like it when they look at you too much.”
That’s a sudden thought that had not occurred to you, and you lash yourself silently because it hadn’t. König has always been possessive of you. Jealous. Protective. And he held grudges in ways that could spark blood feuds and successive generations of death.
Like a curse.
It’s a testament to how fucking cracked and perfectly matched the two of you are that you start laughing, stroking his orbital bones in big, pleased pats, kissing the bridge of his nose. 
“Schatzi, please,” he groans, pressing into you insistently. “Promise you won’t tell. Promise me.”
“Why the fuck would I tell?” you laugh, losing track of your faculties, your very sense. What does it matter? What does it all even mean? You’ve found a man that loves you so deeply and truly and twistedly that he slaughters those who desire or deign you. You’ve found, and fallen in love with a man that would sell his face to save as much of yours as he could. “Who the fuck would I tell?”
The slope of his shoulders relaxes, and he moves closer to you, once again shielding you with the massive bulk of his body, warming you in the cold air. Tucked under his chin, you can study the soft suede-like material of his body, how the bark covering his arms gives way to a ruff of dense, double-layered fur around his shoulders and his long, muscular neck. 
The rest of the muscle on him is horrendously hard, flexed like steel cabling under a layer of fat. There is something about this body that reminds you of the shape of the human one so well–long legs, a nipped waist, and flat hips built to strut and rock, all of it buttressing a broad set of shoulders.
You press your face into the ruff, pushing your fingers into it. Dear god, your hand goes deeper and deeper, and it just never seems to stop. His scent is–it’s almost familiar. He’s in there, somewhere–his musk, the metallic tang of blood seemingly sunken into his skin–but there’s so much more to it. Green, and earthy, almost like soil and moss. 
A sound comes from his body, like a house settling. A deep, broad creak. The trophies on his horns rattle together, clinking like dull wind chimes. “More,” he says simply, leaving you to figure it out. Simple enough.
Your hand drops from the ruff, tracing over his convex chest, down to his stomach. Another shudder, and he pulls those big arms around your entire body, a fuller, more protective hug than you’ve ever felt. 
“Schatzi–would you let me…” he breathes, a heaving sigh. 
Another laugh cracks out of you, hysterical, constricted by your mask. Why not? Why shouldn’t you? You’ve always been a woman that loves monsters. You, yourself, are one. You can’t find a reason to halt your hands, nor your body, nor his desire.
In an odd show of tip-to-tail, you push the mask off your face, and kick off your boots, going for your zipper. “Yeah. Yeah, honey, come on. Show me,” you urge him, pawing at his massive waist as you struggle out of your jeans. 
He groans and this obscene trill escapes his body–a low, rattling moan that travels miles through every cell of your body, his legs spreading wider. You laugh in delight and mania, watching rapt as his cock slides out of a sheath you hadn’t even caught sight of, his monstrous body a foreign land you hadn’t traveled yet, but, fuck, do you want to learn the lands well enough to call them home. 
It’s heavy in your hands, a little slick, and, childishly, you almost giggle (holy shit, that is a sound that has never left your mouth in your living memory, and yet, here you are). It’s hot, hotter than you expected, and a vulnerable shade of pale, like a plant slip. Oh, and it’s elegant, almost spiraling. He huffs as you stroke the length of it, pushing your fingertips into his sheath at the base. 
“I don’t think this is gonna fit,” you warn him, and it somehow feels as if you’re challenging yourself with the statement.
He takes it as a challenge for himself, though, and an aspiration to hold for you, “You are going to take all of it. I’m going to make sure.”
His massive hand comes to the back of your waist, finding your fulcrum without needing to search, pulling you off your knees to hold to beneath him. “You naked yet, or still fucking around?” he asks, breathing heavily, and you shove your jeans off the rest of the way. 
“You’re being a little bitch,” you snipe, a dumb swipe at reclaiming dignity after you realize you’re so wet that it slicks your thighs, having darkened the crotch of your freshly abandoned jeans pathetically. 
He throws another coarse laugh, haa-haa, shifting his massive body long, pulling you into place. 
It’s on you, then, to figure out the logistics. Somehow, it just works, even through layers of physical translation. Under your hands, he reads König, loud and clear. 
There’s a brief, flighty moment of terror as you rub the head of his cock between the lips of your cunt, rolling your hips to stimulate your clit against it. It is just fucking enormous, almost half again the size of his human cock. But then you grit your teeth, tipping your weight back so your shoulders rest against the dirt, bleak and unyielding ruthlessness seizing your mind.
You do not back down, you have never done it once in your life, and tonight is no different. 
His head lifts, bottom jaw dropping, and he bays as you push yourself down on his length. The sound crashes into you, rocking your entire body, and the stretch burns, but you buckle down. What are the people in the houses just at the edge of suburbia thinking? Has the fucking abberation that has been slowly killing its way through their number taken to a different form of punishment? Has someone unlucky fallen to its new tastes?
It cuts your mouth into a horrid grin. If they only knew that you were no victim at all, if only they had an inkling of the fact that you are a victor. That you are the hand holding this nightmare’s collar, and he attacks for the sake of you.
Inch by inch, a slow journey, he fills you, pressing completely against your walls, body shaking with the effort it takes not to thrust fully into you. Oh, what destruction that would result in, what a wreckage that would make of your body, what lengths he would go to not ruin you in such a fashion.
“Fuck–fuck–Liebes,” he mutters, just for you, the moment he is as deep in you as he can go, most of his length still outside of what your body can handle, pleading, “I can’t–I. I have to move. Please, meine Liebes.”
“Go. Go-go-go,” you answer back, almost frantic, too full and occupied, needing motion or you might split apart into atoms. The way he answers is instant, undeniable, desperate, rocking into you as if testing waters, going faster as if he finds them warm and welcoming. 
You lose yourselves to it, and your eyes threaten to roll back into your head, gripping onto the elbow of the arm suspending you, blood rushing to your head in an ache from the way you hang off him, forcing you lightheaded. Sap-like blood from where you’d hacked at him in rage drips down your arm, your waist, clinging to your skin in a way that feels permanent. 
He tenses all around you, panting, clouds of steam fogging the air over your head from his pants. Words escape him, leaving nothing but animalistic grunts, the grinding of his dry, exposed teeth as your desperate pussy sucks him deeper and tighter.
You’d taught him as a human to find your g-spot, to destroy your brain with a steady climb, and he doesn’t even need to search now, every movement pressing every inch of his cock into it, and unrelenting onslaught that makes you shake and nearly drool, being fucked like a sacrifice. 
König raps his other fist above your head and pulls out without warning, shaking his head and breathing roughly. 
You imagine brutally grabbing him by the scruff and biting his ear–what kind of punishment would that even be, no worse than a bug bite to him, more likely than anything else–for the loss of his cock. Mostly just an impulsive fantasy, too barbaric and stupid to actually act upon, but you were thoroughly enjoying yourself, and it feels like hell to be split open against him with nothing inside you.
Breathless–and naked, sweating, and trembling in the woods–you start to sit up on your elbows, cunt throbbing. "What is it? Are you okay?" you ask, your love for him–your fear for him–overwhelming even your damnation-worthy starvation. 
König, massive and so dark he's almost indistinguishable from the night apart from his skull, shakes his head again and puts up a clawed hand. Fine, the gesture says, and you’re realizing he’s beyond words now, but trying his best to communicate. Then he curls it into a loose fist and pantomimes masturbating and finishing.
"Christ!" But you’re laughing, tugging at a tuft of fur on his chest, spun out in your giddiness. It’s still him, you’ve already known, but to see it. To find him through this–this utterly new reality. "They teach you that signal in the forces?"
In his hollow sockets, twisting his body to watch you closely, he looks pleased with himself, ducking forward, bracing on his free hand to one side of your head as he nuzzles into your neck and breathes deeply.
He huffs, rough fingers running over your back, claws trailing the parts of your spine he can reach as he holds you, before he taps the side of your thigh with his other hand. At your eye level, he turns his finger in a slow loop. Roll over, maybe? It's worth a shot.
"Okay. Alright," you sigh, relieved. When you try to roll in his palm, he shakes his head and sets you down, pressing down against your body, pushing his arm under your ribs. With his other hand, he gestures a flat line on the ground. You ask, "On my stomach?"
Two knocks against the ground next to your head. Yes.
You stretch out flat over the frost-crisp grass, too hot to even register the chill against your bare skin, and König lowers with you, sliding the arm under you down to your diaphragm. With his knuckles, he taps your outer-thighs until they're drawn back together, and your breathing hitches when you understand what he intends.
With his legs on the outside of yours, he uses his free hand to run his cock up the length of your seam to tease your pussy, but he takes his sweet time with it. Impatient, you slide onto your knees with near-perfect timing, driving your entrance against his head, snarling with indignation when he bows away. "Fucker!"
He rumbles something almost humanoid, between a laugh and a gruff, trilling ‘rrrr’ you recognize as cousin to a sharp, challenging hum he makes when faced with an idiot comment in his human shape.
"Stop teasing me. I can't stand it," you try instead, turning to give him big eyes over your shoulder because you know that it works well on him.
He bends down and barely-barely nips the top of your ear, a startling move that leaves you perfectly inflamed all over again again. Greedy brat, it says to you, so pleased in the fact he is so desperately wanted. 
The feeling of him inside you is extraordinary. He lubricates in this state, but you hardly need it with the nearly absurd way you’re wet, slick down your thighs. You wonder if your cunt is glimmering under the dim moon and streetlamps, because he'd said that to you once. Heilige sheiße, you have the prettiest pussy I’ve ever fucking seen, could just stare at how wet you get for me forever, he'd laughed during one delirious, marathon session of staying sunken between your legs.
He begins to rock his hips, growling quietly and pleased at the wet sounds of your of cunt squelching around him–another sound he enjoys, a marker of pride, how wet can I make my girl get–settling onto his forearm and pressing a little weight against your back. 
He rests his head across your shoulders, burying his snout in your hair, breathing in hard-bought bursts of restraint.
"Yes, honey," you almost seethe, loosening your body, giving up a little of your own iron will to become just a little lost in the feeling of him. You relax your walls in a bid to take more of him, breathing tight, voice pitching up into a plea, "Yes, baby, that's perfect. That's so perfect, keep going. Just like that."
He rocks a little faster, thrusts a little deeper, breathes a little harder. The hand around your waist shifts up to your breast, but isn't dexterous enough to do more than give it an encompassing squeeze. 
With your thighs pressed together, you feel as if your body can't stretch properly to take as much of him as you want (and you want all of him, every burning hot inch, fucking him so well that he cannot disappear into one of his miseries where he will not let you follow, because they all live in his head). 
He ratchets back his speed, tries a new motion with his hips. He rolls instead of thrusting, a more fluid movement, brushing your insides in new ways that leave your swollen clit screaming for attention and your eyes watering. You breathe in ragged pants, fingers digging into the turf over your head, trying not to rip it with the force of your grip by the fistful.
You might cum. You might cum. You want to cum, and you might, and he's so much deeper now, panting hot as fire against your shoulders. You can feel the muscles in his abdomen clench and dance, his horns cutting the air in swipes of agitation above you, and he is so much this way. König: bigger, sometimes bloodier, but always so, so amplified.
"Honey, honey, honey," you whine in a chant under your breath, trying to ground yourself, trying to encourage him. You squeeze your thighs together for the extra stimulation, but you know you’re going to orgasm from him alone, no extra assistance needed. You’re just greedy, you just want it all, but you want him the worst.
When he pulls out this time, you snarl loud and gnash your teeth, digging your dirt-packed nails into his unyielding skin. You were full to the brim and on the wire-edge of climax, and he is so suddenly fucking gone it's almost as abrupt as violence. 
"KÖNIG!" you shout, his callsign cutting from between your teeth like the desire to slit a throat, shattering the quiet around you both, reeling to find him with your burning eyes. 
He collapses onto his side, cock jumping and leaking, and he whines deep in his throat, pulling at you with the flat of his hand. Your thigh, then his hip, your chest, then his–more hand signals, a story-told like a man with a sucking chest wound needing saving. He snakes his arm under you again, whining growing deeper, and you understand.
You roll, throwing your thigh over his hip, tucking tight against his chest. You give yourself one second of feeling cool air against your overheated pussy before you take him in hand and direct him home, and his deep, slick slide into you knocks the air out of your lungs like a punch to the solar plexus. 
You’re only seconds away, and he can't be much farther, driving his head under yours to give you something to rest on that isn't the ground.
You don't utilize his offering, craning your neck as if you'll somehow get a glimpse of your connection from this angle–flat against him from belly to breast, resting your cheek and forehead against his heaving chest. His whine turns into a series of small, strangled howls and gasps as your voice crawls from whimpering to keening.
You’ve known you were going to cum, but you’re still somehow surprised with yourself at how quickly it's raced up, and how overwhelming it feels like it's going to be. You feel like you’re going insane.
His other arm wraps your ribs, too, squeezing you to him like you’re the only thing in the world worth keeping close, and damn him for it. You don't know why, but damn him.
"Cum, baby, cum," you instruct, gasping when you aren't clenching your teeth. You curl close to him, as close as your body will allow, spreading your legs as wide as you can. You drive back down into his thrusts, giving as much of yourself as you can, taking as much of him as you’re able. 
You want it all–everything–every little bit of blood and bone that's built him into a home he offers only to you. "Cum in me. I'm ready, I want you to cum," you demand, finding it truer than true, finding yourself right on the razor-edge.
The command is all it takes. Three hard thrusts, and he's buried in you to the base, punching the wind out of your lungs, and filling you to the point of what feels like impossibility with his spend. It forces you to finish as well, lighting you up like a lightning storm, swallowing him deeper as you cum and cum like you'll never be able to stop, soaking the both of you. 
You gasp a raw-throated howl, tears pricking the corners of your eyes, and you praise him as his cock kicks and kicks, emptying everything he's got to give into you.
A pressure builds inside you, beginning nearly unpleasant, until something just gives and his knot anchoring him to you feels right. 
It feels special and dazzlingly intimate, and you’re boggled, again, with the knowledge you’re the only person in the world that he's ever shown himself to this way. It’s just a thing you know in your marrow, an immutable truth, like the sun setting in the west, or the cruelty of witches without their wants.
You wind down, sweating and panting and filthy in each other's arms, and you rock against him,  holding him inside, clenching around him what little you can. You feel so wonderfully safe, so immaculately powerful, so stupidly, crazily, fantastically in love.
When your combined breathing evens, and the knot between you retreats, you groan when König shifts back into his human form, but only for the resituating you both have to endure. 
The body against yours is familiar again, and you’re dreadfully sleepy, though you want to clean yourself and eat. You crave something raw, something bloody. You hunger the way an animal hungers after a hard fuck. His spend drips out of you now that his cock's returned to normal, and it forms a trail of cooling wet down the crease where your thigh meets your ass.
You feel lovely.
König laughs, rough and spent, tucking hair out of your face and kissing your closed eyelids. "Holy fucking shit, Schatzi," he marvels, looking at you like you are the only god that has ever mattered. 
Your smile cuts sharp, and your fingers find his pulse point, tracing it thoughtfully. “You hungry? I bet you're fucking starved,” is all you say in return, eyes trailing the way his hand finds the charm bracelet newly returned to your wrist, touching it like a token.
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It’s late and dark when you both manage to stumble your way back to your rental. He stays close, needy and soft, his hand on your hip, tugging you into his body when he can, careful of not knocking into the big, silver knife you’d placed back in the scabbard on your belt. 
The hood is back on his head, rolled up to his nose, and his split mouth kisses against your neck and behind your ear, his eyes closed like he endures a waking dream. You, in your own filthied mask again, allow it, craning your neck to give him more room, anchoring him with an arm around his waist in return.
It is late now, and the neighborhood is silent. Again, you wonder what the quiet lives inside must be thinking–whether they think the crimes have increased into a new field of brutality, if they are fearing and wondering what body parts they will find at the treeline come dawn. 
You know they will not leave the safety of their homes to investigate. They would be stupid to do something like that.
“That shower is going to feel so goddamned good,” you mutter, unlocking your door, and he nods against your skin.
“Oh, yeeaah,” he says, and the familiarity of the phrase makes you hum a laugh, shutting your eyes as you push through the threshold. "Get that blood off your skin before it stains. Your poor face, your poor arm. Poor Schatzi."
He splits off from you with a facsimile of a kiss–your masks pressing together at the mouth–and he pinches your ass before he takes off to the kitchen, his stomach growling, not even bothering to take off his boots.
You, however, kick off your shoes, and pull together clean clothes, heading toward the bathroom in the hall, the one with the big shower, in case he decides to join you.
Sleepy and content, you listen to his boots move heavily over the kitchen tile, the sound of the fridge door hissing snickt as he pulls it open, and shoves things around in his search for food. You nearly sway up to the closed door–why is it closed, you barely manage to wonder–your eyelids lead-weighted.
It takes only one thing to make them snap open wide, your back going ramrod straight. A dark smear, curling around the knob, around the edge of the door where it seams to the jamb.
Cold grips your lungs, sending your heart galloping painfully in the cage of your ribs, wondering if it really is copper you smell, or if it is a trick of your mind. The hall is too dark to tell if the swipe on the white door is red or black–if it is blood, if it is König’s or yours. 
There is a presence at your back, and enormous hands on the door on either side of your head, so fast you cannot tell if you were even able to blink before you saw his wide, scarred, and knuckle-broken limbs spreading wide across the wood.
Your hand finds the grip of the knife, looking at the brutal gouges you had hacked into his forearm earlier in the night, and you are thinking faster and harder than you ever have in your life, realizing in a terrible microsecond that you will have to make a decision–that you will have to choose what reality you are willing to live with, or that you are simply mistaken. 
Either way, you are moments from learning.
“Something wrong, Schatzi?” your boyfriend’s familiar voice asks, low and raspy, hot against the nape of your neck.
The laugh in his tone is cruel, and you can’t tell whether it belongs to König, or something pretending to be him.
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repenting
artwork credit: "The Great Hop" by Dillon Samuelson
pairing: Dave York x f!reader
word count: ~ 1.5k words
summary: Dave and you, two utterly scarred people, meet for stress relieving sex only. But damn, it’s hard. 
tags/warnings: explicit, angst, able-bodied reader, no use of y/n, allusions to unprotected p in v, smut (creampie, f!oral) but it’s hidden in between words and metaphors, church symbolism I guess, a whole lot of confession metaphors, DM me if I missed any
a/n: I missed writing for my man Dave and I just want him to feel good. So I tried to give him some comfort. Basically my plea for his innocence, your honor, Dave has done nothing wrong. thanks to @guiltyasdave for sending me hugs and beta'ing <3
dividers: @/saradika-graphics
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Dave is not a good man. He wants to be but somewhere along his way it got dark and he got confused and took a wrong turn. And then another one and another one. And now he is playing the lead role in this play that is his life.
He is tainted, dirty, he stains whatever he touches. He is Midas but what he touches doesn't turn into gold, it starts rotting. Innocence got corrupted by his badness. And so he looks for someone who is not innocent anymore, someone who was already dying so he is not the one to blame this time. And you? You looked for your own darkness in someone else. To be swallowed whole and to not have to feel for one fucking moment and to feel everything at once.
Of course your paths crossed, scavenger and carrion always end up together. But the lines are blurry between you both and neither one of you knew who was who. Not that it matters, not in the slightest.
It was a silent agreement. You meet, release stress and never ask questions or get personal. Two adults with needs. With the hunger for connection and life, but too scared to connect more than your bodies. 
Being open and permeable for feelings other than lust only meant pain in the long run. And both of you’ve had more than your fill. You are overflowing with pain. You do not want to add to that.
You set up meetings. A hotel room or your place, it was all the same. All you needed was an hour to release whatever has built up since the last time you’ve met. 
It was impersonal. A ‘Hello, how are you?’ at best. And every further attempt at small talk got cut off either by you or by him, with a yank of a shirt, with a shove to make the other one stumble onto the bed or against the wall. With a kiss that eats every word out of the other’s mouth and replaces them with grunts and moans. You had a routine: anger, grief, repenting. It was the perfect recipe for people like you: too lonely to stay alone but too afraid to let the mask of numbness fall.  
What you both did was ugly and selfish. Taking what you needed and giving what you didn’t want to carry around with you anymore. It looked like hate sex. It felt like it, too. But the hate you felt wasn’t directed at the other one. It was directed at yourself and the constant feeling of being a failure, a disappointment. You fucked the hate out of your bodies until it left you and got stuck on you instead. It manifested itself in the sticky residue of sweat, slick, spit, semen, sometimes blood. And when you washed the layer of anger and lust off your skins there were still imprints left. Silent witnesses of what you did to each other.
At times you were like animals, all canines and claws, more fighting than fucking. More scratching and biting and bruising than making use of holes and crevices. When you fought for domination it was never about dominating the other one, it was about dominating your own demons that ran a dictatorship in your souls and brains. And when the skin tingled where later the first bruises would bloom in rich scarlet and purple and the scratches started swelling and stinging you licked your wounds.
You licked his, the red ridges on his chest and thighs, those crests that tasted of salt and copper and your fury. And Dave licked yours. Soothing the imprints of his teeth in your softest flesh with his tongue, pressed flat against the underside of your breasts and the flesh between your shoulder blades. He cleaned your skin off the white, salty trails of your angry tears with little licks. Both of your palates were coated in salt, iron, despair but it all tasted better than the contempt for your own existence.
With the tending of each other's wounds comes a softness you both don’t want. Softness from soft touches makes the hard crust soften and crumble. Dave clearly sees the hurt in you, not just on your and his body, but the one behind your eyes whenever you avoid his gaze. He could smell it, the fear of being seen oozed out of your pores, only covered up by the strong stench of stubbornness and faked independence. He wasn’t mad about it, his scent was the same. You both knew, you both feigned ignorance.
You never kiss like lovers. If you kissed and it didn’t leave the taste of a penny on your tongues, you did it wrong. That’s what you’ve told yourselves. 
The soft kisses play pretend and dress up as the more tender bites and sucks and they only show up when you were sure the other one was not paying attention. 
It is a dance, a tango, a push and pull of what is and what could be. If only you were not broken and utterly ruined. It is sad for Dave, seeing you mourning the ability to let yourself be loved. Your heart was shattered into pieces, the biggest one missing since you were a child. You couldn't even remember how it felt to be whole. To feel love without it running through the cracks of your poorly glued together heart. 
If he only could, Dave would give you the missing pieces. His pockets are full of pieces, of sharp edged shards of the lives and people he destroyed. Each life taken becomes a fragment he carries with him. And in the moments he became too careless, too happy, he cut himself with one.
The blood on his hands is his, too. 
‘Can’t break what's already broken,’ you tell him every time. But the sound never makes it past your lips, always getting stuck between your teeth. And so you write it on his skin with your fingers. The letters inscribed with invisible ink made out of sweat and desperation on his back and stomach. By now, after months of meeting him, his body is littered with your messages. 
Be brave. Have your fill. Eat me, chew me, spit me out. Make me numb. Make me feel. I want to be alive. Please. Oh God, please.
It takes Dave a little while before he understands it, but the feeling of lightness in his soul after he leaves you - it doesn’t come from physical exhaustion and orgasms only. You hear his confessions. His silent confessions he licks into you. 
Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away. And he gets on his knees, every time, and looks at the mess he left inside of you, already spilling out because Dave never made a minor mess in his life. 
Dave wants to be good and so he cleans up the mess he made. On his knees, before you, the weight of your thighs heavy on his shoulders and his fingers almost touching while he spreads you open. 
His head ducks before you like a penitent in church as your body silently writhes, knowing what would come.
He takes his time since there is no rush in repenting. Being full of sin is never ending, especially for men like him. So why try to finish a confession when the list of wrongdoings is endless.
Dave speaks silently, mouthing his failures against you, licking his secrets into your cunt and he is amazed by the way she so patiently swallows his sins.
I kill. I am no good. I will hurt you. Forgive me.
He fills you up with his bitter truth, bitter like his cum that trickles out of you. It’s all bitter, salty, freeing. The more he repents, the deeper his tongue pushes his confession inside of you, the tighter you curl your fingers into his hair.
And your cunt takes it all, all the anger and fear and decay Dave carries inside of him. She sucks it in, clenches around his words like she is chewing on them. She does not judge, you do not judge. It is all the same, it all is pain and that is what you know. It doesn’t scare you.
I destroy. I just want to be good. Hold me. I am broken. Forgive me. I hurt.
He feels it in the way your body tenses and your cunt tightens. ‘Dave’ is the only word that tumbles from your tongue, in the same rhythm you rub yourself onto him. Just a few more silent whispers and pleas, he knows the ritual of confessing by heart.
Make me better. Forgive me. Forgive me. Please.
A broken cry, his or yours, probably a shared one. He keeps his mouth open, ready for his absolution. And with you coming, his absolution comes, gushing out of you. Every sin and every word, no matter how bitter and poisonous it was, got turned into something sweet and harmless. He drinks you in, swallowing the innocence you give him.
Forgive me for I have sinned. A tender bite to your inner thigh, a kiss in disguise, a thank you with canines and claws.
‘Forgiven,’ you write onto his scalp, massaging the letters into his skin and hoping they reach his heart this time.
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find my Dave York masterlist here
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