You may call me Rae (It's short for Raven on this blog. I chose a different name from my main blog to make distinguishing easier). This is a blog where I post my writing and short stories! Feel free to ramble about literature or send other questions and I'll do my best to answer them (unless it's too personal or something I'm uncomfortable sharing)! <3
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I will write fluff, angst, smut. Hcs, drabbles, oneshots and multi-part fics are all welcome. I will not write teacher/underage student, underage smut, parent/child incest, ddlg, or really explicit power discrepancies. I’ll write toxic dynamics but it has to come from both sides. I write f!readers and gn!readers. Please specify if you want a f!reader or gn!reader in your request. I cannot promise or guarantee that if you make a request I will write it! I am new at writing and I'm still learning what I’m interested in and comfortable taking on.
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Do not plagiarize, repost, copy, put in AI or claim any of my works as your own.
You saw him in a brightly lit bistro, staring with palpable despair at a paper cup of broccoli cheddar soup. He was too beautiful for the setting. His skin had that translucent, backlit-by-moonlight quality that made the fluorescent overheads seem like a personal insult to his existence. His suit was a deep, liquid black that seemed to swallow the light around the seams.
You had your laptop open. You were on your second cup of coffee. He was on his first emotional breakdown of the evening.
"Jessica?" he had whispered to the woman across from him, her hand frozen halfway to a bread bowl. "I apologise. I should have mentioned that I do not require sustenance of the...bread variety. And if we are to cohabitate, the windows must be bricked over. Immediately. For the sun. I have a severe sun allergy."
The woman, Jessica, had stared at him. Then she had said, very slowly, "I think you're a weirdo."
She left. He didn't chase her. He just sat there, looking at the soup as if it had personally betrayed his entire bloodline.
You felt a tug of pity. And, if you were being honest with yourself, a thrill of utter curiosity. You closed your laptop.
"That bad, huh?" you asked, sliding into now vacant chair.
He looked up. His eyes were the color of old garnets, and they widened with the panic of a deer who had just walked into a sliding glass door. He had obviously not planned for a contingency plan.
"It's the sun allergy," he admitted, his voice a lovely, sad baritone. "It’s a common dealbreaker. Also, I mentioned the average lifespan of my previous spouses as a matter of fiscal transparency, and she took it as a threat."
"How many previous spouses?"
"Fourteen," he said. "But in fairness, that's over four hundred years. The mortality rate is perfectly average for the era. Two fell off horses. One was eaten by a bear. It was a different time."
You should have run. You really should have. But he looked so genuinely confused, so utterly lost, that you found yourself leaning forward.
"What's your name?" you asked.
"Alistair Ravencroft," he said, and for a second, the air got cold and the lights flickered, and you felt the weight of centuries in the name. And then the lights came back on and he sneezed because someone dropped a cinnamon crunch bagel in the toaster oven behind the counter. "There's cinnamon in the air," he whined, rubbing his nose. "Cinnamon is for the dead. It's an embalming spice. It's rude."
You gave him a chance. He took it with both trembling, impossibly strong hands.
Two weeks later, you were in a car that smelled like old leather and cold stone, driving up a winding road that didn't appear on any GPS. Alistair was driving with the cautious, terrified focus of a sixteen-year-old taking their driver's test, despite the fact he’d been driving since before cars were invented. He kept glancing at you in the passenger seat, then back at the road, then back at you.
"I have to warn you," he said, his voice small. "The decor is a bit...me. I haven't updated since the Hapsburgs were relevant. And I have a collection. I need you to understand, I am not showing you these things to boast. I am showing you because I don't know how else to say: I have nothing else to offer but this."
He took you through the giant oak doors and into a cavern of gothic splendor. The floors were polished obsidian. The walls were lined with oil paintings of people who looked suspiciously like him wearing various historical hats. There was a sarcophagus in the foyer. He used it as an umbrella stand.
"This is the treasury," he mumbled, leading you into a room that made Scrooge McDuck's vault look like a piggy bank.
Mountains of gold coins spilled out of chests. Rubies the size of your fist were piled in corners like forgotten laundry. He picked up a diamond tiara that had probably belonged to a princess and placed it on your head without asking. It fit perfectly.
"I had it resized," he said. "Just in case. I know it's presumptuous."
He then reached into a nearby stone basin filled with ice and pulled out a medical blood bag. He pierced it with a crazy straw, a pink, curly one, and began to suckle on it sadly, his cheeks hollowing. He looked like a tragic, beautiful child who had been told he couldn't have dessert.
"I know," he said around the straw, his voice muffled. "I know this is too much."
"It's a lot of money, Alistair."
"It's not the money," he said, pulling the straw out with a wet pop. He gestured around at the glittering hoard. "This is just shiny dirt. What I want...what I need...is you. Here. Forever. Starting tomorrow. I want to wake up and see your face and know that you are legally bound to share this shiny dirt with me. I want a marriage. Right now. I'm not good at waiting. I've been alive for four hundred and sixty-two years and I'm very tired of waiting."
He pulled a scroll of parchment from his jacket, actual parchment, tied with a black ribbon.
"I had my lawyer draw this up. If you sign, half of everything in this room is yours. Not in the event of my death. Right now. This instant. You can fill the moat with gold coins and swim in them like a nouveau riche dolphin. I don't care. I just want you to stay."
You looked at the contract. You looked at the pile of flawless emeralds. You looked at the vampire, six-foot-four of ancient power and boundless wealth, sucking on a blood bag with a bendy straw, his garnet eyes welling up with the certainty of rejection.
You signed the parchment.
He sobbed. Right there in the treasury. He dropped the blood bag and it splattered on a pile of Spanish doubloons. He didn't care.
The wedding was three days later, officiated by a hooded figure in a ruined chapel on the cliffside. It was very Addams Family.
Then came the consummation. You’d expected it to be cold, clinical. Maybe even a little violent given the whole immortal predator thing.
It was not. He was tender to the point of absurdity. He kissed your shoulder blades like they were holy relics. He whispered your name into the curve of your neck with the reverence of a man praying for rain in a drought. And when he finally entered you, moving with that deep, rhythmic precision that came from centuries of practice, he started to cry.
Not sobbing, ugly crying. Just a steady, silent leak of red-tinged tears down his marble cheekbones.
"Alistair," you breathed, cupping his face. "Are you okay?"
"I'm just so happy," he choked out, his hips never faltering. "I didn't think anyone would ever want the sun allergy."
That was the first time. It happened every time after that. The crying was a feature, not a bug. And honestly? Who cares?
Because the man, the creature, did not get tired. His body didn't understand lactic acid or muscle fatigue. He could go for hours. Hours. You’d come three times before he even got misty-eyed, and then you’d just hold on while he chased his own release with the desperate, awe-struck stamina of an immortal who had finally found a reason to stop counting the centuries.
You’d intended to take the money and run. Maybe buy a yacht. Maybe open a studio in Milan and buy a villa in the south of Italy.
But then you’d wake up to find him standing by the window, holding a cup of perfectly steeped Earl Grey tea (he couldn't drink it, but he researched the optimal temperature for you), looking at you like you'd hung the moon and the stars and also fixed the draft in the east wing.
"Good morning, my darling," he'd whisper. "I watched you sleep for the last four hours. I hope that's not creepy. I think it's probably creepy. I'm sorry."
You stayed for the tea. You stayed for the way he’d carefully dusted the suit of armor in the hallway so it didn't scare you. You stayed for the way he'd apologize to the blood bags before drinking them.
And you definitely stayed for the way he’d weep into your hair at three in the morning, his body still moving inside you with the relentless, loving precision of a Swiss watch, whispering, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."
It turned out hundreds of years of loneliness made a man very, very grateful. And very, very rich. And very, very good at making sure you didn't get much sleep.
a/n: My inbox and messages are open for commissions. You can also donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: Ko-fi
The scent of jasmine incense was a lie in the air every morning. It was meant to conjure mystery, to weave an aura of ancient wisdom around the cramped, stuffy velvet confines of your tent. In reality, it just covered up the smell of old canvas and the faint, coppery tang. You sat at your little round table, the crystal ball in front of you polished to a high sheen that reflected nothing but your own bored face.
You were good at your job. The locals lined up, clutching crumpled bills and desperate hopes. They wanted to hear about tall, dark strangers, about inheritances from uncles they didn't know they had, about love. Always love. You gave them what they wanted with a practiced, smoky whisper and a vague gesture at the lines on their palms. They left convinced they’d touched the supernatural, never realizing the only real magic you possessed was an uncanny ability to read the wear on a wedding ring or the desperation in a pair of drugstore heels.
But you knew the truth. You knew it wasn't just a knack for cold reading. The shadows in the corners of your tent moved when your back was turned. The tea leaves in your cup sometimes spelled out words you didn't put there. You kept your head down, just like the contortionist who sometimes blinked with vertical pupils when he thought nobody was looking, or the roustabout who lifted the iron tent stakes with one hand and a grunt that shook the earth.
You were part of the machine, but you weren't of it. Not really.
And then there was him. Julian the Illusionist. Golden boy. Stage lights loved him. He would stride out in his sequined tailcoat, all white teeth and slicked-back hair, and make doves appear from the very air you breathed. His assistant, Seraphina, with her legs that went on for days and her sparkly, skintight leotard, would smile and hand him the props. You’d seen them behind the ticket booth last night, his hand on the small of her bare back, his lips at her ear, sharing a secret that wasn't meant for the fortune teller in the dusty tent.
He got to stand in the light, creating miracles for applause. You got to sit in the gloom, reassuring farmers' wives that their husbands weren't cheating (they usually were).
Fed up. That was the only way to describe the feeling that boiled over in your chest that evening. You’d just finished reading for a woman who cried because you told her she’d meet a man with a J name. You’d plucked it out of thin air. The incense was giving you a headache. You wanted more. You wanted to see the real magic, not the tawdry, sequined show for the townies.
You slipped out of your tent, the heavy flap falling shut behind you with a soft whump. Dusk was falling, and the midway was empty as the crowd funneled into the Big Top for Julian's finale. The lights flickered, and for a moment, the path between the performers' quarters and the back lot seemed longer, darker, than it had any right to be.
There was a tent you weren't supposed to enter. Everyone knew it. It was black, made of a material that drank the light, tucked away behind the animal pens where the tigers never roared and the horses bowed without a command. It was the Ringmaster’s tent.
You pushed the flap aside and stepped in.
It was empty. Just black silk draping the walls and a single, heavy wooden chair in the center. But the air was thick, buzzing with a pressure that made your ears pop. You felt watched, assessed, and found wanting all at once. You felt gooseflesh on your skin. You backed out immediately, your heart hammering against your ribs. Stupid. Stupid, stupid girl.
You stumbled out into the purple twilight and a large shadow fell over you, blotting out the last of the dying sun.
You didn't have to turn around. You knew.
“My sweet little seer,” a voice crooned from behind you. It was velvety and soft, like the whisper of a knife being drawn from a sheath. It was a voice that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, a sound that lived in the same frequency as the moving shadows. “Wandering where little lambs ought not to wander.”
You froze. No one looked at the Ringmaster’s face. His top hat was always pulled low, his collar always high. All you ever saw was the immaculate cut of his coat and the long, spidery elegance of his gloved fingers. But his presence was immense. He was tall, impossibly slim, and he radiated a cold that felt like the absence of hope.
“I’m not angry, pet,” he continued, and you felt the warmth of his breath on the shell of your ear. He was standing directly behind you, so close the fine wool of his coat brushed your bare arm. “But there are rules. Ancient ones. This circus runs on the tracks of my will, and those tracks do not lead into that tent without my permission.”
A hand, gloveless now, settled on your lower back. The touch was startlingly warm against the chill of the evening. He rubbed a slow, soothing circle over the fabric of your shawl.
“You were looking for a different kind of magic, weren't you? Tired of tea leaves and tears. Tired of watching the light shine on someone else.”
His hand slid down, moving with a languid, proprietary confidence over the curve of your hip until it cupped the swell of your backside. He squeezed gently, the pressure firm and undeniable. You gasped, a tiny sound lost in the vastness of the night.
“I have always thought it a terrible shame,” he whispered, his lips brushing the delicate skin of your earlobe before he pressed a soft, chaste kiss there. “That you cannot do practical magic. That glorious, earthy shape of yours…you’d look divine in one of those little assistant’s dresses. All sequins and vulnerability.”
His other hand came up to rest on your shoulder, steadying you. “But then again, who would believe a woman with her tits out has wisdom? No, the draping shawls and the modest necklines serve a purpose. They sell the lie of integrity.”
He chuckled, a low, rich sound that vibrated against your spine. “You’ve always been my favorite, you know. The one who pretends the hardest not to see.”
Then the pretense of gentle seduction vanished. His hands moved with swift, undeniable purpose, pulling at the ties of your skirt, pushing the heavy fabric of your blouse out of the way. He bent you forward, your palms landing flat against the rough canvas of a nearby supply wagon. The wood was cold and splintery under your fingers.
He didn't ask. He simply took. And as he pushed inside you from behind, a long, guttural groan escaped his throat. “Yes,” he hissed. “There she is.”
The pleasure was sharp, a blinding intrusion of sensation that drove the air from your lungs. But then it changed. He was enjoying himself, a rhythmic, deep, and possessive claiming. But the fullness became...more. It was a pressure that defied anatomy, a stretching that bordered on impossible.
You forced your eyes open, your vision blurry with unshed tears of shock and a dark, shameful pleasure.
His shadow was cast against the wagon in front of you. And it was growing. Lengthening. Stretching up and up, the silhouette of the slim man in the top hat distorting into something vast and ancient. And inside you, he was growing too, thickening and lengthening to match the monstrous scale of the shadow he cast. You cried out, a strangled sound of fear and overwhelming fullness as he filled you past any human limit.
“Shhh,” he breathed against your hair, his voice still that soft, velvety croon, even as his body pushed the boundaries of reality. “You wanted the real magic. Take it.”
He finished with a sound like the ground splitting open, a deep, resonant groan that seemed to shake the very stars above you. He held himself there, buried impossibly deep, for a long, shuddering moment before slowly, carefully, withdrawing. The pressure ebbed, leaving you empty and trembling.
He was human-sized again when he righted your clothes with gentle, almost apologetic tugs. He smoothed the hair back from your damp forehead.
“There shall be no unwanted consequences,” he murmured, his voice returning to that gentle, frightening whisper. “Not unless I will it. And I haven't decided yet if I will.”
He was gone then, melting back into the shadows between the tents as if he'd never been there at all. You stood there, shaking, your legs barely able to hold you. The air smelled like ozone and damp earth.
You walked back to your tent on numb feet, expecting the familiar cramped gloom and the smell of jasmine lies.
But when you pushed the flap aside, you stopped dead.
The space inside was three times the size it should have been. Rich, crimson velvet draped the walls instead of faded burlap. The single rickety table was gone, replaced by a heavy, carved mahogany desk upon which rested a true crystal ball, one that swirled with an internal, smoky light all its own. In the corner sat a chaise lounge upholstered in gold silk.
The air didn't smell like cheap incense anymore. It smelled like night-blooming flowers and something else, wild and unfathomably old.
You were his favorite. And now, the tent reflected it.
a/n: My inbox and messages are open for commissions. You can also donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: Ko-fi
The salt-scoured wood of your father’s dory was the only thing between you and the deep. The fog was a living thing that morning, muffling the slap of oars and turning the world into a grey, silent wool. You’d been doing this since you were old enough to haul a net: the quiet rituals of a fishing village woman. You never sang. That was the first rule. You didn’t call out to the sea; you only took. You would drop a stone wrapped in a bit of net over the side before you cast your line, a tiny offering to the dark for safe passage. You’d trace a finger through the salt crust on the gunwale, three lines for a calm sea. You didn't know why you did it, only that your mother had, and her mother before her.
The last thing you remembered of the surface world was the sudden, violent snatch of your anchor line pulling taut, the wooden cleat splintering, and the cold, hard shock of the water closing over your head.
You woke to the sound of dripping stone and a bioluminescent glow that painted the cave walls in shifting greens and golds. Your clothes were heavy, soaked through, and you were lying on a bed of kelp. You lifted your head, wincing at the ache in your ribs, and that’s when you saw him.
He was massive. Not just long, but built. His torso was the smooth, sun-starved white of a fish’s belly, but corded with the dense muscle of something that swims against currents. Where his hips should have been, a powerful tail swept down, the scales a deep, storm-cloud dark bluish grey that flashed with an iridescent oil-slick sheen in the cave light. His hair was the same color as the kelp, dark and tangled with small shells. And his eyes. They were fixed on you with an intensity that stopped your breath, an iris the color of sunlit amber.
He wasn't leering. He was beaming.
“You’re awake!” His voice was a strange, warbling echo, like someone speaking into a metal bucket, but the joy in it was undeniable. “I was afraid I’d pulled too hard, but you’re so soft. I didn’t want to bruise the skin.”
You scrambled back against the damp cave wall, the sharp edges of shells digging into your palms. “Where...What are you? Did you drown my boat?”
His fins flared with a wet, rustling sound, a gesture you’d later learn was akin to a man puffing out his chest. “Drown? No! I invited you. Finally. I saw your offerings. The stone for stability. The three lines for a triad, for a family. You’ve been courting me for three moon cycles with your little boat and your quiet hands. I’ve been trying to respond, but you keep leaving before I can show you the best rocks!”
He gestured broadly with a webbed hand toward the back of the cave. You blinked, your eyes adjusting. What you’d thought was a strange formation of stone was actually a pile. A massive, glittering hill of treasure. There were barnacle-encrusted amphorae leaking ancient gold coins, a tarnished silver tea set, a crown with a massive cracked sapphire, and strands upon strands of sea-glass and pearls.
“I brought all my best. I’ve been watching. You like the shiny things. The ones the two-legs trade for the stinky fish.” He pushed himself forward with a powerful, sinuous flex of his tail, stopping just inches from your feet. “I have accepted your suit.”
You stared at him, mouth agape. Courting. He thought the nervous tics of a fisherman’s daughter afraid of sirens were a mating dance.
“I need to go home,” you whispered, the sound almost lost in the drip of the cave.
His face fell, his fins drooping. “Of course. You must go tend to your dry nest. But you must take my dowry. How else will the other males know you are claimed?”
Before you could protest, he was hauling a heavy, salt-crusted chest of jewels toward the cave entrance. When you swam up and found your dory, miraculously afloat and only half-swamped, he was there, pushing the chest onto the deck with enough force to make the little boat rock dangerously. He looped a rope of perfect, matching black pearls around the bow cleat, the one he’d broken, and looked up at you with such earnest, alien adoration.
“I will come tomorrow,” he promised, his voice muffled by the water. “When the sun is high. Rest your small, warm bones.”
You rowed home in a daze. You stashed the chest under your floorboards and told yourself it was a fever dream, a concussion from hitting the water. You were safe. You just wouldn't go fishing again. The sea was too strange now.
But he came the next day.
You were mending a net on the shore, far from the dock, when the water twenty feet out churned with a familiar grey flash. He rose, water streaming down his chest, his amber eyes finding you immediately. He looked distressed, his breathing rapid and his gills flaring wide.
“You did not come,” he warbled, his voice cracking. “It is the season. The tide is right. I have something…the most precious thing. I must give it to you. Now.”
“I can’t. The water is cold, and I’m not...”
“Please. It is not a thing of metal. It is of me. If you do not take it, I will burn from the inside. Please, my warm one.”
There was a desperate, frantic edge to him that overrode your fear. You took a step into the surf, then another, the cold stealing your breath. As soon as you were waist-deep, his arms were around you, pulling you against the shocking chill of his chest. He swam fast, one arm locked around your back, keeping your head above the waves as he powered toward the cave you’d woken up in.
He laid you down on the makeshift bed again, but this time, his demeanor had changed. The shy enthusiasm was gone, replaced by a coiled, predatory stillness. His tail thrashed once against the stone floor, a sound like thunder.
“I know you are not of the deep. I know you cannot lay my eggs,” he rasped, his head lowering to the curve of your neck, inhaling your scent like a drowning man gasps for air. “But the song is in my blood. I have waited. And you accepted the pearls. You are mine. My mate. My soft, warm mate.”
He was careful at first, his webbed hands trembling as they peeled the wet wool and linen from your skin. He marveled at the goosebumps on your arms, the way your legs bent at the knee. “Strange fins,” he murmured, pressing his cheek against your thigh. “But soft. So soft.”
When he positioned himself, his tail moving with an instinct older than his strange, human words, you understood what he’d meant by most precious. The slit in the scales at the base of his stomach parted, and you felt the press of something smooth and hard, not quite human but perfectly designed for this purpose. He was impossibly strong, and the rhythm he set was the rhythm of the tide: relentless, deep, and inescapable.
He took you there in the glowing cave. He whispered things in a language of clicks and whistles. He was lost to it, his eyes rolled back, his powerful body shuddering against yours as he chased an instinctual release that biology said you could never fulfill.
When it was over, he didn't let you go. He curled his tail around you, caging you in the bend of his massive body, and pulled you into the water so just your face was above the surface, cradled against his shoulder. His body was feverishly hot now, the mating frenzy slowly ebbing.
You were floating in the middle of the sea, held by a monster who loved you because you had been afraid.
“I cannot give you eggs,” you whispered, your voice hoarse.
He clicked softly, nuzzling your hair. “No. But you will come back to the shore. You will do the three lines on the wood. And I will keep you warm in the cold water. That is enough. That is my most precious."
a/n: My inbox and messages are open for commissions. You can also donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: Ko-fi
