Summary: Blade x GN!reader where he feels restless so he pulls you into an alleyway to lose himself in you.
a/n : hello! first ever fic on here and i start with this… here's a small contribution to the blade x reader nation. this was very self indulgent if you couldn't tell. possible ooc? im trying to get the hang of writing blade :)
The air in the city was thick, humid, and far too loud for Blade’s liking at all. The constant chatter of the crowds and the glow of the neon lights felt like needles pressing against his temples. It's annoying. He's been trying to focus but his restlessness was a physical ache, a craving for something he didn't know. He needed a distraction, something to tether his drifting soul back to the present. As his mind searched through the haze of his irritation, there was only one presence that could offer the solace he craved.
You.
As if drawn by some invisible thread of fate, he realized you were nearby. Without a single word, Blade reached out, his hand encased in the dark, sleek fabric of his black glove. His fingers curled around your wrist with a suddenness that made your heart leap, his grip firm but lacking its usual lethality.
"Hm?" A soft sound escaped your lips as you felt the sudden pressure around your wrist. Startled by the unexpected contact, you turned around to face the stranger who had abruptly interrupted your thoughts, your eyes slightly widening in mild surprise as they landed on the unmistakable, brooding silhouette of Blade. Before you could even draw enough breath to form a single word or ask what he wanted, he moved. There was no hesitation in his actions, only a quiet, driving intent that seemed to bypass the need for conversation entirely.
You found yourself swept along in the silent wake of his presence, the vibrant world around you dissolving into a dizzying blur of neon streaks and muffled noise as he pulled you toward the edges of the light. His long, dark blue hair swayed as he moved, the crimson tips catching the dying glimmers of the city's glow like fading embers before he ducked your head down as he led you into the deep, swallowing shadows of a narrow, secluded alleyway.
Blade didn't speak. He moved closer, his tall frame looming over you. With a movement that was surprisingly fluid, he guided you backward. His touch was uncharacteristically gentle. He stepped forward and you stepped back. The momentum of his advance continued until the sudden, biting chill of the damp brick wall pressed firmly against your spine, the rough texture grounding you in the moment. He pinned you within the small sanctuary he had carved out of the darkness.
The alleyway was a suffocatingly tight space, a narrow vein of shadow carved between the towering buildings of the city. Caught completely off guard by the suddenness of his movement and the overwhelming presence of him, you found yourself looking up. "Blade?" You whispered, your voice sounding soft in the heavy quiet of the gloom. You tilted your head to the side, searching his face for a sign. "Is…something wrong?"
The question was tentative, laced with a gentle concern that seemed to pierce through his brooding exterior. He didn't reply immediately, instead he loomed over you and for a moment, he stared down at you with those piercing red eyes, looking restless. The usual cold indifference in his gaze was replaced by a quiet hunger, a craving for something that wasn't blood. When he finally leaned in, his movements were devoid of his usual nature. His lips met yours with softness. It was a slow, dragging kiss, tasting of desperation and a silent plea for grounding.
As his hands wandered, you expected his calloused, heavy touch, but he was unnervingly careful. His gloved hand slid up to cup your jaw, his thumb tracing your cheekbone with a delicacy that seemed at odds with the scars hidden beneath his sleeves. He touched you as if you were made of spun glass, as if he were terrified that his very existence, his curse, his immortality, the Mara swirling within him might somehow bruise or break you.
His gloved hand, which had been tracing your jawline with such reverence, slid down the column of your throat. His thumb pressed against the pulse point at the base of your neck, feeling the frantic, rhythmic thrum of your heart. He seemed to linger there, his gaze dropping to follow the movement of his own hand. He was watching the way you reacted to him, a silent observer of the vitality he so desperately lacked.
Then, his hand drifted lower. He pulled back just a fraction, his forehead resting against yours. His breath was shallow, and for a fleeting second, the brooding swordsman looked vulnerable. "Stay quiet," he murmured, his voice a low rasp that vibrated against your skin. His hand drifted down to your waist, pulling you a fraction closer, his touch still so light it was almost a question. The sensation of his lips returning to yours was enough to make your knees buckle.
One moment, his grip on your waist was firm, his fingers digging slightly into the fabric of your coat, grounding you so you wouldn't slide down the wall. The next, his touch became a searing caress, his palm sliding beneath the hem of your shirt, finding the warmth of your skin. His touch was hot feverish, almost as if he were trying to leech the warmth from your body to soothe the eternal chill of his own. He had to admit you looked ethereal even in the dark gloom of this alleyway.
As you leaned into him, your senses reeling from the sheer gentleness of it, you felt his hand shift. His bandaged fingers slid into the hair at the back of your head, tangling between your hair. He didn't grab or pull, instead, he cradled your skull, his palm cold and steady against your scalp. The way he held you as if you were a precious relic he had stumbled upon in a wasteland sent a shiver through your entire frame. It was a terrifying kind of intimacy. Blade let out a low, almost imperceptible hum against your mouth, a sound of relief.
The restlessness that had driven him to pull you into this alley seemed to settle, replaced by a heavy, melancholic heat. He tilted your head back slightly, deepening the kiss even more, his fingers remained tangled in your hair, keeping you close, keeping you there. In the cramped darkness, the only thing that existed was the scent of him something metallic and old, like rain on steel and the overwhelming, tender weight of his presence. He seemed to be searching for something in the taste of your lips. "Blade—"
The sound of your voice, a mere breath of a whisper, seemed to ripple through him like a stone dropped into a still pool. At the mention of his name, the rhythm of the kiss faltered for a heartbeat. Blade pulled back just enough to look at you, his face still inches from yours. In the dim, filtered light of the alley, his crimson eyes seemed to glow with a haunted intensity. There was a flicker of something pain, perhaps, or a deep seated longing that crossed his features before he could mask it with his usual stoicism. To hear his name spoken so softly, with such intimacy.
"…Hm," he grunted softly, a low vibration in his chest. It was his way of acknowledging you, a way of saying he heard you without having to find the words he often lacked. He didn't pull away, though. Instead, he leaned back in, his nose brushing against yours, his breath warm against your lips. The hand at the back of your head tightened ever so slightly, not enough to hurt, but enough to ensure you couldn't drift away from him.
"Don't…" he started, his voice cracking slightly before he steadied it. He trailed off, unable to finish the thought at all. "Don't call me that so sweetly," he wanted to say. "Don't look at me that way."
Instead, he simply closed the distance again. This time, the kiss was deeper, more desperate. It was no longer just a gentle exploration; it was a silent, bruising confession. He pressed his body more firmly against yours, the hard lines of his muscular frame a stark contrast to your touch, as if he were trying to merge his fractured existence with your steady, living warmth.
Blade’s hands slid down to your waist, his grip was firm, the leather of his gloves cool against your skin. With a sudden, swift motion, he lifted you, pulling you upward until your thighs instinctively wrapped around his waist to maintain your balance. The sudden change in height brought you face to face, your breath mingling in the small gap between you. Blade didn't kiss you immediately. Instead, he held you there, his strong arms supporting your weight with ease, his gaze locked onto yours. His cheeks were stained with a visible flush, the heat radiating from his skin as he stared into your eyes with an intensity that was almost overwhelming.
He looked cute.
He looked as if he were seeing something he couldn't quite comprehend or perhaps something he feared to want or desire. The usual coldness of his crimson eyes had thawed into something raw and vulnerable. He seemed mesmerized, his chest rising and falling in an uneven rhythm that told you exactly how much this moment was affecting him. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. The way he held you tense yet tender, as if you were the most fragile thing in existence spoke volumes.
"You…" he began, his voice a low, rough rumble that vibrated through your own chest. He stalled, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his expression. It was a rare sight, the immortal swordsman rendered momentarily speechless by the simple act of looking at you. His grip on your waist tightened slightly, a silent, desperate plea for you not to pull away. You gulped, unable to look away from those red eyes that were usually so sharp and piercing, so focused, were now so gentle.
Looking into his eyes felt like staring directly into the heart of a dying star. There was a gravitational pull to that crimson gaze. "Stay still," Blade murmured against your lips. As he leaned in again, the very nature of his touch shifted. It was still soft, still careful, but there was an underlying desperation to it now a silent, frantic demand. His lips moved against yours with a slow, dragging heat that made your head spin and your pulse hammer in your ears. Every time he pulled back just a millimeter, it was only to catch a frantic breath before diving back in, his kisses becoming more feverish.
The way he held you, your legs locked around his waist, your bodies crushed together in the dark made it clear that the gentleness was a thin, fraying veil, a delicate layer of restraint draped over a much more violent, carnal desire that simmered just beneath his skin. You could feel it in the way his chest heaved against yours, the heat radiating from his body like a furnace, and the way his fingers occasionally twitched against your skin, as if he were fighting the urge to grip you with a desperate intensity. He wanted to drown in the sensation of your body pressed against his.
His hips tilted upward, a slow, heavy movement that was a silent, devastating promise of what was to come. He began to grind against you, a rhythmic, agonizingly slow pressure that sought to erase every millimeter of air between your skin and his.
“Please…" The word was barely a breath, a broken, pathetic sound that escaped his throat, unbidden and raw. He didn't even seem to realize that he had said it. His forehead slumped against your shoulder, his breath coming in jagged, uneven hitches that felt like he was drowning.
"In here?" You whispered, the question leaving your lips in a trembling breath, but as you gazed into his crimson eyes, you had your answers from them. There was a subtle tug at the corner of his lips.
idea.. vamp roman pt.3 where despite his better judgement and feelings, he can’t seem to get over reader no matter how hard he tries. he finds himself keeping tabs on reader’s life, haunting her in a way where she always feels like she catches glimpses of him; never long enough to be sure. maybe tie in her photography and make him appear in the bg of a photo? she goes through life having made peace with the limits of their relationship, finding a family of her own yada yada, then maybe they see each other one last time when she’s old and they have their final goodbye
might be ooc with your characterization of them but i digress. i’m just obsessed with your writing style it’s so intimate and fresh
ooh i do like this idea. I do think that roman would keep tabs on reader and their life but he would never ever let them know. he would never be in their line of vision, never risk letting them know hes keeping an eye on them. he knows how much pain itd cause if they were to know. he just wants them to be happy and safe, even if its not with him. (especially if its not with him.)
as much as id love to, I dont think this will be continued. I love the story and everything about it and I really DO want to write more but I am first and foremost a slave to the narrative. it decides what I write, not the other way around.
thank you sm for the compliments on my writing though 🥹 I wanted to post here because boyliife written fics are sometimes rare and repetitive. yall are fr the reason im posting!!
im wanting to write a text fic but im not sure what to write about... ideas please?? and what do yall use to make them? 😭😭 also i feel like my update to the vampire roman fic flopped really hard so if anyone can give me tips on how to not flop i would love u forever <333
tags: angst, like lots of it, sort of maybe slow burn, yearning, kissing, tension, blood and vampirism, only kind of proofread.
an: the long awaited part 2 is here!!! and my goodness I did not think it would end up being this long, but what can you do. as always, hope yall enjoy!!
wc: 6k
As you awaken, sunlight peeks through the grandiose curtains adorning the high windows next to the bed upon which you lay. The silken sheets are soft against your skin, and the massive bedchamber is quiet. It feels stagnant in the way that places that have not been visited for years appear. As you gaze at the soft sunlight, the assumption that this chamber had been long untouched is only further amplified by how much dust you can see floating through the air. The dust is slow, lazy, as if it is unused to moving.
You slowly work through the slight fog of your brain that is still ever so slightly addled by blood loss. You sit up, head turning every which way to try and find that gorgeous man that you had encountered the night before, but your attempts are in vain. He is nowhere to be seen.
Still feeling the slight pain on your neck from last night’s bite, your fingers reach up to the puncture site, expecting to be met with blood scabbing. Only, your fingers brush against smooth plastic. A plaster, maybe? You pry yourself out of the covers of the bed (that you now realise were carefully and tightly tucked around you) in search of a mirror, which you find on the wall furthest from the bed.
When you lean down to get a look at your neck, the last thing you expected to see was a pink Hello Kitty plaster. How had Roman even got this? Maybe he was not as disconnected from the modern world as you had initially assumed. Regardless, you appreciate the kindness he has expended to go as far as to tuck you into bed and bandage the wound he had created.
Before your encounter with Roman, you had assumed vampires to be not scary, but sophisticated, untouchable beings that felt as if they were above all else. Clearly, judging by his actions, that was not the case. While Roman was strangely aloof, he had the heart to take care of you in such a tender way, one that would most likely not be provided to you by any man you were to take interest in around your age.
Roman… You can’t help but wonder where he is now. After everything that had happened last night, he just left? You feel slightly let down, but you cannot bring yourself to blame him. For a vampire, forming attachments would be risky, even possibly deadly. There’s the risk of people finding out, of being chased down and killed, of being detained, experimented on, tortured. You cannot really blame Roman for disappearing.
While to you, meeting him was a significant event, to Roman and his hundreds of years of living, your encounter must surely seem like simply a blink of an eye. He has lived for so long, and will live for so much longer. One night compared to so many lifetimes is utterly insignificant.
As much as you yearn to go search for Roman, you decide it is the best decision for the both of you to simply leave him be, and keep quiet about this encounter for the foreseeable future. Well, not without first taking the photos you had initially come here to shoot. Not in this room, though. To share this room would feel as if you were sharing what happened here, and it all feels too fresh, too personal. Intimate. It’s not quite the right word, but it’s the closest you can grasp.
༺𓆩༒︎𓆪༻
Days later, you’re bored on your phone while reading through the comments on the Instagram post you made from the photos taken at the palace in which you met Roman. In such a grandiose place, it was not difficult at all to find a few rooms that provided the most perfect, vampiric backdrop. However, even with all the searching you had done, you hadn’t caught even a trace of the man you so desired to see again.
When questioned as to where you took the photos, you could never bring yourself to give an honest answer. It was always either a photo studio, or a set you created in your own room that you answered. For the most part, you felt as if sharing the real location could endanger Roman, but deeper down, you knew you also refused to give the real location because you wanted to keep him your secret. Not even your closest of friends had heard the true story of what really happened. No, that stayed between just you and Roman.
Oh, how he was beautiful. You hadn’t been able to take it in completely in the moment, due to the fear of encountering a vampire and later the adrenaline from being bitten, but now that you think back on it, Roman was most certainly the most gorgeous creature you had ever had the privilege to lay your eyes upon.
As you reminisce, you can’t help but wonder if Roman thinks back to you in the same way. Does he think of your encounter fondly? Or does he not remember it at all, it being a mere fleeting moment in a lifetime of experiences? You try not to get your hopes up too much, but you can’t help feeling hopeful that the answer is the former.
You toss your phone somewhere on your bed, groaning slightly as you rub your eyes, still weary despite having slept half of the day away. Clearly, nothing productive is going to be done while you are in this state, and especially while your brain is overtaken by thoughts of the vampire that had enchanted you so.
After days of yearning to return to that extravagant, gothic palace, thoughts running wild about returning every night, you finally decide to give in to the temptation, and while you prepare to leave, you find yourself fretting over your appearance much more than usual. You rationalise it by considering how gorgeous Roman was, and how well dressed he was and thinking you would like to match that ambience. You almost convince yourself that’s the only reason.
And in the same way, once you’ve reached the spot from which you have to take a long walk up to the heavily secluded palace and you notice your heart racing and your skin prickling, you attribute it to the chilly wind and your lack of a coat. Shit. You really should’ve brought a coat.
By the time you’ve reached the foot of the palace, the sky has clouded over and the air has begun to smell like rain. Well, at least you’ve made it inside, but if it starts to rain, how will you get back? How long will you have to be here? The walk is far too long to do in the rain unless you want to risk frostbite, and it would be especially dangerous without a coat.
Without realising, you had been standing at the entrance to the palace for an amount of time unbeknownst to you, and once you come to your senses when you feel a raindrop land on your head, you scurry inside and shut the heavy door behind you.
As soon as you enter the palace, you feel as if you have entered a completely different world. It’s quiet, stagnant, resting. But more so than last time you were here, it feels tense. As if the entire palace is holding its breath, waiting. For what, you are not sure.
Slowly, you creep through the halls of the palace, not quite sure what you’re looking for in order to find Roman. Last time you saw him, he had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. As you explore, you can’t help but wonder if it’s true if vampires can turn into bats. If so, it would make finding Roman a lot harder if he did not want to be found. Either way, you decide you’ll ask him when you find him.
Eventually, after searching various rooms sprawling with decor and grandiose, you find your way back to the bedchamber in which you had first encountered Roman, and as you gently press the door open you almost jump when you see the intimidating vampire himself, standing still, quietly in the middle of the room, his eyes fixed somewhere far away, as if lost in thought.
“Roman?” You call out gently, hoping you won’t startle him. You don’t expect to, considering all his… advanced vampire abilities and such. You’re not entirely sure what that entails, but surely he would not allow himself to be so unaware of his surroundings.
As per your prediction, Roman does not startle when you utter his name. He only turns his head slowly to face you, and he looks just as dauntingly beautiful as when you first met him. He calls out your name just as gently as you said his, but his tone indicates more of a question than anything else.
You take a few steps into the room, keeping your distance from Roman still. You’re not sure why. You’ve got over your fear of him, and you were so close with him the last time you saw him, so why do you now stay away?
Before you can think of what to say to Roman, (your mind has been momentarily rendered blank by him) he closes the majority of the distance between you in a few long strides, the heels of his boots clicking against the wood of the floor.
“What are you doing here? Why have you come back?” He asks, eyes boring into your own. You’re completely captivated.
“To be completely honest, I am not too sure myself,” you respond, voice slightly unsure. “I couldn’t stop thinking about this place. About… our encounter. I guessed I would not be able to think about anything else until I came back here.”
Roman momentarily looks completely stunned by your answer, as if he had not expected you to want to return, before he hides his expression with an easy smirk.
“Well, I could hardly blame you. An encounter with a vampire is certainly a moment to remember,” he says, voice smooth and low. “Have you come here for more? To offer your neck to me once again?” His long finger trails gently down the curve of your neck as he speaks, and you back away slightly.
This is strange, to say the least. Roman was not this forward last time you met him. At least, you don’t think he was. So why is he acting differently now?
You take a step back from him, away from his touch, and as you do so you once again notice a slight amount of surprise flicker across his face, only to be covered up by that seductive smirk just as quickly.
“I mean, of course the fact that you’re a vampire is interesting, and I want to know more about it, but I’m not just here because I want the rush from being bitten again. I could get that in other ways,” you start, voice steady. “I’m interested in you, and your experiences, and I want to learn more. So, I guess that’s why I’m here.”
For the third time now, Roman looks shocked, but this time he does not try to hide the emotion. He lets it simmer as he regards you fully for the first time since you walked in, looking you up and down slowly before he speaks.
“You… really aren’t here just to use me?”
“Nope. Didn’t even cross my mind?”
“Not once.”
“Well,” he says, chuckling slightly, “I guess then you’d be the first.”
Roman sighs, pushing his hair back with his hand and arranging it in what seems like a nervous, almost boyish gesture. He walks around the room slowly, examining the various pieces on display, antiques that’d probably go for thousands if you tried to sell them. You prefer them being here.
“What did you want to know?”
“Can vampires really transform into bats?” You blurt out, not really thinking the question over before it leaves your mouth.
Roman, clearly shocked by the question, laughs in response.
“No, although I do wish I could. Unfortunately, that is just a myth created by authors spinning tales. Although, the tales of sunlight and wooden stakes being deadly and silver being harmful are true,” he explains.
“The stories about garlic and religious symbols,” he gestures loosely, “are nothing but tales. Why would we be weak to garlic, of all things? And really, the idea of religious symbols subduing us is ridiculous. There are so many religions and symbols for each of them that practically anything could be proclaimed a religious symbol. No, that is simply a story spun by believers who think that their religion is the only right one, the one that will keep them safe.”
“That’s… wow. Thank you for sharing that with me,” you say, beginning to wander around the bedchamber like Roman has. You’re surprised he shared that much about himself with you. Last you had met, he had been so closed off.
When you reach a cupboard, you open it to find nothing but a few, extravagant Georgian-era outfits in perfect condition but clearly unworn.
“Is everything in this palace yours, or did you find it like this? It’s all incredibly curated,” you ask, examining an embroidered gaudy velvet cloak while you speak. The craftsmanship on the item is incredible, the kind that you would likely never find now.
“It’s all mine,” Roman answers, walking closer to see what you are examining. “Those clothes are from when I was still human. I suppose I forgot them in this room. Most of my things are organised elsewhere. As for the rest of the palace, well, that’s all been curated over years. When one lives for so long with nobody to talk to, you have to find other things with which to occupy oneself, and I suppose mine was collecting decorations.”
He places a gentle finger on your shoulder, prompting you to turn around to face him. “However, I can’t help but think that you cannot have made the trek all the way up here to simply ask me about my palace, if I can turn into a bat…” Roman says, chuckling softly.
You tense up slightly at the touch, at the lack of space suddenly appearing between you.
“Tell me, dear, what really brought you here? What is bothering you so that you came all the way here?” He asks, voice lowering slightly as he leans down just so.
“I… fuck,” you start, tearing your eyes away from his own. You move away from him and go to sit on the edge of the resplendent bed you had spent the night in just a few days prior.
You are a starving man who has had a feast placed in front of them, knowing full well that every piece of food has been laced with arsenic. To tell Roman the truth would be a dangerous game. He is a vampire, immortal, unable to join the real world and unlikely to be able to form any type of attachment that would last, yet simultaneously you find yourself starving, aching to have his attention, his touch. You know that if you were to get a taste, it would poison your mind, render you unable to think of anything else until you are consumed by hunger, but if you didn’t, would you be left with this longing curiosity for forever? Would you be able to take just a morsel, and live with that being your only taste?
If you were to not get a taste, you know that the curiosity would consume you at a much larger scale than the longing. Longing can be dealt with, can be remedied over time, but this opportunity forever being untaken, unknown? That you cannot accept.
“Truthfully, my mind has been completely monopolised by nothing but thoughts of you. I cannot exist, do anything, be anything without even so much as a passing thought about you, your story, your cadence, you,” you say looking up to meet Roman’s gaze despite how badly you wish to cower.
“I have been utterly consumed by you,” you almost-whisper, as if you’re afraid to admit it. “And I know it is idiotic. I am well aware of the danger you pose to me, yet I cannot help but completely disregard any caution. I am drawn to you, wholly and unreservedly.”
When you finish speaking, you are no longer able to meet Roman’s eyes. In a panic that you might have said far too much, you become suddenly enamoured by the window and its curtains. Well, if he refuses to spend any longer with you now, at least you know that you tried.
You hear the click of Roman’s heeled boots against the wooden floor as he slowly stalks over to you, ultimately coming to a stop right in front of you. As he settles before you, you prepare yourself for rejection, for your blood to be taken and for you to be discarded like a simple feeding bag; to be nothing but a creature that is clearly inferior to the magnificent being before you, who needs to understand their place.
“You fascinate me greatly,” Roman says, his words practically dripping with admiration as he speaks. Your head snaps to look up at him, surprise clearly evident on your features.
“For you, a human, to be so interested in me, my story, when you so clearly do not have the upper hand, is absolutely intriguing. You are intriguing,” he says, now taking a few steps back from you now that he has your full attention again.
“Every other human that has had the absolute privilege of meeting me — and no, it is not conceited to say it’s a privilege, it’s an objective truth — has tried to use me for their own personal gain, whether that be through the adrenaline rush from having their lifeblood sucked out of them or the attempt to make money off of the discovery of a vampire such as me. You,” he pauses to look at you, “have not once tried to do such a thing, and I find that- no, you mesmerising.”
“However,” he starts, tone dipping slightly, “you must be aware of the nature of my being. While I may be long-lived, I run the risk of being taken in, experimented on, killed if I am to show my face elsewhere, and that is not the life I want for you. That is not the life you deserve.”
Roman walks towards you, and you see how his brows furrow, how the corners of his mouth are slightly downturned. He does not want to be admitting this, but you understand his reasoning. Above all, you want him to be safe, but then again, he could be safe with you. Why can’t he be safe with you? Does he not know how bad you want that?
He takes your hands in his when he reaches you, pulls you to stand, and kisses the back of each of your hands gently.
“Do not misconstrue my words. I do want you, but it is not right, and it is not possible,” he murmurs, voice softer than you’ve ever heard it.
How Roman is right now, treating you so softly, talking to you so gently, momentarily silences you. God, those gorgeous eyes of his staring up at you, it absolutely weakens you. But what does he mean you can’t have this, can’t have him? No, that can’t be. You won’t allow it to be that way.
“No, you’re wrong,” you murmur back, which catches his attention. “You could stay with me, you’d be safe there, I promise-“
“Shh,” he interjects. “It’s not, and both you and I know that.”
Roman’s gaze flits down to your hands where his thumbs rub small, gentle circles against your knuckles, and then back up to your face.
“I do not wish that life upon either of us. It would simply not be fulfilling.”
“But Roman-“
“No. You know better than I do that you would grow to despise me, as I would to you. We are much better off as an encounter late at night than a commitment turned bad.”
You let his words process, and as much as you want to argue with him, you know deep down that he is correct. You would eventually grow to hate him for everything you would have to do to keep him safe, for how he cannot go outside during the day, for how he would remain forever unchanging while you succumbed to aging… it is simply not viable, and you know it.
Once Roman notices that you’ve processed and accepted his words, he uses one of his fingers to gently tilt your face back to his.
“Hey,” he whispers, face so close to yours that you can feel his breaths on your own mouth. “As much as I would like to, I cannot give you eternity, but I can give you tonight. Is that okay with you?”
“I…”
Your voice trails off as you process his request. Well, you suppose even a few moments with him is more than you expected, and maybe after experiencing him, it would be easier for you to move on. You know you’re just telling yourself that, but you use it as an excuse anyway.
“I would like that, yes,” you answer, and you do your best to sound completely sure. You’re not entirely sure you were convincing, but it’s enough for Roman.
“Good,” he says, a small smile returning to his face, but not the same seductive smirk as he wore earlier. No, this one is small, but genuine and so, so endearing.
Roman leans back down to place more kisses to your knuckles, and to your surprise he kisses each in turn, slowly and softly. His care and gentleness almost makes you coo out loud. For such an intimidating man, or vampire, he really is rather sweet.
When he lifts his head up to meet your gaze once again, he notices the shocked yet endearing expression on your face, and he grins for the first time since you’ve met him. It really is such a darling expression on him, although completely unexpected, and you can’t help but grin right back and even laugh slightly. Roman, of course, notices, and tries to restore the tone of your encounter back to the seriousness with which he wants to approach this.
“Relax, darling,” he murmurs, gently cupping your face with one hand as he tilts it to meet his own, though you are still smiling slightly. His crinkle slightly as he watches you fondly. If you were in a clearer state of mind, you would have taken time to consider if this were just a ploy to take even more from you. Unluckily (or luckily) for you, you are far too gone to care about such notions.
You watch Roman hesitate slightly, his face close to yours, your bodies nearly touching. His eyes rake over your face, looking for any micro-expression that would indicate that you don't want this. When he finds none at all he leans in, but you don't miss the small, satisfied smirk that rests on his features for the few moments before.
Roman's kisses start slow, controlled. He kisses like you're a pristine rose and he’s slowly peeling back the soft petals, delicate and gentle, and when you kiss him back you feel his body practically soften under your hands.
His lips aren't cold, no. He would never allow you to experience such a sensation. They are not the warmth of that of a regular human, but he would never allow himself to be unpleasant to the touch.
His hands move slowly, gently, tracing from your face to the back of your neck, down the front of your chest, across your torso and down your sides, never settling, never stilling for more than a few moments. He touches as if to memorise and to savour, while his lips press against yours in soft, languid strokes.
Your hands settle in Roman's hair, fumbling slightly before you find the ribbon that he has used to tie his hair back. As much as you loved his little ponytail, you need to tangle your fingers in his hair fully. You tug at the ribbon gently and feel his hair fall from the low ponytail that you had earlier admired so. When he feels your fingers work their way onto his scalp, Roman hums ever so softly against your lips, and you feel that hum vibrate through every limb and every cell of your body.
You smile into the kiss as you hear Roman hum, lips pressing against his just as softly, yet with much less hesitance than before.
“Have I told you yet how utterly enchanting you look tonight?” he murmurs against your lips, not giving you much of a chance to answer before he goes right back to pressing long, languid kisses to your lips.
“No,” you whisper back, kisses filling the spaces in between your words. “Tell me more?”
“Later,” Roman responds, and then takes a few moments to kiss down your neck, never lingering in one spot too long, before returning to your lips. “Let me focus on this for now.”
Before you can protest, you feel his tongue gently running along the seam of your lips, making you gasp softly in response to the unexpected intrusion. Despite your surprise, you open your lips for him, allowing Roman to gently slip his tongue inside your mouth, deepening the kiss.
Gradually, the kisses turn hungrier, yet never stray towards roughness. With the gentle slide of Roman’s tongue against your own, his hands softly caressing your body, all else becomes completely irrelevant. By now, you’ve completely forgotten how temporary this all is, how you will likely never feel like this again. None if it matters to you.
Right now, all you can focus on is the man making you feel as if you’re levitating.
As he kisses you, Roman has managed to back you into the bed, and when the back of your knees hit the mattress you stumble slightly, breaking the spell that had enraptured you both. You pull away for a few moments to catch your breath, and he uses the opportunity to press slow, hot kisses along your jawline as your chest heaves.
“Won’t you lie down for me, dear?” He asks tenderly, hand coming up to stroke over your cheekbones ever so softly. Rejecting his request doesn’t even cross your mind, murmuring a quick “yeah” as you hesitantly pull away from Roman to lower yourself on the bed, lying on your back as you watch him.
Roman removes his heavy velvet cloak lined with fur at the collar, which was likely weighing him down greatly, before he climbs onto the bed after you, hovering just over you.
“You really are far too sweet,” he murmurs, gently brushing any unruly strands of hair into place. Your hands reach up to him, settling on the sides of his face as your thumbs stroke gently over his eyes, cheekbones, nose, lips, everywhere they can reach. Right now, the view that you have of him is unmatched. So close to you, so beautiful and open.
“And you really are far too gorgeous,” you murmur back before pressing a soft kiss to his cheek.
“Hey, I was supposed to be the one telling you that,” he says, grinning at you despite the slight annoyance present in his voice.
“Too late,” you say, smiling right back at him.
Before you can get any other comment in, Roman starts kissing you again, and your lips part almost automatically for him, allowing him to slip his tongue back into your mouth. At your clear willingness to let him in he grins, and while you might have been embarrassed at other times, at this moment you couldn’t care less.
You stay like that for a long while, mouths and tongues connected, hands roaming bodies, memorising each other. The both of you know you won’t have this opportunity again, so both take full advantage of every moment.
Once Roman is satisfied with how he has ravaged your mouth, he moves his own down to your jaw, pressing a line of hot, open-mouthed kisses down the bone before licking a long stripe back up, at which you let out a small, strangled noise that you didn’t know you could make. You feel Roman smile against your skin at the noise, and in that moment you want to do nothing but cower.
He notices, of course, and his mouth comes up to your ear, breath hot against your skin, and he presses a gentle kiss to the lobe before he speaks.
“Don’t feel ashamed, darling. Please don’t hide anything from me,” he murmurs, before returning to kissing down your neck.
As Roman moves slowly, kisses long and lingering and full of attention, your hands find their way into his hair. You scratch gently at his scalp, to which he lets out a soft sigh, relaxing just a bit more. You can’t help but feel a bit satisfied that you can affect him in the same way he affects you.
Roman spends a long while at your neck, if not sucking marks into your skin or pressing more kisses against your skin he is just resting his face there, inhaling your scent. You can’t help but wonder if he can smell your blood… either way, you decide to offer.
“Roman, if you’d like to, you can bite me again,” you murmur, stroking over his hair gently. You feel him pause the kisses he was peppering over your neck to consider you offer, before lifting his head up to look at you, not without pressing a lingering kiss to your lips, of course.
“That’s incredibly kind of you, dear, but I want you here with me. I don’t want you to pass out again,” he says, brows furrowed slightly.
“Then take only a little bit,” you say, gently stroking his cheekbones. “Please, Roman. It’s okay.”
Roman considers your words for a few moments before sighing softly and pressing a small kiss to your forehead.
“You are truly astonishing. Thank you, sweet thing,” he murmurs, pressing a long, deep kiss to your lips before moving down to your neck. He takes a few moments to kiss the spot he plans to bite, before he presses his fangs down into your jugular and draws blood.
The sting you feel is now familiar, almost comforting as he takes from you. To feel your blood being sucked out of your body should not be a pleasurable sensation, yet with how gentle Roman is, how his hand holds your own and grounds you, it could all be described as pleasant.
It ends all too soon, Roman far too scared of taking too much and having you fall asleep again like you did last time. When he draws his mouth away from your neck, he gently licks away the drops of blood forming at the twin puncture wounds along your neck, and presses a soft kiss to the bite as if it’ll help you heal faster.
When he draws his head up, he does not hesitate to once again press his lips to yours, fingers interlacing next to your head as he kisses you. He pries your lips open with his tongue ever so gently, and slips it inside your mouth. You can taste your own blood on his tongue, and the sharp metallic flavour makes you shudder ever so slightly.
Roman ignores this, and continues to press himself further into you, pressing increasingly passionate kisses against your lips until both of you are entirely consumed by the feel of your bodies pressed together, your tongues tied together, and your hearts intertwined.
༺𓆩༒︎𓆪༻
The remainder of the night passes with soft words and even softer kisses shared until neither of you can hold your head up any longer from exhaustion.
Now, your rest half on top of Roman, arms around him and face buried in the crook of his neck as he holds you close to him. You savour these last few moments with him, inhaling and memorising his scent as much as you can.
Although you already know the answer to your most burning question, you ask it anyway.
“Will you be here when I wake up?” You ask, voice low and slightly unsure, as if you’re not prepared for his answer despite already knowing it.
Roman sighs softly and moves one of his hands to your hair, gently stroking his fingers through the strands and scratching his long, pointed nails against your scalp while the other draws soft, absentminded circles on the small of your back.
“You know I won’t. I cannot stay, despite how desperately I long for it. Come tomorrow, you cannot see me again, ever, but you already know this, dove,” he murmurs, voice just loud enough for you to hear it.
You lift your head up to look at Roman once he finishes speaking, and you’re sure he doesn’t miss how your eyes are more glassy than usual. You don’t care if you seem weak or pathetic; all that matters to you right now is him.
“Thank you for tonight. I could never forget you, even if I wanted to,” you murmur, bringing your hand up to his face to move unruly hair out of his face.
“While I cannot promise the same,” Roman starts, clearly disliking what he has to admit, “I can promise that I will remember you for as long as I can.”
He brings a hand up to your cheek to keep your eyes locked to his, and uses his thumb to wipe away the small tear that has slipped from your eye.
“I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, but it is the most I can promise you. Either way, I have a feeling that you will be incredibly difficult to forget,” he says, giving you a small yet bittersweet smile.
Before you can get any more words out, he gently pulls you down into another soft kiss. It lingers, long and sweet, as if letting go would be the death of the both of you.
In some ways it will be, you suppose. You feel as if a piece of you belongs here, and you know you won’t be able to take it back with you when you leave. Perhaps Roman feels as if he’s leaving a piece of himself with you. You cannot know for sure, and you know it will haunt you.
Eventually you pull away from the kiss, reluctant and slow. You allow yourself a few moments to take Roman’s face in, engraining the image in your brain as best you can. You feel a pang of regret at your choice to leave your phone at home, rendering you now unable to take a photo of the ethereal man before you. (“Can vampires even be photographed?” You wonder.)
“Thank you for everything, sweetness,” Roman says as you settle back down in the crook of his neck, eyes closed and body fully relaxed against his. He pulls you to lay fully on top of him, as if he cannot bear any part of your bodies being separated in your final moments together.
As you begin to drift to sleep, you are comforted by how Roman presses kisses against the top of your head, how he holds you with such care, how he still gently strokes your hair as if you were a porcelain doll, worthy of the best treatment.
And when you awake, he is gone. You are alone, with nothing but the ghost of his touch still lingering on your skin to remind you of your time together.
Only then do you allow yourself to cry, alone in this haunting palace, curled up small on the too-large bed not ever meant for just one person.
an: wow... kind of a crazy ride i can't lie. this took me so long to write, and I really didn't expect it to end up being this long, but hey. its fine. I think this is where I will leave this for now, unless someone has a really good idea for a 3rd part, but to be honest im happy with where this has all ended. also, I kind of considered smut for this part, but I like what I ended up writing. also, ive never written smut before and its a scary thing, im pretty proud of this series and didn't want to ruin it with god awful smut. anyway, thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed!!
how do yall genuinely stay motivated to write because like. im here trying to write this vampire roman x reader part 2 because I want to, and I have it all planned out in my head but getting the words out is just to taxing. maybe im putting too much pressure on myself to make it incredible? I dont know but do any of yall suffer like this and if so please send help 🙏
tags: tension, like LOADS of tension, blood drinking, weird feelings, neither angst nor fluff but kind of both at the same time?, NOT PROOFREAD
an: first tumblr post woah! this comes from both my love for vampires and longing for fics of roman that arent fem!reader. I hope you enjoy!
wc: 2k
You can feel your heart racing, and you know he can feel it too, his fangs gently pressed against your neck and his unnaturally cool breath against your skin.
You never should've come here.
All you had wanted was a cute photo op. You had seen this old gothic castle posted on tiktok, apparently abandoned and perfect to get some photos. Unfortunately for you, that had not been the case. You had decided to adventure into the castle, with its grand ceilings and gorgeous decor. At the time you hadn't noticed the lack of dust that was typical for an abandoned space.
While exploring what seemed to be a bedchamber, you had heard the door shut behind you, and before you could even turn around to see what had happened, you had felt a back pressed to yours, breathing on your neck, and your hands held behind you.
You had never imagined you would run into somebody on this excursion.
And when he speaks, his voice is a low purr that despite being quiet, feels as if it’s reverberating off every wall in the room.
“What are you doing here? Lost?” he asks, breath brushing ever so gently against your ear.
“I… didn't know you were here. If I'm intruding, I am incredibly sorry,” you manage to get out. Despite how you will your voice not to shake, you are sure he can hear the tremors.
He hums softly, running a finger along the tendons of your neck gently. You couldn't see, but you were sure you felt a claw-like nail scratch against your skin slightly.
“Polite…” he muses, speaking almost as if it were just to himself. You can feel his body retreat from yours as he steps away, the rhythm of his boots slow and steady on the floor, echoing through the otherwise silent bedchamber.
You turn your body to face him, only to be met with the most striking yet hauntingly beautiful face you have ever laid your eyes upon; high cheekbones, unnaturally pale skin, prominent nose, slightly curly hair that brushes past his shoulders, and dark, deep-set eyes. You freeze, both from shock and fear. You had not expected him to look so sublime.
“I would tell you not to be so afraid, but to be completely honest, you have every reason to be,” he says, and chuckles softly to himself. He walks slowly, practically glides over to the bed in the centre of the chamber, with deep red silk covers and exquisite metalwork in the high frame. “I won't force you, but I would appreciate it if you were to sit with me.”
You watch as he lowers himself onto the bed to lean against the headboard. You observe for a few moments; he looks like he completely belongs in this environment, covered in velvets and silks from head to toe. Before committing to a choice, you pad slowly, cautiously to the other side of the bed. His eyes never waver from your figure. Not even for a moment.
You ask softly, “Who are you?” before you can consider the words.
The man laid before you sighs, turning his head to the ceiling as he seemingly contemplates your question.
“That is… a complicated question,” he answers, his voice the same low purr as earlier, yet somehow it sounds even more intimate as he looks back at you, “ but for now, you may call me Roman. As for my past… it is not of significance to this interaction.”
“I… alright,” you respond and then introduce yourself in turn, choosing to sit down on the bed with your back to the headboard, but you stay as far from him as possible.
“You're a vampire, aren't you?” You ask, having gained some confidence after realising he is not making any moves to harm you as of right now.
“I guess you could call me that,” Roman says, head tilting slightly as he speaks. “I've been called far worse in my lifetime. Demon, monster, villain… compared to those, ‘vampire’ seems rather acceptable. Oh, but please don't worry, I won't bite. Not without permission at least. Unlike the vampires from the stories you've been told, I have decorum.”
“I see,” you respond, anxiety slightly dampened by his apparent disdain for vampires who would bite someone without consent. You decide to ask more questions before you let your mind linger on what it might be like to be bit.
“How long have you been here?”
“Give or take three hundred years. I no longer concern myself with keeping track of exact dates. After a certain point it seems utterly pointless.”
“And why did you ask me to sit with you?”
“Ah,” Roman responds, a slight smile on his face. He looks away from you for a moment, as if reminiscing before he responds. “I am unable to live amongst normal society. When you live like I do, you become incredibly isolated. I get to feed maybe once a month if I get lucky with an animal coming by, sometimes it takes months, so you can imagine that people are far less and few between. I am sure you can imagine why I would rather have a conversation with you than immediately pounce on you for your blood. As delightful as that might be, connection is something I get far less.”
“I see,” you respond, taking a few moments to consider his answer. “I can't imagine how incredibly lonely this life must be for you. Do you remember the last time you spoke to somebody?”
“I… don't, no,” Roman responds, the purr of his voice lessening slightly. At his answer, you can't help but feel a strong sense of pity for him. To be alone and immortal for so long, to be starving for human blood as well, it all seems completely insufferable.
“To be completely honest, you might be able to live amongst regular society now,” you respond, but carefully with your words as to not give any false impressions. “Even if you could only go out at night, with the way you dress, with your appearance, it'd most likely just be seen as aura farming. It's not too unusual, actually.”
Roman hums softly, considering your words before he responds. “I appreciate your concern, but I do not have much interest in reintegrating with the rest of society. While it is not ideal, I am content with my life as it is.”
“Oh. Alright,” you respond, slightly bewildered at his decision, yet understanding. If society had shunned you for years, you also might not want to return. However, you do wish there was more you could do for him. Unless…
You offer before you can think it over completely. It has been a lifelong dream of yours, after all.
“If you'd like, you could feed from me. You mentioned you only really get to drink from animals, and not often at all, so… I don’t know, I thought it might be nice for you,” you suggest, gaze dropping from his. “Sorry if it's a silly suggestion.”
While your gaze is lowered from his, Roman shifts closer to you on the large bed, places one long, slender finger under your chin and lifts it gently until you face him, the long nail at the end of his finger gently scratching you.
“You do realise the gravity of that statement, no?” he asks, his voice now somehow lower yet softer than before. “Your offer is incredibly generous, and I am undoubtedly inclined to accept, but first I must know you realise what you are offering.”
As he speaks, you watch every movement of his face; his half-lidded eyes, his seemingly soft lips and the fangs that glint beneath them. He is gorgeous, but you mustn't let that cloud your judgement.
“I am aware of exactly what I am offering. I am trusting you not to drink me dry, not to kill me. I am also aware this is an incredibly idiotic thing to offer, but I find myself nonetheless inclined to do so,” you respond, unable to tear your eyes from his captivating gaze.
You see Roman smile slightly at your confirmation. It feels dangerous, but you can't help but feel even more drawn in.
“Good,” he purrs, hand reaching up as his knuckles gently brush your cheekbone. If he notices your breath hitch, he says nothing.
Roman gently pulls you closer to the middle of the bed, then pushes you down ever so softly, so your head is resting on the plush pillows. He hovers over you, face close to yours and breaths mingling as he observes you, as if looking for fear. Whatever he was looking for, he doesn't seem to find it as he continues moving you, bringing one of your hands to rest on his bicep.
“If you need me to stop, squeeze here,” he says, voice low and intimate. “If it becomes too much, if you're uncomfortable, if you become lightheaded, please just squeeze. It has been a long time, and I will do my best to read your body language, but I cannot guarantee anything.”
You notice more than anything that his skin is slightly cool against yours. Not cold, just not the warmth you are used to when touching another person.
At his instructions, you nod. You can feel your heart rate increasing, and Roman must notice it too. He brings the hand that isn't restricted by yours up to your face and gently brushes away the hair in your eyes. If you were in any other situation, you would perceive this as incredibly intimate. However, right now, you see this as a predator placating its prey. Despite this, you find you don't mind.
“I promise you, you will be okay. I will be as gentle as possible, okay?” Roman murmurs, and you nod at his words. You know you shouldn't trust him, but you do.
“Okay,” you whisper back, breath almost catching as you speak.
Roman nods at your confirmation, and moves his head to the crook of your neck. Unlike you expected, he does not bite immediately. He rests his face by your neck, inhaling deeply, as if savouring the moment.
And when his fangs do sink into your jugular, it is the most serene pain you have ever experienced.
Roman drinks slowly and softly, as if he's scared to take too much. One of his hands is in your hair, gently stroking as if to soothe any pain you might be feeling.
As blood slowly leaves your body, you feel yourself progressively become more lightheaded. Your vision slowly blurs and your mind becomes fuzzy. With whatever conscience you have left when you're at your limit, you gently squeeze Roman's bicep, and you feel his mouth leave your neck as soon as you do. You register him softly licking away any blood left behind, before following it up with an ever-so-soft kiss to the spot from which he fed.
Your eyes stay closed after he leaves your neck, and you feel yourself stirring on the edge of passing out from blood loss as you curl up to get more comfortable. Despite this, you aren't worried. In fact, you feel rather calm. You know you will be fine, because Roman is here and his hand is in your hair, softly stroking still.
Before you slip fully away, you feel him press another gentle kiss onto your forehead before removing himself from your body.
“Thank you, sweet thing,” Roman murmurs, and in your semi-conscious state you barely hear him. He does not know if you will remember when you wake up, but he knows that he will not be there.
And when you do wake, it is in the very same bed, in the same grand bedchambers, tucked under the silken blankets, completely alone.
Truth is Better When Shared (Anaxa x Reader oneshot)
Summary: What begins as collaboration becomes something Anaxa can’t rationalize away. Told through his private journal entries, your shared marginalia, and the slow unraveling of every wall he’s built, this is a story about integration. Of reason and emotion, distance and connection, the scholar and the person he’s forgotten how to be.
A/N: I've been working on this oneshot for four months. This fanfic blends narrative scenes with diary entries, annotations, and field notes—mirroring how Anaxa processes both philosophy/logic and emotion.
I drew a lot on my literature and academic background for this one, so it’s quite different from my usual x reader writing (and my fanfics in general). But honestly… I couldn’t resist. :D
Please note: While I tried to stay true to Anaxa‘s core beliefs regarding the soul and Titans, I took some creative liberties for the sake of this fic (and because I don‘t have his brilliant mind, unfortunately. :D).
This is a long read. Part character study, part love story, part philosophical meltdown. Take your time with it.
[The pages are crisp, unused. Anaxa’s handwriting is immaculate. For now.]
Entry #01: Hypothesis Formation
[Undated, though the ink is fresh]
Hypothesis: Prolonged proximity to certain individuals induces measurable cognitive interference.
Subject: Y/N. Scholar-in-training at the Grove, specializing in philosophical texts regarding the Titans. Competent, if occasionally reckless in interpretations.
Observations thus far:
Lapse in concentration during joint archival sessions (3 documented instances)
Misplacement of research tools (quill, reference texts, alchemical measures)
Increased frequency of tangential thoughts during solo work periods
Possible explanations:
Standard fatigue due to intensive research schedule
Environmental factors (poor lighting, inadequate ventilation in archives)
Soul resonance interference from sustained interpersonal exposure
The third option warrants investigation. If emotional frequency can influence harmonics—as my alchemical experiments have begun to suggest—then repeated exposure to a specific individual may create residual field distortions.
My work on soul-structure through alchemical deconstruction has shown that consciousness persists beyond physical form as information patterns. If souls and the preserved memories are like data, then emotion becomes the catalyst that shapes how that data resonates between individuals.
Methodology: Continue scheduled collaborative sessions. Monitor for pattern escalation. Document deviations in cognitive baseline.
Correlation is not causation. But the scientific mind, once disrupted, struggles to return to symmetry.
Conclusion: Further observation required.
Addendum: Found my quill in Y/N’s hand this morning. Y/N has been using it to annotate our current work, apparently for the past hour. When I pointed this out, Y/N laughed and returned it without apology.
The laugh. I should note the acoustic properties. Frequency, duration, tonal quality. For research purposes.
I will monitor for further deviations.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
You meet Anaxa in the archives on a morning that feels like every other. Pale light filtering through the high windows, the smell of old parchment and the sharp tang of alchemical reagents, the quiet hum of knowledge waiting to be decoded.
He’s already there when you arrive, because of course he is. He’s always early, always prepared, always three steps ahead of whatever conversation you’re about to have.
“You’re late,” Anaxa says without looking up from his work.
You glance at the timepiece on the wall. “By two minutes.”
“Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds.” Now he looks up, his eye—that distinctive pale blue, almost luminescent in certain light—meeting yours with something that might be amusement. The eyepatch draws your attention as it always does, a stark reminder of his dedication. Or his recklessness. You’re still not sure which. “Precision matters in research.”
“Does it matter in greeting someone?”
“Particularly then.” But there’s the ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth as he gestures to the chair across from him. “Sit. We have work.”
You’ve been collaborating for three months now. It started as a necessity—your specialization in Titan philosophy complementing his work in Nousporism, soul theory, and alchemical investigation. Two scholars, two pieces of a larger puzzle, brought together by the Grove’s mandate to understand what came before.
It should have stayed professional. Purely academic.
Instead, you’ve started arriving early just to watch the way he works. The precise movements of his long fingers as he arranges his alchemical tools—vials of luminescent compounds, carefully labeled soul essence samples, the brass instruments he uses to measure certain frequencies. The way he tilts his head when reading something that challenges him. The little “hm” of satisfaction when a theory clicks into place.
You haven’t documented any of this. You don’t need to.
“I reviewed your thesis on Titan emotional suppression,” Anaxa says, sliding a stack of papers across the table. The pages are covered in his handwriting. Parts are angular, controlled, beautiful in its precision, other parts are messy, as if his writing couldn’t keep up with his thoughts. “Your argumentation is sound, though you’ve made several logical leaps that require additional support.”
“Several?” You pick up the first page. There are annotations everywhere, but they’re not harsh. They’re engaged. Like he cared enough to follow every thread of your thinking.
“Seven,” Anaxa clarifies. “I’ve marked them. You’ll find my suggested revisions on pages three, eight, and fifteen.”
You flip to page three. His note reads: “Adequate reasoning, but you’ve conflated causation with correlation. The Titans didn’t fall because they suppressed emotion. They fell because they never learned to (re)integrate it. See addendum.”
The addendum is half a page long. He’s essentially written you a mini-essay in the margins.
“You know,” you say, looking up, “most people just write ‘needs work’ and move on.”
“I’m not most people.” He leans back slightly, arms crossed. The motion makes him look almost casual, though you know better. Anaxa is never truly relaxed. There’s always that hum of mental energy, that sense of constant analysis. “And your work deserves more than dismissive notation.”
Something warm settles in your chest. You try to ignore it.
“Thank you, Anaxagoras.”
There’s a pause. Brief, but noticeable.
Most people at the Grove call him Anaxa. A casual shortening that he tolerates with barely concealed irritation. But you’ve always used his full name, drawn to the weight of it, the way the syllables feel important and deliberate.
You didn’t realize he’d noticed until now, when something shifts in his expression. Not quite a softening, but close.
“You’re welcome,” Anaxa says, and his voice is different. Quieter. “Now. Let’s discuss your interpretation of the soul-thread harmonics in chapter four. You’ve made an interesting claim about emotional resonance that I want to explore.”
You settle in, pulling your notes closer. The morning light shifts as you work, pouring across the table in golden bands. Occasionally you catch the faint chemical scent from his most recent alchemical experiment. Something acrid and metallic that makes you wonder what he’s been testing this time.
And you don’t notice the way his gaze drifts from his papers to your face when you’re reading.
You don’t notice the way he pauses before speaking, as if testing the weight of words before releasing them.
You don’t notice that his handwriting gets slightly less controlled in the margins of your work, as if his usual precision falters when he’s writing to you instead of for the archive.
But Anaxa notices.
He notices everything.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Entry #02: Variable Documentation
Observation Count: 7 sessions completed since initial hypothesis formation.
Deviations recorded:
Session 3: Discussed Y/N’s theory on soul-memory adhesion for 47 minutes past scheduled end time. Did not notice until archive keeper began closing procedures.
Session 5: Caught myself explaining Nousporic principles using examples from Y/N‘s previous arguments rather than classical sources. Concerning. Y/N remembers things I say. I remember things Y/N says. The feedback loop is becoming self-reinforcing.
Session 7 (today): Y/N called me Anaxagoras. Again. Most at the Grove use the shortened form—Anaxa—which I can tolerate but dislike. It feels dismissive, casual in a way that diminishes the significance of nomenclature. Y/N makes the full name sound… proper. Respected. As if the name itself matters.
Physical observations:
Y/N gestures when excited about an idea. Small movements, but distracting.
Y/N’s laugh when I make dry remarks—not mockery, but genuine amusement. Unexpected. (Acoustic analysis pending.)
The way Y/N reads: lips moving slightly, brow furrowed in concentration. I have spent 4.5 minutes observing this today alone.
Alchemical correlation: My recent experiments on soul-essence resonance patterns support the theory that consciousness creates harmonic fields. When two compatible frequencies interact repeatedly, they don’t simply coexist. They amplify each other. The resulting pattern is more stable than either frequency alone.
This may explain why my concentration improves in some ways during our sessions, even as it deteriorates in others. Not interference. Resonance.
Hypothesis revision: Initial assumption that proximity causes interference may be incorrect. Alternative theory: proximity creates resonance. A harmonic pattern rather than dissonance.
If the record shows emotional impressions as data, then repeated exposure to compatible frequencies would create reinforcement rather than disruption.
Conclusion: The field effect is not diminishing. It is intensifying.
Problem: I am unsure whether I wish to counteract this or allow it to continue.
Secondary problem: I find myself hoping Y/N will be early tomorrow. This is unscientific.
Note to self: Begin documenting resonance patterns more carefully. If emotional frequency can influence soul-thread harmonics, this could have significant implications for—
Who am I fooling.
I want to see Y/N again.
❖ ☉ ❖ ☉ ❖ ☉ ❖
II. Shared Study
The next session, you arrive five minutes early.
Anaxa is already there—of course—but this time he looks up immediately when you enter. His eye tracks your movement across the room, and you swear there’s something different in his expression. Not quite relief, but close.
“Early,” he observes.
“Thought I’d beat you here for once.”
“An impossibility.” But he’s almost smiling. “I’ve prepared tea. Fifth blend from the right—it helps with concentration.”
You glance at the table. There are two cups already poured, steam still rising. The setup is too deliberate to be casual.
“You made tea,” you say slowly.
“I often make tea.”
“You made two cups.”
“An elementary deduction.” He gestures to the seat across from him. “Are you going to sit, or continue cataloging my beverage choices?”
You sit, wrapping your hands around the warm porcelain. It’s exactly the temperature you prefer. Not too hot, steeped long enough to be strong but not bitter.
Anaxa remembered.
The work begins as it always does: papers spread between you, references cross-checked, theories tested against evidence. But today there’s something else threading through it. A current of awareness that wasn’t there before, or maybe was always there and you’re only now naming it.
Your hand reaches for a reference text at the same moment his does.
Fingers brush.
The contact lasts less than a second—barely qualifies as touch—but you both freeze.
Anaxa recovers first, pulling his hand back with careful control. “Apologies. You were…please, take it.”
You pick up the text, hyperaware of the warmth still lingering on your skin. “Thanks.”
Silence. The kind that feels too loud.
Then Anaxa clears his throat and says, with perfect academic dryness, “If you insist on annotating in the margins, at least have the courtesy to use proper notation.”
The absurdity of it—the deflection, the return to familiar ground—makes you laugh. Real laughter, the kind that surprises you both.
His eye widens slightly. You watch him try to process the sound, try to categorize it, and you see the exact moment he gives up and just… listens.
When you finally manage to speak, you’re still smiling. “My notation is perfectly adequate.”
“Adequate.” He repeats the word like he’s testing it. “Yes. That’s certainly one assessment.”
“What’s yours?”
“Promising.” The word comes softer than expected. “Though dangerously reckless in places.”
“Reckless?”
“You make logical leaps that would give most scholars vertigo.” Anaxa is leaning forward slightly now, drawn into the conversation despite himself. “You assume connections before proving them. You trust intuition over methodology.”
“And that bothers you.”
“Profoundly.” But he’s almost smiling again. “It also produces remarkable insights that more conservative approaches would miss entirely.”
The compliment lands gently, unexpectedly. You’re not sure what to do with it.
“So what you’re saying is… I’m effectively reckless?”
“Brilliantly reckless,” Anaxa corrects, and something in his tone makes your breath catch. “There’s a difference.”
The afternoon light has shifted while you’ve been talking, pouring through the high windows in golden bands that catch the dust motes floating between you. The archive feels smaller suddenly, or maybe you’re just more aware of the space. The two feet of table separating you, the way his sleeve brushes papers when he gestures, the controlled rhythm of his breathing.
In the corner, you notice one of his alchemical setups. A complex arrangement of glass vessels and copper tubing, some kind of distillation apparatus. The faint shimmer of soul essence glows in one of the containers, pale blue-green like captured starlight.
“What are you working on?” you ask, gesturing toward the equipment.
Anaxa follows your gaze. “Testing a hypothesis about consciousness transfer. Whether soul-essence can be extracted, studied, and reintegrated without degradation of the original pattern.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“Most worthwhile research is.” Anaxa’s tone is matter-of-fact. “The pursuit of truth requires sacrifice. Understanding requires risk.”
You think about the eyepatch, about the rumors that circulate through the Grove. That he removed his own eye to get answers. That his alchemical experiments have left scars. Visible and otherwise.
“Anaxagoras?” you ask quietly.
Anaxa looks up from his notes. Focuses on you with that complete, undivided attention that makes you feel like the only thing in the world worth observing.
“Yes?”
You’re not sure what you were going to say. The question dissolves under his gaze.
“Nothing,” you manage. “Just… thank you. For the notes. For all of this.”
Something flickers across his face. Surprise, maybe, or something deeper. “You don’t need to thank me for doing what I’d do regardless.”
“What you’d do regardless?”
“Engage with work that challenges me.” Anaxa pauses, then adds, quieter, “And with the person behind it.”
The words hang between you like a confession he didn’t mean to make.
Then the archive keeper calls out that they’re closing in ten minutes, and the spell breaks.
You both move to gather your things. A familiar ritual, papers sorted and stacked, quills capped, cups collected. But your hands are shaking slightly, and you’re pretty sure his are too.
At the door, Anaxa pauses. Turns back.
“Same time tomorrow?” he asks, and there’s something careful in the question. As if your answer matters more than it should.
“Of course,” you say.
He nods. Once. Then: “Good.”
You leave first, but you swear you can feel his gaze following you until you turn the corner.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Entry #03: Hypothesis Failing
I touched Y/N’s hand today.
Correction: our hands brushed during a simultaneous reach for the same text. The contact was incidental, lasting approximately 0.8 seconds.
Cognitive disruption (lost track of conversation for 4-6 seconds)
Y/N’s response:
Similar physiological markers observed (increased respiration, dilated pupils)
Maintained composure better than I did
Laughed when I retreated into academic formality
Y/N’s laugh. I need to stop noting the laugh. It serves no research purpose.
(It does, however, make everything feel less insurmountable.)
Alchemical parallel: In my recent soul-essence experiments, I’ve observed that when two compatible consciousness patterns are brought into proximity, they don’t remain discrete. They begin to synchronize. Creating harmonic interference patterns that are more stable than either pattern in isolation.
The phenomenon is called resonance coupling. It’s what I’ve been trying to achieve in my alchemical work for months.
Apparently, it occurs naturally between certain individuals.
Revision to working theory: Emotional resonance does not simply influence soul-patterns. It creates new ones. Sustained proximity isn’t building interference. It’s building architecture. A space that exists only when we’re both present.
The Titans fell because they couldn’t (re)integrate emotion into their structure. They saw feeling as corruption rather than foundation.
I’m beginning to understand what they missed.
Current status: Hypothesis failing comprehensively.
Accurate status: I wanted to touch Y/N’s hand again the moment I pulled away.
Note: Tomorrow. Same time. Y/N said “of course” like it was inevitable.
Perhaps it is.
❖ ☉ ❖ ☉ ❖ ☉ ❖
III. Notes Accumulating
Over the next three weeks, something shifts.
The work continues—theories tested, arguments refined, breakthroughs achieved—but it’s no longer just about the work. Or maybe it always was about more than the work, and you’re both finally admitting it.
Anaxa starts leaving notes for you.
The first one appears on your usual desk in the archive, pinned under your inkwell:
I’ve relocated the new ingredients to the second shelf, right side. You misplaced them. — A.
The handwriting is immaculate, but there’s something about the dash before his initial that feels almost… affectionate.
The next day, another note:
Avoid the east corridor between the hours of 2 and 4. Alchemical experiments ongoing. Potentially hazardous. Don’t test me on this. — A.
You smile at “don’t test me on this”—as if he knows you well enough to predict you’d be tempted.
(He does. You were.)
By the end of the week, the notes have become a language of their own:
Your interpretation of Titan suppression theory in yesterday’s discussion was insightful. I’ve left a reference text that supports your argument on page 47. Read it. — A.
You left your notes again. They’re on my desk. Try to remember where you put things. It’s becoming a pattern. — A.
Don’t forget to eat. I will notice this. (No signature this time, but the handwriting is unmistakable. There’s also a small, precise ink blot after the period, as if he hesitated before pulling the pen away.)
You start writing back in the margins of your shared documents:
Anaxa’s annotation: This conclusion is adequate, though you could strengthen it with additional supporting evidence.
Your response: ‘Adequate’ again. Is that your favorite word, or do you just enjoy being withholding?
Anaxa’s reply (in even smaller script): I enjoy precision. There’s a difference.
You: Duly noted, Professor.
Anaxa: I’m not YOUR professor. Don’t be obtuse.
You: Then stop acting like one with me. :)
Anaxa doesn’t respond to that one directly, but the next time you see him, there’s color on his cheeks and something that might be fondness in his eye.
One afternoon, you’re both working in his private study. A space he rarely lets anyone enter. It’s smaller than the main archives, more personal. Books stacked in careful towers, alchemical equipment gleaming on the workbench, distillation flasks filled with luminescent compounds that cast strange shadows on the walls. Windows overlook the Grove and the distant trees beyond.
There’s only one chair.
You’ve been sharing it for an hour now, pressed shoulder to shoulder, and neither of you has acknowledged how unnecessary this proximity is. There are other chairs. Other rooms. But here you are, thigh touching thigh, the heat of him seeping through layers of fabric.
“This passage,” Anaxa says, pointing to a line in the text between you. His voice is carefully neutral, but you can feel the slight tension in his frame. “The Titans’ understanding of soul-structure was fundamentally flawed. They treated emotion as external contamination rather than intrinsic data.”
“So you’ve said.” You lean closer to read the passage, and your hair brushes his shoulder. You feel him go very still. “But what if that’s what they needed to believe? What if acknowledging emotion as foundational would have meant acknowledging their own vulnerability?”
He turns his head slightly. Just enough that you can see his profile, the sharp line of his jaw, the way his throat works as he swallows.
“That’s…” He pauses. “That’s a compelling interpretation.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I’m frequently surprised by you.” The admission is quiet. “It’s becoming a pattern.”
You risk looking at him fully. He’s already watching you, and the intensity of his gaze—that focused, analytical attention now weighted with something else entirely—makes your breath catch.
“Anaxagoras—”
“You’re the only one who calls me that,” he says suddenly. “Anaxagoras. Most at the Grove or in Okhema use the shortened form. I’ve always disliked it. Too casual, too dismissive.”
“I don’t mean to presume—”
“No.” Something softens in his expression. “You make it sound proper. Respected. As if the name itself matters.”
“It does matter.”
“Why?”
You’re close enough to see the flecks of lighter blue in his eye, the way his pupil has dilated slightly. Close enough to notice the faint chemical scent that clings to him. Copper and something sharper, the residue of his alchemical work. Close enough to count his breaths.
“Because it’s yours,” you say simply.
The silence that follows is different from all the others. Heavier. Fuller. Like the moment before thunder, when the air itself holds its breath.
Then Anaxa stands abruptly, putting distance between you with the kind of control that suggests it costs him.
“I should—” He gestures vaguely toward his workbench. “There’s a calculation I need to verify. The soul-essence distillation requires precise timing, and if I miss the optimal extraction point—”
“Right.” You stand too, smoothing your robes to give your hands something to do. “I should probably—”
“Same time tomorrow?”
The question comes faster than usual, almost urgent.
“Of course,” you say, and his shoulders drop slightly. Relief.
“Good.” Anaxa turns toward his equipment, but not before you catch the way his hands are trembling. “That’s good.”
You leave before the tension can crack completely, but you feel his gaze on you until the door closes.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Entry #05: Cognitive Dissonance Study
I have identified the problem.
The issue is not that you disrupt my concentration.
The issue is that you have become my concentration.
Every theorem bends toward you. Every question leads back. When you laugh, I document the acoustic frequency. When you argue, I catalog the logical structure. When you leave, I count the seconds until return.
This is not research.
This is longing dressed in notation.
Today’s session: We shared a chair. Unnecessary. There were other options available. But when you sat beside me—close enough that I could feel your warmth, smell the faint scent of ink and something sweet I cannot name—I found I could not suggest you move.
The work suffered. My focus was divided between the text and the way your shoulder pressed against mine, the rhythm of your breathing, the small “hm” you make when reading something that intrigues you.
At one point, you leaned closer to read a passage, and your hair brushed my shoulder. I forgot how to breathe for approximately 3.7 seconds.
Your observation about the Titans: “What if acknowledging emotion as foundational would have meant acknowledging their own vulnerability?”
You understand. Not just the theory. The truth beneath it. The Titans didn’t fall because they were logical. They fell because they had faults. Maybe they were afraid.
I am afraid.
Alchemical reflection: I’ve spent years studying souls through systematic deconstruction. I removed my own eye to get answers. I’ve extracted, distilled, and analyzed consciousness itself in pursuit of understanding.
I thought sacrifice was the price of knowledge. That understanding required distance. That to see truth, you had to remove yourself from it.
But when you look at me with those eyes—curious, warm, seeing—I want to be seen. Not as the scholar, not as the professor, not as the blasphemer who questions the comfortable doctrines.
Just as Anaxagoras. The person beneath the title.
You said my name matters because it’s mine.
What do I do with that?
Conclusion: I am a fool in a scholar’s robes, pretending observation is not the same as devotion.
Accurate conclusion: I am devoted.
Addendum: Tomorrow. Please let there be tomorrow. Always a new dawn.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Entry #06: Notes on Notation
You’re writing back to me.
In the margins of our shared work—those spaces I use for correction and commentary—you’ve begun leaving responses. Teasing ones. Challenging ones. Messages that have nothing to do with research and everything to do with… this. Shall I call it…us?
”‘Adequate’ again. Is that your favorite word, or do you just enjoy being withholding?”
I had to put the paper down when I read that. Had to breathe. Had to recalibrate my entire understanding of what these annotations mean.
You’re not just tolerating my notes. You’re responding to them. Engaging with me, the person, not just the work.
And then you called me Professor. (I am not YOUR professor. The distinction matters. We are colleagues, collaborators. Whatever hierarchy exists in the Grove’s structure or in Amphoreus doesn’t apply here. In this space we’ve built together.)
I replied. Of course I replied. I couldn’t not.
“I’m not YOUR professor. Don’t be obtuse.”
Your response was something that resembled a smiling face. A tiny, hand-drawn curve in the margin.
I have stared at that mark for longer than I care to admit.
Current realization: Our marginalia has become correspondence. These aren’t just notes anymore. They’re letters. Tiny, contained conversations that exist in the space between formal thought.
You’re creating a private language with me.
And I’m answering.
Secondary realization: I have begun timing my delivery of annotated papers to coincide with your arrival at the archives. This is transparently manipulative. I don’t care.
This morning I left you a note: “Don’t forget to eat. I will notice this.”
No signature. If you know it’s from me (you will), then the care embedded in the words will be obvious. If you don’t… well. Then I’m a coward.
Alchemical parallel: In my work on soul-essence resonance, I’ve learned that consciousness patterns don’t exist in isolation. They’re constantly seeking harmonic frequencies—other patterns that complement rather than clash.
When two compatible patterns find each other, the resonance amplifies. They become more than the sum of their parts.
That’s what’s happening here.
Not interference. Not disruption.
Amplification.
Conclusion: The experiment has evolved beyond my control.
Accurate conclusion: There never was an experiment. Only me, trying desperately to pretend I wasn’t already lost.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
A week later, you find a new note on your desk. This one is different. Longer, written on proper stationery rather than scrap paper:
Your recent thesis on memory-adhesion in coreflame- and soul-related matters is exceptional. I’ve annotated the sections that require refinement, but the core argument is sound. More than sound—it’s innovative.
You have a tendency to underestimate your own insights. Stop doing that.
I’ve left a supplementary text on the third shelf (you know where). Read it. Then we’ll discuss your theory properly—meaning I will likely argue with you for an hour while secretly agreeing with most of it.
— A.
At the bottom, in smaller script:
P.S. The tea blend you preferred last week is on my desk if you’d like more. I may have acquired extra. For research purposes.
You read the note three times, tracing the careful loops of his handwriting with your fingertip. The formal praise. The gentle command to value yourself more. The postscript that’s trying so hard to sound casual and failing completely.
For research purposes.
Right.
You write back on the same paper, leaving it on his desk before he arrives the next morning:
Anaxagoras,
Thank you for the notes. And the tea. And for pretending that acquiring my preferred blend was anything other than thoughtful.
I’ll read the text. I’ll probably argue with you anyway. That’s half the fun.
See you tomorrow.
— Y/N
P.S. Your handwriting gets less controlled when you’re writing to me instead of for the archive. I’ve noticed. It’s endearing.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
When you arrive the next day, Anaxa’s already there (of course), but this time he looks up immediately when you enter.
There’s color high on his cheeks. His eye is brighter than usual.
“You—” Anaxa stops. Clears his throat. “You read my note.”
“I did.”
“And you responded.”
“I did.”
Anaxa stares at you for a long moment, and you can practically see him trying to formulate words, trying to maintain the careful distance he’s built between you.
Then he says, very quietly, “My handwriting is perfectly controlled.”
“It isn’t, though.”
“You’re making unfounded assertions.”
“Am I?” You pull out the stack of annotated papers he’s given you over the past month and spread them on the table. “Look. The early notes—immaculate. Perfect spacing, consistent pressure. But these recent ones?” You point to the margins filled with his responses to your responses. “The letters slant more. The spacing varies. There’s even a small ink blot here where you hesitated.”
Anaxa looks at the evidence you’ve presented. His jaw works silently.
Then, to your complete surprise, he laughs.
It’s quiet, barely more than an exhale, but it’s real. Genuine. The sound of someone who’s been caught and doesn’t entirely mind.
“You’re collecting data on me,” Anaxa says, and there’s something wondering in his voice.
“You’ve been collecting data on me for months.”
“That’s different. That’s—” He stops. Realizes there’s no defense. “Fair enough.”
“So?” You sit across from him, mirroring his usual posture. “What’s your hypothesis, scholar? Why does your handwriting change?”
Anaxa meets your gaze. Holds it.
“You know why.”
The admission hangs between you. Not quite a confession, but close. So close.
“Anaxagoras—”
“Same time tomorrow?” Anaxa asks, and there’s something almost desperate in the question.
You nod. “Same time.”
“Good.” He turns back to his papers, but his hands are shaking slightly. “That’s… not unwelcome.” You try to hide the smile creeping up your lips and fail miserably.
You work in silence for the next hour, but it’s a different kind of silence now. Charged. Full.
The notes continue.
So does the careful dance of not-quite-touching.
But something has shifted.
You’re both still pretending this is about research, about scholarship, about the work.
Neither of you believes it anymore.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Entry #08: Integration Failure
I am compromised.
Thoroughly.
Possibly irreversibly.
You noticed. Of course you noticed. You’re brilliant, observant, maddeningly perceptive. You noticed that my handwriting changes when I write to you.
Not for you. To you.
And instead of letting me deflect, instead of allowing me to retreat into academic formality, you presented evidence. Laid out my own deteriorating control like a thesis and asked me to defend it.
I couldn’t.
So I laughed.
I laughed, and it felt like surrender, and I didn’t want to take it back.
Current status: The boundaries I’ve maintained—scholar/colleague, professor/student-in-training, observer/observed—are dissolving. Every session, every note, every moment of shared silence erodes them further.
You left me a message. Called my tea acquisition “thoughtful” and my handwriting “endearing.”
Endearing.
I have been called many things: brilliant, difficult, unnerving, blunt, precise, sarcastic, cold, blasphemer. Never endearing.
I don’t know what to do with that word except hold it carefully and read it again when I think you won’t notice.
(You’ll notice. You notice everything about me now.)
The Titans’ failure, reconsidered: They couldn’t (re)integrate emotion into their structure because they saw it as weakness. As compromise. As the thing that would undo their perfection.
But what if perfection was never the point?
What if the point was connection?
I spent years analyzing their downfall, documenting their hubris, using alchemy to deconstruct their very essence. I removed my own eye believing that sacrifice would grant me clearer vision—that understanding required stripping away the physical to perceive the spiritual.
And perhaps it did. My perception improved. My alchemical work advanced.
But I missed the simplest truth: the Titans were alone. Each of them, alone inside their own power, their own misdeeds, their own goals, their own certainty.
I have come to realize…I don’t want to be alone anymore.
Conclusion: Tomorrow. Same time.
You’ll be there.
I’ll be there.
And maybe—maybe—I’ll find the courage to stop pretending this is anything other than what it is.
❖ ☉ ❖ ☉ ❖ ☉ ❖
IV. The Bath and the Boundary
You’re not supposed to be here.
The private bathing chamber attached to Anaxa’s study is off-limits to students. Even advanced scholars-in-training like yourself. But he’d asked you to bring him the revised calculations for the soul harmonics experiment, said they were urgent, told you to come directly to his study even if he wasn’t at his desk.
“Just leave them on the table if I’m occupied,” he’d said.
You didn’t think “occupied” meant this.
The door to the bathing chamber is slightly ajar, steam curling through the gap like reaching fingers. You can hear water, the quiet lap of it against tile, and underneath that—his voice.
He’s talking to himself. Or rather, thinking aloud the way he does when he’s trying to work through a problem.
“—adhesion patterns remain consistent even at distance, which suggests the exploration doesn’t require continuous proximity to maintain resonance. But then the question becomes: what is proximity in this context? Physical space? Emotional—no, that’s imprecise. Experiential overlap. Shared memory as location rather than a—”
You should leave. Put the papers down and go.
Instead, you find yourself stepping closer.
“Anaxagoras?” you call out, keeping your voice carefully neutral.
The water sounds stop.
There’s a pause. Long enough that you wonder if he’s going to pretend he didn’t hear you.
Then, he mutters, “Did I not specify that urgent meant ‘leave them on the desk’?”
His voice is tight, controlled, but there’s something underneath it. Not anger. Something closer to panic.
“You did,” you admit. “But I thought you’d want to know that I found an error in the third calculation set. It changes the entire conclusion.”
Another pause.
“How significantly?”
“Significantly enough that you’ll want to see it immediately.”
You hear him exhale. A sound that might be frustration or amusement or both.
“Of course you did.” The water shifts. “Stay where you are. Don’t leave. Just…Give me a moment.”
“I can come back—”
“No.” The word comes too quickly. “No, I… the calculations are time-sensitive. If there’s an error, I need to address it now. Just—turn around. Face the door.”
You do, heat rising in your cheeks despite yourself.
There’s the sound of water sloshing, fabric rustling. You keep your eyes fixed on the doorframe, on the way the steam makes the wood grain blur.
“You may enter,” Anaxa says finally. “But maintain your current trajectory. No sudden movements.”
You step into the bathing chamber slowly, still facing away.
The room is smaller than you expected, all pale stone and copper fixtures. A large sunken bath dominates the center, still steaming. The air is thick with heat and the faint scent of something herbal. Rosemary, maybe, or sage.
“The papers,” Anaxa says from behind you, and his voice is steadier now. “Which calculation set?”
“Third,” you say, holding them up without turning. “The section on residual soul echo. You assumed a linear decay pattern, but I think it’s actually logarithmic. See—”
“I can’t see anything while you’re facing the wrong direction.”
“You told me not to turn around.”
“I’m decent now. Mostly.” There’s a pause. “Turn around.”
You do.
Anaxa is sitting on the edge of the bath, wrapped in a simple robe that’s not quite closed properly. His pale green hair—normally so carefully arranged—is damp and disheveled, silver-white strands clinging to his forehead. He looks so human. Vulnerable. More real than you’ve ever seen him.
And he’s staring at you with an expression you can’t quite read. Something between mortification and fascination.
“The calculations,” he says again, but his voice is rougher now.
You cross the space between you, papers held out. “Here. Third set, second page. You’ll see—”
Your foot catches on the edge of a floor tile.
You stumble forward.
Anaxa moves without thinking. Rises, reaches, catches you by the arms before you can fall into the bath.
For a moment you’re suspended there, his hands firm on your upper arms, your own hands braced against his chest. The robe has shifted with the movement, and you can feel the heat of his skin through the thin fabric, the rapid flutter of his heartbeat under your palm.
This close, you can see the water droplets still caught in his eyelashes. The faint flush on his cheeks that might be from the bath or might be from something else entirely.
His eye is very, very beautiful.
“Careful,” Anaxa murmurs, and the word sounds like it costs him something.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” But he hasn’t let go. Neither have you.
The papers have fallen, scattering across the wet stone.
“The calculations—” you start.
“Can wait.” His grip tightens almost imperceptibly. “You’re… you’re very close.”
“You caught me.”
“Yes.” He swallows. You watch his throat work. “I seem to keep doing that.”
“Catching me?”
“Reaching for you.” His eye drops to where your hand is still pressed against his chest. “Even when I know I shouldn’t.”
The steam has made the air thick, hard to breathe. Or maybe it’s not the steam at all.
“Why shouldn’t you?” you ask quietly.
“Because I’m your professor.”
“You’re not MY professor. You’re A professor. There’s a difference.”
“Semantics.”
“Precision,” you counter, throwing his own word back at him. “I thought you valued that.”
Anaxa’s laugh is breathless, almost helpless. “You’re going to ruin me.”
“Is that what this is? Ruin?”
“I don’t know what else to call it.” But he’s leaning closer, and his hands have moved from your arms to your wrists, thumb pressed against your pulse point. “You’ve taken up residence in my thoughts. Every theorem bends toward you. I can’t work without wondering what you’d think of it. I can’t make tea without calculating the exact temperature you prefer. I can’t—”
He stops himself, jaw clenching.
“Can’t what?” you whisper.
“Can’t stop,” he admits. “Thinking about you. Wanting—”
The word hangs unfinished between you.
You’re close enough now to feel his breath against your face. Close enough to count the water droplets sliding down his neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his robe.
“Anaxagoras,” you say, and his eye flutters closed at the sound of his name.
“Don’t.” But he doesn’t pull away. “If you say my name like that, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?”
“Forget every reason I’ve constructed for why this is inadvisable.”
“Maybe,” you say softly, “that’s the point.”
His eye opens. The look he gives you is raw, unguarded, and so full of want it makes your chest ache.
“The Titans fell because they gave themselves wholly to their faults,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “I promised myself never to do the same. To maintain control. To never let emotion override reason. Yet here I am, tempted to offer my entire mind to the sound of your voice.”
“I’m not asking for your entire mind.”
“Then what are you asking for?”
You slide your hand up from his chest to cup his jaw, feeling the scratch of stubble, the heat of his skin.
“Just this,” you murmur. “Just you. However much you’re willing to give.”
He makes a sound low in his throat—something between a laugh and a groan.
“I’m willing to give too much,” he confesses. “That’s the problem. With you, I want to give everything.”
“Then give me this moment.”
“Just this moment?”
“We can start there.”
He leans his forehead against yours, and for a long breath you just exist there—two people, suspended in steam and want and the terrifying possibility of something real.
“You realize,” he says finally, “I’ll have to document this. The resonance effect of—”
“Later.” You smile against his skin. “Document it later.”
“But the data—”
“Anaxagoras.”
“Yes?”
“Stop thinking.”
“I don’t know how,” Anaxa admits.
“Then let me help.”
You tilt your head up, close enough that your lips almost brush his, giving him time to pull away, to retreat into safety.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he closes the distance.
The kiss is nothing like you expected. Not practiced, not smooth. It’s hesitant and hungry all at once, the kiss of someone who’s spent too long denying himself and has finally, finally stopped.
His hands come up to frame your face with a scholar’s precision, tilting your head to deepen the kiss, and when your lips part under his the sound he makes is devastated.
You thread your fingers into his damp hair, feeling him shiver at the touch.
When you finally break apart, you’re both breathing hard.
Anaxa stares at you, his eye wide and dark and full of something that looks like wonder.
“Oh,” he says faintly.
“Oh?”
“I have severely underestimated the intensity of direct emotional resonance.”
Despite everything, you laugh. “Is that what we’re calling this?”
“I don’t have better terminology.” His thumb traces your cheekbone, the touch achingly gentle. “Everything I know is about observation. Distance. Control. This is… not that.”
“Is that bad?”
“No.” He kisses you again, softer this time. “No, it’s terrifying. But not bad. The opposite, to be precise.”
You stay there for longer than you should, trading slow kisses and breathless words, until the water in the bath has gone cold and the steam has cleared and reality starts to seep back in.
When you finally pull away properly, Anaxa looks positively wrecked. Hair disheveled, robe askew, lips slightly swollen.
He looks beautiful.
“The calculations,” Anaxa says weakly, glancing at the scattered papers.
“Still wrong.”
“We should review them.”
“We should.”
Neither of you moves.
Then Anaxa laughs—real laughter, bright and free—and pulls you close again.
“Later,” he murmurs against your hair. “We’ll review them later.”
“Scandalous,” you tease. “Professor Anaxagoras, prioritizing something over research?”
“You have no idea how scandalous this is.” But he’s smiling. “I may never recover my reputation.”
“I’ll risk it if you will.”
He pulls back just enough to look at you properly, and something in his expression shifts—becomes serious, intent.
“I’ve spent my entire life questioning everything,” he says quietly. “The Titans, the Flame-Chase Journey, the blind faith that leads people to destruction. I question doctrine, authority, even my own conclusions. But this?” He touches your face. “I don’t want to question this.”
“Then don’t.”
“It’s not that simple. People already call me blasphemer. If they knew I was… that we—”
“Let them talk,” you say firmly. “You taught me to seek truth over comfort. This feels like truth.”
He closes his eye, breathing out slowly.
“Yes,” he agrees. “It does.”
When you finally leave his study that evening—calculations reviewed, theories revised, the kiss still burning on your lips—you don’t see the way he leans against the closed door, hand pressed to his mouth, eye bright with something that might be joy or terror or both.
You don’t see him sit at his desk and pull out his diary with shaking hands.
But you’ll read about it later.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Entry #14: Boundary Dissolution
Variable integrity: catastrophically compromised.
Today I made a fool of myself. Attempted to discuss soul-related harmonics while submerged in bathwater and distraction.
Correction: today I kissed you.
Let me be precise, since precision is apparently the only thing I have left:
You found an error in my calculations. You came to tell me despite my instructions otherwise. You nearly fell, and I caught you, and for one impossible moment we stood there in steam and silence and I felt every wall I’ve ever built dissolve like salt in water.
Empirical observation: proximity and heat distort rational thought beyond recovery.
Secondary observation: I don’t care.
I told you the Titans fell because they gave themselves wholly to their goals and faults. What I didn’t say: I understand now why they did it. When you feel something this consuming, this certain, resistance seems like cowardice.
You said my name—not Professor, not Anaxagoras with that formal respect you usually employ—just Anaxagoras, soft and sure, like you’d been saving it.
I broke.
The kiss was… I don’t have adequate words. How do you document the moment your entire framework shifts? How do you record the instant when observation becomes participation, when distance becomes intimacy, when hypothesis becomes hope?
Emotional data: terror, elation, relief so profound I could weep.
Your hand in my hair. Your lips against mine. The way you laughed when I tried to maintain academic terminology and told me to “stop thinking.”
I tried. Gods, I tried.
But every thought I have is filled with you.
The truth I’ve been avoiding: I love you.
Not the theoretical concept of you. Not the intellectual stimulation or the compatible resonance patterns. You. The person who brings me tea and challenges my conclusions and looks at me like I’m not broken, just complex.
The person who kissed me in my bathing chamber and made me forget every reason I’d constructed for why this was inadvisable.
I told you I don’t want to question this.
I meant it.
The Grove calls me blasphemer for questioning the Titans, for refusing blind faith in the Flame-Chase Journey. They say I corrupt the students with doubt. Perhaps I do. But you—you’ve corrupted me with certainty.
I am certain of this: whatever we are, whatever this becomes, it’s real.
More real than any theorem I’ve ever proven.
Conclusion: I am lost.
Accurate conclusion: I was always lost. You simply helped me stop wandering.
Note: Tomorrow. Please let there be tomorrow. I crave the new dawn every day, again and again. Infinitely.
❖ ☉ ❖ ☉ ❖ ☉ ❖
V. Separation and the Diary Left Behind
Three days after the kiss, Anaxa tells you he’s leaving.
“There’s been a report of unusual disturbances near the outer Grove perimeter,” he explains, not meeting your eyes. “Residual soul echo, possibly connected to Titan perishing. I need to investigate.”
You’re in his study—your usual place now, though everything about it feels different since that afternoon. The space where you kissed is still there, a charged absence in the room.
“How long?” you ask.
“A week. Perhaps more.” He’s organizing his field notes with unnecessary precision, hands moving restlessly. “It depends on what I find.”
“I could come with you.”
“No.” The word is sharp, immediate. Then, softer: “No, it’s too dangerous. The Black Tide corruption is spreading in that region. I won’t risk—” He stops himself.
“Won’t risk what?”
He finally looks at you, and his eye is bright with something that might be fear.
“You,” he says simply. “I won’t risk you.”
Your chest tightens. “Anaxagoras—”
“I need to go.” Anaxa turns back to his packing, movements jerky. “The expedition leaves at dawn. I’ve left instructions for your continued research in the usual place. The Library of Philia has the texts you’ll need for your thesis revision. I’ve also—”
He hesitates, hand hovering over his desk.
“I’ve left my field notes,” he continues quietly. “My personal observations. In case you need reference material while I’m gone.”
There’s something careful in the way he says it. Like he’s offering more than just notes.
“Your diary?” you ask.
His shoulders tense. “My research journal. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes.” But Anaxa won’t look at you. “One is objective documentation. The other is… less controlled.”
You cross to him, putting a hand on his arm. He goes very still.
“Come back safe,” you say.
“I intend to.”
“Promise me.”
He turns then, cupping your face with both hands, and the touch is achingly gentle.
“I promise I’ll try,” he murmurs. “That’s the best I can offer.”
“Then I’ll take it.”
He kisses you. Slow and deep and desperate, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of your mouth, the taste of you, everything he’ll miss while he’s gone.
When he finally pulls away, his forehead rests against yours.
“Don’t reorganize my lab while I’m away,” he says, attempting lightness.
“I make no promises.”
“Of course not.” He almost smiles. “You never do.”
He leaves before dawn, and you don’t see him go.
Two days later, you return to his study.
You’re not snooping. Not really. Anaxa said you could use his space, could reference his materials. The research journal is right there on his desk, leather-bound and worn, filled with his precise handwriting.
Research journal, you think. Not diary.
But when you open it, the first entry makes you freeze.
Entry #01: Hypothesis Formation
Hypothesis: Prolonged proximity to certain individuals induces measurable cognitive interference.
Subject: Y/N…
Your heart stutters.
This isn’t a research journal.
This is about you.
You should close it. Should respect his privacy. Should—
You turn the page.
Entry #02: Variable Documentation
Session 3: Discussed Y/N‘s theory on soul-memory adhesion for 47 minutes past scheduled end time. Did not notice until archive keeper began closing procedures…
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Oh.
Oh.
You sink into his chair, fingers trembling as you continue reading.
Each entry is a revelation—his thoughts laid bare, the careful documentation of his own falling. You see yourself through his perspective: brilliant, distracting, essential. You see his fear, his longing, his desperate attempts to rationalize what he’s feeling.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Entry #04: [Crossed out title]
[Anaxa's handwriting is messier than usual, words cramped together]
This is irrational. Unscientific. I should stop. I should—
Y/N laughed at something I said today. Not polite laughter. Real laughter. The kind that makes someone’s eyes crinkle at the corners.
I spent four hours trying to work after that. Accomplished nothing.
Just kept hearing that sound.
This is a problem.
I am the problem.
[The rest of the page is blank except for a single line at the bottom]
I don’t know what I’m doing.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Your throat tightens. You keep reading.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Entry #05: Every theorem bends toward you. Every question leads back. This is not research. This is longing dressed in notation.
Entry #07: Deterioration
Empirical observation: I am not handling this well.
Y/N touched my hand today while reaching for a text. Accidental. Lasted perhaps half a second. My pulse rate increased by an estimated 20%. I lost my train of thought mid-sentence.
This is becoming untenable.
I can't work. Can't focus. Can't think about anything except—
[Several lines are heavily crossed out]
I wonder what Y/N thinks about. Late at night. Alone.
I wonder if—
[More crossing out]
No. This is inappropriate. Unproductive. I should—
Y/N. Y/N. Y/N.
[The name is written three more times, each one messier than the last]
I'm losing control.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Oh. OH. Your eyes are glued to his handwriting now.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Entry #08: I am a fool in a scholar’s robes, pretending observation is not the same as devotion.
Entry #11: Failed Hypothesis
[This entry is extremely short]
Hypothesis: Distance will restore objectivity.
Method: Avoided the archives for three days.
Result: Thought about Y/N constantly. Possibly more than when in direct proximity.
Conclusion: Hypothesis failed. I am comprehensively fucked.
Entry #13: [No title]
[The handwriting is shaky]
We were arguing about Titan suppression theory—Y/N was brilliant, as always, saw the flaw in my logic before I did—and I looked at Y/N and thought it. Only thought it....Couldn't say it.
Am I reading this wrong?
[The entry ends abruptly]
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
You’re crying by the time you reach the entry about the bath, about the kiss.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Entry #14: The truth I’ve been avoiding: I love you.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
He loves you.
He’s loved you this whole time, documented it entry by entry, and never said a word.
Your hands shake as you turn to the most recent entry, dated the night before he left.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Entry #15: Departure Protocol
I’m leaving tomorrow. The expedition is necessary. There are disturbances that require investigation, answers that need finding. This is my purpose: questioning, seeking truth, refusing comfortable ignorance.
But tonight, that purpose feels like exile.
I’m leaving this journal behind. Deliberately. If you find it (and I suspect you will—you’re too curious, too brilliant not to look), then you’ll know.
Everything I couldn’t say. Everything I’ve been documenting instead of declaring.
Love, as an empirical phenomenon, resists containment. I’ve tried formula, metaphor, even silence. None suffice.
The truth: I love the way you argue with me. The way you see connections I miss. The way you say my name like it matters. I love your handwriting in my margins and your laughter in my silence and the fact that you make me want to be honest instead of careful.
I love you.
Not as a variable. Not as a subject of study.
As the person who makes me want to stop observing and start living.
My sister died. And I couldn‘t bring her back. I’ve spent years since trying to find truth through reason, through investigation, through keeping everything at arm’s length so I could see clearly.
But you—you taught me that some truths can only be found through proximity. Through risk. Through letting someone close enough to hurt you.
I fear my findings are irrelevant without you present to interpret them.
Conclusion: If I don’t return—
No. Unacceptable hypothesis.
Revised conclusion: When I return, I’ll tell you this properly. Not through notation. Not through observation. Just… honestly.
If you’re reading this, know that you’ve given me something I thought I’d lost when my sister died: hope.
Hope that truth doesn’t have to mean loneliness.
Hope that questioning everything doesn’t mean trusting nothing.
Hope that maybe, just maybe, I deserve this.
I’ll come back.
I promise I’ll try.
— A.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
You sit there for a long time, the journal open in your lap, tears sliding down your cheeks.
He left this for you to find.
He wanted you to know.
Outside, the Grove is quiet, the sun setting in the distance. Somewhere out there, beyond the perimeter, Anaxa is chasing answers in dangerous territory.
And here you are, holding every truth he couldn’t speak aloud.
“Come back,” you whisper to the empty room. “Please come back.”
The journal doesn’t answer.
But you hold it close anyway, like maybe your certainty can reach him across the distance.
Like maybe love is its own kind of soul-exploration, carrying messages that reason can’t explain.
❖ ☉ ❖ ☉ ❖ ☉ ❖
VI. Anaxa‘s Return
Anaxa comes back on the eighth day, two days later than promised.
You’re in his study when you hear the door. You’ve been spending most of your time there, surrounded by his books and his scent and the diary you’ve read so many times you could recite passages from memory.
The door opens.
Anaxa stumbles in.
Your heart stops.
He looks wrong. His robes are dusty, stained with something dark that might be mud or might be worse. His hair is disheveled, falling into his face. There’s a cut above his eyebrow that’s scabbed over badly, and his visible eye is shadowed with exhaustion.
But he’s here. He’s here.
“Anaxagoras—”
“I’m fine.” His voice is hoarse, rougher than you’ve ever heard it. He moves toward his desk with mechanical precision, like he’s running on pure will. “The expedition yielded significant data. The distortions were more severe than anticipated. I’ve documented—”
He sways slightly.
You’re across the room in an instant, catching his arm.
“You’re not fine,” you say firmly. “When did you last eat? Sleep?”
“I don’t recall. The observations required continuous monitoring. If I’d stopped to rest, the patterns might have—” He blinks slowly, like focusing is difficult. “Where was I?”
“Anaxagoras.” You guide him toward the chair—his chair, the one you’ve been sitting in for days, waiting. “Sit. Now.”
To your surprise, he does.
For a moment he just sits there, hands braced on his knees, breathing carefully.
“I kept my promise,” he says quietly. “I came back.”
“You did.”
“Are you angry?”
The question catches you off-guard. “Why would I be angry?”
“I’m late. I said a week. It’s been eight days.” His eye finally focuses on you properly, and there’s something raw in his gaze. “I tried to return sooner, but the corruption—there were complications. I couldn’t leave until I was certain the data was complete, that the risk was justified, that—”
“Anaxagoras.” You kneel in front of him, taking his hands. They’re cold, trembling slightly. “I’m not angry. I was terrified, but not angry.”
“Terrified,” Anaxa repeats, like he’s testing the word.
“You went into Black Tide territory. You were gone longer than you said. What else would I be?”
He stares at your joined hands. “I didn’t think… I didn’t let myself think about what it would mean for you to worry. I was too focused on the work, on finding answers, on—” He stops. Closes his eye. “I’m sorry.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“The field distortions were worse than reported. Residual soul echo from Titan degradation—the patterns suggested active corruption spread rather than passive decay. I had to track the source, map the boundaries, collect samples for analysis. The work was… consuming.”
“You pushed yourself too hard.”
“Someone had to document it. Someone had to question whether the Titans’ essence is truly beneficial or if we’re worshipping our own destruction.” His voice gains strength, the familiar passion bleeding through exhaustion. “The Flame-Chase journey sends Chrysos Heirs to gather coreflames without understanding what they’re gathering. My sister died, and I won’t—I can’t—let that blind faith continue without—”
He sways again, and you realize he’s running on fumes and fury.
“Enough,” you say gently. “You can crusade against blind faith tomorrow. Right now, you need to rest.”
“I need to document the findings while they’re fresh. Memory degrades over time, and if I don’t record—”
“Anaxagoras.” You cup his face, making him look at you. “The findings will keep. You won’t if you collapse.”
He leans into your touch, eye fluttering closed.
“I missed you,” Anaxa confesses, so quietly you almost don’t hear it. “The entire expedition, every observation, every sample collected—I kept thinking about what you’d say about it. How you’d interpret the data. Whether you’d argue with my conclusions.” His hands come up to cover yours. “I kept thinking about you.”
Your throat tightens. “I read your journal.”
His eye opens. For a moment there’s panic—then resignation. Then something that might be relief.
“I know,” he says. “I left it for you.”
“All of it? Even the entries about—”
“Especially those.” His thumb strokes across your knuckles. “I’ve spent my life documenting observations because it was safer than admitting feelings. But you deserve more than notation. You deserve honesty.”
“Anaxagoras—”
“I meant what I wrote.” His gaze is intense despite the exhaustion. “Every word. Every desperate, unscientific, completely irrational confession. I love you. Not as a hypothesis. Not as a—”
You kiss him.
It’s meant to be gentle, just a soft press of lips to stop the words spilling out of him, but he makes a sound—desperate, relieved—and pulls you closer with shaking hands.
When you break apart, his forehead drops to your shoulder.
“I’m filthy,” Anaxa mumbles. “I haven’t bathed in days. This is highly unsanitary.”
Despite everything, you laugh. “I don’t care.”
“You should. The Black Tide corruption carries particulate matter that—”
“Anaxagoras.”
“Yes?”
“Stop thinking.”
“I don’t know how to—”
“Then let me help.” You pull back enough to meet his eye. “Bath. Food. Sleep. In that order. The world can wait.”
“The documentation—”
“Can wait.”
He looks like he wants to argue, but his body betrays him—another tremor, exhaustion winning over will.
“Fine,” he concedes. “But you’re not leaving.”
It’s not a question.
“I’m not leaving,” you confirm.
You help him to the bathing chamber. The same one where you kissed weeks ago, though it feels like years.
This time there’s no pretense, no careful distance. You help him out of his stained robes while he protests weakly about propriety and proper procedure. The cut above his eyebrow needs cleaning. There are bruises on his ribs you don’t ask about yet.
“I can manage,” he says, but he doesn’t push you away when you guide him into the warm water.
“I know you can.” You kneel beside the bath, reaching for the cloth. “But you don’t have to.”
He’s quiet as you clean the wound on his forehead with careful touches. Quiet as you work the dust from his hair. His eye stays closed, but his breathing gradually evens out.
“This is highly irregular,” he murmurs eventually.
“What is?”
“You. Caring for me like this.” He opens his eye, and there’s vulnerability there that makes your chest ache. “I’m not accustomed to it.”
“Get accustomed to it.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s a promise.”
Anaxa‘s lips quirk slightly. “You’re using my own terminology against me.”
“I learned from the best.”
He catches your hand, bringing it to his lips. The kiss he presses to your palm is soft, reverent.
“I thought about this,” he admits. “Out there, in the corrupted zones, surrounded by degradation and death. I thought about your hands. Your voice. The way you look at me like I’m not broken.”
“You’re not broken.”
“I’m damaged. There’s a difference, but the outcome is similar.” His thumb traces patterns on your wrist. “My sister’s death broke something in me. Made me question everything, trust nothing, keep everyone at arm’s length so I could see clearly. But you—”
He stops, swallowing hard.
“You make me want to stop seeing clearly,” he continues. “To stop observing and start participating. To risk being hurt because the alternative is being alone, and I—” His voice cracks. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
You lean forward, pressing your forehead to his.
“You’re not alone,” you whisper. “Not anymore.”
When he pulls you into the water fully clothed, you don’t protest.
When he kisses you with desperate, careful intensity, you kiss him back.
And when he finally breaks down—exhaustion and relief and emotion he’s held too long finally spilling over—you hold him while he shakes apart.
“I’m sorry,” he gasps against your shoulder. “This is—I don’t—”
“Shh. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
“I’m supposed to be controlled. Rational. I’m supposed to—”
“You’re allowed to feel,” you tell him firmly. “You’re allowed to be human.”
He laughs, but it sounds like a sob. “I’ve forgotten how.”
“Then I’ll remind you.”
You stay there until the water grows cold, until his breathing steadies, until he’s calm enough to stand.
You help him into clean robes. Make him sit while you prepare tea—the blend he likes, though you add honey for energy he desperately needs.
He drinks it obediently, watching you with an expression that’s soft and wondering.
“You’ve been staying here,” he observes. “In my study.”
“How did you know?”
“Your notes are on my desk. Your preferred tea blend is out. The chair is angled differently—you sit with one leg tucked under you. I don’t.” He sets down his cup. “Also, you’re wearing one of my reading robes.”
You glance down. He’s right—you’d grabbed it two nights ago when the study grew cold, and you hadn’t bothered to take it off.
“I missed you,” you admit. “Being here helped.”
“You read my journal.”
“You told me to.”
“I did.” He stands, crossing to where you’re leaning against his desk. “What did you think?”
“I think you’re brilliant and self-sabotaging in equal measure.”
“Accurate.”
“I think you’ve been in love with me for months and couldn’t figure out how to say it.”
“Also accurate.”
“I think—” Your voice softens. “I think you deserve to be happy. And I want to be the one who makes you happy, if you’ll let me.”
He cups your face with both hands, and his touch is achingly gentle.
“You already do,” Anaxa murmurs. “Every day. Every moment. You walk into a room and I forget what I was worried about. You smile and I remember why I’m fighting to save this world.” He kisses your forehead. “You exist, and I’m not alone.”
“Anaxagoras—”
“I love you.” The words come easier this time, stronger. “I love your mind and your courage and the way you challenge me. I love that you read my rambling journal and didn’t run. I love—”
You pull him down and kiss him, stopping the words with your mouth.
This kiss is different from the others—not desperate, not tentative. It’s certain. It’s choosing.
It’s saying yes to everything you’ve both been too afraid to claim.
When you break apart, you’re both breathing hard.
“Bed,” you say firmly. “You need sleep.”
“Will you stay?”
“Do you want me to?”
His eye is very blue, very bright. “More than I want my next breath.”
“Then I’ll stay.”
His bed is even cleaner than you expected. Neat, austere, exactly what you’d imagine for someone who spends most of his time working.
Anaxa lies down with visible relief, and you settle beside him, fitting yourself against his side.
For a while there’s just breathing, the warmth of him solid against you.
Then his hand finds yours in the darkness, fingers lacing together.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
“For what?”
“For waiting. For reading. For not leaving when you saw how much of a disaster I am.”
You squeeze his hand. “You’re not a disaster. You’re just… human.”
“I’ve spent most of my life trying not to be.”
“I know.”
“My sister was so pure. And at the beginning, shortly after her death, I was so certain the Titans would return her to me. I was… so very wrong.” His voice is raw. “I promised myself I’d never be that blind again. Never trust anything I couldn’t prove. Never let faith override reason.”
“And then I showed up.”
“And then you showed up.” He turns his head to look at you. “And you made me want to have faith in something again. Not in Titans or Flame-Chase journeys or divine purpose. In this. In us.”
“That’s not faith,” you tell him softly. “That’s evidence. You’ve documented months of data proving we work.”
Anaxa laughs quietly. “Using my own methodology against me again.”
“I’m a good student.”
“You’re extraordinary.” He pulls you closer. “And I’m terrified.”
“Of what?”
“Losing you. Failing you. Proving that love is just another form of corruption that destroys what it touches.” Anaxa’s jaw clenches. “The Titans fell because they got consumed. What if I—”
“You’re not a Titan,” you interrupt. “And I’m not asking you to worship me. I’m asking you to trust me. To trust this.”
“I want to.”
“Then do.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, and you think maybe he’s fallen asleep.
Then: “I trust you. I do. It’s myself I doubt.”
You shift to face him fully, close enough to see the exhaustion in his features, the fear he’s trying to hide.
“Listen to me,” you say firmly. “You are the most controlled, rational, careful person I’ve ever met. You question everything. You refuse blind faith. You think before you act.” You touch his face. “But you’re also capable of feeling deeply. Of caring. Of loving. Those things don’t contradict each other. They complete each other.”
“The Titans—”
“Were beings who suppressed emotion until it destroyed them. You’re not suppressing anything. You’re integrating it. There’s a difference.”
He closes his eye, breathing out slowly.
“How are you always right?” he murmurs.
“I’m not always right. I just know you.”
“You do.” Wonder creeps into his voice. “You really do.”
He kisses you then—soft and slow and achingly tender. Not asking for anything, just… grateful. Present.
When you settle back against him, his arm wraps around you securely.
“Sleep,” you whisper. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
His breathing evens out within minutes, exhaustion finally winning.
You stay awake a little longer, listening to his heartbeat, feeling the rise and fall of his chest.
This brilliant, broken, beautiful man who documents everything because he’s afraid of forgetting.
Who questions the divine because his faith died with his sister.
Who loves you so completely he needed hundreds of journal pages to convince himself it was real.
You’ll stay.
For as long as he’ll have you, you’ll stay.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Entry #16: Return Protocol
[Written two days later, in steadier handwriting]
I’ve been back for 48 hours.
The expedition data has been filed. The samples are being analyzed. My formal report to the Grove has been submitted, though I doubt they’ll appreciate my conclusions about Titan corruption being deliberately obscured by Flame-Chase doctrine.
But that’s not what I’m documenting today.
Subject: Integration. Not of data, but of self.
I returned exhausted, damaged, running on nothing but compulsion and the desperate need to make it back to you. And you were there. In my study, wearing my robe, surrounded by my books and my mess and my confessions.
You read everything. Every rambling entry, every desperate observation, every moment I’d tried to rationalize love into research.
And you stayed.
Physical observations:
You cleaned my wounds with careful hands
You made me tea the way I like it (but added honey, which I normally refuse but drank anyway because you made it)
You held me when I broke down, which I did not anticipate and could not prevent
You stayed through the night, solid and warm and real against my side
Emotional observations:
I am loved. Not as a concept. Not as a hypothesis. Actually, tangibly loved by a person who sees all of me—the brilliance and the damage and the fear—and chooses to stay anyway.
I told you I’m terrified of becoming like the Titans, of letting purpose consume me until I collapse inward. Until I lose all emotions left in me. You told me I’m not suppressing emotion—I’m integrating it.
Integration. The word feels correct in a way my theories never have.
The Titans failed because they saw reason and emotion and purpose as opposing forces. One had to dominate. One had to win. They chose purpose, suppressed feeling and reason, and this destroyed them from within.
But what if the answer isn’t dominance? What if it’s balance?
What if love doesn’t corrupt reason doesn’t corrupt purpose—it just gives reason purpose and purpose reasoning?
Revised hypothesis: Emotional resonance and intellectual pursuit are not opposing forces but complementary systems. When integrated properly, they create stability rather than collapse.
Evidence: Your hand in mine. The way I can think more clearly now, not less, because I’m not spending all my energy pretending I don’t feel. The fact that my sister’s death no longer only means loss. It also means the reason I fight for truth. For preventing other faithful people from being consumed.
Conclusion: I’m in love.
Thoroughly.
Irrevocably.
And for the first time in years, that doesn’t feel like weakness.
It feels like coming home.
Note: You’re still here. Asleep in my study chair with a book open in your lap. Your hair is falling into your face. I want to wake you and carry you to bed (proper rest, you deserve it) but I also want to document this moment. The domestic peace of your presence, the way my space has become ours.
I think I’ll do both.
First document. Then wake you. Then hold you while I can.
Because tomorrow the world will require me to be the blasphemer again, the questioner, the one who refuses comfortable faith.
But tonight, I’m just Anaxagoras.
And that’s enough.
❖ ☉ ❖ ☉ ❖ ☉ ❖
VII. Letting Go
The next few days develop a rhythm.
Anaxa returns to his classes at the Grove—though the whispers follow him everywhere. Blasphemer. Heretic. The professor who questions the Titans. He ignores them with practiced ease, but you see the tension in his shoulders when students avoid his gaze, when colleagues turn away in the halls.
You stay close. Not hovering, just… present.
You attend his lectures when you can, watch him command the room with that sharp intellect, see the way he comes alive when debating philosophy and soul theory. The students who do listen—the ones brave enough to question alongside him—hang on every word.
Afterward, you return to his study together. Sometimes you work in comfortable silence. Sometimes you argue about theories until you’re both hoarse. Sometimes you just exist in the same space, and that’s enough.
But there’s still something held back between you. A tension that hasn’t resolved.
He touches you carefully—hand on your back when you pass, fingers brushing yours when exchanging papers. But he never pushes further, never asks for more than these small contacts.
Like he’s afraid of wanting too much.
It breaks on the seventh night after his return.
You’re both working late—him reviewing his Black Tide corruption data, you drafting your thesis on Titan emotional suppression theory. The lamplight is low and golden, casting long shadows across his study.
You glance up and find him staring at you.
Not at your work. At you.
“What?” you ask softly.
Anaxa blinks, like he’s been caught. “Nothing. I was just… thinking.”
“About?”
“How you look in my space.” His voice is quiet, almost wondering. “How natural it feels. How much I’ve wanted this and how terrifying it is now that I have it.”
You set down your pen. “Terrifying?”
“I’m not good at this.” Anaxa gestures vaguely between you. “Emotional intimacy. Physical closeness. I can document attraction, theorize about connection, but this—” He stops. Swallows. “I don’t know how to do this without controlling it. Without observing instead of feeling.”
“Do you want to feel?” you ask carefully.
His eye darkens. “Desperately.”
The word hangs between you, raw and honest.
You stand, crossing to where he sits. His gaze tracks you, and you see his hands tighten on the arms of his chair.
“What are you afraid of?” you murmur.
“That I’ll want too much. That I won’t know when to stop. That I’ll—” He closes his eye. “The Titans existed with complete devotion and it destroyed them. What if I love you like that? What if I consume you trying to hold on?”
You frame his face with your hands, making him look at you.
“I’m not asking you to worship me,” you say firmly. “I’m asking you to be with me. Present. Real. No observation, no documentation. Just… this.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Then let me show you.”
You lean down and kiss him. Slow, deliberate, giving him time to pull away.
He doesn’t.
Instead, his hands come up to your waist, gripping like you’re the only solid thing in his world.
When you deepen the kiss, he makes a sound low in his throat. Something between surrender and relief.
You pull back just enough to whisper, “Stop thinking.”
“I can’t—”
“Yes, you can.” Your lips brush his jaw. “Just for tonight. Stop analyzing. Stop documenting. Just feel.”
His breathing hitches. “If I stop controlling this—”
“Then you stop controlling it.” You kiss the corner of his mouth. “And we see what happens.”
For a moment he’s frozen, caught between fear and want.
Then something shifts in his expression—a decision made, a wall dropped.
He stands abruptly, pulling you against him with a intensity that steals your breath. His mouth finds yours again, and this kiss is different. Deeper, hungrier, like he’s finally letting himself want without permission.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he gasps between kisses.
“You won’t.”
“I don’t know how to be gentle.”
“I’m not asking for gentle.” You thread your fingers into his hair. “I’m asking for real.”
He groans, and the sound is devastated. “You’re going to undo me.”
“Good.”
He walks you backward until your legs hit the edge of his desk. Papers scatter. Neither of you cares.
His hands frame your face, tilting your head back so he can kiss you properly. Deep, thorough, like he’s trying to memorize the taste of you. When his mouth moves to your throat, you feel him smile against your skin.
“What?” you manage.
“Your pulse.” His lips brush over the flutter of your heartbeat. “It’s racing.”
“So is yours.”
“Empirical observation,” he murmurs, but there’s warmth in his voice now. “I can’t help it.”
“Anaxagoras.”
He pulls back to look at you, and his eye is dark, pupil blown wide. “Say it again.”
“Anaxagoras.”
“Gods.” He kisses you again, harder this time. “The way you say my name—”
“Like it matters?”
“Like I matter.” His hands slide down to your waist, thumbs brushing the skin just above your hip. “Like I’m not just the blasphemer or the professor or the broken thing that questions everything.”
“You’re not broken,” you tell him fiercely. “You’re careful. There’s a difference.”
“Not tonight.” His forehead drops to yours. “Tonight I don’t want to be careful. I want—”
“Tell me.”
“You.” The word is raw. “I want you. All of you. I want to stop observing and start feeling. I want to know what it’s like to be completely present instead of analyzing from a distance. I want—” He stops himself, jaw clenching.
“You want to lose control,” you finish softly.
He nods, and you see the fear in it—the terror of wanting something he can’t rationalize or contain.
“Then lose it,” you whisper. “I’ve got you.”
The permission breaks something in him.
He kisses you like he’s drowning and you’re air—desperate, thorough, overwhelming. His hands map your body with a scholar’s precision but a lover’s intensity, learning the places that make you gasp, the touches that make you arch into him.
When he lifts you onto the desk, you don’t protest. When his hands slide under your robes with trembling certainty, you help him.
“Tell me if I—” Anaxa starts, but you silence him with a kiss.
“Stop thinking,” you remind him. “Just feel.”
So he does.
His hands slide under your robes with increasing confidence, and the way he's looking at you—focused, intense, utterly present—makes your breath catch.
"I want—" Anaxa stops, seeming to struggle with the words. Then, with characteristic bluntness: "I want to take you apart. Methodically. Until you forget every coherent thought." His thumb traces your lower lip. "I've thought about it. Constantly. In lectures. During experiments. At night when I should be sleeping."
Your heart hammers against your ribs. "Then do it."
"You don't understand." His voice is strained, eye dark and wanting. "Once I start, I won't want to stop. I'll want—everything. Every sound you make. Every response I can draw from you. I'll want to know exactly what it takes to make you—"
You kiss him, cutting off the words, and when you pull back you're both breathing hard.
"Then take it," you tell him firmly. "Take everything. I'm giving you permission."
The sound he makes is devastated. "You're going to ruin me."
"Good. Now stop talking and kiss me."
He does. Thoroughly. He starts nibbling your neck, murmuring, "You taste divine," and you laugh while leaning into his touch.
"I thought you don't like exaggerations?" you say, your voice trembling, breath shaky.
His lips wander lower, his hands never leaving your body. "I don't," Anaxa confirms, pressing closer. "Precision like always." His hands roam your body, effortlessly removing your clothes. You do the same, and he makes a low sound in his throat. His fingers trace your skin with need, his voice getting deeper the more he explores and learns you. "I always thought softness is unnecessary. Your skin tells me it's elemental."
Anaxa’s touch is reverent and hungry all at once. The careful observation of a researcher combined with the desperate need of someone who’s denied himself too long. He learns your body like he learns everything: completely, thoroughly, with an intensity that makes you feel like the only thing in the universe worth studying.
“Beautiful,” Anaxa murmurs against your skin. “You’re—I don’t have words.”
“You don’t need them.”
“But I want to—I need to tell you—” His voice breaks. “You’re everything. Everything I thought I couldn’t have. Everything I told myself I didn’t deserve.”
You pull him closer, feeling the solid warmth of him, the racing of his heart against yours.
“You deserve this,” you tell him firmly. “You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be loved.”
He makes a sound that might be a laugh or a sob. “I’m terrified.”
“I know.”
“What if I’m not enough? What if I fail you? What if—”
You kiss him, stopping the spiral of fear.
“You’re enough,” you whisper against his mouth. “Right now, exactly as you are, you’re enough.”
When he finally lets go completely—when the last wall crumbles and he stops trying to control or observe or analyze—it’s like watching something transform.
Anaxa’s intense in ways you didn’t expect. Not rough, but present. Completely focused on you, on this moment, on the connection between you. Every touch is deliberate. Every kiss feels like a question answered.
He whispers your name like a prayer and his own like he’s reminding himself he exists.
And when you’re both breathless and tangled together, foreheads pressed close in the lamplight, he laughs.
Actually laughs—bright and free and wondering.
“What?” you ask, smiling.
“I’ve spent years documenting everything. Every observation, every conclusion, every piece of data.” He brushes hair from your face with gentle fingers. “But I have no words for this.”
“Is that bad?”
“No.” He kisses you softly. “No, it’s astonishingly… liberating. To experience something I can’t explain. To just be instead of constantly analyzing.”
“How does it feel?”
“Terrifying.” He smiles. “And perfect.”
You stay there for a long time—on his desk, surrounded by scattered papers and the warm glow of lamplight, just holding each other.
Eventually he carries you to his bed (narrow, austere, somehow perfect), and you fall asleep wrapped around each other.
No documentation. No observation.
Just presence.
Just this.
You wake before him.
Dawn light filters through the window, soft and golden, illuminating the planes of his face. In sleep, he looks younger. The sharp edges of his intellect softened, the weight he carries eased.
You trace the line of his jaw carefully, and his eye opens.
For a moment he just looks at you, and something in his expression makes your chest tight.
“Hello,” you whisper.
“Hello.” His voice is rough with sleep. “You’re still here.”
“Where else would I be?”
“I don’t know. I thought perhaps I’d dreamed you.” Anaxa pulls you closer, tucking your head under his chin. “I’ve done that before. Dreamed you were here, then woken alone.”
“Not a dream,” you assure him. “I’m real. This is real.”
“Yes.” He presses a kiss to your hair. “It is.”
You lie there in comfortable silence, listening to his heartbeat, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing.
Then, quietly, he says: “Thank you.”
You pull back to look at him. “For what?”
“For staying. For being patient. For teaching me that losing control doesn’t mean losing myself.” His hand cups your face. “For loving me when I couldn’t figure out how to love myself.”
“Anaxagoras—”
“I mean it.” His thumb brushes your cheek. “My sister died and I couldn‘t save her. I spent years after refusing to believe in anything other than my theories. And then you—” He stops, swallows. “You made me believe in this. In us. In the possibility that maybe faith isn’t about blind devotion to distant gods, but about trusting the person right in front of you.”
Your eyes burn. “I love you.”
“I know.” He smiles, and it makes you tear up. “You’ve been very obvious about it.”
“Says the man who wrote a hundred diary entries instead of just telling me.”
“Fair point.” He kisses you softly. “I love you too. In case that wasn’t clear.”
“It was clear.” You settle back against his chest. “But I don’t mind hearing it.”
“Good. Because I intend to say it often.” His arm tightens around you. “I’ve wasted enough time being afraid. I don’t want to waste any more.”
Outside, the Grove is waking—students heading to morning lectures, professors preparing lessons, the world continuing its slow turn toward whatever comes next.
But in this small room, in this narrow bed, wrapped in each other and the gentle morning light, you’ve found something the Titans never understood:
That truth isn’t found in isolation or distant observation or forcing beliefs onto other beings.
It’s found in connection.
In choosing vulnerability over control.
In loving someone enough to trust them with your whole, messy, complicated heart.
Anaxa has spent years questioning everything.
But this—this he finally believes in.
⋯ ✎ ⋯ ✎ ⋯
Entry #17: Post-Integration Analysis
[The handwriting is different now—still precise, but looser, more natural]
I’m writing this while you sleep beside me, morning light turning your hair to gold.
I should be working. There are samples to analyze, reports to file, lectures to prepare. The Grove scholars want my formal recommendations on the Black Tide corruption patterns, though I suspect they’ll ignore my conclusions about the Flame-Chase doctrine being fundamentally flawed.
But right now, none of that feels urgent.
Observation: I am happy.
Not content. Not satisfied. Happy.
It’s an unfamiliar sensation. I keep testing it, like a new hypothesis, waiting for the variables to shift and disprove it. But it remains.
Last night, I stopped documenting. I stopped observing. I just… experienced. And it was—
I don’t have adequate vocabulary. The scientific terms feel insufficient. The poetic language feels overwrought.
So I’ll just say this: it was real. More real than any theory I’ve proven, any data I’ve collected.
You told me I deserve to be loved. I’m beginning to believe you.
Revised understanding of Titan collapse:
The Titans didn’t fall because they loved too much. They weren‘t capable of that. They fell because they loved the wrong things. They loved perfection, control, power, their own divine purpose. They loved abstractions instead of people. Or were just drawn to themselves, egoistic as they are.
But loving a person—flawed, complicated, real—that’s different.
That’s not consumption. That’s connection.
Current status: Integrated. Not perfectly. I still have the urge to document, to analyze, to create distance through observation. But I’m learning to resist it. To be present instead of protected.
You‘re stirring now.
Your hand is searching for me in sleep.
I should let you rest. You deserve it after putting up with my catastrophic emotional processing.
But I also want to wake you.
To kiss you good morning. To tell you again that I love you, because apparently I’m capable of saying it now without my throat closing up.
Conclusion: The experiment continues. But it’s no longer an experiment.
It’s just life.
A life I finally want to live.
——-
EPILOGUE
____
A/N: Thanks for reading. Likes, reblogs and comments are highly appreciated. They fuel my writing. :)
When you were young, before everything fell apart, your father would tell you stories. Short stories, but one always stood out amongst the rest. A farmer and a star. Falling for each other in the only way beings like themselves could. Fiery and intense, but at the same time, so tender and soft you’d fall harder in love. As a child, you wondered if you could have that. Father spoke so fondly of the experience, you couldn’t help but want it too.
And then, then you met Jericho Ichabod. Everything fell apart, and you forgot about the star and the farmer. In your darkness, Jericho was too bright, too loud, too much for you. And when you forgot the glow of the sun, even an ember seemed to burn. But, kissing Crowe? It burns like a hearth on a winter night, comforting and all encompassing. You couldn’t dream of leaving. Under the watchful gaze of the stars and the blanket of night, your souls blend and become something new.
Parting for air feels like suffocating. Navy blue eyes stare into your own with such a soft gaze. His face flushes, red tinting his tan skin, and everywhere you look, you see hearts. Hearts in his eyes, in the shape of his nose, in his hair, even in the grass surrounding you. Your hands wander, cupping his cheek before tracing the edge of his jaw. The exposed skin of his neck looks so comforting, your face is nestled there before you can think.
“What are we…?” It’s such a small question, whispered too quietly for Crowe to hear. Your hands play with the loose strands of dark brown hair that surround Crowe. A steady hand is placed on your back as Crowe holds you close. He rubs circles in the small of your back, and faintly, you can hear him.
“What did you say?” You can hear the smile in his voice, and you can’t help but grin in return. Small chaste kisses on his neck make him laugh under you, and his arms wrap tighter around your waist. “Well?”
“I asked,” you sit up slightly, looking Crowe in the eye. It’s not easy. He looks at you with a moonstruck expression, so earnest that your face heats up under the pressure. “What are we?”
“What are you hoping for us to be?”
“Ah…” Your face burns hotter under the expectant stare. You know the answer, and yet, you’re scared to say it.
“Can I tell you what I want us to be? And apologies in advance, it is a little selfish.” He sits up, his hands steady on your waist as he looks at you. The distance between you shrinks. You’re as connected as you can be with clothes in the way. “I’d like us to be together. More than friends, more than lovers. It’s selfish and crass, but I don’t want to share you with anyone.”
He nuzzles his face into your neck, his lips brushing against the exposed skin there. Your hands grip his shoulders, holding onto the purple shirt and wrinkling the fabric as your skin grows hot. “I want to wake up next to you. Spend my quiet mornings with you and find the world born anew in your eyes. It’s this… all-consuming want, and it’s so selfish–”
“No, it’s not.” The blanket of stars wraps around you both, locking you two together in a room with only yourselves as witnesses. “I think… I’ve always felt that way, even back when we first met in sophomore year.”
Before you know it, you’re kissing again. Lips touch every expanse of exposed skin as if the bruises in the shape of each other will live eternally on your skin. Part of you hopes they will. Let everyone know that Jericho Ichabod is loved by you and only you. You separate, and the needy part of you hates it.
“Can you stay with me tonight? I’m not ready to let go yet.” A deep blush spreads across his cheeks, tinting his face even in the low light. There’s a silent nod as your foreheads touch. Begrudgingly, you pull away and stand up. You must look disheveled, and Crowe looks no better. Grass stains that will be a pain to get out cover you both, but you can’t find it in you to care.
The whole way back to your apartment, Crowe holds your hand. It feels so natural walking through the door with him, like this was meant to be. Your future could be this. It will be.
And the universe said I love you because you are love.
What are mornings like with the mysterious Head of the Oak Family? Not many know. But you, his lover, has the pleasure of knowing how to answer that question in many ways. One memory of dozens comes to mind.
A/n; just a drabble I wrote about mornings with sunday because i wanted some slightly domestic fluff. Its very small.
Cw/tw: implied to be bad at cooking (reader) body pain (reader), mentions of chest but no mentions of boobs (you're welcome), sunday being clingy, overall fluffy. Just 2 mentions of peeing.
Mornings with sunday are fortuitous
And by that, you mean, you get to see the elusive, prestigious head of the Oak family sleeping.
And you get to spoon him.
Isnt this lovely?
Your nose is tucked into his blue hair, a few strands stick up and tickle your face. You shift, to which Sunday responds by burying his face deeper into your chest, adjusting the hold of his arms around you.
You blink your eyes open, slightly blurry still from last night's sleep. You reach up one of your hands to gently pet the top of his hair.
You've recently taken to calling him "star" as a joke. You just called him "Sun" initially as a form of endearment and shortened his name, then simply resorted to calling him star. Although, you suppose he's more like the moon. You should ask him when he's woken up.
You whisper back to him, one of your hands immediately going down to sift through his feathers, soothing his fluttering wings as he stirs awake. He lifts his head slightly. Golden, half-lidded eyes look up at you.
"Not at all. Did you sleep wrong?"
One of his hands moves up your back, going over to your side and resting there, his thumb massaging the outline of your shoulder blade.
"I might have. Probably pulled a muscle?"
Sunday's head gently dives down, taking shelter back into the haven of your chest. He stays still for a moment before his body pushes, and his hand stretches out to reach the drawer behind you. You look over to see shaking, outstretched fingers barely make it to the handle, and stifle your laugh. It escapes as a snort.
Sunday stills for a moment. Then sighs, before pushing further and managing to open the drawer. You see his hands teeter around and feels the various items before landing on a pain relief tube.
He pushes the drawer close, and returns to his original place, the force of his body retreating from you.
You close your eyes, burying your nose into the top of his head again. He smells nice, you note.
You hear the faint click of a cap, and it's not soon before Sunday's deft finger crawls under your shirt and over the skin of your back. It presses the gel on the outline of your shoulder blade, and firmly presses into the cavity beside it, massaging it well. Once he's done massaging it for a few minutes, his finger retreats, and his hand returns to its place on your back. His thumb caresses the outline of your shoulder blade again.
“Planning to wake up anytime soon, handsome?”
“A few more minutes, dear.”
He shifts again, his face moving from the home of your chest to the curve of your neck, and he presses soft kisses on your skin. Everything about him is warm. You scrunch your nose as the feathers of his wings slightly tickle your nose.
“Star.”
“Mmh?”
His hummed response reverberates slightly in your neck,
“I need to use the washroom.”
“My condolences.”
“Sun.”
“Truly unfortunate.”
You sigh. Sunday softly chuckles, the noise muffled.
“5 more minutes.”
“I won't have to go if you keep me here that long.”
“3.”
“Cutting it close.”
“That's fine.”
“Sunday.”
It's his turn to sigh, except, he doesn't. He stays quiet for a few minutes. When he doesn't shift or respond, you get nervous,
“Sunday?”
…
You try again,
“You're so quiet.”
“I've heard acting dead can deter brown bears from attacking.”
The imagery is too bold in your mind as he says so.
“Now, now.”
You tap the top of his head, trying to get him to budge.
“Were you implying something with that?”
“No. But, do you think I'd survive, if I acted dead?”
“Perhaps.”
You push against Sunday, again.
“Sunday, it's been 5 minutes”
“2, to be precise.”
“I'm gonna pee in 2 more.”
“Tragic.”
“Sunday.”
He stays quiet again. Then shifts with a sigh, moving off of you and onto the other edge of the bed. Is he pouting?
–
Your morning is now well under way. The sizzling in the kitchen is loud in your ears as you handle the pan over the stove.
A pair of white wings cover your eyes. Slightly damp at the edges, you note. His face presses up next to yours, the skin cooler in comparison. Sandalwood fills your nose and the kitchen.
“Done, hm?”
You chuckle, as his wings retract.
“I'll manage the rest, dove.”, his voice is clearer than before. You admit, to a degree, you miss the sleepiness in his voice.
He cups your face, both of his thumbs coming up to soothingly run along the edge of your eyes,
“My eyes are really crusty.”
“I'm trying to help.”
“Not gross?”
“Not at all. I don't mind.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“What about my cooking?”
Sunday gently pecks the corner of your mouth.
“Go wash your face, angel.”
You laugh a bit. The sound echoes in the quiet of your kitchen. The air is fresh and still from the morning, sunlight pours in from the open windows. And Sunday treasures the isolated sound, repeating in his mind.
Hihi!!! Recently found your blog and I am in love with your writing!!! I'd like to request Aventurine (of course <3), Boothill, and Sunday with a scenario with non sexual nudity/intimacy? The softness and sensuality with nothing explicit... It's been on my brain and it keeps getting me all fuzzy and soft! Have a very nice week before Christmas! 💚
Unmasked in the Silence
Tags: Aventurine x Reader, Boothill x Reader, Sunday x Reader, Hurt/Comfort, Vulnerability, Intimacy, Quiet Moments, Emotional Healing, Fluff, Tenderness, Light Angst, Lovers in Solitude.
Warnings: References to past trauma (implied but not detailed), Mentions of physical injuries/scars, Themes of emotional vulnerability and healing.
A/N: I'm a sucker for these types of love...🤧 (Man it sucks being an aroace but not at the same time lmaoo)
The rain pattered softly against the windowpane, the muted grey outside a rare contrast to Aventurine’s usually vibrant surroundings. Inside the lavish hotel suite, it was unusually quiet—no clink of glasses, no playful banter, no games of chance being set up. Just the faint hum of the city far below and the breaths of two people who knew how to fill silence with meaning.
Aventurine sat at the edge of the massive bed, his shirt unbuttoned and hanging loosely off his shoulders, a rare break in his carefully curated appearance. The fur-trimmed overcoat was draped over a nearby chair, roulette details peeking from where it folded. He absently traced his thumb along his choker as though it grounded him while his lover, you, carefully ran a warm cloth over his bare back.
“This is uncharacteristically quiet for you,” you murmured, dipping the cloth back into the bowl. “Are you feeling alright?”
Aventurine chuckled under his breath, the sound soft but familiar. “You wound me. Must I always play the jester?”
“No, but it suits you.”
You saw the way his shoulders relaxed under your touch as you pressed the cloth to a fading bruise on his side—a price for a “calculated” gamble that had gone a little south. Aventurine’s skin, though untouched by time’s cruelty, carried its share of scars. You wondered how many of them came from real battles and how many from metaphorical ones—lost gambits, betrayals, self-inflicted wounds.
He tilted his head just slightly, his earrings catching the soft lamplight, and his eyes—exotic, piercing—found yours in the reflection of the mirror ahead. That smile, the mask, was there. It always was. Yet tonight, under the softness of the room’s quiet intimacy, it didn’t look as though he was hiding something. Rather, it felt like a reassurance.
“Is this what it takes for me to earn your care?” he teased, voice quieter now. “A few scrapes and a bruised ego?”
You smirked. “I’d argue it’s the other way around. I finally caught you sitting still.”
He laughed again, the sound more genuine this time, shoulders shaking under your fingertips. As he stilled, Aventurine let the shirt slide down entirely, pooling around his wrists. You marveled at how even his bare presence—unadorned by gold, fur, and theatrics—still exuded the confidence of someone who’d wagered and won countless times over.
When you moved to put the cloth away, Aventurine caught your hand, pulling you gently toward him. It wasn’t forceful or calculated, but an instinctual gesture. Your arms wrapped around his neck as you stood between his knees, the damp cloth forgotten. His head fell lightly against your stomach, his breath warm.
“I don’t deserve this quiet,” he murmured, voice soft, almost too soft to catch.
You ran your fingers through his hair, feeling the tension seep from him bit by bit. “You deserve more than you think, Aventurine. And I’m not letting you gamble that away.”
For once, he didn’t respond with wit or a charming quip. Instead, his hands settled around your waist, holding you close as the rain outside continued its steady, unrelenting rhythm.
The gambler, the strategist, the man of masks—unadorned and at rest.
Boothill rarely allowed anyone to see him vulnerable—his mechanical body was, after all, a testament to his unyielding strength and need to survive. But tonight was different.
The rainstorm had caught you both outside the metal ruins of a settlement, now nothing but skeleton buildings and discarded memories. You found shelter under a corroded overhang, where Boothill leaned back against the wall, letting the rain run down the brim of his hat.
“Figures,” he muttered, pulling his tattered red scarf from around his neck. Droplets ran over the sharp lines of his jaw and the exposed seams of his mechanical torso, the metal gleaming faintly against the dark.
“You’ll rust,” you teased lightly, moving closer as you wrung out your coat.
He snorted, shark-like teeth flashing in a grin. “I’m tougher than that, darlin’.”
Still, as you reached for his hat, he let you remove it, his hair sticking to his forehead. His eyes—watched you intently, curious as to what you’d do next. You pressed your palm lightly to his exposed chest where metal met skin, feeling the faint hum of energy that powered him.
“You’re cold.”
“Cyborgs don’t feel much,” he replied, though the way he stilled under your touch said otherwise.
Without another word, you shrugged off the rest of your damp coat, pressing your body lightly against his. Boothill didn’t move at first, caught off-guard, but you felt the way his hand eventually slid up your back, holding you there as though you were an anchor in the storm.
“Guess I owe you one,” he muttered, his voice gruff but quieter now.
“You owe me nothing,” you replied, resting your head against his shoulder.
For a long while, you stayed like that, the rain a soft symphony around you as it blurred the edges of the world. Boothill’s mechanical parts may have made him something more than human, but tonight, against the storm, he felt grounded—real, warm, and alive.
The air aboard the Astral Express was calm tonight, the hum of the engine a soothing background lullaby. Sunday sat at the edge of the bed, his long coat and gloves neatly folded nearby. His silver wings stretched behind him, soft feathers catching the faint light spilling through the window.
You stood before him, hands carefully brushing along his shoulders as you coaxed his wings to relax. Sunday rarely let anyone close enough to touch them—symbols of his heritage, his burdens—but tonight was different.
“You don’t have to be so careful,” he whispered, his voice as soft as the twilight itself.
“I know,” you replied, though your movements remained gentle, reverent.
Sunday’s halo flickered faintly behind his head, golden light pulsing in time with his slow, measured breaths. He tilted his head downward, silver hair cascading around his face like a veil. His bare skin—smooth and unblemished, almost otherworldly—felt warm beneath your touch.
“You don’t often let yourself be seen like this,” you murmured, kneeling before him and resting your head against his chest.
Sunday’s wings shifted slightly, curving inward to encircle your head. “I’ve spent so long hiding,” he admitted quietly, his voice carrying a weight of centuries. “Hiding my doubts, my fears—myself.”
“You don’t have to hide with me,” you said.
For a moment, Sunday was silent. Then, slowly, he lifted a hand to cradle the back of your head, his fingers threading through your hair with aching tenderness. His wings trembled faintly as they settled fully around you, the feathers brushing your skin like whispers.
“This… is terrifying,” he admitted softly. “To be seen like this, to feel this.”
“It’s just us,” you reminded him, your voice steady. “Nothing else matters.”
Sunday sighed, a sound of quiet surrender. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against yours, his golden halo flickering softly in response.
“You are relentless in your kindness,” he murmured, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “And I am endlessly grateful.”
The two of you remained like that—encircled by his wings, by warmth and silence—sharing a closeness that words could never fully capture. For once, Sunday allowed himself to exist in the moment, unburdened by the weight of the past or the uncertainty of the future.
