#cw for initial dubcon (comma) pregnancy mention

[eternalstrigoii]

Church Mouse

Borra (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) x Female-Presenting Human Reader

There’s a monster in our wood,

It’ll get you if you’re not good.

Horns of iron and wings of bone,

You are never, ever coming home.

 Your father was the parish priest in the village of Ulstead. He was not a royal minister, and, perhaps, it was because of that lack of diplomacy that you caught him many a time whispering with the townsfolk about the faeries on the other side of the gate. To his congregation, he said little more than how fortunate you were to be separated – how he urged parents to leave their children if they should have to travel on merchant trips, lest the fey folk lure the young ones from their wagons.

You heard your father’s stories before, when you were young. The Folk of the Moors will promise you endless sweets and playtime, and then chew off your legs when you fall asleep. You rolled your eyes at them now – no faerie had ever crossed the bridge into Ulstead. As far as you were concerned, no faerie wanted to cross the bridge into Ulstead, and you grew more and more adamant that they were right. It was a little town, and King John meant well but his wife practiced the same virtues as your father. All the piety, chastity, humility, and moderation was starting to get to you. (And if your only prospects were the same fools you had to remind year after year not to drag their crops from the earth by their stems, well, you were better off leaving for a nunnery.)

The children were gathered in the square not long before nightfall, as you brought your pail of freshly scrubbed laundry back to the parish to hang in the attic (where no one might fall to sin because they spied your bloomers on the line). They clapped hands and sang their nursery rhymes, which you had always presumed involved the terrible witch that cursed the princess whom your prince was destined to marry, and you sighed as you lifted your basket past them.

“There are no such things as monsters,” you stopped to snap at them before you flung the parish door open with your foot and let it fall shut heavily behind you.

Your father jumped at the sound. “Good heavens, child!”

“I’m sorry.” You lifted the basket that you had to hold with two hands. “None of the children would fetch the door.”

He was on his knees at the altar, tending the prayer candles that had been lit throughout the day. You knew he’d stay there for the bulk of the night, as he always did.

As he adjusted them, ensuring that the wax fell as uniformly as possible so that God might hear the poor men and women of Ulstead, he said to you, “Would it be so terrible to spare the young ones a kindness now and then? They are, after all, only children.”

It was not the young ones you worried about. You had half a mind to set your laundry aside and help your father, for he was getting old and frail, and while he was surely falling prey to his own stories, he was no harm to anyone. He was but a worried old man since your mother died, or so you told yourself.

You sighed, and you left him to his wax-tending. There were few flights of stairs from the parish to the attic, but with your full basket, it may as well have been a steady climb up a mountain. You were hot and panting by the time you reached the attic where your clotheslines were strung, and you wasted no time in shutting the hatch-door, dropping the basket to the floor, and hurrying to open the windows by their props on the bottom.

“Fool,” you muttered fondly. The windows hadn’t been washed in some time, and you were sure it was because your meticulous father believed someone would catch wind of his cassock and steal it while it dried.

You shook your head, gathered the pins down at the end, and worked your way through your basket. Every so often, the wind swept through the room and made all the clothes flap and flutter, the sweat that had been so stifling before turned to morning dew on your back. After the third strong ruffle, your second pin fell right out of your hand, and you cursed as you batted one of your dresses aside to reach it.

It had landed just between a pair of bare feet.

You gasped and startled backward.

The figure you had first thought was a man batted your line aside. He was tall and broad, quite unlike many of the men of your village, though what held your attention was not the chiseled quality of his face or the intensity of his blown-glass eyes.

It was the massive pair of wings on his back that ripped your line cleanly out of the wall.

You sat there like a fool, scrambling to move away only when he’d already caught you by the ties of your apron and pulled you up off the floor. You cried out in shock – you felt the points of his talons against your back before it collided with the wall, and the tremor that coursed through you left your hands shaking as they found his chest, smooth and warm like a stone left sitting in the summer sun.

“Please?” Your voice wavered.

He made a sound not unlike an animal’s growl, tilting his head at you.

You did not know what you were pleading for. You were hardly a child, no longer the supposed favored-prey of the Folk of the Moors.

“Please,” you repeated, feeling his talons prick your back. You watched his other hand lift to the shoulder of your apron, toy with the heavy material. How easily his claws pricked into it and it started to tear. You imagined your skin would not give the same kind of resistance.

Your heart was pounding. Fear, and something else, had gone to war inside of you. He may have been no man, but he was beautiful. His hair was long and golden, his wings broad and powerful, and you found yourself staring at them again. “They’re beautiful,” you whispered, and found yourself pinned by your throat for your trouble.

“What do you want with my wings?” he asked, sharply.

“Nothing!” you exclaimed, batting at his hand. “They’re lovely, you oaf!”

He let go of you just as abruptly, with that sound again.

You smacked at his solid arm in indignation, a hot rush of embarrassment flooding your already overheated skin. “You have no right! Speaking to me like that! Manhandling me! Coming into my house--!”

You didn’t realize the mistake you made until he had taken a handful of your apron again, backing you against the old wood once more.

“Is it your father, then?” he asked in a much lower voice, its roughness preserved in such close proximity. “Spreading likes about my people?”

You should have denied him, but the pang of fear you felt manifested as you thought all people must feel it – in the innate desire to protect your own.

“He’s a fool,” you replied in the same tone. “He tells stories to children, make-believe. He means you no harm.”

“Harm is what he causes me.” His body was flush with yours again, and your hands gripped his arms as though you were strong enough to keep him at bay when you could hardly manage three flights of stairs with a full laundry basket. “Harm is what he causes all of my people when he spreads those lies.”

“I’ll tell him to stop,” you whispered.

The smile that crossed his face should have scared you, for it was wild, and by the nature of the people you knew, rather unhinged. “No,” he touched your cheek, pressing the tip of his thumb claw into your skin. “I don’t think you will.”

From what you heard, you expected him to do something like rip your flesh from your bones and eat you alive. But he grasped the collar-hem of your gown and tore, and in one broad stroke of his muscular arm, you found yourself nearly bared before him.

And the only thing that frightened you then was how your breath caught as he palmed your exposed skin.

The fey looked at you the way you imagined all creatures must look at their prey. His eyes were intense, wild, wide as they locked on your face. Your knees buckled as his mouth affixed to your collarbone, and you gasped, grabbing hold of his horns.

You did not push him away. No, not even when his teeth caught your flesh, for his tongue was quick to follow, and the sound that left you had nothing to do with pain.

There were no stories about this. Not in anyone’s books anywhere, as far as you knew.

The fey left a trail of bruises on your skin, from the one that began at your collarbone up the side of your neck. They hurt more, there, and you squirmed against him, but he chuckled and pinned your hips to his. You felt him, through your bloomers and the soft fabric of his pants, and your hands settled at his waist only to move, slowly, upward. Over his side, his back, your arms curling around his shoulders.

His wings beat, snapping the other line from its mount on the wall. Your father’s clothes also tumbled to the floor, and were immediately forgotten.

You turned your head when you felt his breath brush your jaw. Your lips brushed his, and he wasted no time in claiming them. What manner of revenge could this be, you thought, only for the thought to fall by the wayside with the drag of his claw down your thigh. One leg of your bloomers split open, and the hand that did it slipped under you, under your clothes, to boost you against him and settle your hips at his waist.

It was not unpleasant, being trapped against him. Not unpleasant at all. You found yourself kissing back when he tried to pull away, giving him your tongue in as close of an approximation to the way he’d given you his as you could manage without the experience.

You felt him grin, and several claws swept over your opposing thigh. Your bloomers fell away in ribbons, the skin beneath singing with shallow cuts.

You arched toward him with a more enthusiastic sound, your knees hitched against his waist.

“Are you enjoying yourself, church mouse?”

You quite liked that tone he used, his voice like a purr against your lips.

“Yes,” you whispered, though you could hardly understand how his anger would become desire quite like this. Maybe you truly were ye of little faith, considering you couldn’t recall a word spoken by your father that would lead you to believe your fey was dangerous.

He chuckled, and the fabric between you fell away. Your eyes widened, and you gripped his shoulders tightly. You were momentarily afraid, though not for the reasons he must’ve anticipated.

“I’ve never….” You started, and your fey brushed his lips over yours once again.

“I’m counting on that.”

He took you the way you had always been told you were supposed to be taken. Your knees clutched his hips, but the sensation, though strange, was not unpleasant. You gasped, and his movement made you claw lightly at his shoulders, seeking purchase so you might somehow press closer.

“Shh,” he soothed, nuzzling your jaw. “Wouldn’t want your father to hear.”

You clung to the back of his neck, your breath ragged. No, certainly you didn’t, but you were three flights up and the rhythm of his hips never faltered. You dropped your head back against the wall, and your fey claimed your mouth once again.

No, you knew why people stole away to be with them now. No promise of sweets could be this enchanting.

You held his jaw while you kissed.

He held you, but one of his hands roamed your body, the trail of his talons causing chills along your spine. You kissed him as though you might pour yourself into him, and he claimed you against the wall like a man new-married.

You felt a tightening in your lower belly, an urgency too strong to be denied. You worked your hips against his, your, and his, ragged breaths overtaking your senses. You couldn’t pull him close enough. Your thighs clung to him. You had started to beg in whimpers that became full cries, yes, yes, please, please! Oh god, oh god!

You reached your peak together. Your fae spilled inside of you with a sharp, wild groan, and you clung to him, breathing hard, your face pressed into his shoulder.

You told him your name in a breathless whisper, no longer believing – or at least, no longer believing it would be a bad thing – he would use it to steal you away.

He was silent for a moment longer, holding the backs of your thighs against his hips. “Borra,” he replied.

“I’ll tell not a soul,” you promised, just in case anyone could truly harm him just by knowing his name.

“I’m counting on that, church mouse.”

When the moment stretched on, you realized that, perhaps, that was not the plan he’d arrived with. Perhaps the both of you, in your youth, had done more for faerie-human relations than you cared to admit, and the thought pleased you to smiling into his shoulder.

He put you down rather gently, as though he was unused to touching you.

You allowed it, reaching for the wet gown you’d started hanging up. Better that then the tattered one. “Will I see you again?”

He had straightened out the fabric of his trousers, and tilted his head as though he was considering it.

“I would quite like to,” you said.

He nodded. Whether that was an acknowledgement or an agreement, you did not ask. You returned to gathering laundry, and by the time you had picked up several more pieces of your clothes, you heard the flap of wings beyond the windows.

Your father never heard you.

You fixed the lines in silence, and re-hung the wash. You took your bath, and you returned to your life almost as though it had never happened.

But you knew you were in no position to protect them. To protect him from them, though you longed to.

By the time you realized you had not bled, you knew it was only a matter of time before your father, your neighbors, possibly even the virtuous queen, found out what had become of you.

The note you left them was simple: No one stole me away.