Basically, I write fanfiction and headcanons on here. I am a straight (questioning) guy so I may have to do my research for fics surrounding those who difffer from me in the queer community, but I will write it if it fits my fandoms and criteria nonetheless. I have an interest in religious horror, angst, and romance.
Batfamily (Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Damian Wayne, Tim Drake, Batman. I’m still reading up on the others such as Steph and Barbra and the other members, so be patient.)
Wotakoi: love is hard for otakus (Narumi, Hirotaka, Kabakura, Koyanagi, Noaya, Kou)
Doki Doki Literature Club (Monika, Yuri, Sayori, Natsuki)
Castlevania: The anime (Alucard, Trevor, Sypha)
Please recommend me fandoms!
Criteria (what I write and do not write)
I write:
Angst
Sfw
Nsfw
Heavy topics such as suicide, SA, trauma, mental disorders, etc.
Immoral age gaps as something NEGATIVE or horror
Oc
x reader fics
Religious trauma/horror
I do not write:
Immoral/large age gaps as normalized romance. I do not condone anything of the sort.
SA depicted as good
Non-con
Incest
Fics with hateful messages
About my work:
I see this platform as something that I can use to help people who just want an escape, help myself by getting all engrossed in this, and just as a way to get involved in fandoms while I’m young.
Usually, I try to finish requests before 24-48 hours pass, sometimes I may do it in a matter of minutes or hours after, sometimes I may take 3 or more days, I enjoy this a lot but I’m generally very busy, so though I write everyday, I may not be fortunate enough to have the time to finish everything accordingly. My apologies if I disappoint!
Feel free to DM me with any feedback for my fanfiction please. I enjoy writing a lot so as of now, don’t worry about the amount of requests! Thank you.
I WISH but no that’s the absolute bodybuilding aesthetics legend Zyzz, he was basically this bodybuilder that took the internet by storm, unreal physique and really handsome too, I don’t find the question weird whatsoever by the way keep em coming I appreciate it!
There’s so much beautiful history that goes into being any sort of queer. Tales and lifetimes of same sex lovers and transgender (binary and nonbinary) individuals as well as every other queer identity that does not fit into those categories such as asexuality and others are just as primordial as the overall concepts of love and bodily autonomy. Anyone that actively seeks to take away your freedom, shuts down your pride, justifies passive aggression, holds up a stance of ignorance or disgust, blatantly misunderstands over and over and doesn’t seek to learn or treat you better or just anyone who makes you feel “gross” or “wrong” or lesser than for such a beautiful identity deserves nothing but to be treated with worse disgust than they treat you with, or anyone else like that. Being queer has such a deep and beautiful culture it shocks me whenever I learn something new. You’re not just your identity but at the same time you have every right to hold it up as a badge of survival and remembrance to people just like yourself, as well as the general beauty of it that exists with and without the immense struggles many have and have yet to overcome. You all absolutely deserve more spotlight and to hold your flag up with utmost pride. That being said, happy pride month!
Pride Month is a time to be loud and share your stories. Without pride month I would have never explored my gender identity and realized I identified as transfem, which has brought me an understanding of my own self and made me so much happier in my own skin. With so much evil and hatred in the world, using this time to spread awareness even more than usual can save so many people from bad places, so please, be loud about it. Be annoying about it. Keep telling your own stories, because each of those stories are beautiful and worth sharing.
In a world that is so unfriendly towards breaking the mold seen as "normal", stand proud against opression. Never listen to those that tell you to be silent. To everyone in the community. People of various sexual orientations, those that don't feel sexual or romantic attraction at all, people who are trans, non-binary, agender, genderfluid, or anyone else outside of the heterosexual and cisgender norms. People in the queer community that are POC, trans people who haven't started physically or socially transitioning, non-binary people who aren't androgynous, intersex people, absolutely everyone under the queer umbrella, every and each single person.
You are a beautiful and strong individual that matters. Stand proud with each other. 💖
There’s so much beautiful history that goes into being any sort of queer. Tales and lifetimes of same sex lovers and transgender (binary and nonbinary) individuals as well as every other queer identity that does not fit into those categories such as asexuality and others are just as primordial as the overall concepts of love and bodily autonomy. Anyone that actively seeks to take away your freedom, shuts down your pride, justifies passive aggression, holds up a stance of ignorance or disgust, blatantly misunderstands over and over and doesn’t seek to learn or treat you better or just anyone who makes you feel “gross” or “wrong” or lesser than for such a beautiful identity deserves nothing but to be treated with worse disgust than they treat you with, or anyone else like that. Being queer has such a deep and beautiful culture it shocks me whenever I learn something new. You’re not just your identity but at the same time you have every right to hold it up as a badge of survival and remembrance to people just like yourself, as well as the general beauty of it that exists with and without the immense struggles many have and have yet to overcome. You all absolutely deserve more spotlight and to hold your flag up with utmost pride. That being said, happy pride month!
With AI on the rise we need to support our fellow writers in the community and show them that we care.
Adult writers, your job is to comment under/reblog this with your favorite fic you’ve written(or share someone’s fic you love) and I’ll try to reblog them all!
Fanfic readers, your job is to recommend your favorite writers and give them some love in the comments. Read any fics that catch your interest, comment, and follow some new writers!
This way both the writers and readers can do something to help and get something in return!
Let’s spread some love and show the community that human writing is still important and wanted!
I have my fav writers here namely @hanafubukki @berriblossom @lunedebleuwrites @cursedcola asterravae and dearestdelilah on ao3 and many more who kept feeding me with their content:3
Wahhh thank you so much for the tag, I humbly accept these platonic kisses with love and gratitude 🥹💕
Sending some love to @orang3rinds @snonkerdoodlefizzy221b @iratempestatis and @aurumalatus too 🫶 Love rereading y'alls writings so much, wishing all of you (including everyone who is reading this) a very joyful day! 💕💕
sending hugs out to @triluneprophecy @orphicmasterpeace @snonkerdoodlewritesstuff and @odoraful :) thank you guys for putting your time and effort into writing things, ik we don't talk but ur posts make my days hehe
OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE TAG 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🥹🥹🥹 I'M HONORED
Virtual hugs and kisses to these awesome writers! @benjaminsplayhouse @itssnow1e @dolly-cherie @ellitx @slvtbunbun thank you for taking time and effort to write sych amazing fics, they always make my day all smiles💐💕🤍
AHHH OMGGG THANK U FOR THE TAGGGG <333 IM SO HAPPY MY SILLY LIL FICS ARE THINGS PPL R ACTUALLY ENJOYING
Tagging the amazing @yanveilrose @livelaughlovesubs @aizofshiguro @yurunivo @yayamrata!!! Ur guys r u the reason the second I get on tumblr I check my following page to see if y’all posted
@sirthisisasubway @crowbarssuck @fatesosour @aflairforthejenna @starlytez @bugzarayy @ellieis-elara @dvinefires @am1mi @surelyysweet @writingdarling @6feathered6siren6 @b0mbngel >>>>> the best best, I love their writing so much/gen
I go by she/her, I'm Canadian, I paint, draw, skateboard, read manga, play video games and love to write! I LOVE animals and I have a cat named Aether!! (Yes I was addicted to Genshin Impact)
Here are things I like!!
I'm willing to write about pretty much anything as long as you keep it respectful!! (NO non-con, weird age gaps, or weird shit like that)
Btw if you're interested in any of the below and just want someone to talk about it with DONT HESITATE TO SHOOT ME A TEXT (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧
Video games:
Killer Chat!!!!
FNaF
Poppy Playtime
Sally Face
Doki Doki Literature Club
Genshin Impact
Danganronpa
Bendy and the Ink Machine
The Legend of Zelda
Class of '09
Yandere Simulator
Anime/Shows:
Jujutsu Kaisen
Attack on Titan
Nana
Paradise Kiss
Tokyo Ghoul
My Hero Academia
Orange
Bleach
Death Note
Soul Eater
The Summer Hikaru Died
Horimiya
Doukyuusei
Sk8 the Infinity
Chainsaw Man
Berserk
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Voltron: Legendary Defender
Bands!!:
My Chemical Romance
Pierce the Veil
PICTURE ME BROKEN!!
Get Scared
Fall Out Boy
Panic! at the Disco (not really a band anymore but you get me)
Sleeping with Sirens
Paramore
Evanescence
Sunny Day Real Estate
Three Days Grace
Thirty Seconds to Mars
Silverstein
The Used
Green Day
Metallica
System of a Down
Buck-Tick
Plastic Tree
Malice Mizer
Dadaroma
I also love vocaloid!!! (my fav song is the BUG cover by N25 and Kagamine Len)
Other:
Creepypasta
(there's probably a lot more I just can't remember them rn)
And remember, requests for fanfics are always open!!
Ronin x murder buddy reader perchance..? (I AM SOSOSOSO SORRY IF IM FLOODING YOUR INBOX TOO MCUH 😭😭 I RLLY LOVE YOUR WRITING. MAKE SURE TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF THOO!!)
OMG NO PROBLEM YOU CAN REQUEST STUFF WHENEVER!!! (◍•ᴗ•◍) I'm not sure if you were going for a more sidekick thing but I think a partners in crime typa situation is cute!!
Ronin x Reader: Partners in Crime
The blood was still warm when you took his hand.
Not a romantic gesture. A practical one. He had reached across the body, this latest body, this still-damp canvas of a man who had deserved far less than the artistry you had both afforded him, and offered his palm as though assisting you over a puddle on a civilized street. You took it. You stepped over the ruin. You did not look down.
This was the choreography you had built together: precise, unspoken, devastating in its efficiency. He killed with the exuberance of a child at play. You killed with the composure of a surgeon at work. Between the two of you, the results were something awful and symmetrical and altogether undeniable.
---
You had met at the scene of someone else's atrocity.
A warehouse. A body. A mutual interest in the macabre details that ordinary investigators overlooked: the specific angle of the laceration, the deliberate placement of the wound, the unmistakable signature of someone who considered violence a vocation rather than an impulse. He was crouched beside the deceased with the casual reverence of a parishioner in a pew. You were standing at the perimeter with the quiet attentiveness of a scholar in an archive.
He looked up. You looked down.
"Admiring the craftsmanship?" he asked.
"Evaluating it," you corrected.
His grin was immediate and incandescent and entirely unperturbed by the corpse between you. "And your evaluation?"
"Sloppy. The cervical incision was hesitant. The perpetrator wanted the act to appear confident, but the depth is inconsistent. Second-guessed himself midway through."
He stared at you for a long, motionless second. Then he rose to his feet, brushed the knee of his trousers, and extended his hand; not for shaking, but for presenting, as though offering you the entire crime scene as a gift.
"I'm going to keep you," he said.
You did not shake his hand. You did, however, follow him out of the warehouse.
That had been sufficient.
---
The partnership established itself with the natural momentum of two rivers converging. He was chaos given form: loud where you were silent, theatrical where you were surgical, conspicuous where you were invisible. He favored bludgeoning and blade. You preferred poison and suffocation.
Together, you were catastrophic. Together, you were complete.
He selected the targets with the enthusiasm of a curator assembling an exhibition. You planned the executions with the rigor of an architect drafting blueprints. He provided the spectacle. You ensured the absence of evidence. The division of labor was elegant, equitable, and profoundly satisfying to you both.
"We complement each other," he announced one evening, perched on the counter of your kitchen while you cleaned the implements of the evening's work. His horned beanie was askew. A faint trace of red decorated his jaw like a misplaced cosmetic. "I'm the thunder. You're the silence after."
"No you're the noise," you amended. "I'm the calculation that makes the noise survivable."
"Same thing, baby. Just prettier words."
---
He was devoted to you in the manner of a man who had never before encountered a reason for devotion and was therefore terrible at its administration. He was obsessed. He showed his allegiance through excess: through gifts left on your doorstep with the frequency and solemnity of offerings at a shrine, through the specific and painstaking way he memorized your preferences and repetitions, through the fact that he had killed three people who had inconvenienced you and had not thought to mention it until you noticed the newspaper headlines.
"They were rude to you," he said, as though this were explanation enough.
"They were a barista who gave me the wrong order."
"Consistently, darling. Consistently and without remorse."
You did not argue. You had learned that his logic operated on a frequency that defied conventional frequency, and that your disapproval only ever strengthened his resolve.
Instead, you cleaned his tools for him. You organized his supplies. You sat beside him in the aftermath of your shared endeavors and pressed a cool cloth to the sweat at his temple while he caught his breath and grinned at the ceiling like a man who had just witnessed something divine.
---
There were evenings of stillness, too. Rare and precious and deliberately cultivated. Evenings where the door remained locked and the curtains stayed drawn and the two of you existed in the simple domesticity of a shared space. He sprawled across your sofa with his head in your lap, your fingers working through his chopped hair while some inane program flickered across the television, his eyes half-closed and his breathing slow and even and utterly unguarded.
He was beautiful in these moments. Not the calculated beauty of his performance, not the sharp and theatrical cockiness he wielded like a weapon, but something rawer and more exposed. Something that looked almost fragile.
You never told him this. He would despise the observation.
You suspected he knew anyway.
"You're thinking too loud," he murmured once, without opening his eyes.
"I'm thinking at a perfectly reasonable volume."
"You're thinking about how soft I am right now. How tender." He said the word with mock revulsion, but he did not move from your lap. "You're cataloguing my vulnerabilities. You're a menace."
"I'm stroking your hair."
"Same thing."
---
The count climbed. You did not keep your own tally; he kept it for both of you, etched into a leather journal he carried with the solemnity of a liturgical text, each entry annotated with date, method, and a small notation regarding your contribution. He was meticulous about this in a way he was meticulous about nothing else.
"You're entry six hundred and seventy-three," he told you once, flipping to a blank page at the back of the journal.
"I haven't died."
"Exactly. You're the one I didn't kill. The exception. The singular, unprecedented, cosmically significant deviation from the pattern." He tapped the pen against the empty page. "I'm writing you in permanent ink. Indelible. You understand? You are the only entry in this book that will never be crossed out. Well... for now at least."
You looked at him—this strange, unhinged, magnificent creature with his smudged makeup and his horned crown and his appalling capacity for both violence and tenderness... and you felt the full weight of what he was offering settle into your chest like something warm and permanent and terrifying.
"Write neatly," you said.
He scoffed but did it anyway.
---
The world saw a killer in a horned beanie who called himself the Devil and left devastation in his wake like a comet trailing ruin.
You saw the man who reached for your hand across every body. Who aligned his stride to match yours. Who had rewritten the architecture of his entire existence to accommodate your presence and called it the easiest renovation he had ever undertaken.
He was the abyss, and you had walked willingly to its edge, and instead of falling, you had built a home there in the dark beside him.
It was, by any estimation, an elegant partnership.
okay so bear with me here……..Ronin X reader who will not stop meowing. says meow in response to ALMOST everything. meows all day and cannot be stopped…. (i am so sorry)
this is how me and my cat communicate we understand each other trust (^._.^)ﾉ dude this was so hard to write I'm dead
Ronin x Reader who can't stop meowing for some reason???
Ronin Beaufort has committed many atrocities. Nothing, however, could have prepared him this. You meowing at him in the middle of a conversation about optimal evisceration techniques.
Ronin, to his credit, does not flinch. He has murdered six hundred and sixty six people. He can handle a few cat noises. The issue is that he finds it insufferably endearing yet insanely annoying at the same time, making him want to commit even more crimes.
The first time you meow at him, he stares at you for approximately twelve seconds. His expression is unreadable beneath the black eye makeup. Then he smirks. That smirk should be registered as a lethal weapon.
"There it is" he says. The one sound that makes the Devil himself consider keeping a pet.
You meow again. He tousles your hair with one bandaged hand and calls you something repulsive like his little darling abomination or something along those lines, and the affection in his voice is so suffocatingly possessive that you can practically feel him wrapping a leash around your throat with his words.
He encourages it. This is the fundamental problem. A well-adjusted person might ask why you're meowing. Ronin is not well-adjusted. Ronin hears you make a noise that is not language and thinks yes, good, less human, more mine.
He starts meowing back. Not in a cute way. In a mocking, theatrical way that somehow sounds like a threat. He tilts his head, watches you with those unblinking eyes that have seen far too much blood to be making cat noises in a dingy apartment. It's a challenge. He wants to see who breaks first. It's never him.
You meow when you're content. You meow when you want attention. You meow when Ronin is cleaning blood off his hands in the kitchen sink, and he glances over his shoulder at you with this expression that suggests he's calculating exactly how many of his ribs he would need to crack open to build you a cage..
When you meow at him in public, he grins like a man who has just been handed an excuse. He leans down, gets right in your space, and says something devastatingly soft about how you are the only thing in this miserable world he would not gut on principle. Then he flicks your forehead and calls you an idiot.
The meowing doesn't make him gentle. He's still Ronin. He's still the Butcher, the Devil, the worst thing to ever crawl through the Slaughterhouse-Losers with a smirk and a body count. He still posts gore at three in the morning and laughs when people complain.
This isn't much of a request and more of an ask!!!
What do you think KC would be like if, instead of serial killers, they were all serial thieves? Like the characters' roles and how the story/world itself would be (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶) ？
- (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶) anon
QGIDHQISIQ I LOVE IT WHEN PEOPLE ASK ME QUESTIONS (☆▽☆)
uhh okay so if instead of serial killers they were all serial thieves running like a dark web server for heist culture I think the MC would still be a writer but researching infamous thieves for a novel instead, and the tension would shift from "will I get murdered?" to "will my boyfriend steal my identity and all my valuable belongings?" Ronin would be this mastermind fence who runs the whole underground network, still obsessive and creepy and I think he'd still stick with a crowbar to break doors down cause well it's Ronin I guess he's gotta be all flashy and shit. Angel would be a high society cliche cat burglar stealing Ming vases from galas she's attending as a guest, Misaki would SO be a getaway driver and distractions expert who causes massive pileups just so the crew can slip away (I think they'd ride a motorcycle too if it were only them and another person IDK THEY SEEM LIKE THEY WOULD OKAY), V would be a Robin Hood typa thing who only steals from corrupt billionaires (he'd still hate Ronin btw), Luca would be the athletic wheelman who keeps tripping over laser grids, and Felicie would be the quiet safe cracker who blows vault doors off their hinges and gets this little glow when she's working with explosives. The routes would have more teamwork since heists require cooperation, so you'd get these tense moments where everything goes wrong mid-job and you have to improvise together, and it would still totally work as a dark satire otome because the core of the characters is their personalities bouncing off each other and not the murder specifically.
The penthouse overlooked the city like a throne overlooking its kingdom, floor-to-ceiling windows revealing a labyrinth of lights that owed their continued existence to the woman standing before them. You held a glass of something amber and expensive, untouched, the crystal cold against your fingers. The city sprawled beneath you, yours in every way that mattered. The ports. The pharmacies. the politicians with their clean suits and dirty hands. All of it answered to you, and that meant the city never slept, because you never allowed it the mercy of rest.
Your phone buzzed against the marble countertop. A message from one of your captains, the words abbreviated and careful: Another body. Same signature. Third this month.
You set the glass down.
The Butcher had been carving through your territory like a knife through silk, leaving corpses arranged in poses that suggested prayer, or penance, or some private joke the rest of the world was not invited to understand. Each kill was a provocation, a daub of red across your carefully maintained ledgers. Your men wanted blood. Your rivals were watching to see how you would respond to someone operating with such flagrant disregard for the hierarchy that governed who lived and who died in this city.
You had not yet decided whether the Butcher was a problem or an opportunity.
That was, until the Butcher decided for you.
The alarm on the penthouse door did not sound. Your security did not call. One moment the room was empty save for you and the hum of the city, and the next there was a figure sprawled across your leather sofa as though he owned it, one arm draped over the back, legs crossed at the ankle, head tilted with the lounging arrogance of a cat that had wandered into a dog's yard and found the dogs wanting.
"Nice view," he said. His voice was the texture of gravel wrapped in silk, and it filled the room with an ease that should not have been possible for someone who had just bypassed three layers of biometric security. "A little on the nose, though, don't you think? Penthouse, city lights, expensive booze you're not drinking. It's very Godfather. Very cinematic. I respect the commitment to the bit."
You did not move. You did not reach for the gun concealed beneath the desk or the knife strapped to your thigh. You stood perfectly still and studied him with the patience of someone who had learned, long ago, that stillness was its own kind of power.
The horned beanie sat low on his forehead, beneath it choppy blonde hair that looked like it had been cut with a knife, which, given what you knew of him, it probably had. Black makeup rimmed his eyes and painted his lips, and his gaze held yours with an intensity that bordered on the devotional. Bandages wound around his chest, visible where his jacket hung open, some of them fresh and some of them stained with rust.
Ronin. The Butcher. The Devil. Sitting on your sofa like a guest at a dinner party.
"You killed Marcus Vetti," you said. Your voice was flat, controlled, the voice of a woman who had ordered the deaths of more people than she could count on both hands and had slept soundly afterward.
"I killed Marcus Vetti," he agreed, cheerfully. "Marcus Vetti was a pedophile who used your shipping routes to traffic children across state lines. Marcus Vetti is now arranged in the back room of his own warehouse with his hands nailed to the floor in the shape of a prayer." His head tilted further, that strange, sharp smile cutting across his painted mouth. "You're welcome, by the way."
The silence stretched between you like a wire pulled taut. Outside, the city hummed its endless, indifferent song.
"I did not ask you to kill him," you said.
"No, you didn't." He swung his legs off the sofa and stood, and there was something in the motion that was not quite human, the fluid grace of something that had learned to move through shadows so often it had forgotten how to walk in light. He moved toward you, and you held your ground, and something flickered in his eyes that looked like approval. "You were going to handle him quietly. A meeting. A handshake. Maybe a bullet behind the ear if he didn't take the hint. Business as usual." He stopped three feet from you, close enough that you could see the fine tremor in his hands, the barely contained energy of someone whose engine never stopped running. "But business as usual doesn't send a message, does it? Business as usual doesn't make them afraid."
"I make them afraid."
"You make them cautious. There's a difference." His smile sharpened. "Cautious men still cross you. Afraid men don't dare."
You looked at him, this strange, feral creature who had walked into your home uninvited and proceeded to critique your methodology, and you felt something you had not felt in a very long time. Not fear. Not quite interest. Something in the space between, a gravitational pull toward a chaos that operated by its own laws and recognized no authority but its own.
He was, you realized, utterly insane. And he was, you realized with a clarity that bordered on discomfort, not wrong.
"Why are you here, Ronin?"
The question hung in the air. He regarded you for a long moment, and the performative smirk softened into something more difficult to read. Something that, in anyone else, you might have called want.
"Because I've been watching you," he said, and his voice had gone quiet, the theatrical edges sanded away to reveal something rawer beneath. "For weeks. Through your windows. Through your men. Through the trail of bodies you leave in your wake, all neat and professional and boring." He took another step toward you, and this time you did step back, just once, your shoulders meeting the cold glass of the window. "You have an empire, and you run it like a bookkeeper. You have the power to make this city kneel, and instead you make it fill out paperwork."
His hand came up, and his fingers, still stained with the ghost of someone else's blood, traced the line of your jaw with a slowness that felt like a threat and a promise in equal measure.
"I want to watch you burn it all down," he whispered. "And I want to be the one holding the matches."
Your hand moved before your mind could intervene, catching his wrist in a grip that was hard enough to bruise. His pulse jumped beneath your fingers, quick and alive, and his pupils dilated with something that was unmistakably hunger.
"You don't know what you're asking for," you said.
"I know exactly what I'm asking for." He leaned in, and his breath was warm against your cheek, carrying the faint sweetness of something that might have been poison. "I'm asking you to stop pretending you're a businesswoman and start acting like what you actually are. A tyrant. Something that this miserable, rotting city has to reckon with." His lips brushed the shell of your ear. "I'm asking you to let me serve."
The word sat between you, heavy and strange. Serve. From a man who served no one. From the Devil himself, offering his allegiance like a dark prayer.
You turned your head, and your lips nearly brushed his, and you felt him go very still in a way that told you this was not a stillness he wore often. This was the stillness of a predator that had just realized it might not be at the top of the food chain.
"And if I say no?" you asked.
His smile returned, but it was different now. Smaller. Almost private.
"Then I keep killing in your territory, and you keep cleaning up my messes, and we dance around each other for months until one of us does something stupid." His eyes held yours, and in them you saw something that terrified you, not because it was monstrous, but because it was sincere. "But I think we both know you're not going to say no."
You released his wrist. He did not step back. Neither did you.
"I have rules," you said.
"I have none."
"Then we're going to have a problem."
"We already have a problem, sweetheart. The question is whether we're going to solve it together or let it eat us alive." He reached up, slowly, and his fingers found the collar of your shirt, adjusting it with a domesticity that was absurd given the circumstances. "I vote together. It's messier, but messier is more fun."
You should have thrown him out. You should have put a bullet between those kohl-rimmed eyes and had your men dispose of the body in the harbor with all the others who had outlived their usefulness. That was what the old you would have done. That was what kept empires standing.
But the old you had been bored. And the old you had been lonely. And the old you had been running a kingdom of ash and ledgers when what she really wanted was a kingdom of fire.
"Sit down," you said.
His grin was incandescent.
"Bossy," he said, already moving back toward the sofa. "I like that."
You reached for the phone. Dialed a number. Your captain answered on the first ring.
"Cancel the hunt for the Butcher," you said, and across the room, Ronin draped himself across your furniture like a man who had just won a game only he knew was being played. "He works for me now."
You hung up before your captain could respond.
When you turned back, Ronin was watching you with an expression that made your chest tighten, that made the city lights beyond the window seem dim, that made the untouched glass of whiskey on the counter irrelevant because you were already drunk on something far more dangerous.
"You won't regret this," he said.
"I already regret it."
"That's the spirit."
He laughed, and it was a terrible, beautiful sound, and somewhere below, the city continued to turn, unaware that its two most dangerous inhabitants had just found each other.
---
The weeks that followed were a study in controlled devastation.
Ronin did not follow rules. This was not for lack of trying on your part. You had outlined your expectations with the precision of a woman who had built an empire on the backs of expectations met and consequences delivered. You had explained the hierarchy, the protocols, the invisible lines that kept the machinery of your operation running. He had listened with his head tilted and his smile in place, and then he had proceeded to ignore every single one of them.
The first time, it was a rival lieutenant found in the trunk of his own car with his tongue nailed to the steering wheel and a note that read, in Ronin's cramped, deliberate handwriting: He was going to betray you. You're welcome.
The second time, it was a warehouse full of contraband, burned to the ground with such artistry that the fire department called it an accident, and Ronin called it a love letter.
The third time, it was a senator who had been quietly building a case against your operation, discovered in his office with evidence of his own indiscretions arranged on the desk like an altar, the man himself alive but catatonic and unlikely to recover.
"Three gifts," he said, appearing in your penthouse as he always did, without warning, without invitation, as though the walls themselves parted to let him through. He had blood on his collar and madness in his eyes and he looked at you like you were the only fixed point in a universe that refused to stop spinning. "Do you like them?"
You were sitting at your desk, the city's lights painting shadows across your face, and you were tired, and you were exhilarated, and you were furious, and you were something else you refused to name.
"You burned a three-million-dollar warehouse," you said.
"It was ugly. The architecture was an insult. I did the skyline a favor."
"You left evidence at the senator's scene."
"I left evidence of his crimes. Not mine. There's a difference. One that the FBI is currently discovering, by the way. You should see the news. It's spectacular." He perched on the edge of your desk, invading your space with the casual entitlement of someone who had decided that your space was his space and that was simply how things were now. "You're welcome. Again."
"You cannot keep doing this without consulting me."
"Okay." He folded his hands in his lap, the picture of compliance, except his eyes were dancing and his smile was a knife. "Consultation. I come to you, I say 'hey, this guy's a problem,' you say 'handle it,' I handle it, everyone's happy. Is that the procedure?"
"That is not—"
"Or," he continued, leaning closer, "I come to you, I say 'hey, this guy's a problem,' you say 'let me think about it,' you think about it for three days, the guy moves against you in the meantime, and then I have to fix a bigger mess than I started with." His hand found yours on the desk, his fingers tracing the lines of your palm with a reverence that was at odds with the mischief in his voice. "I'm trying to protect you, darling. I'm trying to be your sword. You just have to let me swing."
You pulled your hand away. He let you, but the smile did not falter.
"I don't need protection."
"Everyone needs protection. Especially the people who think they don't." He tilted his head, and the horns on his beanie caught the light, and for a moment he looked less like a man and more like something from a painting you had seen once in a museum, a depiction of a fallen angel rendered in oils and gold leaf. "Let me rephrase. You don't need protection. You need someone willing to do the things you won't."
The words landed like stones in still water, rippling outward through the quiet room. Because he was right, and you both knew it, and that was the most infuriating thing about him. He saw through the architecture of your control with the ease of someone who had never been burdened by such architecture himself.
"What you need," you said slowly, standing so that you were looking down at him, "is someone to tell you no. And I am the only person in this city who will."
Something shifted in his expression. The performance cracked, just a sliver, and beneath it you glimpsed the thing he kept hidden behind the smiles and the sarcasm and the elaborate theater of his cruelty. A hunger so vast it had no bottom. A devotion so consuming it bordered on worship. A need that was, at its core, terrifyingly human.
"I know," he said, and his voice was small and vast at once. "That's why I'm here."
The city glittered beneath you, oblivious. Your empire, built on blood and patience and the kind of ruthlessness that did not announce itself. His chaos, cutting through it like a blade through gauze. And between you, something that was not quite trust and not quite love and not quite possession but a volatile compound of all three, simmering in a vessel neither of you had asked for but both of you had reached for.
You kissed him first.
It was not gentle. It was not the kiss of romance novels or twilight rendezvous or any of the soft, safe things that ordinary people built their lives around. It was a claim, a collision, a declaration of war and surrender in the same breath. His hands found your waist and pulled, and your fingers found his hair and twisted, and the sound he made against your mouth was something between a groan and a prayer.
When you broke apart, his lips were smeared with the remnants of his black lipstick, and your mouth was painted to match, and he was looking at you with an expression that suggested you had just rewritten something fundamental in his understanding of the universe.
"Wow," he said, and for once, there was no irony in his voice. "Okay. So that happened."
"That," you said, your hands still fisted in the front of his jacket, "is a down payment. On obedience."
He blinked. Then he laughed, and the sound was startled and genuine and so unlike his usual performance that it made something in your chest constrict painfully.
"Baby," he said, "if that's the payment, I'll be the most obedient thing you've ever owned."
"I don't own you."
"Sure you do." His grin returned, but it was softer now, edged with something that looked almost like wonder. "You just haven't decided whether to keep me yet."
You released his jacket. Stepped back. Straightened your collar with the composure of a woman who had not just kissed a serial killer in her penthouse while the city burned below.
"Get out," you said.
He bowed, an exaggerated, mocking thing, and headed for the window. He was halfway through it when he paused, one leg over the sill, his profile limned in city light.
"I'm going to come back," he said. Not a question. Not a request. A fact, delivered with the certainty of someone who had never once doubted his place in the world.
"I know," you said.
"And you're going to let me in."
"I know."
"And one day, you're going to admit that you need this. That you need me." He turned his head, and his eyes found yours across the distance, and the weight of his gaze was almost unbearable in its intensity. "And on that day, sweetheart, I'm going to ruin you. In the best possible way."
He was gone before you could respond, swallowed by the night as though he had never been there at all. The only evidence of his presence was the smear of black on your lips and the heat lingering on your palms and the absolute certainty that nothing in your carefully constructed world would ever be the same again.
You reached for the whiskey. Drank it down. It burned, and you welcomed the burn, and you stood at the window and looked down at the city that was yours, and for the first time in years, you felt something other than the weight of responsibility.
You felt anticipation.
And somewhere in the dark below, the Devil was smiling, and he was thinking of you, and the night was very, very long.
I'm sorry I'm not writing anything (ᗒᗩᗕ) I'm traveling soon so I'm just super stressed atm!! Thank you for being so patient and I'll get to it right when I can!
