sanguiphage; vampire arlecchino/reader ficlet. cw: mentions of blood-drinking, one mention of suggestive content (deflowering/virginity loss); otherwise tame. Small snippet. mdni
One night, you get the courage to ask would you ever drink from me?
Arlecchino’s reaction is immediate. No. Not something gentle or reassuring, no, my love, never; nor is it something ambiguous or coy, such as is this an invitation? No, no such thing was the case this time. She hadn’t even spared you a sidelong glance from the rim of her glass as she denied you, shot you down the moment you posed the question.
You hadn’t anticipated such a strong reaction, or such a firm tone of voice. No? You’d asked. Pushing the issue was toeing a line you know would create friction, and irritating a vampire wasn’t of interest to you, to put it mildly. If you pushed, you were sure you’d find out what her fangs feel like, all without a tender kiss to chase it like the novels sung of.
That's where this initial intrigue came from, in essence; novels spoke of vampiric lovers, and how intimate of a union it could be, to be bitten for the first time. Many authors thought it to be like an act of deflowering. The shedding of virgin blood occurs one way or another.
No, Arlecchino reiterates, just as firm, softening her bite. She realized she startled you, and a light sigh bleeds the tension from her shoulders. You unconsciously follow suit.
You swallow. If I may, you broach, is there… A particular reason?
You’re not my food, Arlecchino deadpans. It’s so sincere and simple that it jars you a tad. I wouldn’t debase you in such a way. It’s unbecoming and barbaric.
Oh, is all you can bring yourself to say. How… gentlemanly.
Arlecchino sips her blood-wine and hums noncommittally. Stop reading those novels. They’re fiction, and that’s all they will be.
a/n: busy at work, busy in life. making cookies is hard work, you know. I hope my absence wasn't too detrimental.
nightmare; vampire arlecchino&reader; platonic hurt/comfort. cw: violent imagery, gore mentioned, death mentioned, blood mentioned. implied anxiety/panic.
Father’s most important rule was to stay inside your rooms until the crimson moon has set.
The first time you heard it was upon your entry into the House of the Hearth. It was nestled amidst a slew of rules that rushed you like an oncoming flood: clean up after yourself every meal, wash up before and after every meal, leave your shoes at the doorway, gather your laundry every Tuesday so the older children may do the washing. Between mentions of curfews and homework, one older child had said oh, and whenever there’s a lunar eclipse – whatever that was – don’t bother Father. Last kid to do that never returned.
When you looked puzzled, the kid explained a strange phenomenon wherein the moon became red, for some reason. Something about shadows and alignment. You aren’t supposed to be out of bed after that point, but don’t be caught on that night especially. Father will not be pleased.
You had every intention of following that rule. Truly, you did.
Something happened one night where the moon ran blood-red. You awoke, ensnared in your covers, strangled in heat and drowned in a cold sweat. You clawed like a trapped fox at the sheets and the comforter, kicking it off just to gasp for air and to rip the sweltering warmth from your skin. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. You dragged in a deep breath so swiftly your lungs ached. Forcing yourself to breathe out slowly was a tactic Father taught you. Control is your greatest strength. Control your breathing, and you control your nerves. Control your nerves, and your body and mind are your own.
Control. Control, you repeat in your whirling mind. The words pierced the maelstrom that formed the remnants of your dream.
Dream. It was a dream. A nightmare, more accurately, with storms and monsters and wolf-men ripping your siblings to shreds. Their fabricated screams rang in your ears and their blood flashed ugly and red behind your eyelids as you blinked. Control. You breathed in, breathed out.
Then it ebbed. Then it disappeared. Nightmares and their fear factor were fleeting things. Mere moments after your mind came to, and after you registered you were safe, the images melted like wax to a flame.
You exhaled and swung your legs off the side of the bed. When nightmares left, the unease stayed. You were safe, yes, but safe from your mind? Not quite. You hated waking from nightmares for the sole reason that you would be unnerved for hours on end, and when you finally got to sleep, you’d rise two hours later for morning chores. There was never any guarantee that, within those scant few hours you get to sleep, you wouldn’t experience another blood-chilling nightmare.
The moon’s gaze met your own through your open window that night. What differed then from any other full moon met you head-on; that night was a lunar eclipse. A crimson-red moon bathed the world in a limelight that promised misery. It must’ve been the source of your nightmare. It had to have been.
You couldn’t get back to sleep when you stared out at the landscape beneath the moon. Against your better judgement, you decided you needed a walk. To clear your head, you told yourself, as you tucked your blanket around your shoulders. Even if Father says to never leave your room, you need it to sleep and get through your chores.
And so you went.
It wasn’t some grand affair, there was no deliberation or hesitation at the door of your room. You were in too much of an uneasy daze that, like a wild animal, you just needed to get out. To escape. Your door creaked when you opened it, and when you shut it, it made no noise. The hinges were odd.
You walked.
You didn’t see or take in your surroundings. You walked, and walked, and walked, as if trying to outpace your own thoughts as your chest clenched with the lingering anxiety. You almost wanted to claw at it like your flesh were your cotton socks and your fears were burrs from the fields. You didn’t care if it would hurt you, or if it would ruin the surrounding fabric, you wanted it out.
Not much else to be done about it, if you were honest about it. You walked.
Upon rounding some immemorable corner in the labyrinthine darkness, a shadow deeper than that of the walls untouched by the moon’s glare obscured your path. You jumped as if you’d been ambushed. Tall, humanoid, and imposing, just like the monster in your nightmare looked. Your blood practically froze with panic all over again.
“Child,” commanded a voice that rooted you to the spot before you could turn and dart for the nearest room. “At ease.”
Father.
“Father,” you’d squeaked, raspy with disuse. Your eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the lack of light, but you caught what must’ve been her eyes in the dark: two smoldering crimson embers somewhere her head was. Chills crept down your spine when she stepped forth, an exhale bordering on a disappointed sigh on her lips.
“What have I told you of your curfews and leaving your room, especially now?” She groused. Her tone cut you like a knife and poisoned you like fangs on a snake. You’d broken the rules, and you’d been caught. Your throat dried before you could answer and choking something up felt like coughing out cotton tufts.
When you didn’t answer, her tone got icy. “Well?” You could’ve sworn your heart was going to explode with anxiety. You went out. You disobeyed the one rule Father swore was the most important, tantamount to a crime just shy of leaving a dead animal on her important documents after spilling House secrets.
In short, you knew you were utterly done for. Control, control, contro– it wasn’t working. It wasn’t working.
You could’ve answered her honestly, and been punished as you deserved, or you could’ve stayed silent and faced her wrath for your disobedience. You had options, the sky was the limit, and you chose only what you could think of.
“I had a nightmare,” You murmured, weak like a fucking kitten. It was unbecoming, downright pathetic for such a situation, and you were sure you’d be figuratively skewered for it. Maybe worse. “I was scared of being alone.”
Dead. Fucking. Silence.
Control. You needed control, and pronto, because you were sure Father was about to make your life a living hell, fear be damned.
“So you came to find me,” was what you heard next. You nodded and waited for the guillotine blade to strike. A heartbeat. Two. Three. The two smoldering embers in the night remained fixed to you and you just stared, waiting, waiting.
“What was the nightmare about?”
You stammered when you told her. About monsters. About seeing your siblings die in the dead of night. About their lifeless bodies and their screams for help as a monster ripped them limb from wretched limb. As you did, you felt your hands begin to shake in time with a cold trembling that wracked your body; the blanket did nothing to shield you. Father stepped ever closer as you wrung the edge of the blanket so hard you were sure you’d stretched the fabric, and when your damned voice broke, her clawed hands took your shoulders into their grasp.
You don’t know how it happened, but when she touched you, the control in you snapped. You broke, like a flimsy dam, and you began to cry. Tears seared scorching paths into your cheeks and your throat closed before you could croak out about seeing your baby siblings die. Those guiding hands drew you in ever closer. Closer. Closer. Your nose met warm fabric and you simply dissolved into blubbers and breathless sobs.
Father hated tears. Or so you were told by your siblings. Father despised it when children cried, citing tears as useless and weak. Crying meant not acting. Not acting meant losing opportunities, or losing lives.
You weren’t sure how long you spent sullying Father’s shirt with your tears and snot, but when your sobs had lost wind and your eyes ceased shedding tears, you felt Father’s hand carding through your hair. She’d felt you settle, and so when you took your first deep breath in several minutes and did not whimper, she coaxed your head back to stare her in the eye.
“I’m sorry, Father,” You’d mumbled, too conscious of the fact you’d openly sobbed into her shirt. “I– I overstepped–”
“Hush,” Father’s fingers gently dragged across your scalp. The pointed tips of her nails just barely rode the line between painful and soothing. “Don’t apologize to me.”
“But I,” You swallowed back some of that ache in your throat. “I left past curfew. And the rule about tonight–”
“You were frightened awake by a nightmare,” Father interjected then, and you noticed that she’d been far gentler than you expected. “Just as you’d been taught, you went to find safety. There is no fault nor misstep in that.”
You shut up then. You still sniffled and shook like a little Natlani dog in a blizzard, bleary-eyed with tears and undoubtedly flushed in the cheeks, but Father made no comment upon it. She continued to run her fingers through your hair and – as you noticed when you weren’t focused on not crying – pull you closer into her chest. You sniffled again.
“I got tears on your jacket,” You mumbled like you were confessing sins.
“I can clean it out,” Father forgave you as easily as she breathed.
You buried your face into her again. Father only continued to pet you and soothe you in silence.
You hadn’t remembered much of the night after that. There was a walk back to your room, you settled into your bed, and then there was an ever-present warmth that sent you to sleep the moment you felt it beside you. For the first time in years you managed to return to sleep from a nightmare before dawn broke over the sky, protected and warm and untouchable by the monsters of the night.
Arlecchino tucked the covers around her sleeping child, bathed in the crimson moon’s glow and eclipsed with her shadow over their bedframe. They’d dreamt of monsters and carnage. They came to her at first notice. They broke and showed weakness to her with the barest of pressure. By all means, if this had been training, Arlecchino would have been disappointed.
But it was not, and therefore she felt no reproach or disdain. This was one of her children who came to her for safety. She could not in good faith punish that.
In turn, she learned a valuable lesson: the predator that stirred within her, the one whose fangs dug into her gums with violent intent, bowed its head in surrender when her children came to find her. Her rule had done the opposite of its intent.
Arlecchino reclined her head against the second pillow provided in your bedroom. You’d snuggled into her chest and fallen fast asleep some minutes ago, and your steady breaths lulled her ragged, immortal heart to something nearly peaceful and restful.
The crimson moon’s violent influence rested with you tonight. Arlecchino found relief for the first time in decades.
a/n; for as much as i enjoy romantic scenarios, platonic ones speak to me more. arlecchino cuddling her child came to me in a hazy, sleep-deprived vision, and who am I to deny my muse.
vampcchino snippet; arlecchino/gn reader, reader gets their fill of sticking their fingers in her mouth and tempting fate. (or, reader asks to see arlecchino's fangs.) small continuation of sleepless nights.
You gather the bravery one night to ask Arlecchino to see her fangs.
She dignifies you with an answer, at least, but not before her brows knit together and her eyes narrow to gaze at you through her lashes. I suppose it’s no trouble if I should, she tells you, tone dipping with suspicion and reproach, yet I question your reasoning as to why.
You repeat the question, meekly now. You’d figured it wouldn’t have been a pinch point, and being questioned takes the wind from your sails. She notices. She apologizes.
Arlecchino is ever-patient when she allows you to swing one leg across her lap. You straddle her thighs and stifle a blush at the positioning, but her hands settle upon your hips to guide your weight and position you to rest. All the same, your hands lift to her face, as if you were to cradle her cheeks and pull her in for a kiss. Not this time. Not yet.
In hindsight, pushing your thumbs up to her lips to pry her jaw open was barbaric. It was rougher treatment than she deserved, with you practically jabbing your fingers into her mouth to see fangs you have every intention of avoiding. She grimaces when you do, nose wrinkling and something sonorous rumbling from her chest. Did she growl? You freeze as if a dog just snarled at you, and you swiftly apologize.
Gently, mon amour, she reprimands, ever tender, you needn’t act with haste, lest you cut yourself. She worries about you before she even fathoms chastising you for your rough handling. You remember to gentle yourself for her sake, however.
Her lips part, and your thumb traces along her lips before you focus upon the fangs. You expected two long, razor sharp fangs, jutting from where her canine teeth would’ve been – given she were human – but you’re met with several. Two pairs of long, ivory fangs protrude from her gums on her upper mandible. They’re less reminiscent of thick needles and more serrated knives, lightly notched along their edges and ending in knife-sharp points at the tips. On her lower mandible, there’s an additional pair where her canine teeth would’ve been. They too are serrated.
You mutter aloud your observations. Three pairs of fangs, two on top, one on the bottom. You suppose it’s more effective than simply one pair, and the serrations provide an ease to ripping arteries. More wounds, more blood. Arlecchino hums. She’s pleased with your deductions, therefore your hypotheses are correct.
Soon your fingers pull away, and she shuts her mouth. You’ve had your fill of staring into the jaws of a monster.
Arlecchino releases you from her hold after kissing your fingers. Satisfied?
You certainly are.
a/n; something short to fulfill a craving. maybe you (the reader, yes you) should consider a gentler hand when inspecting your dearest vampire's teeth in the absence of a dentist.
vampire arlecchino/gn reader; hurt/comfort. cw: mentions of blood-drinking, none explicitly stated; violence mentions. mythology-typical vampirism aspects. not beta-read, written impulsively before bed. all grammatical mistakes are a result of minimal sleep. wc: ~2k.
It’s during another sleepless night that Lord Arlecchino finds you in the sitting room.
You’re much the same as you were those days prior. Sat within the reach of the hearth’s warmth, your legs are tucked to your right, folded close whilst your left molds into the arm of the couch. The sheer silk of your nightclothes lay in delicate, cascading folds that spill from the arcs and curves of your frame, ethereal yet inadequate for the night’s chill. You’ve attempted to ward it by means of absconding with one of Lord Arlecchino’s fur pelts.
Her hand finds your shoulder first. A sharp gasp sucks wind into your lungs and you swiftly turn your head, only to find exactly what – who – you initially assumed it to be. You exhale as your mind reaches pace with your instinct, though the tension bleeds not from your muscles.
Lord Arlecchino is silent, austere grace wound into a human facade. You’ve known this from the very moment she graced your presence, when you’d introduced yourself and exchanged pleasantries over banquet fare; you recognize it still as her touch glides across your skin in what you approximate to be a soothing pet. You would consider it sweet if not for the furrow between her brows and the weight of her stare.
“My Lord,” it’s you who greets first, quiet as a dove’s wing. “Good evening.”
Lord Arlecchino’s eyes lock with your own in time with her unoccupied hand settling upon your hair. This time you know it is intentionally soothing.
“Good evening, my love,” Lord Arlecchino murmurs. She is gentle when she addresses you. She is always gentle when it involves you.
Her hand in your hair caresses down to the nape of your neck. You grit your teeth to smother the shivers that rise across your skin, following the wake her talons leave. You’re unsure of if it’s your pride, unwilling to bare your weakness so brazenly, or your survival instinct, holding still in the vain hopes of a monster passing you by.
Lord Arlecchino notices. Her touch shifts to your unoccupied shoulder, thumbing the borrowed pelt and subtly pulling it higher. “Sleep evades you, does it?”
You nod. It’s the same as you’ve told her several nights before, when you’d found your solace in the sitting room’s hearthfire and relished the light it brings. It was never the chill, nor the unfamiliarity, nor private matters known only unto you; Lord Arlecchino’s wisened to that. She hums and her hands slip from your shoulders. “Would you like my company?”
Once more, your head bobs in a nod. It would be favorable to craning your neck and showing your back to a lord, especially of her countenance.
You do not watch her round the couch to settle beside you. A shadow blocks the hearth for a mere moment, and then it does not, and then the shadow’s weight sinks the cushions beside your feet. Moving and making room is the next logical course of action, and you follow that train of rationale until you find yourself shoulder-to-shoulder with the Lord of the manor.
She makes no move to protest or widen the space between you both, and you settle into a stiff silence.
In truth, your sleeplessness is borne of your tempestuous anxieties. From the moment of your arrival to Lord Arlecchino’s manor, you’d felt that creeping, venomous sensation of utter discord. It was as deep as your instinct, rich and rife with an intuition from your very lifeblood. Something was wrong. Deeply, utterly, truly wrong. You hadn’t the words for it until you had discovered one fateful night within the manor, out of pure chance, that her glass had not been filled with a fine red wine. No, wine was not so thick, not so rancid in smell. Wine did not dry rust-brown.
You were sure you were hysterical, at first. What noble of her position would drink blood? It’s monstrous, to begin with – just inhuman and dreadfully unmannered. Your readings of biology and the science of the kitchen spoke of just how little it held in nutritional value, too. Drinking blood was a biological waste. More energy went into digestion than there could be gained from it.
But you said nothing of it. You said nothing and simply watched the lord of the manor; and when you had, you’d lost sleep.
Something possesses you as you begin to ruminate, brimming at your traitorous lips to burst free from your tongue and teeth. You inhale. “You’re a vampire.”
Silence swathes you both. For several heart-stopping moments, you wonder if you should have held your tongue and simply suffered in silence. It’s just when you’re about to apologize for your accusation that Lord Arlecchino’s chest rises with the next breath she drags in, slow and deliberate.
“Indeed,” She replies, rumbling and low. You almost do not catch it, and you struggle to parse her tone. What does she make of your accusation? What more of it, when she’s admitted to it without rebuttal or redirection? You feel as though you're in the midst of an invisible, inescapable trap. Lord Arlecchino’s gaze settles upon the fireplace. “Is that the source of your insomnia?”
“In part,” you kick yourself for your evasiveness. How rude.
“In entirety,” Lord Arlecchino corrects. “Allow me to rephrase, it is the source of your insomnia.”
You’re caught. There’s no dignity to salvage there, and no dignity in denying it either. You’d lost hours upon countless hours of sleep, haunted by the sight of her fangs, her lack of reflection, and that glass of blood. You are in the den of a monster and you are sat inches from her. You are next.
Lord Arlecchino exhales. “And it would not be presumptuous of me to infer that you are afraid of being bit.”
“No,” You reply, nearly whispering. She must hear your pulse racing. You cannot look her in the eye.
“A logical fear,” She hums. “And not one unfounded. You have every right to be afraid. Had you not been, I'd have questioned if you’d lost your mind.”
Lord Arlecchino sucks in a long, slow breath when you do not reply. You gather the courage to spare a glance and you find that she is reclined against the back of the couch, arms crossed over her chest in a manner that is ordinarily reserved; in this moment you recognize it as the self-soothing act it is.
To think a vampire is uneasy. It’s you who should be afraid. Not that you aren’t, that is.
“Still,” Lord Arlecchino continues. “Though you may not believe it, I mean you no harm.”
“I know.” It’s an easy lie, and Lord Arlecchino catches it. Her gaze locks to you and something unreadable flickers within those crimson irises. They’re as red as the blood she drinks. Red as your blood.
“Do you?” You don't. You know you do not believe it, and attempting to lie was a fool’s errand. You did it nonetheless and your tongue feels leaden. Lord Arlecchino’s body shifts beside your own to face you as you are, small, helpless, and trapped between a monster and the couch’s corner. Pulling the pelt around your shoulders closer does no good. Your heart hammers.
It’s for a mere fraction of a second that you catch Lord Arlecchino’s expression: pained, perhaps, or you could be mistaking it with disappointment. The tension in her jaw tightens, her brows form a crease between them, her eyes glint in the firelight. In the following second it’s gone, replaced with something mild and nearly serene.
“My love, you’re shaking,” Lord Arlecchino murmurs, unfathomably gentle. She swallows and it sets the barest of grimaces at the corners of her mouth.
You clench your fists to tame the trembling. “I’m.. I apologize.” The shake persists with the ice in your veins.
“My love, look at me,” You dare not stare her in the eye, affixed instead to the placement of her hands, the position of her body. Beneath those nightclothes are wrought muscles and sinew. Power rests beneath her skin like a predator. If you look into her eyes you will see one, too; one that contrasts with the voice coaxing you. “Regardez-moi, mon amour.”
“I’m sorry,” You whisper, and that’s when Lord Arlecchino’s restraint bends. Her hands raise to find your own, talons extended to snag you like an eagle reaches for its prey. She finds you, as the eagle always does, and your trembling fingers are enveloped in the snare of her hold.
Lithe, deft fingers intertwine with your own; slowly, steadily, painfully gently. Where you expected force and the bite of her talons in your flesh, you’re met with care and patience. Her hands are larger than your own. You see the tendons flex beneath her skin.
Your heart stops when she raises your hand further from the safety of your body and brings it to her lips, still held in her grasp. It’s against your better judgement that you flinch, that you let the animal in you have its last gasp and you attempt to pull away. No such luck. Lord Arlecchino does not let you go, and you are left to shake. Those grotesque illustrations in the fiction you’ve read resurface in your mind’s eye, of vampires and hemovore monsters slaking their infernal thirsts through piercing their victim’s wrist with their fangs. That will be you. She will bite your wrist and you will be nothing more than a vessel to carry the sustenance she craves, at her mercy and powerless to stop it.
Lord Arlecchino kisses your hand.
Your mind comes to a sudden, grinding halt.
Her lips are soft. They’re pressed to the thin, delicate skin on the back of your hand, lifted to her face with a gentle hand in such a gentlemanly fashion it almost makes her appear human. She lingers for two, maybe three heartbeats before those crimson eyes refocus upon your own, pupils blown into an expression you deign to call soft.
“My love,” She murmurs into your hand, low and quiet, soothing and gentle. You see fangs glint in between her words, and for a heartbeat you fear you’ll feel them nick you. “There you are.”
That traitorous heart of yours softens for a moment.
“You have no need to be afraid of me,” Lord Arlecchino presses another shockingly tender kiss to your hand. “I will not harm you. I would sooner tear my fangs from my mouth than drink from you when you are unwilling.”
Her nose brushes your hand. She breathes, slowly, and you shudder as you imagine it as her savoring your scent.
“I cannot imagine allowing myself to do so,” A pause, another kiss. “Breaking your trust in such a bestial manner, risking your life in the process, all to indulge in a meal.”
Lord Arlecchino’s hold upon your hand shifts, from intertwined fingers to cradling you and pressing kisses to your knuckles. You imagine it as her pressing physical vows into your skin, potent reminders of her words, breathing them into your blood vessels in hopes of it taking root in your heart.
Perhaps it’s the only sacred thing about her.
“I am a monster, I will not deny that; yet I am not so much a monster that I would betray my love,” Lord Arlecchino presses one final kiss to your knuckles. “I still have a heart.”
You exhale. “How else would you be killed?”
A faint smile from the monster. “How else, indeed.”
a/n; "Regardez-moi, mon amour." -> "Look at me, my love." My french is admittedly rusty, I don't particularly enjoy speaking or writing it.
Finals week or my final week; the adage rings true as church bell choirs. My fate looms overhead and I am blind to the guillotine’s glint. On a lighter note, I’ve drafted a drabble and begun writing sleazy vampire Arlecchino fiction. It does involve the reader on their menstrual cycle.
CONTENT WARNING: ENTEMOPHOBIA, GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE; there are a LOT of bugs mentioned. This is your final warning. Don't mention it in my comments; this is your Dead Dove. Reader works as a school tutor. Arlecchino and reader do not interact romantically here. Wc: 3.1k
Bugs were certainly not your thing.
You’re an ecology and biology tutor. You’re no stranger to studying bugs or being near them; for Gods’ sakes, bugs are everywhere. They’re more numerous than humans on this wretched continent, possibly three times more. There’s no escaping bugs, but it doesn’t mean you like them.
At best, tolerate is the most apt word. If you see a fly – robber fly, damselfly, dragonfly – trapped in your tutoring classroom, you grab the nearest beaker and plastic lid like any sensible person, and trap the bug. Once it’s securely imprisoned in a cage of glass, you take a minute to set it free in the adjacent outside door. Sometimes you crack a window. Roaches are always a hell fucking no in your book, but damn them to hell, because they’re the main source of food for your kids’ pets.
What pets, you say? Predatory insects. They’ve recently swindled you into purchasing a new one with the promise of taking care of it.. Alongside the several other critters in large glass terrariums along the back wall. To their credit, they take excellent care of these animals, and they do well to treat them with respect. Who are you to tell them no?
You sign the delivery paper from the postage worker man, who looks thoroughly curious as to what the hell he is delivering for it to have LIVE ANIMAL, HANDLE WITH CARE plastered across all six faces of the box’s surface area. You take it gingerly from him and offer him a weary smile, which he returns without a word. He merrily takes off and you walk the opposite direction down the hall, returning to your empty classroom to unleash this horrifying creature into its new home.
Your kids have asked for countless little animals; turtles, lizards, snakes, birds, gerbils. Not unusual for them to request, as those are your typical run-of-the-mill class pets, but you couldn’t justify the cost of care and feeding for them to Admin. They’re expensive; between vet bills and food and bedding and the electricity needed for heat lamps for the reptiles, it was too much of a strain. Alas, your children settled for bugs. A tarantula, scorpion, praying mantis – affectionately named Cuddles – and the tamest of them all, a rhinoceros beetle.
To your chagrin.
The classroom door closes behind you and you set the box down. The trip you make to round the lab table and grab your supplies feels like a march to your death, because it quite literally could be. Your children begged and begged for this monstrous creation of evolution, and here you are, armed with spread scissors and seldom else but your wit.
You take the blade to the cardboard and tape seal. It gives beneath a single slice, and you cut the sides to open the top and reveal a styrofoam box within the cardboard. You fit your fingers between the scant space from the cardboard and the styrofoam, perilously lifting the lid from the top and gazing into what may just be pandora’s box. Inside, nestled between two cooling packs and perforated with holes, is the biggest fucking centipede you’ve ever seen.
Your stomach roils and flips. The company swore up and down it was a baby specimen, that this thing would be an average centipede with an average number of centipede legs and no venom. What you’re looking at is definitely not that, because taped to the top is a little identifier that cannot be any more accurate: S. Gigantea. Scolopendra Gigantea. A giant centipede.
Giant is right. That monster contained in the box, with a little nutrient jelly chunk, must be at least ten inches long. A devastating shiver rolls down your spine.
“Focalors’ tits,” you exhale, aghast. “You’re fucking massive.”
The creature doesn’t react. You’re somewhat thankful it doesn’t, not when you lift its plastic prison from the temperature controlled box, when you wipe away the condensation from the mist flower corolla packets and set it down on the lab table. It has countless legs and antennae that idly, nearly lazily twitch to and fro, calmly perusing its new surroundings.
It’s no wonder it’s so calm, you think; it’s so big that not even a hairless ape wants to fuck with it. You inspect its package again and find it’s not an it, but a she. A female specimen, so she’s certainly on the bigger side. Insects present sexual dimorphism often, and size differences are most common. Great. Just magical. Your kids will be pleased, but you? Not so much.
“Hooo-okay, miss legs,” you mutter, dragging the terrarium you’d prepared. It’d fit her. You feel thankful that past-you had the foresight to ask a science teacher down the hall for the empty bearded dragon enclosure she had, because anything less would be a tight fit for this monster you’re harboring. “Please don’t bite me when I’m putting you in your new and comfy home. I’m trying to be nice to you, but you’re very very scary.”
The centipede offers no response, but it jolts when you pop the container open. You flinch too. You don’t drop the creature, though; taking a few beats and then sighing, you continue on.
“Sorry,” you apologize to the animal. As you tilt the container slowly into the terrarium, the insect languidly turns and crawls across the plastic. You pray it doesn’t decide to go for you. It seems to take mercy on you, or it finds you uninteresting enough, and it calmly slithers its long, segmented body across the soft substrate. You retract your arm at record speeds and step back. All ten-ish inches of that thing is put away and you are mostly safe. Mostly.
The centipede rotates her antennae like little satellite dishes. She’s slow, you note, with a twinge of concern rising amidst the fear. “Are you hungry, mama?” The diminutive slips from your lips before you can stop yourself. She’s not even a mother, nor has she sired any eggs, and you don’t intend on breeding her out for more of those wretched creatures. Still, you settle with the nickname. “You seem hungry. It’s not like you can tell me, but you look hungry.”
No response. You’re reaching for the feeder cricket container and the long tongs regardless. You remember hearing this species is spicy and venomous, and that centipedes are not exactly forgiving to handle. They’re hyperaggressive most of the time.
You gulp. “I’m gonna get you a snack, mama, so please don’t..” You trail off. The centipede does nothing, opting to grasp one of its thick antennae in its front pincers and clean it. It’s almost cute, until you see those horrifying fangs.
“Don’t act up,” you settle. She placidly cleans her other antennae.
As if talking to a centipede will make it any better. They’re known for acting up and being near impossible to keep, aggressive little bitches that they are, equipped with a hair trigger and venom potent enough to rot limbs off at the tamest end of the spectrum. Asking a creature capable of killing you to ‘not act up’ is hilariously futile, if not pathetic.
Who’s trapped by who?
Fishing a cricket out of the feeder container is another herculean task that irks you worse and tangles your frayed nerves. If you think you’d snagged one, it’d chew its leg off and then somehow scamper away faster than when it had six legs. Damn creature. Two more attempts leave you too pissed off to keep trying, and you shove your hand into the container to grab two. They squirm and skitter, but you grit your teeth and make sure not to crush or drop them.
Fucking crickets. Unfortunately, the bugs you look after only like lively prey. You’re not thinking when you stuff your hand halfway into the glass enclosure, crickets enveloped in your closed fist, and unfurling your fingers mere centimeters away from the giant ass centipede. When you come-to a short few nanoseconds later, you freeze. Well, shit. You just did that, didn’t you.
Your hand is open. Your middle finger is closest to that potentially lethal beast and there is a cricket still clinging to your knuckle. Fuck. Fuck.
“Please don’t bite me,” you plead to the insect, blood colder than a fucking snake’s; is it the air circulation or fear? “Gods, please, I’m just trying to feed you, don’t bite me. I’m not looking to fuck you up, so please don’t fuck me up.”
The centipede twitches one long antenna. It slowly, painstakingly so, crawls closer to your finger and you brace for hell. A thin but terribly big leg settles on that first knuckle, on your nail. You hold your breath when you feel its belly brush your skin. Another step, another.
The cricket doesn’t move. The centipede strikes, sudden and swift, and her aim strikes true. You flinch. Nothing hurts.
…Nothing hurts?
You blink thrice. She got the cricket. The insect squirms and claws at the air whilst the centipede’s fangs sink deep into its abdomen and thorax. It struggles in vain as she rips it from your finger. The centipede backs off of you with her snagged lunch, slowly scuttling away towards the cork wood hide to devour her prey in peace. You aren’t too sure if she was being kind or showing you stark indifference. Do bugs even have a concept of kindness, much less mercy?
That held breath rushes from your lungs and you retract your hand. There is no reason that you should be unharmed. She struck a cricket point-blank on your hand, and if it’d moved, or if you had jolted back, she could’ve put those fangs in you. You were a giant monster in her new home, capable of killing her or worse, and she just let you go. Still, you inspect your finger and find nothing wrong. You’re blessedly unscathed and your monstrous new pet is fed.
“...Thank you,” You mutter. You’re not sure if that’s to a divine force or to your strangely calm centipede. “Enjoy your food.”
That centipede is too damn calm. You don’t consider for a second letting one of your students handle her, but if she somehow got out, you’re somewhat sure she’d be patient enough to tolerate being scooped into a bucket.
You’d never thought you’d describe a bug as gentle.
. . .
Closing up and securing the classroom is a ritual. It begins with misting down all the bugs and feeding them. Three crickets for Bambi the tarantula, two for Cuddles the giant green praying mantis, two for Pinch the scorpion, and a jelly cube for Fruit Loops the rhinoceros beetle. Bambi eats without trouble, the absolute angel she is, but Cuddles likes to play with her food.
Brute. You watched Cuddles behead a cricket and hold both pieces in one raptorial each. She ate the body first, then the head, and spent two and a half minutes painstakingly cleaning each and every spike on her forelimbs; she then struck another cricket and repeated the process. Pinch doesn’t eat under surveillance, but you’ve seen the remnants of his meals in his substrate before, so you trust he’ll get the job done without you needing to watch.
The unnamed centipede is given another cricket for being polite enough to not send you to the hospital and then you lock their enclosures. You double-triple check, then you shut off the lights, grab your bag, and leave. You lock the classroom door behind you.
It’s past your shift time and the sun’s begun to set.
Sometimes your hours are reasonable. You clock in at six in the morning, take your lunch by eleven, and stay after school until five. You’re usually home in half an hour. You eat dinner another half hour later, typically something microwaveable or leftovers from when you did your weekend cooking. You’re in bed with a cheesy drama on the TV and then you’re out by eight.
You’ve always been an early sleeper. There’s reasons you’ve never gone to sleepovers.
Tonight, you deviate from the routine. Closing up and setting up for the class’ new critter — then cleanup and feeding — took an extra hour. You can feel your stomach growling plaintively when you step from the building, unbearably hollow and terribly loud. You ought to head home and cook that Tupperware of confit you made. A bonus check gave you enough to buy extra ingredients and meats, like duck, and cured things imported from Mondstadt.
It’s dark. Did you stay later than you thought?
Another growl from your stomach. Okay, point token. Any longer you spend dallying and you’d get hunger pangs.
Strolling down the sidewalk is the usual routine. It’s cracked, but the pavement isn’t riddled with potholes like some of the outermost pedestrian crosswalks like Vasari passage. Well, save for one portion..
…you squint. That one portion looks to be under construction. You hesitate to call it that, because it’s just roped off and there’s two construction warning signs. You sigh. Sometimes days are trying, and being forced to walk the long way home while hungry certainly earns its spot on that list. You stuff your hands in your pockets and cross the street to take the scenic route home.
The dense structures and compact streets slowly spread into sparse structures and lusher, quieter green spaces. The cobblestones fade to gravel, then beaten soil, as Fontaine’s towering walls expose you to the setting sun and the blustering humidity of the coast. It isn’t often that you get to get a view of the sea.
And it’s a wonder. Rhinestones and diamonds in every warm color brilliantly dazzle your eyes as you pass, darkening and deepening as the sun eases to kiss the horizon line. The sky’s just as gorgeous — a painted mosaic of gorgeous blues, pinks, and purples. It’s inconvenient to take this route, if you’re being pragmatic, but pragmatism has no place in your mind when the sunset is this beautiful.
Sue you. You’re a sucker for a nice nature scene…for thirty minutes maximum; once bugs start to get involved (mosquitoes!) you usually start to make yourself scant.
Tonight, you get a little indulgent. You figure your dinner can wait, it’s only a ten minute walk on a busy day. You can just hurry.
It’s your own foolishness that gets you ambushed. You don’t pay any heed to the clicking, the rustling, assuming its some possum or cricket nearby that’s hopefully not crawling to you. Dead wrong, as always – because something giant grabs you from behind in a cinch you can’t pry yourself from. Something solid and strong presses against the entire length of your back and you swear you feel like it’s segmented; organic, yes, because you feel the warmth of whatever it is, and because you feel more… oh god, what the fuck is grabbing you?
Looking at your abdomen makes you screech with terror. It rips from your throat in a primal cry of fear because there’s what looks to be insect legs snagging your body and you can’t move. Insect legs, bugs, bugs, bugs – you hate bugs! You especially hate this bug!
“Hey, hey, let– no, let me go, let me–” Something like a hand clamps over your mouth before you can scream to be let go. The giant.. bug(?) hefts you off of your feet and your stomach lurches with fear and the sudden change in height. You twist your head left and right and the monster (monster is what it is, right?) keeps its hand firmly pressed to your face. Biting its finger serves you no good – its flesh isn’t soft, and it seems unfazed. A second arm, not an insectoid leg, binds around your ribs.
You’re fucked. You’re absolutely dead. Dead as a doornail, as a fly in a spiderweb, and you’re going to be eaten by a monster you don’t even know the physical description of.
Tears blurred your vision while your heart beat a rabbit’s rhythm in your chest, heaving for air because your next breath might’ve been your last.
And then it releases you. You drop to the grassy floor in a heap, gasping and choking on the newfound oxygen in your lungs, and when the tears finish shedding a river from your eyes you get a look at whatever the hell ambushed you in the night.
Holy shit.
Towering nearly eight feet over you is what looks to be some sort of amalgamated human from a horror novel. Sallow, pale skin, a long torso that tapers down into a segmented body that spans seemingly infinitely behind it. Each segments sports legs, legs that dig into the earthen soil like some sort of wretched hellborne centipede. The thing’s arms fade into a deep, sooty black starting at the mid-quadriceps. Where its navel ends the belly segments begin, with two smaller… legs? Sitting where human human hips should. They don’t end in clawed pedipalps like the rest of its countless segmented limbs, but instead sport a hollow inside like– oh god. Fangs. Fangs sitting on its hips.
“Holy shit,” is all you say.
The thing’s mouth parts. It functions almost like a human’s, if not for the mandibles obscuring what must be the main ‘mouth’, caged with fangs longer than your index finger. Its eyes are dark, and it sports hair on its head, moon-white with a black undercut and crescent-shaped fringe. The rest of it cascades down its back in an untamed mane of white, grey, and bright flashes of what must be red.
“You’re not who I was looking for,” The beast hisses, brows furrowing. It’s almost human, but not enough, and the sheer uncanny of it makes your stomach roil. It exhales sharply between its fangs, perhaps huffing with frustration.
“Who–” You gasp. You draw your legs in closer. Why are you trying to reason with… a centipede-human? A centipede-monster? What the fuck even is this thing. “What– who is the person you’re..?”
It glares and retreats several… scuttle-lengths. It’s too big to consider its slow, methodical shifts as a ‘scuttle,’ you decide, because it doesn’t flee like a bug revealed from under a rock. It stares at you like a predator and looms over you like death itself, fang-legs poised but at rest. It has antennae on its head, and they slowly wave in the air.
“If I tell you, you’ll die tonight,” it snips, cold. Nothing about its tone suggests a joke or an empty threat, and you’re wise enough to take it seriously. You gulp. It tilts its head when you keep your mouth shut, shrewd and scrutinizing whilst you shake. “Much the same will happen if you run.”
Okay, so you’re stuck with this centipede monster. Fine. Totally fine. You’re not about to piss yourself with fear or scream, no, it’s okay.
“Okay,” You squeak. “Great.. Options.”
It clicks. You think it’s displeased with your wry wit, but it makes no move to rip your head off or stuff you with venom until your arteries burst.
“I– I don’t want anything to do with.. What you’re doing,” you try, voice frail. “I just took a different route to get home, I can see I’m not supposed to be here. I’ll – I’ll go home, I’ll forget about it.”
The beast shifts again and eases closer. Oh fuck no. Your mind flashes to the encounter with that godforsaken centipede in the classroom and feel it may have been a divine omen. A bad one. Seeing that thing creep closer to your hand felt eerily similar to this monster slowly sauntering closer, the tens of hundreds of legs beating slowly against the grass.
It can absolutely move faster. Agitated centipedes are fast fuckers, and this monster is being deliberately slow.
“Promise, promise,” you ramble. Stumbling on your words just ties it all together. “I’ll– I won’t say a word! Nobody– no- nobody will believe me anyways, right? I mean, a giant bug-monster-woman with some really big fangs?” You say your name and make a joke at your expense. “Who’d believe lil’ ol’ miss tutor–”
“Quiet,” it hisses. “I’ve heard enough.”
You shut up immediately.
“You tutor?” It grouses. You nod vigorously and don’t move to elaborate. “Where?”
“The school in Vasari Passage.”
It clicks its fangs again. Just as it approached, slow and menacingly focused, it retreated; like the centipede in the classroom, it got what it wanted.
“Go home,” it says.
You take off like a bat out of hell in the next moment. No fucking way in hell. You’re not sure if you see another human figure coming your way, going the direction you just were, because you’re keen on keeping promises; you’re not telling a soul. It will know, you can tell, if you tell someone.
Your lungs scream for air and your muscles burn with aches, but you sprint until you reach your apartment and only stop when you shove the key into the lock, turn it, and replace yourself on the other side of the door. It slams. You lock it, press your back to it, and just heave.
Holy. Shit.
You hope it’s a dream and you’re insane.
. . .
The next afternoon, when your kids get ample time to fawn over the giant centipede, you take a break from grading their homework to check the news. They’re pawing at the glass, asking you to hold her, and you remind them several times that while she is patient, she isn’t nice. Still, they look at her with wonder and her little antennae wave at the glass when they gently “pet” the glass where her head is.
You watch the articles and parse through the headlines.
One catches your eye. Fontaine Investment President Found Mauled Outside Fontaine City Limits.
Yeesh.
No pictures were provided, but when you click the article, it describes the state he was found in: disemboweled, ripped to shreds, limbs strewn across a twenty-foot radius of his mangled torso. You continue reading until you find the exact location where he was found.
That beachside overlook that you saw…
You turn off your phone. Just in time, you catch a boy named Lyney reaching into the centipede’s enclosure, and you rush over with a reprimand. “Lyney, she’s very venomous! Please put her down, it’s gonna be a long night in the hospital if she–”
“She looks like the one Father has at home!” Lyney coos. His sister, Lynette, hangs closely beside him, and he beams when you approach. “She’s so cute!”
You breathe out. Okay, looks like this little critter seems to extend her mercy to him too.
She’s vicious. This you know. But she rests so calmly against Lyney’s hand and languidly crawls off of his arm when he puts her back down. “Can we name her Father?”
You sigh. “Sure. Her name’s Father. Now please don’t take her out without my supervision, okay? I wanna make sure you don’t get hurt.”
“She won’t hurt me,” he says, with a strange sort of confidence that silences you. You say nothing, watching him shut the enclosure with a hollow, unsettled feeling in your chest. Father slithers back into her corkbark hide.
You still don’t like bugs.
a/n; I wrote this instead of doing a mandarin chinese assignment. I regret nothing at all. The concept of centipede centaur arlecchino rattled my brain immensely.
Untitled. cw: gore, implied violence, implied cannibalism. arlecchino is described with snakelike features and fixtures. wc: ~500; quick ficlet to scratch an itch.
You weren’t supposed to see that.
You weren’t supposed to be out. It’s nighttime, cold enough to freeze the ground and the sea, and your breath puffs in the air when you breathe. The streets are barren as the trees, lacking people like the branches lack leaves. There’s no cover of shade in winter.
You weren’t supposed to go looking for her in the dark. The streetlamps worked, you knew, but you knew even better that a harbinger such as herself would not be out and about where she could be seen. You ventured from the worn cobblestones and the beaten paths, eyes straining to adjust to the deep shadows.
You weren’t supposed to turn a corner when you heard a can knock over in the adjacent alleyway. The darkness held nothing but a black void, yet sliding and unmistakeable slithering noises drew you in. There were no other serpents in Fontaine, you told yourself. She may be a harbinger, but she’s a reptile — alone in a cold night. Nature isn’t kind to the reckless.
You weren’t supposed to get closer and raise your nose to sniff, searching for that familiar cedarwood and vetiver scent amidst the stale water and cold air. You found it, just as your eyes adjusted, and yet—
You weren’t supposed to find her.
Yet here you were.
Your blood freezes with the outside air as your pupils fix first and foremost upon the carnage. On her face, her neck, her chest, her stomach; dark, dark splatters mar her beautiful skin and scales, irreversibly staining those fine textiles and clothes she spent no small fortune on. Her claws dropped with it. You faintly catch the steam of dying warmth billowing from where the dark spatters meet her skin. Her breath steams just the same.
Her surroundings are worse. There’s more of that wretched blackish liquid strewn about like paint. An outline of what looks to be a hand rests discarded against a dumpster, torn and bloodied clothes ruined beyond recognition left in a heap. Her jaw sets and your eyes snap back to her face.
Her eyes. They glint and glow like a monster’s. The next breath you breathe is ragged.
Something pops and cracks, then her jaw clicks; her hyoid bone bobs and she swallows something thick enough to leave a distended shape in her throat. It disappears past her collarbone and then juts out just beneath her sternum; her stomach.
You can’t bring yourself to speak. You weren’t supposed to see that.
She exhales slowly through her nostrils, her thick, forked tongue sliding from between her bloodstained lips to swipe away that crimson ichor. Sliding noises ring sharp against the walls of the alley that seem to swallow you. Her tail sways.
“Don’t expect me for dinner, dearest,” she grouses. “Go warm the hearth for me.”
You gulp, dumbly nodding along and backpedaling.
A breath from her. Another. That tone ices in the nighttime air.
“Go home.”
You turn and run.
a/n: despite having the freedom to write as I please, breaks from schooling demotivate me more from writing than being in school does. how funny. i have something viler drafted out, likely enough to keep jesus from rising again. who knows. thank you for your early support to my works.
vampire arlecchino/reader. wc: 852
gn reader; she/her prns for Arlecchino; cw: brief mentions of violence/murder. reader briefly fears being murdered. Arlecchino and reader have an undefined but intimate relationship. not beta read.
Lamplight and hearthflame illuminate the sitting room.
Silence, too, cloaks you. Shadows caress and creep across where the flames do not reach, where your silhouette frames the figure you cut from the thin cloth of light. So little does the fire warm you, in the cold grasp of Fontaine’s night, and seldom does the blanket ‘round your shoulders insulate that safety.
The sun’s set. Its eye upon the land has gone blind. Priests say it’s god’s eye, holiness made manifest, that protects humanity, and you find that fanciful at best. You’ve seen creation and destruction at the hands of creatures of the sun and beasts of the moon. Tonight is the darkest it will be; even the moon’s glare is set elsewhere. The carnage will be devastating when the sun rises again and god bears witness to what the moon’s children have done to his.
A shadow joins your own against the wall. You jolt and inhale, sharp and swift, as air fills your lungs and your blood freezes.
“You’re still awake,” hushed tones whisper from between glinting fangs. You’d whirled to face what - who - snuck into the manor, only to have the wind sucked from your chest at the sight. They’re not unfamiliar; quite the opposite. She is a face you’d come to dread amidst the cloak of midnight.
“Lord Arlecchino,” you gasp. Curse your tongue, falling limp and numb before you could muster an intelligent response. “My apologies,” you settle upon.
That stern, austere severity ebbs. A puzzled crease forms between her brows, crimson eyes fixed upon your own; brimming with terror, you don’t doubt. “No need,” She dismisses, stepping soundlessly from the entryway to saunter forth and stalk towards your chosen couch. A step to her left brings her to round the back, and you face forward to not crane your neck in some inelegant position. “You’re at no fault. You’ve done no wrong.”
You fall silent. Dark talons, concealed with draping, elegant frills at her cuffs drag along the couch’s backing, too light to slice. They meet the fur of the blanket around your body, carding through the dense and silken plush of mink, to eventually settle upon your exposed shoulder. You’re too focused upon the chilling drag of her claws upon your skin to let her words permeate your mind.
When you’ve offered no response, she hums. It’s a deep, low sound, terribly tender for a monster such as herself.
“Is something inhibiting your sleep?”
You shake your head. It’s the flesh of her hand that meets your collarbone this time, and your muscles tense all the same. Lord Arlecchino exhales slowly, deeply; you’ve come to recognize that sound as troubled. Her hands still, then they glide to rest on your shoulders once more.
“You’re not being truthful,” Lord Arlecchino does not accuse. It’s a fact, and there’s no denying its veracity.
“My apologies.”
“Don’t apologize,” She’s surprisingly deft at balancing sternness with softness. You’re not sure how her correction doesn’t poke hurt into your chest, yet it settles you. “Be honest with me.”
You swallow. She feels it against her index fingers, and she soothes her thumbs over your skin. That, or she hears your pulse jump.
“Nightmares,” you decide. It’s a lie by omission, but there is truth in what you say. “I’ve faced tumultuous and.. chilling dreams, inhibiting my sleep. Sitting by the hearthside eases my nerves.”
Lord Arlecchino hums, a warmer, less sharp tone. She’s satisfied with the answer you’ve given. You know, logically, that she isn’t going to press for more now, but she certainly will later. It will come over breakfast, or when you’re in the drawing room together, you perching upon a stool to paint whilst she thumbs through a book. It’s a mercy she is extending you when she takes your answer and presses no further.
“No harm will come to you within this manor,” Lord Arlecchino’s hands move to smooth over your hair. This, you know, is comforting. She does not linger at your neck like you feared she would. “If it comforts you, it is yours to partake in.”
Fingers and talons brush your chin. They guide you to tilt your head back and your heart hammers.
Your eyes meet those of the monstrous Lord you’d made a home with. Crimson, like the blood of those she gluts herself upon – mongrels, adulterers, murderers, she’d told you one quiet dinner – but warm. You’re unsure of if it’s the firelight, or if that tenderness is reserved for you. Something tense in you softens.
“Promise me one thing,” she murmurs.
You hum. She stoops, bending to your head, the curtain of her crescent-shaped fringe falling like a veil to separate the night between you both. Soft lips press to your forehead in a tender kiss. You feel no fangs.
“Sleep before sunrise.”
A nod is all you muster. She rises, caresses your cheek with the backs of her fingers, then leaves you by the hearthfire just as quietly as she had joined you. Your heart hammers still, but not with the initial fear.
Before sunrise. You’re sure you could manage.
a/n; ficlet to get my bearings with tumblr formatting.
tangentwithtanner
izzy806
baratheonpilled