[HIATUS]
Side blog: @screamghostie | I’m Joyce | 21, genderfluid | 18+, dark/yandere and NSFW | DEAD DOVE; DO NOT EAT | MINORS DNI
NAVIGATION | AO3 | my KOFI
Dead by Daylight | Call of Duty | Spiderverse | more will be added...
Do not copy or plagarize my work, reblogs and stories inspired from them are fine. I post on Tumblr and AO3 only. I don’t own any of the characters I write for;
MINORS DO NOT INTERACT: My blog contains DARK/DUB-CON/NON-CON/RAPE content. There may be triggering subjects - please read the WARNINGS before continuing. None of the gifs or visuals I use in my fics are mine.
Let me know down in the comments or send an ask which AU and fandoms you want to be tagged in.
Ps. Tell me if you want to be tagged in Darkfics or not.
I’m pretty loose with requests and asks, if I don’t feel like doing it, I’ll tell you or dm you if it’s not anonymous, but I will not do Pedophelia or anything sexual between a minor and an adult.
syn. ( wc : 22.7 ) kyryll chudomirovich flins is a kind man, you will tell yourself. he'd swept you away from the cold winter storm. he'd given you a place to stay for a time. you should be thankful; you ought to be...and yet, yet, yet.
TW. ⸺ female ! reader, yandere + smut and dark content ahead. kind of an au with a very skewed time period but still reliant on a few bits of canon worldbuilding, schrödinger's canon??? divergence??????, reader is from sumeru and has some semblance of a backstory as well, another fic where she is not daijobu at all, some allusions to fae folklore with a few creative liberties taken ( flins how tf can you hold iron- ), spectral hauntings and past references to suicide on the ghost's part, flins is not human in this fic and it shows through at times, typical standard fae atrocities(tm), past murder, this fic is 90% just the reader getting her ass haunted, references to stalking and obsessive behaviour, imprisonment and magical bullshittery, the smut starts vanilla and gets freaky as it usually does with me, flins cops a feel out of you but it's quite literally him touching your organs with fire hands, there's fire hands btw ig but the fire doesn't burn yay, is there a tag for organ touching intimacy???? i need to check.
LOG. ⸺ the amount of research i put into lighthouses for this is ridiculous. also i was bullied by my ( alleged friends ). i hope your pillows are warm ( love you ). and yes, many thanks to @meimeimeirin, @silentmoths @euniveve and @stickyspeckledlightt for being the victims of the yap ( and speckled, to you for the little lighthouse videogame XD. i could finally relate certain mechanics like the motors turning the lenses and all that in ). this work has been marked mature for containing smut & dead dove content. readers below the age of 18 / ageless blogs and antis, do not interact. PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS BEFORE PROCEEDING.
HAMARTIA n. ha·mar·tia : tragic flaw. hamartia comes from the greek verb hamartanein, meaning "to miss the mark." aristotle used the word in his poetics to refer to the error of judgment which ultimately brings about the tragic hero's downfall. ( mariam webster )
You’re still not used to the cold that settles in Nod-Krai.
You grew up kissed by the Sumeru tropics, after all. Warm sun, humid heat and belting rain and all the lushness and green bunched together against the crevices and roadsides of its little towns and cities and on the threshold of your grandmother’s house.
But in Nod-Krai, the weather is something oppressively alive, densely jarring you against its unpredictability. Oppressively alive yet swathed over with a sense of debilitating sleep. It tires out and seeps away and freezes into skin and bone and muscle; singing you into a lull that almost baits you to a peaceful sort of rest. And Nod Krai is beautiful too the way the fangs of a beast are, you came to learn as well.
You’re trembling now, when the storm rolls by and you’re stranded in the woods heel deep in snow. A part of it was your reckless foolishness — You’re on your last flame flower corolla and you’d shut your radio off, missing the usual report to stay indoors. Now you pace past the dip and over the snowbanks, trying to find the way back to the main road. The snow has blanketed the stillness around you and has covered away your old trail and the crisscross of your footprints.
You do not know where the main road is. You grip your corolla a little harder, feeling it’s fading warmth over your fingertips.
The woods seem to have closed in around you ( it’s gotten denser, darker, darker still ) and its trees loom over with its rustled whispering. There’s nothing else to hear — just the wind buffeting past your bare face and the ebb and flow of the little lake a few sprints away as it kisses its shoreline. You could be watched between the shadowed edges. You could be dragged deeper inside its hollow body.
( It certainly feels that way, the more you walk. The suffocation comes with an angry buzz in the air. You’re not welcome here, it seems to say. You are not welcome here, it seems to insist, as it wrangles out the breath in your lungs. )
When you realize that, it sets off an old fear inside — a familiar sinking panic that throws you deeper into that pit. You’ve ventured a ways off from familiarity. This isn’t Nasha town anymore, or the pale blue of Hiisii Island. This isn’t the surrounding countryside within the safer limits you’d wandered.
Are you going to die here? You think. A bitter taste stays on your tongue. It’s acrid, hard to swallow. You feel stupid. Foolish, stupid, reckless. There’s nothing to trace your steps back to. You can’t pick out the shape of the path in front of you. You’re tugged in too deep till you run around blind to the world you’re stumbling past and now, now you’re lost.
( And the woods, it still rustles and it still whispers, and it still veers and goads you in deeper and deeper with its malice slickened like blood over steel. )
You want to go home, you think then. You’re weakened from walking in circles and the cold only spikes as the residual warmth fizzles out in your fingertips. The corolla is pressed to your cheeks as you try to reach out and pick into any lingering remnants just as the whistling in your ears pitches to a deafening loudness. You want to go home, to your little house and the worn-down walls you were surrounded by. You want home, and its shuttered windowpanes and the plants by the wayside of your kitchen.
Home, and even that is seized by some unwelcome, edged grimace barely a moment later. Even that doesn’t quell the ache that keeps building up in your chest.
You mustn’t stop moving. You think you could find something. Shelter, a shack somewhere. Nod-Krai is populated. There were a few scattered oddballs who lived far away from the main town and maybe just maybe, just maybe there’s a place that could let you in —
Your knees buckle. You’re on the ground, coughing.
The locals had their own horror stories to share over counter tops. Hikers going missing, who had grown too cocky and ventured too far and too deep into places they probably never should have crossed into. Nikita, who managed the library had mentioned, off hand, that sometimes the land itself seemed to persist with an old scar that refuses to fade. That the beings that lay within it could steal hearts and voices and people and return mangled corpses days later.
He had shown you the faces who’d gone missing. Obituaries upon obituaries that listed old newspapers and an even longer line of missing posters that dated decades ago. All of them smiling. All of them so seizingly alive in those photos. All of them, perhaps grieved for and loved by a family.
( “But those are fairy tales.” you had told him then, pulling the book you’d checked out to your chest. Nikita considered you, keen blue eyes raking over the spine of your book and picking into the foolhardiness that you must have exuded.
“You’ll do well to respect it, no less.” He’d said, settling for a simple warning. “It’s always the mouthy ones that get picked off first.” )
You try heaving yourself back up. Your limbs feel heavier than usual, sluggish, clumsy and slipping over and falling again and again till the panic sputters into hopelessness. You manage to haul yourself a few feet forth, leaning against a tree trunk to catch one raspy, icy breath in, then another.
There’s no sensation left in your hands. You see white around your eyes and white everywhere. White and blurs of black swimming past your field of sight with splotches intermixed between. Your next few breaths are pained, slow. It feels like dying.
You’ll probably end up as another unfortunate instance in the end. A name on that register that could be written off and forgotten.
You wonder who’ll feed the remaining cats in the neighbourhood. One of them is expecting a litter soon. She’s taken residence at your neighbours and comes to you for her dinner despite your attempts to drive her off. Sometimes she used to nap by the overhanging roof near the shed, rolled over to the side with her small, soft face tucked beneath her paws.
A moment passes. You try one last time — and you’re waddling through the rising layers of snow with the scraps of strength you had leftover. You’re spared a few more steps till exhaustion crushes you down. You sit back, fist deep in snow and stare up at the cloudcover. The mist coalesces, thickens, swallows you in its canvas.
It’s so cold. It’s so, so cold.
You press your palms over you eyes and stave back the tears. Then you gather the air in your lungs.
“Help!” you call out and it’s a soft, feeble thing. “Help!”
There’s no answer.
You sink into your jacket, trying to huddle into the heat of your body. You can hardly see past the condensed puffs blown out from your mouth, shaking off some of the snow in your hair and staring straight ahead. There’s nothing to see past the thicket in front of you. Just more lines upon lines of trees growing closer and closer together.
Then you hear something past the wind’s howling. You brush it off at first.
And then it comes closer. It’s just a little louder.
A crunch, crunch, crunch.
Footsteps, you jolt and sit up a little straighter. You nearly fall forward, keenly stretching out to the source of it. It’s there, masked beneath the white noise in your ears. You open your mouth and push back that lump in your throat. “Hey!” you yell out. It breaks halfway and you cough. It hacks through your body, and it aches.
You don’t pick up on any more sounds. Then the crunching closes in, faster, a little more urgent. A thought betrays any notion of hope — that perhaps you had called on something that you probably shouldn’t have and —
Blue cuts past your line of sight. It’s bright enough to have you reel back, hissing a little against it. You could barely make out the black of the person’s boots in front of you and archons, archons, archons, the beat of your heart spikes and strays and spirals. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.
“Are you one of the living?” a voice speaks up. Your head swims at the strange question.
A person. Another person. It’s another person. The floodgates batter, so dangerously close to breaking and it’s nearly too much to bear. You’re quiet for a tense few moments, clawing away at your throat to get a word out. The man paces closer. The light shines even brighter and you…you can’t sense warmth from it. You shudder and twitch away, raising a hand up to cover your eyes.
“Am I…” you start. “Y-yes. Yes I am — ” You wobble, forcing your body up till you stand a little taller. You’re still unwieldy, arms snapping up to balance yourself out and your weight tips over and you’re sent hurtling back into the snow again. The man doesn’t flinch, sucking a breath in as his hand rests on your shoulder and he takes a knee next to you. You feel the burn of his gaze against the top of your head.
“So you are.” he muses, sounding pleased. “For a moment I assumed you were one of the graveyard’s residents…apologies, if I came across the wrong way...one can never be too careful.” You shake your head, at this point, desperate enough to blow past the unconventionality and the macabre lilt in his wording. The lights lowers, casting itself across his face and you make out the shape of a lantern and a gloved hand holding it. You squint up at him.
A pale face looks back, the kind often painted in pictures of storybooks about princes and princesses and noblemen and women. Despite it all, it’s his eyes that stick out the most, half obscured beneath his windswept hair. The stuff the colour of minted gold and marigolds.
“It’s you!” you blurt out, because you know this man. You’ve caught glimpses of him in town, slipping past the doors of the Flagship during weekend nights and skulking by the shelves of the stores with his groceries under arm. You’ve caught him at the tram lines, so easy to spot against the height he stood at. As strange a man as he was, according to some locals, you let your relief show at the corners of your eyes and the sag of your head.
The man blinks a slow, careful blink, searching you as well and he smiles ( a buttery sort, a little disarming in its sincerity ). “I could say the same.” he muses. “But this weather is hardly ideal for any conversation and…” he trails off, appraising you with a sharp look. “My residence is close by. You may warm yourself up there.”
You nearly weep. “That…yes. Yes, that would be nice.” you nod, bumbling about like a newborn. You feel bogged down like dead weight, but he pays little mind to it, easily tugging you along with him as you both trek through the building storm. Maybe it was the delirium speaking, but you think the woods slowly loosened its hold around you, making way for a route you’d missed out while running past.
“What are you doing this far from Nasha Town?” he asks when you spot a flicker in the dark and a tall, dark outline in the distance. The overhanging fog clings to the both of you, but he seems unbothered by the lot of it, his lantern held aloft.
You chew on the inside of your cheek. You will not answer that. The idea of it makes something stir in the depths of your guts and bite into the tender flesh of it. It refuses to let itself settle past the trembling steps it tracks. The crackling from the branches makes you flinch and stumble over to keep close. You spot the man staring from his periphery.
“Hiking.” you lie.
“Hiking?” he echoes, half scolding. You feel the weight of something settle on your shoulders. “That was a very foolish choice on your part.” he adds, but he staves back the mockery for consideration, pulling a bit of dark fabric a little past up your chin. His coat, you guess. It sits on you, heavy weighted but perfect for staving the freezing winds off.
You spy the shirt and the thick sweater he had on underneath. It still felt wrong in all sorts of ways, how exposed he looked momentarily. “You’ll get cold.” you protest.
The man waves it off, his focus trained ahead now. “We’re close to our destination.” he assures you, hips tugging up at the corners. You’re a little taken by how awfully pretty he is. “I think I can manage. The worst of it is yet to come anyway.”
You let yourself be lead, craning your head back to catch the shadows prowling the treeline when you step out of the cover. There’s a glint behind it, a smattering of pale eyes peering over at the two of you, cast by the shadowed light of the moon peeking through the clouds every now and then. The deer do not advance any further. You see them creep over the borders and throw their antlered heads back.
Inhale, hold, exhale. You bundle yourself under the jacket, guilt chewing at your insides. It makes its home there, and a meal out of the deluge.
"Thank you." you croak out. His smile simply widens.
( And with it comes the click. A manacle you don't see, a shackle you don't hear. "Look, look, look." the chittering in the trees seems to echo then shift into laughter. "She has no clue at all, the poor thing."
You are none the wiser.
None the wiser to all of it, save the absent warmth of his body. )
The-Man-Who-Saved-You is named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins.
“Flins, is just fine, of course.” he finishes smoothly when he turns up the heating and sets a kettle to boil. You curl up by the hearth, bitten fingertips grasping at the swelter around the grate’s edges. Some of the tension in your shoulders start easing and you turn to him, feeling a little pathetic over intruding into his space.
( Said space is worn away, like the rest of Nasha town and its older streets. Metal walls and metal doors and patchwork panelling held together by dogged spite. But you can’t quite put your finger on the ‘something else’, a disconnect, as if it were shrouded so thick in it’s isolation, even the sun can’t quite reach it.
You’re suddenly aware of the fact that you’re in the middle of nowhere, with a man you barely know. )
“Mr. Flins…” you test carefully. You still have to grasp the way some letters here are pronounced, but you think you got this one right, at the very least. You tell him your name in turn, playing with the well worn corners of the blanket he’d provided ( hand knit from white and blue wool. It’s a pretty thing. You wonder where he got it from ).
He tilts his head, testing the way the syllables rise and fall against his tongue. Your cheeks flush and your traitorous heart, amidst the strain and tire, still lets itself speed up for just a second ( and then it aches, it aches, it aches ).
“I hope I’m not causing you any trouble.” you add, sheepishly as exhaustion tugs your words loose. Flins glances over, sharp, searching and huffs out through his nose, the dulled yellow of his eyes raking over your form with something incomprehensible. If you’d been a little more awake, you’d have been put off, perhaps. But that churlish, scathing side to you scolds the flicker down and stamps it out. He’s been helpful. He saved your life, you ungrateful thing.
“Hardly. I’m actually quite embarrassed with myself…” He gestures around the little living area, lit by low watt bulbs and panelled with wood and odd trinkets. You don’t see any photos, like some of the houses you’d been to. Flins probably isn’t the type to set his history on display — or perhaps there is little need to. “I’m afraid I do not receive guests often, save for the occasional shipment of supplies. I’d have cleared the room up a little, otherwise. I hope you don’t mind the untidiness…?”
Oh that…does not stave away the guilt. You’ll be eaten alive at this rate, as you brush the heel of your palm against your cheek and wipe away the melting snow.
“It’s fine…It’s fine…I just…” your words peter out. It feels like grabbing at water, at this rate. You can find yourself thinking straight under the dizzy haze you sink into with the passing tick on the clock. “Mr. Flins, do you know when the storm will die down?”
Flins pauses, in the midst of straightening out the table. “The storm…” he intones. “In a few days, I'm afraid.”
Wonderful, you think to yourself viciously as the consequences start tearing your throat out. Swell. Simply swell.
You muster up a defeated “Oh.” and feel that gnawing intensify and core your insides hollow. Your clothes have dried out, thankfully and your head wafts against the howling outside. Black spots start flooding into your line of sight, clearing out only when your weight starts tipping forward and you catch yourself in time.
You yelp, sputtering back. Flins considers you, his expression blank. “Well…” he speaks up, schooling his amusement. “I’ll get a room ready for you.”
“Alright.” you sigh, defeated. You should have stayed home. You chew over it, slowly, steadily, the aftertaste leaving behind iron and bile on your tongue. “Though I’ll do just well on the couch…” And you glance over at it. You could, if you tuck your legs in. The thought of treading further into his life seemed an awful idea now, and you feel uneasiness swell up in your chest and fester around that open wound. You’re still too on edge to let yourself settle into your skin and wait out whatever was outside.
“Nonsense. That would be improper, on my part as a host.” he states, a matter of fact finality edging every syllable. You have no more strength to argue, trailing his footsteps while he ducks into the hallways. He almost seems to melt into the shadows licking the walls, save for the occasional flicker of his shape by the dim light from the windows. You hear a switch flip and the lights flicker on.
You swallow that cloying terror and manage a wobbly smile. “Come along.” he urges, though not impatient. “You look like you’ll collapse.”
A heaving sound escapes. It rattles your chest. “I certainly feel it…” you mutter.
“And we certainly cannot have that either.” he agrees, a droll lift to his voice. You listen for the brush of his footsteps against the wood flooring. “Here.” he stops, the door creaking open. “It isn’t much.” he admits, and some of that sheepish embarrassment trickles in. It’s disarming, the sight of it on a man dripping with platitudes and you rub at your shoulders.
“It’s more than enough.” you shake your head, drinking the room in. It’s small, a little downtrodden but the sheets were freshly laundered and looked so soft you think you could sink right in and never want to wake. “Thank you again, Mr. Flins.”
The indescribable look in his eyes returns, keenly basing in it. It’s so stark yet so missable you wonder if you’re going mad at this rate. Your stance falters. “I should…” you mumble. “I should turn in for the night, I guess.”
“You should.” he complies quite placidly. “Do let me know if you are in need of anything. I’m making myself a pot of tea and if you’d like a drink before retiring, I’d be happy to bring a cup in.”
“Maybe tomorrow.” you shut your eyes, your lip wobbling as you sway in place. No more talking, your mind whispers. Rest, you need rest. It’s cold enough as is and even with the heating whirring through the vents, you’re still struggling to retain some of that warmth. Your fingertips are still cold when you touch them to your ears. The lobes are empty and your mouth purses ( of course they are ).
Flins bows his head and steps back. “Good night, Mr. Flins.” you whisper through the crack of the door, staring up at him with a tired smile.
“Goodnight.” he returns it with one of his own. You shut the door and lean your head into the old wood, taking one breath in, then letting out, then taking one in again. You pace each breath, as you’d taught yourself over the years. There’s nothing to fret over for now. You’ll need to leave the moment this storm dies down and get back into your own routine and the comforting motion it brought you.
It tempts you, that near future. But your house…
It feels a foreign thing now. You cannot imagine living in those walls, picking up the shattered glass from your broken windows. You can’t find what old fondness you had for it anymore, when you’d surveyed those walls the first time and taken it in, as small and modest as it was.
( You cannot taste that freedom it once held. You cannot taste anything. )
Your vision blurs over a bit and you pad over to the bed, slowing down when you pass the mirror by. It’s a small one, small enough to be held by your hands with the most beautiful ornate frame laid atop a small table. Flins seemed to like old things, shiny things, much like ravens flock to coins. He’s done you plenty of favours so far and you know better than to leave a deed like this unpaid. Maybe you could treat him to food at the Speranza. Would he like a Lackaberry Madame?
There’s a creeping feeling that cuts through the air around the room bit by bit. Then the temperature plunges, and you double over, head spinning as you grip the edge of the table too tight. Your lips part when your sight starts clearing out bit by agonizing bit as you feel hands pull you back and they’re cold, cold, so very cold over your shoulders and an incessant thumping over your temples.
You cannot scream.
You try to call out, but it rams into your guts and batters your ribs. You cough, that invisible grip tightening against your heart and archons, archons archons were you dying what’s going on —
Something shifts in the mirror. You take a step back ( and oh, it’s pained agony, like you’re being stabbed at the soles of your feet ), ears ringing louder and louder as the wailing slowly starts to hitch into an agonizing chortle. You feel torn open, bloodied and flayed alive just as the alarm starts to spill into sheer anxiety-inducing panic like you’d been pushed headfirst into the freezing depths and held there flailing and drowning in sea water. Your hands jolt. Your face peers back, frozen in apathy as the undercurrent brims just beneath your skin and in the way your brow twitches.
Someone else peers back with you, pale faced and dead eyed. His hands hold you in place and dirt cakes the underside of his broken finger nails just as his gaze widens with some inexplicable manic to it. You feel cold breath against the shell of your ear, the ghost of something brushing your hair.
“Don’t eat what he gives you.” it whispers, sharp, hoarse, cracking at the corners like his vocal chords had given way. It’s debilitating, the memory of desperation imprinted and seeped into every half whispered syllable. Then he’s gone, with the cold he brought and you drop to the floor, your voice returned to you and wailing into the floorboards like you were shot.
You can’t quite guess for how long. Time seemed to have bent and blurred it’s segments. You could make out the shape of Flins by the door and the way he eases you up as the weariness crunches down at your throat and you claw away at him with incense, then with a defeated, helpless series of warbling “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry — ” You also don’t register him leading you out of the room and tucking you into warmed sheets with practiced ease, pressing his hand over your eyes with a soft sigh.
“It’s alright.” he soothes. “You’re quite alright.”
“I didn’t — ” you choke out, panicked because you saw something in there. You saw something in there. Flins draw his hand back and you look up at him. His hair shadows the glow his eyes held. He offers a kind smile. “I saw…I could have sworn I — ”
“I shouldn’t have hauled you up so unceremoniously.” he muses, more to himself than anything else. You’re pressed beneath the weight of a throw pillow. “Rest for now. You’re exhausted.”
You shudder. You can’t sleep. You don’t want to, if it meant seeing whatever that thing was haunting your dreams. He shakes his head. “You are safe.” he reiterates, firmly pressing your palm. You’re trembling, you realize. You’re trembling like a damn child and you bury yourself into the pillows, weeping into the sheets and your shame.
The exhaustion was what took you in the end, quick as a flash, right into its yawning mouth. Outside, the storm still moans through the shutters.
You have another nightmare that night.
( A person with hair like flaxen gold is seated atop your stomach with a too-sweet smile. They’re beautiful, beautiful in ways that scare you, that makes your insides hurt. It’s a haunting look on them, tragic as water drips down steadily past your cheek and into your hairline and over your eyes. You suck a breath in, insides twisting.
“I’m sorry,” you barely get to whisper as they lean forth, nose to nose with their long lashes pressed to their cheeks.
Their touch trails over your collarbone, over your chest. Then they peek at you through the locks shadowing their face, mischief on their lips, in the forest green of their gaze. The flash of a mirror shines in their hands and the shattering follows, sharp and loud. Broken glass tears your chest open with a sickening, messy crunch.
In the visceral aftermath, you can feel the blood soaking your sheets and the way your ribs are broken into your lungs and the last persistent thumps of your weak, beating heart.
You wake after that, in cold sweat, the lingering aftermath of her laughter still fresh on your mind.
And outside, the storm still moans through the shutters. )
The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to people-watch.
It’s the leftovers of curiosity that still pulled him back onto the streets of Nasha town during his free time, where he pored over Tarno’s wares and sorted out the pretty trinkets that caught his fancy. It was also the leftovers of curiosity that let him linger post shopping, to let his gaze rove the by lanes and the bustle at the ports.
The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins knew the ebb and flow of humanity and the faces that came and went with it. He’d counted the generational lines he’d lived past and the graves bearing his familial name, for every dead father and mother of Poor Kyryll and Poor Chudomir who lived within the lighthouse.
He’d learned the routes the tram lines traveled when they were first set down decades ago. He’d walked past this stop every new moon and caught a ride to the edge of the town where the port lay winding down a few feet past the teetering housing. This was where he’d take the ferry to Paha Island and the cemetery off-shore and his residence and its isolation.
He’d waited by the stop that day. The sun was up, dim as it usually was and the residents had thrown on an extra layer to greet the encroaching lull of winter with. His line of sight followed the people who’d walk past. And then he saw gold, on the ears of a foreigner, gold so openly displayed in a place like Nasha town and he almost laughed at the absurdity. They were a lovely set of earrings, though, he’d deigned to admit it. The metal work was delicate, and the product itself small against the centerpiece; a little white pearl embedded in the middle.
How pretty, how pretty, how pretty. The impish side of him chants and sings and giggles away with all that hidden snark. Had he been younger, a little less tempered by human touch, Flins would have followed and magicked it for himself. How pretty, how pretty, how pretty —
And then it stopped when you turned your head to lean against the stanchion by the entrance ( so tired, with your taped fingers and that half-asleep slouch to your shoulders. ). You seemed to have caught on to it and you looked around you, back a little straighter and your stance wearier — till it landed on him. You froze, swallowed nervously and you waved his way. It was a small gesture. An innocent one. And oh foolish, foolish you — you with all your blissful ignorance hadn’t a clue of what you’d done then.
Flins blinked.
Oh.
Hello.
“Have you slept well?”
You’d awoken in his room, you quickly learn. Flins is plain with that admission when you asked, and brushed it off as he usually did when he set your tea down next to you. You draw your legs to your chest, the after-image of gold still burned into your eyes and you fight the urge to tear your hair from your head as the shudder between your ribs grows to a rampant, hungry thing.
You shutter, when Flins repeats his question carefully and you bite your cheek bloody for being so rude. “No…not really.” you rasp out, feeling more and more like a nuisance. It’s his room, and it repeats in your head and rattles and rattles till it festers into something deep seated and annoying.
“Was it a nightmare?” he probes.
You swallow. “I…I guess.” It’s a slow admission and you feel stupid saying it aloud. When you’d graduated, you assumed adulthood meant growing up and casting away the childish things. The fairy tales and the anxious nag of something stirring in the shadows of your bed. The old fears that let you run to your parents’ room with babbling, warbling cries. “Nothing too bad and all. I’m just…easily flustered.” You laugh it off and lay your sights on the tea, feeling your insides shift with nauseous protest.
Flins taps his chin. “And yet you’re distressed.” he retorts with a hasty followup: “I won’t pry. Will the tea help? Or a meal?”
No, you sound out in your head. That pale face flickers back and forth, death-like, corpse-like with its grip digging into the flesh of your upper arms. Don’t eat what he gives you.
It’s strange, the familiarity of that warning. Nikita had uttered it once in passing when you’d checked another book in. Then there’s the bile stinging at your throat and burning your insides out. The last thing Flins needs — even as some old, dulled instinct screams at you to run — is a sick resident ( and oh, how like you, you coward to unearth the ugliness that is your own loathing ). “I…I don’t think I have the stomach for anything right now.”
The corner of Flins’ lip twitches and that was that.
Strange. Strange. Strange.
He dips his head down, collecting the cup. “Alright. A little later, perhaps” he hums, sliding the saucer into one hand. How graceful, how proper; you’re admittedly a little enthralled by the action. “I have my own duties to attend to now. If you wish, you can amuse yourself and look around. You’ll be here a while, after all.” And that smile returns, all buttery warmth against washed out marigold.
( You want to flee into your blankets — but these ones aren’t yours. They’re unfamiliar, and you tell yourself this over and over because you are, for all intents and purposes, something alien disturbing this little corner of Nod Krai. You should never have been here at all. )
He hasn’t asked about the previous night yet. You shake your head a little before offering him a smile of your own. “I could help out around the house.” You state. “Actually, I think I will. It’s the least I could do.”
“There’s no need.”
“I must.” you insist, a plea creeping into your pitch because you can’t be dead weight, you simply cannot. “Again. I’ve barged in with little thought or care for your space. It’s only right…”
“You were freezing to death.” Flins intones, a gein hiding away rather sneakily as he speaks. “Now I doubt there’s any room to protest ill manners in a situation like that, don’t you agree?” You mouth purses and you clench your teeth when a grin threatens to pull at your face. You see what Katya meant when she spoke of him now. He’s polite, easy to talk to if not a little off. Then again most keepers like him are, living so far out in isolation.
“Do you step out often? From this island?” you ask, sneaking a glance around you. The walls are bare here too and there are more shelves, more boxes and a large desk with days worth of papers upon papers stacked atop it. Flins follows your gaze.
“Reports.” he waves off. “A nasty thing to deal with. You don’t have to bother with those.”
You huff with a quiet, “I don’t think I can help with that.”
“Pity.” he comments. “Would you like to head down to the living room?”
You shouldn’t linger and you know this. Still, given what you’d seen, leaving felt like something horrible and maligned. You…you could hear the thump-thump of your heart at the thought. But you could have been hallucinating ( you tell yourself this over and over. A figment of your imagination. That boy was never there. His grasp on you never existed. You saw nothing in that mirror; just the flayed mind of someone who has to eat her terrible choices ). Were the last few hours easy on you at all to begin with?
He helps you up and you rub salt on your wounds, hissing at yourself for it. How pathetic.
“I can manage, Mr. Flins.” you pipe up and it’s a reedy attempt at sounding bigger than you were. He shows you the bathroom and you run some hot water for yourself, scrubbing away the stale stench of sweat off of you. You almost expect to catch a pair of eyes peering at you through the mirror or past the parting the curtains provided. There are no eyes. There are no shapes hiding away past your vision.
You still feel watched.
You hate every second of it.
But you lay your anger flat and leave it in some corner to rot into itself. Flins provides you with spare clothes while yours are put away for washing. You accept them, your cheeks burning from behind the door ( he wasn’t looking at you; and you had stifled a weak, awkward giggle; it comes out more a strangled croak ). They’re too big on you, and you’d folded the sleeves of the sweater and trousers a few times so that you could walk around with them with little issue.
He says his usual, “Call if you need me, yes?”
“I will.”
( Something is burning into your shoulders when you turn away from him. That same voyeuristic hunger, that same uneasiness lighting up and gagging you. )
You make yourself useful, as the itch compelled it. clearing a few tables out when he allowed it and washing any used dishes. The morning beat on that way, as he disappears off, probably to see to the reports and keep the lighthouse running.
From your knowledge, as limited as it was, you doubt he does leave this place as much to begin with. You can make out a few of the graves; the closer ones poking out of the haze of grey outside your window. That and the faint outline of trees bent over against the gusts that rattle by. In Sumeru, you only knew the rainstorms and how the palm trees bent over till some snapped against the sheer force of it. It was a rare moment of you facing the cold back then.
Now it’s…common.
You feel homesick, putting the washed dishes away. You miss the basking and the green and climbing the trees you did when you were young. You missed peering over walls and sorting jasmine with your grandmother. You miss the smell of the earth when the rains ceased and the momentary cool and then the sweltering heat that followed. You miss Sumeru, as infuriating as it got and you miss your family and the messiness they brought with them.
( You can’t face them anymore. Not after this. )
He has nice ceramics. The hand painted kind, locked away in a cupboard. Your grandmother loved to hoard away her good cutlery too — the nice plates, the nice glasses and when fanciness permitted it with fancy guests, the nice cutlery ( but never family, because that ease and casualness seemed to magically brush aside the metal plates passed around ).
Your eyes land on the knives and their sharp edges ( and you remember the feel of skin and you remember the way it divots ). Your mouth runs dry and you tear your eyes away from them, pushing away those memories — all of them into a locked corner.
You dry your hands like clockwork. They’re numb and you move to the hearth, reaching out for the warm flicker within it. The fire swells, burns. You watch it, transfixed, perhaps intent to curl up beside it like a cat and think about the sun you miss so much ( and the sun itself and nothing else even at s tails after you like a restless creature so intent on being noticed ). Maybe you can make a few games up on the spot to pass the time.
Then it sputters and the lights around you flicker off.
You almost crumble then and there, sitting upright. It’s dark, save the warm orange behind you, and even that casts its ominous shadows over the wall. And they shift, they twist, they morph and blend and melt in together and you stay stock still, bells tolling in your head as you wait and watch and wait and watch and wait.
You retreat back, closer to the light and heave a breath in. Nothing yet. Nothing too alarming. You watch the dark and you watch it hard till you feel some of your nerve start to splinter and calm. Your head hangs down and the drumbeat in your chest starts easing just a bit.
Look at you. This is getting ridiculous.
It is, you agree, palms to your cheek. You give them a firm smack. You need to pull yourself together. You haven’t seen any sign or sight of Flins yet and you wonder if he’s trying to manage the shut power. You have no clue how the lighthouse even has electricity, given it’s so far removed from any notable settlements…
“Mr. Flins?” you call.
No answer. He’s probably a little too far to hear you. You weren’t very loud to begin with.
Your face feels bitten, pulled taut against ice water. You draw your legs back, exhaling sharply.
Then something grabs you. It holds fast to your ankle and pulls. You brace yourself as you skid into the wall, freezing in place for a bare second like a deer in headlights. You feel the way it batters against you and the white hot searing swallowed up by numbness and the blood roaring in your head. You scramble to your feet, slipping once, twice and run. There’s a scrape and scramble and the heavy footfalls that follow till it feels like they surround you and echo past the and down every turn and every bit of cramped space you squeeze by.
( Thump, thump, thump goes your heart, loud enough to mask the scratching, the soft undertone of hurried whispers echoing from the floorboards beneath you. They grow louder and louder till you fear them reaching between the spaces of wood and hauling you down thrashing and screaming. )
That chill settles fast and you push yourself off to one side, meandering into one narrow hallway till you ram right into a snowswept Flins holding his lantern aloft. He’s shaken a moment, just as you press into the space beside him, only just catching something retreating back farther away, as if terrified of the blue light that cuts across the dark. “Did — ” there’s hysteria there and it drips out of you, in trembling, shaking gasps. “Archons what was that — ”
Flins looks eerily calm. “The neighbours.” he replies.
“What?” you swallow, grimacing. “What?!”
“The neighbours. I do live next to a graveyard after all.” he repeats firmly. “We have residents on the island who often linger past their time. They’re rather loud today…”
Oh. Oh. You slump back, back hitting metal as you press a hand down and rub it over your face, your breaths erratic. Flins’ clothes rustle and he hovers, his presence still so cold against the emptiness of the hall around you. “I’m…What I saw yesterday — oh god I'm being haunted — ” When his touch brushes against your arm, you draw back as if shot and he takes a step away. “Sorry. Sorry I didn’t — ”
He shakes his head. “They must have given you a scare.” he notes, brows pinching just a little. “Given how they’re usually so docile, I didn’t quite expect them to lash out as much…” He pores over you while you inch into him, following the timbre of his voice and screwing your eyes shut. “Are you hurt?”
The burning on your back is starting to smart. Your nose twitches and you shake your head.
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.” you tell him, a little too hasty, you think. “Will they keep…” you stop, eye stinging just as you dare to sneak another glance out, jumping against the slow rock of the lantern and the shape of the space seemingly distorting. “I don’t want to keep seeing them — ” Flins looks at you with something akin to sympathy, gently meandering you back to the living room.
“If you are scared, you can stick a little closer to me.” he offers. “They tend to steer clear my way…”
You sniffle. “Why?”
He offers a dry smile. “Why indeed? I’m under the assumption that I put plenty of people off.” You’re seated down on the couch, where you absently nurse your shoulder blade and hope he doesn’t notice the way you wince when you press down a bit too hard. The lantern is set down on the table and you turn your attention to that, and the blue flame dancing inside it ( it shrinks, then swells and shrinks again, dimming and brightening all at once ).
“People in town call you ‘odd’.” you concede, the pads of your thumb smoothening over your knuckles.
“I’m aware.” Flins laughs a little. “Do you think I'm odd?”
What a question, you shake your head. Is there a correct answer for this one? Flins is expectant though, even if he turned it over as a joke. He’s leaned forward a little on his seat and there’s a prickle there that you…you can’t quite put your finger on.
You mull over it. You’d met his gaze a few times already and you meet it now; dull yellow against the lamplight and the ghostly paleness of his skin. “A little.” you mutter. “But when it comes to speaking to you, it just…comes out…? I don’t know how to say it but…” you shrug, cheeks starting to burn a bit. You haven’t lost the taut set to your jaw. You still duck just a little when something seems to move in spots. “...It just is.”
Flins hums, seemingly satisfied and you’re left to the silence filling the space between the two of you for a little time after. The rattling outside seems to grow wilder, wilder still till you almost fear the window flying off of the hinges. He waves it off. “It’s quite normal.” he says, bent over a book. You open your mouth, nearly commenting on the poor lighting ( “your eyes will strain.” Your grandmother would say. “And then you’ll go blind!” ).
You keep quiet. It would be very rude. You barely register him saying something about fused wires, and power outages, as if he sensed your unspoken query and you wither a bit from embarrassment.
The pelting slowly starts to slow. “It’s stopped?” you squawk out, wide eyed, a little hopeful.
“It’s slowed.” Flins corrects. “Which is a good thing. I may not have to keep clearing the windows of the lantern room over and over…” He pauses, considering your frame, curled up on his couch. Your heart leaps; you’ll have to be left alone again at this rate and given the last instance? You shrink a little, too much of a coward to speak up while you pull against the hem of the clothes you’d borrowed.
No more ghosts, you want to wail. No more ghosts. But you ask too much of him as is. It feels like you’re digging yourself too deep into a pit to really climb out of at this rate.
“You could come with me.” Flins offers. “I’ll need to refuel the lantern again while at it and an extra set of hands could be of some help.”
You blink and look up. “Could…could I?”
“It’s nothing too complicated. Just pouring some kerosene in and handling a hand pump.” he states, dipping into the halls. You follow him as he ventures back to his sleeping quarters, fishing out a spare coat and scarf from the cupboard after some rummaging. “It is still quite cold out.” he reminds you just as you shoot him a distressed glance. “We don’t want your tongue to freeze off. You don’t deserve a liar’s omen, hm?”
You sputter a little, your own coat clutched against your chest.
“That’s not going to keep the cold out.”
“I’m aware.” you mumble, securing yourself beneath layers upon layers of heavy fleece. Flins circles you once, hiking your scarf up a moment then passing you a curt nod. “So all I have to do is pour the fuel in?” You run over it again, still so uncertain with yourself. He leads you a little further into the house, opening the door at what you could surmise was the edge of it. A circular room lays beyond, iron walls and all with a single stairwell spiralling upwards.
Flins ascends first and you test your weight on a step before scuttling after, stopping by the windows to watch the ground slowly plummet below the two of you. He finally stops at a circular room, walls bare and a chair or two strewn into the shaded parts. You catch a table here too and the vague scrawl of a weather report streaked across it as well as a few white shavings. “Pay that no mind.” he says, as you shift and bounce on your feet. There’s a terrible mix of nervousness and excitement welling up — heat and cold turning over and over and upheaving itself through the space between your ribs.
He wheels a barrel over to you, patting the top of it. You pull your mittens off and stuff them into the pockets of the jacket. “Two of these into the vat.” he instructs, clipped, precise as he taps at the little tank. Then he points to something vaguely shaped like a bicycle pump. “And I’d mentioned it before, but you’ll need to pump this after pouring the oil in. twenty should do just fine. The needle should point right here and stay there.”
He taps at the gauge and turns to you with an encouraging smile. “Could you manage that now?”
Your lips purse. “Seems simple enough.” you jerk your head. “Fuel in tank, and then pump…right…right…”
“I’ll be up in the lantern room.” Flins continues on. “Don’t worry too much now. You won’t be bothered by any spirits up here. I’ll be in the next room over as is.” And you keep that bit of comfort close, as greedy as you were for it at this point. There’s far too much going on as is. The nightmare struck that match and burns your insides out and you’re stuck tripping over every corner like some quivering child.
Be useful, you tell yourself and it starts tasting bitter in your mouth. It stings into delicate skin and it lingers in its aftertaste. You vaguely hear Flins climb the ladder up as you get a grip of the handles. You’re not unused to manual labour, but the container is still heavy, nearly jerking you forward. The oil nearly tips and spills over and you throw yourself back just a bit to salvage it and straighten yourself up.
You try a second time, staggering and angling the neck of the barrel straight into the feed till you’re left with an empty vessel. Rinse and repeat and the repetitiveness offers just a little comfort as your mind shuts off and you lose yourself and your thoughts and the feeling of drowning.
You hadn’t noticed the light, the shape of it muted initially when you had deigned to glance out earlier. You were momentarily caught off guard by the clinking of machinery and a chain slowly lowering itself down, followed by an apology from Flins. By the time you hear the sack hit the bottom of the stairs, you’re done with the pumping, and turn your attention to the ladder. You can hear the winds slowly starting to pick up once more and the storm slowly gathers its battering weight.
You’re starting to feel the iciness in the room and the mittens are slid back on to spare yourself.
Outside, a dark shape hurtles past the gallery deck. It disappears down below.
You jump, glaring at the window in stunned silence. “Mr. Flins?!” you call out right after, alarm scratching at your throat, at the prospect of him falling.
“Yes?” he answers, his voice far away and slightly muffled.
You heave a breath in. You were probably just seeing things at this point. Pinch at your cheek and square your shoulders. “Nothing. May I come up?” you ask.
He sounds a little closer now, answering with an absent: “If you’d like.” So you pull yourself up there and slow yourself down, a little wide eyed at the sight of the lenses slotted in the center of the room. There’s glass slid into place, turning over and into each other in a display you’d call beautiful ( and it is, the sight of it makes you a little dizzy over the intricacies ). Blue light filters through the glass, so glaringly bright and so pretty in how it dances against the edges of it.
“Apologies.” Flins calls out, clearing the last bit of snow out. He takes a walk round the lens, his eyes a little wide as he gestures at you to follow. A knob is turned, and you watch the little bulb and the wick inside slowly light up and the room bathes itself in buttery gold. “Don’t look at it directly.” He breathes. “You’ve helped me with half the work here already. I’d have been up here a while, I think.”
“It’s quite cold. We wouldn’t want your tongue falling out.” you crack a small smile ( he narrows his eyes in a cheeky display, an unspoken “oh really?” ). “But archons this is…” You can’t find the words for it, every smart little bit of vocabulary you know, crushed underweight by something so big it wells up inside and walks against the edge of exploding. “I…I’ve never seen this before. Just in textbooks.”
The lens turns and you try to crane your head up a bit to catch the world outside from over the surrounding wall. Flins huffs, holding a hand in a gesture that is delightfully chivalrous. “I’ll have to warn you beforehand to brace yourself.” He advises,his hand hovering by your arm. You flinch when it accidentally brushes at your back, aggravating the faint ache from your bruise. He bats his lashes, looking you dead in the eye and you clear your throat.
The door creaks open. You pull the scarf up to your face ( it smells of nothing, conveniently stripped away of any sense of use or history ). The beam of light cuts into the fog before you, tearing through like a blade, like some kind of homing light that seems to span on and on till forever. “How far does it go?” you let out that hushed question, looking over to him.
“Far enough to see it till Hiisii island on clearer knights.” He replies. “It’s an old lighthouse…perhaps not as good as what one would find back in the port of Nasha town. But it does it’s job well, no less.”
“It does.” you whisper, the expanse of grey in front of you suffused in a soft glow. “And you see this every night?”
“Every night.” he whispers back. “I’ve grown used to this view…you on the other hand seem taken by it.”
“I’ve mentioned it.” you play with your fingers, tap-tapping them against your knuckles like you had too much to do and let out and it builds and builds and builds inside. “We’ve only studied them in passing in textbooks back at school. Port Oromos, back in Sumeru has one of its own but it was decommissioned before I was born and well…we just tend to pass by the outside of it.”
“And you’re from there, then?” Flins asks, looking mildly interested. It feels a little sudden as you wrestle with the door and try pulling it shut ( he steps in to, help, an amused lift to the corners of his lips ).
“I am.” you bob your head.
“Interesting.”
The two of you make way downstairs, and you melt into the warmth of his home. “And you’re still not used to the winters here, it’s safe to presume.” He glances back your way, while you pull the jacket just a little bit closer to your body. You catch a few graves down below poking out of the mist’s line. It’s a strange spot to build a lighthouse. Or perhaps the lighthouse was here first?
It’s still pitch black inside and Flins guides you over back to the living area, where he nestles the lantern close to you. “Lunch is due.” he says with a small smile. “Are you hungry?”
There’s an emptiness in your stomach that has spread its teeth back while you worked. You nod. “I am…” you admit, even as the rattling warning starts up again. Flins straightens up, something akin to a hungry delight set ashine in his eyes.
“Good.”
You should have said no, something inside protests, angry. You keep it quiet, too tired and too famished to give it any sense of concern or comfort in the thick of it, letting yourself pry its gnawing teeth from your shoulder. It’s just a few days. A few days, nothing more and nothing less with a kind man — a strange man, yes — but a kind man.
You eat what he brings you, some smoked meat with a side of pickled vegetables that you carefully take a few forkfulls of, all too aware of the way he watches you as he urges you to have some of the soup as well. It’s a bit much, the attention and you reason that he’s anxious to see your reaction to it. “It’s really good.” you speak up. And it is; well seasoned and well cooked. You wouldn’t mind having more if you’d dare to ask for it. “Won’t you be eating though?”
His side of the table is empty. Flins rests his elbows on the armrest, leaning his chin into the heel of his palm ( so disconcerting yet so sweet lipped ).
“I don’t have much of an appetite.”
“No?” you parrot, dubious. It doesn’t sit well with you. You can’t put a finger on why.
“No.” he finishes, a low, steady hum trickling into the silence.
“Oh. Okay.” you look down, stirring your soup. “You’re a very good cook though, Mr. Flins. I’ll have to steal away a few of your recipes, I think…” Another mouthful, another spell, another wave of humming that you can’t seem to wrap your head around. You shut yourself off, too far away, maybe, to take in the almost mechanical way your body bends its joints and feeds itself. All you could feel is the cotton fogging up every inch of your head and layering itself over like molasses.
You were hungry, and somehow satiety curls its claws inwards.
( It’s nice enough to feel a hint of dazed contentment seeding itself deep, deep inside you. A whisper, a suggestion, a quiet lull. What if you stay, what if you stay, what if you stay? It’s a captivating thought, something you would have wring your hands at in any other instance.
Stay, stay, stay. It keeps insisting and you close your eyes, swaying a bit. It sounds so far removed from the speech you know and yet, yet, yet, you know it in a way you know an old friend. Stay here.
Stay forever. )
Flins tilts his head. “I’m glad to hear that.”
The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to visit the library.
He knew the man who checked the books out — old Nikita who’d once fought in the army with him, who knew better than to nod along and wave away his seeming agelessness. Nikita, who had a sharp eye and a sharper head; and perhaps that had delighted Flins with the very novelty of having a bit of push and pull and knowing acknowledgement.
He’d asked for recommendations that day, then perused through notes on modern art and photo albums littered with pages upon pages of pictures taken by those newfangled handheld kameras he’d heard so much about. He’d stalked the quieter shelves and picked out a few novellas that had gone out of print years ago, with those inky little drawings scrawled in between pages and paragraphs of stories.
The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to visit the library, and on that day, he spotted another familiar face that had pattered right past him. You hadn’t noticed his presence this time and he had let himself linger about a little longer as you had tucked a light novel close with a collection of other books, so hurried and everywhere and nowhere all at once while you pulled your hat over your face and moved on to deliver your packages.
Quaint little think that you were, with your silly taped fingers and that perpetually anxious furrow to your brow — Flins had noted the harried feeling about you being edged with something brutally desperate. It came with that sharp scent; the fear that would nestle in the ribs of wild animals cornered. He hadn’t meant to try and pry as deep into the details of it, but he’d still gone to Nikita after you had left and asked a few questions.
Nikita was weary. He’d told Flins to turn his gaze away. You weren’t something to be toyed with and Flins knows this. He wasn’t a cruel man, by any means. Nikita knew this too and reiterated that statement — that you were a little too spread thin, too easy to knock over and break. Flins had soaked this in, and those little attempts to try and appeal to gentleness.
He smiled at Nikita and thanked him. When the old man had looked away for a mere moment, Flins’ gaze happened upon the register perched atop, listed with library card numbers. Your collection was a little list of odds and ends and titles some of which he vaguely recognized. One made him pause.
On Folklore: Snowland Fae and other Snezhnayan Legends.
A passing fancy, he mused. Snezhnaya’s legends were legends with reason. People knew of the truth that would come with every little story uttered by the bedside and the warnings that would accompany every single one. Flins looked away when Nikita’s attention slipped back to him, probing, almost accusatory.
( He’s whispered under his breath, that you were getting curious. Nikita had people as about old stories, but the way you had taken to him, scared, as he’d described it, was enough to set off that sense of trepidation that had haunted his own old heart for years. )
He asked Flins if he was responsible for it. Because to Nikita, Flins’ ilk were the dangerous sort. He had good reason too — he knew well how the revelry of the fae would often drive one to near madness. He also knew well that even he, and his body sewn together with flesh and viscera and the blood and face of a human man couldn’t quite shed the core of him.
Flins also, however, spoke nothing but the truth. He told Nikita he’d barely entertained your presence, if conversed with you at all. And Nikita bowed his head and sighed ( he was tired, from a lot of things ). Flins offered his regards, gathered his material and left for the tram stop. His assigned day off was coming to its close and he had his work to see to, in his isolated little territory.
Then he slowed.
Ah, he had realized then, rather belatedly — and it sparked a string of pity there when the uncertainty you had held yourself with stricken his field of sight. Your earrings were gone too.
( They are back in your dreams.
They pull you into the deep end of it, curtailing their breezy laughter as they take your hands. The water — and this is when you notice the lake, comes to your knees and it rises higher and higher the further out they lead you. They don’t speak to you, an analytical shine sparking in their gaze, as if cutting you apart and baring you naked before them. And you hate it. You hate them. You hate, hate, hate.
You try to pull away but their nails dig into your wrists. You gasp; it’s a deep, rasping cry and it strangles at your chest when it lets itself out. The trees around you start to blot into itself, nothing more than spurs of inkblots speckling out amidst the grey and white and this person — the creature only smiles wider when you let that terror be known. It’s all wrong, your thoughts slur. This is all wrong.
You stretch on till it’s up to your hips, then your waist and they go on deeper and deeper still. Your feet dig into the mud. “No — ” you hiss out, eyes stinging against the cold that pinches at your cheeks. You feel how the blood starts rushing into your face, into your stiff limbs and the creak and rattle of your joints as they start freezing over. “I’m not going there.” You speak up again, you assert, snatching yourself back.
The creature’s expression shifts to contemplative blankness. The apathy makes you pause just before you turn and try to wade out, breaths falling short just as your body starts shutting down. You’re pulled back and you catch the gold of their hair by your cheek for a speck of a moment. Then you’re under, water rushing into your lungs.
You flail against the ironset of their grip. It’s inhumanly strong, dancing close to breaking bone. You scream, scream and scream and fight and bite and scratch against the pale expanse of their skin and they only push you deeper and deeper till your vision starts to fade out.
You caused this. You caused this. You face it.
Then you are pulled back up, coughing and limp and all you can see is blue — blue everywhere as you’re cradled by too-cold hands. You feel lips slant upon yours in a way that’s starved out and wanting and you know the dread that claws its way in all too well. Push back, push back, push back And you try to as the sting in your eyes turn to tears. The newcomer doesn’t budge.
You aren’t drowning anymore, you hush. So you let it be. )
“I still can’t radio anyone from the mainland.” Flins tells you after breakfast, his hair tied up after clearing away the bits of frost that had stuck itself onto it. You’d taken residence on his couch now, worn down and pulled taut — just in view of the outside world and the storm that still beats on. “The lines must still be down given the state of things and the weather. Maybe when it clears a little more…”
You hold fast to the pillow, taking it in with a sinking down to the very pits and in-betweens of you. “Are you disappointed?” he asks, a half-tease testing the silence.
“No…well, yes.” You bury yourself into the pillow, feeling fatigue gnaw at you till you start teetering forth. Flins reaches out, steadies you and gently pushes you back against the couch ( and the gesture comes so naturally. You’re honestly a little abashed with a lick of defeat edging itself in ). Your back stings in protest and you right yourself up into a position that is a little less painful. “I feel like i’m overstaying at this point, and you’ve been so good to me.”
“And…?” Flins urges, plucking away at the ties and buttons of his coat. You have far more to say and he has an uncanny habit of knowing. For a man so isolated, Flins scrutinizes the world around him with an uncanny amount of veracity that puts you off. Or maybe you have let yourself steep in assumptions — and you’re more inclined to the latter.
You trace the hem of the pillow. “When you come to town next time, you can come visit me at the library Nikita runs.” You tell him. “I need to buy you lunch. Many lunches, in fact.”
“Next time.” he repeats, an odd look in his eye. “And will there be candlelight?” he asks after, the ghost of a smirk playing into the impassivity on his face.
You sputter. “Not unless there’s a power outage.”
Flins hides a chuckle behind his hand. “There won’t be any need for that.” He says with a heavy kind of certainty. “But it is a kind offer…what other plans do you have once the storm clears?” And oh that has you blinking over at him, a little jarred by the suddenness that enquiry brings about; or rather, your inability to formulate any other coherent thought. A part of you, something so quiet and childish curls up. It’s a stationary creature and it clings on fast to the disjointed routine you have started here.
“I’ve not thought beyond that.” you say it before you could stop yourself. You feel punched in the gut. “It’s not been long, I know but — ” you struggle, cheeks starting to burn. It’s so foolish, this attempt at grabbing at things like a petulant little brat.
“That’s alright.” he flicks his head up a bit, his gaze luminous. You can’t tear away from it, or the sinking in your gut.
After a while, you prod again. “Won’t you be eating, Mr. Flins?” you curl up, knees to your chest. “You didn’t seem to have breakfast today either.” And he didn’t. Last night, on your request, you’d moved a pillow to the couch to not inconvenience him any further ( even if the rest of the night was restless ). His rest is important, and the room was the closest to the stairway and when you’d awoken and eaten what Flins had offered, he made no moves to join you at the table, save for watching.
It doesn’t sit well.
He’d seated himself down on the chair across you, something of a silent watchman and he’s bent over with a carving blade in hand, chipping away at a small white piece. “Hm. I ate what I needed to eat earlier.” His eyes shut and his breaths are low, almost missably quiet. “Please pay it no mind. My eating habits are a little jarring and unreliable at the best of times.” And there’s a matter of factness in how he says it.
“Okay.” you mumble. “And what are you doing now?”
Flins holds the object up. “This?” You eye it, picking out the smoothness and its shape as it presses into the palm of his hand and the clasp of his fingers. You couldn’t quite put a finger on it, on what it was at first. Not till you push past the sleepiness to rise from the couch and pad over to him with a sheepish little “may I?” His gaze crinkles at the corners and he complies.
“This is…a bone.” you blurt when he hands it to you and you test the weight of it. There’s one side to it that opens up into a hollow curve and a faint resemblance of a skull.
“It is.” Flins nods. “When you walk over the beach, you often find fragments of whalebones washed ashore. Some of them span larger than the boats that occasionally pass by. While I do let those ones be, there are some that are just the right size to make something new out of.”
“I mean…” you reason, handing it back to him. “I’ve known people who collect twigs and acorns and make little people from them.”
“Then I suppose it’s just a difference in material.” Flins finishes, enjoying himself a little too much, you think.
“This doesn’t look like a whalebone though.” you note. It’s too small and much too light to be one.
“Oh no.” Flins shakes his head. “This one is an Ibis. You can see where the beak was over here.” He shows you a chipped away part, filed down carefully till the cracks had given way to a somewhat sleeker finish round it. “It wasn’t a whole skull when I found it. The rest of it must have been taken by the dogs.”
Despite yourself, you find yourself asking, “What else do you have?” It keeps your mind off of things, and the looming that traces your footsteps and shadows your movements. You’re a little too soft hearted and scared to tell Flins that you couldn’t stay here, not when the dead are turning in their graves and deriding your very presence.
( And the nightmares too, and the way they come to weather down and erode the corners of you bit by bit till you lose your sleep and you lose your senses. You want to tear the skin from off your arms, to gouge your eyes out as the phantom feel of your lungs collapsing into your chest continues to persist. )
“Hm.”
You didn’t expect the collection to be as expansive. Flins has a little work station dedicated to displaying his bone puzzles, some of them a mismatch of species slotted together to make new ones and others bearing carved models of birds and animals trapped mid-flight. And all of them, every last one, were whittled down from bones.
He places his lantern down and points to a few, ever so polite, ever so proper with explaining things. A couple of them had ornaments decorating them. Little bits of metal flicking their feathers or small gems in their ribs ( you are admittedly a little smacked at the sight of a pair of brilliant sapphires; just a little bigger than a ball bearing, affixed in the eyes of an eagle ). But strange hobbies in isolation aside, they’re well made, well crafted and you balk at the detail put into it.
What a strange, strange man, you muse to yourself. It explains some of the antiques and the plethora of odds and ends that lay scattered across his shelves and tables. “Do you collect gems too, Mr. Flins?”
“I often do, yes.” He shows you another. This one simply holds a chain round its neck, more a display than anything else. “Have you come by Tarno? I often go to him to occasionally buy myself a thing or two when I receive my monthly salary. You can find all sorts of things on his shelves. Books, showpieces, uncut gems, jewellery…”
Tarno. That name guts you, and your smile freezes into the shape of your face. You can't bring yourself to say it, while Flins seems lost in his own thoughts; his touch sweeping over the wood surface and past another line of carved pieces. You know about the shop he’s talking about. You've been inside. You've walked out with that pocket of grief, lodged deep into your heart. But Flins is Flins; and you've never met him in person. He wouldn't know.
“Can’t say that I have.” you slowly work away at some chance to move away from this conversation.
Flins however, seems intent on keeping it up. “I recently bought a few things.” He continues, pulling away at the drawers to produce a little casket. You can’t bring yourself to look at his face, catching the rustle of fabric and the faint clink clink clink of metal and beads. Then you feel his touch on your chin, soft, deliberate as he holds something to your ear. “I’d noticed they were pierced.” he tells you and there’s a hushed sort of tremble buried deep down. “These suit you well.”
The lantern light seems to swell into a brighter glow and when you blink, it shutters and dims. He draws his hand back. You see gold-work, twisted into a loop, a circle encasing something round and small. A pearl.
The floor falls away. There’s the feel of a yawning chasm eating yourself through from the inside, something so akin to numb emptiness and your jerk back, nails digging into the flesh of your palms till you feel wetness crest into the pads of your fingers. “It’s lovely.” you force out.
Flins watches you, silent, waiting. You tell yourself he couldn’t have known ( he couldn’t, he wouldn’t. You can’t be certain if this would count as betrayal but that gesture would have shattered you and left the fragments to rot away in some dark space ) and you lie and lie and bite your tongue and call yourself a stupid thing for lapsing so easily. “It is.” he agrees. “Tarno told me they were cared for.”
They were loved, he seems to say. They were loved. And they were, you want to nod. You’d treasured those earrings, you’d treasured them and the memories they came with. You treasured it in every instance, with how you kept up maintaining its shine for years. And now it’s bitter fruit and something, something that makes you sick the longer you stare at them.
Why does he have this. Why does he have this. Why does he have this. Why does he have this.
“I’m tired.” you whisper to him, as the room starts to shift in and out of sight.
“Tired?” he echoes, his voice distant, dipping down to a staticky baritone, his stare flickering, searching. “You do look exhausted.”
Flins lets you go. You didn’t sleep all that well the previous night anyway and he stays behind to put the jewellery away. You can’t shrug the burning on your back; both the bruise and the way he surveys every little shift in your muscles ( or at least, you think he is ). But it’s Mr. Flins. The same Mr. Flins who had taken you from the cold. The same Mr. Flins who let you stay.
You’re being rude. You shouldn't have snapped like that, like some wounded dog, like some unresolved idiot.
But the earrings. Oh the earrings. You’ve had them since you were a baby, bought for your first birthday with your grandmother’s savings. It’s such a materialistic gripe, but it’s also the love that had littered itself into the years you’d spent wearing it. They were all you had till you were in your teens. They were all you had when you came to Nod Krai, so naively insistent that you could live on your own.
They were all you had of her.
( And then those greedy eyes had set their sights on it and kept trying to snatch, snatch, snatch till your cupboards were overturned and your face and neck bruised and bleeding. Nostalgic sentiment, you quickly learned, was not worth your fracturing sanity. You’ve come to regret it since. )
There’s an eerie chill that you don’t quite register, with white noise flooding in and your lips being bitten raw. And then you see that ghost again, watching from a corner. There’s no accompaniment of fanfare or the usual violent terror, save for him wafting in and out of sight, his features diffusing further and further into obscurity. You can only make out the shape of his scarf and the messy state of his clothes.
He brings the winter cold with him. And then a despairing absence of it after, ribbing you of sensation for moments at a time. Cold then not, cold then not.
And he seems to be watching you. Watching, empty eyed as if he could reach into the spaces between your ribs and perceive that swell there, that unhealed cut, that puss ridden centre that keeps you awake and hurting and empty all at once. His garbles are nothing more than muffled distortions, like he was trying to call in from a badly tuned radio. They peak into urgency, then stop with a helpless lilt.
And you watch him back, waiting. You wait for the voices, for the mounting weight. You dare him too, wound up, ready to fall apart and break your skull against something because lords about there's too much to think now. There's too much to think.
The boy draws back as if shot. He dissipates and you breathe.
You’re tired. And it comes down hard when you slip back onto the couch, holding your head against the rise and fall of your chest. You see the dozens upon dozens of shapes drawn out into the mist and the way they seem to dance against the wind and the snow’s pelting. And you see how it circles, how it comes in closer and scurries back.
Your mouth twists to a grimace.
You sleep a few hours, your dreams disturbingly empty. When you wake, Flins brings you dinner, content with the silence and the seeming layer of tenseness it runs thick with now. You could liken it to rotten fruit or stale honey and you eat the food with that hysteria slowly starting to clatter against your insides.
Flins doesn’t touch his food.
The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to buy antiques.
He wasn’t picky on what kind — so long as they held weighted sentiment and a story engraved into its body. Rusted coins, old shoes, bracelets and stones and stamps and books and cowry shells strung together with string; Flins would set his sights and pass his mora over the table. He’d decorated his lighthouse with it; spruced up what Illuga and Nikita called the perpetual doom that clung to the walls and ceiling.
Sometimes he came across particularly beautiful pieces. Watches, for one, that had stopped at certain times ( Flins took to collecting ones that had stopped at every different hour. He’s yet to acquire a few but it was a growing collection he was pleased with ), and lovely looking cufflinks with silver finishes that glowed like moonlight. He would fuss over them like a magpie with its horde and he’d survey the shelves for more till he’d satisfied that itch.
The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to buy antiques. This time around he’d found a few gramophone records, all of them tunes once played in the old courts of the Belyi Tsar ( as monotonous as the droning of cocktail parties were, Flins had come to see how easily history would fragment and die away with its passage. Plenty of music had failed to survive past the Tsaritsa’s ascension decades later ).
He didn’t have a proper player but on the occasion that he did come across a working model, he would be delighted to listen to some of those songs again. Tarno packed away the discs and in the meantime, Flins counted his mora, till his prying eyes laid upon one of the displays with its multitude of jewellery.
Tarno must have smelled a new opportunity for a sale and brought a few of them out. Some of them were Liyuen hairpins plated with gold and jade. Some of them were brooches worn by ladies in the Fontanian courts. But he zeroes in on one that Tarno produces. Earrings with the gleam of pearl slotted in a cradle of gold.
Now that he could take a closer look at it, Flins could pick out the way the gold was worked into the semblance of a flower. He didn’t quite know how you’d come to acquire them; Tarno told him that they’re well past a decade old, from what he’d gleaned. And Flins could imagine you growing into these. Something whispered in with so much love he could taste it on his tongue. They’re well cared for, Tarno had said with a pleased look. And they were and they were lovely.
Flins turned them over, and marvelled at they way they caught the light, at how small they were and how his heart beat with a visceral sort of greed that he’d often chided away into silence. He wasn’t something the wild had spat out; not since the dregs of his youth where mischief came so much easier and so much more viciously as Kyryll the Azure Flame.
But he could have this at the very least. He could have this piece of you here, and the thought of it was, in a way, an exciting one. It took more mora out of his pocket, and he reminded himself to budget a little better next time — no more impromptu buys, Kyryll and he tucks those earrings and the little velvet box they were housed in into his coat pocket.
He’d often stared at them, trying to rummage through the noise that layered itself over the years upon years it had. Sometimes he could see the afterimages of you and the smell of summer and the crinkle of a smile he never quite had the chance to see and oh, oh, oh, that greed would return and bite away like a rabid animal till he’d shut that lid and cut away those traces.
He couldn’t imagine why you’d sell something like this. But that child, perhaps could have danced a bit too far past a certain line, with that same reckless passion that sparked in the midst of his flames once. You probably didn’t like their games, with how your fear had muddled the aftertaste with sharp iron on his tongue.
But oh you were so warm too, so very warm. Kyryll could drink it in; every moment of it. But for now, the earrings stay here, locked away with the rest of his treasures. In a fantasy, he could return them to you and you’d be pleased with it and Kyryll could live with that instance locked away in his heart forever.
The storm starts slowing over the next few days ( and so do your nightmares ).
It’s come to a point where you can catch glimpses of the cemetery outside, with its snow-capped graves and the scattered budding of frostlamps just beneath the windowsill. For once, you tug away at the fogginess clutching in your head and the perpetual ache your chest thrums with, just to press up against the glass ( you count the minutes in between every spurt of snowfall with bated breath. They’ve started stretching out longer and longer ).
And with the fog clearing, you had come to see, are the shapes sputtering in and out of view. Some of them are solid. The blurry, stiff figures of woodland creatures who tease around the edge of the island itself. You see how a few patter up the straight from the Maroon Basin, curious, oh so curious. And then they run; every single one of them, like this place itself compels the very stench of fear.
It’s the deer who are the most cautious. You often catch how they corral at the border and simply watch, too far for you to really see the look in their eyes. But you think it to be wide, a little lost, a little scared. You don’t understand why that is.
( A lie. Yes you do, you do, you do. You’ve seen this before, with the cats back at Nasha town and how they meandered away from you one day. You’ve seen the terror in their little faces and the taste of heartbreak so strong on your tongue. None of them ran to you, anymore. None of them save for the mother cat who’d curled up by your shed with pathetic eyes.
By then, all you could do to spare yourself, was drive her off. )
It’s not the ghosts. They peer up at you from the outside too, shifting in and out of view with haunted looks on their faces. The animals do not run from them. They draw close, as if to find a scent they can’t quite match to the still, human figures that linger on by and dot the beach and the space between the tombstones. And the ghosts throng in and around the lighthouse like moths to a flame, locked in their soundless screaming.
Flins has already started taking rounds, collecting fuel and tools from the shed and a spare lamp that he gives you when the night starts to draw. The thousands upon thousands of gazes in the dark would disappear under the blue flame he carries.
“Just in case,” he says, when he steps inside and sheds his coat. “It can keep you company, if you get scared again.”
You wrinkle your nose in a gesture that’s tired but playful. There’s still an air of awkwardness hung heavy between the two of you. You don’t quite know how to break it down any more, even after the shamed apology you had given him a few hours after the incident. But Flins, ever gracious and a bit too sweet-hearted, let it be.
Flins, Flins, Flins. A strange man, a distant man and you can’t quite look at his face anymore. It’s the most foolish, most stupid thing you’ve felt so far with how unfounded and unnecessary it was. It’s just nerves, it’s just panic, it’s just you slowly going mad, it’s just you imagining things that aren’t there at all. “...I’ll keep that in mind.” you call to him as he passes you by. “But I hope this won’t come across as too jarring, sir but…” you stop. Your tongue twists itself into knots and you wince. “Well I — I…I wanted to ask — ”
“Yes?”
Don’t ask, a raucous, angry thing hisses. It tries to steal away your voice until the thought dissipates. “Since the storm is starting to clear.” You continue, and you curl your fingers around the lantern handle a bit too tight; tight enough till your knuckles start to pale. “I — I think I should leave.”
That snatches his attention back to you. Flins turns and stares, face dappled in blue. “Leave…” he echoes. You can sense something unspooling in the way he said it, furrowing his brow as he glances outside. He seems to be taking it in; the receding whiteout and the earth unfurling beneath it. You play with your fingers, and you feel a wrongness all over.
“I know.” you mutter, gathering yourself together. “It’s quite sudden but I can’t keep staying. You’ve entertained my presence for long enough and well, I think I’m starting to come off as more a nuisance than anything else…”
Flins gazes at you, unblinking and there’s a stirring that you can't keep ignoring. It scratches at the edge of its cage. It warns you to run. “Is this about the earrings?” he asks carefully. “Or the ghosts?”
You jerk back. “W-what? No, no of course not! I’ve been out for long enough. Heavens I have a job to return to, too! They probably think I'm missing or dead — ” Who, who precisely? You aren’t sure if you last in Nikita’s memories, or anyone else’s for that fact. It’s simply a facet of you; someone who knows all too well to disappear in and out of obscurity. You don’t like the way that hesitation slips past his expression, or the tightness round his jaw.
“There’s still some time left before it calms.” Flins finally says, clipped and sharp. “Rest, till then.”
You take a step forth. “I’ve just woken up.” you point out. Your hands are trembling. “It’s fine, we can talk about…” you swallow, shrinking away from him. “...whatever it is you want to, right now.” It’s that stubborn insistence that makes you want to twist yourself up inside out. But you cannot falter now, even if he’s acting so strange.
“And simply running off into the wilds won’t bode well,” he says. “The waters are still choppy and the mist still hangs overhead. Sending you out now would be far too much of a risk.” And you can see the reasoning behind it all. Of course he’d worry. Of course he would, even as you feel that tinge of dread creep in. There’s a buzz in the air you can’t quite name but oh, had you missed the signs? Had you missed the little tells?
So you try to be gentle about it. “...I’m honoured to know I’m worth your concern, Mr. Flins,” You start. “But I barely know you as is. I think I've far overstayed my welcome. I must go soon."
It’s just Flins, you remind yourself. Just Flins, who had taken you from the storm.
Somehow even that is slipping away into a darker, messier state. There’s a finality there, steeply simmering in the yellow of his stare. The tightness melts and he’s soft cheeked ease all over all while he closes the space in between. The gifted lantern is set aside and his hand sweeps up, lifting your chin with just a slight touch. You shiver against the cold tingle it leaves behind.
He speaks with that same levelled, cool tone; your name whispered in the tail of it. “You’re still exhausted.” Your eyelids start to droop and you feel your senses start to clog as if you’re strummed to some inaudible tune. “Ah, look at you. Sleep for a while; we could think about everything else a little later now…”
You’re guided to the couch and you’re there but not there. You curl up, back to the backrest and Flins brushes against the healing bruise with a click of his tongue. You passively try to push him away and he complies, still watching with his silence as your limbs seem to be pulled tight against inaudible strings and your body crumbles to a whistle in your ears.
Teetering off into dreamland comes easier.
( Flins often told you stories to pass the time through the past couple of days. Folk legends and fairy tales, some of which were tersely macabre with their endings. He often delighted in your questions, his voice lilting to something lighter, airier when he would recite the spectacle in the old Tsar’s court and the revelry that would sweep away unsuspecting mortals from their homes. There were spirits too, spirits who threw windows open to abduct sleeping children from their beds.
“You can guess which ones the parents were fond of telling their children.” he added in between, stirring some tea in for you.
You laughed. “Did yours?”
Flins simply smiled, pouring a single cup. He’d settled for some wine for himself after offering you some — which you politely refused and you watched the way the deep red of it turned translucent when he’d held it up against the dim light outside. “Alas, bedtime stories were not a staple in my youth.”
You took a sip. And you thought there’s something lonely that had taken its roots inside Flins, when he’d peered out into the expanse of white outside the window. Yet, you think, he seemed happiest this way; content with his distance and with being the singular resident on this island with nothing but the waves for company. Then you can’t think of anything else past that, entrenched in a sea of cloying tartness and cotton wool.
How nice, you mused to yourself, shutting your eyes to this singular memory. “Did you have someone staying with you, once, Mr. Flins?” you asked. “Given there is a spare bedroom.”
“Lighthouse keepers often came in pairs.” He confessed. “I suppose it was built with that in mind.”
“And the graves outside?” you did a little tap-tap against the rim of your teacup.
“Previous residents. They’d often be buried here as well.” You must have made a little face then with how he hid away his humoured smirk. “To be fair it’s a lovely burial spot around early spring. The frostlamps would glow a most lovely shade blue and you could see them stretch on till the cliff edges in whole swathes.” He takes a sip of his wine after twirling the glass. “And the auroras would streak across the skies above it. Have you seen them yet?”
“I only moved in recently.” You admitted. “And there’s too much light pollution around Nasha Town to really get a good look at them. All I saw were bits of grey…” The lantern sputters. You could see how the dark around you licks closer still, teasing the heels of your feet and your periphery.
“Ah.” there’s a distorted blanketing in his speech. There’s a thump in your ribs. A wrought whisper freezing the shell of your ear. “Then I ought to show — ” he’s cut off by that feel of being immersed underwater, of your senses shutting down bit by agonizing bit till the panic lilted garble turns to clear words. Flins is nothing more that a disjointed, muffled call in the background.
Wake up, wake up, wake up.
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up.
There are a thousand hands pulling you farther and farther away from the memory and it’s fizzled out outline. Wake up, wake up, wake up it continues the resolute chanting and there’s something pulling at your teeth, at your jaw, trying to coax something out of you. It starts fragmenting, the aftermirage of old festivity and the grasp of something tugging away at your mind.
You struggle and struggle and struggle.
And you wake. )
The boy is hardly noticeable when you see him. Your nerves are set alight and you stumble past, nails to your cheeks when the effects of whatever had compelled sleep into you, forced it into your body starts to dissipate. There’s still the fallout in how you feel close to collapse, some parts of you still yet to catch on to your wakening.
Breathe in, hold, breathe out. Your grandmother’s voice cuts in this time. You’re close to drawing blood and breaking skin and you sit up a bit straighter with a pained sniffle. It’s an awful sort of drop in your stomach, the kind that follows the tail end of something so dopamine inducing and then being left to recover from that plummet when the world settles around you. You shut away the sweetness on your tongue.
You fix your focus on him and how he blurs in and out of the walls. There’s so little detail left to garner; just the shadow of a face and a few wisps of hair catching itself the way the sun would have if he were solid. A bowl knocks over, then a plate and you could tell the fury in every gesture. You flinch at first, then square your shoulders and grimace.
“What do you want?”
It’s not a brave demand. It’s strained. You feel like you’ve been drugged; but you know you’re not. It is something that runs so much deeper — so, so much deeper.
You know it. You’ve felt this once, before. The shutting away of sensory input, the euphoria encroaching spaces it shouldn’t.
Flins, Flins, Flins who never ate, who never seemed to sleep, who seemed to roam against the wilds as the animals cower away from the very presence of him passing through and the cold he carries under his flesh. What the hell is he? You’re gutted by that awful feeling, a mockery, a chortle so perverse it drives that statement deeper still. You know the answer to that.
The boy steps closer, urgently dancing just shy of the hallway. And you follow, beholden, perhaps by your slow realization. When you pass the kitchen by, you slip in and out, knife in hand, the feel of it heavy and familiar. The lantern is held up, heavy and debilitating in the other, lit up with yellow fire. The boy lingers, stepping out then down the halls. He disappears and you startle, chasing after.
You can vaguely hear the pull of chains. Flins is up in the lighthouse.
You suck some air in through your teeth and speed up, weaving down another turn. The boy stands stark by a door. His study, you recall belatedly. You’d been inside it for a fraction of an instance to help sort past a few old files. It’s where he did most of his bone carving and most of his gem polishing. But the boy is insistent and the death in his eyes seems to glow like a pair of lamps.
“What if he finds me?” you ask.
He speaks. You cannot understand the fuzzy static that he tells you. So you follow him, past the door. It’s dark and the walls are cold against the brush of your shoulders. You grasp the handle of the knife just a bit tighter. It’s the same as it always was when you pore over the sight of it. An old table, a chair, a few bits and pieces of half finished projects and the starched white sheet that was spread over the tabletop.
The boy leers and you question yourself, if trusting him was ever a good idea.
Then again, you trusted Him.
You feel so foolish. But you cannot scream that frustration out.. You cannot shed your tears. You’ve eaten his food, you’ve given him your thanks and if he were, if he was one of them —
You find yourself reflected against the glass of his cupboards. Faces stare back, ashen, dead, in wait with their pale fingers tangling and pushing you along and away, deeper and deeper inside. The boy circles around one spot, as if possessed by a feverish daze and then he’s gone, with the shine of his hair and the last few imprints of his scarf round his neck.
You stumble forward. You can hear the beat of your heart in your ears. You can hear that rush of blood.
You come down to your knees, lantern set down and you drive your knife through the floorboards, puppeteered by some unseen force that whispers its suggestions and carefully directs your hand. You can feel all those presences, all of them patterns d crowd closer and closer and closer still and you can sense a pressure throw itself over your shoulderblades.
The wood comes undone after some tugging. Your nails scrape against the surface, and you pull as hard as you can. It shutters and falls back into place, nailed hard. You try again, pulling, pulling with all you could muster and there’s a crack. It falls apart and you are met with a finish of packed dirt underneath.
Dig.
Dig, dig, dig.
There’s fervour there. Your veins burn hot, like you’re being boiled from the inside out. You dig, catching the mud beneath your fingers and scraping your knife against loose rocks. You dig and dig and dig through, even as your wrists chafe against the wood and your digits grow numb. Your face is flushed, a hot-and-cold sensation that seeds itself in and flowers into being.
You unearth a bone, caked in dirt. A tibia, then the remains of the skull and the rest of the fragmented skeleton just peeking out of the damp earth. Your lips part, brushing away some of the soil to pull out the tatters of a knitted scarf and the worn down, mud caked bits and pieces of clothing. The crying around you, the audience to all this hitches up to a deafening howl.
Then comes silence, the lingering notes of panic and the stuffiness of the room is replaced by heat.
Flins takes a knee beside you. “I must have missed this one.” he eases. ‘And you…” he observes you, how you turn your neck to stare with twisted horror. “You were certainly not supposed to see this, silly girl.”
Not you, you want to cry out. There’s instinct biting into your core and it tells you to scramble away, and there’s terror that tells you it’s pointless because you know, you know how strange magic moors you to this spot and keeps you still. “It’s him — ” you choke out and the knife comes up, barely held in your shaking hands. “What did you do to him?!”
He looks hurt when braced with your strangled shriek and at the sight of the weapon, as flimsy as it was. It’s all you had against him and it feels all too little in the face of it. “I did nothing. Vasily…yes, Vasily, if I am not mistaken, threw himself off of the widow's walk of the lighthouse.”
“And why,” you grit out, “Is his body under your fucking floorboards — ”
“When I buried him,” Flins smiles. “There was no study. I simply must have missed out on this one while moving a few graves.” There’s a reasonable enough explanation it seems but you’re still seized by that persistent, stumbling thing on your shoulder. You’re still edging away.
“That’s the truth?” you eke, every bit a cornered animal with your hackles raised at him. “The whole truth?”
Ah, and there it is, a shine in his gaze. There’s an unbrokered wideness to Flins’ smile when he gazes down at you. “Your questions are awfully direct.” he murmurs. “You’ve found out, then?” There’s no suggestion, no place to argue otherwise and you want to empty your insides out onto the floor. Flins fixes that gaze of his to your knife and the hurt, it seems, has given way to amusement.
“A knife won’t be enough to kill me at least, you know.” He supplies helpfully.
You falter. “Shut up.” you hiss, as he shifts closer. The sharp end of it hovers just over his jugular and he tilts his head with a curious lightness in his expression.
“Put it away. It’s dangerous running amok with that.” You drop the blade, to your shock and your body quietly complies to his touch when he winds his hands round your wrist, almost fixated on the pulse thrumming there. The fight in you has dissipated into flimsy embers and you push back, clawing at him, trying to scrape away at some modicum of control.
“Let me go — ” you don’t recognize the creature that screams it, or the force it comes out with. “Let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I swear so please, please — ” you descend down to wet sobs, pushing away the weight of him till your elbows start bruising from knocking against the floor one too many times. Tearing your body asunder just to escape hardly seemed daunting at this rate.
Flins purses his lips, the luminosity in his eyes nearly swallowing you whole. “I won’t hurt you.” he says, carefully navigating through your panic as he reaches up and tucks your hair behind your ear. “Oh I wouldn’t dream of it and you know well that we can’t lie.” Bare fingers press against your cheekbones, knuckle white and gentle. You flinch back, teeth borne like some wounded dog and Flins coos.
He’s fae, you think and it reeks of betrayal and it aches, how he touches you with a hint of twisted reverence that makes you reel. He’s fae.
( You’re at home, picking up broken pieces of glass. The little patch of earth you’d grown your plants in were upturned and the flowers were missing. )
“The same cannot be said about the others though. If you leave, should you leave.” he drolls on, lifting your boneless body up. Your hands are caked with dirt and he inspects them with a click of his tongue. “Let’s get you cleaned up, hm?”
( The cats started turning up dead on your doorstep when you’d set the bells up against the fence. Their insides were torn open. You recognized one you’d fed earlier that week. More and more start showing up, some of who you’d only deigned to look at in certain instances. )
“What?” you manage to say, your tongue weighed down like lead.
“A wash.” He repeats. Then he huffs, his eyes but yellow crescents. “Oh you mean the rest of them? Dear one, you’ll be torn apart if you venture too far out of my grounds. Or have you forgotten the way the woodlands ensnared you so?”
( There are greedy hands tearing and scratching at you, at every inch it could find. Some of the jewellery you’d had is gone now from the safe. Your grandmother’s karimani and the anklets you were gifted. Gone, one by one. And it, with a prideful voracity, demanded more. )
Your head swims and the tears hitch through. Flins wipes them away, patiently taking you to the basin to scrub off every bit of skin and the underside of your nails. A few of the splinters were carefully removed. “I saved your life.” he reminds you. “You’d have been carried off into their snare. They’d have made you run till your feet bled and they’d have stolen every piece of you for themselves. And now they’ve asked to keep you here, given how you’ve angered them so.”
“Why?”
You bat at him, still trying to muster together a little more fight. Flins straightens you up, bending to your level. You can see your scared reflection in the mirror, glassy eyed with horror and him behind you, his hands curled round your shoulders.
“You know why.” He reminds you, blankly.
( And the misfortune had built itself like a festering wound. When you saw them, the cause of it streak past your window in peals of raucous laughter, you had surged, dragged them back with every bit of vicious intent you could muster then. They fought. You fought. And at some point you’d begged, begged for a reprieve. To let you be, let you live. You had precious little to offer but it could be anything, anything but this.
“But it’s fun!” they had laughed at your battered form and the scratched up state of your arms. Something in you, a fundamental lock and chain, had snapped open and fury dulled the rest of the world out.
When you came to, they laid there, silvery blood twining with the gold of their hair and your hands soaked in it. )
No, no, no not that. You jerk away, trying to make a break for the door and he pulls you back. “Was it you?” you ask him, voice shaking because he knows — and it’s the possibility of how much that tears you out on the inside. “Did you send them — ”
“Of course not.” Flins shakes his head. “The one you killed was young, a foolhardy thing.” He addresses it with a disconnect that you can’t begin to fathom, a lack of sympathy peeled down to the very roots of it. Perhaps it’s what they’re known for, their kind with their morals so far removed from the tiny flashes a human life had to give. “Do you regret it? What have you done?”
You skitter, squeezing your eyes shut while he watches through the mirror. The chill is seeping into tissue and muscle. “No.” you spit out against your better judgment.
Flins’ lips twitch. “Liar.” he whispers, fondly, gently. “Oh, don’t cry now.” He soothes when you start to shake. “I’m not the cruel jailor they’d expect me to be. I’ve been good to many; to Maria, to Vasily. There’s much you’ve lost here, I do agree but you’ll be treated well. I’ve come to be so terribly fond of you, after all.” You think this is a sick, cruel joke. You think you’ve stumbled right into the pits of some horrible dream.
“Yes, and I'll have to restock. You need your food and you need a decent enough space to rest in. The couch, as comfortable as it is, is hardly feasible at all.” He threads his hand with yours. The coolness of his palm presses against yours and Flins flushes.
“But I can’t — I can’t stay!” you try to argue, even if there are so many other worse things that lay in wait.
Flins takes you to the guestroom. To the same walls you’d run from that first night. “You don’t have much of a choice.” He confesses, sympathy touching his features. It’s a cruel thing, how they’re all so pretty yet so viciously inhumane in a way.
But honestly, are you any better? You’ve killed one of them. Their body is somewhere in that lake you’d immersed them into, undecayed, unchanged like the underbelly of bedrock and you;re still here, alive and yearning to forget about any of that. You’re cut open and raw and bleeding and Flins lowers you down against the sheets, removing your shoes and socks.
Your breaths begin to shake. Flins shrugs off his coat and sets aside his scarf. There are no more ghosts scraping their hands to the walls. Just you and him and the weighted silence this room has to offer the two of you. He kisses the back of your hand, just above your knuckles, then the tips of your fingers.
“Stop that.” You mumble. “You do not know me. You do not care for me.”
Flins reaches out and pinches at your cheek, feeling the softness of it between his forefinger and thumb. “But I do know enough,” he insists with that odd smile. “I know the shape of your breath and the way you scraped your knees climbing trees too high for you. I know why you left your home and the dogged insistence of your family. I know how you like cycling down by the docks where Hiisii island comes to view during your deliveries and how you pout when you write long letters.” He presses a finger to your lips, a little hungry, a little expectant. He breathes in, unfurling your hand to press it against his cheek, his own flattened over it.
“You’d be mad to think I'll feel anything for you.” you tell him, venom dripping through every enunciated consonant.
“I have time.” he sighs. “Plenty of it, and I can wait for you, I think…” Flins dips his head down and kisses you, testing the way you give beneath him and the feel of your lips. He pulls away, the tips of his ears running red and you stare up, open mouthed. “Oh.” He breathes, the makings of a laugh stirring under his tone.
A flush betrays you, burning your cheeks. He presses his lips to the corner of your mouth and when the tears spring forth, he kisses those away too.
You did this to yourself, some miserable part of you rattles. You shutter in your sniffles, and close your eyes to the sight of him. Flins down not mind, pulling himself away just to leave a slow stroke over the line of your jaw, up, up up to your earlobe. You shiver against his touch.
“It won’t happen.” you repeat. “It won’t.”
Flins hums, straightening you up and bundling the pillow beneath your head. You could laud him for the imitation of sweet faced love he wears so plainly. You could believe him. Maybe it is real. But Flins himself seems to distort and bend into the air and you only remind yourself of his inhumanity and the mess you’re in now.
“Stubborn creature.” he comments with affection. He steals another kiss from you, chaste, gentle but so, so hungry beneath the surface of it. “I ought to return your earrings to you too.” Another kiss. “You always looked so lovely in them…”
You think about the woods outside and the chanting promise of death. You think freezing over from the cold would have been a far better mercy than this.
When Flins shifted that line from host to jailor, he lets you fall into the simple routines of lighthouse keeping with him. Keep the lamp running, keep the motors clean, wipe the lenses down and clear the windows out. He helps you put your earrings on and marvels at the sight of it. “You were wearing them when I first saw you.” He says.
Oh, you think, bitterness light in your mouth.
The storm finally dies out a few days after and he manages to get the generator running after a few calls in to Ms. Aino. When the lights blink back on, you still can’t find any bit of comfort in the hallways past; even when he comes to walk with you to the kitchen and back. He’d played some music to celebrate, dulcet tunes reminiscent of the classics and the waltzes they’d go with.
Flins offered to dance with you. There’s little need to use your name, to pull on any strings; the hours seemed to have scraped by slow enough for you to consider it. When you fall into step with him, he is patient and he is kind about you stepping on his feet, first by accident, then the next few times out of pure spite.
He did not flinch in the face of it. There was only a quiet coring, a tender display of affection and a kiss to your cheek and Flins would gaze upon you with an affection too inexplicable for you. The stuff that makes the treasures in his collections, the quaint oddities he liked to collect.
When you left Sumeru, you left with the hopes of burying away old grief, to tell your family that your helplessness isn’t something to tail after your shadow when they’d started treating you as such. When you left Sumeru, you couldn’t let yourself fall into the patterns of a show piece, even if the intent of it, as cutting as it was, is drawn in by love.
And now look at you. Look at you, spooled into the webs of something inhuman that lurks behind the visage of a handsome man.
Perhaps, in the end of it all, you did deserve it. You had thrown away any instance of the fae who came by your house and unravelled every facet of your life. Every reminder, every part of you that could behold any form of recollection and the consequences were something that was bound to come along and tear you apart.
Yet, “Is it fair to call it love if I’m trapped here?” You tell him, your voice an echo in the hallways. Flins gently undoes the tie of your scarf, a newly knitted thing he’d commissioned just for you. He slows his movements, contemplative.
“I am confident in what I feel,” he states. “It may not be love, from the view of what most mortals know. There’s little affection in the idea of wanting to hide away and covet every visceral inch of their lovers but…” he lifts you up by the chin and you think you see how his eyes settle, marigold yellow to the lamplight. His knuckle presses over your pulse and he smiles a secret smile when it quickens. “...It’s love to us and it’s love no less, no?”
“But I’m not you.” You mumble. “You scare me.”
“You don’t have to be.” Flins takes your hand, and the two of you start the waltz once more. “You are safer here.” And you know it’s true, even as the call persists to something frenzied, even as it compels you to throw the doors open and escape. If not the angered fae, then Flins himself would reel you back, stubborn and covetous as he was. He’ll reel you back in, back into his collection of shinies and keep you squirrelled away.
So you patter around the house. Your first winter here in Nod Krai comes and goes.
When spring comes along, the thicker coats make way for lighter ones. Flins visits the lighthouse a little less and the windows are thrown open to let the breeze in. You aid in sorting out his fuel then keep count of his bones and you have him buy a sewing kit just to keep your thoughts together as you embroider in your free time. Then one day, when you were tired out from wandering over the uneven crags of the island and the way the land seemed to shift and bend itself and your path back to the lighthouse, you called him by his first name.
“Kyryll.” Not Flins.
He freezes up. “Yes?” he returns it, eagerness slipping in so easily. You could have loved this man, perhaps and it’s a thought that starts to haunt you in the wee hours of the night. You could have loved his willing silence and his gentleness if he’d come to you in Nasha Town with flowers and a willingness to know you.
“I’d like to head back inside.”
His lips press up against your forehead. “Alright.” And Flins leads you back, hand held tight in his, like you could be blown away by the passing winds or slip back and melt into the receding snow. You can taste the way the air around him shifts; electrifying, sudden and all too much at once. He doesn’t say all that much after, attending to his tasks down to the minute detail till dusk comes along and the clock calls him back down for dinner.
That night, after setting the lantern down by your bedside and you’re half wrapped under the mound of blankets, he whispers to you, “Say it again.”
“What?” you blink. Flins draws a layer back.
“My name.”
You look at him, really look at him. His gaze is bright. “Kyryll.” You test it on your tongue. He closes his eyes and knocks his head against yours.
“Again.”
“Kyryll.” you repeat, feeling yourself dig a deeper and deeper hole.
The weight of him rolls over onto the mattress. His touch is a slow, deliberate thing. “I could eat you up.” he mutters, nose pressed into the apple of your cheek. “Keep saying it, dear one.”
“Kyryll.” you whisper it, quiet as death in an instance where you should have shut up completely. His eyes snap open and he watches you, and listens to the thumping of your heart. You’re doomed, you realize, plummeting far past that point of no return. The sheets come loose, pulled down to your knees.
“I’ve overestimated myself, I think.” he murmurs into your neck, teasing you just shy of your pulse. He comes close to testing the straps of your slip. “May I have you, dear one?” and you witness the greed, the affection, the twisted up echo suffused into the thing he calls love. You can’t bring yourself to say no. Maybe in the midst of this madness, you could let yourself forget. You guide his hands to your hips, slow, steady, and his breath hitches to mild shock. He probably didn’t expect it, your affirmation.
“You are certain?”
“This is the last time you’ll ask me.” you warn him, gripping the sheets a bit too tight below you. “And the last I'll bother saying yes.”
He peppers kisses over your forehead and cheeks. “Oh you spoil me.” he murmurs. “You spoil me so.” He slides the hem of your slip up, up past your thighs. His breaths are laboured, heavy. “Could you lift yourself up just a bit?” he asks, prompting you with a nudge. You comply, lips pursed as nervousness peels itself into the workings of your bones.
“Easy now…” he whispers, kissing the pulse at your neck, then down further and further still. The fabric comes to bunch just below your chest when he settles between your legs, and he keeps his hand pressed over the softness of your thighs.
You curl your fingers into the wool of his sweater. Flins fixes his gaze on you. “Scared?” he asks.
You swallow. “A little.” you admit, the tenderness of it all feeling so out of place. Flins hums.
“It makes the two of us.” He admits. “It’s been years since…well…” and that statement alone strikes you — reminding you that he’s so much older than he makes himself seem. You try to ground yourself against something, anything, wincing against the shock his colder touch brought to your bare skin.
“But you know how to start at least, right?” you peep out.
“I do. Right now, let me see what I can test out, yes? The act would be terribly one-sided if you don’t enjoy it…” he trails his forefinger up your torso, tracing a line till your slip. You stop him, teeth drawn into a snarl and Flins faces it with a tilt to his head.
“Just…I don't know! Do something! Anything!”
“Anything?” he intones, raising a brow. “Well I was attempting to — ”
You shake your head and it feels like you’re going to fall apart. It’s all too visceral, too embarrassing and somehow, you wanted it to be put to rest. “Not like this. It’s not enough. I…” your grasp on his clothes tightens into a fist. “Kyryll, Kyryll, just make me forget it all. Please.”
“Ah.” he closes his mouth and you feel the way his hands grasp and shift your body further up his thighs, just shy of the part between his legs. Your face is on fire and you try to sink yourself down into the mattress, just as his prodding touch returns. It’s everywhere, slipping beneath your slip, over your shoulders. One travels up to your face, and you let out an exclamation when his digits slip between the seam of your lips, testing your teeth against the pads of his fingers.
There’s a fascination, you think delirious. A fascination he has with your pulse in particular, just as the air becomes a little hotter and a little heavier. Flins can’t quite stop himself from touching. “It’s the warmth.” he smiles, rubbing his cheek against yours like a cat. “You are so warm.”
And then he kisses you.
“And you are mine,” he concludes. There’s no possessiveness, or jealousy. It’s stated with a sense of knowing and matter of factness.
He tests the space between your legs, pulling your underwear to the side to run a finger over your clit. Your lips part and you press your face to his shoulder with a keen. There’s a clumsiness in his movements at first, before Flins eases himself to the shape and the rhythm of your body and he’s slipping a finger in just as you try to gather your senses.
You can’t quite keep up. One finger, then another and you want to tip yourself over and sink into it. It feels wrong, it will stay that way and you still curl up and buck into him and to the whispers in your ears spun in another tongue. You curse at him in your dialect and he laughs at the spunk.
“Are you still with me?” he asks as the pleasure starts its steady build. You nod, lips parted. “Words.”
“Yes!” you force out.
You can’t even step away and deny the hunger in how he takes you apart, spreading your legs just a bit more to fix a single charged look down at you. The heel of his palm presses up against your clit and you’re reeling once more with the inside of your cheek bitten raw. “Kyryll.” you whimper. “Kyryll.”
His teeth nick at your shoulder. “You test me.” he mumbles. “You’ve been plucking me apart, my beloved, playing me like an instrument. Have you any clue of it?” No and it’s awful and it’s so much, your eyes starting to sting. “A sweet thing like you, a poor, sweet little thing.” he keeps nibbling, finding new spots, new places, just shy from plain sight to hide his bites. He lays his teeth just over your sternum, your heart.
Flins groans, restraint hitching itself further and further off. When he finds that spot in you, one that arches your back and blots your vision out, he bends over your frame and keeps you still, grabbing and touching and grabbing with so much fervour you fear he might just lose himself in it. But it comes with a sharp toothed vexation, the feel of it not quite whetting his own appetite in any way.
He tweaks a nipple, starting a slow grind against your bundle of nerves and you squirm under him, hooting softly. “There you go.” he whispers. “There you go, my sweet thing, all mine…” He keeps his promise; there’s so little your mind could properly formulate, even if there is the barest hint of fear tinging certain spots in your ribs with how he probes and prowls over the shape of your curves.
“It’s…strange — ” that buildup starts it’s crest. Flins snaps his head up, intent on watching and that has you attempting to hide away. The pillows are pushed aside and you twist your body, ears starting to burn. “Wait — ”
One last thrust of his fingers, one last brush against your clit and you release, panting helplessly. Flins looks struck, a little awed as he takes in the sight of you, a little sweaty and very unravelled and he sets you closer to the crook of his arm, where you stay clinging on for dear life. It’s all wool and fuzz and the blurry outline of the room.
You could vaguely make out the rustle of his clothes, of his clothes slipping off. When he winds your arms around his shoulders, they’re bare and your hands splay out over his back and just past his shoulder blades. He moans into your throat. “Relax.” he directs. You try, you really do till you feel his tip breach in through the stretch makes you want to cry.
Flins murmurs his comfort and something in that pain guts a sick sense of satisfaction in. You revel in it, nails scraping at his back, and that draws a gasp from deep inside his chest.
“You.” he murmurs, watches the way your flesh divots neath his fingers, and how you curve up to met his shallow thrusts. He soothes your bitten lips, lidded eyes searching, searching, searching and you try to goad him on to move just a bit faster. “Not yet.” he mutters, words slowly running into melded slurring. “It’s not enough…hardly…”
What more could he want, you think, half there, half not. He pushes your legs up, up to your knees and you think you see the sun in the horizon. What more could he want from this; a timed surrender and your mind undoing itself over and over through, purging the venom, shading the anger, letting that whiteout glare against the breadth of it till it’s just less thought and more sensation.
But there’s always something there that Flins never quite fully states. It comes with that interest in bones, in his attention to your heartbeat, in his honey dipped insistence when he hovers his hand just over your stomach. The pink flushing against his pale cheeks aside, he’s digging into you just barely and there’s a look in his eye that stills you, even through the daze of pleasure.
Like he wants to tear you open.
He swallows back a pool of saliva. “Dear heart.” he says, pleasant yet roughed by the shake and the stutter of his hips. He’s hardly up to the hilt and you start to push back against him, letting more sink in. You want some of that sweet friction, and the buzz staticking just below your skin. “Forgive me but if I may…”
This kiss is deep, demanding in how his tongue intrudes and coaxes your mouth open. There’s a debauched rawness burning itself into your ribs and Flins slants his lips, silently drawing out more and more and more.
And more, till there’s a lick of blue and you feel something cold and hot shift through skin and bone and tissue to cradle into your insides. You gasp, and it times with his first proper thrust, something inhuman phasing in and out of his visage — and afterimage of a monstrous face and so much blue. Blue, blue fire, blue like his lantern, and it moulds itself, not quite burning, not painful but strange.
Flins shudders, euphoric.
“This, yes, this.” he whispers, awed. He steals more kisses from your lips, all while the feel of those hands, one dipped into your chest and the other cradling your neck, with the tease of claws to flesh and the burn of azure light stifling back the yellow-orange glow from the bedside table. That steady warmth starts to build, the feel of him cupping your heart, moments away from fraying something asunder and then him, dragging against your walls with a jerk of his hips.
He quite literally holds your heart now. You try to wrap your head around it, the feel of fire, the stirring and its terror and a traitorous sting of pleasure disturbing the stagnancy. Flins strokes the line of your ribs, raking his fingertips through the expanse. Then there’s him, the transfixed fever that burns ever so slightly against the flickering glow of his stare. Every bit of him, strung up. Every bit of him oozing a sense of want.
It’s want that has him still and steady your hips when you start to move away, that alien feeling making your face burn and your world start to stutter. You feel like you could be tugged loose, body and soul, like you’re on the verge of blinking out of existence and falling underwater. It’s panic, but not quite, in how it’s immersed in something else altogether.
( You can’t be enjoying this. You can’t. )
And then he draws it back and they dig into the sheets and spot a few scorch marks onto the surface. You’re drawn in, tugged by some spectral leash and your start to warble against his pace and the taste of his satisfaction biting at the crook of your neck.
It feels like a wave, something that descends upon you like a battering crash, marked by a desperate mewl from you; a jumbled string of “Kyryll”’s sputtered out in the wake of the moment, as you come undone and feel every part of you fall into that pitching height of pleasure circuiting every instance of you..
Flins sucks a breath in. “Oh you’re perfect. Perfect…” he mumbles. Your nerves are still alight and you’re still all too aware of every small move he makes. He pulls himself out after he empties into you and you whine, whine at the emptiness.
The cold he leaves behind on your skin is fast fading. Flins fusses over you and you start to recover from the blankness and the haziness prickling at your body. It’s a shroud pulled over your eyes and you let him work away, oh so thorough in cleaning up the mess.
“You did wonderfully.” he coaxes, spreading your thighs to wipe at the white residue at the inside of them. The mattress dips under his weight. He gathers you into his arms, and you could barely pick out what he’s saying after that. But the adoration is there as it always was.
It only dawns on you, the next day when you stir awake and take the sight of Flins fixing his attention on you, taking in the way you breathe. Last night had happened and you clutch at your chest, as if you could still feel that phantom sensation haunt your body. “What did you do?” you warble.
Flins smiles. There’s no answer from him and you don’t expect it. “Will you be going outside?” he asks when you throw your slip back on and teeter off to find your underwear, then your coat and socks.
“Yes.” you mumble, and you are. You cannot stay in this room much longer. You cannot stay in his presence. You feel the edges of yourself start falling apart, blurring against the starched edges and you fall back against the feel of him weighing your back down as you pull your boots on.
He lays his lips on the nape of your neck, gentle, loving almost. You break away from him, nearly running out, out of the house, out into the open. The aurora burns overhead and the lighthouse cuts past the faint mist cover and into the endless dark sea. You stare up, mouth agape and then you look forth.
When you walk a little farther out, you note how the fog thickens over and shies away from you just till the strait to the basin across the waters. You see the shapes of things dancing along the beachside, lost in the taste of revelry and wine and merry tidings. They call to you, try to coax you farther, closer even as some fall to deathly silent and distort their shape and form.
You take a step forward. Your boots sink into wet sand. Come here, they ring out. Come here, come with us!
I really shouldn’t, you tell yourself rather tightly. Then you turn and leave and you can hear their mockery ring against the air. You’re dizzy and you feel some kind of consuming emptiness start expanding and collapsing into your heart. The ghosts are now mere faint outlines. You’re the only living, thinking thing breathing in the too-chilly air.
Slowly, softly, you make your way back to the lighthouse. Your line of sight blurs and you’re crying halfway through, clawing at yourself, disgusted, angry and so, so strained and spread thin. You want to burn it off of you, that feeling. You want every single inch of you scrubbed clean of that decision, that damned decision and —
That last shackle clicks in place. And you know you’re never leaving, with the paths winding themselves to and away and back again. You walk past and circle every inch of the beachside and you watch the ocean lapping at the shoreline, spreading a hundred white fingers across the sand and evening the ground out beneath it.
( There, you whisper your last few goodbyes. To Sumeru, to your family, to your old life and the forgotten details through the bustle you’d been caught up in. )
The quiet continues to follow when you stumble back up the cliff face. It’s getting colder, even with the sunwarmed rocks radiating the last few vestiges of their heat. Pulling your coat around you tighter, you draw past the shed and over the dirt path, up the slight incline and the scattered frostlamp buds.
At the threshold, Kyryll waits with his lantern, fully dressed. He holds his hand out when you come closer. You take it.
After accidentally slipping and dying because the janitor forgot to put up a wet floor sign, you find yourself reincarnated as the Holy Saintess in the r18 otome game Celestial Bonds. Not wanting to get any of the bad endings or become a glorified sex toy (the game was really pushing the r18 rating), you accept the King's order to join the expedition and become the main healer for the war.
However, it seems like the gods of this world hate you considering how your death flag, who rarely partook in missions, was suddenly appointed as the general. Worse of all? He agreed.
featured character: malleus draconia x afab!reader
cw: au, subtle hints of yandere mallues but not mentioned, does this count as teratophilia, non-con/dub-con, big-cock and two dick malleus, religious themes, breeding, creampies, cumplay, unprotected sex, hair-pulling, overstimulation, implied brainwashing, ooc malleus, porn with somewhat heavy plot
wc: 7.5k
Amidst the din of clashing steel, roars of fury, and cries of pain, the Holy Saintess of the Temple of Dire was a calm figure of divine beauty. The blessed figure knelt beside a fallen soldier. She whispered holy chants and blessings as her hand hovered over the soldier's pierced stomach, glowed a bright light.
The soldier let out a pained sigh; his eyebrows furrowed as the Saintess continued healing the man.
"Don't worry, child." The Saintess smiled, "You won't die today. Not on my watch."
You barely had time to breathe before shouts began to surround you. "Saintess!" A soldier called out, his spear clashing with the sudden multitudes of monsters. "A barrier—we need a barrier!"
You let out a staggered cough as you lifted your other arm, channeling your remaining divine power. The light from your hand flickered, and you could feel your already depleted energy drain.
Shit.
You used up all your mana and a sinking certainty that you couldn't even make a small barrier. Amidst your plight, a monstrous roar tore through the air as heavy steps lifted the pebbles off the ground.
A heavy shadow loomed over you, and a chill ran down your spine. You barely had time to turn your head before a gruesome slash sounded nearby. The monster's body was cut, and its head exploded, followed by the sickening splatter of blood and the horrid cries of the other beasts.
Feeling droplets of blue blood hit your cheek, you let out a small tsk at the sight of your stained robes streaked with fresh (and smelly) gore.
Paying no mind to your smeared robes, you finished healing the wounded soldier with a cough before another shadow loomed over you. However, instead of responding with fear or shock, you tilted your head backward, eyes narrowed in annoyance.
"Malleus." Your lips curled into a thin line, looking at the horned man looking down at you with an arrogant smirk. "How many times do I have to tell you to stop making a mess?"
Malleus let out a low chuckle, his eyes glinting with amusement. "Forgive me, Saintess."
"I was simply concerned for your well-being, and considering your...failed attempt at making a barrier that even a peasant child could raise, I had to come save you." The dragon mocked playfully, his neon green eyes watching you stand and lift your once pristine robes slightly, inspecting the disgusting blood drip.
"This is the fifth time my robes have been stained due to your unsavory methods." You let out a long-suffering sigh.
Malleus' finger touched the tip of his chin, his lips forming into an arrogant smirk. "From how often that happens," The dark-haired man tilted his head. "One would misunderstand our encounters as you purposely putting yourself in danger so I'd come rescue you."
"Isn't that so, your Holiness?"
With a soft thud of his armored boots, the dragon leaned close to you.
"—!"
You roughly pushed the man away, a scowl evident on your face. Malleus looked at you with surprised eyes before he raised his hands in mock defeat.
"Do not think of me as an incompetent fool, you beast." You huffed, eyes glaring at the green-eyed man with disdain.
"The only reason why my mana was drained is because you," A carefully manicured finger tapped harshly against the leather covering of Malleus' chest. "kept on injuring our soldiers during training. And then have the audacity to waste my mana on your minuscule wounds knowing damn well there are other priests who would be more than glad to help you."
Malleus smiles at your irritation, a deep chuckle rumbling when he steps closer to you.
"You wound me, dear Saintess. My job is to make sure these soldiers can fight, not coddle them like a bunch of sheep." With a dismissive shrug, he huffs.
"If my men can't keep up, that's their problem, not mine. I'd rather train and bruise those fools than have them cower in the presence of a true battlefield."
"And besides," In a swift movement, sharp black armored gloves gently grip and caress your waist as Malleus tightly pressed your body close to him, your faces only a few inches separated, his long hair draping around you like a veil. Malleus hums akin to a purr, the deep vibration reverberating across your body.
Suddenly, Malleus puffs out a dark, neon green smoke to your face, tittering slightly at your coughs.
"Why would I let those third-rate fools heal me when I have you right here?"
Your face forms into a disgusted scowl.
"Let go of me, you fu—!" Before multitudes of swears could escape your mouth, a young herbalist, no younger than 12 years old, called out your name—oblivious to the clear sexual tension.
"Your Holiness! More soldiers require healing!" Malleus watched you sigh as the girl yelled out, softly letting go of your waist and resuming distance between the two of you.
"Go on, now." He smiles, ignoring your hateful glares. With a huff, you quickly ran in the girl's direction—not before turning your head back and scoffing at Malleus' smug figure.
Malleus watches your retreating figure with lidded eyes and a smirk. With another deep chuckle, he turns and heads to the training grounds, the image of your angry face embedded deep in his mind.
The gentle orange hue of candlelight flickered softly as you stood frozen in front of your vanity, your face twisted in a mix of regret and panic as you recounted your interaction with the general earlier.
"I'm an idiot." You laugh, pushing your hair back. "I'm a god fucking idiot."
You pull at your hair.
"I bantered with him. Bantered, of all things!" You pull at your hair tighter, your face pale. "You don't banter with your death flag! Especially one as dangerous as him!" You press your forehead against the cool glass of the vanity's mirror, your fingers gripping the wooden frame.
...
With a deep breath, you pull away from the mirror and slump your tired, bruised, and hopefully uninjured body into the soft, cushioned chair. Sighing, you pinch the bridge of your nose and adjust your position to a more comfortable one.
"Okay," you rested your legs on the small, cushioned stool and placed your head in the palm of your hand.
"Let's think about this clearly."
"Malleus, my death flag, practically the one I avoided hell and back while I was in the Capital, suddenly agrees to the King's request that he join an expedition with the Saintess he supposedly hates." Tapping your finger, you narrow your eyes. "And while the King and I aren't on good terms, for someone of his character—it's certainly weird how he never once notified me of the sudden change."
Biting your lip, you clench your fist and hit the chair's soft armrest dramatically with a whine. "Damn it! Damn it! Damn iiiittt!!!" Your fist trembles in the air.
Had it not been for the sudden change of Generals, you could've been romancing the gallant and gentle General Silver!
Instead of getting splashed with gruesome and horridly smelly monster blood every battle, you should've been fighting side-by-side with Silver as he covered you with his cape in fear of you getting stained!
Instead of being forced to that beast's tent to heal scratches (that don't even hurt him!) and wasting your mana, you could've been having an intimate moment with Silver as you healed a deep wound on his hip! (That would totally not lead to a passionate night.)
A woeful, singular tear fell from your eye as all the scenes, dialogue, and events from you and Silver taking late-night walks to swimming together in the lake underneath the romantic moon appeared in your mind.
Damn it all!
Taking a deep breath (you lost count of how many you've had today), you lift your body from the velvet cushioned chair and make your way towards your vanity. Sighing, you draw back the stained veil and brush your hair, yawning lightly.
Your eyes flutter as you feel your body relax, a wave of sleepiness hitting you suddenly.
'That's odd...' You mumble, blinking slowly.
'I drank a mana replenishing potion before I came here. So why am I...' You rub your eyes. 'So sleepy?'
Setting aside the wooden hairbrush, you stretch your neck side-to-side for a few seconds before letting out a long, unguarded yawn. Blinking away the tears, your back arches like a cat as you raise your arms high, fingers outstretched to the tent's roof.
With an exhale, you push your somewhat numb body from the chair and plop down ungracefully on the bed with a satisfied groan.
Your hands wander blindly on the soft bedsheets, fingers feeling around for the familiar shape of your beloved pillows. You make no effort to lift your head from the comforts of your bed, letting your hands fumble around before finally brushing against the squishy and smooth cotton of your pillow.
With a small, sleepy sigh and a slight smile, you clutch the ends of the pillow and pull it close to your body, hugging it tightly as you yawn yourself to sleep.
Long, pale-white fingers gently glide upon the supple flesh of your thighs, with black, long nails sometimes scratching your skin lightly. Not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough for you to feel and furrow your brows even in your sleep.
Said hands wander slowly upwards to your stomach, stopping at the base of your belly button.
...
"How...small." A dark chuckle rumbles, pressing his thumbs lightly on your stomach.
You twist your body away from the feeling, letting out an annoyed grumble and hugging your pillow tighter.
Neon green eyes watch as your chest heaves, his pointy ears twitching at the sound of your slow and even breathing.
Tilting his head, Malleus leans down, his silky and dreamy hair tickling the sides of your stomach. With a light hum, the feared and esteemed general presses his lips softly against the soft and fragile flesh of your body.
A tickle of moonlight shone through a small gap in the tent, glimmering brightly against the delicate silver and luxury items splayed across the wooden vanity on the side.
Malleus' lips linger, his hot and steamy breath fanning on your stomach. Suddenly, he stretches his body a bit straighter and leans his head against your chest, a satisfied hum leaving his fanged mouth.
The man grumbles something akin to a cat's purr, wrapping his arms around your pliant body.
Malleus doesn't see the need to be careful. Considering how potent the few drops of sleeping vial he put in the mana replenishing potion you drank earlier.
Now, don't get Malleus wrong.
He is a gentleman through and through. He would never stoop to such measures had it not been for how utterly dumb and naive you are.
Anyone with the tiniest bit of common sense, peasant or noble, would've been able to see his attempts at courting you.
The very fact that he even bothered to kill that beast and save you from getting mauled was evidence enough to his soldiers. And even when you don't consider his brutal ways as a form of courting, were the flowers he sent to the Temple not enough? The endless jewelry and gifts, some even sparkling brightly on your vanity.
Malleus sighs, burying himself deeper into your body.
If this were months ago, the man would've listened to his fae and draconic instincts and snatched you from the very ground and soil you stood on, trapping you inside his gloomy castle that surely would've bloomed under the gentle care of your hands.
And yet, here he was—stalling and playing the long game.
All because Malleus loves you too much to quickly ensnare your fragile soul into the deep depths of his black heart.
His pupils elongate into slits as he watches your chest heave up and down peacefully. A blush creeps up Malleus' face, and he presses another kiss to your stomach.
The draconic fae sits up and caresses your face, his eyes glinting underneath the darkness of the tent.
His sharp nail grazes the skin of your cheek as his fingers grip the base of your chin gently.
With a deep exhale, Malleus leans down, licking his fangs before pressing his lips against yours.
He hears your throat hitch and your body squirm, but he knows well that you won't wake up until the early dawns.
So he indulges himself in his current pleasure, pushing his tongue deep into your mouth. Malleus ignores the twitch of your legs and your face scrunching in discomfort, intertwining his tongue with yours.
Malleus allows himself to continue the kiss longer, knowing that he won't be able to satiate himself for the following days.
The fae feels ur breathing goes short, yet he still persists and glides his hand lower until it reaches the base of your underwear.
Control yourself.
Such thoughts echo in Malleus' mind as his hands go under the waistband of your underwear, his hands trailing lower and lower, descending beneath and resting on the inner corners of your thigh.
He digs his nails deep into your thigh, finally removing his mouth. Malleus lets out a shaky exhale, his nostrils flaring at the smell of your arousal.
But the man knows better than to assume.
Still, Malleus is a very patient man. He's certain it won't take long for you to realize your desires and approach him.
He chuckles ominously, amused by the way your throat hitches and tries catching breath from his kiss earlier.
Oh, how you tempt him so.
"Is it just me, or does the Saintess look a little stressed today?"
Wiping the grotesque yet familiar blue blood from his sword, a young soldier remarks to his friend, who, in turn, raises his brow.
"What makes ya say that?"
"Well," Soaking the cloth in water, the boy shrugs. "I passed by her Holiness earlier, and she looked angry. Like, her face was all scrunched up, I thought I was the one in trouble."
The boy's friend continues to restring his bow, his face a look of contemplation before shaking his head. "She is the Saintess, after all. With how many were injured in the last battle, and as the personal healer for General Draconia, it makes sense if she's in a bad mood."
"I guess that's true. But is it really because of the battle?" The boy raises his finger. "The Saintess should be used to this typa stuff!"
Groaning, the man pinches the boy's ear. "Idiot! Don't say stuff like that out loud!" He scolds his boy before sighing. "I heard the battle took a significant toll on her Holiness. I even heard from the other soldiers that it got so bad that her Holiness' mana nearly went out."
The boy gasps and drops the cloth, his eyes wide with shock and worry.
"Seriously?! No wonder her Holiness seems to be in a bad mood today! I'd be the same if I got into a near-death experience like that in the middle of battle."
"And she still had to heal the wounded and the General. So yeah, I'm not gonna blame her Holiness if she'll be a bit rude or snarky later."
The boy mutters out a small nah. "I doubt it. The Saintess is a sweet person, I'm sure, even in a bad mood, she'll still treat us nicely!"
His friend stares at him blankly and then lets out a resigned sigh.
"Guess so. Speaking of which, where is the Saintess? I haven't seen her since this morning, and she usually makes rounds around the camp during this time."
The boy perks up with a smile. "I spoke with her earlier! She said that she wanted to hunt some slimes to make a soothing cream for the soldiers since it's summer season."
"Really?! Thank Dire! I thought I was gonna die from the heat."
"Yeah! Her Holiness truly is a gift from God. She's such a sweet and lovely lady, it makes me sob!"
"Repent for your sins, bitch!"
The heel of your shoe collides with a dwarf's arm as his body slams hard into a tree, creating a loud boom echoing within the deepest depths of the forest. You pay no mind to the red stain spreading on your pure white garments, digging your heel deeper.
"W-WHAT KIND OF HOLY EUR-CHK! SAINTESS ARE YOU?!" The dwarf snarls, howling in pain.
Your head tilts with a slow blink of your eye, and a bright smile plays upon your face. "A Saintess who's in a deeply bad mood." With a flick of your finger, multiple holy crosses encirle the dwarf's neck, their sharp ends drawing blood as they titter against his thick skin.
"So," Your voice purrs, "I suggest you fess up where you hid those potions before my mood sours any further."
"Potions? The hell you talkin' about?!" The dwarf spits, gripping the wooden baton in his hands.
"Don't act dumb with me." Your tone drops to a chill, and the dwarf stills.
"Earlier this morning, a courier was expected to arrive here, in this very forest, to deliver me a box of potions that I've been searching for and paid a tremendous amount of money to obtain."
You lean closer to the dwarf, the strands of your hair slipping from your veil and caging the tiny person's face.
"So," A smile plays upon your lips. "Imagine my surprise when I arrive at the meet-up point to a mangled corpse, with no potions to be seen."
The crosses dig deeper into the dwarf's neck, drawing blood.
"I don't know what the fuck's going on with that head of yours, lassie, but I didn't do anything!" The dwarf narls.
You raise a brow.
"Then, mind explaining why three empty bottles are dangling from your belt?"
The dwarf freezes its entirety, its eyes immediately darting to the sparkling silver bottles attached to its belt.
"H-hold on!" The dwarf yelps, sweat dripping from his skin as his body trembles from the harsh pressure of the crosses. "I didn't take these; someone gave them to me!"
Your hand stops, and a questioning look sparks on your face.
"Speak."
The dwarf gulps.
"I was hunting animals earlier in the southern area, and I smelled blood nearby."
"Why the southern area?"
"Because obviously I wasn't going to take chances hunting near that damned soldier camp of yours!"
The dwarf scoffs, rolling his eyes.
"To continue, I decided to follow the scent because I thought it was a dead animal, a recent one since the blood smelled fresh at that time."
The dwarf sighs and leans defeated against the tree.
"...Let's just say, lass, that it wasn't a dead animal."
"I pity that courier. Seemed like a young man."
Your lips purse, and you raise your chin lightly with a condensing stare.
"I'd expect wild dwarves like you to be used to the sight of human corpses." You sigh, rolling your eyes.
"Still," Your voice trails off. "Even with that courier dead, that doesn't prompt you to steal my potions."
A vein appears on the dwarf's forehead, and the tiny man grumbles.
"Don't interrupt me, girl! I ain't done telling the whole story!"
"...Continue."
"That boy of yours didn't get mauled by some monster or animal."
"He—"
HWAK!
A light whistle softly echoes as the trees still, and everything falls silent.
Your body is still as your eyes are wide.
Your eyes shake and tremble, your breath hitching, your hands quivering.
Your mouth closes, and a bitter taste fills your tongue. Something drips from your face—you think it's tears.
It's not.
Your dress, once lightly stained, now bleeds and taints red.
Your heart thumps—once, twice, thrice.
And it takes precisely 10 seconds before a shaky whisper escapes your mouth.
"Why?"
Your voice is soft, vulnerable.
A branch breaks behind you, but you stay still, not moving an inch.
"Naive, so utterly naive." A deep voice purrs, and you take a deep breath as the familiar fiery yet masculine scent fills your nose.
"I thought you were hunting slimes, my dear Saintess," Malleus smirks, leaning his armored body against a tree.
"I was." You retort, ignoring the shiver creeping up your spine. "I simply had some other business to attend to."
The fae raises a brow. "And that includes interrogating a dwarf? If I'd known better, I'd say you were putting yourself in danger for fun." He chuckles.
Your fists clench. "I was perfectly capable of handling this, General."
"And by handling, you mean letting that dwarf go once you've got all the answers you needed."
Malleus narrows his eyes—sharp pupils tracing the expanse of your back, faced at him.
"You may have threatened that thing, but I know you well enough that you had no thoughts of killing that dwarf."
Your throat gulps as your eyes stare tremblingly at the decapitated and exposed neck of the dwarf.
"Not everything needs to result in death, Draconia."
"In the subject of your safety, it should be." The man frowns, taking a few steps closer.
"And besides, he's a thief, isn't he? A thief and a murderer."
You grit your teeth and turn around, eyes filled with immense rage.
"How long have you been listening?! And excuse you, but this dwarf made it clear that he didn't steal my potions!"
"Long enough to laugh at how oblivious and callow you are." Malleus steps further, only stopping until his shadow envelops your entire body.
"Don't tell me you actually believe that dwarf's words?"
You scowl. "Why shouldn't I?!"
Malleus presses the bridge of his nose. "Because that dwarf was about to stab you using his left hand, and clearly murdered that courier and took those potions you ordered." The man points a sharp, armored finger at the dwarf's side.
Your eyes follow, and a shocked gasp escapes your throat at the sight of the dwarf's tiny hand gripping a dagger, exuding a demonic aura.
One dark enough to seriously injure your body and spiritual mana.
"..."
"You may think that mercy comes easy, my dear." Malleus leans close, removing his gauntlet from his hand.
"But need I remind you of who you are."
Long, pale, and calloused hands grip your chin, tilting your head high.
"Making underground deals for potions is one thing, but having a secret meeting with an agent alone and foolishly believing a dwarf's blatant lies?" A patronizing smile fills Malleus' face.
"You are the Holy Saintess. Your position holds not only power, but effect."
Malleus' eyes glint with barely hidden anger.
"Your actions, your words, everything you do affects this very world."
He puffs out a small smoke of fire from his mouth, ignoring your coughs.
"And yet you act so recklessly simply because you have the Holy blessing and the protection of the spirits."
The man stares at your livid face, a light blush fluttering on the tips of his ears.
"Foolish."
He sighs, letting go of your chin and stepping back.
Biting your lip, you glare at the man.
"You treat me as a child!" You scoff, fists clenched.
"And you are acting like one!" The man counters, his hair flowing gently against the wind.
Your tongue clicks against your mouth, and you narrow your eyes.
"You may be an honored General, Draconia."
"But that does not mean you have the right to dictate or control my actions."
Malleus crosses his arms, a smug smile on his face as the glow from his neon eyes is barely visible against the setting sun.
"Had it not for the King's orders," You take a step forward. "I would've replaced you with General Silver ages ago."
Malleus stills—the smile on his face freezing.
His hands quickly dart to your face, looking for any signs of teasing or a horrid play of humor.
None.
No teasing glint, no haughty smile, not even a playful jester.
You sneer at the motionless man and spit on his armored boots, bumping into his shoulder as you walk past him.
"I may be a fool," You halt and glance back. "But at least I'm not a pathetic man desperate for the tiniest ounce of attention."
You scoff, flipping your hair as you make your way back to camp.
...
.....
........
"Ha."
"Haha," Malleus tips lightly, his hand cupping his mouth, "Hahaha,"
"HAHAHAHA!"
The man inclines his head back, a crazed smile playing on his face. Multiple veins bulge in fury as a surge of magical energy builds up in his surroundings.
A growl rumbles deep in his chest, and with a click of his tongue, multiple trees break in half.
"Ah," Malleus sighs lovingly, "My dear Saintess," his eyes squint, and his body wobbles slightly as he sniffs the air for your scent.
Malleus' long tongue licks the slate of his fangs, a devilish cackle filling the silent, and now dark forest.
"An arrogant fool is much worse than a pathetic man."
The Holy Saintess of the Temple of Dire is a figure so revered and kind that people would shed tears at the mere sight of her silhouette.
Many tell stories of her kindness, her gentle voice, her soft laughter tittering like a bird's chirp.
However, as true as the stories and whispers may be, Epel finds them to be a bit too exaggerated.
And what basis does the young man have for such a statement?
"He's nothing more than a ludicrous, asinine, outrageous, and demented man!"
By being the personal attendant of the Holy Saintess and apprentice to the High Priest.
"Simply because he's a general, that deranged man thinks he can order me around?!"
"The audacity!"
Epel watches his beloved Saintess pace around, his delicate and soft hands stirring the pot of tea carefully.
"Well," The boy interjects with a shrug.
"If I were naturally born with immense magic, natural fighting ability, practically being a prodigy in all things considered, the only son of Princess Maleanor and Duke Raverne, thus being the only heir to the Draconia Empire, and then becoming part of the highest ranking generals four months into knightlyhood—I, too, would have the audacity."
"Whose side are you on?!" You frown, grumbling out a comical huff.
Epel lifts the teapot and pours the herbal mixture into an intricately designed cup with grace.
"The winning side."
Epel lifts the cup and places his free hand on your shoulder. Smiling, the boy casually directs your body and sets you down on the bed with an upright posture, an action done so many times that it has practically become a bodily reflex.
"My dear Saintess–"
You glare at Epel, who simply gave you a sly smile.
"Your health is of utmost importance," he places the tea in your hands, of course, after he has ensured that the cup is at a reasonable temperature to avoid burning you.
"So, please, drink this carefully mixed herbal tea and let this young boy rest."
Before you could even retort, Epel quickly dashes out of your tent with a big wave of his arm.
"Sweet dreams, Y/N!"
"That damned boy!" You groan, quickly gulping down the tea.
With a deep sigh, you promptly rise from the bed and set the teacup aside. Yawning, you approach your vanity and fumble slightly with the cabinet handles.
Opening the drawer, an irritated grumble murmurs in your mouth.
"Damn it," You brush your hair back, "I'm out of potions."
You stare blankly at the empty space inside the drawer, your body crouched and eyes filled with tired despair.
Your face slams into the palms of your hands as you sob fake, dramatic tears.
That is, until a silvery glint shines brightly into your eye.
"Huh?"
Underneath the velvet cushion of the leather case placed inside the drawer, your eyes squint as the faintest glint of pure silver peeks through.
With careful precision, you lift the velvet cushion, and your eyes light up in delight.
You jump up from your crouched form and spin happily, giggling cheerfully.
Despite the clearly suspicious, sudden appearance of the potion and its weird pink color, a color you don't recall making or receiving, you were too blissfully ecstatic to care or think properly.
Snickering, you easily pop the potion's lid off and gulp the entire bottle in one go.
"Man, that hit right." Wiping away the excess liquid from your mouth, you toss the empty bottle and fall face-first onto your bed.
With a slow blink accompanied by a yawn, your fingers fumble and clutch the soft ends of a pillow. Your back arches with the stretching curve of your arms as another yawn follows.
Pulling your legs and pillow close to your body, you hum contentedly as your body falls into a deep slumber.
Underneath the soft blanket of translucent silk fabric dangling and caging above a queen-sized bed, the Holy Saintess of the Temple of Dire shivers against the cold wind of the midnight air.
The Saintess, too deep in slumber, tunes out the gentle flutter of her open tent, her arms tightening their grip on the pillow resting softly between her legs and chest.
The moon's silver light spilled through the small gap, casting a shining hue amongst the Saintess' exposed legs from her nightgown.
The light slowly went up to her face, causing her lashes to flutter. However, as quickly as it came, it ended as soon as it started, as a dark shadow loomed over the Saintess' body.
A black nail taps against a pale chin with a hum. With a short flick of his fingers, the fae casts a spell—a silencing and confinement spell.
He can't have anyone interrupting the two of you, of course.
Something electric runs down Malleus' body, and his lips curl into a vicious smirk as his eyes glint within the tent's darkness.
Such thrill.
Malleus, as powerful as he is, only found excitement and pleasure in the pains of war. He had never bothered with such minuscule and irrelevant aspects, such as affection—yet here he was, careering his hands against the soft supple flesh of your exposed thighs.
Needy.
Desperate.
And so painfully horny.
The man positions himself above your slumbering form, a purr reverberating from his chest as he lets out a small smoke of fire right into your face.
He drags a clawed finger from your thigh to your stomach, slow, deliberate.
He stops right at your pelvis, pressing a warm palm against it.
You whimper.
He smiles.
He drags the finger upward, stopping at the base of your neck. The man shivers, an act that surprises even himself.
Malleus leans his head down, pressing a soft yet deep kiss at the center.
And as quickly as his affection came, he immediately wrapped his hand across your neck, a deep flush covering the entirety of his pale face.
He squeezes.
You whine.
Malleus trembles.
"I despise you." The fae whispers, yet his lidded and lovestruck eyes say the opposite.
"You make me desperate."
He squeezes tighter.
"You make me act like a damned dog." The man huffs, ignoring the twitch in his pants at the sight of you losing breath at his clawed hand gripping your neck.
"You haunt my mind," Malleus uses his free hand to remove the pillow from your grasp.
"My soul," He positions your body straight, making sure it faces his muscular build.
"My heart."
Malleus knew himself as a beacon of self-control—a figure of power and wealth.
Yet here he was, begging, even without an audience, pleading for the slightest bit of your affection.
"And my dear Saintess," The man smiles, devilish.
He leans down and kisses your forehead.
"To conquer a fae's heart," He tightens his grip.
"Means to conquer their entire being." Malleus chuckles, letting his draconic features show.
"And to conquer their entire being," He lowers his free hand to the intricate lace decorating the top of your nightgown.
"Means to receive their entirety."
RIPPPP
Malleus' fingers tangle in the remnants of your ripped nightgown, immediately discarding it without a care for the world.
Malleus' tongue flicks and curls, his body shuddering at the sight of your naked body. A groan escapes his mouth, and he throws his head back, eyes turning hazy.
"Ah." Humming, the fae glances down, his ears twitching at the bulge protruding from his tight pants.
Malleus' eyes glimmer with wickedness, a sinful smirk forming at his lips.
He presses a cold hand on your stomach, and with a tilt of his head, he chuckles.
Malleus knew himself as a beacon of self-control—a figure of power and wealth.
Malleus considers himself a beacon of self-control after letting out a rather embarrassing lustful groan with his sharp fingers digging into the marked-up inner parts of your thighs.
He ignores the harsh shaking of your legs and continues pressing his reptilian tongue deeper into the depths of your warm pussy.
His eyes flutter at the impossibly luscious, serene taste of your cum, curling and hitting his sinfully long tongue at those spots that make your unconscious form drown in pleasure.
"Urgh..."
Correction, previously unconscious form.
A moan escapes your mouth, soft, small, and confused.
Your eyes blink wearily, your head fogged with questionable sensations.
You moved your leg, hopping to kick off whatever was invading your body.
Instead, you got pulled down—the action making you yelp awake as a high-pitched, broken moan rips from your throat as multiple rounds of pleasure jolts up your body, your thighs instinctively snapping shut at the head buried beneath you.
"W-what—"
Your fingers clutch the bed's cushion harshly, your back arching at the pressure pressing against your already sensitive clit.
Your eyes try to glance down, trying to steal a glance at least at who was reconstructing your entire body and soul.
But what happens instead is the sloppiest squelch you've ever heard in your entire life; not even slimes make that noise, echoes inside your tent with the loudest whine you've ever heard, challenging it.
And before your mind could recover, a deep gasp rumbles from below, and another moan escapes you at the tongue pulling out from your pussy.
"Delectable." Your throat tightens at the voice, your mind frantically trying to figure out the perpetrator.
"Mhm, my dear Saintess,"
...my dear...Saintess...?
Your mind fumbles, the pieces of the puzzle forming.
"Had I known that such delicious taste was awaiting me inside that fiery personality of yours," A horned figure appears in your line of vision, and your body stills at the glowing green eyes peering from above.
"I would've indulged in you long ago."
The fae presses a kiss to your hair and then to your cheek.
"M-MALLEUS?!"
You screech, a sudden wave of clarity filling your body as you pull yourself away.
The fae tilts his head, a pout on his lips.
"My, my," He sighs. "I expected you'd be more grateful after all the pleasure I've given you."
"Grateful?!" You grip the blanket and quickly cover your body, ignoring the tremble of your thighs and the heightening heat from your inner,
"You assaulted me!"
"Assaulted? My dear, you hurt me with your unkind words." The fae huffs, sitting upright and cautiously approaching you.
Your breath hitches at the man approaching you, and you push yourself back—you can't.
"?!"
Before you could even let out the most outrageous insults and swear words known to man, you lock eyes with alluring green orbs, and suddenly, as if a burst of carnal lust shocks your entire body—you moan.
Like full on, moan.
A loud, scandalous, and genuine moan.
Your throat tightens, your back arches, your hands grip the sheets tighter, and your entire body loses itself.
And as if Malleus knew what was about to happen, he placed his hand behind you, eyes gleaming with immense lust as he watched your body twitch and succumb to undeniable pleasure.
With a scratchy exhale, your arms collapse after a harsh jostle hits your body. The warm expanse of your back lands softly against the cold palm of Malleus Draconia.
"Wh—what did y-you do to m-me?" You breathe, your hand gripping the fae's arm.
Malleus tilts his head innocently, his eyes glittering.
"I didn't do anything, my dear."
"B-bulls-shit." You grumble, digging your nails into his exposed skin.
"T-then, why a-am I like th—is?" Malleus presses his lips upon your hair, his finger twirling a strand.
He bites your ear.
You whimper.
"Because..." Malleus turns his head and kisses your nape with such gentleness you'd forget what was happening right now.
"As lovers, it is only right that we consummate during the moonlight's eve."
...
.....
.......
Lovers?
No, that must be wrong.
It has to be.
Because...you're in love with...
General Si-
Sil—ve—
Malleus.
You are in love with General Malleus Draconia.
And only Malleus Draconia.
"A—Ah, yea—h." You drunkenly giggle, playfully cupping the fae's face with both of your hands.
"You're my babyyyyy." You kiss the tip of his nose.
"My darling, cutieeee, babyyyyy." Malleus chuckles along with your gleeful laughter, leaning close to your peppering kisses.
"Mhm. That is indeed correct, my dear." He ruffles his hair against yours.
"I'm your baby." You wrap your arms around the man's neck with a giggle, nodding along with his words.
"And as your beloved baby," Malles brings his hand to yours, removing one from the back of his neck to place his lips upon your delicate wrist.
He leans in close, eyes sparkling when you tilt your head at his words.
"You'll indulge in this poor, needy baby of yours desires, won't you?"
You blink.
Once.
Twice.
A bright smile fills your face as your body shakes along with your gleeful giggles.
"Of—course!" You press a deeeeppppp kiss to Malleus' cheek.
"Why wouldn't I help my cutie baby?"
The Holy Saintess of the Temple of Dire is a figure of divine purity.
"Hik.. hiIkK!"
Her body is regarded as a holy artifact, one that can never be tainted.
"I-I c—an-aNT! Ngh!"
Many praise her for her chastity.
"Oh dear Dire—FU-ucckk!"
Yet, the Saintess held a secret only known to her and the High Priest of the Temple of Dire.
"A-ahH!"
The Saintess has never taken the vows of chastity and abstinence.
"Are you certain that this is your first time, my dear?" Malleus adjusts the pillow nestled beneath your pelvis, a small whistle escaping his lips at the wetness.
And she has no plans to ever commit to a life of celibacy.
"You clench on me like a damned whore from the red light district."
"Well?" Mallues tilts his head, bucking his hips deeper.
Your back arches as you choke on a wail, tears dripping from your eyes, and toes curling in the air.
"S—so—o deep!" You cry with your head thrown back, twisting your body.
Your eyes fall shut, your cunt throbbing and squeezing against the thickened tip, grinding against every sensitive spot hidden inside you.
Everything is just dizzy.
Every ounce of your body squished against the soft, wet mattress. You squirm, you whimper, you sob, your mind falls into a state so delirious you can't even breathe properly.
You don't know if the man thrusting so hard in you is just experienced or has a dick so damn big that it makes your whole body shudder in tremendous pleasure.
Malleus has you in a simple classic missionary position, but fuck, from the way he's gliding and slapping his toned hips against the reddened fat of your thighs and ass, you might as well consider it a mating press.
Your voice chokes on a wail, and your stomach tightens.
"Too-b-ig." Malleus' pace is already brutal—every hungry and desperate snap of his hips sharp and precise.
"Shhh," Malleus chuckles, pressing a finger harshly on your clit. "That's just one, my love. The other is much, much bigger."
Malleus' voice is calm, collected, like he isn't cervix deep inside you, rearranging your organs with every disgusting hot squelch pull on his glistening dick from how many times he's made you cum.
Your breath stutters, mind too far in pleasure and fog to register the words your lover was saying.
But then, your brow furrows. The words of your lover echoing in your mind.
"The other."
And before you could think any further, your body stills as a primal shudder rips right through you when you feel something sliding against your puffy clit.
The tip of Malleus' tail plays with your chin, tapping it lightly before gripping it hard and forcing your head to look down.
Down to the absolute monstrosity inside and outside your overstimulated cunt.
Ribbed.
Oh dear Dire, his second dick is ribbed.
You knew that this game was already pushing the boundaries with its R18 rating, but seriously?
Two dicks? Fine, more so walking on thin ice, but still fine.
But a bigass ribbed dick?
Now that's when you're starting to regret agreeing to the whims of your dear lover.
"M—ma-al, babyyy," You whimper, your smile a nervous stutter.
"Yes, my dear?" The man above you smiles, shoveling his slender hips in with precise thrusts that kiss the opening of your womb.
"You're not—not gonna p-put bo-th in, right?" You giggle halfheartedly, genuinely concerned for your mental and physical state.
For the first time in his life, Malleus is stunned.
Awestruck, to be precise.
Now, as lustfully carnal Malleus is, he is still a gentleman at heart. Even with his creamy cum spilling out in surges with every harsh thrust with his wet, swollen dick, the fae still had the rationality to know when to stop and give you a break.
And yet, with those few simple words you uttered with a clearly frenzied and pleasure-lost mind—for the first time in his life again, Malleus is nervous.
Nervous not for himself, but for you.
Because, as powerful and composed as the man is, it does not mean he doesn't fall to his instincts.
Instincts that are currently screaming at him to break both your soul and body, to claim you as his, to ensure that no one else will ever touch you as he does.
To breed you till morning.
To fill you full with his seed.
To mark you as his.
And Malleus almost agrees.
Almost.
"Rest assured, my love," He hums, kissing away your tear-stricken eyes.
"It is still too early for you to receive both." Unfortunately, Malleus thinks to himself.
Your lashes flutter open at the way Malleus easily commands and positions your body to relax underneath his soft words and gentle affections, too absorbed in the fae's caress to notice how his second, ribbed cock twitches and glows a light green hue.
"So, my dearest," He sucks your nape, "loosen yourself." His chest rumbles happily at the sight of your hickey-filled body.
Malleus licks his lips, his eyes betraying his tender movements.
"For I will give you all the pleasure you need."
You're delirious.
Scratch that—you're hysterical.
Your throat is raw, and every word, every whimper, every moan that tries to escape you hurts.
Your body is numb. You can't feel or hear anything other than the sound of Malleu's ravenous hunger.
A puff of smoke exhales from Malleu's nose, the warm sensation sending shivers down your shoulders.
Malleus is drunk.
So damned pussydrunk.
He ignores your desperate pleas and squeals for a break, his earlier control already fading into dust.
"You will bear our children," He huffs, eyes hazy. "Mhm, you will bear a bountiful clutch."
He grips your body, pulling back to a knotted ribbed dick with a load groan.
"hAH!" Raspy wanton cries echoed, drool seeping from your mouth.
"We—Ngh, will repopulate the Draconia lineage." Malleus' sparky tail rubs against your puffy clit, a sultry chuckle vibrating from the fae's heated and scaled chest.
"Please-" You sob out. "I'm gonna-gonnaa-!!!"
"Breathe, my love." Malleus thrusts along with your orgasm, the multitudes of his cum splashed inside you, spilling out from the fae's continuous slamming dick.
You're gonna die.
Like, seriously!
Your chest heaves, up and down, at the splitting sensation inside your cunt.
You're gurgling and mumbling incoherent words, the only thing making sense is the insatiable clench of your pussy and the fact that the fae above you still isn't stopping.
Still, even in your pleasure-induced state, your eyes can't help but catch the tiny sparkle glittering from Malleus' discarded vest on the ground.
And even with the fae's plummeting and mind-breaking thrusts, the tiniest bit of rationality remaining in your mind manages to recognize the emblem somewhat.
You don't know if you're just too deep in lust and pleasure—
However, the emblem bears too much resemblance to the underground dealer from whom you purchased your "lost" potions.
You blink, your mind starting to clear—
"Having wandering thoughts, my dear?" Malleus tsks, his clawed hands tangled in your sweaty and messy hair.
Your eyes roll back, and your mind fogs up once again.
"Stay still, my dearest." He presses a cold hand to your stomach, letting your back arch against the bed at the tight pressure of your cervix and his bulging dick.
Fuck. You think, flinching at the cold grinds of Malleus' tail against your clit and pussy.
"One more," He hums. "And I will let you rest." He nuzzles close to your ear.
"You'll agree," Your hazy eyes meet his glimmering, cat-like pupils.
"Won't you?"
You're addicted.
this work belongs to @lili-534030, please do not copy or repost.
Long ago, before the word witch became a curse, before empires learned to call themselves gods, there was one mage with a hair that captured the sunlight.
A Mage, young and gentle, with a heart so open it made even the stars feel softer.
The elders warned.
They said your heart was too open.
They said your magic was too bright.
They said the world would mistake love for weakness.
But you did not listen. You fell in love with a man who had nothing but callused hands and a quiet hunger for more.
And the prophecy—spoken long before you were born—began to stir.
“When the heart of a witch is given away, the world will be built on stolen fire.”
You gave him everything. Warmth. Faith. Magic. And he took it.
Not once. Not twice. Again and again—like a greedy river taking what it needed to survive.
The prophecy watched, patient as stone. “The one who rises from nothing will rise by your light. The empire he builds will be a monument to theft. The name he earns will be written in blood.”
When you finally ran, your heart shattered, the magic in your chest broke open like a wound. You disappeared and the world forgot you.
They called you a monster.
They wrote you out of the story.
They praised the man who had stolen your light, and called him a savior.
But the prophecy does not lie.
“The witch who was erased will return. The empire built on his heart will crumble and the man who claimed the gods will beg for the only thing he can never earn.”
For as long as the world lives, there will be a truth that refuses to die:
You can take a witch’s power.
You can steal her love.
But you cannot steal the part of her that is meant to be free
Imagine being a succubus that feeds regularly on one John Price. He’s an excellent source of energy— vivid dreams, active imagination, plenty of pent up desires and time spent desperate for the soft touch of a woman— it’s no wonder you come back to him more than a few times a week.
What you don’t know is that John, deep in his ancestry, has a bit of demon blood in him. So he doesn’t get affected by your enchantments in quite the right way. He doesn’t wake up suddenly, convinced it was nothing more than a wild, lustful dream. No, he knows what you are and what you’re doing. And your pheromones are that much stronger
And he’s tired of you running away at first light. Always taunting him with that pink, glowing tattoo right over your womb. So cute, just beckoning him to shove his cock inside you and make it a home for his seed.
So he walks out of the occult shop, talismans in hand, excited for what the look on your face will be when you try to leave him and your wings are bound and body heavy. When he slips that delicate silver chain around your neck, the spell inside humming to life. And when you find out that his demon blood makes you breeding compatible…
Monster!AU where you, a slime person, end up working with the 141.
And Werewolf!Soap cannot take his fucking eyes off of you.
And everyone knows why. It’s a little embarrassing— your kind usually has their own prominent section on porn sites, and you know it.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that he puts literally all of his time and energy into pulling you. But it’s not so tough— he’s funny. And it’s hard to resist that wagging little tail when the wolf takes over.
You’re in his bed before long.
“Fuck, fuck , fuck— take it, bonnie. Take this fockin’ cock til your insides take the shape of me.”
The sticky, sloppy sounds are music to his sensitive ears, your biology keeping him slicked up and dripping. His eyes are glued down at your stomach, watching his dick distend and rearrange you easily, little drops of his milky pre suspended inside you. The way your gel knits back together slowly whenever he pulls out before he punches back through it with his thrusts.
It’s considered a weakness of slimes that all of your organs are visible— and it’s not terribly hard to reach into you and grab them. The plus side is that you can move them anywhere you want in your body, and as long as your heart is intact, you can regenerate. Well, it’s more like a nucleus. But it still pumps and thumps like a human heart.
And he can feel it on the tip of his cock. It’s drifted down inside you and pounding with your excitement. Now that’s something you never see in the videos.
“Shit— how’s that for havin’ yer heart in the right place, bon? Gonna fockin’ kill me with tha’ little trick—“
He almost asks if you’d let him take a video when he’s about to cum, but he decided to savor this moment between the two of you. Drool falls from his panting mouth as he watches the ribbons of cum shoot from him, his spend collecting into a neat little suspension in your glossy gel. He’s already dreaming about taking you out somewhere just like this— so everyone can see what you let this nasty mutt do to you.
And god… he can’t wait for the next full moon. He’s never found someone who can take his full cock and knot when he’s transformed, but he’s pretty hopeful about you. And god, the size of the load he’s gonna give you, watching it all spill while you’re locked together.
cw: lots. and lots of blood. child abuse. domestic abuse.
next->
Blood.
On the walls, the countertops. His hands, his arms. Forearms drenched in the viscous, astringent, scarlet syrup. His fingertips so used to being covered in the substance that they’ve taken on a permanent crimson hue despite the litres of industrial strength soap he douses himself in. Blunt, gnawed nails lined with dried blood, too stubborn even for his obsessive cleaning tendencies. He’s sure to leave carmine smudges in his path, the marks of a predator, large footprints in the snow.
Blood, dripping from the row of knives on the wall next to his head, hanging from a bespoke holder he was gifted from an old captain. Blood, dripping from the gaping maw of a wolf, standing guard over a fresh kill.
The bitterness permeates the air, singing nose hairs, watering eyes, so pungent you can almost see it in the air. He is unphased; the blood is his paint and he, the artist. This is his normality. This is his profession. His livelihood.
He remembers the fables his mother used to tell him, anything to get him to sleep so he could block out his father’s drunken ranting down the hall and the glaring muddy bruise across her cheek, vermillion still spilling from her lip in a slow and steady stream.
Growing up with blood being a normal fixture in his family- a second sibling, the unwanted but accepted family member invited to christmas dinner, the outcome of a glass of whiskey and a big angry man- changes a boy. Simon doesn’t think he was ever innocent- not really. Even as a young lad, half his father’s DNA. Evil from conception, corrupted by the very person sworn to protect him.
A boy forced to grow up too fast. A boy born with blood on his hands. A man made to hunt.
The age old story of the wolf and the lamb.
Simon, the snarling, hungry wolf. An apex predator. Licensed to kill.
You, the naive, stumbling lamb. Inexperienced. Blind to the world and its dangers.
That’s why he has to have you. He simply has to, otherwise, who knows what might happen to you? The world is full of danger you know, lamb. But fret not, Simon’s here. With his big arms and even bigger shoulders. He can fend off the vultures circling overhead, cradle you in the palm of his hand.
His fingers wrapped snugly around the precious skin of your throat.
You don't question your brother when he sends you to drop off packages to his friends, but when the enforcer for the 141 shows up to teach the small-time dealer selling on their turf a lesson, you realize there are different ways to pay someone back with pounds of flesh.
(OR: your brother owes them, and Ghost is content to let you settle the debt. after all, if you wanted freedom, then you shouldn't have caught the eye of the butcher of the 141, should you?)
18+ SMUT. noncon. objectification. marking. kidnapping. threats of violence. unsafe sex (manipulation into unprotected sex). rough sex. size difference. breathplay. 10k of foreplay. light pussy slapping. overstimulation. mafia au.
SERIES MASTERLIST | AO3
The goal is to be as quick and discreet as possible.
In and out, he says, looping the baggie around his index finger. Inside, a snowfall of white powder settles at the bottom.
Meth this time. Oxytocin the last.
He ties it tight before giving the bag a quick shake, breaking up the clumps. Satisfied with the way it looks, he turns toward you. Levels you with a sombre look, the picture of a concerned older brother.
You almost fall for it. Believe it. But the clouded, flat edge to his gaze undercuts his worry for what it really is. A farce.
“And if it seems sketchy—”
—run.
But your knees are locked, soles glued to the pavement. You can't move even though everything is screaming at you to flee.
The problem, maybe, is that there's nowhere to go. Escape cut off, filled by a body, a man—even though the idea, the mere notion, of thinking this behemoth as human, flesh and bone; blood and tissue, is laughable when he's so clearly a beast. A monster.
He fills up your field of vision. Your line of sight was eclipsed by the thickness of his waist, the broad expanse of his shoulders. Thighs that are as wide as the trunk of a tree. Arms boxing you in. A prison of obsidian. A black shadow.
In the panic that surfaces, surging to the top like an oil spill, you catch a pocket where he doesn't root. A small alcove between the bend of his elbow and the slot of his knee perched against the wall. Enough room for you to—
“Wouldn't do tha’ if I were you.”
His voice seems to shake the earth, rolling out of his broad chest like the low, brassy roar of a lion; a rumbling thunderclap.
You feel sick—
The leather covering his hand is cold when it closes around your arm, grip tight. Bruising. Trapping you with just the slightest effort.
“Go’ a problem, you and I,” he starts, and it's almost conversational. Might be, perhaps, if the clean, sleek outline of his gun inside the unclasped holster around his ungodly thick waist wasn't threatening you more than the grip he has on your arm. “How do you reckon we can fix it?”
You have a meagre twenty dollars in your pocket. Less money for them to take if things go awry. If they decide that the little girl standing in for her older brother was an easier target to rob—money and drugs—than to settle things fairly. Money, goods. Hand over hand.
Just like the movies, he'd said.
Just like the movies, you think when he leans in closer, bulk swallowing you whole.
There is a pockmark in the corner of his crooked, misshapen nose and the crease of his eye. A scar, maybe. It's circular—almost perfectly so; a silver-pink moon on the angular ridge of his nose. Uneven, craggy, like crumpled printer paper.
It looks almost like—
You think of the mark on your arm. Soot-stained. The smell of burning hair, tissue. The searing pain.
“I–I can pay you—” you stammer out, tearing your gaze away from the ugly mark on his skin. A cigarette burn. It makes you shudder.
He cocks his head slowly like a big, dumb dog, but there's something eerie in the ink spill of his eyes. The soft matte of a saltwater crocodile staring at you from beneath the murk. Calculative. Hungry.
“Pay me?” He echoes slowly, dragging the words out mockingly. “D’you know ‘ow much trouble your brother is in? For sellin’ ‘ere of all places?”
“No,” you swallow. It feels like your heart is stuck inside your throat. “I–I just—”
“Run ‘is errands,” he finishes cruelly but you can't deny it. “Ain't you a good little sister? Almost makes me wish I ‘ad somethin’ as sweet as you f’myself growin’ up.”
You don't answer. He doesn't seem to be looking for one, really; just empty words to fill space. To echo in your head, barbed wire around any sense of comfort you might have felt. Punishing cruelty.
He has the upper hand, it says. He's the one who makes derisive jokes while you tremble in his grasp, and try to make yourself as small, as unassuming, as possible. Hiding from the predator in plain sight. Hoping he passes you over for something bigger, more calorie-dense; the effort to catch and consume you expends more energy than the return. Hardly worth it in the long run. The comfort of a risk-reward ratio, right?
But he's opportunistic, it seems. A snacking scavenger.
Could eat, it says, like a basking tiger keeping a mouse trapped between his paws, letting it squirm and squeak as he slowly licks his lips. Not enough to fill its belly but enough to satisfy the gluttonous urge a predator has to eat. Sharpening its teeth on flimsy bones. Child’s play.
It's a fitting image, especially with the way he arches over you, looms; fingers looped around the thick of your arm, holding firm, but not—
Not as tight as he could.
It's a loose-fisted grasp. Lazy, almost. He knows you won't run—or, at the very least, knows you won't get far.
You peel your gaze away from his, dropping it to the curve of his shoulders—the width of them is just as dizzying as his height; broad, muscular. Pulling it further down the length of his arm, covered in a thick jacket. Black corduroy. Ashes stain the cuffs. A bulky watch juts out from his wrist. Gold. Glinting even in the grey-blue gloom of an overcast evenfall.
His muscles tense. Hand tightening around your arm, fingers digging hard. Rubbing muscle painfully against bone.
A warning, maybe. Stop looking—
But something else catches your eye. Blood red. The colour of meat. A fresh kill.
The back of his hand has a blooming rose. Petals spread out, unfurled. In the middle, a milky skull sits. Stencilled in boxy, yellow letters is ONE-FOUR-ONE—
You know what it means even as your mind whirs, gears turning, turning; plummeting into a tailspin, making excuses as it falls, dragging your heart down alongside it. An area code. Some special date. An inside joke.
But you've seen the marking around town before. Heard whispers about them from your brother, his friends. 141, they say, and then: mafia.
The real deal, he said, puffing around a joint his friend rolled. It's too tight. He scoffs, and rips it out from between his lips. Shitty roll, man, make another one—
Mob. Mafia. Gangsters. It seemed so extreme, Hollywood. Fiction, fantasy, all rolled into one. Tony Soprano. Ralph Cifaretto. Michael and Vito Corleone. Tony Montana. Larger-than-life men created on paper.
You think your brother thought so too. Child's play. Grown men selling weed to kids for two hundred an ounce. Buying themselves sleek, black cars—G Wagons, Escalades, Cullinans—on the Xanax they sell at clubs, parties. Cocaine. Heroin.
Nothing to worry about.
Then his friend went missing.
Sent out on a routine delivery to drop off cocaine to well-dressed men in suits outside of a local butcher shop. A normal, nondescript Tuesday.
But he wouldn't answer his phone. Texts were being delivered, read, but no chat bubble appeared. Nothing sent back. Calls went straight to voicemail. He wasn't at home. Wasn't at his mum's. No one saw him. Heard from him.
Your brother didn't call the police. Didn't report him as missing.
It's just not what they do, he said. You don't involve them. Ever.
The most shocking part of it was that no one saw anything. He just vanished. Disappeared—stock an’ all, your brother angrily spits—without a trace, picked up off the streets.
If it was the police, someone would have said something by now. They're hardly discreet. And a rival—
Well.
The biggest problem was that your brother was blindsided by his own small-time success. An accumulation of little wins bolstered his confidence. Overfed his ego. This fallout was tunnel vision. A refusal to see the bigger picture.
Or the storm clouds looming on the horizon.
You'd heard of the 141 in passing. Little quips, anecdotes from the passel of friends that congregated around your brother—often getting high on the couch and watching old cartoons; sharing a joint back and forth between gossip.
Through rheumy eyes, they'd talk about the real gangsters in town—much to the irritation of your brother—and swap tales of run-ins and feats they heard from a friend (of a friend, of a friend). Most of the guys were known already. Soap and Gaz are the biggest names that cropped up on the streets through reputation alone. Both fighters for a gym. MMA, mostly, but whispers of street fighting and extracurricular activities weren't uncommon.
Liked the thrill of it, they said. But the worst was a man simply known as the Ghost. An enforcer for the 141—a fucking butcher, more like, Liam cut in, jaundiced eyes widening—the guy who took care of problems.
“Can't be,” your brother scoffed, lifting off the couch to reach in his back pocket for his wallet. A small anthill of white powder poured into the glass table. “They don't get involved in our shit—”
And for the most part, you're sure that's true. Dealing to the same circle of people—outreach spread through word of mouth—seemed paltry in comparison to the scale of an operation that had a money laundering gym. But the problem was that your brother lacked common sense. His ego often got in the way of foresight. The shadow greed casts blocking out the bigger picture.
Like—
Territory is territory—regardless of what's being pushed.
You wish there was a modicum of surprise when his friend turned up. Barely recognizable. Sent right to the morgue as a John Doe.
Most would see the marks on the man's skin—the distinct lack of blood—as an indicator to abandon ship, find the boss, beg for forgiveness, and maybe even try to strike up a deal. But—
That picture is hidden under his anger. Greed. Selfishness.
He sends you instead.
You're somethin’ they ain't expectin’, he said. Won't mess with you.
Right.
He catches the realisation dripping down your brow—beads of sweat gathering at your hairline; anxiety, fear, churning your stomach—and hums. Cocks his head to the side.
“Was expectin’ ‘im t’show up, though—” he murmurs, hand tightening around your arm. The pressure, the sting, is eclipsed by the gnawing sense of dread biting viciously into you. “Told ‘im if I caught ‘im sellin’ on our streets again, there'd be trouble. Thought we ‘ad an agreement after ‘is friend. But—”
His eyes cut to yours. It feels like a knife to your guts, sinking into soft tissue. A pain you can't breathe around.
Won't mess with you, you think, and then viciously—sadly—he knew. Was warned by them and still sent you out. Let you take his place for whatever comeuppance they decided he deserved.
It should shock you. You almost wish it did. Desperately clinging to the threads of surprise that slip through your oily fingers, grasping onto the nothing but empty air. Numbed to the resignation that trickles in.
Of course he would leave you here to save himself. Letting you fend off whatever they threw at you alone. Leaving you trapped between a brick wall and a wall of a man.
The excuses are there. They pool on the tip of your tongue—it isn't me, don't do this, it's my (stupid, selfish) brother you want, not me—but you swallow them down and try not to wince at how quickly they dissipate when you do. It doesn't matter in the end because whatever you have to say won't negate the drugs in your backpack. The empty house you'll lead them to—your brother probably squirrelled away somewhere until this blows over. Half-hopeful you'd call him and say everything is fine, the deal went smoothly. You're on your way back. Or that the debt he racked up with them is settled by you.
It's half-hearted when it slips out again, caught between resignation and dread. A brittle whisper. A prayer—
“I can pay you. Whatever he owes, I can—”
He's already shaking his head.
“Too late for that, birdie. ‘sides, I don't want your money.”
He moves back, rocking on his heels to put a small measure of distance between your bodies. In that scant space, he drops his gaze, sweeping it over you. His eyes darken.
When he pivots them down, catching yours, you can't stop the shiver that crawls up your spine.
That calculative gleam is back.
“But I think we can work something else out.”
Something else turns out to be ushering you into the backseat of an old Ford pickup.
The door whines when he opens it. Rust flaking off, falling to the ground by your feet. Your mind reels. Spins comparisons to falling snow, dried blood.
He hauls you in with his hand wrapped around the nape of your neck, thick thigh sliding between your own to boost you up. The protest—a mindless, reactionary squeal at being manhandled—only makes him chuff. A brief flex of his fingers around the skin of your neck is the only warning he gives before it pulls away, and wraps tight around your waist. His thigh flexes, muscle drawing taut as he shifts his foot up to the running board, lifting your feet off the ground and seating you fully on his leg like a child.
(In his hands, you feel like one, too.)
The motion makes you slip, back glueing along his broad chest with a shallow thump. You feel the rumble of his laugh trembling up your spine before you hear it.
“Careful,” he drawls, oiled with amusement. “Might slip.”
Anything you could say in response is choked back when he bumps the corded steel of his thigh into the seam of your legs, pushing tight to your clothed cunt. His intention is unmistakable this time. Unignorable. And with the rasp of filtered, balmy air against your crown; the pull of a groan when you rock back into his groin, the noise still slicked with mirth, you feel a knot of dread spool tight in your belly.
Something else is dragged back to the forefront, coiling like wisps of smoke around you.
And you knew. It's shocking, you think, but not necessarily a surprise. To call it a dichotomy would be lying to yourself, and so, you settle against it. This notion that what he wants—wanted—is flesh. Not money. Not retribution.
Not to talk things out like you'd hoped he’d try (grabbing onto the idealistic thread, holding it tight to your chest); bringing you in and forcing you to convince your—stupid selfish greedy—older brother that quitting was the only option. Dangling you—baby sister—over his head in an appeal to his emotions. Familial bonds. Love.
That thread is cut. Snipped.
Probably severed when they first came to him with an offer. No strikes against him and yet—
The idea of using you to make him bend was expunged from the drawing board. It's not even a plan b, or c, or z.
And—
You knew. Have known. Maybe that's why it's so easy to swallow around the panic when it lances through your chest, climbs up your throat. You can think and feel and breathe around this dagger in your back like it was there the whole time and you've only just noticed it now.
Nothing but a small, whispered oh in the roiling polyphony of your emotions.
It sits there as he manuevers you into the passenger seat of his truck, your head spinning around the indescribable sensation of being woefully cognisant despite the paralysing fugue pressing against the bubble of stark awareness that keeps it at bay. It manifests itself as a numbed sort of shock. Or more accurately—
Indifference.
Defeat.
His hand brushes your cheek, the snag of dry leather against humid skin tugs uncomfortably at your flesh, stinging as they dance down to your jaw, the delicate line of your vulnerable throat, skimming over the curve of your breast—
And it's too much. Too present. Too real.
Autopilot. Dissociation. Derealisation. All of these concepts slip past the bubble of hypervigilance, skidding the surface like a pebble thrown over a lake. Out of reach as he unashamedly gropes you, barely making an effort to mask his actions as just buckling you in.
You pretend, though. Curl your fists around the sides of the seat, fingers digging into the worn foam. Head lulling back on the headrest. Eyes fixed out the window as he walked around the front, head and shoulders still visible in the windshield despite the height of the truck. It makes your heart leap, stuttering in your chest as the absurdity of his size is brought back into focus. Too big, you think. Grossly so.
There's a moment when you think about running. Toying with the idea of sliding your hand over the lock, pulling the door open when he's too busy on his side to notice. It'll give you an advantage—a head start. Enough time to slink through the dense forest of concrete buildings lining the industrial zone, and into somewhere safe. Help, a behemoth is chasing me—
But the door clicks. Swings open with a squeal of rusted metal just as your fingers twitch toward the handle. Hope evaporates with each lurch of the cab as he climbs inside, metal creaking under his weight when he settles in the seat.
From the corner of your eye, you can see his head tip. Chin angling toward you. Staring. Assessing.
When he speaks, you feel the words like cold fingers dancing maliciously down your spine.
“‘pected you t’run.”
It's said idly enough. Nonchalant. Tone even, if a little cruel, and you wonder if this is some test. One that you passed—and failed—in equal measure.
He doesn't look away. It takes less effort than you wish it did to peel your lips apart, to breathe in the stale, mulch scent of the cab—something overgrown, rotting, and damp—and mumble:
Where would I go?
It seems to amuse him. He hums around a mouthful of mockery before turning away, pawing at the ignition. Gloved hand curling over the wheel.
“Smart girl.”
You don't feel very smart. In fact, you feel very small. Stupid. Maybe you should have taken a stab at it—running. Tried, at least, to save your own life before the jaws of the beast closed over you like an iron bear trap around your ankle. Fought like hell. Clawed and kicked and screamed.
When most kids read the back of a cereal box, you learned about secondary locations. You know better than this.
But the truck sputters to life in a belly-deep rumble, hacking up soot into the air as he pulls the lever into DRIVE. The fight inside of you—however ephemeral it might have been—dies inside the smoke spilling out of his exhaust. Gone so quickly that you begin to wonder if it was even there at all—
Must be, you think, eyes listing outward. Keen. Mapping the twists and turns—a futile effort in the end: he doesn't bother hiding where he's taking you, and you've been down these old, grim streets more times than you can count.
It doesn't surprise you much when he turns down the street leading to the butcher shop. An old relic that still carries the marks of a booming farming town before it fell victim to industrialisation. Concrete skyscrapers in place of lush cornfields. Warehouses over old barns, ranches. Cattle, meat, produce—it all used to be a mainstay here but now hides under layers of steel.
The dark windows of the small shop gleam with hazy smears of neon blue, red, when you pull up, catching on the array of rowdy bars across the street. All clubs that belong to the 141. A playground of drugs, sex. More money than you'd ever see in your lifetime.
It's an uncanny juxtaposition to the quiet, assuming street right across from it. Barber, butcher, accountant firm, antique store. All dark inside and bathed in the smeared stream of glimmering neon as lights flash in the fading glow of twilight.
He pulls up to the curb in front of the shop. A bold move if the streets weren't so empty. Lifeless. The clubs won't be open for four more hours. Everything else follows the same nine to five as the rest of the world. The shops closed an hour ago, and everyone in town seems to know not to linger here after dark.
The air seems to stagnate in your lungs when he cuts the ignition. Slips the key into his pocket.
“Don't get any funny ideas in tha' pretty little ‘ead o’yours.”
“Funny ideas,” you echo, toneless. Flat. It rolls out with your exhale. Words that might have been smarter to swallow down. “Like following a stranger to a butcher shop?”
“Lippy little thing, ain't you?” He scoffs. The truck creaks when he shifts. “Ain't go’ no one t’blame but yourself. Told you what would ‘appen if you kept sellin’ in our territory. You should ‘ave known better.”
“That was my brother.” The words slip out before you can stop them. “Not me—”
“‘ow am I suppose t’know that? You were sellin’ where I told ‘im not to—” he has the gall to shrug. Spit these careless words at you like it wasn't life or death. “That's all there is to it, birdie.”
“That's not fair—”
The truck groans under his weight, shaking from side to side as he leans over to push his door open before turning back to you, rolling his eyes.
“Life ain't very fair, is it?”
The acerbic words are flicked out from between his teeth; an apathetic, droning curl clinging to each syllable. He doesn't care. Won't. What happens to you next is your choice, and yours alone.
And he's just doing his job—
“When I get out of ‘ere, you ain't gonna do anythin’ funny—”
His hand lashes out. Gloved fingers close over the thick of your throat in a blink. Fear lags by a beat, giving him enough time to sink his fingers over your neck, and when it catches up—heart rabbiting in your chest, thudding in your ears; roaring as your pulse thunders beneath the press of his thumb—he’s already got you in his hold. The width forces your chin to lift, stretching up to accommodate the curl of his hand around you.
Trapped like a rabbit. Cattle to the slaughter.
He tilts his head down, keeping his eyes on yours as he forces your crown into the headrest, chin lifted up. It's uncomfortable. The curve of your neck cuts off your airways. Constricts your breathing to shallow gasps. An ache grows in your nape.
The swell of panic, fear, in your eyes makes him hum. But there's nothing echoing back. An absence of light in the deep, placid pits. It looks like still water. A stagnant lake.
It's unnerving how dispassionately expressive his eyes are. Wild, wild. Vats of ink. Pools of obsidian. Ringed in red-lined ivory. Long, ashen lashes dusting over the smears of charcoal under his eyes. Sleepless nights, maybe. Fatigue. The corners are tattooed with coal, leaving behind a thumbprint in the crease.
But empty. Barren. No light.
Like black holes. Eating everything around it. Devouring all that gets too close, but giving nothing in return except a bottomless crater in the bruised-plum nebulous of space around it.
You're not sure you like it. You can't look away.
But in staring back so hard (getting pulled in deeper and deeper), you catch the twitch in his left eye. A shallow spasm. It throws off the symmetry when he blinks, one eye a sliver of a second behind. Desynchronized in a way that seems so—
Unlike him.
Disjointed.
You blink in response. Perfectly synchronous.
His lid twitches again. Just once. Brief. Pale, pink eyelids drop, unveiling a nebula of indigo veins on the smooth, thin surface as they roll down to half-mast over his eyes, now narrowed slightly in contemplation. Thought.
Whatever is happening in his head can't be good. It causes a ripple over the lake. Little rings rebound outwards.
He looks away first. A quick slide of his eyes to the corners, glancing out of the passenger side window. Whatever catches his attention is unknown to you. The anchor on his hand around your throat keeps you still. Immovable.
(Every instinct in your body compels you not to look away from him because nothing outside could ever be scarier, more dangerous, than him.)
A second later, he breathes in through his nose. The fabric of his mask is pulled into his nostrils from the force, forming little black holes under the crooked arch.
You hadn't really given much thought to his appearance outside of big, massive. But there's a strange asymmetry to the slopes and valleys beneath the balaclava. Trying to map his face, fill in the blanks with just black cloth and vague, lopsided outlines, is impossible. There are too many gaps. Too many missing pieces. You can only wonder, then, what he looks like under it.
Monstrous, you hope.
It's just a coincidence that he looks at you the moment the thought passes, but you flinch like a naughty child getting caught doing something you shouldn't when the heavy, dour weight of his impenetrable stare is levelled at you once more. Your heart stutters. It's loud in your ears. In the truck.
You wonder if he can hear it just as loudly as you do—
Another blink, and his gaze flickers down, settling on the gap between your lips, watching the little tremble they make with each shallow hiccup of air you greedily suck in. His head tilts to the side, eyes never leaving your mouth even as he leans down, masked lips brushing over the beading sweat gathering on your hairline.
It's a brief touch. A taste. You tremble when he pulls back, fingers tightening around your flesh.
His eyes are lavascapes.
“Are you, birdie?”
You almost forget what he's asking. The conversation hidden between the scant beats it took for him to measure your worth with the blistering intensity of his stare, and the tumult of your feelings still looping around each other in your belly. Knotting up tight into a ball. There's fear, of course there is.
But the rest—
You'd rather not think about.
The grip on your throat eases just enough for you to shake your head no to whatever he is asking. Doing anything funny, you think, scrambling at the tangle of memories flipping past, trying to connect the pieces to a puzzle you've already forgotten.
It must be the right response. Or maybe it's another question like before, a test where there’s no right answer.
Run, stay.
Smart and stupid.
But it seems to appease him—marginally. His eyes crease. Tightening. His other hand folds over your throat, sliding until his palms kiss the sides of your neck in a near-perfect symmetry.
Something frissons across the blank, placid lake of his expression. Another ripple. A shudder. He leans in for a moment, nose touching the apple of your cheek, and when he breathes in, it’s sharp, reedy. Cold air ghosts over your skin. Long, pale lashes flutter when you swallow.
He hums quietly under his breath before peeling back. The flatness to his gaze is back; a cold, impenetrable distance widening like a chasm as he uncoils around you. You almost fall for this—this indifference. An icy nonchalance. But you've been eating the minuscule quirks of him just as ravenously as he's been devouring yours.
There is something there. A fracture, maybe. A splinter.
But what leaks through from the other side isn't anything close to warmth. It's—
Hunger.
The shift in your throat draws his molten gaze to your neck, still wrapped tight in his firm grip. Your reflection blooms in the vat of black; eyes wide, all white. Pupils narrowed to a pinprick. Mouth slack, corners tugging downward from the pressure of his hand. The tilt of your head. His thumbs press under your chin, pushing you back further until it feels like your neck might break—
He stops. Shifts. You puff out a shallow breath.
What looks back at you is unremarkable in the murk. A sliver of fear. A slip of unease.
Eye of the beholder, you think when his breath chuffs out shallowly through the mask. When that hunger is ground down to a raw, esoteric fissure hairlining the black of his eyes. The widening expanse of his pupil.
You wonder if it's your fear that itches under his skin, dredging up something predatory in his hindbrain. The urge to chase. To bite.
But the nearly indiscernible flicker of his gaze has you brushing that idea aside when it snags on the expanse of his hand coiled around your throat. Easily swallowing it whole with just his palms.
You're not a small thing, but the indomitable size of him makes you feel insignificant.
You think he feels it, too.
His fingers flex over your nape, stretching. Pulling. It pushes the flat of his palm into your throat, ridges crushed against your trachea. But you can still breathe. It's shallow. Hoarse. A touch painful. Dizzying in a way that makes you feel like you're on a rollercoaster. A teacup ride that just spins and spins and spins—
The gap closes. A sliver of air snakes down your throat. Muscles flexing, shifting. Struggling to swallow around the pinch of his hand. A harrowing task when you feel the gloved fingers link to the first, then the second knuckle, tying together in a too-tight, impossible, noose around your neck. Thumbs overlap. Fingers slide into place. It forms a chain of his hands with no gaps between them. Not a single sliver of skin shows from under the leather of his gloves.
He makes a sound when they meet—a nasal groan in the back of his throat, mouth clenched shut so the air has no choice but to tear through his nose. It's raw. Fractured. The devastating moan of a tiger nuzzling at its meal.
Your vision blurs. A black fog presses into the edges, seeping over the arch of your peripherals. Dripping down slowly over the hazy smear of the man. The way the ochre sun peeks over the angular roof of the accountant's office illuminates his back and casts swaths of shadows over his front. Drenching him in murk.
Despite the flickering darkness shuttering over your sight, you don't blink. Even as the tears prickle at your eyes, they stay open. Fixed on him. Black holes, you think, watching as the fever marbling those obsidian pools recedes. Cools.
He makes that noise again. Softer this time. A purr from deep in his chest. A breath. And then he peels back. His hands go slack. His shoulders slumping back into the lax, easy spread from before as you gasp hard, nearly choking on the flood of air that roars down your throat.
Your cheeks feel hot for a moment, and then cold. Icy. You don't have to touch them to know that you're crying. That the deluge clinging to your lashline spilt over, dripping messily to the collar of your shirt.
The placid lake is back. In the stillness, you heave. Mouth hanging open, chin quivering. His thumb lifts, slides over the curve of your chin. You don't feel it. Numbed, maybe, by the brief kiss of hypoxia. But you see it. Watch as he slides it up to the jut of your lower lip, the black, angular tip tickling over your skin. He follows the seam between skin and lip, tracing it to the corner of your mouth. It's slick. Drool pools in the crease, dribbles over the top of his finger. His eyes drop when he mops it up, catching it on the pad.
He makes another noise. An arid rasp bubbling between the soft tissue behind the roof of his mouth and the back of his tongue. It's ugly. The shiver you try to fight back slinks through.
His hand peels away from your neck, movements lax. Slow. The unwinding gait of an idling tiger in no real rush, no hurry, because there's nothing in the frigid Arctic that can touch him.
You watch him with flared eyes as he brings his thumb to his clothed mouth, and rubs your spit into the fabric of his mask.
His eyes don't break away from yours once.
Your spit doesn't stand out against the black of balaclava, but the idea of it burns through you. Throwing you headfirst into a dazed stupor. Dizzy. Confused.
Satisfied with whatever it was supposed to mean, he clambers out of the truck before coming around to your side. Distantly, you're sure this is what he meant by funny ideas when he passes the headlight, head straight and eyes gliding around the empty street. An opening to run. You know where you are. It would be easy to flee. Hide in the construction zone just ahead, tucking yourself into the tightest corner you can find until help arrives.
Help, though.
Officer, please. I got caught selling meth in the mob's territory and now they're going to skin me alive. Please hurry—
Right.
They'd rather help bury your body than get in the way of the mafia. Gangland violence isn't their concern unless it tumbles out into the street. Fat wallets keep even the most compassionate person quiet. Willing to turn a blind eye.
You'd be thrown in a cell. Or dropped off at their doorstep.
Either way—
You won't be coming back alive.
There's nothing to steel, harden, when he pulls the door open, your nerves long since ground down to fine powder. Nothing to fight against, either. He hauls you out of the truck, hands firm on your skin. Bursting blood vessels easily between his fingers. Barely any effort at all to crack your bones.
The moment in the car seems miles away when he pulls you in front of him, hand curling over your nape. Any flicker of humanity rendered out when he pinches you tight and shoves you forward. Dragging you back to the butcher shop by the scruff of your neck, leading you down a narrow set of stairs to the basement where pale white carcasses hang from hooks on the ceiling. He laughs when you tense. When your heels dig into the brown-stained linoleum.
Ain't gonna hang you, he mocks, fingers dipping punishingly into the sides of your neck. “Not yet, anyway—”
It brings little comfort when he drags you to a room in the back, kicking open the door with the toe of his boot before pushing you inside with a nudge against your nape.
It's dark. Walls covered in stains; mould, mildew. Something you hope is just rust. A single mattress is shoved into the corner; sheets stained with sweat and grime. Tinged a pale brown. Two pillows sit at the top, lopsided and matted with use. Threadbare. A twisted, black heap of fabric sits at the bottom. Wisps of cotton poke out from the cigarette burns.
A pair of muddy, black boots sit against the wall at the end of the bed. A basket of clothes—jeans, black shirts, black sweaters—is piled on the wall across from the door.
The room smells of stale sweat and old cigarettes.
You don't want to be here. The thought is abrupt. Immediate. Unease prickles along your nape, warmed and damp under his gloved palm. Between the look of the room—the floors stained the same suspicious brown, the rumpled bed in a corner—and the smell, you know this is not a place you want to stay. To be trapped inside with a man cut from Everest; whose hands are more dangerous than the sharp end of a knife.
He must feel the tension brimming beneath your skin; the spark of adrenaline surging through your veins. The clamp of his hand on your nape digs in tighter. Holding firm.
A breath tumbles out, thickening with mockery. “Like I said,” he leans down, pressing the mountainous width of his chest into your spine. The accentuation in your size difference, how big he is in comparison to you, makes you feel like prey. Small. Brittle, thin. He eats you whole. Spares nothing for later. “I wouldn't do that if I were you.”
Another nudge and you're pushed further into the room. He leans away, foot shoving back on the door until it snaps shut with a noise that cuts through the gossamer that spun around you, bifurcating reality from dream. The haze is wafted away, and all that remains is a barren room with a lumpy mattress, the smeared stain of rotten blood coagulating on the floor, and his body boxing you in. No escape.
The rumble of his chest shakes loose the cobwebs spooling across your thoughts. A brush of humid air ghosts along the line of your jaw, dampening the skin below your ear as he leans in close, too close, and purrs:
“Go on now. Strip for me.”
Each scrap of clothing you slowly roll off of your body is exchanged for a slip of information about him—who he is (Simon Riley, the name rumbled through the split between his teeth; a low, brassy purr as his eyes gleam in the dark, drilling into the expanse of skin unveiled to him)—and what he wants—
Nothing, he tells you, lifting one massive shoulder up in a half-hearted shrug. Jus’ what's owed to me, pet. For stickin’ my neck out f’you.
You don't think he did. Not really. But you're harshly reminded of the unsubtle threat. The gun balanced on his massive thigh. So wide, so big, it seems to make it look smaller in comparison. Tiny. A toy.
Child's play.
It's made worse, somehow, as he lounges. Sprawls out on the bed, legs spread, pulling taut on the jeans that stretch around the thickness of his upper thigh, bunching around his calves in a half-tuck inside his black boots. Arms flexing. Folded over his broad chest. He rolled the sleeves of his black shirt up to his elbow, showing off an impressive tapestry of harsh, faded black ink. Crisscrossing lines. All asymmetrical. Guns, barbed wire. A bullet with a wide, toothy grin—
All of it knits together; woven into a tangled mass of muscle. Of man, hidden under scar tissue. Rope burns on his wrists cut so deep that the skin is permanently dented in. More cigarette burns hidden inside the mess of ink. Jagged lines—from a knife, maybe; bullet wounds.
His skin tells stories of a terrible life. Ink spills over the worst of them, but they're visible under the fading charcoal. A series of burns—acid, fire, chemical—and raw, torn skin. He looks like he's been mauled. Pressed into the cold metal of a wood chipper until chunks of flesh were taken out. But even with these deep gouges, craters of missing tissue, he's big. Bulky. Soft—like a tiger. Predatory muscle tucked away under a thick layer of fatty tissue.
The pillowed pouch of his belly, the softness around his biceps—
It belies the danger underneath. The steel.
But as scary as it is, it has nothing on his eyes.
Glinting in the dim room. Dark pools of obsidian that follow each movement with an almost clinical keenness. Sharpened to a razor's edge.
They might be pretty, you think, if they weren't so intense. So liquid. His eyes gleam like wet ink, languidly rolling along his lashline as you clumsily shed your jacket, your blouse. Shoes, socks. Pants. Until you're in nothing but your panties.
Swallowing around the influx of panic that flutters like little birds beating their wings against the soft walls of your throat, you slip your fingers into the hem, now or never, and—
And you hesitate.
There's a difference between undressing willingly and doing so to save your life. It should spurn you on—survive, survive, survive—but you freeze at the apex. The summit is within reach.
You know what happens when you climb it. Cross over the invisible threshold.
What you've been trying to ignore this whole time, ever since he shoved you into the room with a huff, taking his perch on the edge of the bed, legs spread wide, but in such a terrifying state of vulnerability, nearly nude, you can't any longer. Can't avert your gaze to the stained linoleum in a thinly veiled effort to keep from glancing at the thickening bulge lying prone against his thigh.
His—
Well.
You knew what he wanted when he grabbed your face in his hand, squeezing your cheeks until your lips pursed, puckered for him to run his finger along the inseam. Prying your teeth apart. Rubbing his finger over your tongue, eyes dark—full; black holes pulling, tugging you in, dragging you closer to the event horizon framed in a ring of arsenic—and locked on to the sight of his gloved knuckle disappearing into your mouth. Wanting. Hungry.
You knew. And now—
Committing to it is legions above what you’re mentally prepared for. Nausea brims, churns your stomach. Unease curdling inside of you like rotten milk.
You don’t want this. But you don’t have a choice, do you?
That notion, the idea, prickles along your nape, raising the fine, peach-fuzz there until it stands on end.
You freeze. Movements still as every muscle in your body tenses. Coils. You can't do it. Can't—
A huff is dragged out of his chest as he sits up, knocking the gun carelessly to the mattress. His eyes daggering, sharpening into needlepoints, as he stares at you.
“Gotta do everything f’myself, do I?”
A grunt and he’s up. Pulling himself to his feet with nothing but the flex of his abdominal muscles.
There's no reprieve. Not a moment graced to gather your bearings before he crosses the distance between you. Once a comfort, a chasm, now conquered in a single stride.
The tips of his gloves are cold when they brush over your skin, sliding down the slope of your waist until they meet the hem of your panties. The last piece of modesty you have—
But he doesn't wait.
You're aware that this isn't a non-consensual thriller where the lead looms over the hapless love interest, eyes blazing with passion and need. That each interaction is drenched in a thick, palpable tension tethering the two together. Urges coalescing. Threads pulling taut, magnetic, dragging them closer and closer to the brink until they tumble over.
This is reality. And he doesn't stare into your eyes with an all-consuming desire as he slowly removes that last scrap of fabric keeping him from devouring you. No.
His skin-warmed fingers push under the elastic band with a rough shove, curling into the fabric until it tightens across your pelvis and thighs, and then he huffs, annoyed, and pulls. Pulls—
Until something gives.
The lace yields to the tension in his flexing bicep, and scrapes over your skin as it rips apart in his hand, threads snapping. Popping.
It hurts. Stings. You hiss, but the noise is ignored when he peels the ruined scrap of fabric from your legs, shoving it into his back pocket with a grunt of satisfaction. He looks back to you, eyes rippling like the dark, ink-black surface of a lake during nightfall, and coos, mocking and mean—
“Not s’hard, was it?”
He leans closer to you, a hand skimming up your spine before his fingers curl around your nape, keeping you still for just a breath before he pulls you into him with too much force. Your hands lift, palms slapping against his thick stomach when the movement nearly topples you over and threatens to break your nose on his chest.
“Makin’ me do all the work when y’supposed t’be payin’ me back? Ain't very nice o’you, is it?”
He touches you like he's taking stock of your worth. Grabbing a heavy, rough palmful of your beast in his hand, squeezing. Testing the weight, the softness, how supple you were between his fingers like he might with a piece of fruit. Meat. Prodding into the flesh, feeling the ripeness there. Gauging whether or not it was a piece he wanted to keep.
It's demeaning. Humiliating. He treats you like cattle; presses into the elasticity of your muscle, examines every inch of your skin for blemishes. Scouring for imperfections. There's no softness in the way he grabs handfuls of your body—squeezing your breasts, pushing them together, rolling your nipples between his thumb and forefinger; pinching your belly, your sides, your waist; curling his fingers under your thigh, lifting it until it hitches over his waist, cunt exposed and pressed tight to the bulge trapped in his jeans. Your ass is handled rougher than the rest. Each cheek sitting in a hand, squeezed and punched and spread embarrassingly wide.
He ruts into you as he does it. Pushes the thick, fat length of him into your belly, rolling his hips against you with a heavy, ragged puff of air.
He feels big.
Everywhere, of course—it’s not so much his height, but the absurd width of him that really digs into your hindbrain, crossing all those intricate wires until they're tangled up, knotted together. Seeing his thigh, the same scale as a tree truck, slotting between yours—a mere branch by comparison—makes your belly flop. Turn over itself.
The muddled wires spark. Heat pools between your hips.
He could crush your head between them like a bear pushing its paw down on a watermelon.
It's fear and heat.
The two work in tandem, forming a seamless cohesion, as they flit down your spine, brimming up the urge to sink to your knees, the need to roll over and show your belly. A paradoxical desire to both run and be chased.
You're not sure if he's tendering your meat to eat later or if this is the usual type of foreplay he engages in, but once satisfied you're softened up enough for him, he shoves his fingers between your thighs with an abrasive hum that reverberates through his belly, tickling your palms.
“Tired o’waitin’,” is what he says when your head jerks up, eyes widening in shock. Terror. Horror. “Don't look so surprised,” he huffs, dryly. Voice a rough scrap over your cheek. “What'd y’think was gonna ‘appen?”
“Wait—” but he doesn't.
His fingers twist, pushing through your folds to graze your clit. It isn't gentle. It's sudden, quick. You gasp more from shock than pleasure; the rough slide of leather feels strange on your flesh, and your head is too muddled to separate fear from bliss.
Despite that, your body heats. Reacts to his touch. Your lower lip wobbles. You bite back another sound that crawls up your throat when his knuckle catches on your clit again, the pressure just shy of too much.
The burn, the fever, melts the unease. Shallow gasps spill out. Your cunt clenches, fluttering around nothing—throbbing, growing sticky, slick; achy and empty—when he starts to glide his digit between your folds. Little sawing motions drag each groove and stitch of his gloves over your pebbled clit, each thrust of his hand between your thighs making heat pool between your hips. It's done so clinically, so detached, like his hand rubbing over your leaking pussy was nothing to him. An action to get done, a task to complete.
It's the shame of that, the embarrassment, that makes you want to weep. Your fingers dig into his chest, nails pulling uncomfortably on the pleated bumps of his jacket as you grip the fabric right between your fists, clinging to him like a newborn fawn—all wet-nosed, teary-eyed; knobbly knees threatening to buck.
“S–stop—” you mewl when the monotonous rhythm melts into something harder, more intense. Heart thudding in your chest, heat burning you up as he turns his hand, palm up, between your sticky, shaking thighs. He rubs his hand back and forth, curling his middle finger up when he passes your hole, tip pushing against your leaking rim.
The friction aches. The stretch stings. The leather feels strange, foreign when it pries your folds apart and dips inside of you.
You don't like it. It's too much—
He makes a sound—a tut—when you pull away from him, standing on the tips of your toes until the blunt curve of his finger slides out of you. He sucks his teeth in a mockery of disappointment before digging his fingers, hard, into the sides of your neck. A warning. You whine. Whimper—
It goes unheeded. And when you press your thighs tight together, shivering at the slip-slide of your skin rubbing against each other, he growls. The noise is inhuman. Animalistic.
Your act of deviance comes with a swift, bruising punishment.
His fingers tighten on your neck once again. A warning squeeze as he reaches down with his other hand, grabbing your hip. It keeps you still, immobile, as he bullies his boot between your feet, kicking your legs apart. You're not expecting it. When you stumble, he huffs in amusement. Can't hold yourself up? Want me that bad, huh? Needy fuckin' thing, ain't you?
You don't get a chance to respond. His palm splays wide over your hip, leather creaking as he flexes, stretching his fingers out, tapping some soundless beat out against your skin. Touching you like he's owed the privilege. The right. And in many ways—
Go’ a problem, you an’ I
—he does.
Brute strength, and an unmatched, almost laughable, dearth in your physicality ensures that he has the upper hand—even without the gun he left on the mattress; darker and flat, a full matte compared to what you were expecting.
(They're always so shiny in movies, aren't they?)
The threat of it—dull as it might be—roots you to the spot as he slides his hand down, thumb brushing over your belly button, dipping in; pressing until your stomach starts to ache—
It peels away when the whine wells up, sloping down, down. Teases your mound with the tips of his fingers, gentle swipes along the sensitive seam of your belly and pelvis, the sensation is an odd tickle that pulls at your navel, pulses at the apex of your thighs. You mewl—a slow, soft thing that barely makes it out from between your teeth—and he lets his hand drop. Palm flat against the soft flesh of your mons, fingers reaching, spreading, until they curl over your folds. Index and ring finger tucked tight into the hollow bend of your pelvis and thigh. The tip of his middle rubs gentle strokes over the skin above your clit. It's a whisper of pleasure. The idea of a touch.
Mindless, your hips flit, following his hand—
“Needy.”
It cows you. Douses you in icy shame. There's barely any mockery in his even, observant tone, but you feel it unfurl over your shoulders all the same.
He doesn't give you a moment to think, to let the ripples of humiliation take over, forcing you to pull away, hide. His fingers trail over your hood, the pebble of your clit. The sensation, the cool undertone in the leather of his glove, is unlike anything you'd felt before. The thick stitches in the fabric catch on your flesh, nerve endings flaring in pleasure. Heat blooms in your belly.
It feels good.
You gasp, head tipping back. His hand winds around your waist when your knees buckle, catching you with a rasping huff—
“Feelin’ good, ain't you?” He pulls you tight to his chest, finger rubbing circles around your throbbing clit. Your cunt clenches, empty, and you whine, needing something more. Something to fill the ache inside of you—
His finger slips. Slides easily between your folds, parting your lips around the thick of him until he reaches your drenched hole. The sounds it makes when he taps his finger against your fluttering core makes your toes curl. Has heat blistering over your cheeks, down the slope of your neck.
It makes him groan. The low growl makes you throb, clenching in needy little pulls, pulses, as his finger dips into the slick dripping out of you.
“Suckin’ me in,” he grunts, and pushes his finger inside, thrusting up to the last knuckle. Palm tapping against your folds as his index and ring finger close to give him more room to sink deeper into you. The messy, slick squelch is loud, rolling over the mewling gasps that tumble from your lips.
Heat floods your belly at the belly-deep groans he lets out when you squeeze around him.
“Stranglin’ my fuckin’ finger, birdie—”
He leans down, knocking his forehead against the side of your face. It's more intimate than you were expecting. Jarring. The proximity plays a twisted game inside your head—the urge to run, to roll over coalescing into a paralyzing tailspin. Rooting you to the ground when the warm, damp knit of his mask grazes your cheek.
The intimacy of his head on yours is eclipsed when you can feel the shape of his mouth through the fabric.
It's softer than you expected. A plush, fleshy give when he presses his lips against your skin. And—
A gap.
On the side of his mouth, there's a gouge. A pockmark. You feel the gap, the absence, of his flesh when he rolls it over your cheekbone. You try to read the asymmetry of his face—mapping all of these misshapen parts; his mauled lips, the crooked nose that digs into your skin and leaves behind a tacky smear of condescension when he breathes out through his nostrils in a heavy puff of air—and convince yourself that you're doing it so you can bring these patchwork pieces to the police later.
Survival, you think, your head tilting back as he noses down your neck, tickling along your skin.
(And when your cunt flutters around the rough, thick drag of his finger petting along your walls, you add: a bodily reaction. That's all it is.)
He takes another lungful of your scent before he rocks back on his heels, pulling away from you. Straightening up. Looming above you once more.
“Now—”
He pulls his finger out of you slowly and you try not to whimper at the empty feeling that brims up. The way your hips rock toward him, seeking and eager. Wanting.
Needy, just like he said.
Just a bodily reaction—
He holds his hand up to the dim light flickering over his head, fingers spreading apart as he takes in the glossy shine of his middle finger.
The gleam of it makes your ears feel hot. Shame pools in your belly as he makes another noise—a groan, deep and low, in the back of his throat. Eyes darkening as his pupils bloom, eclipsing his irises in an endless pool of black. They flicker toward you, listing half-mast in a way to leonine, so predatory, that it shudders through your bones. Run, run—
His hand flexes around your waist when you twitch. A warning. A threat. You tremble when he leans in, masked lips brushing over your cheek once more. Breath ghosting through the fabric, tickling the inside of your ear.
He smells of war. Of fire and brimstone. Napalm and nitroglycerine. You want to close your eyes, look away, but you can't. His proximity alone roots you to the spot. Turns you into a prey animal, frozen on instinct alone as he prowls around, creeping closer. Maw stretching wide, drooling dripping off razor-sharp canines—
“Let's see if y’worth all the trouble.”
—and he bites.
Knocks his palm into your sternum, roughly shoving you down on the mattress.
His hands fall to the button of his jeans. “Ready?” He asks, but doesn't seem to care about your answer. Opts, instead, to fall to his knee beside you. It pulls on his zipper, tugs it all the way down with a sharp, metallic sound that cuts through the stagnant air as each ring of teeth is pried apart.
You can't help it. You look. Dragged there by something primal, magnetic—the morbid curiosity to see the monster for yourself as it tries to take a bite.
And almost immediately, you wish you hadn't.
The spread of pale skin, dark curls jutting out from the split of his jeans, makes everything feel more real, and moving fast. Whiplash quick. Happening in a blink:
The shift of fabric as he pulls the mask up over his lips, letting rest on the crooked bridge of his nose. A flash of his mouth, mangled. Mauled. Full of ugly, pale pink scars. A gap where tissue once knit his upper lip together. The bite of crooked teeth as he brings the sticky, wet tip of his glove to his mouth, sinking in. Pulling. Tugging. The roll of skin—a rose, a gun, a skull—all encased in barbed wire; thick rivers of blue-green veins.
Another pull and it's free. Dangling between his teeth for a moment as he reaches up and shoves the jacket off his shoulders. Rolling and thick. Wide. A broad chest. Soft belly. There's an inch of flesh around the expanse of him—biceps, thighs, calves, chest, stomach, shoulders—but it's a buffer for the corded, streamlined muscle beneath. A layer of fatty tissue.
Like a tiger, hiding its dizzying musculature beneath a thick, loose pelt.
When he moves, it flexes. His shoulders roll; muscles bunching together, pulling taut under soft skin. The jacket slides off. Falls to the ground behind the mattress. Forgotten, discarded. The glove is next to go. Dropping from between his teeth, landing just beside your ankle with a muted thud.
He follows after it. Ink spilling over his lashline as his eyes drop, staring at the roll of his skin tucked on the outside of your thigh. Trailing up to your knee. Your hip. The split of your cunt beneath your other leg; knee tucked to your chest.
A flash of something, a flicker, is the only warning you get before the back of his hand is nudging the glove off of your skin, replacing it with the rough, calloused grip of his palm.
You jerk at his touch, flinching back—
He's intimidating above you like this. Leaning back on his haunches but still as tall as you are standing up. The sheer absurdity of his height—his width—is dizzying. Gives you vertigo when you look up.
His throat shifts when you move. A swallow. Coarse stubble grows down the column of his neck, dusting over his lower jaw, chin. The rest is swallowed by the balaclava bunched around his crooked nose.
He's not—
He's not handsome.
A smattering of crisscrossing scars, burns, skin pocked and gouged out in deep pockets along his flesh—the slide of a knife carving away at him, you think; digging down to his marrow—all take away from any sense of modern attractiveness you might feel for him with his broad, jagged nose and full lips.
But there's something rugged about him. Untamed. Wild. Appealing in a dangerous way.
You don't know if you would have let this happen under different circumstances. If this minacious beauty of his would have worked on you enough to want it outside of this awful, almost unfathomable trade.
He's too big. Wouldn't even fit inside of your house—
The graze of his thumb on your angle knocks the thought loose, and you're dragged back to the heat of his hand. Rough and coarse; palms slightly damp from the glove. It tugs on your flesh as he draws it up, a rubbery sort of pain as it catches on the soft, dry skin of your ankle. Your shin.
He follows behind a second later, pulling himself into the mattress with a huff, knees shuffling forward as he crawls over you. The jostling rocks your body. Makes your breasts shake as he lumbers on the bed, hand still sliding up, up, until his fingers curl over the bend of your knee.
The bed dips under his weight. Your body sagging, rolling into the divot beneath his knees. Tucked under him. Loomed over. He stares down at you through the cutout of his mask, eyes liquid in the gloam. Pools of melting, dripping obsidian. Black holes. Event horizon—
You look away before it drags you in. Submissive. Softened under the harsh burn of his flat, wide stare. He chuffs when your nose brushes over the thin skin of his wrist, mouth sliding over the thick, pulsing vein stretching down from his inner arm and curling into the bend of his hand. Your lips purse, and he makes that noise again.
Quietly amused, and—
He shuffles forward until the backs of your thighs are pulled over his, spread out on his lap. Bare. Open to him.
And he looks.
And looks.
Hungry, you think. Quietly amused and hungry—
The notion is wrenched out of your head when he shifts his weight. Watches the folds of your pussy open for him as he pulls your knees wider apart, head dropping between his massive shoulders, gaze drilling into the split of your thighs. Gasping at the sting, the sudden stretch, does little to deter him from shoving your leg down until the outside of your knee touches the bed. Muscles straining. Pinching. It hurts; hipbones twinging in agony.
But the embarrassment burning through you singes all the pain.
You're spread open under him. Bare. Legs tangled around his waist, stretched wide around the width of him. Ankles knocking into the hard plains of his lower back each time he shifts.
“Fuckin’ hell—” he grunts. Snarls. The word ripped up from the back of his throat, forced through the twisting channels of his nose. Nasal and ugly when it scrapes out between his teeth. “Gonna ruin this pretty pussy, birdie.”
It's a threat. A promise. You twist, mouthing your protests into the warm skin of his wrist.
There's something about his voice—that airy, brassy tone—that strikes a chord deep inside you. Makes heat pool between your thighs, leaking out in a syrupy mess—
His hand peels away from your knee, sliding down your sticky, damp inner thigh until his knuckles graze the sensitive slip of skin sitting between your outer lip and hip. That ticklish, belly-fluttering sensation blooms in your groin as he rubs his scarred knuckles over the crease, catching the slick gathered there on his thick, meaty thumb.
“Fuckin’ soaked,” he groans, shifting his fingers until they cover the whole of your cunt, cradling you in his hand. He holds you like that for a beat, eyes locked on the way you're swallowed up by the broad stretch of his palm.
The rough drag of his skin over your folds feels good. An all-encompassing heat spreads over your tender flesh from the curve of your ass to the bump of your mons where his middle finger rests, almost touching the strip of skin between your loins and your belly. Held in his grasp. Cradled in his palm.
Your thighs twitch. A shallow jerk as your knees try to bend over his hand, but you can't. With his thumb and pinkie tucking into each crease between your outer lip and leg, it keeps you from closing your legs. Hinged by the wide, flat cup of his palm.
And it shouldn't bludgeon through you the way it does. All heat. All want. Need. A growing ache you can't think around.
(bodily reaction, you think even as the image of his hand—big with thick fingers, scarred knuckles; streaks of faded, ashy ink etched into milky, veined skin—laying over your pussy, swallowing it whole, sears into your mind—)
“Can feel your little cunt,” he grunts, feeling the pulse, the little throbbing pulls of your muscles as they twitch at the sight. The feeling. Clenching down around nothing. “Greedy little thing, ain't you, birdie?”
Anger paints his words as he rasps them out. A teeth gnashing, jaw clenching frustration that needles into the scorn, the fury, forced out between the tight seam of his crooked teeth.
You don't understand it. Can't, maybe.
But it's tucked away as quickly as it appeared, shifting into an ugly, mocking derision. Dry. Acerbic. His teeth flash, lip pulling upward in a sneer—a snarl—before he hums, sliding his hand down. The drag of his damp, rough fingers over your swollen folds has your knees falling open wider around his thick thighs, baring yourself willingly to him.
Want it bad, don't you? He mocks, and the sound of his voice alone has your pussy clenching tight, belly fluttering around the abrasive scrape of his tone. Brassy and full. Gritty. You whine, hips inching up—
His hand peels off of your slit. The rush of cold air drags another whimper out of you, hips pushing up to chase the heady, molten feeling of his skin on yours. And he's amused by it—a laugh echoes out, crackling in the hollow of his throat at your desperation—but you're too achy, too hot, to feel the simmer of humiliation nipping the apples of your cheeks.
He's not even making a real effort to pleasure you, to make you feel good, and yet—
Your hips twitch toward him in needy, mewling cants; please sits on the tip of your tongue, cradled between your teeth. Slips out on a shaky, breathless gasp when he meets you on the next buck of your hips, palm slapping over your wet slit.
The crack echoes through the room. Rough, dry skin on soaked flesh.
And it shocks you more than it hurts. The sting is there, of course, but it's just an afterthought to astonishment. An eye-widening disbelief masking the way your cunt smarts, throbbing from the slap. Nerves muffled behind the burn in your eyes, the searing heat pooling in your sinuses.
Wrenched open, unblinking as you stare up at him, your eyes begin to sting, to water. You blink, and feel something hot trickle down your cheek. A tear. His eyes snap to it. Pupils narrowing to a pinprick as he watches it slide down your face, little droplets clinging to your jaw.
“Poor baby,” he mocks, tilting his head as he tracks the teardrop. “Better behave.”
Behave. Like he's admonishing a child and not an adult.
It morphs; rots. Becomes yet another thing you shouldn't feel feverish over. The slick, sticky feeling grows between your thighs as your cunt flutters at the humiliation of it all.
And deeper—maybe—the bastardized sense of care—
(Punishment is affection in its own, special (awful) way and you've been aching for something just like it, haven't you—)
It's pushed down. Swallowed. And you know in the back of your head that if you keep eating these feelings, you're going to be sick. But you can't stop. Barely breathe around the idea of them sometimes—
“Tha’s’it,” he coos like he knows. Sees them bright and burning behind your irises. Little flickers of need, a smouldering want that you'll never grasp at yourself.
So he gives it to you.
The rough slide of his hand, all scarred and dry and calloused, scrapes over your slit once more. A full, flat stroke upward until your clit bumps into the ridge of his palm. Then down, down—
His fingers spread. Ring and index prying your folds apart as he pushes up once more, opening your seam to slip his middle finger through the slick, sticky mess that drips out of your burning cunt.
“Gonna be good f’me?”
The slide of his fingers drags the tip up to the bump of your clit. You stare down at it, fixed on the jut of his ink-black knuckles threading through your folds. The crease of his nail as he slips his fingers up higher, pad pushing over your pebbled clit. They're dirty. Grey-black under his nails. Congealed with dirt. Blood, maybe.
Your stomach churns even as your hips lift. Eager, searching. Hating yourself each second of it. It's gross. Disgusting.
You want his dirty, thick fingers inside of you—
“When I ask a question—” the tip circles over your clit. A shallow roll that pools heat between your thighs. “I expect an answer.”
“Y–yes,” you stammer out, hips flexing against his hand. Seeking more of that white-hot bloom of pleasure he brings with each pass of his finger.
“Good girl—” and you hate how it burns you up from the inside out. “Wasn't s’hard, was it?”
The retort is bitten back with the slow swipe of his finger drawing tight, small circles around your clit. His fingers are rough, scarred. Too dry. The abrasive drag over your soft sensitive flesh makes you whine—a drawn-out whimper nestled between clenched teeth.
It's too much.
Too harsh. Too sharp.
He rolls your clit under the pads of his fingers in jerking half-circles. Puts too much pressure on the bundle of nerves than you ever would—your touches are always soft, sickeningly sweet; gentling your flesh until you cum—and the sting, the burn, of it makes your toes curl. Body burn.
It's good.
And that's the problem.
It shouldn't be. His touch shouldn't make you so wet, growing slick and sticky between your spread thighs, bare to his hungry, prying gaze. Shouldn't make you moan. Hips twitching with each stroke of his fingers—
And then he peels away from you, but the time to mourn the loss of his touch, the fear of losing this trembling ember pleasure, is snuffed out when he presses his wet, slick fingers against the inside of your knee. The touch is intentional. Insistent. He makes an impatient noise in the back of his throat before pushing it down to the mattress. The twinge of pain swallowed up as quickly as it forms when he drops to his elbows between your thighs, forearms curling under your legs, and tugs you sharply into him.
Heat floods your belly when the backs of your thighs press tight to his broad, muscular shoulders, but it's nothing compared to the sight of him on his knees between your legs. It's so obscene you nearly weep—
And then he leans down and licks a long, broad swipe of his tongue over your cunt.
You hadn't expected it, maybe. His mouth on your pussy, his broken, jagged lips sealing over your pebbled clit. Going down on you seemed too intimate for what he was after. His end goal. It does nothing for him at all—
You realise your mistake when he dips his tongue into your hole and his hips jerk forward. Unconscious. Eager. Seeking. The shifting drags his jeans down his hips, and his cock slips free.
Most of the cocks you've seen—in porn, pictures, art—jut out from the person's groin. standing at attention, the nasty comments used to say. Jokes whispered on the playground. But his falls. Droops down between big, folded thighs. Skin marbled in shades of red, peach. Deep gouges dot his upper thighs, some sinking deep enough to reach bone. More scar tissue than flesh.
—than man.
It looks raw. Fresh. Some injuries not too dissimilar to the Wagyu hanging in the front of the storeroom, on display and oh, so out of place in a town where the richest man must be just a hair above the poverty line.
On paper, anyway.
You swallow, avoiding his gaze as he pauses, dark eyes watching you with his mouth pressed against your seam. Unmoving. Still as a predator between your thighs, cock visible between the bow of his torso, jutting sickeningly from mangled legs as you gawk at this hideous thing that makes several, half-hearted attempts to spring up towards you, spitting clear, milky liquid all over with each jerk. Tugged down by its own weight. Too heavy to fight against gravity like the rest of the cocks you've seen have done—
Normal cocks, you amend. Textbook.
His is anything but.
Ugly, you think again, stomach churning. Roiling. Obscene. An odd thing considering what you're looking at but all too fitting with the way it droops, big, flared head drooling pre-cum all over the bed in long, dangling stands that prickle over your jaws—half nauseous, half hungry, too. Saliva pools in your mouth even though the sight of his cock scares you. Fills your belly with dread. Misery.
It looks like a bruise. Skin smeared with purples, reds. Patches of pink. Long, thick veins run up from the fattened, full base to the divot of his frenulum. Thick. It hangs low. Drips.
He raises slightly and shoves his hand down between his thighs, big hand curling over the fat base of his cock. His grip is tight around himself, and he strokes up, from base to tip. It squeezes more precum from the flushed, fat head, and dribbles between your spread thighs in a thick, pearlescent puddle.
It makes your mouth dry. That twinge in your jaws coming back. Festering. You wonder if he'll make you take that thing in your mouth. Choke you on it. Taste his precum—
“Fuck,” he snarls into your cunt, hand jerking over his cock. “Keep lookin’ at my cock like tha’, birdie—”
You gasp at the rough grunt, the way it seems to tremble through your sensitive flesh. More, though, from the way he sounds. His voice brassy, rough. Unkind, but the words bloom a fresh heat behind your navel.
His voice does things to you. Things you're not allowed to like.
Those thoughts are knocked from your head when he bows down again, eyes still fixed on you, and seals his wicked mouth over your cunt. It's hard to compare it to anything else other than being devoured. Eaten in the truest sense of the word.
His tongue splits down your seam, tip digging into your slick hole. A groan bubbles up at your taste—the soft, fluttering clench of your body trying to drag him in deeper. Needing him deeper. A huff of air ghosts over you, dipped in the same derision as earlier but the harsh slap of skin on skin, his hand working furiously over his cock, makes you acutely aware of how much this affects him.
“Taste good, birdie,” he grunts, and then sucks your fold into his mouth, laving it with his tongue and teeth until the skin is tender, swollen. “S’fuckin’ good—”
Your breath catches when the crooked arch of his nose presses taut to your clit. Pleasure twisting in a dizzying pirouette inside your belly, winding tighter and tighter—
His nose jerks up on your clit. Lips moulded to your seam, you hear him rasp eyes on me, birdie. Don't fuckin’ look away—
The rough snarl trembles through your body, sinking its teeth into the coil until it snaps under its jaw. Your knees snap around his head as your release locks your joints tight. His name, Simon, a hoarse cry on your lips. You barely have time to bask in the ripples of pleasure throbbing through your body before he rips away from you with his teeth bared, and his chin wet.
“Fuck—!” he snarls again, shoving your knees apart as he lifts his massive body up from between your thighs. “Gonna fuck you, birdie. Gotta be inside your tight cunt—”
He towers over you, grinding his cock into the apex of your thighs. The drag of his cock—a little damp from being stuck inside his jeans all day; balmy—against the dry skin of your belly makes you shudder. Shivering beneath him as he huffs through the mask. Head bowing. Dipping to look at the way his cock slaps down on you. Cockhead nudging above your belly button, dribbling a small puddle of pre-cum that gets smeared into your skin when he rocks back on his haunches.
His hand wraps around the thick base of his cock once more, squeezing tight as he grips himself above you. It makes the head swell, engorged with blood. Thickening in his hand as globs of pre-spend leak out onto your belly. That feeling in your jaws comes back—nauseous and wanting.
He leans back with a hum. “Like my cock, eh, birdie?”
The crass words bring a fresh bloom of heat simmering in your veins, creeping up your collar. Like doesn't really cover what you feel when you stare at it—his inked hands running along the long, veined shaft—and the unsettled feeling in the pit of your belly rears when he nudges forward, the weeping head of his cock bumping your mound.
It's humiliating how much want floods through you just looking at it. At him. Disgust, dread, desire.
You don't answer. Not that you really need to—
Your silence is loud enough.
“Don’t worry,” he murmurs, the rasp thick in his throat. “M’gonna give it to you, pet—”
And he does just that. Slips the head of his cock down the slope of your mound, letting it graze your clit until you're panting, whining softly for more, and pulls it over your slit until his pre-cum is smeared over your drenched folds. You know exactly what this is even without glimpsing the ugly burn of his possessive desire smouldering in the back of his eyes—ownership. Greed. Hunger. It revels in the stain on your skin, from belly to slit; his, all his. Outside and soon—
In.
It shocks a creeping sense of worry into you. “Wait, what about a condom—”
He snorts, ugly and caustic. “What about ‘em?” He taunts, and it's flat. Playful.
“You should—”
He drags his gaze away from the pearlescent smear of his spend on your folds, your clit, and the even, placid look in that stagnant lake tells you everything you already knew.
“I've never—” you start, wincing at the kernel of fear lacing your hoarse words. “Not without a condom—”
It's the wrong thing to say. Near cataclysmic. He drops his head back with a groan that rumbles out of the slope of his throat, sounding like the rip of a chainsaw.
“Firsts for everything,” he purrs, and he nudges your entrance with the bare, weeping tip of his cock.
“But—”
His hand lifts, catching your jaw in the too-wide span of his palm. The force makes your teeth clack together.
“Need me to gag you, birdie?”
You swallow. It's not much of a choice. Gagged and fucked raw, or—
Just fucked raw.
No gag. No condom. You fight back a shiver and wish it was all just from fear.
“No,” you murmur, like you have a choice. “No gag.”
“An’?”
“Um. No–no condom, either—”
It's not enough. "What are you gonna let me do to this pussy, birdie?"
You know what he wants. What he's angling for. But there's a line, you think. A delineation between unwilling participant, coercion, and giving into the need that slinks down your spine, and rots inside your belly.
(Being forced to ask for it isn't permission, but what happens when you want it more than your next breath?)
The shame can come later, you think, and feel yourself give in.
"Cum—cum inside me—"
“Good girl, birdie.”
You hate what that does to you. How eagerly your body reacts to the dark possessive curl in his eyes when you do something he likes.
He nudges your entrance again, this time with purpose. Intent. A heavy pressure pushing on your rim. Too tight, you think, and the sting of the first inch he feeds—forces—into you burns, pulsing behind your navel. His tip isn't even in yet, and it's already too much.
You think about telling him so, offering up your mouth instead, but he leans down on his forearms, and catches your lips in a bruising, biting pantomime of a kiss. A blood-soaked parody with more teeth and tongue—sinking into your lips, nipping hard until the skin splits; catching all that spills with his tongue.
With his weight pressed against you like this, there's nowhere to run when he cups your throat in his hand, winding the other up above your head, forearm tight on your crown to cage you in. And then he shifts. Bears his hips down on yours until the fat head of his cock pops inside of you.
Your squeal is chewed up between his teeth, swallowed down with a rumbling groan.
Caught beneath him, trapped, he works himself into you demanding, heavy thrusts. Each inch burns more than the last. A stinging stretch that brings tears to your eyes. It's already too much and it's not even half. Barely even the tip.
“Can't—” you slur into his wet, demanding mouth. “No more. I–I can't—”
The breath rushes out between his teeth. Your watery eyes drop to the divot above his canine. A permanent snarl. A condescending sneer.
“You can,” he says decisively, words ground out from between crooked teeth. He presses them to your cheek, nipping at the skin under your eye. Possessive and wanting—
(Hungry for something you can't name—)
“And you will.”
—Or maybe you just don't want to. Can't look at the thunderous need draped over his mangled, battered face without thinking of the rumble in your chest that echos back against his thundering call—)
Stupid, foolish thing—
The dark promise of his words isn't a threat until his hand tightens around your neck, nails grazing your skin, and he adds, all of me, birdie as he grinds his hips into yours shallowly. Broad chest expanding with each ragged inhale. Cementing his taunt with a steel edge as you try not to come undone beneath him.
You'll take every fuckin’ inch—
He pulls back until only his glands stretch you open, and you know what's coming when his fingers grip the sides of your neck tight. Holding on. Anchoring you to the bed as he nudges his forearm tighter between your skull and the wall, a protective hold.
Before you can tense up, bracing for it, or even cry out no, please, don't, you can't take it, he huffs, and then slams his hips forward, splitting you open on the fat stretch of his thick, too heavy cock.
Maybe it's hysteria, delirium, but the blunt press of his length against your tender, sore walls balms the ache, the sting. The deeper he pushes, the less it hurts. A paradox that leaves you whimpering under his hand, heels digging into the broad stretch of his waist as you struggle to decide if you want to kick him away or pull him closer.
A war you don't have the power to win when he surges forward, burying himself to the hilt with a growl that shakes the fragile tendons surrounding your heart. Fear, misery. Pleasure, pain. It admixes. Coalescing into a dizzying sense of fullness, unbearable pressure. Catastrophic in its heaviness as your mind reels, struggles to come to terms with the gut-wrenching, heart-aching uncertainty of how you're supposed to go on without having him seated as deep inside of you as he can get. You've never known emptiness before him. Before now. Mere seconds ago.
And now, the thought of it leaves a palpable hollowness itching behind your ribs. Festering. Rotting tissue and bone.
“Simon,” you choke, sobbing his name out under the firm press of his hand. “Simon—”
But he knows.
His arm curls over your head like a crown, and you can easily forget the pinch of each thorn when he holds you tight. Protectively. Possessively. Securing you in his arms before he lifts up, palm sliding over the mattress, touch tender against your cheeks, and then settles it on the indent of your knee. Widening you for him as he spreads his thighs under yours until you're opened up for him.
Those dark eyes are dragged down to the split of your legs where his cock disappears into your slick, swollen cunt. You follow it down, gazing at the impressive width of his stomach bowing over you until they land on the jut of skin pushing out from a messy smatter of damp curls around the base of his cock.
The coarse hair of his groin unfurls as it sticks to your wet lips, and he rolls his head back over his shoulders he heaves through the too tight stretch of your walls over his length. You feel the pulse of him inside of you, thudding like a heartbeat. It blooms molten under the feverish weight of his lidded, dark gaze.
“Fuck, birdie,” he rasps, and it's scorched. Charred. “Look at you—”
As the world is condensed, narrowed down to nothing but the near impossible stretch of his cock seated as deep inside of you as he can get, he leans down, scarred, mangled lips brushing cruelly over your ear, and whispers, see? Told you'd take me.
Every fuckin’ inch.
Your hand jerks to your belly, fingers dancing over your navel as if to feel him there, bulging from under your skin. Nearly hysterical as you try to come to terms with the pulsing, white-hot ache of him inside of you, slowly acclimating to his girth, his length.
He grunts when he sees what you're doing, eyes flaring as your fingers skirt around your navel.
“It's—” you shudder, gasping for air. “It's too much, Simon, I can't take it—”
He rolls his hips with a groan. “m’cock too big for you, birdie?”
His usual cadence is flat, droll, but an unmistakable sense of masculine pride, a deep, egotistic sense of satisfaction, drapes itself over his brassy words. Glueing to the scorching rasp of his voice in a way that makes you unerringly certain that he likes it. Likes that his cock is too big for you. That it hurts.
“Y’can take it,” he prompts, forcing more of himself into you until something snaps. Splits. Makes room. Carves out a space for him to fit.
The brief flash of pain is soothed when he's seated deep. That same paradoxical balm making itself known as he flattens his hips into yours with a noise—half a grunt, or a growl; a lazy, pleasure-soaked snarl. You're not sure what it is, but the sound knocks the air from your lungs, igniting inside of you like a spark inside a tinderbox.
It's only when his balls are flush against you that the same masculine pride brims up again. Primal. Animalistic. The urge to present your soft belly rears up suddenly, and it's only stifled when he grunts again, looking down at you with lidded, black eyes.
“Now, be good and let me fuck your tight cunt.”
He's not looking for assent. Nothing you could say at this moment will sway his mind one way or the other. There's a nasty spool of determination welling up like blood on a pricked finger. Beading up to the surface in a clean, neat droplet as he rolls his broad shoulders, and shuffles into a comfortable position on his haunches between your spread thighs. The motion jostles his cock in a way that makes your breath hitch with each jerk.
It's not painful. Not particularly. But you're overwhelmed by the sensation of utter fullness in a way you've never experienced before. Each grind of his cock against your overly stretched walls deeping that incipient feeling of anxiety brewing in your belly that one wrong move and you'll tear. He's just—
Too big.
And despite his claims—or rather, in spite of them—you don't think you can do it. Don't think you can take him. It's too much. It feels like being turned inside out and then put back into place. An uneasy sense of discomfiture blooms with each too-tight, too-sharp tug of his cock pulling taut on your rim.
Almost deliriously, you think you can feel the pulse of his cock inside your goddamn throat.
“Simon—” you start on a tremulous breath but he cuts you off with a hum.
“Relax.”
You can't. Can't—
“Fuckin’ hell, bird,” he rasps, leaning down suddenly until his face was pushed tight into the curve of your neck, breath shallow on your thudding pulse. “Stop squirmin’ ‘round me like tha’ or I'll cum right fuckin’ now.”
Your heart stutters. Gallops painfully in your chest. His words make you dizzy because for as much as this feeling of him, his cock, inside of you dances on a delicate precipice of being more than you can feasibly handle and somehow the most incredible thing you'd ever experienced before, you hadn't considered how he'd feel.
Inexplicably, it pleases you.
There's something so strange—so extraordinary—about bringing a man like him, like this, to his knees. Pleasuring him by just heaving through the white-hot stretch of his cock inside of you. Making him bury his head in your neck, groaning about how he was gonna fuckin’ bust, pretty thing, fuck—
It was a powerful feeling.
Unwarranted, maybe. But incredible, nevertheless.
“Fuck,” he grunts, and you feel his throat work around a thick swallow. “Gonna fuck you, birdie. Gonna fuck this pretty cunt so fuckin' hard until you beg me stop—”
And he does just that. Rears back from your neck, and settles again between your thighs—quicker this time. With an urgency that makes you whimper when his cock grinds against your walls hard enough to bruise.
When he finally pulls out until only the flared head of his cock remains, you knot a fist into the thin pillow, clinging on, and latch the other onto his hip as if that could somehow stop the vicious promise in his eyes about poundin’ you into the goddamn mattress. There's a flash, a brief flicker of his eyes, and then he thrusts back inside of you with a grunt that makes your belly clench, and your back arch.
True to the promises he gave, it's brutal. Violent.
Any pleasure you feel is leached through osmosis. A tether bound around his own.
His arm is shoved under your back, angling your pelvis up. Thighs dangling over the thick spread of his own, ass seated in his lap. He drives into you, thrusts deep—grinds his hips until your moans break into hoarse screams, whimpers. Makes your eyes roll so far back, all you see is black even when you blink your eyes up at him.
He carves a spot deep inside of you with each delirious piston of his cock, pounding into you with brutal thrusts, and then holding tight when his balls slap against your ass. Digging the head of his cock into the seal of your womb until it aches behind your navel. Each breath feels like glass in your lungs—
“Tha’s it,” he slurs in your ear, mouth damp against your skin. “Take my cock so good, pretty birdie. Little pussy was made for it, weren't you? Tight cunt all mine—”
His gruff words tug on that tether until you're wrapped around him like a bow. Following him down this endless spiral as he slams inside of you over and over again, cooing in your ear about the sounds you made for him, pretty cunt so fuckin’ wet f’me, birdie, hear tha’? all f’me—
“Cum f'me, birdie. Want this pussy cummin’ ‘round my cock—”
“Can't—” you gasp, arching into him, desperate and needy. It rides a line between pain and pleasure; a needlepoint you wobble on. “Need—”
You try to reach down, to touch your clit, but grinds his hips into yours with a snarl. “Cum ‘around my cock, birdie.”
“Touch me—”
“Fuckin’ hell—”
It edges on too much. Pain and pleasure teetering on a knife's edge, split apart by a line the width of a razer. Looping and tangling around each other until you can't differentiate between the two. But it makes sense, you suppose, staring up at him arched above you like a black cloud of smoke. All hunger and fire. Consuming, devouring, everything in its path. A wildfire.
Butcher, you think again when his hand wraps around your throat. A mimicry of what he did in the truck, forcing your eyes on him. Your life tucked neatly against his palm.
These hands take lives. It's what they're made for. All scarred, and thick. Scar tissue and bone. Muscle and cartilage. Meant to render meat of cattle. Slaughterhouse in the shape of a man. Consumption personified.
But where there should be fear, all you feel is an echoing sense of hunger. Leatherbound to each other, maybe—
The look that passes over his eyes as he stares down at you, cupped in his palm, seems to fit perfectly into the fractured gaps inside yourself you try so hard to ignore. And what doesn't—
Well.
He'll make room to fit.
You reach up, curling your fingers around his thick wrist. His eyes flash, but he doesn't slow his thrusts. Doesn't stop. Just watches as you peel his hand away from your neck, bringing it up to your mouth.
On his palm, there's a piece of skin that's unblemished compared to the rest of his worn, burnt hands. A strip just big enough for you to sink your teeth into.
And you do.
“Fuck, Birdie—!” The snarl is ripped from his throat. His thrusts grow harder, sloppier. Each bit of strength in his muscled hips and thighs is used to pound into you until your vision blacks out. It hurts. Aches. Your heels slip down, catching on the broad expanse of his lower back. And you tighten them around his waist, pulling him closer. Deeper. “Fuck, Birdie, fuckin’ cunt was made f'me, wasn’t it? So cum on my cock. Now—”
Whining, you shake your head. “Can't. I can't. I need—”
You don't get to finish. With a huff of anger, he rips his hand off of the mattress, leaning back on his haunches, and shoves his hand between your thighs, scarred fingers stroking over your pebbled clit. It's rough. Sloppy. His anger hums through his body, skewering into you as he glared down, gaze swinging like a pendulum between the split of your thighs where his cock disappears into your swollen cunt, his fingers rubbing over your clit, and back up the hand around your neck, the tears staining your cheeks.
There's an edge to his thrusts. A viciousness in the way he pistons his hips into you. Dark eyes catching every flicker—each wince, gasp, moan, whine all meticulously catalogued and exploited. He finds the spots that make your hips jerk, twitching both toward and away from him. Angling into the ones that have your eyes rolling back into your head, drool dribbling past your slack lips as you gasp his name out into the dank, humid air.
It smells of sweat, sex, and him. Something brutal, bloody, and dark. Rotten leaves. Charred forests after a rain shower. Dangerous. Tinged with a slight acrid, chemical stench—benzene, oxidizing iron. It drips down your throat, and drenches your lungs. Staining you from the inside out.
And he exploits that, too. Leans in, and breathes heavily against your upper lip, your cheek. Drowns you in his scent. His sweat beads along his jaw, droplets raining down over your brow. Soaked in his essence. Unable to see, smell, or touch anything that isn't him.
With his hand over your mouth, teeth sunk into his palm, all you can taste is him, too. Leather. Gun oil. Blood.
The ravenous look in his eye sharpens, turning into deadly points.
“Such a pretty fuckin' bird.” He rasps, the words shattered, mangled in the back of his throat. They carry the scent of blood when you breathe them in, and you wonder if he forced them through glass. Pushed them out with his bloody fists.
You bite down harder in response, keening through the white-hot pain of his cock spearing deeper than before, stretching you past your limits. The taste of blood on your tongue, the rasping snarl pulled from his chest, his fingers toying with your clit, push you over the edge once more. Again and again, and again, and—
His hand peels away from your oversensitive clit, dropping down to the mattress beside your face. He follows quickly after several impossibly deep thrusts that shove you higher up on the mattress, pressing in until his balls sit flush against your ass, cockhead battering against your cervix, and he groans—deep and liquid—when he comes, spilling inside of you. Rooted deep, cock twitching, Simon drops to his elbow beside your head, smothering you under his weight as the tension in his body bleeds out.
Your teeth stick to the divots in his hand, and the sensation of ungluing them from the wounds you gave him makes you shiver. Slowly, you roll your tongue out, chasing the drops of blood, and breathe heavily through your nose as he burrows deeper inside of you, chest shuddering over yours.
“Fuckin’ hell,” he rasps, hips jerking into yours with a slap that echoes through the room. “Little tease, ain't you?”
Even with his cock softening inside of you, it's still thick. Fat. Stretching you open as he yawns out above you, bloodied hand dropping down to cup your neck again, forearm resting heavily between your breasts. He raises slightly on his elbow, black eyes glinting in the shallow dark of the room. Piercing as they drill into your sweat-slicked face.
It aches when he moves. When he presses his hips harder into yours, the muscles in your legs throb as his broad waist splits them apart. Your feet dangle, sliding uselessly down his back, over his ass, before coming to rest curled around his thighs. Melting into the mattress, tender and sore and all chewed up—
You feel like a massive contusion instead of a person. A pestle. His.
The thought makes you shiver, and his eyes flash in triumph like he knows.
The feeling of him pulling out of you draws a whimper from your lips. The drag on your sensitive, bruised walls is a strange mix of tender pleasure and pain. He chuckles at your mewl—dark and low; the sound of nightmares, you think. Crackling sap on charred wood.
You try to pretend it doesn't make you shudder, but the way he hums in response dashes the feigned oblivion before it can form. All you can do is heave on the bed, and watch him through narrowed slits as he leans back on his haunches once again, head cocking to the side. His dark eyes fixed on the split of your legs. The ache in your cunt growing sharp under his molten stare.
“Fuck,” he rasps, the shallow groan pulled out from between clenched teeth. You wonder if the mangled curse was unintentional. Ripped from his throat before he could clamp his jaws around it—a crack in the facade. A hairline splinter in the indomitable mask he wears.
Your heart lurches. None of this makes sense, but your head is too muddled, too syrupy, to think much at all. A quandary for later when he throws you from his bed with a harsh slap on your ass and a and don't think about doing this ever again.
But you don't think you can move. “Give me a minute,” you start on a trembling breath. “And I'll—”
His brows move but his eyes stay fixed on your sore cunt. You can feel him leak out of you, spilling on the mattress in thick globs. The sensation makes you shiver.
“You'll what?”
It looks like he has to forcibly tear his eyes away from you, reluctance forming a cold, angry crater between his brows. The brunt of his ire—white, burning—makes you want to supplicate yourself at his feet, roll over on your belly and show the beast you mean no harm.
(Run, and run far—)
He huffs. “You'll what, birdie?”
It takes a minute to find your voice through all the panic clogging your throat. “I'll leave, um—”
He peels away from you with a loud, rough snort, and drops to his his elbow beside you. Hands curling possessively over your waist, fingers tight. Unyielding.
He pulls you roughly to his chest until your head is pillowed on his shoulder, and then rolls on his back, keeping you cushioned at his side. You try to move, but his arm wedges under your neck, curling over your shoulder. Trapping you to him.
The panic wants to come now. To rage against the shackle of his embrace, to run home and scrub your skin until it bleeds. But the exhaustion collapses over it all until your eyes feel too heavy to hold open. Too painful.
As you drift, aimless and dreamless, his voice cuts through the fog. “Gotta learn ‘ow to cum with nothin’ but my cock inside of you sooner or later, birdie. Or you won't be coming at all—”
It sounds like a threat. A promise. You fall asleep with the words echoing in your head, his arm an anchor around your waist.
He wakes up hungry.
A gnawing in his belly pulls him from the thin doze he fell into after fucking you three more times—with your face pressed into the mattress, ass in the air for him to rut against like a beast; teetering over his hips, the spread of them too wide for your thighs to split over leaving you precariously unbalanced and shifting your weight above him as neither knee sat comfortably on the mattress; and on your belly with him crushing you to the floor under his bulk. The memory of which makes his spent cock stir, twisting limply against his damp, sticky thigh. Matted down with drying cum, sweat, the slick wetness of being buried inside your messy cunt.
Filled now with his cum.
He groans low in his throat as he thinks about it. The sloppy way you let him take you over and over again until you couldn't keep your eyes open anymore, passing out before he finished. Letting him fuck his cum inside of you as you whimpered in your sleep—
Perfect little thing, aren't you? So good to him.
Simon can't remember the last time he fucked someone, much less when it was this enjoyable (an understatement, of course; in the back of his head, wheels spin round and round as he tries to come up with a plan to keep his cock buried inside of you at all times while still doing his work—), and the overflow of unquenched lust churns in his belly. A hunger he can now slake on your willing body. In the silence, he purrs—
But the effort, the exertion, dredged up a different need inside him.
Simple hunger. An appetite.
He could eat—
his eyes slant toward the top of your crown in the dark, and he amends it, quickly, to: in more ways than one.
He'll go home in a minute. Make himself a steak from the prime cut he butchered a few days ago, leftovers that no one had any qualms about when he took several pieces home with him.
(and really, why would they argue with the butcher who keeps their wallets fat and their bills paid?)
It was left on the counter earlier before he got the call that your brother was making another move. Now a perfect room temperature as it waits for him to come back. Cook it the way he likes—
Rare.
The perfect grill is a nice char on the outside, but bleeding red on the inside. Basted in duck fat and garlic. A sprig of rosemary in the pan, but not touching the meat. Just enough to give the juice that earthy, sweet flavour. Let it rest for ten minutes under foil with the rest of the fat poured over it from the pan. Served as is with maybe a dash of salt and pepper on the side.
Simple. But incredibly difficult to perfect, he finds.
Everyone tries to make it fancier than what it needs to be, but at the end of the day, meat is meat. And going from picking scraps from the garbage outside of the Italian butcher on the corner to ordering his own pretentious filet mignon still gives him a sense of unease. Whiplash, perhaps. Nothing to something—how about that, Tommy?
Maybe that's why he prefers to raise and butcher his own cattle. A never-ending supply of meat for him to sink his teeth into even if this whole thing goes belly up and he's back to begging for morsels on the corner. Tommy hiding in the shadows with a baseball bat waiting to ambush the richer men who happen to feel altruistic that day.
This practice bled over into his current occupation, too. The basement of that same Italian butcher shop he used to sneak expired sausage from out of the bins is now his home base of sorts. A money laundering front of the 141. Headquarters for them to congregate in secrecy upstairs. And here—
A torture chamber for those who tried to cross them. Strung up on meat hooks like the cattle they eat, the ones he feeds them, until he makes up his mind on what he wants to do to them.
It's where you should have been, he supposes, thumb brushing a spot of dried blood on your shoulder, right below a nasty bite mark on your forearm. The ring nearly black from the clotted blood pooling in the indents. It matches several others on your thighs—top, insides, back—and neck, belly, collarbones, sternum. All chewed up. Marked by the butcher.
In working for the old Italian man who ran the shop when he was eighteen, he learned that most of the butchers preferred to mark their carcasses when they came in. A little x on the fat to signify they'd be the ones carving up the prime meat.
He didn't think you could handle his knife, so he gave you his teeth instead. But the implication is clear.
His.
It's overkill considering his reputation, and the claim he already had on you. Because even before this, back when he saw you through the window of his shop as he was moonlit as a legitimate butcher and businessman instead of the enforcer, the brute, everyone already knew he was, his interest was clear. You were off-limits. His to deal with.
And while Price refers not to get involved in small-time street dealers, the warnings Soap and Gaz impressed onto your brother should have been the end of an irritating situation and not the beginning of a fuckin’ headache. But no. He had to push. And push.
Until Price gave the order to take care of it.
And that he did.
(With the added benefit of killing one bird and keeping the other in a pretty cage.)
Price probably won't like his solution, but Simon racked up enough favours to keep a little pet of his own. Been a good boy for a long, long time now, and he supposes he's owed a bone.
Or a sweet thing tucked tight to his side having passed out some two hours ago after he slaked his dizzying thirst on you over and over again even though it doesn't feel like it's been enough.
It's rare that he has an appetite for people. Even rarer that he lets this meagre hunger consume him like this. But there's something about you that makes his teeth ache in the same way they often do whenever he's hungry for meat.
He wants to devour you. Consume you. Eat you alive and save nothing for anyone else to taste.
(So—
Price will just have to let him keep you, won't he?)
The mattress vibrates under him. His phone buzzing with an incoming text. He reaches over, pulling it close enough to read the notification on his screen. It's from Soap.
All her stuff is on your porch.
He hums, but doesn't reply. Simply opts to drop his phone on his belly, and tug you closer to his broad chest. He'll wake you in an hour, and the stirring in his groin tells him it'll be for another round. Maybe he'll take you in the freezer. Make you cling to the hook hanging down from the ceiling as he fucks you like that. He has a pair of ties for ox, lamb legs, that he can loop around your wrists and heft you up on.
It'll hurt, he's sure. The binds weren't designed with comfort in mind, but he can easily bear your weight as he pounds into you from below, your pretty legs wrapped tight around his waist.
The image, the thought, alone has him thickening against his thigh. He reaches down, gripping the base tight in his hand as he pulls you even closer, burying his nose in your crown.
At the very least, he wouldn't be lying when he told Price he strung you up.
Three rounds—on your back, your hands and knees, perched above him like a pretty goddess he stole away from a temple—and he still isn't satisfied. Fuck. He breathes in your scent and doesn't think he ever will be.
He'll get you out of here, take you home. Make you the steak he likes for a late dinner, rare and simple—the same one he gave your brother weeks ago when he dragged him into the shop, strung him up on a hook, and demanded payment for his disrespect.
Who'd have thought that his payment would be you?
(fitting, though, since he'd had his eye on you for a while now—)
He nudges you when his phone chimes again with another message doubtless from Soap telling him all your things have been tucked away. Matters dealt with.
“C’mon,” he grunts, running his hand down your spine. “We’re leavin’.”
You blink at him slowly. “Leaving?”
He nods. “Get dressed.”
You're quiet as he turns, reaching for his jeans left in a heap beside the mattress, but he hears the hitch in your throat. The click when you swallow. Unbothered by it, he turns, giving you his back as he wedges his feet inside the trousers, pulling them up his legs.
The bed shifts behind him. “I—I can walk back to my brother's—”
The hope in your voice is a delicate thing. Fragile like fine china. A pretty, vulnerable tchotchke meant to be seen, admired, but not touched. Not handled roughly.
Unfortunately for you, he's never had much of a gentle touch.
When he throws a glance over his shoulder, he's not surprised to find your arm folded over your bare breasts as you kneel on the mattress, your palm resting flat between your parted thighs, wrist and forearm covering the slip of heaven between them from his greedy, prying gaze.
It paints a startling picture, he finds. One with you looking thoroughly ravaged. Taken. But presenting it in a soft sort of sensuality meant to make a man feel both hot under the collar and like an unrepentant voyeur.
Pretty bird, he thinks, and feels his cock stir.
He rises swiftly, hiking up his jeans around his thighs as he goes, and then turns to you with a heady desire to crush that gossamer of hope between his greedy hand like a silken cobweb that will stick to his fingers.
“Not goin’ to your brothers,” he says, pushing his tongue against his cheek to stem the ache burning in his muscles.
You shiver, eyes growing wide, frenzied with fear as you stare up at him. The shift of your throat when you swallow makes pre-cum dribble out of his fattened cock. He's never really had much of a taste for it, but he's overcome with the urge to see you cry—
“Where are we going?”
Amid the ache in his loins, the flickering fantasies of your pretty, lachrymal face gazing up at him helpless, hopeless, and needy, he catches the edge of panic when you speak. The razor-sharp tremble of fear.
But buried amongst it, hidden in the bruised look you give him as he towers over you with his cock bulging in his slacks and his eyes burning with want, he finds a keen sense of eagerness amongst the rubble. Agog, almost.
And fuck. If that doesn't do something awful to him.
“What?” He taunts, cocking his head to the side as your breath grows shallow and your eyes wide. “Did you think that was enough to pay your debt, birdie?”
“What? You can't—”
“Don't like it—” he lifts his shoulder up in a cool, indifferent shrug, enjoying the dismayed expression that falls over your brow more than he should. “—go to the police.”
“The ones on your payroll?” You spit, eyes flaring wide like an angry cat. “You—”
Several things might have continued in place of your choked, angry sob, but it's swallowed down as pragmatically as it was the first time he cornered you earlier today. And as beautiful as your ire is, he finds the cornered look on your face to be much more pleasing. Prettier.
“C’mon, bird,” he mocks, holding his hand out toward you with a tick of his lips. “All your stuff is at home. Don't be stupid.”
“Stupid?” You gasp in indignation, but there's a bruised look in your eyes. A wounded thing that makes his breath hitch in his lungs for reasons he can't really ascertain, but just knows that he likes it. Likes it a lot. “This is—insane.”
Again, he shrugs, but the indifference this time isn't the same manufactured callousness meant to inspire fear. The conversation is stale already. Grating on him. He's not used to having his orders ignored or questioned. What he says usually goes—either through association or reputation, or just the fact that no one has ever come close to filling the same measure of space as he does—and questioning him like this makes him feel too much like a boy, and not enough like the living ghost he pretends to be.
“You can't do this. It's not right.”
An appeal to his humanity. Cute. He huffs, reaching down to fasten the button of his jeans. The sound the zipper makes cuts through the room. “You're mine, birdie. Better get used to it.”
Catching your eye as he says it was only meant to reignite the kindling fear you have of him from extinguishing. A scared prey animal was a better pet than an angry one. But the look on your face catches him off-guard.
It reminds him of a flightless little bird shivering in a child's shoebox. Tiny broken thing his mum warned him not to touch or its mother would abandon it to die on its own.
“Until the debt is paid off.”
A statement, not a question. He shrugs, but doesn't respond. Tilts his head toward the door. “Let's go.”
His lack of reassurance doesn't soften the flint in your gaze, but the prospect of recompense seems to spurn you on. Another wishbone of hope to cling to. And despite himself, he lets you keep it. Lets your little finger wrap around the delicate bone for comfort because as much as you might think there's a fifty-fifty chance of getting the bigger piece, he has no intentions of letting something like that get in the way of his appetite even if you do.
(And his hunger has always been particularly voracious, hasn't it?)
“Come, birdie. Gotta get you home, and fed, don't I?”
It was a joke. A letter to a criminal—UK's most wanted. You told him he was hot. Told him you were a virgin. Left your address, because it’s not like he’d ever get out, right?
✉ 2K FOLLOWER SPECIAL .ᐟ | AO3 . MLIST
18+ AU, DUBCON, fem!reader, takes place in the UK, porn with plot, pathetic!reader, harddom!simon, asshole!simon, implied stalking, (morally irredeemable) pining, oral (f receiving), shit-ton of degradation, praise if you use a magnifying glass, virginity kink, pussy pronouns, pussy & face slapping, dacryphilia, unprotected sex [ 10.2k words ]
Who knew working at Tesco would be such a fucking nightmare?
It’s almost absurd how people can forget how to use their brains the second they step through the automatic doors. It’s a massive store, but you’ve come to believe that its sheer scale only amplifies some customers’ overwhelming stupidity.
You find yourself watching, day in and day out, as people stumble over the easiest parts of shopping, like scanning a barcode or finding the right aisle despite the sign above their heads. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so damn frustrating. You can’t even afford the luxury of venting because you're stuck behind the register, forced to plaster on a fake smile, nodding while they hold up the line, your eye twitching as you answer the same question for the umpteenth time in 30 minutes.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity of gritted teeth and hollow patience, your shift comes to an end. The relief is brief, but it’s there, at least. You drag yourself out of the store, shoulders slumped under the weight of the day. The commute home isn’t any prettier, but it’s a kind of mindless ritual that’s grown familiar over time—20 minutes on the train, crammed between strangers who are just as exhausted, just as done with the grind. The train lurches and hums beneath you, a rhythmic noise that almost lets you forget the stress. But you’re too far gone for that kind of escape, your mind still whirling with all the things you’ve had to swallow throughout the day.
The train empties as the sun sinks below the horizon, each stop peeling away another layer of the late afternoon crowd. You finally step off the train at the final stop, the air crisper than when you left for work nearly 11 hours ago. The walk home is short, but it’s long enough for your legs to remind you that you’ve been standing for hours. Ten long minutes to your flat, a familiar route that feels both comforting and suffocating in its monotony.
After walking down some quiet streets, past some sketchy alleyways, you finally reach your tiny one-bedroom flat. It’s tucked just outside Bromley, and it’s small, not much at all, but it’s enough. It’s the kind of space that suffocates you some days and feels like a sanctuary on others. You push your key into the lock and push the door open. You kick your shoes off and they thud as they hit the floor, echoing through your small flat. You hang your keys on the singular hook you stuck on the wall, barely noticing the clink of them settling into place.
This is what most days look like for you: wake up, subject yourself to a long, draining shift, then return home to an empty flat and an even emptier fridge. It's a routine that feels as hollow as the flat itself. The days fly by in a boring cycle of work, silence, and the echo of things you thought you’d left behind when you took the leap and moved out.
After college, you made it a point to leave your parents’ house. You couldn’t stay in the nest anymore, not when you so strongly believed there was something better waiting out there. You had to prove you could stand on your own, that you didn’t need the constant supervision or the suffocating presence of a family that just didn’t get it.
Honestly, who could? Who could stay locked in a house that felt less like a home and more like a cage? College had been the escape you’d craved, the independence you had always wanted. You dove in headfirst, joining club after club, meeting all kinds of people, each one with their own story, a sort of authenticity that people in high school never had.
In college, one of the many things you got involved in was Vets Club, which wrote letters to veterans, thanking them for their service. It was a simple thing, but there was something about it that felt right. You’d write a few lines of gratitude, nothing big, just a small act of kindness. And sometimes, you’d get a letter back. The responses were always the same—surprised and grateful that someone even bothered to take the time. It never felt like much, but it always made you feel good, knowing you could brighten someone's day just by saying thank you.
But now, when you’re standing in your tiny flat, staring at a barren fridge that only houses a bottle of wine and some leftover takeaway containers, you wonder if wasting your time on asinine things like that were worth it.
You’re having a… Well, a hard time, to put it kindly. The kind of time where nothing seems to go your way, and you can't quite shake the feeling that maybe you made some wrong choices. All of your college friends? They're out there, living it up, traveling the world, landing glamorous careers, posting photos of sunsets in Bali and dinners at places with names you can’t pronounce. They’re thriving, but you’re stuck here, watching their highlight reels on social media while your own life feels like it’s paused on a loop of dead-end shifts and lonely nights.
You had big dreams once. You convinced yourself that an art history degree was going to be the key to something meaningful, something that would set you apart. Now, though? Now, you can barely find work, and the opportunities that do pop up feel like they’re beyond you in all shapes and forms.
Rent and bills are manageable, but manageable doesn’t mean easy. To you, it means scraping by, choosing between a decent meal or keeping the lights on for another month.
Your parents help sometimes, covering the electricity bill here and there, but you’d rather die than let them know how bad it really is. You don’t need their pity, their unsolicited advice, or the smug ‘I told you so’ about picking a more practical degree. No matter how deep you’re sinking, you’ll claw your way up alone. It’s not pride, it’s survival. You’ve always done it yourself, it’s just easier that way.
And the real kicker? The cherry on top of this already pathetic sundae? You’re a fucking virgin. No one to warm your bed, keep you company. Mid-twenties and untouched, while your friends from high school are already posting pictures of shiny rings and baby-bumps. Like struggling to stay afloat wasn’t humiliating enough, you’re also trailing behind in the one thing that’s supposed to have happened already.
You’ve had chances—plenty of chances—but every time, you freeze. The pressure, the vulnerability, and the fear of not measuring up always make you bail.
Not that you’re a prude. You’ve done everything but. Had shitty oral a few times, given it even more. And if the guy’s screaming was anything to go by, you were either naturally good at it or he was just being dramatic. Either way, it was a fleeting moment of triumph in an otherwise awkward, unremarkable sex life, not quite the high point you’d imagined, but in your world of half-hearted hookups and ‘almosts,’ it was something. Proof you weren’t completely out of your depth.
Not that it really mattered.
You shut the fridge and turn to open the cabinet with the same lack of enthusiasm that’s come to define your evenings alone. Peanut butter and jelly, quick, mindless, barely even a choice. You spread the peanut butter, then the jelly, the motion mechanical, just something to fill the silence. The takeout leftovers can last till tomorrow.
You pad over to and collapse on your second-hand couch, the cushions sighing under your weight, and pull your legs beneath you. You grab your phone out of your pocket, thumb idly swiping up to unlock it. The screen lights up, and for a moment, you just stare at it. An infant-sized handful of notifications blink back at you—an automated bill reminder, a news alert you’ll ignore, a lone text from your mom checking in. That’s it. No stream of messages, no flood of tagged posts or party invites. Just a near-empty notification bar, silent in its own damning way.
With a sigh, you lock your phone and toss it aside, letting it land somewhere on the cushion beside you. No one’s waiting for you to reply anyway. Instead, you grab the remote and flick on the TV. The screen blinks to life and you skim through a few channels, the lowest-tier cable offering not much more than black-and-white novellas and the news. You settle for the latter, knowing it won’t add much to your day, but it’ll at least fill the space with noise.
The pretty woman on the screen drones on about politics and stocks, things you don’t have the capacity to care for. You nibble at your sandwich, half-listening as the segment shifts. The soft murmur of the newscaster is background noise until something catches your ear, an undercurrent of excitement creeping into her voice as she announces a breaking story. Your attention sharpens as she mentions a supposed notorious figure, someone whose name apparently carries weight in the world of crime.
A man known only as Ghost. No full name, no history, just a shadow stitched together by word of mouth and grainy security footage. The anchor’s voice is steady as she rattles off his crimes. High-profile armed robberies that bled banks dry, embezzlement schemes that unraveled entire corporations, and a trail of bodies left in the wake of meticulously executed mob hits.
It’s the kind of name you’d expect to hear on the news, or in the underbelly of the city where crime festers unchecked. A name spoken with a mix of fear and reverence, as if he was more myth than man.
And yet, despite knowing nothing about him beyond what you've learned in the last 5 minutes of the broadcast, the sight of him on your TV—towering, masked,—hits you in a way you hadn’t anticipated. Intrigue coils in your stomach, but you can’t fight the way he unsettles you.
He’s been arrested. The news anchor’s voice carries the weight of the revelation, the story intensifying with every word. After years on the run, the law has finally caught up with him. Ghost—a ghost no longer—is now locked away in the High-Security Unit of Belmarsh, one of southeast London’s most formidable prisons, home to terrorists, murderers, and just the worst of the worst.
You stare at the screen, the words sinking in as you take another slow bite of your PB&J. There’s a strange sort of chill that runs through you, not from familiarity but from the sheer presence of the large man on the screen, as if he’s in the very room you’re sitting in. The news anchor’s voice drones on, but you’re already lost in thought.
You think back to Vets Club, remembering how the club would sometimes send letters to other people—petty criminals who were locked up for minor counts of drug possession, vandalism, or shoplifting. Stupid shit. At first, it seemed odd, but the more you thought about it, the more it made sense. Why not offer a little kindness to anyone that needs a pick-me-up? They didn’t have to be war heroes.
As long as they didn’t kill anyone—or anything.
So just like the veterans, you guys would send letters. And just like the veterans, you'd sometimes get a reply, a genuine thank you, as if the fact that someone cared enough to reach out made a difference. It was just about being human, about showing some kindness when so much of the world felt cold.
You never wrote to someone like Ghost before. Not someone so... bad. Not someone whose reputation is so undeniably, explicitly rotten. Someone who, many would argue, is explicitly undeserving of such kindness.
You snap back to reality, and his figure dominates the screen—broad shoulders, large muscles even under the clothing, the kind of man who demands attention. The CCTV footage is grainy, a mere screen capture from a longer video plastered on the TV for your viewing pleasure
His face is masked with a skull-patterned balaclava, the fabric stretched taut over his facial features, distorting the skeletal design just enough to make it seem like the grinning visage is shifting with every movement, angular lines that give him an almost inhuman quality—like a wraith lurking in the dark.
He’s swathed in black from head to toe, the fabric of his dark jacket and and even darker pants absorbing the dim light, making him one with the shadows that cling to every surface around him. Each step is silent, calculated, his presence more of a feeling than a sight—an omen in the periphery, waiting.
It’s strangely captivating, the way he looms, the way the static buzz of the television makes it feel like he could crawl through the screen at any second, like that stupid Ring movie. You sort of wish he would.
His image lingers, burned into the LEDs of your TV, burned into your mind. You’re not sure why it catches you the way it does, but you can’t look away. Something about him—his sheer presence, even through a screen—snags at your curiosity like a loose thread begging to be pulled, a sweater unfurled into a heap of yarn. God you’re so lonely.
Your mind drifts as your fingers move almost instinctively. A few quick Google searches lead you down a steep rabbit hole, a litany of news reports covering crimes that stretch back years. No one has seemed to figure out his real name, no verifiable background. Alleged military ties, some say, possibly ex-special forces. Others insist he was born into the criminal underworld, raised by it, shaped by it, an enforcer forged in violence.
Though nothing could be determined for sure, most of the reports agree on one thing for certain: he was methodical, precise, and had an undeniable dedication and passion for his craft. You presumed that’s what made him a terrorist-level threat.
Then you stumble upon another fact—and you pause. Belmarsh Prison, his current home, isn’t even that far. Just a thirty-minute drive from your flat.
That should be alarming, but the thought sinks in your mind like a stone dropped into a well. For a second, the dull, predictable rhythm of your life feels disrupted—a ripple in reality, as if you've slipped into some parallel version of your life, one that isn’t just last night’s leftovers and tomorrow's 10-hour shift.
For the first time in a long while, you feel a flicker of excitement. It makes your life feel a little less dull, like something unexpected, something outside the ordinary routine, has just entered your world. Maybe you could write him a letter—
—No. What the fuck? That’s insane. He’s killed people, and you want to send him a letter?
…
You decide to send him a letter.
It’s not like you’re his number one fan—or a fan at all, for that matter. Plus, the chances of him even reading it are slim to none, he’s probably buried under piles of letters that sound just like the ones you used to write, if not worse.
It’s just a letter. You’re not looking for anything in return. You’ll write to him, then move on, because why not? It’s not about trying to change him or sympathizing with him, it’s just... kindness.
Your half-eaten sandwich is abandoned on the coffee table, forgotten the moment the thought takes root. You push yourself up from the couch. The floor is cold beneath your feet as you move down the narrow hall and toward your bedroom, each step fueled by something you don’t care to name—excitement, recklessness, boredom, maybe all three twisted together.
Your bedroom is dim and poorly lit by your bedside lamp. The air feels alive, the window cracked open, allowing the evening breeze to slip through and blow through the room. The curtains sway with it, shifting shadows across the walls, fleeting and fluid, much like the thoughts in mind.
You reach for an old journal tucked away in your bedside table, its spine softened by years of thumbing through its pages. The cover, once smooth, is now rough with wear, smudged with time and old ink stains. As you flip through, the pages crackle—thin, fragile things filled with half-formed ideas and late-night ramblings from high school.
You find a blank page and grab a pen from the bedside table, its weight familiar, and grounding, and shift into a cross-legged seat on your bed. The mattress dips beneath you, the duvet stretching with the movement.
For a moment, you hesitate. What do you even say to someone like him?
You reason with yourself that if he’s unlikely to even read the letter, then it doesn’t matter. You don’t expect anything to come of it, but the thought of sending a message feels like the most fun you’ve had in years.
You press the pen to the paper.
‘Dear Big Bad Ghost,’
A quiet giggle escapes you at that, the kind that bubbles up when you know you’re doing something absolutely stupid. But really, what’s the harm? You have nothing to lose, no reputation at stake, and no consequences beyond a letter that will likely end up thrown in a trashcan. You might as well have some fun with it. A little tongue-in-cheek humor never hurt anyone.
Your pen glides across the paper, words spilling faster than you can second-guess them. You tell him how you found out about him, how you saw his face flash across your TV screen, how his name is spoken like an urban legend on the news channels. And—because there’s no point in pretending otherwise—you admit the truth outright: you thought he was hot, because—let’s be honest—you wouldn’t be doing something this rash if he wasn’t (you make sure to write that, too).
You just keep going. You tell him you’re 24, impossibly lonely and still a virgin, stuck working at Tesco with the worst coworkers possible, with little excitement in your life. You’re sure you’ve painted yourself as painfully average, definitely the most boring woman on the planet, though you wonder if that in itself might intrigue him. Or maybe he won’t care at all. Either way, the words are already there, ink drying on the page.
You tell him that if this were happening back in the States, they’d have slapped him with a RICO charge so fast he’d get whiplash—but lucky for him, he’s dealing with the UK’s legal system instead. A small mercy, though not much of one.
Your pen barely lifts from the paper as you continue. If he ever gets out, you tell him, your door is open for a ‘good time’. You underline it for emphasis, like a wink through the page, though you’re quick to add that, realistically, you’re sure he’ll be locked up for life.
Still, you suppose, even the worst criminals must get bored. Maybe he’ll want a pen pal to entertain him for the rest of his days.
You sit back, tapping the pen against your chin as you reread the letter. It’s ridiculous, a tad insane, but the thrill of it makes your stomach buzz. Some prison guard will probably skim it, roll their eyes, and toss it straight into the bin.
But still…
You scrawl your name at the bottom and the moment the ink dries, you tear the page from your journal, fold it neatly, and slide it into an envelope. You write your address in the return section. Just in case. Your fingers hesitate at the edge, but before second thoughts can creep in, you lick the edges, the bitter taste making you wince and seal it shut.
Next thing you know, you’re sliding on some slippers, unlocking the front door, and stepping into the cool night air. The mailbox is just a few paces from your front door. The world has gone to sleep for tonight.
You reach the rusted blue box, heart hammering as you pull open the slot. The envelope feels heavier now like it carries more weight than it should. You hover there for a second longer than necessary, gripping the paper between your fingers.
And then you let it go. It’s chilling how easy it is.
The past two weeks have passed in a blur of work, exhaustion, and the crushing weight of an uninspired routine. You’ve long since moved on from the letter. You’ve nearly forgotten about it entirely. Life doesn’t give you much room to dwell on dumb things like that—not when you spend your days dodging entitled customers and biting back the urge to commit minor acts of violence in the break room.
Today was particularly brutal. Some guy spent ten minutes arguing with you over a 5 quid price difference like it was a matter of life and death. A toddler managed to knock over an entire display of crisps while her mom scrolled through Instagram, blissfully unaware. By the time your shift ended, you felt like you’d been put through a meat grinder and then asked to clock out with a smile.
Rush hour on the train only adds insult to injury. Someone sneezes directly onto the back of your neck. Another person else eats an offensively pungent egg sandwich within arm’s reach. You spend the entire ride back gripping the overhead rail and wondering why you ever thought adulthood would be anything more than a slow, soul-draining trudge toward the grave.
By the time you finally get home, your body aches with exhaustion that seeps into your bones. You kick off your shoes, chuck your bag onto the floor, and drag yourself toward the kitchen. There’s no energy left in you for cooking, so you grab some leftover takeout from the fridge and toss it into the microwave, staring blankly at the rotating container as it whirs to life. No, it’s not the same takeout from two weeks ago.
You settle onto the couch with your dinner, flicking through the limited selection of channels. With an eye roll, you settle on the news once more, just as a reporter’s voice cuts in, crisp and professional.
At first, you’re barely paying attention, too focused on shoveling lukewarm noodles into your mouth. But then—
BREAKING NEWS: MASS PRISON RIOT ENSUES AT BELMARSH – GHOST AT LARGE
The bold red banner streaks across the screen, sharp and urgent. Your fork stalls midway to your mouth, noodles slipping off the prongs and back into the container as your brain struggles to catch up.
The news anchor doesn’t miss a beat, her voice steady, polished, and edged with just the right amount of alarm:
“Authorities have confirmed a large-scale riot at Belmarsh Prison earlier this evening, resulting in multiple casualties and the escape of several high-profile inmates—including ‘Ghost’, who was awaiting trial for dozens of indictable offenses.”
Your stomach tightens.
Ghost might be on your doorstep and London might look like Gotham, all before dawn even breaks tomorrow.
For a moment, you simply sit there, absorbing the weight of it. You should probably be more concerned. Probably get up, lock the doors, check your windows, and maybe even send a half-hearted text to your parents that, no, you haven’t been stabbed or kidnapped yet.
After a few more seconds you wisen up, mentally slapping yourself. Super-Mega-Criminal-Ghost has bigger problems than tracking down a random girl who sent him one dumb letter out of the hundreds you’re sure he’s gotten. You’re not special. You’re not even remotely relevant in this situation.
Your eyes lock onto the screen as aerial footage of Belmarsh fills the frame. The prison looks like something out of a videogame—thick plumes of smoke curling into the night sky, roaring flames illuminating figures in riot gear as they swarm the perimeter, floodlights sweeping across the wreckage of what was, until hours ago, one of the most secure facilities in the country. Sirens wail in the background.
Somewhere in that chaos, a man you sent a letter to—that more closely resembled a dating profile— has vanished into thin air.
You exhale, exhausted and too tired to brood on it further. Even if he did show up and break down your door, you’re sure your life couldn’t get worse, so you decide to ignore the news and reach for the remote. With a press of a button, the world of reports and fear-mongering headlines is cut off and replaced by the manufactured warmth of a sitcom.
The studio audience laughs on cue.
You force yourself to eat, to go through the motions. Take small, measured bites, as if chewing will somehow settle the restless feeling creeping up your spine.
It doesn’t.
When you finish the sad lump of noodles, you head to the kitchen. Dishes clink as you rinse them, your mind half-present as your body moves on autopilot.
By the time you’ve cleaned up, the tension in your body has quieted. You tell yourself it’s fine. You’re fine. It’s just another night with one more thing to add to the ever-growing list of reasons why this city is exhausting.
You make your way to the bathroom with a sigh, shutting the door behind you. The day clings to your skin, heavy and lingering, but the promise of hot water is enough to shake off the worst of it.
You twist the shower knob. Pipes groan, then sputter, before a steady stream rushes out. You strip down, kicking your dirty clothes into the corner as steam billows, curling against the mirror until your reflection blurs.
After testing the water with your hand, you step in, a sharp inhale slipping past your lips as the warmth crashes over you. It seeps into your muscles, loosening tension you hadn’t even realized you were still holding. You tilt your head back, eyes fluttering shut as you let it pour over you.
Your body moves through the motions on autopilot. Shampoo, scrubbed into your scalp. Conditioner, combed through the ends with your fingers. The buy-one-get-one soap glides over your skin, the scent of cheap vanilla and pomegranate thick in the humid air, mingling with the steam that cocoons you. You carefully shave where necessary before the water washes everything away.
You finish your shower, stepping out into the warm fog of steam clinging to the bathroom walls. You take your towel off the hook and drag it over your skin, patting your hair just enough to keep it from dripping but not enough to fully dry it.
Right now, all you want is to crawl into bed and pretend this night is just like any other, despite the very real fact that the London Bridge might actually go down overnight.
You don’t bother wrapping the towel around yourself. There’s no point. It’s just you here—always, unfortunately, just you. As much as you wish that wasn’t the case, there’s no reason to pretend otherwise.
Pushing open the bathroom door, steam rushes past you, rolling into the hallway like a ghost of its own. The air is cooler than usual, biting at your damp skin. A shiver rolls through you, goosebumps prickling to life as you clutch the towel tighter around yourself.
You move quickly, bare feet padding against the floor, the cool air chasing you down the hall. You shake it off, the shower was especially hot today, after all.
Once inside your bedroom, you flick on the small lamp on your bedside table. The weak glow struggles against the shadows, barely illuminating the room beyond a soft, feeble pool of light. You sigh, staring at it for a moment. You really should invest in another one, something stronger, something that does its job—but the thought of subjecting yourself to the blinding glare of overhead lighting is unbearable.
The usual cool breeze from the window rolls in and whisks against your skin as you stand in front of the large mirror sitting atop your dresser, as naked as the day you were born. You absentmindedly rub lotion onto your arms and legs, the smooth cream sinking into your skin with satisfying ease, a small act of self-care amidst the shit-show of your life. You swipe on some deodorant, a miscellaneous powdery scent briefly masking the other smells that linger in your room.
You pull open the top drawer, fingers brushing past folded fabric until you find a pair of plain black no-show panties. The material is soft between your fingertips.
You hook your thumbs into the waistband, bending slightly as you slide the fabric up your legs, smooth against your skin. It settles high on your hips, snug and familiar.
But as you straighten, the air feels different.
Your breath stalls, a tight, involuntary hitch in your throat. A prickle skates down your spine, the hairs on the back of your neck rising, your body sensing the shift before your mind can grasp it. Then comes the scent. Subtle quickly shifts to suffocating.
Ash, woody and bitter like a lonely bonfire.
Gunpowder, metallic and pungent like a shrill war cry.
And beneath it all, something brutally masculine. Utterly tart, like blood welling on your tongue, bitter, metallic, yet impossible to spit out so you’re forced to swallow.
You’re still facing the mirror, bare skin gleaming under the dim light, damp where the shower’s heat still lingers. Your reflection is all soft curves and slow, steady breaths, the delicate contrast of black fabric against your skin.
But you’re not looking at yourself anymore.
Your eyes are locked onto something else. Someone else.
Over your right shoulder, a hulking figure sits backward in your desk chair, big, long legs spread on either side, the heavy, shadowy outline of him filling the space behind you. His presence is so sudden, so jarring, that it takes you a moment to even process it. From what you can make out, he is facing you, arms crossed over the backrest like he owns the room.
You’re frozen, trapped in your own body, your mind a tangled mess of confusion and fear. You scramble to process how this could even be happening. Your eyes dart to the window over your left shoulder in the reflection, the wind howling on cue as if to mock you.
Your window is violently wrenched ajar, and suddenly, the drop in temperature makes sense. That’s what you felt earlier—the sudden chill that wrapped around you the second you stepped out of the bathroom. How you didn’t feel it moments ago is beyond you.
Your heart pounds in your ears, a brutal thundering that mutes the voice in your head telling you to run, single-handedly hijacking every morsel of reason you possess. Each beat is so violent, that you think you can feel your ribs splintering, cracking to make room.
You can’t help but stare at yourself, standing there, exposed and utterly vulnerable, tits perked and on display like it’s time for Sunday dinner. But it’s impossible to make yourself move. Your feet feel like cinder blocks.
Your eyes flick back to him.
He hasn’t moved. Not an inch. A statue of flesh and shadow, his towering frame swallowing the space behind you. Your breath stutters as your gaze collides with his—an accident, a mistake. Dark eyes, barely visible, catch the light as he leans in, closer, closer still.
You regret it instantly. Your stomach flips, twisting in on itself as something molten ignites deep inside you. Butterflies—you’re sure—but they feel wrong, tainted, clawing their way up your throat, wings drenched in bile, desperate to break free.
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t even breathe.
Just silen—
“Shouldn’t’ve given a dog a bone, Girl.”
Oh.
Oh.
Shit.
You swallow, the motion sharp and dry, as your eyes fixate on the sliver of him that the mirror allows you to see. Your tongue feels like it’s too big for your mouth, thick and clumsy, but it's not just that—it’s as though it’s been wrung dry like you’ve forgotten how to speak, how to make any sound at all.
Could be fight, could be flight—or could be sheer, reckless stupidity. Superficial courage floods your veins, burning hot and impulsive. You don’t know where it comes from, only that it’s there, forcing you to turn, to face him, not through the mirror’s reflection but for real, head-on. Your body obeys even as your mind screams to stop, to run, to do anything but face the giant sitting in the chair behind you. It must be adrenaline.
You pivot, and the room changes. It warps.
He fills the room—dominates it—far more than four walls should ever allow, and far more than your traitorous mirror portrayed. His frame is more ape than human, more God than man, every inch of him radiating undomesticated power that seems to bend the very air around him like a mirage.
He’s dressed in grey, prison-issued sweatpants, the soft fabric taut over his thick, spread thighs. A matching grey sweatshirt is tied around his waist, a small, white wife-beater stretched across his chest. The fabric strains against the thickness of his body, pecs beneath like boulders, barely contained by the threadbare material. The shirt looks as though it might snap under the sheer pressure of him.
It almost seems pointless for him to wear it.
A sick part of you wishes he didn’t.
Around his neck, a set of dog tags dangles, the metal catching the light as it sways in rhythm with his slow, steady breaths. His arms are a canvas of dark ink—twisting amalgamations of war and death, flames and ruin etched into his skin. The same balaclava you’ve seen on your screen stretches over his face, but it feels even more menacing now.
His eyes—dark brown, nearly black—burn as they lock onto you. There’s an eerie glow to them, a depth that makes your stomach twist. You can barely make out their full shape, but you feel the weight of his gaze, the way it maps your body with an intensity that singes. He’s memorizing you, branding you into his mind, scorching every visible inch of your skin just by looking.
Which, right now, is essentially all of it.
It’s suffocating, and overwhelming. The space around you seems to shrink, the walls pressing inward, forcing you to feel the heft of his presence. Your bubble, your safe little world, vanishes, replaced by the oppressive weight of him, his sheer size and power making the room feel like a part of a dollhouse, too small to contain him. Every breath feels harder to take like you’re drowning, and he’s the rip current that dragged you out from shore and pushed you under.
And then, as if sensing your every thought, as if aware of your discomfort and your disbelief, he shifts. Just a subtle movement at first. But a shift is all it takes before he’s not sitting anymore.
Your breath catches in your throat, as he slowly rises from the chair, taking up even more of the room, shadow growing longer in his wake, his muscles rippling in the lamplight. He doesn’t rush. No, there’s no need. He moves, each large step bringing him closer to you.
All that ‘courage’ drained. You never thought you’d be the frozen-in-fear type, but here you are, your body stiff and uncooperative as you look up at him. Your neck cranes back further and further, unwillingly following as he stalks toward you, each step near imperceptible to the ear. At least you know why you didn’t hear him come in.
You’re backed flush against your dresser, your breath coming in shallow gasps, your chest tight with panic, but you can’t look away. You don’t even know if you want to. There’s a strange magnetism to him, something almost predatory in the way he moves, so controlled, so sure.
It’s addicting.
Your thighs clench together at the internal acceptance, a small attempt at some kind of control over the sick part of your brain that’s turned on by this.
“Quiet little thing.” His voice is low, gravelly like it’s been rubbed raw, but there’s a hint of amusement in it, a wicked edge that makes your skin prickle and your cunt gush. He takes another step closer, a mere foot away, the distance between you is agonizing. “Glad you’re not a screamer.”
He pauses just in front of you, towering over you. The weight of his gaze chokes you like a noose. He doesn’t miss when your thighs clench. You could have sworn you saw the flicker of a smile beneath the balaclava, though it’s hard to tell.
“I’m not gonna bite, Girl,” he tuts, “unless y’want me to.”
The way he says it—so carnivorously—sends a jolt of electricity down your spine, a hot flush of pure shame of pooling low in your stomach. You're still frozen, unsure whether you should respond, run, or drop to your knees.
“Y’sent me a letter,” he continues, his voice softening just slightly as his eyes flick to your tits like he’s checking out a new appliance.
“Tellin’ me all about your boring little life,” He steps even closer, “And that sweet little cunt, untouched like you want me t’make it mine.”
You try to speak, but only your mouth moves, your vocal cords too dry, too hoarse, and your throat constricted. He notices. The slight twitch of his lips like he’s enjoying how utterly speechless you are, how dumb you look.
“Y’want me t’make it mine? Hmm? That why you gave a ‘Big Bad’ man your address?”
You swallow in an attempt to lubricate your throat, but it’s futile. Is this what you were subconsciously hoping for when you wrote down which street you lived on and your apartment number? Did you want this? Were you that lonely—that desperate?
“Can y’imagine how hard I came,” he leans over you, his breath hot against your ear, you feel it through the mask, “How I rubbed my cock raw to the thought of some dumb virgin with the audacity of a dozen slags?”
Yeah. You were that desperate.
You nearly whimper at the way he talks to you. You finally manage to take a breath, your voice barely more than a whisper. “I— I didn’t think you’d—”
He cocks his head slightly as if considering your words “What? Didn’t think I’d show?” he repeats, dragging the words out slowly, a smirk curling at the edges of his lips as if he’s savoring the mockery in them. “You invited me here. It’d be rude to reject such a generous offer.”
You bite back a scoff. As if he’s so gracious, breaking into your house and cornering you while you’re naked. Talk about audacity.
“Go fuck yourself.”
“I have,” he shoots back, shrugging almost imperceptibly as his hands find your hips, tracing the fabric of your panties, eyes darkening at the way your mons dimples beneath his thumbs. “Won’t be as good as her.”
Your pulse spikes, a mix of anger and something darker curling in your chest. You should shove him away, scream at him to get out, but his hands are so warm when they hold you. The proximity of his body has you paralyzed, his hands still firm on your hips, as if to remind you that he can have his way with you at a moment’s notice.
You open your mouth to speak, but his hand moves higher, wrapping around your waist, while the other slides down to grip your ass, pulling you against him with a force that leaves no space between your bodies. The words die in your throat as your tits collide with his stomach and your cheek presses into his chest, the hard beat of his heart thudding beneath your ear, as he holds you there, pinning you in some weird, bone-crushing hug.
He smells like soap and something musky and everything you’d expect a fugitive to smell like, like cigarette ash and a smidge of gunpowder. It makes your pulse stutter, like a drug you didn’t know you were addicted to. You can’t help but melt into his strong frame despite your brain screaming at you to push him away.
“Y’feel that, sweetheart?” he hums, his hand kneading the fat of your ass, pressing his bulge against your pelvis through his sweatpants. “Ever felt a cock that big before?”
“Please,” you whisper, the plea a stark contrast to the defiance you try to muster. Your body trembles, a mix of fear and blistering heat. “Just... don't.”
He chuckles, a low, mocking sound. “Don't what, sweetheart?” he murmurs, his fingers rising from your ass to trace the delicate line of your throat. “Don't touch you? Don't remind you of what y’are?”
He tips your head up to his as you flinch at his words, the truth of them cutting deeper than any physical blow. “I…” you stammer, faltering as you meet his dark hazel eyes.
“Virgin,” he deadpans as he grips your chin between his digits, “Y’terrified. It's written all over your face, baby” He coos condescendingly, eyes scanning your body, lingering on the cute flush in your cheeks, “Curious, too, aren't you? Wondering what it would be like.”
You swallow hard, eyes flicking away from his. “No,” you lie, the denial weak and utterly unconvincing.
He lets out a low, exasperated grunt, like you’re testing his patience, like this is tedious for him. And then, without warning, his hands clamp around your thighs, lifting you effortlessly before settling you atop the dresser. His grip is firm as he pushes your legs apart, spreading them as far as they’ll go to make room for himself. The wood is cold against your skin, a stark contrast to the heat radiating from him, from the rough drag of his palms as they find purchase on the soft flesh of your thighs, from where he dips his head to your throat.
“Don’t fuckin’ lie to me, sweetheart,” You don’t know when he pulled his mask up, but you can feel his canines graze against your jugular, making you wince. He crowds your space, forcing you to tilt back until you’re leaning against the mirror, until there’s nowhere to go. You can feel his lips twitch against the skin of your neck, the ghost of a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.
“I can smell your cunt.” He licks a fat, hot stripe from your collarbone, past your jaw, and to your cheek, all before growling in your ear, “She’s droolin’ f’me, ain’t she? Gonna give me a taste o' her?”
Your eyebrows knit at the feel of his tongue slobbering all over you. Your breath hitches, and you can’t help but tremble. You can feel your panties sticking to your folds, but you’ve never been this wet before. “I... I don't know,” you whimpered, overwhelmed by everything he was making you feel.
“Don't know? Please,” he scoffs, his voice thick with disdain. Without any hesitation, both of his hands find the gusset of your panties, balling them before ripping them in half. You yelp as they fall and settle against the dresser top. “Awh. Look at that,” he gets to his knees, thumbs spreading your glistening folds. “She's leakin’ onto my hand." He chuckles as he stares at the dampness between your legs.
He lunges forward, his mouth latching to your pussy like it promised him a million dollars. A strangled moan rips through you as his tongue swirls and plunges into your weeping hole, mimicking the thrusts he intends to deliver later. He laps and nips, teeth gently but fervently grazing your clit, sending shivers of both pleasure and terror through your body.
Your head jerks back, waves of pleasure that have you gasping for air. His tongue works you in ways that should be illegal. You cling to the edge of the dresser, your knuckles turning white as he buries his face in you. You peer down at him as he eats you, his mask pulled over his nose.
“Whinin’ already?” he growls, his voice muffled against your cunt. He sucks harder, reveling in the way you arch your back and press your hips into his face. “Like a bitch in heat.” Your hands find his head and he suckles at your clit harder, eliciting a string of please, please, please’s from you.
“Beg for it,” he commands, “Beg to come on m’tongue, baby.”
“Yes,” you choked out in a gasp, the word a desperate plea lost in a wave of overwhelming sensation. Your body thrums with frantic energy, every nerve ending firing in a symphony as you desperately claw at his balaclava, nearly smothering him. “Please,” you beg, your voice thick with need. “Please, I— ‘m—”
He pulls away from you, gasping for air. His eyes find yours and he lands a firm slap to your cunt, making you jolt. “Tell me,” he hisses. “Tell me y’want to come for me.”
“I... I want to,” you gasped, your body trembling on the verge of collapse. “I wanna come for you, Ghost— Please—.”
“Good fuckin’ whore,” he slaps your cunt again, before diving back in, his hot tongue carding through your folds. He slips his ring and middle finger into your hole and you wail as he massages your g-spot. He slobbers on your clit, wet squelches echoing through the room as you feel the coil tightening in your belly. “Come, let me taste this slutty fuckin’ pussy.”
A strangled cry rips through you as the pleasure reaches its peak, a blinding wave of sensation that absolutely shatters your control. You convulse around him and he has to hold you still, pinning your hips down as your muscles clench and release in a series of involuntary spasms that make up the best orgasm of your life. Hot, thick spurts of cum flood his mouth as you croak out a broken string of curses and moans.
He laps at you unhurriedly, savoring the taste, the feel of your release coating his tongue. “Fuck,” he moans, his voice rough with satisfaction. He pulls back, lips and chin glistening, and looks up at you with a smirk. “Love you virgins. Come so easily.”
Heat surges up your neck, pooling in your cheeks—a traitorous flush of shame that only worsens when you try to press your legs together. You didn’t think it would affect you like this, didn’t think you’d feel a spark of something twisted at being called the most horrific of names.
Your gaze darts away from his, unable to withstand the weight of it. Your hands move on instinct, a feeble attempt to shield yourself, to reclaim some sense of control. “Stop staring,” you whisper, not used to having eyes on you. But even to your own ears, it sounds weak—like a plea rather than a command.
He chuckles, a low, mocking sound as he rises to his feet, pressing his massive bulge against your bare cunt. “Stop what? Admiring my handiwork?” He reaches out, his fingers tracing the curve of your cheek before harshly squishing them between his index and thumb, your lips puckering. “Don't be shy, sweetheart. You should feel lucky. Could’ve ruined this pretty fuckin’ mouth instead.”
You bite your lip at the thought of taking him in your mouth, stretching your throat and making you gag. He was so big, would stretch your pussy so good and you know it. He could give you what you’ve been wanting, what you’ve been needing. Tears prickle your eyes as you recover from your orgasm. “Just... fuck me, Please…?” you hum, unsure..
He grins, briefly flashing his teeth in the dim light. “Eager, are we?” He straightens, pulling you by your knees to stand on your feet. “Don't worry. Got more in store for you.”
He hauls you off of your dresser and toward your bed without much effort. Your legs feel like jelly and you trip over yourself, falling back onto the mattress, your body bouncing with the impact. He chuckles as he moves toward you, looming over you, his eyes burning with lust at the sight of you all spread out beneath him.
He reaches for the hem of his wife beater and pulls it over his head, tossing it aside without care, not bothering to take off his balaclava. You drag your gaze over his broad torso, taking in every inch as he stands before you. His muscles shift beneath scarred skin, every ridge and plane carved by years of violence you can’t even begin to imagine. Scars that have scars, bright pink wounds closed over. His dog tags rest between his pecs, gleaming dully against the heat of him.
Your eyes trail lower, catching on the unmistakable wet patch darkening his sweatpants, a frighteningly long outline of his hard cock to accompany it. He watches you closely as your gaze traces the contours of his body, a smirk playing at the corners of his lips.
"Like what you see, Girl?" His voice is low, thick with a dark amusement. It’s rhetorical, he knows you do. Without breaking eye contact, he slides his fingers into the waistband of his sweatpants and pulls them down, revealing his length with a singular motion.
No underwear. A Right dog, he is.
Your breath hitches, a gasp trapped in your throat as you take in the full view. His cock is thick and heavy. A brutal, veined length that periodically twitches every time his gaze drops to your sodden cunt. A thatch of dark, dirty blonde hair frames its base, leading up to his navel. The uncircumcised head glistens in the lamplight, a single drop of pre drooling from his tip. You wish you could flick your tongue against it, gulping down every ounce of his slick he’d be willing to let you swallow.
“What’d y’want?”
You can't form the words, your mind blank, throat tight with a mix of fear and anticipation, the air heavy with implicit tension and the scent of sex.
How could he even fit inside of you?
You just dumbly nod in response to whatever he said. Meek, almost imperceptible.
He tuts, “Noddin’ ain’t enough, sweets,” he growled. “You’re a big girl, ain’t you?
“I…” you stammer, your cheeks burning with shame at saying something so lewd out loud. “I want…”
“Say it,” he taunts as he takes his cock in his hands, pumping slowly. His voice is like thunder, a low, dangerous rumble. “Say y’want this cock.”
“I... I want your cock,” you whisper, the words barely audible. You’re too focused on the way his pre drips onto your spread pussy.
“Louder,” he demands, landing a firm slap against your clit. “Can't hear you.”
“I want your cock,” you enunciated, your voice a little stronger this time.
“Louder, y’fuckin’ slag—”
“I want your fucking cock!” you shout, the words echoing through the room.
He shrugs and a satisfied smirk spreads across his face. “Geez, all y’had to do was ask.”
You could slap him.
He positions himself between your legs, the bed dipping as he crawls closer to you. He takes your thighs in his hands, pressing them up to your chest. His knees dimple the duvet on either side of your hips, the ruddy head of his cock tracing the puffy folds of your entrance. Each time his tip grazes your clit, a tremor runs through your body.
“So fuckin’ sensitive,” he groans, “So wet f’me, too, Christ.”
He presses forward, your pussy stretching taut over his mushroomed tip. You wince, your eyebrows knitting in pain. He was huge, impossibly thick, and the feeling of him pushing against your sensitive flesh was both terrifying and exhilarating.
“Gonna split this cunny in half, girl,” he winces as you pulse around him. He draws tight circles on your clit and you’re reeling, choking on your own gasps, “gonna feel me in y’fuckin’ throat.”
He pushes himself deeper, inch by agonizing inch until he sheaths himself inside of you completely. Tears stream down your face, a mixture of pain and pleasure overwhelming you. You cry out at the stretch, your body arching into his as your hands search for anything to steady yourself, settling on the hard plains of his back.
“Jesus baby, so tight,” he grunts, stalled inside of you as he tries not to blow his load. “So fucking tight.”
You slowly loosen around him as you adapt to his size, but the burn still has you lightheaded. You've never been so full in your life. Your nails claw into his back, leaving raw streaks and crescent-shaped marks on his scarred skin. “Fuck me,” you rasp, “Please, Ghost, fuck me.” Your hips buck involuntarily as you babble, desperate for more of him.
He chuckles a low, guttural sound that you swear you can feel vibrating through your body. “Cock-drunk already, are we?” he taunts, “Fuckin’ whore,” He pulls back slightly before plunging forward with renewed force, cramming his cock against your cervix, hitting places you couldn’t even reach with your own fingers.
He was right. You could feel him everywhere, stretching you, filling you, owning you, utterly consuming you. Every thrust punched the air out of you, the rhythmic plap, plap, plap of his thighs meeting yours reverberating through the room as he fucked you.
“Fuck me harder, I need you— please—” You were so close already, worked up from your last orgasm and already teetering on the edge of another, the pleasure building each time the head of his cock strokes your g-spot. He picks up the pace with a groan and hammers into you, unable to breathe as his cock stretches you to your limits.
“Ghost,” you sob, fat tears falling from your eyes, wetting your cheeks before you can stop them. His name escapes your lips through hiccups, unable to think of anything except how full you feel, how you could’ve possibly missed out on this for so long.
He slaps your cheek, the sting is a sudden shock that jolts you back to the present. “Stop fuckin’ callin’ me that,” he snarls, his voice thick with pure sex and an edge of possessiveness, just lurking beneath his words. He leans directly over you, your legs pinned between his torso and yours. He groans before shrugging up his balaclava and licking your stray tears. You’re too deep in it to fully process, too consumed by the heat of the moment to care.
“Call me Simon when I fuck you,” he rasps against your lips,
“Say it.”
“S—Sim—on,” you mewl, your voice punctuated by each of his thrusts. “S—simon, p—ple—ase…”
“Please what?” he snarls, the head of his cock devastatingly rubbing your g-spot with each thrust, “Please fuck you harder? Please make you cream all over this cock?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” you wail, your body writhing beneath him. “Please, Simon— Fuck!”
“Atta fuckin’ girl,” he praises through gritted teeth, and with renewed vigor, he fucks you harder, caging you in as he fucks you into the mattress, each stroke shoving you farther up the bed.
“Squeezin’ me so tight,” he rasps, “So fucking tight.” he gripped your thighs harder, the fat dimpling beneath his fingers, surely to bruise in the morning. He presses you further, painfully folded in half. “Feel me? Feel how deep I am inside o’ you?”
You gasp, your body trembling, heat pooling low in your belly, sparks shooting up your spine, “Yes,” you breathed, your voice a strained whisper. “Too much... it's so much, Si—”
You’re on the edge, pressure just building and tightening as your walls pulse around him, ready to milk him for all he’s worth. His hips stutter and he knows he’s done for. “Fuck, let go, Let it happen, pet,”
At his command, a raw, guttural cry tears from your throat, and a shattered echo of his name launches into the humid air. It isn’t much of a word, not really, but a primal sound, a desperate, broken exclamation born from the white-hot core of your pleasure.
Your back arches, lifting you off the bed, your spine a rigid curve against his. Your hips buck wildly against his, grinding and shuddering. The hot, slick rush of your release coats his cock. It spreads across his abdomen and your thighs as well, a glistening sheen in the dim light. Your breath hitches and ragged gasps escape your lips as the waves of pleasure wash over you.
The world narrows, focusing solely on the feel of his skin on your own as he still thrusts into you, telling you to “Cream this fuckin’ cock,” as he groans, just as lost in the pleasure as you. The aftershocks of your orgasm reverberate through you, leaving you trembling and weak as he fucks you through it to reach his own.
A series of breathy moans escape his lips in tandem with yours, each one a ragged exhale as his hips begin to twitch, thrusts growing sloppy as you pulse around him, energy rippling through his muscles as his own orgasm approaches.
“Oh-,” he breathes, his voice a low, jagged rasp, a guttural urging. “Fuck! Fuck— Shit, just like that, girl.” His hips slam against yours, a final, desperate thrust that presses him flush against your cunt. He spills inside you, a hot, thick tide of his cum flooding your cunt. Ropes of his seed paint your inner walls, as far as he can reach, marking you as his. A wave of heat pulses through you, the feeling of him filling you completely, claiming you from the inside out.
Eventually, the tremors die down, and he rolls off you, the sudden absence of his weight pinning you down leaving you feeling strangely hollow. Your thighs fall limply as he lets go of them, a strange ache that almost bothers you.
A low chuckle rumbles in his chest, a sound of contentment.
“Broken little bird aren’t you?” he drawls..
You lift your head to see him eye-level with your pussy, watching as his cum leaks out of you. You lay still, your body aching, your mind spinning. You want to protest, to deny his words and shut your legs, but you don’t think you could form a genuine sentence if you tried.
Not only did you (finally) lose your virginity, but you lost it to a criminal. That broke into your house.
He moves to sit next to your laid figure and reaches out, his fingers tracing the delicate curve of your jaw, his touch surprisingly gentle. “Don't look so glum, sweetheart,” he murmurs, his voice softening slightly. “You did well,”
“for a first-timer.”
A blush creeps up your neck, and you instinctively turn your face away, curling into yourself. “Shut up,” you mutter, your voice hoarse.
He lets out a low, husky chuckle. “Oh, usin’ fightin’ words now, are we?” His fingers find a stray strand of your hair, twisting it lazily between calloused fingertips. “Funny, didn’t see you puttin’ up much of a fight five minutes ag—”
You don’t let him finish. Grabbing a tousled pillow, you launch it at his face. It bounces off his head with a pathetic little thump. He snorts, catching it mid-air, the plush looking comically small in his massive hands.
“Oh, we’re throwin’ shit now?” He smirks, squeezing the poor thing for emphasis. “Little minx—”
The sudden blare of the doorbell slices through the moment. You both freeze.
His eyes flick toward the door, sharp and assessing, mood immediately changing. “You expectin’ anyone?”
You shake your head. “No.”
His jaw tightens. The weight of reality comes crashing back. He’s a fugitive, and did, in fact, break into your house.
“I’ll get it,” you hum, already moving.
He gives a slow nod, hungrily watching as you rummage through your dresser for something decent. You yank an oversized T-shirt over your head and grab the first pair of pants you can find, his sweats. They nearly slide right off your hips, the waistband hanging dangerously loose, but there’s no time to fix it.
You leave the bedroom, your pulse drumming in your ears as you make your way to the front door. The second you pull it open, your stomach drops.
Two cops.
Their faces are unreadable, their eyes scanning you, the dim space behind you, everything. “Evening, miss. Sorry to bother you, but we’re making the rounds,” one of them says, flashing a tight-lipped smile. “You seen anything suspicious? Anything out of the ordinary?”
Your fingers tighten around the doorframe. You think of Simon. His hands on your waist, the weight of him between your legs, the low rasp of his voice still ringing in your ears. But you swallow hard and shake your head.
“No, nothing,” you say, keeping your voice light, casual. “Why?”
The other officer exhales sharply, shifting his weight. “ Highly dangerous man on the loose. Escaped with the rest of those arseholes from Belmarsh. Last spotted in this area.” His gaze flicks past you again, scanning the dreary interior of your flat. “Figured we’d check in, see if anyone’s seen him.”
You school your face into something neutral, shaking your head again. “Haven’t seen anything lately, sorry to disappoint.”
They watch you for a second too long. You wonder if they can hear your heartbeat slamming against your ribs. But finally, they nod.
“All right. Just be careful, ma’am. Lock your doors.”
“Will do,” you say, forcing a tight-lipped smile of your own.
You shut the door.
Your heart is pounding. You press your back against the timber, exhaling sharply before pushing off and heading back to the bedroom.
“Simon—” you call, nudging the door open.
The bed is empty, sheets tangled, the ghost of his warmth already fading. The curtains billow, the night air slithering in, laced with the scent of him—sex, sweat, something else that’s so distinctly him.
He’s gone.
But ghosts always return to their haunt.
Another pitstop to hell @diejager - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
