#he's just a bird and a villager! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dabisbratz · 8 months

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𝑀𝐸𝑅𝐼𝒩𝒢𝒰𝐸 𝒟𝒪𝐿𝐿 — kento nanami x male!reader

himbo!reader , farmer!au , strangers/friends/lovers , meet - cute , inaccurate farming techniques , lawyer!nanami , slow burn , depictions of injury ( minor burns ) , check - ins , dumbification , vaguely implied age gap (~5 years) , hand kink , inexperienced reader , light feminization , blowjobs , anal , mating press , fingering , hand-holding , praise , degradation , slut - calling , dirty talk , spit / drool , under-negotiated kink , aftercare

w.c; ~ 13.8k

sonny says. . . naaamiiii !!! {cry} {cry} mbaby :c can ybelieve s’is mfirst nami fic ?!?! just tbe clear, the reader’s size or height isn’t explicitly stated, but he’s vaguely hinted toward bein/appearin physical stronger than nanami.

‘ Next stop: Sekichiku ’

When he wakes up, Kento expects sunlight peeking through greenery— warm, yellow rays of light that dance and flicker across his eyelids. Warm, yellow beams that caress his cheek like the knuckles of someone tender, the palms of someone sweeter. It’ll overwhelm him at first, so bright and unapologetic as his eyes adjust and focus, but he’ll quickly crash, pupils constricting as the disturbance dwindles. And, suddenly, the star’s saturation will be comforting. It’ll be like a second. Just slower paced, peaceful. He expects the rustle of leaves, connected to strong branches and even stronger roots that dig into deep, rich soil. He expects to roll over in his temporary bed, breathing gently beneath shade, shielding his eyes from the welcoming invasion and blanketing him in a seamless flow of cool air.

When he wakes, Kento expects to hear the chirping of birds. It’s never quite enough to hear them in Tokyo. The strum of wind as it tickles his nose and pushes him forward. The swaying of grass— the smell is still so freshly imprinted in his brain, as it makes his head swim while crystal drops glide across its surface — a coarse underfoot of greenery that prickles the souls of his feet.

Tranquility by his side, urging him to get out of bed, chirping in an excited voice as it tugs on his wrist. He expects solitude, rolling its tangerine eyes and tapping its foot impatiently, “This is the break you’ve waited twenty-seven years for.”

But, instead, he finds himself clutching his chest, his heart beating with an unfamiliar pace that isn’t so calm. His body feels cold, like he’s been submerged in the deepest part of the ocean, unrelenting and ruthless as wave after wave crashes into his ribcage. The static in his ears grows louder and louder, ready to combust and burst his eardrums. Instead of the rustle of leaves, the cruel hustle and bustle of city life storms forward against his chest, shoving him back and forth. Back and forth, to and fro, against his body as his knuckles turn white and his vision starts to spot. Back and forth, as he comes undone.

It’s been so long, he’s not quite sure just how to unwind.

He starts off slow, swallowing air in desperate heaps until his legs relax, spreading toward the cushion arms of his faux-velvet chair. Then he flexes his fingers, draws them into tight fists and releases the digits until the shaking has stopped. Sips his complimentary white-wine with newfound steadiness, and tries not to choke when the intercoms ring,

‘Now approaching: Sekichiku.’

It’s a quaint little village, your district, where everyone knows everyone and the news is always, no matter where you are, city-wide. Stone-clad pavement and moss decalled windows, there’s a small blanket of achroous fog further north of town square. Yet, despite that, there’s an ever growing city of greenery and agriculture. With a small population and himself being the only passenger to unload at the station, it seems to be a lot busier than he’d originally thought. Street-food stalls and vendors, selling freshly baked goods and syrupy, savory sweets. It’s not like Tokyo, no, there’s no rush. No pushing or shoving, no overcrowded lines, no smells of smoke and burnt coal.

In fact, the air is rather crisp— the further his legs take him, the more apparent. No longer are his lungs breathing in the stench of sickness or body odors, no longer is he pushing past the fortunate, just to shove the unfortunate. And, admittedly, it’s a bit of a culture shock— but it’s not unwelcome. Regardless, Kento keeps his suitcase close, pushes it forward, sidestepping polite smiles and local shop owners.

He basks in it. The genuine nature to it all, the healthy glow of the atmosphere despite the steam, the fog, the chill to the air. He considers this a luxury— the closest to a vacation he’ll get, even if he’s technically ‘on the clock.’ Still— he soaks in the sights of hugging trees, of mossy roads and cobblestone streets. The colorful banners that jump with life, the lanterns and yellow-lighting that illuminates the day— he’s sure at night they’re even more wondrous. And, oh, the smells. Not at all like tokyo— there isn’t an overwhelming mixture of perfumes and colognes, no fast-food chains competing through aromatic smells, no heavy scents of tobacco littering the air. It's crisp, it’s ripe.

He almost takes no offense to the collision against his side— nor the screeching sound of surfaces grinding against each other, nor the loud and abrasive cry of the man bumping into him, accompanied by the crack of an apple’s core against the ground.

“Woah,” Warm breaths pan down the base of his neck, even warmer hands wrapping around his bicep with strength Nanami is sure shouldn’t be normal for a typical, everyday civilian. He involuntarily grunts, a deep sound that rumbles in his throat and earns an eager, yet apologetic chuckle. “You alright? Y’almost went flyin’!”

His brows furrow quizzically at that. First— he’s certain it’s the latter who nearly lost an arm and a leg with his tumble. Second, he hadn’t expected such a youthful, bouncy voice from the very stature shadowing acast him. Not even a bit, it doesn’t match the muscle straining through thermal clothing at all, let alone the sheer square feet of area being taken up by one person. Blocking his vision almost completely, standing straight— at an angle— that blocks a stall for fresh produce and flaky, steaming bread. The goods speak for themselves, crusted over in golden brown mountains and cloud-like, moist cross-sections.

Swallowing, Kento nods, eyeing the poorly drawn sign for fresh bread. Drawn in sharpie, the prices are written in big, bold, red letters. Endearing, almost, the curve and loop of each letter and number— the lines of each to-scale doodle of bread. Nothing like Tokyo, not nearly as artificial, not perfectly clean-cut. Not so cookie-cutter. There’s some personality in it, as juvenile as it may be. And it’s a shame, really, how promising the stand looks. Apples that shine a golden shade of red, bread that’s glazed in a sweet, sticky layer of yellow molasses and savory honey. And though he’d love to indulge, Kento has yet to label himself as the type. “Great, thank you.” Is all he says, pulling his suitcase along the perimeter of the stand.

Some other time, then.

The days are long as they are hard. The sun has yet to fully set, and still, the Earth pulls and pulls to weigh it down onto your shoulders. The sky is painted in hues of orange and purple, strokes of tangerine and lavender roaming past your bird's eye view. Your back pops as you stretch, arms tensing against the woven basket of leftover harvest, shiny red fruits aligned with the horizon and reaching toward the tiny glimpse of departing stars.

Where blossoms grow from tiny seeds, and orchids dance in gentle breeze— beds upon beds of farmland and agriculture drape the outskirts of the farmstead. Though the weather is turning, branches are starting to grow bare and bloom in color, the wind picks up its seasonal chill, and the clouds have begun to dissipate into the sky. . . The well-received proof of your hard work is still something to behold.

“—ome any minute, now,” You’ve heard it all before, your mother gossiping to her farmer-wife friends as she nurses sweet teas and tangerine tiramisu under her calloused, warm hands. You’d been a mere two steps away from where she sits at the open-island kitchen, shoes tipped in the illuminated speckle of celadon clearing just adjacent to the sliding, front, cedarwood door. “Said so, at least. Did you hear. . . ” Windchimes sing in welcome, soft and mellow as the door opens and shuts behind you, socked feet slipping from boots to warm, fuzzy slippers.

“M’back, Mama,” You mumble, half-humming along to the tune of muffled windchimes the further you walk, arms hoisting the overflowing basket up to your chest. A sweet sigh, then pitter-patter of fleece against parquetry, and the discovery of a sweet, cherry-red ladybug walking along your knuckles, leads to the basket securely placed on a free countertop. There’s a quirk of her brow, something of a gentle question— more of a suggestion— not completely committed to keeping two conversations at once. How’d it go?

“No luck sellin’ today,” your voice buds, small and soft as your eyes trail the curves of a particularly large waste of an apple. An evident pout on your lips, then a quiet huff of air.

Farming has been your whole life, really. It’s what you’re best at, good at. Ever since you were young, barely tall enough to push away tall-grass— barely strong enough to pull out weeds, you knew it was yours. Something special, gravel crumbling and breaking beneath heavy, solid boots and rubber tires. The remnants of small, flying rocks, pelting into each other and leaving behind white, gray smoke as your tractor comes to a slow, gradual halt.

“But I met someone new!” That peaks her attention, nothing short of a gasp coming from a pair of lips—identical to your own— and here come the questions. Was he blond? Oh, I knew it! Did he buy anything? Well, why not? Was he tall? Thought so. . . How about handsome? Come on, now. .

“He was . . hmm, pretty.” Is how you’d like to put it, raising a finger to the air in finality. Truth be told you don’t remember much about his appearance— it was more so his demeanor. He’d bumped into you— you think— and yet, there was something so smooth about him. Not even his slicked hair, wavy at the end and curved just right to frame his face and bleed into the bristles of his blond undercut. He’d carried on like it was nothing, still polite, even admired your handiwork on your stall’s banner. A sweet thing of a stranger.

“You’re so easily impressed,” The smile dusting your lips curls into a wee, nasty little frown. That’s just not true. “A good thing, too, you’ll have to like our new neighbor.”

Her voice melting through one ear and out the other like freshly harvested honey has your throat tied into a thick knot, stuck right at the base of your neck and only growing in size. Hands thrumming against the granite countertop, your body leans inward.

“Neighbor?”

“Mm,” She hums, landline trapped between her ear and sweater-clad shoulder. You’re not entirely sure if it’s toward you or her friend, either way, her conversation stays ambiguous. “I heard he’s some fancy lawyer. You think he’s defendin’ the Hasaba girls from last year?”

That’s something to think about. Two little girls who’d been found locked away by some sort of— police officer, was he? Perhaps something more authoritative, and taken into his personal care. You wouldn’t be surprised if it became legalized— you’d only met that man (Suguru Geto, was it?) in passing, but his stature seemed dead-set on protecting those girls.

There’s a muffled gasp on the other line, crackly with static as a finger twirls around the phone’s coiled, mint wire. The rest of the conversation goes unheard, slippered feet carrying you to the large, alcove window that displays just enough equal farmland and neighborhood housing. And, sure enough, as if on cue, it’s not hard to make out the lines and shadows of the ‘ fancy ’ lawyer, his fluid silhouette effortlessly carrying luggage and— what looks to be— a box of books. Documents, perhaps.

“You didn’t— how come you didn’t say nothin’ ?!” Your excitement has you toppling over, limbs every which way as your face presses into the glass window. When you’re stuck in a place where everyone knows everyone, there’s something exhilarating about having a new neighbor. And he knows nothing.

There’s a quiet mumble that roughly translates to: ‘You didn’t ask.’, but it’s filtered out by the sound of your full-footed stomps. You opt to keep your slippers, racing toward the neglected basket, mind completely set. “I’ll be back, Ma!”

The path along your house isn’t dangerous, but it is harsh on bare feet— inured by heavy boots and pick-up trucks.. Still, it goes completely ignored as you carry the heaviest basket of goods you own, anxiety twisting and turning in your stomach— bunny hops into your chest and stomps and stomps and stomps. You’ve carried yourself past the intersection of the cobblestone path, a lot more smooth the closer it gets to the large, usually untouched, rental home. The lights are off— save for the dim, yellow glow of a small porch lamp resting above an unsullied, sleek and wooden rocking-chair. When there’s no one to inhabit the home, it’s always been comforting to look at— but now? .

Cold would be one way to put it. Your feet are cold, your arms are cold, your hands are cold, and you’re stood at his front door— frozen. Scared is another.

Even so, you’ve always been told you’re the ‘bravest boy’ in your whole district. Cry-baby habits and all.

The door opens before you can knock, and all you can register is brown. Brown wallpaper— the beige type, just barely meeting the requirement. Patterned with old, vintage looking floral prints. Brown, sleek wood of a bannister— steps that lead down into the living room, but are visible from the front door. Brown eyes, such a specific shade. When exposed to the light they almost look gray— green?— but as he stands before you, there’s nothing but molten chocolate and burnt honey-candy. A brown leather belt, securing crisp slacks and an equally crisp button up. You expect to see brown loafers, but—

Fuzzy slippers, brown and soft and cute. Little black buttons for eyes, and two floppy, fluffy ears— reminiscent of a bunny.

“Oh. . . Can I help you?” You’ve heard it before, his voice, but it’s even more striking than ever. It’s easy to forget the voice of someone you’d just met, but there’s something so. . distinct about it. He’s got a slight accent, too, something Tokyo-adjacent— you’ve always wanted to visit for longer than the feeble four hours of a busy work-trip.

“Mhm!” Pretty lips spread to their best grin, pulling at your cheeks until the babyfat wells up. “Well, no— um, actually. .” Brown eyes are expectant, but calm and patient as they watch you fumble over your words. Your fingers tremor as the basket is thrusted forward, heat blooming in your cheeks. “These— This is for you!”

“Ah. . .” Pink lips part, cupid’s bow prominent. There’s a beat of silence, then the sound of his front door closing with a slight click— right in your face. For a moment all you can do is stare, eyes boring into the dark, chestnut wood of the rustic front door. Staring until it’s gone blurry, eyes bubbling with fresh, unshed tears. And, nearly spilling over like an overflowing faucet, they gather before you can blink them away— fat and thick and embarrassing.

“Um. . I like your sli—slippers.” Fully aware you’re speaking to an unmoving door, you can’t behind yourself to walk back the moss-decalled path home. It’s not so cold anymore, your bones having rung out in the, metaphorical, hot sun until they’ve dried completely and— now it’s warm. Warmth in your nose, stinging as you sniffle and bite down a hiccup.

“Sorry for the wait,” Mahogany shifts, offset by a deep rumble of a voice, smooth like velvet in comparison to the sharp, slow creak of door hinges, “Here.”

Dam rebuilt almost immediately, your body straightens. Him again, this time his eyes trained on what he holds in his hand. Brown and gold like sweet honey and, by God, it’s the most crisp set of yen you’ve ever held in your life. His fingers dance with fluidity you’ve never seen before, counting through each slip until he’s deemed an amount satisfactory— there’s a slight patch of hair on each of his knuckles, an array of veins that cascade into his forearm. His fingertips look a bit rough, but his nails are glossy and clipped. Even his cuticles are pushed back, just enough to look healthy and natural.

“Oh! I wasn’t trying to—”

“I know it’s rude to tip, so I left the exact change,” You blink. Once, twice— again, lips parted like a fish, fresh out of water. Then he’s hoisting the basket from your trembling hands, eyes downcast. “Next time, don’t give out things you worked for, for free,” Right where his eyes dip, his monolid, there’s a small mole— cute and circular, and had you not been studying the curves of his face you wouldn’t have noticed it. “You should wear a coat, too.” And, like a schoolboy, you can’t help the flurry of butterflies catching flight in your stomach.

“Yes, Sir,” Pearly whites biting at the fleshy, pink insides of your cheek have your lips puckered, pensive and sweet as you clutch the money to your chest. “Sorry about earlier— um, if it’s okay, I could help with your boxes?”

He leans forward, careful enough to keep the respective bubble of space between the two of your bodies, glancing at heavy, book-piled boxes labeled ‘N.K.’ The woven basket creaks under the weight of his chest, but it stays in one place nonetheless. “That?” He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s fine, just mail. Must’ve arrived before I did.”

It’s a bit awkward, really. Anticipation nips at your fingertips— you’ve never really had to work so hard to continue a conversation. You’ve never had to think about it either, if the words were coming out correct, if anyone was comfortable with your presence.

“Oh,” You breathe, subconsciously leaning closer. Perhaps it’s a miracle he hasn’t actually shut the door in your face, and— right. Your hands move to wipe away any streaks from your cheeks, a small sniffle ringing in the air. “Sorry f’I bothered you. I live, um, closest to the windmill. Yknow, just up the path from here. . . ?”

You haven’t known him for long, but you just can’t consider him comparable. Maybe it’s your heart speed-running past any other rational thought, maybe it’s the blooming heat in your chest, maybe it’s the shiver of winter trailing down your spine. You find yourself desperately hanging onto his every breath, only ever beaming when he shakes his head.

“Kento Nanami,” Tense shoulders relax with a deep inhale, the sweet smell of chocolate stuffed bread filling his nostrils. All that trepidation washes away, hushed under the breeze of Kento’s slow breaths. “Did you make these yourself?”

The door creaks, quiet and welcoming as Nanami extends an arm, stepping aside. Once his eyes finally settle on you they harden, just for a moment, as if he’s finally noticed the pull of your eyes— the crystalline seam tightlined around your waterline, the bright red strain of veins peeking behind your lids. Still, he says nothing, until you’ve introduce yourself with watery tremors.

“It’s cold, and you came all this way without a jacket?” Your eyes trace the vapor floating into the air as he sighs, irises dancing along the edge of your bare forearms. “Come in.”

Your muscles straighten up under his gaze, rippling until rigid as you eagerly nod, “Y’don’t think we could share some of that bread, d’you?”

The best time to farm, you’ve learned, is just after sunrise. The sun rests her head on grassy hills, still groggy and not quite awake yet, herself. But you are, suited up in your boots and overalls, not a single lantern in hand. That’s the first plus, natural lighting of the rising sun. The sweet, dim bath of light that paints the path from your home to your plantation in molten gold.

Then there’s Kento. You’d think he never sleeps, but you’ve seen it. Ritualistic, in a way. For the last two weeks, you’ve watched him go about his day. See, the window of your bedroom leads straight into his study, where he prefers a dimly lit lamp over the bright fluorescents. It’s almost hard to tell when he comes and goes, seeing as whenever you look, there he is. Sat in a swiveling chair and hunched over his desk, writing something in a notepad and skimming through— what looks to be— more documents on his computer.

You can only tell he’s going to bed once there’s a sigh, a pinch to the bridge of his nose before smoothing out his eyebrows, then the discarding of silver-frame, rectangular reading glasses. The lamp stays on, as if he knows he’ll be back in less than seven sleeping hours— which you think, for him, translates to roughly thirty minutes.

And, though he can’t see you, you always make an extra effort to wave up at his study, just before starting up your tractor.

You never expected him to wave back. You never expect his eyes to trail from your face to your supplies. And you, most certainly, never expect him to join you. Two thermal mugs in hand as he makes it over the small hill from his home to your own, past the thorn bushes and vacant tangerine trees. Hot chocolate— piping and rich, it coats your tongue in its sweetness and splashes against your lips with comforting warmth.

“Mm!” You hum, blowing through the small gap between the thermos and its sealed lid. You’d assumed your scarf, wrapped snug around your neck, would do the trick— keep you warm enough — but this seems to actually hit the spot. Sticky accents from remnants of unmelted marshmallows, its fluff clings to the corner of your lips. And Kento, nursing his own mug— though it contains tea— looks up to watch you grin, shards of tiny sugar crystals clinging to your pouty bottom lip.

“Hold still,” all but purring, his thumb swipes at your lip, wipes away the stickiness until they’ve parted— breathless. His eyebrows furrow with concentration, as if it’s a practiced habit, absentmindedly licking his thumb clean with one smooth, quick dart of his tongue.

“Sweet.”

Your breath circulates into the air, a swirl of white that dispels almost immediately. Your thoughts are cut short, breath stuck in your throat, eyes wide and glazed over with astonishment. “It’s— huh?”

“Sweet,” he chimes, lips curling around each letter. He’s beside himself, nearly forgetting who he is until the clear of his throat and a resigned grumble. “I can’t fathom how you manage to drink. . . radioactive waste from a cup.”

His humor is dry— something you have to think over for a moment before smiling against the lid of your cup. Kento notes how you smile— with your whole body— eyes closed tight and teeth on display, shoulders bunched and your stride much more bouncy. He tries not to smile when you giggle, hiding the lower half of your face behind the piping mug as your shoulders brush against his own. With each step the closer you get— to both the blond and your truck.

“It’s good,” Your voice lifts at the end of the statement, feigning offense as you lick your lips. Soft tongue against soft lips, Nanami partly wonders if you naturally taste as sweet as your preference for drinks. “M’not bein’ mean about yours!”

“I'm not being mean,” He corrects, a silent apology laced in his tone— just in case — and your knowing gaze lifts from his cup to his eyes, blazing bright and beautiful. He basks in your attention for a moment, like the gentle rays of a sun-swept island. Had this really been a vacation— no carry-on cases— he would’ve considered booking a flight to Malaysia.

First, he’s buckling you into your seat— it seems you’d forgotten, then he’s reminding you to put on your gloves, despite having bare hands of his own.

“You do this for a living,” is his justification, though you deemed it more a reason for him to wear the protective gear. “You wear them.”

And, now, he’s listening intently as you explain the mild inconvenience that is the technicalities that come with farming. He learns of your affinity to animals. Your slight, biased preference for gardening. The way your nose wrinkles when you think too hard, and the way you often forget what you were saying as you say it.

Though the scenery outside the passenger seat window is beautiful— valleys of faded green and brown, a light fog dusting the air. The symphony of crickets and cicadas, and of course, the sunset making its round up the horizon, teetering along the age of the Earth as it paints each and every blade of grass in its light.

He helps you out of the car as if you haven’t done it yourself a million times, careful not to spill your drink in his other hand. He’s awfully tender, too, his thumb absentmindedly circling the glove-clad skin of your knuckles as your hand squeezes his own. The door slams shut, and he doesn’t miss your expression twist as you whisper a small ‘oops, sorry!’ to your precious truck before unloading supplies.

Kento can’t name a thing— he’s out of his depths, here, but he helps anyway. He carries it down the never-ending row of cabbage and radish, watches his step despite nearly dismantling at least three dozen budding vegetables simultaneously. And you don’t yell at him once, instead offering words of sweet encouragement until you’ve found the place to start, dropping your assortment of tools and buckets.

“M’kay, ‘Nami,” He watches you drop to a crouch, warmth blooming in the apples of his cheeks. It’s not just the suggestive position, nor the way your pretty eyes look up at him from there— but it’s how sweet you say his name. . going as far as to give him a nickname, too.

Still, it manifests through the twitch of his eye, which you don’t catch onto, as he kneels alongside you.

“‘Nami—”

“No. It’s pronounced Nanami.” He interjects, his grip tight along the base of unsavory, frostbitten weeds— at least, that’s what he sees you doing anyway. Almost too tight, heavy and thick hands flexing, you can see the bend of his knuckles as his fingers dig into the roots.

“Na,”And, the smell of dirt, it’s so strong, the earthy undertones invade your nostrils and have no intent on stopping. . . “—na,” Raw, natural. His palms press in at the sides, thumbs stroking at the soil as he feels around for growing stems. For a moment it’s silent, save for the crackling radio beside you. Your pretty lips part, and sweetly, you’ve sounded out his name. “—mi.”

A puff of air leaves his lips, a scoff of a chuckle, and he’s giving a slight nod, quietly whispering the syllables of your name in acknowledgment. “Mhm?”

He doesn’t miss the way your lips split into a wide grin, weeds absentmindedly disregarded for a moment as you giggle, “I already knew that— I just said it!”

“Mm,” He agrees, though he’s not entirely sure you did. Then his heavy fingers tap your wrist— gentle, barely even a tap, but it gets you back on track— picking up the dead weeds. Kento watches, your hands gingerly plucking them free from the root, mastered and effortless.

Your fingertips dig into the soil, palms sticky and damp, littered with defrosting grass along each ridge and defining line. There’s so much care in your fingertips, and with every successful pull your eyes ignite. Like a cute, overgrown puppy. “Good. You’re a smart boy.”

“Y’think m’smart?” And, though your shoulders bunch up— a bit more bashful, you’re shaking your head. “I mean— I knew that already, too,” and it washes away as fast as it arrives, replaced with genuine exuberance. “I tell m’self everyday!”

The blond catches it anyway, gaze unwavering, even as your own struggles to keep contact. Nanami’s eyes are remarkably intimidating despite belonging to someone who’s positioned so utterly relaxed. . Crouching just as you are, but with smooth shoulders and lax biceps. Still, they’re visible through the silk fabric of his button-up, but he seems used to it. Tufts of blonde hair, slightly unruly and disheveled— swept back with gel, yet still set off in a flurry of gold by the back of his head, as if he’d rolled around in bed and decided to lounge about instead of retouching it.

Cozy.

“I do,” The sun dawns down through thick, gray clouds, framing his bronze locks— and with his lips slightly parted and his skin picking up a peachy glow, he looks almost seraphic. “What were you saying?”

“Um,” You pause to rethink through the last hour, warmth blowing past your cheeks as a particularly nippy gust of wind rushes by. “. . We sell ‘em, the weeds! That won’t be for a few days, sometimes we keep ‘em for cookin’, but . . . these aren’t any good.”

“Too many?” He asks, as if it’s the most interesting thing he’s learned in his vacation here, by far, despite having learned that just a few days ago.

“Too many!” Pretty lips part into a wide grin, and perhaps that’s the conclusion to Kento’s sightseeing.

౨ৎ

Kento tries not to lie— not unless he absolutely needs to.

With your black on black attire— a large, knitted sweater, a black bomber atop it, dark jeans to match, a hand-woven gray scarf wrapped around your neck, and white sneakers that carry a cream-colored accent in its threading— it’s hard to keep his mouth shut.

“Where are we going?” Is his first question— but there’s so much more he means to ask. Since when do you dress so nicely? Do your parents know you spent extra farm money on those shoes? Is it bad to feel the urge to hold you closer, just so no one gets any ideas?

Nonetheless, checking the silver-plated Rolex along his wrist with the slight tussle of his lapel-collared trench coat, just before popping open the passenger’s seat of your truck, he ignores the growing thought.

“You’re always locked up in your house,” Twisting your keychain covered keys into the ignition, the truck starts up with a gradual rumble. You’ve figured something was wrong with the oil for quite some time now, but it’s never been enough to start any problems. “Don’t y’wanna have fun?”

That doesn’t entirely answer his question, nor does it ease his mind— a vacation this is, yes. But it’s also paid, and he’s technically on the clock whilst being here. Still, he nods just once, the clench of his jaw apparent in the faint valleys of muscle just below his ear. Though, he supposes he could say the same about you. Every day you wake up, harvest, water crops, feed your animals, clean out troths and shovel up feces. He’s not even entirely sure if that’s your idea of fun— but he hopes not.

Kento doesn’t expect you to be such a great driver. Smooth turns and a gentle ride— even with cobblestone streets and gravel trails. You get carried away when you talk, too, hands moving about and your gaze trailing to his eyes every few seconds. He has to remind you— “Don’t take your hands off the wheel,” “Don’t look at me, look at the road,” — but Kento would be lying if he said it weren’t endearing.

It’s almost like you can barely function without basking in his presence.

“If it were warmer,” You swallow, finally stopping to catch your breath after the last fifteen minutes of rambling. The car slows down to a halt, an overhead traffic-light flashing a bright, crisp shade of red. “We could’ve went apple-pickin’ . . . or even oranges!”

You take the time to fully face him, eyes trailing up his dark trousers and gray turtleneck— it bunches at his chest, and you’re sure without his trench coat it’d be just as strained around his biceps.

“What do you do when it’s cold?” He muses, ducking his head to watch the passing of trees and inner city shops.

“Hm?” You hum, but before he can repeat the question you beat him to it. “Uh, we have this lake— it’s the first to freeze over when it’s cold. . ” So quaint, his eyes gloss over pedestrians as they live amongst themselves. Walking their dogs, sharing a drink at an outdoor bar, couples huddled close together for warmth. The sidewalks are clean and clear, there’s a polite, happy bounce to everyone’s step. Fairy lights blink in every other window, casting a sweet, bright hue along the streets below it. Kento understands it all, despite it being much more. . comfortable. . than Sendai. “And, when it’s completely frozen, we skate on it!”

It feels like home. A gentler, cozier version of it.

“I’m sorry—” The blond clears his throat as he turns to actually look at you, having fully processed your words. “Skating?”

“Are y’scared?” Nanami tries to ignore the burning of his throat when you laugh at his silence— a pretty, featherlight thing of a giggle that only progressively makes it harder for him to catch his breath.

“No,” He grumbles. He’s actually done it before— his younger, studying ‘coworkers’ had a knack for dragging him around outside of work hours— and he wasn’t free from it, even in winter. Yuji, Megumi, and Nobora, perhaps the three only people who could have him willingly risking a fractured disc.

“Don’t be scared, ‘Nami!” The car turns into a short trail, decalled in various signs and brightly colored symbols. “I can help you, m‘kay?”

Four people.

He nods anyway, save you the meltdown, and lets you drag him out the car once you’ve found a good place to park. He’d think it was illegal had there not been a sign for it, let alone communal skates in varying sizes. They’re in good condition, too. A small wooden bench— decorated with moss along its sides, he brushed his fingertips against it by accident— keeps him steady, but when he looks over to you, you’re already walking around with untied skates.

“Come here,” He beckons, voice soft and fond as he quirks a finger in your direction. He watches you fumble, nearly tripping over your own legs as opposed to your laces, but you make it over to him anyway, thigh against thigh. You brace yourself when he pulls your legs over his lap, shifts in his seat and tightens them just enough— “It’s not hurting you, is it?”— to fit comfortably.

“Thank you, ‘Nami,” He can hear the sincerity in your voice— as if he’d saved your life. Your breath pans across his face, warm and minty as you shake your head, “Doesn’t hurt. . .”

He offers a gentle pat to your knees once you’re fully set, softly dropping them back down as he leans to tie his own. It’s a quick process— not as tedious as the knotted up, tattered ones back home— a much more nice change of pace.

The ice, though, is considerably worse. He surmises it’s because it’s relatively untouched— if the whole village of Sekichiku had done two laps over it still wouldn’t have been enough to leave a noticeable dent in the ice— so his skates have nowhere to grip. You, though. . .

You’re much more graceful on ice than on land. A slow turn here, a quick twirl there, you could skate laps around him if you so choose. But you don’t, instead holding onto his wrists as he stiffly skates forward. Kento’s nose is nipped with pink, matching the particular shade of his lips as they part in concentration. The shade dispels down his cheeks, and you’ve never seen his face so. . . soft.

“Say, ‘Nami?” You huff, holding his wrists as you move in a slow, clockwise circle, turning you both. “When’re you leavin’?”

The truth bubbles in his throat, tougher to swallow than he’d originally thought it’d be. He clears his throat, avoids the question, and instead of freeing his wrists altogether, he holds your hand. You’re pouting when you slowly swivel to his side, his heart somersaulting almost painfully at the cute, wee frown to your lips. “Hey,” you whine, caught off guard but still pleasantly surprised, squeezing your palms against his own. “What’re you doin’?”

You’ve always been undeniably sweet. Kento thinks back to your basket of goods. The sweet, savory, aromatic flavors of bread, meats, cheeses, chocolates. How you have it to him so sweetly, no questions asked. There’s no ulterior motive to your demeanor, either. It’s peculiar to have someone so. . dependable. Someone to easily lean on, someone so— hospitable.

You’re perfect.

“I've never—“ He pauses, watching smoke dispel form your lips. An intimate position, he’s in— close enough to hear your breaths, holding on tight enough to feel your pulse through your fingertips. “Noone has ever done this for me. Thank you.”

“What, take you skatin’?”

“Support me unconditionally.” He pulls away before you can say anything in response, relishing in the thought of your pulse speeding against his knuckles as he stiffly skates back toward regular land.

The ride home is smooth, but quiet. And once you get there, hunger overrides your hospitality.

You like Kento’s rental— its kitchen is spacious and just big enough to support the mess of pots and pans that come with baking. It’s warm and inviting, the stove works great and the oven even better. Its heat burns a little brighter, but nothing you can’t handle.

Pain au chocolat — chocolatine — and meringue cookies; they’re a pain in Kento’s ass. Not even something he’d try to attempt without you there— he’s happy to watch you whisk away and laugh at his disgruntled faces. A “taste-tester”, you’d called him, scooping one sugary accessory after another onto the pad of your fingertip and asking him to try.

You weren’t lying. You really do know how to bake— flour dusted skin and all. Twisting raw dough into pretty sculptures of bows and braids, scored surfaces of x’s and o’s, light layers of warm butter that seep into soft, risen dough. And when it bakes, oh, how sweet the smell of aromatic bread is to Nanami’s stomach.

Studying the contours of a pretty face— baby fat rounding your cheeks as they pool into a sweet smile, pearly whites displayed brighter than the moonlight leaking through the floral curtains. Your laughter is wholehearted, hands gripping the hem of Nanami’s fleece shirt, body tipping toward his chest as your giggles dispel into the warm, brown-sugar baked air. For a moment he mentally swoons, something of a comforting coo, eyelids heavy and blanketed with the same baking powder littering your handsome face. He relishes the warmth, which leaves just as fast as it arrives, and suddenly you’re reaching into the oven without your cute, fluffy puppy-patterned mittens protecting your hands.

“Wait,” His tone is harsher than intended, solid and thick, and you— the sweet, softheaded boy that you are, don’t entirely deserve the worried look on your face that melts into sharp, hot pain.

“Ouch!” Your elbow smacks into Nanami’s calf as you flinch, fingertips raw and numb— still pulsing from the fresh burn. The man crouches down, knee to ceramic, palm to your warm shoulder, and suddenly your wide eyes are glittering and gleaming. Had the smile from your face not been growing, he’d have been appalled. “‘Nami, did you see that?!”

“Silly boy,” He sucks his teeth, pulling your clasped hands from your chest. Gingerly, he plucks out each finger one by one, runs the pad of his thumb along the burn sites. “You have to be more gentle with yourself.”

And, as if he’d declared to destroy your favorite equipment, your shoulders deflate. Hazel watches as tears well in your eyes in real time— with award winning speed, really— glassy and wet and oh, you’re so cute. It was just a small reminder, nothing too harsh— it could barely be considered scolding. Yet here you are, sniffling and averting your gaze. Eyes glossed over while your fingers instinctively curl over his own for comfort. Then a small, petulant, “M’sorry, ‘Nami.”

“None of that,” Soothing, it's gentle and soft as his thumb travels along the numb pads of your fingertips. And though it was already a faint sensation, you can tell his touches are deliberately featherlight and calculated, cautious. “Nothing to cry about.”

“I’m not crying,” You grumble, though his ears register the sound as a wet sniffle as you rub at your cheek with the back of your free hand. “I don’t do that.”

“Of course not,” The breathy lilt tongue voice gives it all away, a tiny smile dotting the man’s lips. They’re entirely too enticing, a sweet shade of pink that dispels into the milky tan of his skin. Sheen and glazed with what could be spit, your lips part to mirror the same smile. Though yours is larger, his isn’t any less exuberant— luring you in one centimeter at a time until, inevitably, his breath ghosts along the expanse of your jaw— you can almost taste him.

His voice breaks through the thickened silence, “But it’s okay if you do.”

The next two hours should go by just fine.

౨ৎ

“What does ‘default-judgment’ mean?”

Floorboards creak beneath Kento’s feet, dimly lit ambient lighting placed around the office keeps it lit just enough to see ever so clearly— a small lamp angled above an open file, then the remaining trickle of light cascading over photos. Labeled, dated, clipped, and shipped to his front door just a couple weeks ago. Soon to be released, relinquished, deadlined.

His hair drips with cold water, tiny drops dripping down to the floor while others slither down his neck, and pool where his back dips, just slightly. He doesn’t tense when he sees you— his muscles remain just as relaxed as they were in the shower— and his eyes barely widen past the tired, lidded expression that paints his face every night, before he gets his studying done. But you—

You’re the opposite. Your shoulders raise to your ears, eyes wide and unblinking as they stare at the towel wrapped around his thick, slightly hairy forearm— it’s navy blue, with a brown, horizontal stripe across its fabric, and embroidered letters you can’t quite make out. An intelligible sound, then an unexplainable expression, and— there you are, tripping over your own tongue as your hands shoot to cover your eyes. Only unclothed from the waist up, Kento can’t help the amusement blooming in his chest.

“It’s a deduction based on a defendant’s failure to answer. . or appear, in some cases, to a lawsuit or court.” Nanami’s eyes trace the part of your lips behind your palm as your brain processes (though, he doesn’t think that’d be the correct word for it) his words. They purse, quickly, tight lined, until parting again— once more, with less confidence. With each step he takes (long strides that make him appear as if he’s almost floating) he grows closer, strands of freshly washed angel hair sticking to his forehead.

“. S. . ure!” You smile and nod in faux understanding, fingers curling toward the dip of your hairline, eyes peeking through cracked fingers. From there, beneath your palms, an uncomfortable warmth blossoms from your throat up, settling in your cheeks and sprinkling across your nose— sweltering and tingly.

Kento tuts, a soft noise, and you watch as he inhales a deep breath, pine eyes perusing through the space between your fingers for eye contact. “. . . Don’t worry about all that.” And, as if he can feel the high voltages slamming against your heart, his tongue darts out to moisturize his lips, and his eyes fall to your chest. He sits aslant to you, legs spread wide with the occasional sway of his knee— but nothing too sudden. You’re made all too aware of his half-naked proximity, purportedly close enough to feel the warmth of his body radiating through the room— to smell the sweet undertones of vanilla, musk, and earl gray tea residing in his skin. In a low rumble he speaks, pulling lotion free from the drawer to your left. “Silver lining is: I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

Even as he leans forward, closer and closer, he doesn’t cage you in— even if your chest aches at the loss.

Your heart demands the conversation die after that. Beating so rapidly you assume it’s stopped, silence freezes the air as your hands slowly drop to your lap. Lips pulled with woe, darling eyes low and sodden in an instant. Shoulders dropped just enough to sound a sharp creak in the swiveling chair you’re sat in, your lashes clump with fresh, unshed tears. And, in a lapse moment of murkiness, Kento’s lips twitch into a frown of their own.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, as if afraid your response will confirm it— he’s what’s wrong. His choice of words— wrong. Thin brows furrowed, the dip of his chin has his lips ghosting your cheek.

“. . . Nothin’.” It’s worse. He’d expected tears— maybe even an exchange of fiery words— but instead you’ve shut down, hands balled up in the fabric of your flowy pants, denim bunched up and draped over your thighs. Completely silent, staring at nothing and everything— all in between— all at once.

“Nothing?” He echoes, a silent suggestion for more. The rumble in your ear is almost too much, for a moment you assume you’d conjured it up with your imagination. Too close, too bare, too blunt, too warm— too fleeting.

“Mhm,” When your gaze meets, his heart plummets to his stomach. “Nothin’.” Words rush to his tongue before they can catch up to his brain, and. . you look so . . sad. He’s never seen you so defected— nor had he thought the concept of giving up existed for you. So headstrong, determined to make things work, gears always shifting into overdrive when you can’t make something out. You’ve gone as far as to create your own definition— this isn’t you.

“It’s. . . inevitable,” Kento’s voice softens, dropping to a quiet whisper between just the two of you. “But not for a while,” Then shifts his weight back, pulling away as he speaks in some sick sort of oxymoron, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“But you will.” Grumbling, you’ve always been an open-book.

“Not forever.”

“. . . Ever,” You grunt, choosing to ignore the stern quirk of his thin brow. You’re a bit of a brat— Kento sees that now— behind the pouty lips and soft eyes, behind the large smiles and intimidating prowess. “When are you goin’?”

Nanami treads carefully, fingers wrapped around the closed bottle of lotion. With a snap it clicks open, and a generous amount is pumped into his palms. The smell is neutral and muted, but clean and fresh.

Kento tries not to lie— not unless he absolutely needs to. An unexplainable feeling, adjacent to panic, rises in his stomach as he lies, “Six weeks, at least.”

“Nami…” Ignoring the deadline he’d just given you, you ask, “D’you like your job?”

You watch his posture relax, as if the previous conversation was just as emotionally taxing as it was for you, for him. He sighs, pauses to think for a mere second, then shrugs. “I like its structure.”

“Oh.”

“I like helping people, too.” He adds, much more sincere. Your eyes trail the lotion as it’s rubbed into his biceps, his shoulders, his forearms. His fingers flex and muscles ripple, skin bouncing beneath his fingertips, and light traces of hair at his knuckles raising.

“Oh.” You breathe, eyes locked on his veiny hands. You suppose, in a way, your jobs are similar. You, too, help people out— you provide fresh food and crops, you herd cattle and brush the hair of healthy horses. A very hands-on job— it’s rewarding. “Me too. I— I like helping too. And. . .”

His fingers twitch, almost as if they can feel your gaze, but Kento makes no effort to move them.

Six weeks. Time is fleeting.

“I—” With trembling hands you lean forward, clasping Kento’s smooth knuckles against your palm. He’s just as warm as he looks, skin soft and sheen. His fingers flicker in your hold, straining as they tense— silently, asking, ‘what?’ as an increasingly overwhelming urge to keep Kento close washes over you.

It’s moments like these you’d wish you were better with words. To weave them together into something pretty, like a basket made for carrying fresh harvest. To pull apart and braid together an amalgamation of just the right phrases— ones that sound pretty and roll off the tongue. Some that sound soulful and genuine, yet effortless and forthwith at the same time.

Moments like these, where your breath is stuck in your throat and with every rise and fall of his chest you think you’ve lost some more— he’s taken it all from you— you wish you knew just what to say, to do, to bring that air back.

To have him melt at your words the way you do at his actions, to have him feel the same exact thing when your heart clenches in your chest like a rag that’s been wrung out to dry. Without trying, without straining. You wish you were smarter— better at this, as you lean so far from the chair it begins to squeak in protest.

You’re sure there’s better people in Tokyo. With better educational backgrounds, with cleaner jobs. People who have it all together, who have different skills and assets— who don’t stick to one thing simply because they have a natural born talent for it. People who are prettier, more handsome— perhaps more his type. People who have aligning career goals and paths— more accomplishments.

Sweeter, kinder. With softer hands and an easier understanding of city life.

People who are better with words. Who can weave them together into something pretty, like a closed case with no loose ends or dead leads. Who can pull apart and braid together an amalgamation of just the right phrases— ones that sound pretty and roll off the tongue. Who can make their confessions sound soulful and genuine, effortless and forthwith at the same time. All within the heart of Tokyo.

People who aren’t you.

Nanami stands, shuffling over to fix the documents you’d ruined— of course you did— but his face hasn’t changed from his usual tight-lipped expression. Sometimes it’s hard to read him, and it’s times like these you really wish you could.

“I like you,‘Nami.” You whisper to yourself, quietly pouring your heart out with each spoken letter.

And, with a snap, your world goes crumbling down. Increasingly silent, the world stops as you hit the floor and Kento’s chest stills— the soft, quiet beat of his breaths gone quiet, as if it were a mere memory to begin with. The backing of his swiveling chair falls with you, right to the floor, clattering much louder than the sound of your tense body, and—

“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I think you have the wrong idea.” His voice is strained. Uncomfortable.

You’ve never felt more humiliated.

౨ৎ

Despite your humiliating attempt to hold onto it, time flies by. Locked away in your room— your only source of comfort being an occasional knock on the door from your mother and the weight of your blanket as it remains overhead. You’ve counted the seconds— tripped over your thoughts after reaching 1,633– started over again. You’ve listened to the pitter-patter of rain against your windowsill, peeked out from your cocoon to bet on a race between the raindrops.

You’ve thought about Kento, of course. So much it plagued you, made your chest uncomfortably tight— until all you could do was let out a humiliated groan all over again. It’s a timeless cycle, and yet, it grows closer to his leaving date.

You haven’t spared a glance toward the actual outside, even when your window overlooks his own study. You’re sure everything’s out of sorts now— weeds overtaking the farm, plants dried out or overwatered, any blooming vegetation snipped at the bud before it could bloom. Tough luck, they’ll get over it.

And, God, has your family tried. Through gentle words and offers of food, through soft praises that fell on deaf ears. Through frustration, too, anger laced in the sweetest yell of ‘where’d my smart boy go?’

Your eyelids feel heavy and thick. No longer swollen with tears or bloodshot with dejection— just heavy, simply tired. Sleep is all you’ve done these days, yet it feels like your body can’t get enough. Fifteen hours a day leave you straining for more, three hours a day leave you exhausted. You can barely remember when you last left your bed— for the bathroom, never for a drink— and even when your frown deepens as you think about it, you can’t bring yourself to fix it.

You can’t bring yourself to fix anything as of late, if it can even be fixed.

You were stupid for thinking he’d feel the same, anyway. A man like ‘Nami— a man like Nanami— so smart and so distinguished. So. . opposite of you, to think you’d fall anywhere near the same line as him. . is laughable, really. Even more so when you consider his upbringing. He doesn’t mention it much, and you try not to pry, but you consider his lifestyle quite traditional and cookie-cutter. You hadn’t even asked if he liked men.

“I think you have the wrong idea.”

His rejection physically pains you, a quiet sniffle and suppressed whine straining your vocal cords. Your nails dig into the fleshy, cushiony part of your palm. You can hear the pitch of his voice — rumbling and deep, you hear the shakiness of his breath—so deeply uncomfortable, cold with disgust. “I think you have the wrong idea.”

A knock to your door startles you awake, eyes wide open as your cocooned body flops around in bed. Still, you barely make an effort to respond, dry lips parting to form a garbled groan.

“Your. . . friend was at the door,” It’s your mother’s voice, but softer and pleading. For a moment your heart twists, eyebrows pinched as you suck in a sharp breath through your teeth— you can’t remember the last time you’d seen her face without slamming a door in it. “Looked tired, so I gave him some coffee. . .”

A bitter, disconcerting ‘so?’ nearly leaves your mouth— something so unlike your usual self, it makes you want to borrow deeper into your sheets and never leave. Shame. She doesn’t expect you to crack the door open. You shake your head, even if she can’t see you, only breaking your stubborn resolve when knocks once more, and slowly, you scuttle around the mess of your bedroom to unlock the door. Your eyes carry dark circles and heavy bags as your gaze pierces straight through her. Then, a shaky breath and barely audible whisper, “. . . S’it Nanami?”

Her aged smile is soft and thoughtful as she leans into the doorframe— something you haven’t seen in a while, and your eyes prickle with warm tears once more. “Between you ‘n me, you’re in much better shape.”

Cracking a smile nearly takes all your energy from you.

You don’t bother changing from your pajamas— they’ve always been so baggy to support the muscle you’ve grown over years of lifting heavy produce and working with truckloads— and now you’re grateful for it. Something to hide behind if you need it, and your fingers subconsciously curl into the fabric of your long sleeves for comfort. Once you get downstairs the two of you depart, and a gentle rub to your shoulder blades is all your mother offers before finding solitude on her own, just a few rooms away if you need her.

And— she was wrong. Of course, he looks tired. You can see it in his shoulders— they’re all wound up and tense, like they’d been when you first met. Sure, his jaw is tightened and you can hear the grind of his teeth against one another despite keeping your distance— but he still seems put together, albeit lacking his usual combover or corporate style of clothing.

It hurts to know he does well without you, as selfish as it may sound.

“Hi,” You mumble, rubbing at your face with the palm of your hand. Your voice crackles with disuse, rumbling and garbled in your throat. “Nanami. .”

“Hi,” He echoes, your name heavy on his tongue as he stands, leveling out the shared eye contact. Just Nanami. For a moment he’s at a loss for words— and it’s odd, typically he has an answer for everything. You remember asking why he’d buckle your seatbelt before his own, and his answer was always the same. You remember asking why he likes what he does— and they’d all circle back to enjoying the small things in life. His Kento’s lips part, taken aback by the loss of his nickname, but they close into a tight line with registration. Perhaps you’re just. . too much.

“I lied to you,” He begins, and your heart leaps to your throat. He clasps his hands together, resting soundly by his thighs as his head tilts downward, a silent plea. “And, for that . . . I’m sorry,” Kento releases a breath, hands coming undone to swipe away stray, gold strands of hair. “Don’t feel obliged to accept, I just— I like y— I want to show you something.”

It’s odd. The look on your face makes him want to scoop you up, to cradle you in his arms and hold you tight. And yet, he can see the cogs turning in your brain, the gradual loss of your frown and faux steel in your eyes as you shrug— he can’t even distinguish if you’re being reluctant or stubborn. Nonetheless, Kento smoothens the fabric of his coat, and makes a small, polite gesture to the door.

“Okay.” Your fist rubs sleep from your eyes, steps heavy and dragging along the floor as you slide your feet into brown bunny slippers— the same ones he’d worn when you officially met.

Stepping into the cold, crisp winter air, you both ignore the tremor to your bottom lip, “What were you gonna. . ?”

Not at all hard to spot, set alight by the glow or orange lanterns, it’s your farm. Oh, it’s much prettier than you could’ve ever imagined it. So clean, with pristine rows and neat placements of fresh soils. You can actually walk through it, as opposed to tip-toeing around like you used to. The air is crisp and fresh, just like you’d remembered it— but it feels better than before. And, dotting the horizon, fireflies dance into the night sky and blend into the twinkling stars. You don’t remember the last time you’d seen them— vision occupied by tall grass or obstructed by rusty tools. You could almost cry. Your breath catches in your throat, a gentle breeze brushing along your forehead and digging into the fabric of your clothes— yet you feel light and warm.

He did all this for you?

“Are you cold?” You blink hard, vision blurred with tears as Kento’s hand grasps your shoulder. “You’re shivering.” He’s quick to shrug off his coat, barely even flinching when the fabric dips into fresh mud, and loops it around your form with steady hands.

“M’okay. .” He frowns, barely visible, and the slight protests of being strong enough to tough it out die on your tongue. But it’s true, you don’t feel cold— not internally, at least. You feel light yet heavy, warm and airy. Heat pokes at your skin, ignites in the apples of your cheeks and trails down your throat. “. . . Thank you, ‘Nami. . . For everythin’.”

‘Why're you saying it like that?’ He wants to ask. As if it’s some sort of sick, roundabout way of saying goodbye. His movement stutters, lips curled into a small ‘o’ before reverting back to its usual, thin line; and he speaks, “I don’t just like you.”

Your fist tightens in his coat, fabric twisting to accommodate your grip.

“I. . admire you. Your strength, your weakness. Your baking. . Your smile, too,” He sighs, quiet and cautious. “Your laugh. I regret not telling you before. At first, I thought you were impulsive, and somehow abrasive, bu—”

You’ve never been one to hide from your feelings— you laugh when you’re happy, scowl when you’re angry, mope when you’re sad. So it’s no surprise to feel you smile; wide and unapologetic. It’s no surprise to feel the tremble of your fingers as they release his coat and land on his biceps. To feel the slow, shaking breath of air he releases at your silence— hearing his own slight sniffle at the nippy, cold breeze. You’re nervous, lips twitching as his chin dips, bashful as his lips intertwine with your own.

A kiss.

"’Nami," Laughing into his mouth, it meets the sound of your lips continuously meeting in breathless, heavy harmony. His lips are plush, soft and sweet, hungry and hasty, everything and nothing and all things in between. “I like you. I like you, I like you, I like you.”

You feel it now— the warmth enveloping his chest, the hard hammering of his heart against his ribcage. "Shit," He whispers, incredulous, and before slowly pulling away, cradles your handsome face between his calloused “I like you too.”

౨ৎ

Kento owns silk pillows. You can tell they’re imported from home— as they disturb the uniform colors of the crisp, cream comforter set blanketing his bed. It’s the first thing you notice, head sinking into the fabric as your eyes flutter closed, thoughts and breaths stolen with each wet, heavy kiss being pressed against your lips. His breath is hot and heavy, small groans and grunts leaving his parted lips, and— he tastes of chocolate.

“Kenny—” You gasp, but the sound of his name on your lips only eggs him on. Hot heat blooms in your stomach, tingling down to your tummy, so deep, something you’ve never really felt before. It tingles, almost, right through your thighs and straight to your cock, plumping up with each passing second. And his hands, god, are so quick and skilled— shedding you of your clothing as if he’s done it a million times before.

“Kenny,” You repeat, much whinier than before, tiny sounds leaving your lips as you squirm in his hold. “Mm, wait,” and his response is barely committal, a low hum that melts into a breathy sigh as your bare skin is exposed and your leaking cock springs free against your tummy. He coos, peeling the sticky fabric of your underwear free. Cute.

“Use your words,” Kento mumbles against your skin, running his hands along the silky smooth skin of the back of your thighs. “I know you can, you’re a smart boy.” You squirm with every touch, plush skin bouncy as you press your thighs together, cock sliding by your navel. And, even when you hide, he can see the precum smearing against your stomach, the tightening of your balls, and, now, your exposed hole winking back at him.

Fuck.

“Mm, don’t look,” You’ve barely convinced yourself, a choked out moan leaving your lips as his big, warm hand wraps around your cock and pumps. “That’s— oh, embarrassin’!” Slow, at first, trailing up the sensitive shaft and rubbing circles into the overly-sensitive head. Until his hand is slick with precum and his own spit, until your thighs are convulsing and you’re close to covering yourself in your own cum. Until you’re sobbing, pulling at his wrist with weak, clammy hands.

“I know, sugar. I know,” And the stifled cry you've been hearing belongs to you. “Feels good, hm?” His free hand grazes down your waist, thumbing at the dip between your hip and your thigh, then cupping the soft, plush skin of your pecs. “Feels better than your own hand, doesn’t it?” Kneading until your nipples harden against his palm, soft skin swelling around his fingers. And, oh, how pretty you are when you cry, overstimulated tears rolling down your cheeks and incoherent babbles leaving your swollen lips.

“Uh— huh, yeah,” Is barely breathed out, and Kento watches pre leak over his knuckles. Creamy and thick, sticky and sweet as your hips rock back and forth, to and fro. You just can’t help yourself, greedy boy, fucking into his fist like it’s the best thing you’ve ever felt and— oh.

It is.

“Messy boy,” He huffs, pressing his forehead against your own— damp and sticky. Your hand, preoccupied with fisting his sheets, is grabbed, and all you can feel is slick, hot heat. “Fuck your fist for me.”

“Wh- Huh?” It takes a moment for your brain to catch up to your hands, wrapped tightly around your cock as your hips buck— whines high and loud in your throat, keening like a puppy. It’s not at all paced, not like Kento, just pure desperation and need as your toes curl and your eyes roll back into your skull. Warmth rises in your face as your legs instinctively part, tingles spreading through your body and needy moans filling the air. Wet and sloppy, your hand is slick and soaked.

He travels lower, lips trailing down your throat, your collarbones— pausing at your chest. He watches the rise and fall, the slight bounce of your pecs as you pant like a dog. Pretty buds hard and sensitive, a gentle suckle is enough to make you arch from the sheets and keen.

“Good boy, that’s it,” You have the urge to get on your knees, to present all your holes to him, to spread yourself open with your fingers- fucking them in and out, in and out, just for Kento. It’s all too much, thinking of what’s next, what’s happening now, what’ll happen later.

Nanami lifts his shirt over his chest, the fabric bunching under your armpits as he keeps it pinned between his teeth, and you have no other choice but to flutter your lashes, watching as his pants are loosened and his cock springs free. Big. Thick and long— and, it seems his tan has traveled to his cock, too. Blushing at the tip, the sweet color of mocha, it disappears the further you look down. Curved, too, slightly past his belly-button and heavy against his navel. It's humiliating, the way your mouth waters almost immediately.

It’d feel so good weighing down on your tongue, fucking your throat fast and rough, making you gag and sputter— choking on your own tears and groans.

“Wanna. . I want. . .” You squirm where you lay, whining high in your throat as you find nowhere to hide— nothing to put your face against, nowhere to bury the drunk, hazy expression on your face.

“Want what?” He murmurs, pretty eyes trailing along the curves of your face before he places a sweet, soft kiss along the edge of your jaw. You take the grip on your waist as a slight indication— Kento’s patience is slowly waning.

“V’never. .” Your lips part into a gasp, eyes fluttering closed as his large hands travel along the expanse of your chest. “I wanna. . . feel you in my throat.”

The smart man he is, Nanami, never misses a beat. Pink lips splitting into a small smile, his thumb rubs circles against your skin. Still, you can feel the throb and twitch of his cock against your thigh, hard and almost leaking. “That’s ambitious, sugar.”

You don’t register scrambling up by your elbows, nor the amount of time it takes for your fingers to fail at wrapping around his cock. Your thoughts are muffled and hazy until a quiet chuckle sounds above you— rumbly and deep, and— ah, Kento’s hand is guiding your head back as he pulls your hands free. You’re panting for it now, mouth dropped open as the slurp and slick noise of his cock tapping against your tongue drops straight to your stomach. You could cum from this alone, without even a single glance toward the ache between your thighs.

"M'gonna be so good, promise, know I can do it! Want it, Sir," A clear habit of rambling when you’re nervous, a soothing coo leaves Kento’s throat. His tip smears along your pillowy lips, sticky and salty as pre paints your chin.

“Shit,” He groans under his breath, fisting his cock to ease the ache in his balls. “Slow. I don’t want to hurt you. Gentle, remember?”

You don’t. You can barely think, let alone recall something from another day. But you nod anyway, eyes glued to his cock as it bobs to and fro— pretty and weeping. You bet it’ll feel so heavy, weighing down on your tongue and nearly crushing your throat as you gag around it. He’ll taste good, too, salty and sweet as he buries his cock down your throat. With your nose pressed into the blond of his pubes, and his balls slick against your chin as they tighten and clench.

Yeah, you want him to cum on your face.

With a whiny nod you take his tip into your mouth, pink tongue over your teeth. In your head, it’s much easier— you can sink down to the base no problem— but in practice. . . You sputter and gurgle, leaning into the gentle touch caressing your cheek as your tongue traces the pulsing, thick vein cascading down his shaft. Through your pathetic whimpers and whines he mumbles— but it falls on deaf ears.

You stick out your tongue, cute and pink, latches onto your bottom lip, slicking his slit as he blinks down at you, pupils blown and wide as he praises you, voice smooth and buttery.

Through your own jittery, inexperienced suckling, his tip is smeared along your lips, slowly tracing your cupid's bow and bottom lip until a thin layer of pre has them glazed over and sticky. Your lips part, carrying a thin trail of creamy pre between them, as his dick slides in and out your hot, wet mouth. Spreading heavy along your tongue, swallowing around the head as his thighs tense, muscles flexing and rippling as they strain to keep still.

“‘Nami’s dick is heavy, sweetheart,” He’s gasping before you can fully take in the stretch of his cock, hips twisting as his eyes flutter closed. It’s been a while, you can tell, with the way his balls are clenched tight, his hand morphed into a fist— careful not to grip your hair. Your spit bubbles and pools around his cock, slick and wet, sliding between the seams of your lips and dripping down your throat, down your sternum, down his thighs. “And you’re taking it so well.”

Running your tongue along his big, veiny cock, his head falls forward— adam’s apple bobbing as he lets out a pleased moan. His cock fills your empty mouth, stuffing it full like a pre-lubed fleshlight, his balls slapping against your chin in sticky, wet plaps. Collecting drool, it froths between your lips and his cock, bubbly and white until your noises are sloppy and loud. “That’s it, good boy, take this load down your pretty little throat. . .”

Gasping on his cock, Kento’s hand holds you close, until you’re buried against his pubes, until your throat is squeezing and contracting and wrapped plush around the thick shaft of his dick. You can feel it, each and every twitch and throb, each hit, sticky rope that paints your mouth as he cums down your throat, ropes shooting down your tongue and sticking to the roof of your mouth. You’ve done so good, such a good boy, marked for Sir, offering a few hollow sucks to his spasming cock before he pulls you off.

You’d rather he paint your face, but you trust him, swallowing the bitter, salty cream as he whispers gentle praises.

“You’re perfect,” Kento mumbles through heavy gasps, rubbing away the fat tears that roll down your cheeks. Such a sweet, pliant boy, leaning into his touch as he gently pushes you back down, off your knees.

Now he’s got you folded, knees bent back in such a slutty, shameless display. The blond squeezes at his cock, his large hand sliding into a fist that clamps down around his beading, shiny slit, then slowly back down to the thick, veiny shaft. Yeah, that’s good, how it slips and slides with rhythmatic pumps. You’d like to imagine that’s how it’ll be when his cock is inside, stretching past your rim and splitting you open, sliding against your velvety walls until he fills you up with his hot, sticky cum.

“Spit,” he says, gentle at first, but hardening as your poor, pitiful attempt at spitting down your own cock turns into gurgles of drool and incoherent moans. He grips your jaw, angling it just right— till you’re resting back on your elbows and have enough space to land a warm, wet glob right down the slit. “Good boy. Look at me, pretty. Like this.”

You watch as he spits down onto his own cock, runny and wet, which stands as a reminder of its own. His fist is so big, but it’s not nearly enough to swallow his cock down. You watch it pop free from his tight grip, loud squelches with each and every movement. Every time he throbs, pulses, shifts— you hear it all.

“That’s it, atta boy, my good little cocksleeve,” You— it must be you, there’s no one else he’s speaking to. Still, with your hand squeezing your throbbing shaft there’s not much you can say, airy little moans and sweet, high gasps leaving your pouty lips as you buck— up, up, up. A thin trail of drool slips down your chin, warm and wet and— oh, that’s nice— trailing down your cock. “That’s it, stick your tongue out.”

You really do play the part, tongue on display as you fuck your fist silly, bumping slits with the blond. Soft and sticky, loud and wet squelching until his own large, warm palm envelops both your cocks, bumping and grinding and sliding so messy. You nearly burst into hysterics when the warmth is gone, and Nanami’s gaze tears away from the pre oozing between your shafts. “Ask Sir for more, angel.”

“Mm, waitwaitwait, don’t— don’t stop,” You keen, stumbling over your tongue. Your brows pinch, eyes glazed over with unshed tears. “Kenny— Sir, please.”

“Good boy,” All but purring, his hands roam along the plush, round mounds of your ass. “Yeah,” His dick slips between the slick skin of your perineum, dragging along the sensitive skin— the head of his cock catching on your rim when his thrusts turn too eager. “You’re a good boy, asking like that.”

“You like grinding on Sir's cock don’t you? Getting me all wet. . .” Just as warm and wet as he’d thought, cooped up in his office and fucking into his fist, lube gushes and trickles out with every deliberate, shallow rut forward. Your balls bounce and twitch, slick and shiny with a mixture of pre. Your moans, so pretty, high and nasally— incoherent and blabbering. The slurp of his cock goes straight to your balls, tightening as you whine like a bitch for it. And his grip, once gentle and steady, leads down to your ass, keeping it spread as he slides the big head of his cock along your pretty little rim, again, and again, and again. It’s more menuevering than bouncing, through your fucked out haze you try to think; you want him to ruin you.

A knot tightens in your tummy, tingling in your balls as your thighs tighten and your legs tremble— fuck, you’re cumming, hard and all at once, it catches you off guard and a choked squeal is knocked from your throat, rope after rope spraying along your own chest.

“I—” You sob, cock convulsing against your tummy as Kento groans. “I didn’t mean to— didn’t know, m’sor—”

He hushes you, a low growl in his throat as his eyes roam up your tummy, past your hard nipples and land on the splatter of cum collecting between the plush hills of your pecs. “S’okay, it just felt too good, mhm? I bet your pussy feels so good, baby— perfect, pretty little pussy swallowing up my cock.”

You don’t expect him to say that— that’s the last thing you expect, eyes rolling back in your skull as you moan, wholehearted and slutty. With the wet squeeze of lube along your bottom half, slicker and sloppier than ever before, your hole winks back at him. Your perfect, pretty little pussy. “That okay, sweetheart? Can Sir pound this hole till it aches for him?”

Your response is barely coherent, garbled sounds and babbling that roughly translates to ‘please’ as thick fingers prod at your tight, puckered hole. Your loud moans are hushed as Kento leans down, close to your ear. His fingers slide against your entrance, sticky lube sliding along with them and connecting to your puffy rim. They feel so big, so long and thick when he taps them against your hole, barely breaching the tiny gape of your rim. “Gonna get you ready for Sir’s dick, gonna finger that cunt nice and slow, get that sweet boy-hole stretched out.”

“Kenny,” You hiccup, uncontrollable tears streaming down your face as you reach forward to press his fingers closer, a tiny gasp leaving your lips as your entrance is breached. You don’t miss the groan you earn in return, deep and shaky as the man takes the opportunity to slip his fingers right in, past the burning stretch of your fluttering ‘cunt’ that sucks the digits deeper and deeper into your gummy walls. “Can take it, pound it, Sir.”

“Look at me, watch me, sugar. Watch Sir fuck this little hole full.” You squeeze your eyes shut for as long as the reluctant, bratty little part of your brain lets you before staring down into hazel. Until his fingers have you seeing stars and rocking back into them like a cock hungry slut, you’ve never felt more full until his cock kisses your insides, leaving you sloppy and open and full.

Your voice isn’t nearly as loud as the wet squelch and slap of skin against skin, his cock sliding in and out your puffy hole as lube gushes out around his dick in white ringlets. Like you’ve creamed on his cock, he can see it slip back inside with each thrust. Your knees over his shoulders, Kento hauls your body up, and with a tiny, wee and pathetic ‘ah!’ you follow suit, your cute little hole clenching and fluttering around his thick, leaking cock.

“Give me a little more, just a little more of this pussy,” You can’t contain the squeals and squeaks that leave your mouth when the blond pistons his hips, a bruising grip on your waist that only gets harder as he grinds his cock down into you. He’s filling you up so good, his balls slapping against your ass with each rushed, rough thrust that has your mind scrambled just as much as your guts. You can’t take it, hands scrambling to grab at something, anything that’ll keep you from screaming.

Pounding into you, your head falls back as you take it, nice and slow, stretching you out— fast and rough, steady and patient— Kento groans above you, bullying his cock inside, grinding while your hips squirm. Mouth open with an unending stream of moans, he breaks you in, turns you into his good boy— his perfect fleshlight. Wet little hole clenching and spasming, his weight pins you down as your greedy hole milks him for all he’s worth.

“Cummin’, Nami, s’too much— M’can’t—” Whining and crying, his touches go right to your head as much as they do your puffy hole."Kenny," you whine, long and pitiful, a pout of a noise that hits him right where you want it to, just as his cock does inside of you. You whine again when your rocking turns into frantic overstimulated grinding, reveling in the stretch of his cock and the rub of your prostate. He groans, thick and gravelly, hands coming up to squeeze at your chest.

“I’ve got you, c’mere, hold Sir’s hand,” He chokes out, feeling it too. The tightening of his balls, the way his dick aches and pulses inside you, the way his cum is starting to kiss your insides and spurt straight onto that small bundle of nerves— fuck, it’s so deep. His thrusts are hard and deep, thick rope after thick rope frothing around his shaft as he fucks it deeper inside. “So good for me,” You never want it to stop, not the pump of his cock, not the drag of his tip against your entrance, not the filthy sounds, not the cum filling up your hole till you can’t move. Your grip on his knuckles is tight, nails digging into the skin of his hands. “That’s it, such a pretty boy, cumming on my cock.”

A searing knot of pressure grows in your stomach, filling as you bear down on his cock and sob on your whimpers. For a minute you think you’re going to pass out, everything going dark as you spurt all over yourself, globs of cum spraying hard onto your chin and splashing back on the blond. He makes you ride it out, offering hard, shallow thrusts to satiate the erratic spasming of your hole, and places a few sweet, tender kisses to your sweaty jaw.

౨ৎ

You wake with a small moan, limbs racked in small aches as your body melts into silk sheets. It smells like him: warm, cozy, and comforting, like a hug. Grateful for the dim, ambient lighting of his bedroom, your eyelids flutter open slowly, and there’s not much to adjust to. You’re clean— its the first thing you notice, a faint scent of soap lingering on your skin as your aching body scrambles for Kento’s warmth.

“I’m here,” He says behind you, hairs on your neck standing straight as you blink at him. Carrying a glass of ice water and a plate of meringue cookies— whisked perfectly. Cute, cloud-like spirals that sit on a porcelain plate— the same ones he watched you make, a smile pulls at your cheeks. “Hungry?” The muscles of your biceps flex as you push yourself up, body subconsciously leaning toward the blond until he’s sat next to you, his touches gentle and fleeting.

He feeds you a cookie, watches your teeth sink into the sweet, then wipes away the remnants of sugar from your lips. So tender, your heart flutters when he takes a bite after you— an indirect kiss.

He swallows, throat bobbing, lashes batting against his high cheekbones, before parting his lips, “I was thinking of extending my stay.”

The room feels ten times brighter, ten times louder, and yet, your heartbeat overpowers it all.

“I like you,” The words tumble from your mouth, almost as if he hadn’t just spent the last hour taking you apart and building you back up. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. “I more-than-like you, Kenny.”

And, without missing a beat, Kento answers truthfully this time.

“I love you too.”

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hedgehog-moss · 1 year

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Here are 7 little facts about my donkey and how his summer is going :)

1. I received an anon the other day asking if Pirou was still a working donkey who carries my firewood for me, and the answer is yes. I've been cutting some branches from the big cherry tree that fell down the other day, and Pirlouit has been valiantly carrying them to the woodshed—fun fact, for this activity he likes to wear his ears like this:

Probably because this T position is reminiscent of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, which is how Pirlouit perceives himself as he carries heavy logs for me. He's willing, but his martyrdom should be acknowledged.

Here's Poldine acknowledging it with a nose kiss, because Poldine.

I stopped so they could have their little chat.

2. Pirou has been chatting with a lot of new friends lately—we met these horses on a walk and he was so happy to stop and touch noses with them while making equid noises. Llamas are good with the nose-touching but their llama noises are just less interesting to Pirlouit. He had such interested ears here! "Finally a serious grown-up conversation"

We also met this goose during the same walk and Pirlouit was a lot less eager to go say hi to her. The goose was yelling threats at us and we prudently stayed away, and Pirou was clearly thinking "this bird is doing a better job at protecting her home from intruders than Pandolf ever could" (it's true, Pan assumes intruders are friends until proven otherwise)

3. You'll notice that there are houses in this pic! Our walks got longer and longer until one day we went all the way to the village (it took 1 hour 20min at Pirlouit's leisurely pace). I was so proud of him. I've been trying to convince my friends to go to the village on donkeyback (this requires two people, because you can ride Pirlouit but you can't tell him where to go unless there's someone holding his rope and leading the way)—my friends were reluctant because they still sort of perceive Pirou as the feral animal terrified of everything that he was when I got him. They know he's made a lot of progress but going to town on donkeyback still seemed foolhardy.

So we've been riding Pirlouit in the woods, in familiar environments, and we also went to town with him but without riding him. He was amazingly calm and brave! There's a river that cuts the village in two and the first time we went, we stopped before the bridge, since it's pretty narrow and cars would have to drive very close to Pirlouit, we didn't want to risk it. We just went to say hi to the librarian who lives on the right side of the river, but since Pirlouit was very serene, we did cross the bridge the second time.

He did not care at all about cars driving very close to him (he had one familiar human on either side of him and the drivers were very considerate and went slowly), which emboldened us to stop for a drink on the terrace of the coffeeshop on main street (< also a narrow street with cars driving by quite close to Pirlouit). There was just no problem at all, Pirou let total strangers rub his forehead and was more interested in iced tea than main street traffic.

It was a hot day and we gave him all the ice cubes from our drinks and he chewed them enthusiastically.

4. We made a stop at the pharmacy on our way home because we had another 1 hour 20min walk ahead and I had a blister, and the pharmacist noticed my donkey parked outside his shop and in a determined tone he said, "I want to try something." He took one of the donkey milk soaps from the overpriced-Provence-soaps-for-tourists display and opened the door and offered it for Pirlouit to sniff.

... I'm not sure what he was expecting—for my donkey to go "ohhh this smells like Mother's milk and aloe vera 🥺"—but unfortunately nothing happened.

(4. bis—Sorry, this 4th fact was anticlimactic.)

5. Pirlouit is now the proud owner of a surcingle. Not for equestrian vaulting and not for his log-carrying job because I don't know if it would be solid enough for the weight of a bag full of logs, but I'd like to tie bags or baskets to it to take Pirlouit grocery shopping, now that I know he's okay with going to town :) He even seems to enjoy the adventure, and the attention he gets from children.

And actually I shouldn't write off equestrian vaulting because Pirou is also remarkably chill with weird things happening on his back. I used to be very careful to climb on his back in a quick & fluid way so he wouldn't spook (because he used to! a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil used to spook him!) but now that my friends are riding him I can confirm we've reached a point where you can climb on Pirlouit's back in any way you want and he'll just be like "...... sure"

6. I almost forgot to mention that Pirou turned 15 last month, according to his ID papers :) Donkeys have a longer life expectancy than horses, they can live 30-40 years on average so he's still a young lad really. Happy 15th birthday Pirlouit :)

7. I wanted to conclude with a nice aesthetic pic of Pirou's shadow on the road during all those walks, like I did with Poldine, but unfortunately donkey shadows do not have the chic je-ne-sais-quoi of llama shadows. Pirlouit looks like a hammerhead shark wearing a tiny fez and that's not his fault.

#crawling along #i am so proud of him!#4 years ago i couldn't even touch him let alone halter him let alone... any of this #he's a great donkey. very curious and interested in the world around him especially iced tea bottles

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evilgwrl · 10 days

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Arranged marriage! With ghost where she’s from a small island and ghost comes to collect taxes well the island is just a few hundred short they can make it up next year? Right?! Nah ghosts is like mmmmm I’ll take what yall call a princess mean while she’s struggling as much as the other fokes on the island so when Simon takes her way and finds out she’s never lived the simple life he makes it his mission to show her the good that can out of this arrangement smutty if you would 😭 I’m obsessed with the arranged marriage trope with ghost he’s a cutie patootie

Arranged Marriage w/ Simon Riley

Holy moly I love this…

Thank you for this idea @creepytoes88 I hope you don’t mind that I made him a king, I just wanted it to flow with giving her a better life and the tax collection <3

King!Simon Riley x Reader

Archipelago

CW: Being sold by your family to pay off debt, sharing a bath, oral sex (f receiving), orgasm bc simon knows what to do ;)

Word Count: 2,623

Twisted fingers hooked under the bark, knees scraped with stagnant flora, coiling limbs of bushy thorns blistering around the tropical plains. There was a subtle burn that sunk through your thighs, muscles gnawing at your bones before you finally settled on a thick branch, wind hissing in your ear, almost warning you. You paid no attention.

Pupil-blown eyes stared off to the view in front of you, lapping in the vicious strain of turquoise, untouched coral glistening an array of colours under the harsh sun. There was a trickle of sweat that ran down the back of your neck, your hair thrown into a rough bun as you shielded yourself with raggedy, overworked fingers.

You watched the skerries surrounding your island, a flurry of birds swooping low before nestling down on the warmth of the rocky floor. It was a peaceful sight. Nothing but the low crash of waves to be sound, the occasional calling of a fellow Islander working its way through the palms and out of the sand, before landing in your ear.

You felt the prickle of pain shoot through your feet as you landed on the ground, the grass covered in speckles of yellow dust sticking in between your toes as you hurried down to the village. Any bit of tranquillity soon disappeared as your eyes locked into the sight of the townspeople, the Island far too small to accommodate such needing families.

“Y/N! Where have you been? The King shall be here soon and you’re off running with the fairies.”

Your Mother’s tone was harsh and reprimanding, her eyes tight with wrinkles as she scowled, chucking a makeshift broom at you. You weren’t exactly sure what the difference of you sweeping would make, the life you live here, swept or not, is strikingly different to the one of a King. No matter how beautiful your Island is, your feet are permanently stained with grains of sand, skin is littered with dull scars and fresh scratches.

You understood her worry, offering her a gentle, apologetic smile as you followed her bustle of orders. Your Father was the village Chief, a wise man who led the people to survive without the worry of advanced civilisation.

You were seen as a headcase to the others. A woman whose head wasn’t fixed well enough to her shoulders. A dreamer. Your mind was amplified by the need to do more, to see more. Untouched beauty too turns mundane when you’re not allowed to experience it.

As night fell, the waves seemed to settle, burying themselves in the crops of sand that spanned around you, 10-legged creatures hiding away in the cocoon of a cracked shell. Palms slept with the safety of coconuts that would blossom into the town’s delicacy, the meat tender on the tongues of children, the water fuel for the fishermen. There was a large bonfire lit, the earthly crackle occasionally popping as a spark flew out, hissing against the cool air before dispersing into a drag of smoke.

Girls chattered around you, smoothing down their appearances as they used crushed berries on their lips and the apples of their cheeks. You were never fussed about the King, hardly paying attention to him on his previous arrivals if he even bothered to show up. You took note of his lack of empathy, normally sending one of his men in his place, unbothered by the Island that’s supposed to fall under his command.

You heard the ship pull up, wood striking against the ground as it split between the beach, a carved woman tangled to the figurehead, flowing hair etched between wood and a man’s knife as she breached the island. They were a loud bunch, deep voices echoing across the Isle as your father walked down to greet them formally.

The air grew silent, thick smog suffocating the air as your father appeared, his figure shaking as he hobbled towards you. Toughened hands gripped your cheeks, stroking the sun-kissed skin to comfort you.

“Father, what’s wrong?”

“We- We’re short on our taxes,” he gulped, a hand planted in your matted hair as you scrunched your brows together.

“But how? We’re sensible, we work harder- How?”

“Things happen beyond our understanding sometimes, sweetheart, just know me and your mother love you very much.”

“I know? Why are you-” you stalled “- Why are you telling me this? What’s going on?”

“The King needs a wife,” he hiccupped as realisation set in, spine snapping into a cold flush as you attempted to wriggle free from your father’s grip.

“No-“

“I have to, Y/N, I don’t have a choice!”

“A choice? There’s always a choice! How could you do this to me?” The strain of a sob wracked through your chest, your heart beating eerily slow against your rib cage as you wailed out for your mother who only walked away, her face concealed by strands of hair. Hands coiled around your biceps, dragging you towards the ship as you carried on, cementing your heels into the dirtied sand to anchor yourself.

“Stop resisting,” A harsh voice spoke into your ear, nails breaking the surface of your tender skin as you nipped at the air, wriggling. Your limbs felt mangled as you were thrown over someone’s shoulder, your stomach caving in with a penetrative force as you choked on the air, saline tears streaming down your face.

Aching skin collided with the sand as you were thrown onto the floor, leather boots staring back at you as your head cocked up. His figure was tall, dressed in all black with a row of medals displayed on his breast pocket. His stare was dark, irises the colour of burnt whiskey, pale lashes flickering down at you before looking back up. The rest of his face was covered by a woven garment, handcrafted to perfection, painted with a white skull.

“Did you find it necessary to throw her at my feet like she’s some dog?”

“Your Majesty she was res-“

“It is a yes or no question.”

His voice was thick with malt, a hidden arrogance underlying his words as his eyes spoke for him. A veiny hand was offered to you, light scars tracing his knuckles before he lifted you, admiring you for a brief second.

“She’ll do. I’ll be back in 6 months,” The King spoke roughly.

The sea breeze was tranquil given the circumstances, the ocean rocking your tears to a halt as you huddled yourself away in the captain’s quarters. Your body was trailed with layers of silk, dirtied clothes moulded to your skin as you sniffled. There was a vast smell of salt, almost suffocating you as it burnt through your nose and hair. You scrunched your skin, rubbing at your nostrils before nestling yourself into a pillow.

You awoke to the sound of commotion. You took in the handful of women surrounding you, their hair tied back in a tight bun, protected by a frilly cap. They wore black and white dresses, aprons attached to their fronts and smiles on their faces.

“Good evening, your majesty. Shall we run you a bath?”

You sat up, hands creasing against the sheets below you as your eyes adjusted to the new scenery. You weren’t on the ship anymore.

“Where am I?” You choked out, huffing your chest out to look more intimidating. In reality, you look cowered, skin droopy with betrayal, burst blood vessels evident under your eyes.

“In your private quarters, the King requested we come to you, settle you in.”

You scowled, “I just want to be alone.” They left in a hurry, feet skidding against the floor in a squeak as they shut the large oak doors behind them.

The room was one for Royalty. The large bed was dressed in golden sheets, red swirls detailing the plush headpieces, solid gold baubles along the edges as tall stakes met the ceiling, lace hanging from them for privacy. Your feet hit the polished marble floors; calloused skin not used to such luxury that you almost yelped in unfamiliarity. Glass trickled from the overhead chandelier, an arrangement of crystals advocating flickers of light across the room, an occasional rainbow seeping through like a diamond in the rough.

Oil paintings hung from the walls, detailed gold wrapping around them as the figurines stared at you dauntingly. A plethora of books rested on shelves, a comforting sofa tucked away in the corner, highlights of red bursting through the stuffed pillows, plucked by the finest of feathers.

The room felt suffocating, the air a terminal sickness that wove into your lungs as you realised the severity of the situation. Your father – your parents, had sold you away to the King to pay for lost taxes. You were a miserable sight as you huddled over onto the floor, chest collapsing with cries as you attempted to grip the material beneath your knees, desperate for the sensation of sand.

Simon watched you intently from the door as he cracked it open, a deafening cough sounding from him as you looked up at him, bewildered.

“I understand the circumstances aren’t the best, but your people owed me, and they chose you as collateral.”

“I want to go home,” you hiccupped, facing away from him in humiliation. His leather shoes hit the floor, striding up to you in only a few steps.

“This is your home now, and in a few weeks, we shall be wedded. Whether or not you choose to invite your family is up to you, but I shall not tolerate disrespect. If you didn’t want the maids to tend to you, that’s fine, but I will.”

You watched his stalking figure disappear into another room attached to your quarters, the heavy pour of water indicating that he was running you a bath. You rose to your feet anxiously, popping your head around the corner as you took in the room. A large tub was carved with porcelain, wide in size with golden feet, bubbles guzzling under the powerful stream as the scent of lavender filled the air.

“Undress,” He spoke as you cocked a brow.

“In front of you?” You scoffed.

“You didn’t want the maids, now you have me. Undress.”

Your clothes itched as they were ridden from your skin, bare body flushed under the light as you attempted to conceal yourself from his bruising vision. The water scolded you as you sunk in, muscles relaxing instantly under the soothing oil. It was an irregular feeling.

You heard him shuffle behind you as you turned, eyes gawking wide as you took in his naked figure, cock resting low against his thigh. A squeak slipped through your lips as you turned around in a fluster.

His mask was off, his face a welcoming surprise. His brows were thick, bulging above slit frames, his nose slightly crooked with a masculine appeal to him.

“What are you doing?” you gasped, chest tight, eyes bulging.

“Bathing,” he practically snarled, “move over.”

Your belly felt hot, the unknowing feeling of arousal seeping through your pores as you adjusted in the water, the liquid rising as he stepped in before you were pulled back against him, bottom flushed against his thighs. You were tense.

“Relax, it’s just a bath. We will not do anything until you’re ready but after marriage, I will need heirs.”

“Heirs? I don’t even know your name!”

A hand coiled around your waist, tugging at the tender skin for a moment before it rested, settling at your upper thigh.

“It’s Simon, Y/N.”

“How do you- “

“What kind of King would I be if I didn’t even know the name of the woman I’m marrying?”

The air was hazy with steam, almost suffocating you as you felt yourself relax against his hard chest, delicate twirls of hair tickling against your spine. As your body settled, Simon washed you, entwined rag lubed with delicate soap as he massaged it into the crevices of your skin, any dirt seeping into the water. His fingers were long as they massaged against your scalp, digging any knots out with a gentle force before rinsing it.

You found yourself refreshed as you settled into the sheets once more, body fresh with a floral scent, skin drenched in almond oil, the glistening reflecting against the flame of the fireplace. The bed sunk in as Simon crawled in next to you, menacing frame wracking against yours. It was silent, the usual sound of waves and birds no longer hushing you to sleep.

Your fingers twitched as you played with the hem of your nightgown, letting out a low, exhausted breath.

“I shall not hurt you for as long as you are mine, Y/N. I hope you grow to trust me and understand that I am a man of my word. If you allow me, I would like to show you who I am and the life you can have here.”

You swallowed. There was an itch inside you that couldn’t be scratched, his words only adding fuel to an uncontrollable flame as you turned to face him, cocked up on one arm. Your gown hung low, strap dangerously low on your shoulder as he adjusted his vision back to your face, lips parted with a flushed manner.

“I’ve never experienced anything before.” Your voice was low, an evident streak of self-consciousness staining it as you averted your gaze.

“Let me help you.”

Rugged fingers lifted your gown up, silk resting against your stomach in a hunched manner as Simon gripped at your thighs, spreading them lewdly. He huffed out a hum of appreciation as you jolted in embarrassment. You were so open, so exposed to fresh eyes.

“No one’s ever touched you here?” He asked. You shook your head, gazing down at him with an unspoken innocence. You felt his lips curl against your thigh as he placed a gentle kiss to it, letting it rest against the warm skin before two fingers pulled apart your lips, glistening folds presented before him.

You felt pleasure tickle up your spine as the King placed a small kiss against your clit, a mewl escaping you as you instinctively attempted to press your thighs together. He let out a tsk as he looked up at you, amused by your reaction.

“Relax for me,” he said, arms flushed around your thighs before his tongue soaked up the middle, your juices drenching his lips as you squealed, your fingers wrapping into his dusty hair as he ravaged the taste of you.

The noises you made were wanton, slopping breaths soaking the air as he worked against you, slurping you into his mouth with an aggravated need for you. His teeth grazed against your sensitive clit, wrapping his lips around it before sucking, an obscene scream sounding from you as he continued the assault.

“Taste so fucking good,” he quipped, holding your belly down in place as your hips lifted, clit overstimulated by the amount of pleasure it only just began receiving.

“Sim-Simon, I feel strange- somethings happening,” you croaked, pulling at his hair in an attempt to stop him.

“Let it happen,” he growled, his tongue thrusting against your entrance as a finger pressed against your nub, rubbing it in circular motions as you began to hold your breath.

The pressure in your belly was turmoil like an unknown danger was approaching. Simon didn’t stop, the sound of your breath hicking stirring something primal inside of him as he held you down before the pressure inside you popped, a broken whine piercing the air as you came, hips rocking desperately against the King’s face as he growled against your heat.

He pulled away, spit slick against his chin, cocky smile on his face as you panted, chest rising and falling in a synchronised fashion. Your legs closed instinctively, wetness seeping between your bottom as you shivered, satisfied clit throbbing.

“I’m not done yet, sweetheart.”

677 notes · View notes

halcyone-of-the-sea · 9 months

Text

PREY

PAIRING: Hunter!Simon 'Ghost' Riley x F!Werewolf!Reader

SYNOPSIS: There’s blood on your hands again.

WORDCOUNT: 16.8k

WARNINGS: Intense gore, body horror, death, mutilation, weapons, firearms, knives, intended harm, violence, blood, descriptions of wounds, angst, fluff, protective!Simon, religious mentions, period time standards for men/women (1700s), etc.

A/N: The first of my reverse AUs is finally here! Enjoy!

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

The tale of the Werewolf extends back to around 2100 BC. It was written in The Epic of Gilgamesh, scored into a clay tablet by hands long buried—a corpse forever still in the earth so deep, the bones have yet to be found by greedy eyes. Perhaps the oldest surviving story in human history, and there is still a passage that bleeds into stories hundreds of thousands of years later.

In such, Gilgamesh, a man on the search for immortality, rejects a woman for the reason of turning her previous husband into a wolf.

“You have loved the shepherd of the flock; he made meal-cake for you day after day, he killed kids for your sake. You struck and turned him into a wolf, now his own herd-boys chase him away, his own hounds worry his flanks…”

And then, the tales spread, changed, through history and through spoken words of caution. Like water trickling from a well, down the shape of the wooden bucket delving deeper and deeper into a pit of age—of caution.

“The Beast of Gévaudan. Man-eater.” Through France

“He has a wolf-head, you know? Tall thing—short brown hair all over him.” Through Scotland

“Beware the man that changes shape under the full moon.” England.

Now, in the late seventeenth century, it all comes to a head. Even the people in 2100 BC knew that someone who changes into a wolf, or some bastard-like imitation of one, was very much real; it is very much an affliction that overtakes sense and reason. A curse.

Transferable down to the saliva of one entering your bloodstream.

You must never get within the beast’s sights.

—

There’s blood on your hands again.

Hunched over, your body quivers, and the bareness of your flesh in the moonlight is of little concern to you—trapped in a fetal position while the chilled wind howls.

Howls.

“Get out of my head.” Your fingers grasp at your scalp, pulling; ripping. A sob jaggedly slashes your throat open. “Please,” you rattle in a fast breath, the grass snapping as you writhe. “Get out of my head.”

It had happened once more, and you can’t remember any of it.

The forest is deathly still. No birds sing their songs—no breeze moves the long grass, patches trampled down around you as if a beast had staggered into the small clearing you’re lying in. Maybe it had. There are shadows that listen to your quiet panic, the low whines and gasping quivers of your throat; from behind the trees that speak in the way that only they could. The deep night creeps into you, and the moonlight bathing your flesh doesn’t push back the terror in your bloodstream.

Your body burns like you’ve broken every bone twice over, and judging by the blood stuck in between every line and dip of your skin, to anyone walking past, the analogy could be very real. Fingers flexing and bending, you try to force out the venom inside of your head with desperation befitting a dying dog, spine visible out of the skin of your back as you sob all the harder.

You tried to stop it—you had; you always do. But, just like every month when the full moon mocks you with its silver-hued face, it never works.

It never works.

Your eyes stare at nothing as you lay here, in this place of grass, blood, and bile, of corruption as deep as a vile sin of flesh. It came over you like a wave, fingers trapping your throat and bearing it to the caress of fangs. There were different names for it here, miles from your village and the terrified eyes that search the tree line; names coming from the hunters and their black deeds.

Shapeshifter.

Demon spawn.

Werewolf.

“I can’t take it anymore,” you shove the side of your head into the ground, pushing the torn earth away from the cuts of long claws. Tears flood the dirt until it’s wet and muddy, pushing the crimson stains on your skin away in long streaks. “It hurts, God, please, it hurts.”

The sound of your hysterics rises and falls in the stillness—the inactivity of fearful birds and beasts wondering if your fangs would rip from your gums and your claws would tear from your fingertips. Fur along your body the color of which leads to stories of their own spreading far and wide.

The White Wolf. The Specter of St. Francis’ Village. A hound from Hell.

More pale than snow, and sharper seen than a knife or blade through the black trees. Even if the memories of your shifts were fuzzy at best, there were flashes of those who’d seen your gargantuan form from the confines of their stone-cut homes. Those wide eyes. Yelling—screaming; sprays of blood as heads were separated from bodies—

“Stop!” You scream, your legs kicking out as your toes scrape the grass. “It’s not me! It’s not!”

There’s a call of alarm from deep within the woods, the flash of torches and bellow of hunting dogs. They’re running you down, you’d forgotten that in the depths of your breaking mind and body, and by the time your elongated limbs had set themselves back into a more human-like appearance, your spine cracking at every vertebrae, it had slipped your thoughts entirely. It always took you a long time to understand what had happened after…everything.

But even now, the shouts of the hunt are pointless to the visceral breaking of your consciousness, stuck between leaving bloodlust and knowledge of horror. There’s flesh in your teeth, and you wail before your fingers drag down your face, cupping over your ears. In the back of your skull, the panting of dogged breath echoes; running, blood, blood, blood. It’s a dance of fangs, of pale fur, staining every inch and flooding the back of your mouth. Drinking it down like water.

Flesh—lovely, disgusting, flesh rent and torn to the bone with smacking gums belonging to a square snout.

Who had you killed this time?

By the time the dogs had tracked your scent to your curled body, it was already too late.

“Here!” Male voices shift in and out on the backs of crows, hard and cruel. “It’s here!”

“Get the dogs on it!”

“It’s not me,” you mutter incessantly, not truly understanding what you’re saying as hounds burst through the bushes, all snapping teeth and slobbering tongues your eyes widen in an instant. Panting, your jaw clenches; long whines move your throat.

“What…?” Blinking quickly, the dogs surround you—having to be at least ten of them on their nimble legs and thin tails. Everything is distant to you; separated. A knife could be driven through your heart, and you wouldn’t even realize it until minutes later, bleeding out on the grass.

The hounds are afraid of you.

They dart forward and balk back, your scent driving them up a wall until rabid slobber drips from their maws. Torchlight pulls through the trees—quicker now, running. Fangs nick your shoulder and you yell, shoving up to your backside as the world swirls, shuffling away as the dogs snarl. Their eyes are red-huen. Drunk off fear and order.

Your head darts and shifts, blood dripping off your chin to travel down the flesh of your stomach and navel—so much crimson that the whites of your eyes are violent under the moon. Hands slipping over the wet grass, your face pulls and slackens in delirious confusion as you try to stand but fail. You cry out in sharp pain, and the dogs go wild in their kill circle, nearly attacking one another in anticipation.

You glance down and see the black crossbow bolt sticking out of your thigh.

The scent of wolfsbane in the air only then becomes clear to you, and the realization is slow. Wolfsbane—you’d been told about it by the village priest. It makes beasts of the night dumb and weak; minds unclear.

In a moment of clarity, the reason behind your incurable hysteria becomes clear.

Lungs heaving and eyes far-off, the hunting party bursts through to where you stay, and you look up in animalistic fear. Figures dip and slip into one another, faces becoming demons as the visages melt into twos and threes. You yell out, sniffling and sobbing, trying to back up until the hounds grapple onto your shoulder and rip a chuck out of your arm. Screaming, your hand moves back, shoving at its snout before hands staple themselves to your wrist.

“No!” You wail, injured leg dragging as you’re forced back into a heavy chest. Hot breath fans against your neck as multiple grips pull and touch you—shackling you down with rope and chains. Your throat screams itself raw, kicking and struggling futility. “Let go!”

You’re too weak—too drugged off wolfsbane and blood loss. Rotting teeth move across the canvas of a smeared painting, you can’t focus beyond the riot of your heart inside of your ribs.

Grubby hands snap under your chin, digging into your flesh as you cry, not able to move as the restraints are tightened. A silver muzzle is slapped over your jaw. Dark eyes shimmer as you rage—aggravating the bolt wound until fresh blood forms a puddle on the ground, which the dogs lick their lips at.

“Look at that,” a low, lust-filled voice eases out, and hands around your body tightening as you squirm, head spinning. Silver and wolfsbane. Your eyes snap to fight the sudden flood of fuzzy heaviness in your body. “Pretty little Hell-Beast, eh? Almost seems a bit strange to have the Spector be her. Think that hunter shot the right bitch?”

“Course,” another grunt, a hand grabs the top of your head, jerking it up as your head lulls along with the force. You can barely focus on the words being said. “He isn’t a fuckin’ twat. Killed a werewolf in the next village over, too. Heard he skinned the fucker and took its head for his mantlepiece—just like the vampire skull he wears.” A pause. The dogs are still barking—echoing out in the trees. You can’t feel your legs. “Isn’t that right, Hunter?!”

A shout is sent into trees as your panic breeds with the drug, eyelids drooping as your head is snapped and moved by your hair. Your buggy eyes don’t focus on the man until he steps into the torchlight, the crowd parting for him as the metal of your chains drags and clinks together.

It’s as if the very blackness of night takes human form.

The man, the Hunter, is tall—very tall. He looms like an aloof animal over most of the others here with his dark boots and his black hood, and yet, under the fabric, there is no whisper of his face.

Only the upper visage of a pure white skull, and two long, needle-pointed teeth where canines should be.

“Ghost,” one of the men laughs, groping at your bleeding thigh before you shriek, muffled from behind the muzzle, and weakly kicked out. “Good shot, Mate. Right in the meat of the thing. Gave a good trail for the hounds.”

Ghost blinks slowly, grunting under his breath as the large crossbow in his hands is shifted. He stays silent as your visible pulse hurries on as if you were a rabbit and not a wolf, watching from under the cover of his hood. The darkness of his clothes is blue in the moon—silver buttons down the length of a loose shirt and pants stuffed into boots. The hood is attached to a jacket, which itself extends down to his knees and sways lightly with every shift. The silent resting of weapons and tools is not lost to anyone.

Belt of filled vials and large knives; a firearm over his back, and two pistols hidden on either thigh. That crossbow was still in his hands.

Brown eyes openly dig into your soul, dead as a corpse, and your voice whines as your thigh is finally released with a laugh. Your vision blacks and comes back a moment later as you try to breathe from behind the muzzle, gasping. That skull on his face…you don’t like it. It scares you.

And the Hunter only continues to watch numbly as his wide shoulders stay stationary.

“Get the cage!” Someone roars, and you flinch, shrinking until a dog with short fur comes and nips at your ankles, the man holding you grinning sharply as you sob and shake.

“C’mon—expected more of a fight from you, Spector. Getting bullied by dogs, now? Ain’t that a twist of fate, then. Bet this devil’s whore can’t even walk with all that wolfsbane in ‘er, eh?”

A grumble of chuckles as the rattle of metal is in the distance. You grow more fearful, mind flashing to a burning stake and the trials you’d seen in village after village. No—no they can’t put you in a cage; they can’t put you on trial.

They’re going to make it hurt.

“Say we try it out.” A shadow comes closer and grabs you by the arm, ruthlessly shoving you to the ground. You cry out as your spine meets the earth, arms and legs kept under chains that tangle and screech in their metallic way. The rope that holds the muzzle pulls against your neck until you can’t breathe except in ragged wheezes.

“Go on,” they taunt, some holding back the rampaging dogs just to watch you flail and shimmy. Your face grows hot as you struggle to sit up—shaking so violently you can’t focus on anything but the quiver. “Put on a show for us, Beasty!”

Death would be better than this.

Tears hit the ground as the cage is finally brought into view, the men all groaning and annoyed that you hadn’t even attempted a forced shift or a desperate run into the trees.

Ghost’s fingers, you notice from the side of your blurring eye, tighten minutely around the body of his weapon. You do not doubt that he’s wondering if it would be easier to just put a bolt through your eye right now.

“Get it loaded up,” the Hunter’s voice is accented and gravel-like. As if rotting wood is being peeled back and scraped along gravel, he stares at you for a long moment and then glances at the dogs. “And get those fucking mutts under control.”

“Which one?” Is the low-blow joke, and the ruckus of loud amusement that follows makes you want to die.

It’s not your fault, how do you tell them that? It’s not your fault.

Your throat bobs in an attempt to speak, but you can’t move your jaw from behind the restraint of your face—held tight to you as the men come back over and grapple for you again. The priest was right, wolfsbane makes werewolves sluggish.

You can do nothing as you’re ruthlessly dropped into a silver cage, borrowed, no doubt, from the Vatican itself, and christened with holy water. But it was a funny thing, really, and the dark humor wasn’t lost to you even like this. There was nothing godly about this contraption.

Locked in, you shove yourself immediately into a corner and hunch over, grasping at your thigh as the bolt still leaks fluid in a long trail over the ground. The pain is so great in your head, that the physical agony is little—a bullet wound to a sliver.

Your temple slams into the metal, smacking into it as your eyes shove themselves closed.

Head hurts—hurts. I can’t think. Can’t think. It’s humming, my skull is breaking open.

Bile pools in the back of your throat, but the muzzle keeps it in, leaving you gagging as the cage is lifted with a grunt and carried by long poles; back to St. Francis' Village, no doubt, but you can’t…focus.

“Think you might ‘ave given her too much, then, Hunter,” one calls, slapping Ghost on the shoulder as the crowd follows after the panicking quarry. The large man only gives him a look from the side of his eye and the villager pulls away immediately, awkwardly chuckling before hurrying off after the others.

Brown eyes watch your bare body hunch and spasm, pupils wide as you’re carted off.

He’d been generous with the wolfsbane, truth be told. He’d expected you to be…Ghost’s dark brows pull in from behind his grim mask…he’d expected you to be different.

Humming under his breath, the Hunter watches the torches disappear into the trees and lets his gaze linger on you.

There was something…off.

Blinking, he turns, eyes studying the place where they’d found you with sharp attention that misses nothing—not even the birds that come back to settle into the trees again. Large boots shift through the grass, and as he’s re-settling the crossbow in his hands, his eyes find something glinting.

Watching, Ghost takes another step and brings his body to the item in the grass, hidden, before he kneels. Digging with large digits, the Hunter’s hands loop through the chain of a necklace, dragging it through the torn earth until he can gaze at it fully under the light of the moon.

Blinking in slight surprise, Ghost finds the body of a silver bullet hanging from the confines of a leather strap. Brown eyes shifting to look over his shoulder, the man listens to the cheers and merriment of the hunting party mutely. A simmering understanding brews in his gut. It’s only one that you could know from years of experience doing just as he had—hunting and being hunted in turn with a knowledge of all things dark and unholy.

It could never be easy, could it?

A low grunt later, the man sighs out a deep, “Fucking hell,” and moves to slowly stand, slinking back into the darkness.

—

They kept you in the cage and set it on display in the middle of town for days.

Shivering now from the cold more than the wolfsbane, you stay collapsed into yourself as people come past to poke and prod at you—even sticking knives into the slits of the cage and digging them into you like an animal until your flesh was marked and brutalized.

You don’t remember what it’s like to not be bloody.

The bolt wound was festering; infected. You dare not touch it, because the pain only makes you want to vomit, and if you do, you’ll most likely suffocate on your own bile before the trial ever happens.

Yet, on the fourth night of this, as your eyelids flutter and your body grows weaker, a shadow comes to visit.

“You weren’t born one.” It isn’t a question, but the sudden voice makes you startle.

Eyes locking onto Ghosts’, your mind flies with fear—thinking that perhaps there’s more abuse that you’ll be put through. But no…the man has no weapons on him tonight. Only a long knife at his belt. The mask stays.

You stare, unable to speak as your fingers twitch.

Grunting, Ghost’s head tilts, gaze moving up and down as you curl in tighter around yourself. A cold breeze rips through the square, and your eyes clench closed with breaking will. When you open them again, the Hunter is kneeling by the cage, and holding up something in his hand loosely.

“You going to behave if I take that muzzle off?” You nearly gasped at the hanging image of your necklace—a silver bullet on a leather strap; that dark and heavy thing usually kept around your neck. A reminder.

After a moment of wide-eyed staring, you nod quickly to his question, a desperate, pleading thing without the need to utter words. Please, you want to scream at him, take it off.

Ghost’s eyes are as dark as a mound of dirt, sharply intelligent and filled with an unflinching reality. He doesn’t care what you are, and he won’t until you speak to him and let him judge your character far before any courtroom can. The man knows what a lie is better than any priest.

“Good,” he says curtly, accent far more deep as he thinks, re-capturing the bullet in his palm and standing before he shuffles it into his pocket.

You can’t help the anxiety as Ghost moves forward, loping to the side of the cage with the side of his eyes on you incessantly. It’s obvious how his other hand lays limp on the hilt of his blade that, with only one wrong move, you’d feel the chill of the edge with no time at all.

But the temptation of getting this muzzle off was too good to ruin, and so, you stay as still as you’re able as crows call in the distance and the deadness of the town leaks into your blood.

Ghost moves his free hand and orders, blankly, “Closer.”

You hesitate, body tight before you drag your face closer to the bars, angling it parallel with the metal so the tight bind on the back can be taken up. The fear can be smelt the second your eyes have to break contact with his with the turn of your head—neither of you trusts the other.

Ghost hums under his breath at the sight of your broken body coming farther into the open light of the moon, the whites of your eyes all the more visible from under the slathering of blood and tears. He hadn’t been absent to witness the abuse you’d been put through, even if the coin from his successful hunt was feeding him at the inn, a small window allowed the tight view of your torment at the hands of the people you’d once lived around.

But the reality was that you’d killed people—scores of them—and yet the worst part of it was that he wasn’t sure if you even knew that.

It took four nights for him to break his only rule: never get involved after the job’s done.

But the hunch he had was too important to ignore.

Large fingers latch onto the knot at the base of your skull through the cage itself, Ghost grunting at the sight ahead of him. The rope had been gradually chafing over your flesh, peeling back hair and skin until only the bloody meat was left—Simon had to wonder if the people of this village even wanted you alive for the trial or not at this rate. You’d be dead by tomorrow if that infected bolt at your thigh wasn’t taken care of.

Despite himself, a part of his chest tightens at the sight of the thing sticking out of your leg, dripping a yellowish puss. It had been a good shot, and he had overcoated the bolt in wolfsbane.

Ghost hadn’t expected you to be so susceptible to it—most werewolves only got slower, but you…you seemed to have a stronger reaction. He files that fact away and tilts his masked face to the side.

Grasping at his blade, the sound of a knife being slipped out of a sheath makes you startle, jerking your head back and shoving away even as your muffed whine of pain falls out. Ghost momentarily readies himself for an attack, but the way you force your mangled body to the opposite corner has him grumbling out a hard, “Easy.”

The Hunter raises the blade, watching you with unblinking eyes. Your body shakes; panting. It was like calming a feral dog.

“You want the thing off or not? Have to cut it.” Once more, the man rises and walks over, boots almost silent over the small raised platform the cage had been set on like a trophy, you inside are comparable to the golden coins that greedy eyes touch and run their dirty hands over.

Your mind is a troubled thing as you watch this Hunter and his crude knife come closer, kneeling again, and motioning with two fingers to shift your head.

“Out ‘ere,” Ghost says, brown eyes not letting you guess anything about his true motives. “Don’t have time to fuck around. Guards’ll make a round soon and I’d rather not get caught wide-eyed.”

Your brows pull in, hands clenching and unclenching in your lap as goosebumps travel the length of every limb. You were tired—hungry and thirsty; there were open wounds that burned with infection and ones that were crusted over with dirt and grime. You can’t feel your toes, and the tips of your fingers have long since gone numb.

The thought of getting this muzzle off was like the promise of heaven being dangled in front of your nose. Your hesitation this time is far longer than the first, moonlight glinting off the visible blade in Ghost’s hand as he stares. That mask holds death.

The hood is gone from him—only that pale bone left and sewn into dark, dark, fabric. The sharpness of the teeth leaves your throat bobbing in a nervous swallow as your head carefully shifts to rest on the bars. Bending, you present the knot once more and try not to focus on the way Ghost’s attention is fully on your expanding lungs; the pulse that is seen through the meat of your neck.

But he says nothing before his fingers once more grasp the rope and the tip of the knife slips up. You don’t even feel it before the sudden slackening of the muzzle, and then the thing slips from your face before it slaps the bottom of the cage with a dull thump.

The first thing you do is vomit.

Spine pulling in, your body jerks as the bile that had been in the back of your throat rockets out, restrained hands slapping the ground as the acidic concoction leaks from between your torn lips. Face on fire, you choke and retch for what seems like minutes before you can finally breathe in the damp air—the innate shame and disgust rolling through as you cough raggedly.

It’s only after you’d forgotten the man kneeling outside that he seems to remind you of his presence with a grumble.

“Breathe. It’s no use if you can’t speak to me.”

A weak, quivering glare comes across your eyes, saliva dripping off your chin as your tongue moves to lick at your lips. But the brown gaze is as immovable as stone. Finding it pointless, your hands come up and delicately touch the base of your skull, only making you flinch when the fresh blood pools down and over your neck, licking at your shoulders. Tiny droplets fall to hit the metal one at a time.

Ghost’s fingers twitch as he puts the knife away.

“Who bit you?” You stare at him, hands falling before your wrists rub at the aggravated skin of your jaw. He shifts his head, voice slow but heavy. “Speak.”

“...I’m not a dog,” your voice is scratchy, hoarse. You send a small glance his way, mouth open and nostrils flaring in an attempt to bring in the oxygen you’d been lacking.

“Really?” A hidden eyebrow is slowly raised. “Hell, coulda fooled me.”

“Damn you,” you whisper, not meeting his gaze as you shuffle back. The crossbow bolt catches on one of the cage’s bars and you bite on your lip to stop the shrill yell that threatens to exit. Head moving, you lightly slam your skull into the wall in pain.

Breath hitched, you clench your trembling jaw tight.

“Speak or don’t,” Ghost grunts, and he makes a move to stand. “Your funeral.”

A spark of fear stabs you as he begins to shift, and you can’t explain why. Perhaps it was because it was the first conversation you can remember having lately that wasn’t one-sided or on the edge of a blade.

“W-wait,” you stutter, blinking through the blood. The Hunter doesn’t slow, and then he’s on his feet and fixing the gloves over his fingers, flexing his hands before his foot begins to pivot—

“Please, don’t go,” your voice is thin and pleading, echoing through the street. “I’ll answer your questions, any of them you want,” the sentence cracks through a dry throat, tears welling. “Please, don’t leave me here alone.”

Ghost had half of his body turned away before it went rigid; the side of his dead eyes flash to you, swirling with specs of moonlit silver. A hunter and a werewolf lock gazes, great beasts respectively brought together in seconds that seep into slow minutes of delicate need.

Knowledge and company. Understanding and a horrible fellowship.

The Hunter’s eyes twitch in their ever-narrow resting place, glancing away before he mutely moves back to where he was before.

He wastes no time.

“Who bloody bit you?”

You stifle a pathetic sigh of great relief, taking company with a man who had shot you not days before. Yet the ability to speak and be heard was a commodity that was dimming each and every day.

“It was already fully turned,” you speak quickly, tongue tripping. “A big wolf—a gray one with eyes like the sky.”

Ghost glares to the side. Gray? There were no contracts for gray werewolves with blue eyes in the area. Only you—only Specter. The next question is just as stiff.

“When?”

“Three years ago,” your lips move. “Only three years, I promise.” Brown eyes narrow slowly, fingers tapping the fabric of his pants once before he makes a noise in the back of his throat. Ghost’s jaw clenches, mind working through the hoops that need to be jumped.

To you, the questions might seem pointless, but to a hunter, they were important—very important. Werewolves who are born afflicted with this moon-drunkenness are different from those turned by a bite. Not only are shifts from turned werewolves more violent, more deadly, but they rarely know their own actions from that of the frenzy under their skin; those that are born as such are rarely out of control, unlike your faction.

The only question now was if Ghost could condemn you to death when it was obvious your human form was entirely different and you had no semblance of an idea of what was going on. Was it even his problem to care about? Even looking at you now, the man blinked away from cuts and inflicted injuries—the muzzle on the ground.

The blood and the bolt.

He’d known it had been a foolish play to bring all of those townsfolk with him on this hunt but he needed their knowledge of the terrain; he hadn’t passed through St. Francis’ before. At the time, Ghost hadn’t been averse to assistance as long as he got the job done in his own fashion: capture or kill, the contract had stated. Rarely was he known for capture.

Maybe, deep down, he’d known something was already wrong about this.

“Show me it,” the Hunter grunts, staring you down, a deep anticipation growing in his bones. He had to make sure you weren’t lying.

You lick your lips, face pulling with every twitch and sway of your form. The black at the edges of your vision was coming back, and you blinked quickly, chains dragging before you shifted your back with a quivering breath. The punctures were difficult to see through all of the gore, but Ghost made do as he grabbed at the waterskin at his waist and the rag hanging from his belt.

Flooding the fabric in the lukewarm water, he hums out a firm, “Don’t move. Cleanin’ it,” before you feel the press of the rag to your back.

Gasping lightly, you almost jerk away before the sensation becomes a nearly welcomed one—the drag and slight scrape of rough material. Your averted eyes dip lower, staring at nothing as your heart momentarily slows to a normal pace. Ghost cleans the areas where the swell of scar tissue is the most obvious, and, one by one, the violent groves spread out like a slash of paint over canvas. Along the left side of your waist, the blood gives way to a dented ‘v’ shape of healed punctures. Deep, dragging; a point to where your side was almost ripped away before it broke off swiftly.

Ghost’s dark eyes fight the need to widen, and that hidden blankness stays.

A great gray wolf with blue eyes…

His mask tilts, head shifting as his gaze moves slowly. Gloved fingers twitch to touch them, moving in an almost examining way that befits a surgeon and not a decapitator. Your breath is held in the back of your throat, but you sag nearly entirely into the bars of the cage, growing more unsteady by the second.

The scent of infection is so strong it makes your head burn, and you’re overtaken by it as Ghost’s presence suddenly disappears.

You don’t know if it’s minutes or hours before you understand that you’re alone again, but when your limp neck finally turns to wonder where your silent captor is, you are greeted with nothing but moonlight. Blinking through the sludge behind your eyes, the sinking in your gut was stark and sudden—like a knife dragging itself from gullet to navel.

But all you offer is a light whine as more blood moves to cover the places where Ghost’s rag had just cleaned. You were scared of him, no doubt. A hunter through and through down to the vampiric skull on his face and the shroud of death at every inch of his form.

He’d shot you and drugged you with wolfsbane. Found your necklace.

So why had he talked to you?

Your head is too muddled for this, too delicate. Like the crimson under your nails, it dries and flakes off of your brain as the lack of distraction breeds stored agony. There wasn’t anything left to focus on besides the upcoming trial, your death, and the pain that doesn’t let you sleep except for now, on the brink of not rest but unconsciousness.

And at the sound of a key being slotted into the silver of your cage’s door, only then does your body slump with the weight of doom.

You don’t even feel the hand that grasps at your ankle.

—

The sway of the horse makes your teeth clatter with every clop of hooves.

Your conscience mostly comes and goes, only staying in thin seconds where you feel the press of clean bandages on your afflicted flesh and the tipping of warm broth into your mouth. Grass under your head.

Blankets being shuffled over your clothed body when you shiver.

When you’re finally able to speak, when the horse is moving along and hands keep your back stuck to a strong chest, it’s a low, garbled, “Ow.”

Ghost barely blinks down to your head as it slumps to the gait of his horse, glancing before his attention returns to the thin forest trail ahead of him. You’d made noises in your sleep often enough—this was no different except for the fact he felt your shoulders flex.

Slowing the horse with a pull on the reins, the dappled mare settles to a walk.

“You up, then?” Ghost hums, his hand around your waist tightening as you groan under your breath. “Good. Thought I was dragging a corpse—would have wasted my bandages.”

Your eyes shudder as they open into the light, having to focus on moving them before the sting of the sun makes them water. But you do, and then the confusion outweighs the numb stinging of tended wounds.

Head shifting, you look behind you slowly with wide eyes as the horse under both of you snorts.

Brown eyes watch you before a dark brow twitches upward. “What is it?”

You just blink, mouth slightly open.

“Where…am I?”

“Forest.” Ghost states matter-of-factly.

If you had the energy to glare, you would have. Seeing that nothing will get the man into a proper conversation—he was a brick wall even now—you look down at yourself and land on the scarred forearm that keeps you secure on the saddle. Ghost’s gloves were still on, but the sleeve of his dark shirt had ridden back to his upper forearm, and in the wake of pale skin, you find the black ink of all manner of warfare.

Werewolf skulls; vampire fangs and fire. The slash of inkish chains with skeletons.

Your lips thin, your senses slowly becoming your friend again as you stare at the snarling face of a needle-hewn wolf. Eyes tightening as the horse moves to the left, your body follows the reactive action before Ghost’s pressure tightens once more, visibly veins behind the pale flesh. You move on, seeing the thin tunic and pants over your body—feeling under that, the bind of wrappings with the scents of mashed yarrow leaves in the fabric.

They’d been re-applied recently, too.

“Stay still unless you want to re-open them,” Ghost utters, eyes scanning the trees for unseen threats. It was midday by now, the sun high above the trees watching the both of you on your trek to seemingly nowhere. “We’re far enough away, but I want more distance before I take the time to close them fully.”

“The trial,” your arm moves up, fingers grazing the side of your nose before it falls back down. Ghost can feel the air heat with unease. “The…the cage?”

“Trial was two days ago,” he draws, thighs shifting over the saddle. “Give or take.”

The confession isn’t as shocking now that you have woken up here, but the lack of remembrance on your part of that time startles you. It’s a blank slate—just like the aftermath of your shifts. You don’t like not knowing.

The next question comes out with a haggard cough, sweat dripping off your nose. “Why?”

“You’re going to tell me ‘bout the werewolf that made you,” the Hunter grunts. “And you can’t speak if you’re lit up like a pig on a spit. Took you the night we met in the square.”

Through it all, Ghost barely looks at you—always his attention keeps to the trees and the shadows that linger; seeming to listen. He knows more than anyone that they do.

The horse continues on, your pain surfaces again, and with a shuddering breath, you fall into a fitful sleep once more. The arm around your body tightens, and the warmth it lends is accented when Ghost’s shifting gaze glances at the top of your head. He wears an expression he can’t name yet.

When the throws of fever pull their curtains back for the last time, it shows you the slats of the attic above your head, wood polished and clean as the heat of fire moves over your body. Pulling a large inhalation of air into your lungs, you blink softly as if clearing away cobwebs with a broom—willing sense to return in the few seconds it had flown away.

The furs are warm.

In the village, you weren’t anyone of standing. A simple woman—unwed, and, thus, unimportant due to the era the world sees itself in. It wasn’t all bad…namely, it hid your affliction far longer than you could have hoped it did. You had a small piece of family land passed down to you on the edge of the village, and that was where you stayed. Nothing fancy; a hearth, a large, single-room property with a garden and a well. You were known to keep sheep, a fact that had caused perhaps a few hysterical chuckling fits when, every full moon, one or two went missing, but it gave you the ability to accumulate money and, more importantly, an alibi.

Who would suspect a werewolf to own sheep?

But this home already had a more detached feel to it—something removed. The air was sterile, somehow. Groaning, your face tightens before you rise to the palms of your hands, muscles quivering to keep the strength your stubbornness gives to them. Half-vertical, you turn and study the area.

Square, the four walls are stone with mortar and clay to keep the rounded blobs together. You’re on the ground floor, a staircase to the far right while the bed is stuck into the left corner; a nightstand sitting void of all except a single chamber-wick holding an unused candle. A sturdy table with one wooden chair, a stone fireplace set into the same wall the headboard is level with, and a large oak door.

There are runes written on it.

You can’t make sense of what they mean, but when you see them, your tiny-pupiled eyes slip to the rest, all placed at windows or near some point of entry—unassuming things until you realize why they were red in color.

Your shoulders tighten, and whatever bit of magic moves through your skin lets your nose pull to the scent of human blood.

You clear your throat and look away, licking your lips with a dry tongue. Moving your toes under the two bear furs that rest at your abdomen, you notice the lack of earth-shattering pain that accompanies it, and, shifting a hesitant hand, you grab the edge and push it back a bit farther.

Bandages with perfect ties meet you, void of any crimson staining.

Truth be told, you expected more of a Hunter’s home—skulls; trophies. The town always spoke of burnt bodies strung up on crosses that mark the property of those in this profession, a ward and a sign of grim hope. Vampires mostly, wasting away in the brutal sun. Others as well. Werewolf fur and witch bones shoved in blessed boxes.

This place is almost normal, you think, thighs shifting over the dip of the bed as your finger runs the white wrappings where the bolt should be. Your mind dares not go to how he got the thing out of you, and at the stretch of sutures, you take your curious grip off of it entirely.

Looking around once more, your brows furrowed tightly.

Where was the man? The hunter responsible for your current predicament? Ghost. With his vampire skull mask and his black attire—a hellhound with dark ink and intentions. More importantly…

Why were you still alive?

Your memories come back slowly as you stand, bare feet moving to the floor as the tunic over your upper half falls to your knees at the verticality of your spine. They creak a bit, the bones, at the ability to stand fully upwards and not be impaired by bars of silver. A strength seeps through you slowly.

In the deafening silence, you clear your throat tinily and lightly itch at the clean flesh at the back of your neck where the muzzle sat; rubbed raw now scabbed and healing with the spread of natural oil balms. Taking in a slow breath, you step forward with a heavy limp and watch the door, glancing at locked trunks and cupboards, eyes blinking. Your muscles ached, but the sting only served as a way to remind you that you were still here—living. Few in your position were granted second chances.

You’re about to study the runes at the door when you’re called to with the creak of the stairs in your left ear.

“Wouldn’t recommend it.” Your head snaps over, blinking quickly.

Ghost carries the leather holders of his twin pistols in one hand, the bodies of the weapons in them hanging as he comes to ground level one step at a time. Brown eyes glance over through the confines of his skeletal face-covering as he walks to the table, placing down the items.

“Keeps the spirits out—smudge ‘em and the house gets haunted,” he grunts. “Rather not bleed myself again to get the runes copied.”

You stare in mild shock, sound sparking from the back of your throat. “...Right.”

Side-eyeing the markings, you shiver and step back from the door, silent as Ghost seems to focus on his task at hand—looking over his weapons.

Large hands running the metal and wood, the pistols in his grip shift as the drying light of the day streams in through the curtains of the windows. He touches them intimately, knowing every grove and dip until he tilts one and rubs away a slash of dirt from the barrel with his bare thumb.

You quickly turn awkward, looking down at yourself and the bareness of your lower legs. It wasn’t lost to you that the man was the reason you were in this situation in the first place.

“You shot me,” you grumble—not unlike someone who had a knife to their throat.

“Affirmative,” Ghost says nonchalantly. You get a slow, blank glance and nothing more.

“Have you drugged me?” You ask, heart speeding up. There wasn’t anywhere to go—not without an escape plan and with Ghost in front of you.

“Wolfsbane?” The Hunter shifts his thighs, boots moving over the hardwood. “Negative. Not yet.”

“Yet?” An attitude seeps in, lips thinning.

Ghost sighs under his breath, slipping the pistols back into their holsters. “Forgetting about how we met, Love?”

“No,” you huff. “Not really.”

“Perfect.” Eyelids pull down slightly. “Don’t.” Ghost nods his head to the table's chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sit.”

“I told you I’m not a—” A sharp, numb look makes your snappy reply stall itself, and you stand there for more than a minute before you find the pointlessness of this.

You limp forward and sit in the chair.

Looping your arms around your waist, you glare to the side as your skin crawls at the unblinking eyes that stare. Ghost rolls his shoulders, tilting his head.

“What do you know about the werewolf that bit you beyond appearance?”

“Nothing,” you chuckle hopelessly, moving a finger in confusion. “I…I don’t know why you’re asking me about it—it’s not like I had a conversation with him.”

The Hunter blinks at your sudden confidence, unable to separate your form now from the one in the cage; blubbering ceaselessly in a grassy clearing. But lesser pains always bring out someone's true colors. As long as you told him what he needed to know.

Ghost explains with a sheen of dull annoyance. “Every turned werewolf holds a connection to the one that bit them. It’s pack mentality.” At your blank look, his brows pull in, the mask shifting. “You telling me you’ve never come back into contact?”

“...No?” Your lips dip. “For three years I’ve been by myself with this.”

Brown digs into your face, a small sheen of confusion slipping in to tighten them, around his biceps, Ghost’s fingers twitch.

You lick your lips, speaking up in the impending silence. “I don’t remember anything after I turn. Is that normal?”

“For you?” He mutters, still not taking his eyes off of you. “Yes.”

“I’m not going to pretend like I know what’s going to happen,” you shrug. “But at the very least I want to try and understand why I’m like this.” You open and close your mouth for a moment. “Before you kill me, anyways.”

“If I wanted you dead,” Ghost grunts through a half-amused tilt of his head. He doesn’t beat around the bush. “...You would be.”

“‘Capture or kill,’” you huff. You’d seen the flyers; heard from word of mouth. “Right.” You sigh. “They’ll track you down, you know. They’re not going to just let you take me.”

“They won’t make it through the forest. Bastards would get lost on the trail.” The Hunter moves until he can grasp the waterskin from the counter, dragging it over with his hand. He tosses it to the main table in your direction after he comes back over, and you hesitantly reach forward and pull the top off. Ghost changes the subject back to his studies of your condition closely. Dark eyes slip down your front as your lips part to take up the liquid. “Before your shift, tell me what you see.”

Your throat bobs as you drink the water, thirsty as it soothes your dry mouth. You hum, but the inquiry makes your hair rise. Your arm wipes at your mouth as you lower the waterskin, a small thankfulness in your heart. “It’s less of what I see and more of what I hear and smell—blood; metal. River water. I…” Your chest tightens. “I feel my bones breaking and I hear howling mixing with whispers.”

“Whispers?” Ghost leans, eyes alighting with dim interest. “What’re they saying?”

“I try to block it out,” you whisper, not exactly answering. “Makes it go faster.”

A long nothingness ensues.

The impending night grows deeper, and then Ghost finally speaks again after you begin to shift with unease. He nods firmly, tilting his head as if it’s already been decided.

“Next full moon, you’re going to listen to them.”

Your horrified face snaps up. It’s a moment of stuttering before you force out a heavy, “What? No!”

He’s already turned, moving back over to the stairs and placing one foot on the steps.

“Ghost!” You yell, face devoid of blood.

He side-eyes you. “Go back to bed. You’re dead on your feet.”

And then the same man who shot you in the thigh with little remorse disappears into the attic.

—

The Hunter was a strange beast.

The days the two of you spent together were mostly silent—left with tight stares and tense shoulders. Clipped sentences.

Ghost, for what it was worth, gave you space in this small house; as much as you could get. He kept himself up above while you stayed on ground level keeping yourself occupied. You’d gotten spare trousers and socks, a jacket, and the bed was practically yours with how your scent rolled off of it now. Yet, you had never been permitted to go outside.

You’d seen the land from the windows—careful of the runes, of course, and it wasn’t anything… ghastly. A vegetable garden, a single-stall stable with a dappled mare, and a beaten-down trail out the front.

No livestock.

No bodies.

It was only when you had become ever more curious about your lupine curse that you braved the stairs to the attic—one week into the impromptu stay. It’s funny due to the fact that Ghost had never said that you couldn’t go up there sooner.

You stand now in the flat room with a sloping roof and find the man making bullets. It’s a long table, parallel to the walls in the center of the room; dark and covered in all manner of books and tomes. Grimoires tied up and locked. Racks of weapons with markings and blessings tied to sheets of ribbon…it was something you’d never seen before.

Studying it now, the contents were a dark fascination.

Ghost fiddles with his silver shell, mixing in gunpowder into the hollowness. He doesn’t speak until you do, but he knows you’re there.

“Tell me more about werewolves,” you speak through the air, and he waits before answering. “The ones who are born with it.”

“Rare,” Ghost comments, and you’re stuck by how willing he is to tell you about this. He puts down his bullet and picks up another. “Harder to find, even harder to kill. Unlike you, they know what goes on when they’re running ‘round. Fuckin’ nightmare to pick up the pieces—bloodbath.” You thin your lips. “Not all of ‘em are murderous, but they’re unpredictable. Can’t help but make packs.”

“Instinct,” you murmur, coming a bit closer. Ghost pauses, looking at you before huffing in the form of a gruff ‘yes.’ Your wondering continues. “But why am I alone then?”

“That’s the question,” the hunter says slowly. “Need to figure out why.” Brown eyes slowly move to you. “‘Fore more people end up dead. Or turned.”

“Can I,” you stop at the table, standing opposite the man. “Can I turn people, too?”

“No,” is all you’re given. Ghost’s eyes glint. “And I’d rather you didn’t bite on me to try.”

Your face heats.

Your attention focuses for a while on how he works—prepares for something unseen. He’d said he’d kept you alive to help him find the one who bit you, but he’d also cleaned your infected injuries, bandaged you, and fed you. Kept you warm. Safe. It was far more than could be said about your village.

However, it was strange how Ghost’s stark muteness was something that you found in the darker hours, a small comfort. When the moon was coming in from the windows, and you hid from its rays as if being stalked down, he once found you sleeping under the bed on the floor because of it.

He never said anything, just offered you a silent hand and helped you back out with a slow blink and a tilt of his head.

There was a distrust, obviously, but there was also an unspoken nearness. No one would make any sense of it—you couldn’t either. It was like a wolf and a raven; something built on hesitence but necessity. You didn’t like Ghost’s mask or his brutalist profession of shooting his wolfsbane-coated bolts, and he didn’t like that once a month you turned into a rampaging werewolf.

Comparable things, really.

But even here, in this workshop in his attic, you saw the need for this—for hunters. If you couldn’t stop yourself, there came a time when you had to be stopped. Truth be told, you expected it to be a quick and final end. Maybe that was just a foolish hope.

A silver bullet would have always been your final song, you believed. Perhaps the very one that had once swung from around your neck; the one you’d never taken off until now.

But then, perhaps that would have been your own brutalist profession.

“Thank you,” you nod. Ghost pauses, fingers stained with gunpowder. He blinks at the bullet in his hand as you continue. “I know you don’t care about anything beyond your work, but if you hadn’t gotten me out of that cage they would have burned me alive. Skinned me.” Your tongue pokes out of the side of your mouth. “I don’t know, but it wouldn’t have been kind. Job or not…thank you for getting me out of there.”

“I shot you,” he utters, voice gravel. Ghost seemed confused.

Your lips flick. “I never said I forgave you for that part.”

A smooth chuckle wafts out over the attic and your own softly mirrors. Your head tilts somewhat quizzically. “But, about that…did you mean to put so much wolfsbane on it?”

Ghost shakes his head, grumbling. A small sense of honesty leaks out. “...Expected you to be bigger.”

You blink, and then, a few seconds later, a loud snort echoes like a ringing bell.

The Hunter's unimpressed look only leads you to find him all the more enjoyable. “Shut it. Fuckin’ hell.”

A hand is waved from your party, dismissing the harsh snap. “Sorry, sorry.” You puff out amused air. “Spector not up to your expectations?”

Ghost nearly rolls his eyes, trying to focus on the task at hand. He didn’t mind your company, at the very least he knew he needed to keep an eye on you for any potentially forced shifts or hostile attitude. What he hadn’t expected was to find you so…different from your muzzled counterpart, your shared physical inhabitant.

He could almost call you endearing if he wasn’t so numb to the sight and scent of reality.

“Sightings were far between,” Ghost grunts. “Here-say. I took an educated guess—better to put something like you out of commission than drag my way out of a forest without legs.”

“No apology?” You try, tilting your head.

“None,” is the drawn response. “I don’t have regrets. You’re alive.”

Your fingers touch the outside of one of his journals, tracing the bumps and grooves of age and wear. You hum, but don’t reply. Most of your pains have been pushed back now, even if you still weren’t up to full strength. Food and rest helped, but the anxiety that perpetuated only lengthened the healing process.

When you can’t trust even yourself under the drunkenness of the moon, it only makes your fear of the sun worse. Everything made you afraid—most of all your mind; most of all, the future.

“Why do you want to find the werewolf that turned me?” You have to speak this, have to push. Your curiosity demands it.

Ghost puts the bullet down and grabs a rag from his belt, mask turning to look your way as he brushes off his hands. He pauses, looming with that gargantuan height—natural intimidation in the span of his chest and the trunk that makes up his front. You find yourself in his shadow as he rubs at his fingers with the rag, taking it away and slotting it back into his belt a moment later.

The man’s heat leaks into your body as he blinks over, glancing your form up and down in a single look; keeping a respectful distance but still making his attentions known.

He stares. “If it keeps biting people, there won’t be any villages left to take up contracts from.”

“Money?” You frown.

“Principle,” Ghost counters, chest rising and falling steadily. “There needs to be a middle ground. Too many feral werewolves, too few people. Cut off the head.”

“Ominous,” your form turns to his, itching at the back of your head again—the scabbing skin. “If what you said was true, how do you know the thing isn’t already dead? If it hasn’t tried to get to me, what was the point of making me?”

“Because you hadn’t left St. Francis’ by the time I put a bolt in you.” Ghost grumbles, rubbing a hand on his bicep, itching above the fabric of his tunic. He stretches with a grunt—and you see his shirt ride up and the pale skin underneath. You gawk for a moment at the length of scars and brutal muscle.

“Charming,” you dryly utter, stuttering in a brief second of pulling back your senses, but the Hunter continues on, ignoring you.

“That was where you were turned—your territory. You stayed because your leader is still close by waiting.” Legs shift, and all of a sudden, a body is over you, hands are on the base of your skull, pushing your own away as brown eyes dig into the injury you pick at.

Your breath hitches, tensing for a second as your spine straightens. You watch widely from the corner of your eye as Ghost runs a careful hand over the flesh. He puffs a breath, chest moving in a grunt that is both commonplace and expected, yet the brush of his chest to your shoulder is not.

You restrain a shiver, nostrils moving to the overwhelming swell of leather and gunpowder. Bone fragments; the tang of whiskey.

His skin as he runs a thumb over the edge of your wound.

“It’ll start cracking.” Ghost utters, and through his fabric, you feel the brush of speech. “Have to apply more balm. Stop messing with it unless you want stitches soon.”

It takes a moment more of his surgical study and a small clearing of your throat before you can speak. Your mind changes the subject for you.

“So…if my bite can’t turn anyone,” you breathe, nearly sagging as Ghost’s fingers catch in your hair, shifting it under his attention to get a better look. He listens, you know. He wasn’t good at talking, but he always listened. “Why did they muzzle me?”

For a brief instance, you think you feel the Hunter’s fingers jerk a tiny amount—some reactionary muscle twitch that leads your body to still.

Ghost can’t say why he did that, though perhaps it was the sudden flash of the injuries that he’d wrapped on the road back to his property that went over his eyelids. Or the cage—your pleading face aching for whatever small sliver of brutish company you can get.

The silver bullet that he still had in his pocket, attached to that leather cord. He knew the purpose; the intent. Just as he knew the scrape of scabbing under his fingertips.

“Control,” he grumbles, and it’s all he’ll say.

Your burning face is somewhat down-turned, letting him do as he must, study what he can. He hadn’t made any moves to endanger you, and besides the upcoming full moon, there was nothing here that screamed imminent danger. Danger as a general, yes, of course. You were a werewolf in a hunter’s home—it would always be…your eyes flutter when his fingertips drag over your scalp…it would always be danger….dangerous.

Ghost doesn’t think you notice it, but your eyes are drooping.

He watches after the slight shock wears off, a tiny smirk flickering the hidden skin of his lips after he realizes the reason. If you had a tail, he’d assume it would be moving in a soft arch by now.

The man was mildly amused at that, and before he moved away fully, he had to stop himself from uttering a sarcastic, ‘like that, then?’

He had to remind himself not to get attached to whatever…this was. He was using you as bait, as some key to his problem. Not a companion. The distance here had to be firm and heavy-handed.

“The balm is down in my packs,” he grunts, leaving just as his name implied before you had the chance to gather your bearings and the lack of caressing heat. You startle back to the attic room, eyes wide and face loose before Ghost’s retreating footsteps echo on the stairs. “Don’t bloody use it all, then.”

The front door opens and closes with a pull of weighted wood.

—

“I can’t do this,” you mutter, pacing alone in the middle of the night down in the living room

The full moon was tomorrow.

“I can’t do it,” you itch at the back of your head, peeling at the nearly healed flesh harshly. Your nails dig into the soft tissue, drilling like a knife. A bead of blood slips around your fingers, but it doesn't stop you.

It’s late—late enough to know that Ghost should be asleep by now. For days, the paranoia, just like always, builds until you are nearly as mute as your Hunter. No more curiously searching his attic; no more questions about his job or how he got into this business. Brown eyes had been lingering more as the days went by, this strange companionship growing. You knew, in his own way, he was…worried.

So silent, even he had been getting noticeably uneasy. Shifting legs and quick glances. Nights where you hid under the bed from the moon until lunch came around, Ghost speaking as easily as he could to try and coax you out to no avail. You, a feral dog with white-rimmed eyes.

At supper, only hours before this panicked pacing, you had told something to Ghost that made him double-take.

“If I can’t stop it…I need you to shoot me. In the head.”

He’d never answered, but his eyes seemed to get ever-sharper as the hours continued on. More tense. Ansty.

But…that was his job, wasn’t it?

“Can’t do it,” you murmur. Blood slips down your wrist. “It isn’t right—”

“Spector?” Ghost’s voice had become so familiar to you that the only thing that made your heart skyrocket was the sudden call of it. Your gasp is sharp from behind a panted breath, hand flinching away from the crater you were steadily digging in your skull. A long string of blood trails into the air as your fingers jerk away, and it’s only then that you notice the deep pangs of pain.

Your eyes shudder for a second as Ghost’s form makes it to ground level. He comes over slowly, attention staying on the way the moonlight makes the crimson stains glint from the dripping line seeping into the sleeve of your tunic. He blinks, and you both stand.

The man’s skeletal adornment was missing, though the fabric under remained. A loose sleep shirt and pants, stained by the rays of night.

“Let me see,” he sighs under his breath, a tiny rasp telling of the sleep he’d been awoken from.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” you utter. He doesn’t seem to care, grabbing your wrist and pulling the limb away as his body takes up presence behind you.

“Was already awake,” Ghost grunts, eyes narrowing in hidden worry. You calm down a bit at that, one less problem to worry yourself about.

The Hunter, quietly, leaves for a second and grabs his pouch near the door. With a muffled command, he nods to the bed until you’re backing up and hitting the back of your knees off of it, sitting.

Ghost lights the candle on the nightstand and opens his belongings with stiff glances your way. He noticeably doesn’t ask why you’ve harmed yourself like this.

“I can’t,” you say it like a plea for help. “Ghost, I can’t do it again.”

Hands fiddle with clean bandages and take out his waterskin. The man douses a rag with the liquid and comes over, shifting onto the bed and lightly turning you so your back is to him—legs half hanging off.

The hard press of cold water makes your breath hitch, and you bite your lip.

“It hurts,” you push out. Ghost knows you’re not talking about the newly opened wound.

“Breathe,” he says to you, seeing the way your sides expand with heavy lungs. Brown eyes flutter from the push of his large hand to the warmth of your shaking flesh. “Tell me about your home, yeah? Heard you lived in your own place.”

The question makes you double-take.

He’s asking me that? Here? Now? Hours away from perhaps another catastrophe?

Yet, you can’t help the slippage of your tongue as Ghost’s fingers rub into your scalp. The rag is lessened, and, soon, the material is rubbed gently over the sore itch of weeping skin. You fight a whimper and reply with an addled mind.

“It…it’s quiet. Calm. I always keep the candles going because I don’t like the dark.” Ghost works quietly and quickly.

“There,” he grunts, glancing at the flickering light of the candle he lit. He’d have to remember that. “And?”

“I kept sheep.”

He pauses, and, without meaning to, a soft scoff bounces off the confines of his chest. It catches your attention far better than a bullet could. Ghost shifts a needle and thread out of his gathering of items, taking away his limbs only for the short while it takes him to loop the two together.

“How many?” The masked man asks, amusement gone just as quickly as it had come.

“Only a handful,” you whisper. Your mouth opens and closes, glancing over your shoulder as the candle-light spills out over the room; casting shadows over Ghost’s face, catching on his long eyelashes. Those browns of his glint like tree trunks covered in dew.

“Please,” your words are muffled. Eyes wide and fearful, there isn’t anything that can console you on this. “You need to kill me.”

There was a dichotomy to you—a violent thing. You didn’t want to die, no, you feared it heavily, more than the moon, but the truth was that you couldn’t keep going through this. The unknowing. The breaking bones, the blinding pain. The understanding that nothing that you do can stop it.

“It hurts, Ghost,” your breath stutters. “More than taking off a limb, more than slicing yourself open and ripping out your intestines—it burns more than the light of the moon.”

The Hunter listens through all of it. He sits, he stares, and he hides the brimming sense of concern behind his dead eyes.

With a pulling of his eyebrows, Ghost’s free hand moves upwards and grabs your chin. Freezing, you study this phenomenon from over your shoulder, face on fire with eyes wide to the pale skin visible to your view. You hadn’t realized until now, but this was the most you’d seen of the man’s face.

You could make out the point of his crooked nose—the strength of his jaw under the form-fitting fabric. Cheekbones and the heaviness of his brows. Wisps of hair. He had eyes like a cat, you had to admit; something sly about them despite the numbness that seemed to extend bone-deep.

But his hands had been kind to you.

Firmly, Ghost’s fingers run your flesh, and he blinks softly before a low sound echoes in his throat. He pushes carefully on your jaw and shifts your head back forward so he can help you. When he lets go, your heart quivers in your breast

“I’m ‘ere,” he mutters, and you feel the first stitch enter the thin flesh of your head. You take down deep breaths, focusing on the scrape of his fingertips and not the point of the needle. Ghost can understand the fear of it—of pain. It’s instinct. He tilts his head and pushes out, “I can only ask for one full moon from you, yeah? No more. I just need one.”

“And if I can’t find the werewolf?” Your voice vibrates with emotion, staring down at your hands as Ghost’s chest brushes your spine. The scent of him was addling your brain; the rub and slide of his hands.

The Hunter’s jaw clenches softly. “...Then I let you go.”

It wasn’t what you were expecting, but anything from the time you’d gotten a bolt through the thigh was unknown territory, and, like a dog without a leash, you’d run into it. Your brows furrow, blood oozing down your neck before Ghost’s grip shifts to place the rag back again, swiping away firmly.

“Go?” He nods, but you can’t see it. “But what about the hunt?”

“I can manage.” The stitching pauses. The air is broken up nearly a full minute later. “You’re not evil.” Before they start up again as if nothing was uttered aloud.

The confession makes the sting in the back of your eyes start up again—a strong thing of confusion and vulnerability. Ghost continues his task, pulling together your skin one suture at a time until the injury is fully closed; clean.

“Chin,” he lowly states, and you allow him to tap your jaw, shifting it up so the wrappings can loop above your ear and over your forehead—securing them.

Even far after the blood has seeped through, the two of you stay.

—

Come morning, you already feel wrong.

Your body stays in bed, shaking—sweating. A large pain flairs in your chest over and over like a pulsing well in the earth, skin twitching with the spread of blood. Ghost sits beside the bed all the while, having dragged over his chair. He leans back into it, one arm over the side, hanging with the thing ever so often moving to rub at the back of his neck.

You don’t think he’s moved since he brought it over last night; since he got another candle to stick into the holder—push back the dark. To watch, to study, or just to stave off your rising anxiety is another question.

It’s only after the fourth time you try to rip at the stitches at the base of your skull that he finally grabs your hand and holds it silently. Now, his thumb moves over your knuckles—his gloves back on.

At noon, he tries to suggest eating.

“Hungry?” Ghost asks.

“No,” you say instantly, sweat dripping over your temple, your body partially buried under blankets. “No, I’ll just throw it up.”

Brown eyes glint. “Just one bite?”

Your mouth is already salivating—thoughts of wet flesh and blood in the forefront until you whine and shove your face into the pillow; panting heavily.

Whispers dance in the shell of your ears.

I’m here.

“Go away,” you whisper quickly to them.

Ghost pauses, hesitating. After a moment, his thighs tense with the action of movement, thinking you’re speaking to him. Something swirls in his chest, but he starts to stand nonetheless.

Your eyes widen.

“No!” Both of your hands latch onto the Hunter’s wrist, fear a needle stuck in your gaze. “No, not you. Stay, please.”

A silver cage covered in blood slides across Ghost’s slightly shocked look, but he only licks at the corner of his mouth and slowly leans back once more.

“Not going anywhere,” he says, accent dipping. “Tell me what you’re hearing, yeah?”

His hand slips back into yours, and he presses into your pulse softly, counting. The sun continues across the sky.

“I don’t like how it sounds,” you say, shaking your head. “It’s wrong.”

“Focus,” Ghost breathes, looming closer. His grip squeezes once. “It can’t hurt you.”

You shiver, eyes tightly closed as tears burn the back of your nose. “It’s howling.”

A suddenly gloveless hand spreads up your cheek, resting there and pushing back the sweat that pools. It’s calloused—scarred. You whine, head spinning.

I’m waiting.

Find me.

“I don’t want to,” you utter under your breath, words an amalgamation of slurring gasps.

“Spector,” Ghost calls, head moving closer. “Eh.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” your hurried panic is similar to a mind overdosing on wolfsbane. “Gotta go away—gotta get out—”

“Spec!” The Hunter’s quick bark makes your eyes pop open, and you lock instantly with brown orbs.

They’re tight, unblinking just as always. They offer just a few moments of clarity.

Ghost holds your head still while the rest of you shivers with cold sweats, you can hear the blood inside of his veins; his heart pumping. The scent of his skin was addicting to the point of memorization on the airwaves. You watch, gulping down breaths as your throat bobs.

Eyes dart you up and down, fingers spreading out to offer what little comfort he can. The man wonders if he’s completely in over his head.

Ghost pulls his face-covering up to his nose, and your heart skips beats at the sight of ravaged skin and stubble, scars spreading out like your own. Long ones, short ones, burn marks, and hyperpigmentation. He wasn’t pretty, but he was real.

Oh, he was real.

His grip on you strengthens until all you can focus on is him.

Ghost blinks, and you see his lips move. The gravel of his voice was never more clear. “Fucking hell, keep that head on, okay? Nothing’s going to happen as long as I’m here. I’ve got you.” He sighs out a low breath, thumb running your undereye as the small dribbles of tears begin to sneak out. Ghost murmurs. “I’ve bloody got you, alright? Let it happen—we can figure it out.”

He’d grown fond of you over the course of a month. You were curious; not pushingly so. Honest. Good. You’d been dealt a bitter hand, and damn him if his stone heart wasn’t stretched thin at the raw fear on your face. This wasn’t your fault, but he needed to find who turned you and stop them before it got any more out of control than it already was. If more unstable werewolves went running through the woods, there wouldn’t be anyone left in the territory alive.

“When you turn,” Ghost says as clearly as he’s able. “Go. Don’t fight it. I’ll find you.”

“Promise?” You ask, a weak flicker coming to your lips—eyes vulnerable.

Ghost nods once, and it’s all you need. “I’ll find you,” he repeats. “Doubt me?”

“No,” you ease, clearing your throat. “But…one more thing?”

“Anything,” the Hunter instantly says.

“Just don’t shoot me in the thigh again.”

When the claws start protruding from your nailbeds hours later, you’re bolting to the door with only one last glance at the Hunter and his half-pulled-up mask. Booted feet hitting the wood as he stands, he lets you go even as his thighs tense in a need to run after you. Patience was his beast to tame, but it seemed to have left him in the form of a woman disappearing into the tree line.

There is companionship in broken things.

Your body slips into the forest just as the creak of your bones begins to shift and bend. You fall into a heap, hearing the gargling of marrow under your skin like a call to sea. An urge grows to infect you; a feral need to run and hide. Biting back a shrill scream, a hoarse yell escapes instead—flesh rippling as your mouth opens, fangs breaking the supple mushiness of your gums as blood floods like a river.

Find me.

“Ghost,” you whisper, hands snapping to your head. “Ghost, please.”

Your bullet, you want your silver bullet.

A rabid scream rips from your throat, and back in the house, Ghost’s hands tighten into fists as he glares at the open door. He growls under his breath, eyes tightening in a certain type of anger that brews in his gut. The nights your shuffling woke his light slumber were more common than when you hadn’t, and every utterance was clearly heard to his ears. It had become a curse to him—how you’d met.

A regret was seeping in, a care, and now, as he forces himself to back up and head into the attic, Ghost clenches his jaw tightly. So unaffected by the horror of monsters, he was now at a loss of sense for this growth of feelings.

He wasn’t dull, he knew that some of the contracts he took marked him as a tool and not a person of stable mind. He’d done things he wasn’t proud of, and he would continue to do them for no other reason than they were the orders he was given.

But you had broken a piece of that off of him, somehow, someway, your face had seared itself into his retinas—speared him at the brutality that your community had treated you with. The muzzle. It was cruel, and while Ghost was precisely that, there was a limit.

He did his job, and that was that. Anything after wasn’t his problem.

You became his job, and the one who turned you was an add-on. Maybe if he justified it to himself, he could understand his actions better.

But he was already sprinting to grab his gear when the first howl shattered the night.

—

A white beast prowls the forest.

It stands on two legs, but it isn’t human—isn’t natural. It’s taller than a grown man is; snout pulled back in a soundless snarl that puts dogs to shame with rows of teeth so sharp, they look like pale knives. Its feet—large, splayed—soundlessly skate the ground until clawed fingers slam to the earth.

A nose inhales the scent above the dirt, tongue lulling as a shaggy tail lays limp behind a curved spine. In between the erect ears, under the thick skull of the werewolf, the rolling bumps of a brain spark. A pull.

Find me.

Your eyes are tiny black dots—and they blink once before you rise once more. A great growl moves inside of your chest, the large collection of hair around your neck standing on end.

I’m waiting.

But there’s something that keeps you here—standing in the grass as the moon shines atop your head, your fur nearly glowing even with the stain of bloody injuries. The remains of clothes are about a meter away; only strips of what was.

Your gaze looks over your shoulder, and your gargantuan frame lumbers backward until you can stoop to them—nose once more sniffing with your arms reaching.

Your fingers twitch, blackened claws digging through the ground as a near purr echoes in your throat. The scythe-like additions card across the strips.

Gunpowder.

Leather.

Whiskey.

Something you can’t quite name, but feel drawn to despite the tightening noose at your throat. There was something there you can’t focus on…something that you need.

Your drooling jaws snap, saliva coating the fangs until they drip off one at a time to stain the grass. Body shifting, your head lowers until your wolf-ish visage rubs against the fabric, licking at the sides of your gums as delicate grumbles slip out of your mouth.

A far-off howl leaves your frame freezing.

Eyes slipping back into the feral-inhumanity of a wild animal, your body jolts up, gaze to the forest trees and the rustling of bushes. The swell of rain on the clouds is in the back of your nose, and the previous attraction to the ripped clothes is lost as simply as it had come.

You were being summoned.

Ears twitching, the entirety of your body refuses to move to the sound; tensed and ready to spring on anything that moves if only to let off the spike of anger at the lack of control. The pull grows stronger, and it feels like something is trying to drag you away into the wilds.

This was the sensation you were always trying to fight—the one that led to the aggression; the hunt. You knew that if you followed that howl, whatever was left of your human sense would be gone entirely before you could stop it.

Yet, this time, there’s a nagging need to find the owner, and you can’t remember why.

Your large head tilts, feet spaced as the curve of your spine grows more aggressive—hunching forward as you snarl at nothing, claws shaking as your fur is more bristly than sleek.

Like pure white spikes.

In the back of your head, a thin sliver of a memory slips in. Fingers on the back of your head, caressing calluses and dark, dark, eyes. Clean bandages and gentle touches.

I’ll find you.

If the side of your vision picked up the shadow shifting from far off into the trees, your curled lip never turned that way. If your nose twitched to the heavy weight of a man’s sweat, it never shifted to point as a mutt would to the rustling bush.

Your body bolts after the resounding echo of a wolf’s howl, and it’s no later that Ghost slips after your clawed prints to follow.

—

Crossbow in hand, the hunter’s mask gleams in the darkness, his pale eyes twinkling. Bending down, he glazes at the long pushing tracks of your form—seeing the spray of dirt to the side and the broken branches. Ghost blinks, shoulders tense before he swiftly stands and continues on. The firearms at his thighs lightly rattle, and the bolts in his crossbow are already laced with wolfsbane; silver tips smelt a week ago.

He passes a river with only a single glance at the tossed rocks from the bed, sloshing through the water as the bottoms of his pants get weighed down. Ghost’s mind is on one thing only: make sure this plan won’t get you killed.

The bolts aren’t for you—the silver bullets aren’t for you.

He grunts under his breath, the dark woods casting phantoms over the ground. The Hunter’s legs shift through tall grass, and he carries himself with the ingrained confidence a man of his station requires. If he were anything less than a monster himself, he would have died ages ago. Ghost shoots and lets others come up with the questions, but he could never be called dumb.

Seeing what fast glimpse he had of your shifted form after the last time, he was struck by how erratic it acted. Snapping head, twitching ears, and roving eyes. If he didn’t know any better, Ghost would have called it rabid.

Yet, your actions with his borrowed shirt were…body-stilling, to say the least about it. It had made his gut swirl.

“Give me a trail,” Ghost utters to himself, brown eyes still picking up the dash you’d taken. His agile feet splash through a puddle, the beginnings of raindrops hitting his head.

The man grabs at his hood and pulls it up stiffly, frowning under his mask.

Rain would wash away the tracks.

“C’mon, Love,” he grinds out, body hunched. “Leavin’ me to do the dirty work, eh?”

It’s too quiet—even a collection of minutes later of hard hiking, the trees barely move. There aren’t any birds; no animals beyond the black bodies of crows in the far-up branches, waiting, watching with obsidian eyes that don’t blink.

Ghost isn’t off-put, but the length of his strides gets far tinier, carefully stepping over twigs and rocks like a soldier at war. Then again, he was at war. And if he was caught unawares, there wouldn’t be a bullet to pull out of his side, but, instead, a chunk missing.

His ears were almost ringing from how hard he was focusing.

Brown eyes shift from one area to another, and then, suddenly as if a deer, he freezes.

Ghost’s body winds up, fingers twitching from the stark trigger discipline of his crossbow downward instantaneously. No one but him can explain what just happened, but he knows when he has to listen instead of act. Stuck in a clearing not unlike the place he’s first met you, his feet rest shoulder width apart and his eyes stare blankly into the trees ahead.

Your tracks end here.

From behind him, just as the large raindrops slap the side of his bone-ed visage, the small crack of a twig makes his ears twitch.

A low snarl sets his hair on end.

Looking over his shoulder, Ghost is met with the same color that he’d become so accustomed to in a full month completely blacked out. Void. Lifeless to anything besides rage and bloodlust.

Your white fur was infected with dirt, blood, and leaves—a mosaic of ferality ingrained into your body; pale fangs snapping. The beast slips through the treeline, slapping a veined hand into the soggy earth.

Ghost only watches, eyes a mystery.

His finger shifts over the trigger, and for the first time in his life, he hesitates.

The man looks into your glinting orbs, the dripping saliva on your lulling tongue as your esophagus pants for breath. One hesitation, he always knew, would mean death. One mess-up.

You’d asked him to end it, he shouldn’t feel remorse, guilt, perhaps—he was still human, despite his appearance, but remorse was deeper. It left wounds that were harder to lick clean again.

…So why isn’t he sending a bolt into your forehead?

Ghost remembers the times he’d found you under the bed, your shaking, and the way you hadn’t allowed him to change your bandages the first few weeks you’d stayed with him; didn’t want him to touch you. The nightmares and the small smile you’d gain when he’d spew his dark, sarcastic words as if this was a joke. How you’d always thank him under your breath for the food he’d give you, hunted by his own hand.

A silver cage. Crimson blood. The sight of your pleading eyes when you’d told him to shoot you.

Maybe the two of you were far more alike than he’d dare to admit. And he currently won’t, not even on his deathbed. Not even now.

Ghost watches, and he waits.

He can’t do it.

Your body slinks closer, stalking with the sound of anger, nearly rib-shaking in its volume. Ghost’s jaw clenches, and his body shifts to face yours head-on. At the sight of the crossbow, your snarl turns into an air-biting rage, saliva flying through the rain.

“Spector,” he keeps his voice low, even. The sight he’d seen as you smelled his clothes had to mean something. Ghost tilts his head, moving out a hand from the side of his weapon in an appeasement gesture. “I’m not going to shoot you. We have a job to complete…get those fangs away.”

He wonders if ordering you around will even work. You had told him before—you’re not a mutt. Ghost agrees. No mutt was the size of a fucking boulder.

The werewolf’s claws drag—goring the mud as if a pig to tear apart.

“Spector,” the Hunter tries again. But something’s different about his tone; he drops it, letting it pull on a softer string. “I’m here to end this. We’re here to end this.” He blinks and lowers the crossbow completely. “Breathe. The night can’t last forever.” A breeze whips the trees. “I made you a promise.”

There’s a second, he thinks, where he can see something shift in your gaze, pupils slightly widening above the deluge that wets down your fur into a sopping mess that hangs off muscle.

“That’s a girl,” Ghost grunts, taking a small step closer. “Never told you,” he utters, eyes locked with yours. He sees your nose twitch minutely. “But if we get this right, Spec, there’ll be no more painful shifts, hear me?”

Your dog-ish mouth is closed, hanging off every word as Ghost comes even closer.

“I kill this bastard,” the hunter breathes, gloved hand still outstretched, nearing closer to the near-silver of your form. “The moon’ll have no claim on you. She’ll let you off the leash, Little Wolf. You get to decide when it happens.”

He thinks he has you now, back to some state of recognition in the addled brain that tries to see him as prey; as competition. Ghost’s fingers are close enough to almost touch you, but just before he can brush his gloves over your wet fur, your mouth opens in a display of untamed challenge. Your growl is enough to make the man unconsciously reach for his pistol, and in the time it takes him to realize the fault of it, you’ve already rampaged forward with an unhinged jaw.

Ghost’s eyes widen, taking a quick step back.

Your legs push off, and you shove the hunter out of the way just before the fangs of an immense beast can clamp down on him, your own finding the shoulder of gray, thick fur.

Fighting as wolves do, Ghost only needs a moment to recover and get to his feet, though the sight in front of him can rival any that he’d seen before. His crossbow clatters a few feet away, sending the bolt off into the trees with a metallic ‘twang’.

The two werewolves roll around the pouring clearing, snapping teeth and rending claws drawing blood that’s deep enough to swim in to the green grass. White and gray meld together—blue eyes like a knife to Ghost’s chest when he takes it in from between the sound of tearing fur.

“Bloody fucking…” the man trails, staggering as his palms slap to the pistols at his side. He blinks, shouting in more of a bark than even a dog could imitate. “Spector!”

The wolves pull and rip the other to shreds, flesh torn and limbs grasping for purchase. Bodies are slammed to the ground before getting tossed to the side, fangs flashing in the moonlight. Ghost watches crimson stain your fur a pinkish-red.

He can’t get a good shot.

The werewolf that turned you sinks its claws into your sides, dragging them downwards as you yowl, eyes tiny with aggression before your jaws connect with its snout, biting down with more force than a horse’s hooves. The monster screams—a garbed thing of fangs and saliva.

Just as easily as it called you here to it, as it stalked your Hunter, it bashes your body back into the earth and takes you by the scruff of your neck. Eyes wide in that lupine way, you lock on Ghost’s profile before your body is lifted, and tossed away violently.

Spine slamming into a tree, you hear the cracking and bending of your bones in your ears just after you hear the sharp shout from the man in the clearing, body dropping to a heap into the grass and mud. Angled head flopping back and forth, black infests the edges of your vision, coughing up blood that seeps from between your gums and slips down the back of your esophagus. Fur and flesh are stuck at the base of your throat.

Whining, your limbs drag and pull futility, eyes flooded over with crimson and fogged by rain. A great roar worries the air, sending long shivers over your spine as you try to rise to your limbs, a five-fingered hand slamming you back down.

Just before the fangs can clamp your throat, two great booms burst through the forest.

The wolf atop you reels back, great bellow escaping its throat when you can finally drag your head to look over. This beast was clawing at its chest, shaking its large head in an arch to try and dispel the shock of having two silver bullets entering its back—the gray head snapped around to Ghost, who held his twin pistols aloft with eyes burning with anger from behind his mask. An avatar of vengeance; a bringer of death.

The orbs inside of your sockets widened, nose twitching wildly as you bleat a quick warning bark.

Blue-Eyes rises, body far larger than yours would ever grow to be—on two feet more powerful looking than a bricklayer many years into his craft; tall enough to reach to the sides of black-shingled homes and pull itself up. Ghost takes one look and growls under his breath, knowing there would be no time to reload the weapons in his hands.

So he drops them and pulls slowly at the cruel blade in his belt until the gleam winks in the low light like a curved smile. Setting it in his hands, the small flicker of a sharp smirk on his lips is lost to you.

Yet, there isn’t a chance for some brawl between two beasts—there’s only the flash of pale fur and the final crunch of a body hitting the ground.

You bury your fangs into the wolf’s neck; the one responsible for all of your pain and torment spanning years of isolation. You feel the body seize as it drops, the last remnants of a dying brain trying to fight the inevitable nothingness that ensues, and, you only hold on the harder, the bloodlust seeping back in with every drop of life pooling into your locked jaw.

Your throat releases tiny growls of pleasure, biting a bit to make sure there wasn’t a sliver of a chance that something living was walking away from this scene.

Ghost pauses, and in the back of his head, he knows he should stop you. Brown eyes see the animalistic sheen of enjoyment at a fresh kill, the way you pull at the flesh until chucks peel away from a gurgling wolf. Even when the thing is long dead and the rain still slaps the earth, you barely let go until you get a hold of the meat and tear with a backward jerk of your snout.

“Love,” the Hunter sheathes his knife, taking a step forward. The blood was pooling under your body. How many of those were treatable? He had to know. “Let me see what’s—”

The eyes that lock on him are not yours.

Up to your ears, the entirety of your face was awash with the stain of life, dripping off the whiskers at your cheeks; your chin.

Before he can utter another word, he finds himself on his back with a snapping snout right in front of his face, two dead eyes staring deeply into his own. Ghost sucks down a quick breath, hand snapping to the large wrist shoving down on his chest.

He pants out, gravel accent far more deep than it was before.

“Easy, Spector. Easy. Eh—focus on me.” Your tongue licks at your fangs, body shaking. Ghost pushes out, “That’s it, then. It’s over, yeah? You did it; let's pack it up and head back home.” He grunts. “Recon even dogs get cold in weather like this—the bed’s waiting. Get a nice fire going.”

Ghost sees your face move closer, and his hand minutely shifts to the vial of wolfsbane on his belt. It wouldn’t kill you, but it could put you out of commission until your body shifted back into its proper form. He could carry you back—that wouldn’t be a problem at all.

But he was worried about your injuries. Even now the droplets of blood roll off of you faster than the water can.

Too much.

Brown eyes crease, darting a look down.

“Fuck,” he growls, seeing the carnage and the open meat. “Sweetheart, we need to get you checked out—you need to listen to me. Can you do that?”

He can see the conflict; the internal fight.

Your mouth moves with fast pants, claws stuttering over his gear futilely. You blink rapidly, shaking your large head in fast increments with small snarls.

“C’mon,” Ghost says slowly, fingers looping the vial. “Keep listening. Know my voice is utter shite, but only you can tell me it.”

Your head drops to his chest just as the wolfsbane is popped open, and, for whatever reason, Ghost pauses. He waits.

You take a long inhale of his gear—of the leather and the gunpowder, and just before the Hunter can dump the vial over your skin, the long blackish claw on your finger loops the bottom portion of the fabric under his bone attachment.

The man’s breath hitches as you let it rest along his nose bridge…holding it there as you drag your head upwards as if it were an impossible chore. Your mouth dribbles out gore to his cheeks, but the Hunter stares upwards into your eyes as they soften in a lupine way.

Inexplicably, you let out a bone-rattling sigh and slump into oblivion.

—

Come morning, you sleep under the spread of large fur blankets—clean bandages over your bare frame as the man has tended to you for hours. He mutters for you to slip your arms into a spare shirt after he finds your eyes open, not uncomfortable by your nakedness, though he wants you yourself to be at ease.

His brown eyes are creased, and you can’t remember what you’ve done.

You comply with small grunts and moans; more sore and cut up than you can recall ever feeling as a large tunic is slipped over your head by scarred hands.

Gunpowder.

“What did I—?”

“You finished the job,” he says, sparing you a glance as he shifts back with his eyes averting themselves from your visible legs. The sun seeps in through the windows. “It’s morning.”

You blink slowly, and the man eases you back down into the furs.

“I’m tired,” your voice yawns out—weak and brittle like the hope you’d had that this plan of his would work. Eyes half-closed, they blink at the hunter with a soft kind of care that you can’t remember showing before. Whatever pain medicine he’d given you, it was working. The underlying itch was still as strong as ever, though.

“Tired is good,” Ghost nods slowly, standing still until he crosses his arms and sets his feet. He’s in a fresh shirt and pants. There’s blood under his fingernails; traces smeared over his flesh. “Means you accomplished something.”

“Don’t think that’s entirely true,” you breathe. A pause. “...Why is your mask like that?”

It was half pulled up—showing off his lower jaw and the stubble. The scars that you already have memorized. Ghost shrugs, blinking those dead eyes of his.

“Ah,” he grumbles. “Forgot. Here.”

He reaches up and slips the thing off in one motion. Your loose brain takes a moment to realize the entire face you’re staring into, but the second it does, the image is engraved into your mind forever. You make a noise in the back of your throat.

“Better, Little Wolf?”

“W—” Your lips stutter, new sutures pulling tight. “Why would you…?”

“Hungry?” Ghost asks, quickly changing the subject. “Know you like that venison that I caught.”

“No,” you breathe. “No, I’m not…I’m tired, Ghost. My head hurts.”

A hand sweeps over your forehead, staying as you sag into it with a hum and a fluttering of your eyes.

“Bloodloss,” the Hunter murmurs. “Normal. Go back to sleep; take however long you need. I’ll be here.”

The bond between the two of you has strengthened to that of a silver rope.

“Stay,” you plead under your breath, already slipping back into nothingness with no promise to wake up again soon. “Hold me, Ghost?”

“Simon,” he grunts to only himself, knowing that the words are lost to you. Perhaps that makes him all the more eager to share it with you when you’re better. “Stay still.”

It wasn’t like you could protest.

The broad man slips in, shifting the furs until you’re covered back up and your forehead is to his chest—keeping himself closest to the door where the runes still sit in their bloody glory. If he listened hard enough, he could even hear them humming him a tune.

No song was better to him than the one of your breath at this very moment. Alive. Moving. There were many times in the night that he thought...hm.

“Better, then?” The dry tease slips out.

A kiss to the side of his mouth is what he gets in answer, and he doesn't say a peep more until he knows you’re back in the clutches of a dream—a good one, he knows, because he watches your expressions like a loyal guard dog would.

Ghost, Simon, rests his lips on the top of your head, and in a delicate murmur, eases, “You did good, Love.”

There was much to do, but for now, all he had to do was hold you a little bit tighter and let his stone heart beat a little bit faster.

TAGS:

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yandere-daydreams · 1 year

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Sphinx!Xiao, who finds you stranded in the desert after your research group gets separated. A pack of wild coyote hybrids thought to be amicable, if not friendly towards humans attacked your camp in the middle of the night and sent you running aimlessly into the sand plains without time to gather food or water, let alone distress flares. By the time you stumble onto a wind-beaten temple, you're freezing, dehydrated, and exhausted. You barely have the strength to drag yourself up the meager steps and through the degraded doorway before you collapse on the sandstone floor, only able to hope that, by some miracle, a search party would be able to find you before you died of exposure. A search party doesn't find you, obviously, but Xiao does.

Sphinx!Xiao, who refuses to show himself for days. You only know he's there by the gifts he leaves you - cactus pears, palm dates, flasks of water and bitter wine that burns your throat as it goes down. It's not much, but it's enough to keep you alive, and you're too desperate to turn down anything he gives you. He's generous, too, giving you more than enough to get by while you're still in that state of bleary half-consciousness. You think he can tell that survival's not your area of expertise, that if you were left to your own devices, it'd only be a matter of time before you ate something poisonous or wandered into a bobcat den. That, or you're just pathetic enough to earn a few sand-covered blankets on top of the bare necessities.

Sphinx!Xiao, who lets you fawn over him with a purse-lipped scowl when you do finally manage to corner your elusive savior. You honestly just want to thank him, but once he's in front of you, you can't help grinning as you rake your fingers through the ivory feathers of his massive wings and scratch at the bases of his rounded ears. You've never so much as heard of a creature with both the wings and eyes of a bird-based hybrid and the legs, tail, and fangs of a cat-based hybrid, so you can't stop yourself from treating him like the eighth wonder of the world (unintended affection a touch-starved Xiao secretly basks in, not that you notice the pale blush painted across his skin while you're performing a remarkably thorough investigation on the color of his paw-pads).

Sphinx!Xiao, who stand-offish at best, reclusive at worst. He's clearly not used to having someone to talk to, his voice rough and his dialogue usually limited to one-word phrases or barked orders, but you can usually manage to string along your brief conversations on your own, either wondering aloud when you might be rescued or telling him about all the things you're going to do when you make it back to civilization. For every hour you spend fantasizing about baths and take-out and air conditioning, he spares a few words about himself. From what you can gather, he's a guardian of-sorts, meant to protect people like you from a threat he claims you couldn't begin to understand. You're not really in a place to question him, considering you didn't even know a hybrid like him could exist a few weeks ago.

Sphinx!Xiao, who also claims he's not allowed to 'meddle in human matters', meaning he can't help you beyond making sure you don't starve to death. You've asked him if he's seen anyone looking for you while hunting, but he's never given you a straight answer, and when you suggest that he just, say, put that twenty-foot wingspan to use and drop you off on the edge of the nearest town or village, he just scowls, rolls his eyes, refuses to say anything at all. You want to press the subject, sometimes, but you really can't afford to annoy him, to make yourself even more of an irritation to him than you already are. You wouldn't survive a day out here, on your own. You wouldn't survive without Xiao.

Sphinx!Xiao, whose gifts have been getting more... modern, recently. Luxuries are still few and far between, but you have a small store of canned food, now, a couple fleece blankets that don't seem at least a decade old, bits of scrap metal and glass that must've caught Xiao's eye. You try not to pry, not to turn down anything he gives you, but his most recent gift - a half-crushed, silver wedding band with an odd, scarlet stain you can't seem to polish away - hasn't seen the light of day since he dropped it into your hand.

Sphinx!Xiao, who keeps his wings wrapped around you as you sob into his shoulder and beat your fists against his chest. You're not in the temple anymore, dilapidated and open, but his den - a hellish, lightless cave filled to bursting with golden jewelry and century-old artifacts and scraps of metal and clothing that couldn't have come from anything but human travelers, from dozens upon dozens of people who could've saved you if he hadn't gotten in the way.

Sphinx!Xiao, who hums and coos and purrs as he rubs circles into your back, as he promises that he's not going to hurt you, that he's not going to let anything hurt you ever again.

Sphinx!Xiao, who's always been a guardian, first and foremost. It's just that now, he's decided it's his responsibility to guard you.

#hybrid au #yandere #yandere x reader #yandere x you #yandere imagines #yandere drabbles #yandere genshin #yandere genshin impact #genshin imagines #genshin impact #genshin x reader #xiao x reader #yandere xiao #yanderecore #yandcore

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peachdues · 6 months

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THE WIND AND MOON

PROLOGUE ♢ SANEMI SHINAZUGAWA X LUNAR PILLAR!READER

A/N: oh boy! The fic that started it all is back in progress (with a slight title change).

This will be a slightly canon-divergent AU, wherein Lunar Breathing is inherited and there's actually some power involved with the breathing techniques as a whole (as opposed to the styles just being nice sword movements with illustrations lmao).

Reader will be Sanemi's tsuguko for a time, and she will eventually become a Hashira. This is their story.

This will be a multi-part fic. Be warned: the Reader is a very morally gray character (but we love her for it).

@ghost-1-y thank you for reminding me of my love for this fic.

Massive CW: 18+, canon-typical violence, graphic violence, gore, child death, and implied S/A. Smut to come. MDNI.

Sanemi was there that day; the day she became part of the Corps.

The day her world ended.

It was fucking freezing that morning. The sky was a muted gray as snow drifted down from the heavens in wet, fat clumps. It had started sometime the previous night, and by the morning, the village had been covered in its thick blanket.

The carnage, however, was fresh, and so the snow was not white.

Only an hour had passed since the watery gray light of dawn bled into the sky from the east, when Sanemi’s crow swooped low over his head, tugging frantically at his hair. Beside him, the Flame Pillar ducked as his own crow joined the panic.

“Northeast! Northeast! Right at the base of the mountain! A horde of demons attacked the village!” They cried in tandem.

Not just one. A horde. A swarm of demons had descended upon a moderately populated merchant village, tearing it and its people to shreds.

Both the Wind and Flame Pillars furiously made their way northeast, one of the crows bleating that Tengen and Iguro were also en route. As they ran, the birds alternated in snaring what little information they had of the village, and what had prompted the attack.

It was because of her; or rather, her family.

The head of the village was a merchant known for his imports from the West. His success meant the village prospered as a whole, and it was popular for its numerous small shops and tea houses which lined the streets, always crowded with locals and travelers alike.

Demons had no use for money or exotic baubles; but Muzan Kibutsuji had a keen interest in obliterating Lunar Breathing from the world.

So he had.

The very merchant whose business prowess bolstered the local economy with his imports was directly descended from the clan which had created Lunar Breathing, Breath of Sun’s powerful, dark twin. The merchant was the youngest and only living relative of the aging head of the Lunar Clan, a retired Hashira who’d never taken a wife. But unlike the other breathing techniques, Lunar Breathing was an inherited talent, and without an heir, there would be no one to continue the great family’s legacy.

That burden was thus placed on the surviving eldest child of the merchant whose village both Sanemi and his comrade now rushed to.

There had been an elder son, Rengoku’s crow revealed, but he had died a few years prior from illness. And so, the merchant’s middle child was made the new heir, tasked with the mission of becoming a demon slayer so that she could continue on the Lunar Breathing tradition.

Her.

There was no word as to whether she had been present for the attack. Final Selection ended only a few days prior, and it was entirely possible that she either had been killed on the Mountain, or that she was still making her way back to the village, unaware that no one would be there to welcome her home.

There was certainly no greeting for the Pillars when they finally arrived at the mountain’s base. The village was eerily silent as Sanemi and Rengoku crossed over the small bridge abutting its ravine; still. Dawn had given way to a dark gray sky, and visibility was not ideal.

Not that it would’ve taken much effort to see the blood and gore that littered the village’s once lively streets.

“What on earth?” The Sound Pillar’s familiar voice broke the silence, as he and Iguro approached their comrades from the Eastern gate of the village. Behind them, trailed a group of nearly thirty Kakushi.

The Hashira slowly took in the nightmare around them, stunned into horrified silence as they beheld the level of destruction which had befallen the village just hours before.

“Kakushi. Spread out. Look for any survivors. They may be buried or hiding.” Rengoku’s voice was steady but uncharacteristically grave, his face stony and hard. “Shinuzagawa, we should make our way to the Lunar Merchant’s estate. We need to send word to the Clan head right away if-“

“You didn’t hear?” Iguro interjected. “The head of the Lunar House is dead.” Though the lower half of his face was covered, the anguish on the Serpent Pillar’s face was evident. “That’s where Uzui and I just came from. He was ripped to shreds.”

“Fuck,” Sanemi hissed, a toxic mixture of anger, guilt roiling in his gut. An entire clan — and entire village— had been decimated in a matter of hours, and no one had been able to protect them.

They hadn’t been able to protect them.

“Have we any word on the Lunar heir?” Rengoku asked quietly. Iguro and Uzui shook their heads. “Then she likely is lost, too.” The Flame Pillar turned back to Sanemi, his face a mirror of his own. “Let’s go.”

The snow and wind picked up just as the two swordsmen approached the Lunar Merchant’s manor, obscuring part of the wreckage before them. From the corner of his eye, Sanemi swore he spied movement out of the back corner of the estate, but when he turned to examine it, all was still.

Beflre he could inquire further, a sharp gasp to his right snapped his attention back to the Pillar at his side. But Rengoku was not looking at him; rather, he was staring directly ahead, right to the courtyard of the manor.

“Heavens above,” the Flame Hashira whispered.

Sanemi followed his gaze through what had been once-proud iron gates, though only half of it remained hinged. The other had been ripped from its stone setting, twisted by some unfathomable strength and thrown carelessly to the side. Just past the gate, Sanemi beheld a single, bloodied arm.

His heart dropped sickeningly to his stomach at what lay beyond it; for there was not an inch of ground that hadn’t been saturated with blood and bits of gore.

Chunks of flesh and torn limbs bearing harsh jagged teeth marks were strewn across the snowy garden. Broken glass and wood from the manor littered the ground, and the few walls that remained standing had been showered in a thick coat of crimson.

But the carnage did not end with the massacre on the courtyard. Sanemi forced himself to look upon the half-severed bodies of those who’d been stuck to the sloped roofing of the Manor, as though some demon had plucked fleeing humans from the yard to feast on them mid-air, adorning the handsome estate with a shower of bloodied entrails.

He did not notice the small group of Kakushi that had arrived at the Manor until he heard their gasps and cries of horror. Behind him, Sanemi heard one or two begin to retch, unable to stomach the carnage before them.

“Move!” Sanemi barked, his voice scratchy over the lump forming in his throat. “Fucking look for survivors! Anyone!”

A few paces ahead, Rengoku called up to the crows checking above. “Do you have a description of the heir?”

“She is around eighteen, Lord Rengoku!”

Not helpful, given that most of the bodies around them were unrecognizable. But it was something.

Rengoku turned back to Sanemi. “I will check inside the house. You!” Rengoku called to a small group of three Kakushi nearby, “With me!”

Sanemi continued to make his way through the debris and body parts in the courtyard, lifting stone and wood in hope that he might find someone — anyone — who had managed to hide. Yet that hope dimmed with every stone he turned, as he found only the scraps of the people who’d once called the Manor home.

He came across a large chunk of curved, chiseled stone that was half-embedded into the soft ground below. Grunting, Sanemi heaved the rock aside, thinking it was perhaps part of some fountain or statue.

His stomach lurched as the stone toppled heavily over. For there, crushed beneath the weight of the rock, was the small body of a child, severed completely at the torso. Her two halves lay next to one another, a ragged seam torn between the two as though pulled apart by force.

Sanemi felt the bile rise in his throat as his gaze fell upon the child’s face, utterly frozen in fear. Though death had snuffed out the light of life from her eyes, it had done nothing to conceal the terror she’d felt in her last moments, the girl’s mouth stretched wide, fixed in her final scream.

She was no older than ten.

He could not help it. Sanemi turned away from the grisly sight and vomited into the snow, every inch of him trembling. He wretched until his stomach was empty and his throat burned from the acid and strain of his dry-heaving.

With great effort, he managed to straighten, his breath short and choppy. But he forced his legs to carry him forward, though any hope that they would find the Lunar Heir or any survivor grew dimmer by the second.

Even as Hashira, Sanemi knew he’d never seen wreckage quite like this.

He neared the center of the courtyard, and halted before a large, circular stone inset that had been smashed to gravel, leaving only a single, large piece of rounded stone wall standing.

Found the fountain, Sanemi thought bitterly. Another sharp, icy gust of wind whipped its way through the courtyard, disturbing the little bit of snow that wasn’t packed down with the carnage. But the wind also stirred up something else, something dark and wispy.

Had the Wind Pillar’s lilac gaze been focused anywhere but that piece of stone, he would have missed it softly fluttering up before disappearing beneath the lip of the fountain.

Lips mashed into a tight line, Sanemi moved to examine the other side of the broken stone. As he did so, Rengoku reappeared on the outer steps of the engawa surrounding the Manor, a frown etched deeply on his face.

“Shinazugawa, something is off. The demons’ presence is obvious, but the house looks like it was ransacked— jewels, silks, valuables, all strewn about. Some of it seems to be missing —“

“I found her.” Sanemi bit out, gruffly. “The heir.”

It was her hair, Sanemi realized. Her hair was what had been disturbed by the wind, a few strands having drifted up before settling back down upon the bloodied shoulder of the lifeless girl collapsed before the fountain.

Had there not been a thick spread of red-stained snow and earth beneath her, Sanemi almost would have thought she’d been sleeping. Her face was almost devoid of any injury, save for a few fresh scratches along her jaw and temple. Her eyes were closed, long dark lashes tickling a soft, and unblemished cheek, as pale and smooth as the Moon. And there was a serenity to her expression, a calmness that posed a stark contrast to the chaos and horror which surrounded her.

The rest of her had not been left untouched. Sanemi noted that while she appeared to have maintained her limbs, her back was soaked in blood, no doubt the source of the large stain beneath her. Grimly, he noted that her blood still oozed from an unknown wound between her shoulders. Her left arm was stretched out before her, wrist bent at an unnatural angle, its skin mottled from a mixture of the cold and an attempt to bruise before her blood had ceased flowing in her veins.

Beneath the torn and bloodied haori around her shoulders, were a pair of pants and a fitted, long sleeved top which had clearly seen better days. Her clothes hosted various tears and stains, and she was so caked in blood and mud that it was difficult to further discern her body’s condition.

The crows had said the Lunar Heir was around eighteen years of age, but as Sanemi stared at her lifeless form, all he could think about was how small she looked; how young she’d been, when she lost her life to the brutality of demons.

The thought made his blood run cold.

“No doubt this is her,” Rengoku said heavily, nodding at wounds Sanemi had not noticed on her hands. Squinting, the Wind Pillar spied bruises and cuts in various stages of healing dotting her knuckles and fingers.

He suspected more lay beneath her soiled clothing.

“Final selection wounds,” the Flame Pillar confirmed. “She must have just returned from the mountain when the attack began. Perhaps she even stumbled into the middle of it.” Rengoku shook his head. “She didn’t stand a chance.”

It was well known that even if one survived final selection, they would likely descend the mountain with some degree of injury. Seven nights without access to shelter, food, or water was difficult enough, but the added danger of starving demons almost guaranteed that one would not emerge unscathed.

She must have been wounded, and severely enough to slow her return home by a few days. Even if she had the skill to hold her own against the swarm of demons that had attacked her village, whatever injuries she sustained during final selection likely sealed her fate.

Sanemi swore, looking over the last of the Lunar Breathing Clan, the acrid bite of guilt and pity seeping hotly into his veins. The poor girl survived the controlled horrors of final selection only to meet an even more grisly end at her home — where she was supposed to be safe.

Cruelty; utter cruelty, and a damn tragedy.

“She will get a Slayer’s burial, in the Master’s garden.” Rengoku declared firmly, raising his voice so the nearby Kakushi would hear. “She passed Final Selection; she’s one of us.”

“No,” Sanemi said, voice hoarse. “Bury her here with her family.” His eyes returned to the girl’s face, an inexplicable bitterness coating his tongue. “She fought to return to them; let her be with them.”

He lifted his eyes back up to the ochre gaze of the Flame Pillar. Rengoku stared at him for a long moment, before nodding, turning back to the Kakushi. “You heard Shinazugawa. Let’s give them all a proper burial.”

The Kakushi began to move, thorough and efficient even among the horror around them. Sanemi readied himself to assist, moving to stand when his eyes snagged on the girl’s torso, his gaze drawn to the sizeable swath of smooth skin that was exposed to the icy bite of the snow. His frown deepened as he took note of the odd way that her clothes sat around her exposed abdomen. The girl was half laid on her side, but the front of her shirt was bunched and twisted together, like it had been gathered and shoved out of the way.

His eyes lowered a fraction to the front of the girl’s pants. At first glance, all seemend normal, her trousers fitted at her hips, but that was precisely what caught his eye. The waistband on the girl’s pants slotted across her lower hips, not higher up on her waist as it should have been. One side was noticeably lower than the other, almost as though they’d nearly been tugged off.

Almost as if-

Sanemi felt the hairs on his body rise. Looking over the girl once more, he noted the suspicious lack of claw marks and bite marks to her body; the way that she seemed intact, compared to the bodies of her friends and family scattered in pieces around her.

And her blood — her blood appeared more fresh than what was caked in the snow around them, as though she’d been attacked right before the Corps arrived at the manor’s gate.

“Rengoku,” Sanemi said sharply, and the Flame Hashira was back at his side in an instant. Sanemi jutted his chin toward the girl’s body and Rengoku followed his gaze. He could see the gears turning in his comrade’s head, the owlish Slayer steadily taking note of the odd skew of her clothes and her lack of demon-like injuries.

“How many demons do you know that try to-,” Sanemi ground his teeth at the word that came to mind, his blood boiling hot. “Have their way with victims before eating them?”

“Not many,” Rengoku conceded darkly, a similar anger simmering in his eyes. “Though not unheard of. It is… rare. Most can’t resist their hunger.”

He fell silent for a moment, contemplating.

“Didn’t you say the house had looked ransacked?” Sanemi turned his gaze away from the girl and towards the broken doors of the manor.

Rengoku’s eyes widened. “Yes. As if someone came in and grabbed anything they could.”

Sanemi nodded. “Bandits. Probably heard about the attack and got excited to loot. Found a body that wasn’t completely torn apart by demons and tried to take advantage.”

Rather than bile, Sanemi felt anger, hot and lethal, threatening to spill out of him.

If he found them, they would receive no mercy, human or not.

Rengoku exhaled sharply through his nose, a weariness clouding over his features. “Though I don’t suppose we can really know for sure. There isn’t enough left of anyone else to compare.”

Rengoku clasped his hands in front of himself, and he closed his eyes, offering a small prayer for the girl. “Whatever happened to her, she’s gone now. Let us ensure she can rest.”

He turned to head back to where the Kakushi had begun digging graves for the deceased, leaving Sanemi alone once more.

He’d stared the spot where the girl’s body had lain long after a pair of Kakushi gently removed her to ready her for her burial, watching with hollow eyes and a hollow heart as the one of them — a female — tenderly brushed the girl’s hair from her face and straightened her haori. They’d crossed her arms over her middle and gingerly carried her to join the remains of her family.

Hers was the last of the graves to be prepared. The Kakushi were just beginning to pack the mud and snow over her body when one of them collapsed from exhaustion. The group resolved to take a small water break before finishing, and neither Shinazugawa nor Rengoku had the desire to object.

After all, digging nearly twenty graves was no easy task.

Both Hashira assisted with the effort, and their combined strength and stamina had streamlined the task considerably. While the Kakushi rested, Rengoku departed for the front gates to update Uzui and Iguro, who’d been dealing with the wreckage within the village, assisted by reinforcements of both Kakushi and lower rank slayers called in to assist with the clean up and burial.

In total, over two hundred graves were dug, and not a single survivor had been found.

It was a heavy day — perhaps one of the darkest in the Corp’s history, and its crowning poisoned jewel was the eradication of one of the oldest breathing styles.The news that there was one less defense against the demons was not a welcome one.

Sanemi had gone to the other side of the courtyard, away from the voices and graves and rising stink of death. Out of sight from any prying eyes, he found a tree and shoved his fist through it, clear to the other side. Splinters of bark exploded around his arm and bit into the skin around his knuckles and palm, but Sanemi could not find it in himself to care; he sought only to break through the silent numbness threatening to consume him.

Because he’d taken refuge on the other side of the courtyard, away from the new burial site, Sanemi did not see the hand and arm that shoved through the pile of earth resting atop the last grave. He did not see clawed fingers sinking into the mud and snow, desperately seeking purchase as the body attached to the arm hauled itself — herself — from beneath the earth, the remnants of her grave skittering to the side as she heaved her body out.

Sanemi did hear the terrified shriek of the Kakushi, and immediately he drew his sword. In the distance, he could hear Rengoku roaring orders at the terrified attendants, though he could not discern the specifics.

The Wind Pillar came into view of the gravesite right as the girl spilled out from the hole in the ground, using her bare hands to pull herself forward as the rest of her body remained limp.

Sanemi Shinazugawa was not a pious man; in fact, he considered himself rather skeptical of the idea of faith. If there were truly any gods out there, then Sanemi wanted nothing to do with them. They chose to let chaos and devastation run rampant. They chose to let demons exists.

But hell apparently had frozen over, and Sanemi found himself offering a prayer for the girl’s forgiveness as he prepared to behead her demonized form. He hoped she would understand; after all, she’d joined the Corps intending to rid of the world of the very thing she’d now become.

It was what he hoped one his his fellow Hashira would do for him, if he ever found himself in that situation.

As the Swordsman cocked his blade, ready to strike the crawling demon from behind, Rengoku cried out. “Shinazugawa, NO!”

Sanemi stuttered, his arm in mid-swing as he neared the demon’s neck. A flash of violet and white shot towards him, and a piercing shriek of metal tore through the sky as Uzui’s blade parried his, the force of the clash knocking him out of the air. A frustrated grunt echoed from his chest, and with great effort, Sanemi twisted mid-air to avoid falling flat on his ass, just barely managing to land swiftly on the balls of his feet.

“What the fuck,-“ His vicious snarl faltered at the expression on the Flame Hashira’s face, frozen and gaping. In that moment, Sanemi’s ears picked up on the faint thumping of a heart beating rapidly and unevenly below him. His nose suddenly burned with the strong scent of iron. The stench of blood so metallic that it could not have been anything but fresh.

Ears ringing, the Wind Pillar shoved past his stupefied comrades. Only when he was face to face with her did Sanemi finally understand why the Flame Pillar had been so desperate to stop his sword from hitting its mark.

The three Hashira were not looking at a newly turned and bloodthirsty demon. Instead, dragging her way across the bloodstained, muddied snow, was the Lunar Heir, deathly pale and trembling..

The girl whose death they feared doomed the Lunar Breathing House had clawed her way out from her grave with nothing but her hands and sheer will. She’d not been dead, after all.

Slowly, so slowly, her eyes lifted to glare up at the one standing directly before her. Though she strained to raise her head more than half an inch, her silver eyes met Sanemi’s lavender gaze, and a violent chill shot up his spine as he beheld what simmered within them.

Defiance.

Pain.

Rage. So, so much rage, relentless and raw. And so very human.

She reached another quivering hand out before her to further drag herself away from her tomb. A thin sheen of sweat coated her pallid skin, and fresh crimson began to seep into the snow beneath her.

Sanemi’s eyes flit to the stain on her back, where fresh blood oozed from the deep wound.

She was panting, clearly fighting every urge in her body to give in, to let death beckon her back into its sweet embrace.

“I-I’m not dead!” She grit out in between shallow, uneven breaths, her jaw clenched tightly enough to crack her teeth.

The three Hashira remained dumb and silent for half a heartbeat before-

“What are you all standing there for?” Uzui bellowed. “Help her!”

The Kakushi sputtered into action, several of them crouching down around the girl to aid her.

“Don’t touch me!” She screamed, eyes screwed shut and her head bowed defensively over her hands as she clenched her fists into the earth. The Kakushi fell back, looking anxiously to the Pillars to await further orders, but even they were at a loss. After several, harsh breaths through her nose, the Lunar Heir turned her face up, her gaze clashing with Sanemi’s once more.

He recognized the fear in her eyes, visceral and deep. Whatever she’d experienced over the last few hours had overtaken all her senses. She had no logic, no ability to rationalize that she was among other humans, among comrades.

Instead, all that drove her now was the primal instinct to survive.

And to her, they were another threat.

She continued to try and crawl away from them, but her movements grew even shakier, more unstable, as the blood loss combined with her physical exhaustion. Rengoku caught his comrades’ eyes, waiting to confirm their next move.

A quick shared nod sent Sanemi stepping quietly into her blindspot. Swiftly, the Wind Pillar struck the pressure point on the back of the woman’s neck with his hand, and she crumpled against the ground, unconscious and still. Gingerly, Sanemi lifted her over his shoulder, mindful of the open wound on her back.

Once she was secured, the Hashira and their Kakushi began their frantic sprint toward the Butterfly Mansion.

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