mwah!

smooch, 1996, virgo 🔞 lads fic sideblog 🔞 twt, ao3

[smoochfics]

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hiiii, i'm smooch!! this is my lads fic and oc chatter sideblog. zayne/rafayel main, but i'm an mc enjoyer first and foremost

find me on twt to interact, chat or squish our mcs together

i write li/mc, li/li, mc/mc and whatever other combinations wiggle their way into my head. everything here will be crossposted from ao3, i hope you enjoy!

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writing:

my fics | #smooch other's fics | #fics

my fics by character:

rafayel | #rfic sylus | #sfic zayne | #zfic

general:

caleb | #caleb rafayel | #raf sylus | #sylus xavier | #xav zayne | #zayne other's mcs | #mc

other:

my mc | #birdy inspo | #inspo

[wifechu]

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ commission for @smoochfics

— thank you for the opportunity to draw these absolute cuties!

alternate version without glasses ~ thank you to my wife @ao3rivoli for commissioning me to gift her wife 💕

[wifechu]

✦ it's all fun and games for sylus and his silly clown girlfriend 🎪⋆.˚🃏⋆✮⋆˙

— thank you to my dear friend Xia for drawing my loves ♡ it looks so absolutely amazing i can't stop crying T_T

[ao3rivoli]

pavement princess

explicit 🔞 | sylus/reader | 6.8k summary: you take sylus on a joyride. he's happy to be your collateral damage. tags: sylus pov, corruption kink, car sex & car crash kink, sadomasochistic sylusmc, vaginal sex, vaginal fingering, enemies with benefits, pain kink, a little bit bonnie and clyde, a little bit cronenberg's crash, recreational drug use, violent sex, canon-typical violence author's note: this fic can also be read on ao3!

Sylus watches as the salesman leers at you, those wide eyes ogling your chest where it's pressed against the service counter. But Sylus isn't one to judge, not when he leers all the same. It's only natural with someone so beautiful, and you know exactly what you're doing when you cock your hips like that—back bowed, ass begging to be groped as you flaunt yourself with all the seduction of a Venus flytrap. When it comes to you, Sylus is just as much a fly as any other man.

But his role, of the moment, is not to fall in line with the rest of your prey. He waits for your signal, leaning against one of the many luxury cars in the showroom. With a flick of his wrist, he could easily buy up the entire floor if you asked. It's actually possible he already owns this particular establishment, and a quick phone call would confirm as much. But no, you prefer to do this the hard way.

Lucky for you, he's always liked things best when they're difficult.

You push off from the counter, taking the salesman by the arm as you bring him to your target. It's a sports car, of course, with the convertible top put away so you can elegantly hop inside the driver's seat, peering up to the salesmen with your elbows resting on the door. Your lashes flutter, your smile sweet, but Sylus catches your grimace just before you pretend to laugh at what was probably a terrible joke. It's that look, that brief scowl of disgust, that charms Sylus more than any other part of your act. The veil is nice, but the cruelty beneath it is you.

Sylus strums his fingers as you flirt, but slowly your performance wanes. Your eyebrow twitches, your frowns outnumbering your smirks until your irritation becomes severe enough that hiding it seems impossible. It isn't his cue, exactly, but he can't resist meddling when he witnesses you so vexed, leaving him with no choice except to make his way over.

"I'm sorry, Miss, but I have to join you for the test ride," the salesman sighs. He looks only partially apologetic; the pitiful desperation to stay in your orbit for as long as possible practically wafting off of him.

"How many times are you going to make me say please?" Please? Sylus would have approached much sooner if he knew you were saying please.

The salesman bites his lip, then lowers his voice to a half-whisper. "This is the N109 Zone. You understand why I can't let you leave on your own."

Sylus can't help his laugh, and only then do you and the salesman even realize he's walked up. You look to shoot him a cutting glare, then force your face to soften when you turn back to your mark.

"You think I'm going to steal it?" you ask, aghast, hand pressed to your chest in mock-offense.

"Of course not. But—"

"Then let me take her for a quick loop around the block. I'll bring her back safe and sound, I promise." Even as you attempt to pout cutely, there's a curtness to your tone that doesn't go unnoticed.

"I can't do that, Miss. I'm very sorry."

"But there's only two seats, and my benefactor needs to know exactly what he's spending all of his money on. Isn't that right?" This time when you look to Sylus, you smile, throat tight, and that's how he knows his role in your performance has begun.

It's always benefactor, isn't it? Never partner, never lover. At least, Sylus thinks, it's much kinder than anything you've called him privately. Not that any one term could encompass exactly what you are to each other. For every time you've said he's a monster or a despicable excuse for a human being, he's had you writhing underneath him, begging to come with that same breath. It's all the same—you prefer the ambiguity, and he delights in the contradiction.

You can hate him as much as you please, but every time you intrude on his territory, every time you ask him to play a part in your little games, Sylus knows exactly where you really stand.

"You're… together?" The salesman looks between the two of you before taking a step backward, away from the almost intimate distance he was sharing with you.

This is Sylus' favorite part. He can watch you flirt, watch you banter, watch as these men are fed the fantasy that they somehow have a chance with you. And then they see him, and Sylus doesn't have to do anything for them to realize there was never any hope to begin with. He takes a perverse glee in crushing the spirits of lesser men, in knowing that he belongs to you in a way few can only dream.

"Yes," he replies, though he knows the question wasn't directed towards him. Best to get ahead of you denying it. He smirks as he takes his hand out of his pocket and holds it out in greeting. "Sylus."

The salesman turns sickly pale in an instant. "Oh—um. Well, uh, give me one second. I'll, uh, get the keys. Yeah. Okay. Um—yeah. So sorry."

All semblance of nicety evaporates from your demeanor the second the salesman is out of earshot. You turn to Sylus, eyes narrowed, upper lip pulled taut into a sneer. He almost melts. "I told you to wait."

"That's a strange way of saying thank you, kitten," he replies, draping a hand over the car door so he can lean in close. Unlike other men, Sylus has never felt intimidated out of encroaching on your personal space. You used to push him away, then came a time when you'd stand unbudging, and now, though the movement is only slight, you draw in closer. It's unclear whether or not you even realize you're doing it, but Sylus always notices, and always wishes he could pull you in just that little bit more.

"I didn't need your help," you scoff. "Now you've ruined it."

"Ruined? Let's not pretend flaunting me isn't part of your fun." Even though you're chastising him, Sylus knows better. The denial is just as much an element of the foreplay as anything else. His fun, however, lies in teasing it out of you.

"If flaunting is what you want to call keeping you on a leash, then sure."

He smiles gleefully, dipping low so he's face-to-face with that delicious glower. "You say that like it's an insult. I quite enjoy being collared by you."

Your hand curls around his neck. "Then be a good dog and behave."

"Yes, master," he teases, and it takes all of his willpower to hold himself back from kissing you when you scowl like that. Once he starts, he doesn't think he'll be able to stop, and while he's not necessarily against taking you in front of everyone in this showroom, you have much grander plans in store.

A forced cough from behind him has you pushing him away, and Sylus swallows a laugh at the nervous blush that covers the salesman's face.

"I, uh, have the keys. I need to—I'll drive it out front. If that's okay with you," the salesman says. He shifts anxiously from foot to foot, keeping a careful distance now, but he still makes the critical mistake of addressing Sylus instead of you. Sylus raises his brow, nodding his head towards you in an act of mercy, and the salesman startles as he shifts his gaze. "—Miss."

As pleasant a tone as you try to feign, your offence cuts under it anyways. "That'd be lovely."

Sylus offers you a hand as you open the door to step out of the car, and to his surprise, you actually take it. Never one to leave an opportunity on the table, Sylus seizes the chance to wrap his arm around you once you're standing, tugging you into his side with a broad hand at your waist. You don't protest, and he claims the victory.

As the two of you waltz outside to wait on the lamp-lit curb, anticipation becomes the appetizer to the oncoming adrenaline. He pulls you closer, one hand lifting your chin to face him as the other sneaks down to grab your ass now that you're alone. "I like this one. You look good in red."

Your breath hitches, hand wrapping around his wrist to drag it back up to your hip. "It's a nice colour."

"Such a shame, I almost want to keep it."

"You can buy another," you say, and in his mind it's already settled. He'll have one sent to your door next week, where you'll complain about the audacity and force him to take it back, and then he'll have it waiting for you in his garage the next time you grace him with a visit.

Still, he'd rather tease than show his hand so openly. "Hm, only if you'll do the honour of modelling it for me."

"Don't push your luck." You swat his hand away from your face, turning to the street when that red convertible pulls up in front of you.

He laughs as your attention is stolen from him. "What luck?"

"Just around the block, right?" the salesman says as he steps out of the car, keys in trembling hand.

"Just around the block," you repeat with a smile. Gracefully you take the keys, the salesman holding the door open for you as you step inside with an air of importance, tossing your clutch inside the door. Sylus makes for the passenger seat, not missing the jealous glare lobbed his way from the salesman. He returns a smirk, and the man folds just like that, shrinking in on himself.

It's cute that you even bother with the seatbelt, the unconscious habit superseding all intention. Sylus hopes you notice how he doesn't bother, obedient even without you having to remind him. The car you've picked really is beautiful—he runs his fingers along the leather seats with stately coloured stitching woven through the fabric, all of it complimented by the wood panels lining the interior. There's a naturalness to it that contrasts well with the hard lines of the exterior, the cool metal shaped into sharp, aerodynamic angles that help it look as fast as it drives. It's hard to imagine something this inhumanly elegant was made to crumple so easily upon impact.

Sylus watches how reverently you smooth your hands over the steering wheel, and he allows you the intimacy of the moment. You press the ignition, and it comes to life under your touch. The screens and dials awaken, lights aglow in time with the roar of the engine. He catches the stutter of your breath as the car vibrates with the ferocity of all eight cylinders, and his hand falls to your thigh as if commanded.

A manicured hand drifts to the gear shift, fingers curling around the stiff, leather-wrapped joystick, smoothing along the length slowly, sensually. You're doing this on purpose, aren't you? Always such a tease. Intentional or not, his cock twitches in response. You don't take the car out of park just yet—instead, your heeled shoe presses to the pedal, the engine revving under your touch once, twice, filling the empty street with its groan. Your head knocks back against the seat, eyes lidded in anticipation, a grin already beginning to form.

You look to him with a devilish glint in your eyes, the one that always sparks at the first sign of adrenaline. The one he'll raze cities just to indulge.

He nods. You nod.

"Have a good night," you say with a twirl of your fingers, and the salesman's expression falls immediately into a look of dread.

"Wait— you're not— you can't—" He tries to lean in to snatch the keys, but you shift to neutral and the tires screech in place against the pavement, sending him scattering backwards.

"We are," Sylus replies as you laugh, though the engine blares loud, the kick-drum sputter of the exhaust drowning out your voices.

But this is the N109 Zone, after all. So of course, the salesman draws out the gun tucked into his jacket and aims it right for your temple, eyes narrowed into that killer instinct prevalent in all inhabitants of Sylus' city.

There was a time when your own instincts would kick in, where you'd knock it out of your assailants hand in a maneuver so quick as to be over with in the blink of an eye. Now, your eyes stay locked ahead, and you simply wait for the inevitable—the quick flick of Sylus' wrist, the tendrils of red mist that tear the gun out of the salesman's hand and dangle it above his head, the pathetic jump as he reaches up before it's thrown down the street and he's sent scrambling after it.

That simple trust in Sylus' capabilities sends a wave of arousal through him, his hand tightening on your thigh until you gasp.

And that's when you throw the car into drive, tires squealing as the two of you are thrust backward with the sudden acceleration, velocity sending the car flying ahead.

The salesman is left to swallow the fumes of the exhaust, but quickly, the thought of an insect so insignificant leaves Sylus' mind entirely. All he can focus on now, is you. The way you drive, laser focused on the road, a smile lighting up your eyes with every uptick in speed. The beauty of your foot crushing the pedal, your legs cradled by the leather seat, your dress drawn up to your waist to show off the gun strapped to the inside of your thigh.

Under the red moon, flush with depravity, you've never looked so divine.

But for an insatiable being like you, this thrill alone is not enough. Nothing ever is, and once you've sped securely out of reach of the dealership, you downshift the gears, the engine echoing the RPM of your seductive slowing until you pull off into what appears to be an empty alleyway. With a car as nice as this, however, it won't stay empty for long.

Sylus doesn't care. If he can't touch you properly right this second, it'll be a fate worth than death. Let the gunfight ensue.

You turn to him as you put the car back into park, eyes glazed over with adrenaline, and before you can get a word out he's already taking your mouth in his. Finally, he can taste you just as he's craved all night. He wastes no time in turning the kiss dirty, sucking your tongue into his mouth, and your grunt of surprise quickly devolves into a moan. Just like that, you always melt so beautifully.

His hand slides up your thigh until it spans the crease of your hip, and Sylus leans over the console to wrap the other around your waist, eager to touch as much of you as he possibly can. You're still bound underneath the seatbelt, and it serves as a convenient excuse for you to not throw yourself into him despite your writhing. Still, you're sweet for him as his tongue drags along yours, as he kneads at your flesh, as his touch drifts over to where, so conveniently, you're not wearing anything under that pretty dress of yours.

"Is this for me, kitten?" Sylus groans against your lips, his fingers grazing along your folds, already so wet from just your thievery alone. You haven't even gotten to the main event, and yet here you are, wanton like this. Devious little thing.

"Shut up," you say, hips stuttering with his touch. He knows you well enough by now to take that as a yes, and it sends him reeling. The thought of you defying convention for him is seductive beyond compare. Somehow, you always manage to make him even more ravenous than he thought possible.

As quick as you always are to deny it, you want him just as voraciously, don't you? He can sense it—how you need him with that same carnality, the primal draw of your souls bringing you into his territory for all the danger and sex he can grace you with. Who else could satiate your hunger like this? Only he understands your greed, and only he can give you every taboo you could possibly desire.

A hand presses against his chest, and you push him away just enough so you can speak, hushed. "Did you bring it?"

He chuckles as he circles your clit, drawing a delicious gasp from you, and your hand latches onto his bicep. A bead of sweat drips down your neck, and eagerly, he licks at it before he speaks into your skin. "Bring what, exactly?"

"You know what I mean," you scoff. And yes, he does, but it's always so much fun to make you say it.

"You'll have to be more specific, sweetie."

"Just— fucking—" Every time you try to speak, he rubs his fingers, stuttering your thoughts until you finally get sick of him and rear him away by the arm. "Just give it to me."

"Such a needy thing, aren't you?" But he relents before he pushes you past the point of want, releasing his hands to reach inside his jacket to procure that little white packet you're after.

You stare at the plastic bag, eyebrow raised. There's just enough cocaine inside for a single, but very generous, line. "That's it?"

"Usually only the first hit is free, kitten. This is what? Your fifth? And yet here you are, greedy for more without so much as a thank you. Where are your manners?" The truth is, Sylus is more aware of your limits than you are. Though if he dared to speak that aloud, he thinks you'd have his head for it. But he's here to maximize pleasure, and that means maintaining a very specific degree of recklessness. Enough for him to keep your game in check without you realizing it. He'll just have to bare the force of your ire as he so often does.

"You're a prick," you spit.

He smiles. "A prick who spoils you rotten, sweetie."

The only response he receives is an indignant huff as you rummage through your purse for a hand mirror, opening it and pouting at the ruined state of your lipstick. He sees your eyebrow twitch as you restrain yourself from fixing the imperfections, and instead you hold out a hand expectantly. Sylus knows exactly what you're after, reaching into his wallet and pulling out one of his credit cards. It looks good between your fingers, like it's meant to be there. You suit expensive things. Luxury sports cars, luxury credit cards, luxury cocaine. He's already rolling up a large bill as he watches you form your line on top of the mirror, precise as always.

He trades you the card for the bill, and you snort your line as elegantly as anyone ever has, smoothly dragging along the glass, inhaling deep, then throwing your head back with the rush.

Ever so slowly, you turn against the headrest to face him, eyes blown wide, pupils dilated, throat undulating with every breath. The switch flips, and your ire twists to want, your hand drifting to his wrist. "Sylus," you say, dragging out the syllables of his name. "Touch me."

You don't ever have to ask, but he loves to hear you say it anyways. Eagerly, he obliges, taking your tools of trade and tossing them into the console as your legs spread, as he melds back into your space to kiss at your neck. His right hand finds its way under your dress again, and now, with your permission, he teases not before plunging a finger inside. You shudder, moaning breathlessly as he fucks into you, as he drinks up the sweat on your skin, as the engine rumbles through you both.

God, he loves having you like this—unchained from convention, stripped down to the you he always knew lingered underneath the surface. The you no one else gets to see, reserved only for him to unearth in your dalliances into his world. And each time, he brings you deeper and deeper, liberating you from your facade of virtue. It's in his city, under his influence, that you transform into this raw, unfiltered creature of depravity.

"Stealing cars, doing drugs—look at you, kitten. So much for being a law-abiding citizen," he teases between kisses to your throat, pumping his finger in and out as you writhe.

"It's the N109 Zone. There—ah—aren't any laws to abide."

He can't help his laugh, nor his need to press you further. "Is your sense of morality so threadbare as to be determined solely by what is or isn't written into law?"

"Please," you groan. It's supposed to be a rebuttal, but with the way you grind onto his hand, it sounds closer to begging. "Like you're one to—to lecture me about morality."

"Yes, imagine how terrible you must be to get lectured by the leader of Onychinus." He presses another finger inside of you, your hips lifting to allow him the honour, your insides clenching as you're filled.

It takes you a moment to respond, too caught up in sensation to speak. When you finally do get the words out, they come quiet, almost under your breath. "I'm not hurting anyone."

Oh, now that's rich. He bites your neck in preemptive revenge. "Really? No one?"

You gasp, hand flying to the back of his neck, rearing him away like a misbehaving pet. As you glare, your pupils are blown so wide as to look to him with nothing but wells of beautiful, inky black. "Nobody innocent."

"If that's what helps you sleep at night, kitten." At least there's some truth to your thinking.

It's then, that Sylus hears the grumble of an engine grow louder and louder, his ears perking up to the sound that cuts through the alley, far from the cacophony of racing cars down the main streets. You open your mouth to retort his comment, but he cuts you off by throwing himself over your head and bringing you down into the seat. A bullet whizzes by, a near miss right where you were a second before.

Sylus clicks his tongue. "It seems your friends from the dealership were feeling left out."

Pulling up behind the two of you, in a jet-black sedan of their own, is the salesman from before alongside three of his associates. All of them armed, and all of them quite unhappy. It's no surprise they found the two of you so quickly; there's surely a tracker on a car as nice as this.

"Sylus," you huff, tugging on his wrist. His fingers flex inside of you, and you twist in your seat.

"No time to waste, sweetie. I suggest you get into gear and drive." His left hand sneaks between your bodies, retrieving the gun strapped to your thigh.

"But—" You're cut off with his heel grinding against your clit.

"I can multitask." A stream of bullets rattles off the car as more fly overhead.

"Fuck you," you half-mutter, half groan, before finally accepting you have no choice but to do as you're told and accelerate at full throttle.

The car careens ahead, speeding down the endless stretch of neon highways that weave through the N109 Zone as the sedan follows behind. Your assailants hang out of the windows to continuously fire, a careless waste of bullets with their lousy aim. Now with distance on his side, Sylus peeks up from behind the seat to fire back. As his fingers curl around the trigger, his fingers inside of you curl just the same, and you moan in sync with the whip of his gunshot. Luckily, his aim outclasses most even as preoccupied as he is, and he takes one of the men out just before your car swerves wildly.

"Focus, kitten," he teases into your ear.

"Go to hell." You whip the car back into the lane sharp enough to jostle him, but it only works to your disadvantage when he's anchored so deep inside of you, and your hips buck at the friction.

"We're already here, aren't we?" Sylus smiles, then fires once more, and another fly drops.

Even as you fight him still, he can feel your desire pulse tenfold, can see that smile on your face every time he kills in your honour. You love the danger. The thrill. The destruction. It's even better for you, being hunted like this—creating enemies for him to strike down, one by one. Again, a bullet rips through an assailants throat, blood gargling before he's tumbling out of the window and smearing flesh along the highway. You watch in the rear-view mirror, and desire ignites once again.

Can't you see it as he does? That he's only acting as an extension of you? You can hide behind your veneer of innocence all you like, but here you are, delighting in the death he's wrought as if it's your finger on the trigger. Later, when you deny it, when you call him the monster, he'll know better. Because slowly, little by little, with every sin he allows you to indulge, he'll show you exactly the person you truly are in all your wicked glory. You're just the same as him, after all. Kindred spirits.

Sylus' cock throbs at the thought, pressing tight against his slacks, but he denies himself the easy pleasure of rutting against the console. He's not just any unruly mutt—he's your attack hound, and he's been sicced on your enemies. His reward comes later. Your pleasure, on the other hand, he has no such restraint for.

For every shot fired from his gun, he increases the tempo of his fingers fucking into you, faster and faster as he unloads the clip, until you're moaning loud enough that he can hear it clear over the wind whipping past his ears.

Your car swerves as you drift in and out of focus, lost to sensation, until you over-correct too hard and suddenly speed into oncoming traffic. It all happens so quickly—the headlights of both cars flirting briefly, two beasts seducing each other with doom—but right before the bumpers kiss, you skid over just enough to clear the collision. Still, you're so near to each other that the left side mirror rips off when it grinds against the body of the other car, metal rutting against metal with a high-pitched squeal.

It's then, barely escaping certain death, that he feels you come. Your hips stutter, thighs quaking as your cunt clenches tight around his fingers, something close to his name leaving your lips.

Behind, the salesman shares none of your quick reflexes—there's no same drift as he careens directly into the car you only just dodged. All at once sparks fly, gasoline fills the air, and a beautiful explosion erupts as the vehicles collide, melding into one.

Anyone else would stop. This would be the climax of the game, a total victory in sex and death. But you are not anyone. You're a monster, just like him.

You continue to speed ahead, foot glued to the pedal, the speedometer locked to the very limits of the engine as wind whips furiously against your face.

Sylus draws his fingers out of you, slow, bringing his other hand back inside the car and tossing your gun aside. Then he wraps that hand around your neck, his lips to your ear. "Jealous, sweetie?"

Glazed eyes flicker to the rear-view mirror, a cloud of smoke ballooning from the crash behind. "Not for long," you say, still catching your breath.

"What are you waiting for? All this open road, all this speed—it would take one little twist of the wheel to send us soaring, wouldn't it? One split-second maneuver, and we're strung out on the pavement like roadkill. I'm not even wearing a seatbelt, kitten. It'd be so easy." Sylus' right hand glides over your thigh, then up, until slick fingers lay over yours on the steering wheel. "It's in your power. You could kill me just. Like. This. That's what you want, isn't it? To kill me?"

Under his palm, he feels you swallow. He hears you suck in a breath. He senses the heat of your desire as it aligns with his.

Your will meets his corruption, and you spin the wheel of fate.

The car veers sharply to the side, and at this speed, with this velocity, it soars as it clears the raised road high above the ground below. Time seems to slow as the two of you fly, as the car twists in the air following its grand jeté. There's no bracing for impact—all of his focus is centered on you, and Sylus commands his Evol to cradle you from the worst of the damage. He'd never be so selfish as to rob you entirely of that lovely ache you desire, but he doesn't bargain with your life as easily as you do. Red mist surrounds your head and neck, ensuring you're not damaged beyond repair. No such grace is spared for his own well-being, however. That's your wish, after all. With nothing to hold him in place, Sylus is thrown wildly around the car, his body ratcheting against the windshield until he's flung out of it entirely, wind caressing his descent.

Time catches up the second he collides with the ground, and he feels the impact rupture through his entire body as he bounces and rolls. Bones shatter, skin tears, his skull thudding as pain ripples out through all corners of his being. He should be lucky that you had the courtesy to drive just outside of the city where his landing is softened by dirt and grass, but he feels none of its tenderness as a cough of blood claws it's way up his throat, as his broken ribs threaten to pierce the delicate flesh within.

But even as he howls with his suffering, he stops himself from healing his wounds. Not yet. Not until you're satisfied.

He looks to where you've landed a few metres away, still strapped within the car as it's rolled on its right side, wheels spinning with the last vestiges of velocity. The metal of the once-beautiful chassis is crumpled and concave, the mechanical organs of the vehicle spilling out where the fender and hood have been torn off to expose them. Glass scatters from the broken windshield, dusting the grass in flickers of sparkling red reflecting off the moon.

And there you are, arms dangling with gravity. Sylus worries for a moment, heart tight in his chest as you're still, eyes closed, a cut leaking blood over your temple. For a second, he fears he didn't do enough to keep you safe, but then finally, you blink into consciousness.

Your first instinct is to undo your seatbelt, and you collapse into the ground with a quiet groan of shit. There's an attempt to drag yourself up to stand, but your chest rises and falls with the exertion you can't seem to muster, and you roll onto your back instead, the car looming over you like a metallic angel. Then your neck turns to the side, and at last, you lock eyes with him. It takes you a second of staring, evaluating the mutilation you've bestowed upon him, but slowly, sadistic satisfaction pulls your lips into a viscous grin.

"Sylus…" you groan, voice hoarse. A hand stretches out towards him.

He tries his damnedest to drag himself to you but the act is too slow, too pitiful with the urgency you crave, and instead, he summons his Evol to teleport himself to your side. Black feathers drift into the ether, and he soothes a dirt-covered palm against your cheek. "I'm here, kitten."

But tenderness isn't what you're after. He feels that thrum of desire spike now that you see him up close—black, blown-out pupils greedily taking in every little cut and bruise. You roll onto your side, curious hands smoothing over his chest. The touch is delicate at first. Exploratory. Then, you press.

"Fuck." Pain ignites as you squeeze his broken ribs, a searing sting shooting through the whole of him, eyes screwing shut as every breath only forces his lungs to meet the pressure of your touch from the inside.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" you ask, giggling with malicious glee. He feels his cock twitch.

"Like hell."

One hand drags down to the zipper in his slacks, hurried, and you moan with delight as you free his hard length to the night air. Every little pump to his cock sends pleasure rippling through him, intermingling with the pain as you continue to paw at his chest.

"Sylus, I," you begin, leaning into his neck to suck at it, "I really fucking like you like this."

Before him, did you know this side of yourself? This cruel, rotten thing that only his presence seems to surface? He chooses to believe that all of this began with your reunion—your awakening wrought with the gun he put into your hands, with the bullet he commanded you to shoot through his chest. It was him that showed you the violence lingering in your soul, latent within your wicked little heart.

What he can't pinpoint, exactly, is how it bloomed into this. What is it about these crashes that arouses you so? As much as he recognizes the adrenaline, that daredevil's thrill, there are so many better ways to kill him that don't put your own life in jeopardy.

Except, that's precisely it, isn't it? You want to share it with him. The trauma. This is connection without words, woven into the psyche through its violence like a second skin. Every crash brings you closer to him, bound by your mutual suffering. It's not enough just to have him at your mercy. Even with your delight in his agony, a part of you needs to feel it, too.

A leg hooks over his waist, and you bring his cock to rut between your thighs. You're impossibly wet, and his cock glides easily against your entrance. Fingers move to tangle through his hair, the other hand still pressing against his chest even as you entwine yourself so close to him.

"I just— I want—" You grind on his cock, and every pass has your breath stuttering.

"I know, kitten. I know what you need." He wraps his arms around you, drawing you in tighter, closer even as it increases the pressure to his ribs. With every touch, his blood smears all over you, and he rejoices in the perverse delight of marking you with his very essence. Then, his cock catches on your entrance, and at last, he presses inside of you. The incomparable heat of you surrounds him—so exquisitely tight as he stretches you open on his cock—all while your beautiful moans fill his ears, and for a second, he forgets just how much pain he's in.

Of course, you refuse to let him languish in it, sinking teeth into his neck as though he isn't covered in enough bruises. Perhaps you just want to mark him in your own way, too. Then you return to meet his lips, not yet kissing, just grazing each other as you breathe heavy into his mouth. "How bad is it? Tell me."

"My ribs are shattered. At least four of them." he answers, and you grind on his cock, drawing a gasp from the both of you. "Right now, there's a shard of glass lodged into the back of my leg. Every time I move, I can feel it dig in deeper."

"Yeah?" The leg around his waist hooks under his own, drawing it closer, and he hisses as the glass pierces his flesh even more. Exactly your goal, it seems, as you laugh breathlessly. You roll your hips, whimpering with every drag of his cock inside of you, with every bit of pain you bestow upon him.

And with grace, he accepts all of it. He grips your waist, and even if his own mobility is limited by the searing ache in his fractured hips, he can still find the strength to bounce you on the length of him. With every pass, your cunt clenches on his cock, your moans spilling into his open mouth. Over and over he fucks you on him, his hand spreading your ass to get deeper, dragging you to the hilt so he can feel you shudder with just how full you are of him. Each time, the pain blooms until it's indiscernible from the pleasure it's entwined with, all of it twisting into one magnificent sensation.

You're so close—he can feel it every time you tighten around him, with every stuttered moan that escapes your mouth and into his own. Just a little more, and he'll take you to that final high you crave. "With the internal bleeding, if I was anyone else…"

"You could have—" You're cut off by your own thrum of desire, your thoughts quicker than your words, cunt pulsing around him as you're so near the edge you can barely speak.

It's alright. He'll finish the thought for you. "Died. You would have killed me."

"Sylus," you gasp, eyes screwing shut, your orgasm ripping through you as your thighs quake around him. He doesn't stop fucking into you, thrusting you on his cock faster and faster so he can feel every second of your climax. Your entire body shudders, hips rolling, and then you can't hold back any longer—finally kissing him with all the voraciousness he's desperate for.

Just that, the sharp bite of your teeth to his lips, sends him reeling. Your kiss has him forgetting all about his mangled state, and he fucks into you hard as you're bounced on his cock, hips meeting yours again and again. Each time, the pain is excruciating, but he doesn't care. You feel too good for it to matter. His fingers dig into your skin as to bruise you further, enough to cause you to hurt even just a fraction of how you've hurt him. When you sing with the pain, when he feels one with you in the agony of it, that's when he comes inside of you at last. His hips stutter against yours, pressing as deep as he can as he floods your cunt, as his cock twitches into oversensitivity.

You don't stop kissing him. He doesn't doesn't stop kissing you. Better, even, when the blood pouring from your temple finally meets your lips and he can taste that wonderful iron tang.

"God, I—" you mutter between kisses. "I just— I hate you, Sylus."

He knows that you mean those words just as much as you don't. How much you're aware of that, he's less certain. But it doesn't matter. Until his last breath at your hands, he'll always indulge you and every ounce of your malice. "Next time, kitten. Next time."

Only then does he recognize the linkage sparkling faintly between your wrists, and he wants to ask again for you to try and resonate with him, to feel that harmony with your soul he so often craves. He knows better than to ruin the moment with such desperation, however, and leaves it as merely a thought.

Except suddenly, there's a small spark—a barely perceptible flicker of gold. It's over within the blink of an eye, but even so, it's just enough to kickstart his healing without him commanding it himself. Sylus smiles against your lips, and you pretend not to notice.

Soon you'll return to Linkon, to your perfect little hunter life, where you'll continue as though everything that transpired tonight—your larceny, your murder, your reckless endangerment and everything in between—was nothing but a fantasy enabled by the liminal space of his world. You'll embrace that dissonance, law-abiding citizen that you are. And then you'll come back to him. There will be another stolen car to crash, another man to kill, another way to make Sylus hurt for your pleasure. And he'll be there, to bring every fantasy to life as only he can. To raise the stakes of your games. To stand by your side at your best, at your worst, at everything you can and will become.

One day, you'll finally see yourself in the mirror he holds to you. You'll know, just as he does, that you're made of the same wicked soul as him.

But most importantly, you'll know that whoever you are, whoever you choose to be, he'll love every part of you the same. No matter how rotten, how lovely, it'll always be you. It'll always be him. And always, he'll love you.

[smoochfics]

new tricks

caleb/reader 🍎 one shot | explicit 🔞 | 13k summary: colonel caleb is eager to train his new pet tags: established relationship, puppy play, master/pet, dom/sub, domdrop, anal fingering, anal plugging, clicker training, crate training, shock collar, abandonment play, degradation, boot worship, non-consensual voyeurism, dom!caleb, sub!reader notes: gender neutral reader, please mind the tags! unrelated to our new puppy friend - just fortuitously timed :3 crossposted from ao3 (original 05/29/2026)

Word travels fast around the fleet. Caleb knows better, or should have the foresight to get ahead of it at the very least, but in his defense he never anticipated the gossip to be about himself. Certainly not over something so mundane as the colonel adopting a dog.

Peaceful times are slow, as his lieutenant points out, and he's something of a celebrity to the newer recruits. It's a dangerous combination in the rumor mill. Even the most innocuous questions on dog ownership spur on frantic whispers. The fondness in Caleb's tone when he asks around evolves into its own beast, growing legs and running amok in the mess hall. His subordinates are used to his privacy, always nodding politely when he refuses personal talk, but at the smallest hint of an opening they swarm.

Only once does he make the mistake of referring to his new pet as cute and that alone is enough to get tongues wagging. Who could believe the colonel had time for cute?

All harmless whispers, leading to a bizarre competition that has bunks sparkling, so he lets it happen. Men who were once too afraid to approach him suddenly find shared ground, taking any excuse to meet him between stations to show off their own pets. Caleb has little interest. He plays along with a smile, sprinkling in questions about treat brands and the most trustworthy boarding services Skyhaven has to offer. Feigning banter comes naturally to him, the words coming light and breezy from a place in his chest much darker than he can let on. Every breath from that roiling place is a toxin, slowly eating away at him one easy smile at a time.

One of their newest, a young man who trails after Caleb not unlike a puppy himself, takes every mission he can to get closer to his superior officer. He squeezes himself onto the crew of a routine mission, unconcerned with the impatient glares from his peers and sidles up to him with an overconfidence that will get him far in life, if he can tame it.

"I just never really expected you to be a fellow dog lover," he admits, in one of their rare moments of leisure, "with all due respect, of course, Colonel."

Caleb shrugs, "Even a guy like me isn't immune to puppy eyes."

"Well, be careful with those! Puppies may be cute, but they need plenty of discipline. Not that you should have a problem with that, sir."

That's the crux of the problem, isn't it? The thing keeping Caleb up at night. Discipline. His puppy waits for him back at home, unaware of the training that he only just realized is necessary. With only a couple of weeks left in his assignment, each day feels longer than the last. In his free time, locked behind a closed door, he spends every waking moment fantasizing about the consequences.

He first caught you on his second night deployed, hunched over his desk with exhaustion despite the work left to be done. At first he intended to finish up a few documents for the night and gets some much needed rest, when a ping on his tablet stopped him short.

Maybe you thought were being sneaky, successfully dodging the cameras at his front door and balcony in a trick he was determined to figure out, but you neglected to check for more in his bedroom. He couldn't understand why you would try to hide your entry from him, especially not when it warmed him to know you visited in his absence, but by the time you crawled into his bed he had an inkling of what you had planned. Your back was to the camera, vulnerable to eyes you didn't know were there, and as you dug through his nightstand, he leaned back in his chair, enhancing the image until there was nothing else in the room but your writhing body on his crumpled sheets. His breath caught.

You propped his pillows into the center of the bed, one between your legs and the other folded under your cheek. Your back was bowed, presenting yourself to your voyeur as you traced the tight ring of your ass impatiently. With the lube from his drawer, tube promptly tossed from the bed, you worked yourself open until you were three fingers thick. It had little to do with pleasure and although Caleb's cock was rigid in his uniform at the sight he left it untended, caught up in his new role as your audience. Off camera, your unsullied hand patted around for something just out of reach, before dragging a long and fluffy object into frame.

A plug with a tail swinging from the end. You lubed up the bulbous end generously between your dripping fingers, and he smiled at your thoroughness. You've always hated the cold metal inside you and only once it was properly warmed up in your hands did you tease it around your hole and slide it into place. Cute, he thought, watching your tail wiggle with the satisfied shake of your ass. In one final touch, you pull a headband over your hair. Puppy ears to match your gently swaying tail. Fuck. It suspended him, watching you consider your next step like a killing blow.

The door to his office was locked securely hours before, but he glanced over again just in case. With a trembling hand, the pressure of the guilt slowing his movements more effectively than his Evol forced upon a Wanderer, he unbuttoned his slacks and freed his throbbing cock, but didn't take himself in hand.

You flipped onto your back, baring your whole self to the camera, and he smiled at how at home you were in his bed. He could pin you there, teach you a lesson with his mouth between your legs, if only those next few weeks would go by quicker. Until then, he could only wait for you to touch yourself properly and dream of the punishment he would dole out. Instead of dipping lower, your fingers drummed against your stomach in an uneasy rhythm. If he were there, he could coax anything out of you.

You huffed, kicking your legs up, and propelled yourself from the bed. Without slowing, a frantic energy spurring you on, you scurried off camera. Bare naked in only lamplight, you dragged a tripod to the foot of the bed. Your phone clamped into place, aimed precisely ahead. Blurry, he could see the peek of your tongue from between your lips.

You promised not to touch yourself while he was away, though he promised the same with no intention to keep it now. Eye for an eye, and all. Whether or not you knew he watched, you broke his rules. Worse still, it pricked him to know this private desire. Yet another thing about you he wasn't privy to. How long had you kept this from him? The thought of you trying something new, testing little pleasures that you wouldn't share with him, made his jaw tense.

On screen, you were uncaring of his torment. You scrambled back to the bed, arranging yourself just as before, and got to work. Your hand rode up and down, just out of sight behind the length of your body, and you dropped yourself to the pillow between your legs. His fingers flexed over his head, contracting tightly, when you buried your face into the other pillow, his pillow, and inhaled deeply. With each rapid breath, your hips worked themselves faster until you were humping against his pillow shamelessly. Your tail bounced uselessly between your legs and the frantic momentum sent the ears askew.

He gave up all pretense of self control. Caleb's fingers trembled as he tugged his foreskin back, spitting on the head before pumping himself twice. Then, all thought flew from his head. He followed your pace, stroking himself with the same uneven tempo you kept. You ground against the pillow, barely relying on your hand anymore, and cried out for a nameless, invisible lover.

Your phone has been arranged just perfectly he noted, as if it was something practiced, giving the recipient a clear view of your face, squished and drooling and so raw in its pursuit of relief. You needed a firm hand to take you, grab you by the chin and force those lips open. Caleb's hips kicked up. Had you done this before? For whom? You played everything too well, performing for someone that wasn't him. He couldn't stand the thought of anyone else watching you like that. He worked himself ruthlessly, tugging to the point of pain. Your armed flexed between your legs, finally jerking yourself to a rapidly approaching end. From his vantage, he could see the way your tongue lolled out, panting your pleasure. A perfect, eager little puppy.

There would be consequences for that eagerness. He would take that tongue between his fingers, hold it there until you were ready to apologize. You had to be mastered until you never thought of anyone else. At that, Caleb shoved his free hand to his mouth, biting down fiercely into the meat of his palm to stave off his groan. He would be your first everything, your only everything, all the way until your final moments. And if he wasn't, if that had gone to another, he would make you forget that anybody else ever had you. Just the thought drove him frantic. When he could make himself into anything for you and still not be enough, what was left for him to become?

As if you felt his urgency through the vastness of space, your voice came crackling through the cams, whining, "I need you."

Release crashed through him just as your own brutal climax overtook you. Committed as you were, you remained against the pillow, rutting and needy, until your orgasm devolved into pathetic little thrusts. His own hips rolled, jerking him fiercely until come shot to the lapels of his uniform. He swore, scrambling for tissues from the desk, and lost track of you in your afterglow.

He felt foolish cleaning up, his own maddened thoughts catching up to him. It was absurd, he thought, that he let himself believe you would do something so callous. He trusted you. The video would be sent to him, nobody else, and he'd self-flagellate upon the unworthiness of his suspicions. It was betrayal enough that he watched, that he touched himself, and had mentally punished you again and again for an invented infidelity.

Baseless concerns, he told himself, until the video never came.

Still, with puppy rumors abound and subordinates buzzing around like gnats, he waits for that text. Even now, with your punishment planned down to the final detail, a piece of him knows that you'll put him out of his misery soon, surely. Night after night, until finally his leave approaches and he gives up all hope of relief.

Before returning to his apartment, knowing that you'll arrive shortly after without him even having to ask, he has a few stops to make. Each errand emboldens him until even the more minor purchases have him straightening his spine. He carries himself to his front door with the same confidence that guides him in the cockpit. Unearned confidence, he thinks sourly, built on a foundation of nights tossing and turning, wishing he could beg you for answers and too afraid of his own simmering anger to ask.

Back in his apartment, OTTO has neatly stacked his deliveries by the couch. Caleb wastes no time in getting to them, not after spending the better part of the past two weeks imagining what he'll do with them.

By the time you arrive, he's neatly unpacked everything into it's proper place. You fly into his arms the moment you're through the door, knocking him back enough that he has to catch himself on one step and peppering a warm, wet kiss to the nape of his neck. He shivers and holds you tighter, maybe squeezing a little harder than he should.

"You're back!" you cheer. Your legs kick behind you, throwing all of your weight into him and he swings along and twirls you into the kitchen. When he lowers you, your body presses against his in a slow slide, a move he would know is deliberate even if he didn't catch your smile on the way down. Your feet barely land on the floor before he grabs you around your waist and vaults you onto the countertop with ease.

From your new vantage you take him in slowly. The way your eyes track him from head to toe is a physical force, outlining him hotly, heavy with desire as you catch the way he's left his first few buttons undone. You cross your ankles in front of you, humming quietly, and here is the part where he's meant to match your heated gaze. He resists. The hurt on your face is gone in a flash, covered up with an easy smile, but even that tiny glimpse of it has a knot twisting in his gut. Good or bad, he's unsure, he just knows he'll tie it tighter.

"You just got home and you're already cooking? You didn't even take off your uniform," you say with a suspicious note to your voice. You're clever enough to know there's a game waiting for you, but you can't quite pin it down. All the better for him.

Caleb turns to the stove, back to you, to hid his smile, and slowly stirs the simmering pot. The two of you catch up while he cooks, soft chattering about what you've missed in each other's lives, and the whole time he can feel your eyes on his back.

You like him in uniform. A lot. He knows this, and you know he knows, but he enjoys waiting for you to admit it anyways. Stubbornness is half your nature, half a performance you put on for him. It fits you more naturally than your own uniform, that you've apparently changed out of before coming here tonight. It doesn't matter, Caleb likes you in whatever you wear.

He dressed down only partially when he got home. His coat hangs pristinely in the closet, his boots lined up by the dresser, everything in its proper place until he needs it. Normally, he'd have at least removed his tie by now. Instead he lets it hang loosely around his neck, slightly askew. His hat is by your side, discarded on the granite, and you trace your finger along the brim and grin when he leans against the stove and twists back to face you.

His hat is plopped haphazardly on your head, something that would get him chewed out back in his recruit days, and you give him a lackadaisical salute. He straightens it out, fitting it snugly in place, and salutes back with a grin.

"It looks cute on you," he says and his earnestness steals your bluster. It only makes him want to push you more, to unload his every sincere thought until you're squirming and embarrassed for him. In lieu of rebuttal, you stick out your tongue and nudge his hip with your foot.

"Yeah, yeah," you mutter, "you think I'm cute in everything. Back to cooking."

It's comfortable, easy as long as neither of you acknowledge fever building between you, one that you try to feed only for him to ignore. Caleb soaks in the little tasks of taking care of you, settling into it as easily as a warm bath at the end of the day. He cooks your meal, cuts the meat into slices even when you roll your eyes, every tiny thing to keep you from lifting a finger. More than once, you coyly try to bait him into more. His touches are gentle, sweet, but never offer the flirtiness you try to goad out of him. He offers only the soft brushes of a loving caretaker. It gets to you, clearly, but you press on.

Of course he wants you, always, but you scramble when he refuses to show it. His plans are laid out meticulously and no amount of temptation will lead him astray. As sweet as you are for him, trying to mask your need with diffidence, he treats your advances like nothing more than obstacles to step over. Without realizing it, the moment you entered into his apartment you were pulled into his current. Only once does he try to give you an out.

He asks innocently, "You didn't stop by while I was gone, did you?"

You nibble the inside of your cheek, glancing over to OTTO as if it ratted you out.

"Nope," you lie, popping your lips on the P. He can't look at the curve of your mouth longer than that, or risk ruining his plans. "Sorry, was I supposed to come by and water the plants or something?"

It's a fair effort. Caleb shrugs with a faux glance down at his phone, letting you believe in your own triumph. The only notification is a pilot meme from Gideon that he swipes away.

"Nothing like that. Just got a weird ping on one of the cameras the other day," he explains.

"Hm, must've been a bird or something."

After dinner, you help him gather the dishes and make a decent attempt at subtlety as you glance around for any new cameras. He waves you off when you scamper over to help at the sink and the back of his neck tingles at the dejected drop of your shoulders. You mutter something about washing up for bed and flee to the bathroom.

There's no time for self-pity, or self-hatred or whatever it is making his skin crawl. He loathes it, he adores it, and he'll feed it more before midnight. As if he were back in training, he rushes to the bedroom and flawlessly dons his uniform. Whatever you're doing to hype yourself back up is more than enough time and once he hears the door click open down the hall, he's more than ready.

"I'm in the bedroom," he calls out. The trepidation in his voice is barely there, but you know him better than he knows himself. If you catch it, it doesn't slow the soft pad of your feet approaching. He takes a deep breath, straightens his shoulders, and settles himself into his new role.

In the doorway, you freeze. Your eyes widen at the sight of him, sat perfectly still in the armchair and waiting for you. He doesn't give you a chance to regain your bearings, standing up and stalking over to you like you're an unruly subordinate. You've softened, wearing nothing but one of his old hoodies and your sleep shorts, and the curve of your legs seems uniquely vulnerable to him tonight. Those legs carried you into battle, saved your life and his countless times, but they still belong to you and everything that is yours is precious to him. So precious, that he knows caring for you isn't so simple as giving you what you want right away.

"Phone," he commands, holding out his gloved hand. Your mouth hangs agape, lips moving as if you may protest, but your eyes have already taken on the hazy quality he knows well. Something about the uniform always makes you surrender more easily. You're nearly pouting, so close to protest, but instead of resisting you pull your phone from the pocket of his hoodie. Despite the thrill your compliance gives him, he bites back his smile.

"Let's do this the easy way," he says. The tiniest hint of color peeks from under your grey sweatshirt, some gaudy boxer shorts you got at a tourist trap that you adore for some reason. It's little things like this that urge him on, things he knows about you that nobody else does. On the rug, your bare toes curl. You want to submit to him just as much as you want to rebel and he knows which of the two will win. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

Your brow furrows, eyes darting away from his. Your tells fall into place one by one. A flash of your teeth, the pink of your tongue, and the little suck of your cheek may as well be a flashing neon sign of liar emblazoned over your head.

"What would I even have to tell you?" you mumble. That's what he's been waiting for. Petulance lingers even when you tacitly agree to play along. It's as good as a signed contract when you drop your phone into his palm.

His sigh will eat at you for the rest of the night. Caleb's disappointment always crawls under your skin, feasting where you're most tender and leaving you hollow until he fills you back up with gentle praise. He withholds it.

"The hard way, then."

The pin to your phone has been the same since you were old enough to have one. His birthday. For years he knew it and hid that knowledge from you long enough to reach the day you finally admitted it yourself. For your pride, he pretended to be shocked, though his joy was very much real, and that night he threw himself between your legs and brought you to pleasure again and again in eager service.

Now his enthusiasm takes a different shape. It's something polished, harder and sharper to be wielded against you. It wasn't fair, the way he honed himself on pushing you to your limit. He craves it more than he wants to admit. With time and patience you'll surrender to him until, in your defeat, you're so desperate to please you'll swallow up any scrap of praise he has to offer. But, before you're biddable, you always find ways to resist.

He swipes to the photo app, giving your pouting none of the attention you blossom under. All it takes is one stern glare for your whines of protestation to die down.

Most of your photos are exactly what he expects. He's seen most of them himself, through texts or social media. There's a few selfies from the week, you posing proudly in front of the wreckage of some battle he had tensely read about online, and one racier shot you had sent him just before the end of his mission with a teasing little "miss u <3" that made his co-pilot tease him before takeoff when he was caught smiling at his phone. Deeper in are a couple of memes that childishly rankle him, clearly sent to others. Food pictures that were posted online days before, and one blurry photo of your head on Simone's shoulder, all of which feel strangely like provocation.

That's when he finds it. Not hidden away or behind a privacy screen, it's as if you were just waiting to be caught. The video begins with your shy face, up just a little too close where he can see the pores on your nose that used to drive you crazy. To him, there's no cuter face out there. Just when the you onscreen is backing up, knees bumping the mattress and offering him an angle he'd been imagining every night to no relief, the you in front of him finally gives up.

"Okay, okay, fine," you groan. "Fuck, Caleb, I get it. You can stop now, you made your point."

In your embarrassment, you get snippy. His fingers twitch. Clearly his point hasn't been made well enough yet. He locks your phone and tosses it behind him on the bed. The insecurity rises in his throat, words that he can't set free with your pitiful eyes tracking his every move. Why didn't you send it to him? Only patience will get him his answer.

"Enough," he snaps and your teeth click together. One word is all it should ever take. Your knees tense and lock into place, standing you up unnaturally straight with your shoulders lowered back. It's a defenseless stance, your feet too close together to get any traction without twisting away, as if you're poised to run. Much better. "That doesn't sound like an apology to me."

Your eyes drop to his boots, hands clasped behind your back penitently. Before giving him what he's looking for, you lick your lips, swollen from your nervous nips.

"I'm sorry, Colonel," you whisper. Too quiet. Was he really supposed to believe you meant something, so feebly said? He laughs, shaking his head, and you flinch.

"That's it?" he sneers, "Let's try that again. On your knees."

It's a near boneless drop and you don't go gracefully. This routine is familiar to you. His cock hardens at how easily you fall to his feet and unveil your sins to the floorboards. He doesn't have to ask you for more, you press kisses to the tip of his boot all on your own, breaths shuddering, and bow your head to the floorboards.

"I broke my promise, I'm really sorry, Colonel."

He's not quite ready to accept your apology, despite the way he goes dizzy with it. For two weeks he was tormented by that video, kept up at night and irritable in the mornings. You could stand to suffer just a little longer.

"That's better," he allows, "but I'm not sure you really mean it."

He lifts his leg, jostling you off of him, and you fly to sit up. Your knees always get sore on the hardwood. Sometimes, when he leaves you waiting long enough, it leaves bruises for the remainder of the week. He likes it best just before he leaves, knowing your subservience is visible to anyone close enough to you to see it. He can make you wait like this, until your thighs tremble in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that your feet have fallen asleep. It's one of the many things he's dreamed of committing to video. It makes your slip-up all the more bitter, yet another fault of his he can pin on you in his worse moments. He should have asked to record the two of you forever ago, from the moment you were fully his, but his cowardice was all that much crueler when he caught you on camera.

Tonight will be different. No more hiding what he wants.

"I bet you're wondering how you got caught," he muses. Your eyes follow his march around the room. Each step he takes lands with a thump, and he watches the tense lines of your body from the curve of his eye. You stay stock still, back straight, with your hands politely pressed on your knees.

He leans against the dresser and points up to the tiny red light in the corner.

"Since you like being on camera so much," he taunts. You purse your lips and glance away. For the first time since he stepped away, your gaze doesn't follow. "Eyes up, look at it."

You twist to obey, looking directly into the corner with renewed focus. He sees when you find it, the little reflective glimmer that you must have missed when you snuck in before. On your thigh, your fingers curl. How long had this been here? The memory of all of your nights in his bed suddenly flash across your face. You must be desperate to ask, but you hold your tongue. Of course, he never recorded the two of you in this room before tonight, not that there was any reason for you to know that yet.

"Get up and strip."

You nod once, short and tight, before gripping the bedframe to help yourself up. On the rise, your knees tremble. Caleb watches impassively.

"Eyes up," he reminds you. You obey, gaze snapping back up to that red dot. He clicks his tongue in approval, the first compliment you've gotten for the night paired with an indulgent smile in reward. You'll learn to love that sound.

He doesn't have to direct you closely. Without any further orders, you undress for him. It's not a show, but something practical and quick. You turn to fold your clothes neatly, just how he likes, and line them up the way you've been trained to do. Empty of resistance, you turn and await his next direction.

"Knees."

This time when you go down, it's slower and more deliberate, taking care to tuck your feet behind you. The lights are dimmed just enough for the city glow to illuminate you, speckles of light flickering over the plains of your skin. When he approaches, your breath catches. One of his knees presses down into the meat of your thigh when he crouches in front of you.

His tone is steel, like you've obeyed command on a mission, as he lays out the night for you.

"You've been keeping secrets," he says, "and there's consequences to your actions. You were bad, and you know it."

You swallow hard to be chastised like this. On another night, maybe he would let it slide. Tonight, he grips your chin and forces your eyes to meet his.

"Since you've misbehaved, we're going to do things a little differently. I'm not your colonel right now. I'm your master. Can you repeat that?"

With how he holds you, you can't nod, but you make a weak attempt at it nonetheless.

"Yes, master."

Click, click of his tongue.

"That's good. I want to know I can trust you when I'm away," he says. From his belt loop, he unclips your collar. It will fit perfectly. He knows this, even had it ordered special made to your measurements, but he's still eager to see it on.

You gasp when he holds it out in front of you. At first, you're too stupefied to move, until he clears his throat expectantly. You bare your throat to him, tilting your head back as far as he allows in his hand.

It's soft pink leather, so sweet against your skin, with a gold tag dangling from the center loop. Sliding around the back of your neck, he secures the clasp tightly in place. It's snug but not restrictive. It almost catches him off guard, nearly breaking his expression into a smile you haven't earned, but he locks his contentment away with a curt nod.

Along the strap sits a little back box, secured to the nape of your neck. He taps it once to draw your attention and unveils the remote from his jacket pocket.

"I watched it, you know. You were rutting on my pillow like a needy puppy while I was gone," he whispers. Your eyebrows furrow, a telling wrinkle forming between the bridge of your nose. If you cry now, he'll comfort you. Sometimes that's what he wants more than anything. If he squeezes you just enough, sometimes you crumble for him. This time, he hopes you hold out. "That's what you want, isn't it? To be my dog."

In the quiet of the room, he can hear your near silent inhalation. If he was any closer, he could swallow it up, keep your every breath for himself and offer you all of his own until there was no distinction between his life and your own.

"That's what I want, master."

Click. You melt beneath his smile. One of his gloved hands pats gently at your head, his thumb stretching down to stroke your brow bone.

"That's it," he approves, "Good puppy. You just need a little training, don't you?"

You're wary of his praise, eyes locked on lips like you can watch the lies tumble out. This side of you makes his stomach ache. How sweet you are, waiting so patiently for his approval. He gives you the opposite, holding the little remote out between the two of you. In the middle are three shiny buttons and he takes one of your hands in his to run your fingers along them.

"I don't want to use this. It's only for when you misbehave," he says, "Let me show you."

On the far left is the lowest setting. With your thumb in his control, he taps it quickly. Just a jolt and it's over, but the shock makes you jump. One of your hands flies up to cup your neck, just over the brick on the curve of your collar. Your eyes are blown wide, intrigued and betrayed by this side of him. Sure, the two of you weren't new to this game entirely, but this wasn't the same as a spanking and he knew it. Regardless, you don't protest. That's the one thing you're well trained it.

"If you're good you'll never even feel it," he assures you. When he stands it's your final test. With a hand to his thigh, he lifts himself up straight and for a beat he lets himself look out over the city until his composure returns to him. There's something mean inside of him, something that wants to keep pushing you until you falter. In his room, you become something fragile in his hands that he could so easily ruin. He doesn't. Still, the eyes that look back down at you are cold.

You do well. Without even a tiny attempt to follow along after him, you remain rooted on your knees. This view is one of his favorites, though the list is never ending. Whoever you are when you step out his door, right now you're nothing more than his dog, waiting for your next command.

He clicks and crosses the room, taking a seat back on his chair. His long legs spread naturally and your eyes track his knees as the part.

"Come," he says.

There it is, the mistake he's waiting for. You scramble to stand for him. Before you can manage to get your knees out from under you, with your bare spine curving towards the ceiling, he reaches into his pocket for the remote and hits the left button. It's longer this time, no longer just a warning, and you yelp in shock. Instantly, unsure of what you did wrong but appropriately chastened, you return to the floor.

"Be a good dog," he reminds you. It takes a moment for you to understand, but you huff in near disbelief when you do. Almost haughty enough that he's tempted to punish you again. He holds back. On your hands and knees, you begin the long crawl over to him. There's reprieve on the rug, a brief break in your repentance, but you move slower when you reach the hardwood. Tomorrow your knees will ache, and he'll spend every hour bringing you everything you need even when you protest his attentions. The two of you have the whole weekend together and he intends to make good use of it.

Once you reach his side, you're careful not to touch him before he allows it. He pats his thigh again, just above the knee, and gestures you up into a position you know quite well. You clamber across him, bent over his lap with your ass on display. Up close, he can see the goosebumps over your skin, the way anticipation prickles across the small of your back. His hand grasps your thigh harder than he intends and you gasp, but stay silent. Any other night, he would rub the spot in gentle apology.

Instead, he administers orders with a voice gone gruff, "Help me get these off."

Caleb brings his hand to your lips and, without waiting for them to part, shoves his way between your teeth. With two fingers, he probes inside, rubbing the leather seam of his gloves along your molars. His knuckles curl, exploring your mouth until you're gagging around him. He holds himself there, waiting for you to adjust and pulls back with a drag against your tongue. His obedient little dog does exactly what he wants. Before he slips out, your front teeth catch the edge of his glove and with a twist of your neck you pull his hand free. His glove hangs from your lips, gently swaying and glistening with spit. There's a twinkle in your eye when you glance over your shoulder, so pleased with yourself, teasing him for trying to catch you unaware. He allows you that moment of triumph, scratching behind your ear indulgently before he offers up his other hand.

Divested of his gloves, he wastes no time. He grips you with one hand, digging his fingers into the meat of your ass like he can imprint himself there, and spreads you open in his lap. Under his thigh he can feel your fingers curl, a little embarrassed whine gathering in your throat, but you don't struggle. From the top drawer, he scrambles around for the bottle of lube he left earlier. It dribbles out cold and your muscles tighten when it makes contact. With his knuckle, he circles your rim, coating you until it drips down between your legs, running slow and thick until it wets his slacks. His ministrations are crisp and perfunctory, not tailored to your pleasure but for efficiency. In his pants, his cock strains taut for you, but that's negligible when there's a job to be done.

Your training matters to him. You prove your need for it in short time, whimpering as his fingers twist you open. At this point you should know better, but you rut against him anyways in a pitiful attempt to build friction. Without missing a beat, he lets go of your ass just long enough to reach for the remote. You jolt under it and he seizes the moment to shove his knuckle deeper. Greedy heat flutters around him. When the shock dissipates, longer this time, he pulls back just enough to tease the ring of muscle before finally plunging inside. You keen, winded in your leap between pain and pleasure.

"Behave," he snaps, his own patience a straining thread. He keeps his free hand on the remote and relishes in the way your lip trembles when you notice just how much you've lost his trust. When you're like exposed like this, cracked open to display all your inner workings, his approval is your vitality. He'll drain you of it just to be the one to renew you.

After your punishment, you grow quieter, wriggle less, and as much as he misses watching you struggle, it's even more enticing to watch you fail at your composure. Your thighs squeeze together when his finger slips free, one last attempt to keep him part of you. Your eyes dart back to the remote clipped to his pelt and you freeze. Caleb's hand remains suspended as he counts down in his head. Once he's satisfied with you, he rubs his thumb softly along the crease of your ass. Skin to skin thrills him. His hand splays, petting up your sides and across the small of your back until your skin heats beneath his palm. Limp to his touch, your eyelids flutter shut and a low groan vibrates through you. From behind, he grasps something soft and fluffy waiting on the dresser top.

Cold metal rubs against your opening, one leg kicks up behind you in your attempt to hold still. Without fanfare, with you stretched open for him, he stuffs the plug inside of you with little fanfare, pleased with the way your muscles contract around it.

The tip of your new tail sways between your thighs. Your eyes fly open, head whipping around to look back over your shoulder when you feel it. Embarrassment floods your face and his gut tightens.

"Ca- Master, please," you whine. All it takes is one sharp look. Disapproval has your teeth clamping together, accepting whatever he has to offer you.

His fingers grip the base of the plug, twisting it inside of you until your head drops between your shoulders. Against his legs, your abdomen tenses and trembles from the effort of holding yourself up. He wants to keep you here even longer, let you struggle until your muscles fail you, instead he gives your tail a little tug and relinquishes.

"Down," he says. At first, you don't move. You're slow to keep up when you're too deep in his orders, like his words reach you from a distant place. Impatient, he swats your ass once. You fidget, awakening your limbs, and roll off him with a clumsy thump to the floor. At his feet, you wriggle from side to side on your knees, trying to balance further back on your heels and offset the ache in your joints.

From the pinpricks of tears in your eyes, he knows the moment is catching up to you. It's not easy to overwhelm you, but as soon as you walked through his door he had the upper hand. It thrills him, the way you fall harder instead of resisting, thrusting your trust into his hands without a second though for what he'll twist it into. Unwilling to back down, you nod eagerly to a question he never asked, nuzzling soft smiles into his knees. Your cheek is sweet and warm against him and when you look up at him, it's with a dazed sort of determination.

"I have one more gift for you," he offers.

Now, the final touch. Ears, big and fluffy and just the same color as the headband from your video. When he slides it on, his hands are harsher than he intends. Had anyone else seen you in this color?

Next time, he'll have to prepare a muzzle. He needs something, a barrier, to blur the lines between the person at his knees and you. Beneath his gaze, you fidget. One ear bumps his leg and your tail wiggles behind you. He can imagine it wagging for him, eager when he returns home to see you.

"There's my sweet pet," he coos. His tongue clicks. Your fingers curl against the wood where they're laid flat between your legs, arousal and lube coating you at your apex. Shiny and wanting for him, so easy to take, he wants to lick his way up to that private place partially concealed behind your wrists. "Sweet, but not properly trained, huh? It's okay, we'll fix that."

He keeps his tone saccharine and light, buoying you after the sharp edge of his words from earlier. When he cups your cheek, thumb stroking your temple in tiny, circular pets, your eyes flutter shut. Without even the smallest twitch, you hold your spot even when he stands. The improvement in behavior has pride emanating from you from tail to tip. Caleb strolls behind you, taking a small lap around the room for no other reason than to look upon the curve of your thighs as you stare straight ahead. He'll never look his fill, but it's enough for now. He turns to the closet, sliding open the door to the pull out his final piece of training.

A large, wire crate awaits you. He drags it out across the floor, pulling it to the center of the room. You perk up at the grating sound, but remain steadfast. Satisfied, he clears his throat and pats his thigh in two loud smacks. You rise to all fours, already shakier than when the night began, and turn to face him. On your hands and knees, you have to tilt your neck back to look at him. At your throat, his name dangles from the collar. You sway at the sight of your crate. You'll fit, he had measured perfectly, but your eyes reflect your apprehension.

"Maybe now you'll learn," he says, sucking the easy warmth from the room. You shiver. "Go on, then. Place."

First, you're frozen. You open your mouth, as if to protest, but instead of words only a hoarse whine comes out. With the same impeccable posture instilled upon him every time he dons his uniform, he stares straight ahead. You're nothing but an animal in this room. You try to lock eyes, desperate to convey something unspoken, and he steadfastly looks away. Down, down, your pleading look goes until it locks onto the erection straining against his uniform, where he aches to rip the tail free and thrust inside of you.

You hesitate there, weighing your options. He knows what you must be thinking. Maybe, just maybe, you can use his own desperation to your advantage. You could crawl over to him, slide your hand up to where he waits, and wield his pleasure against him like a weapon.

He finally meets your eyes, it's to sneer down at you. At his belt loop, he hits the remote. One long jolt follows a short, stronger one. You cry out, dropping to your elbows with a crack against the floor. The rug is so close, he cruelly thinks you could have saved yourself some pain if you made even a small effort forward. That pain makes him feel sick, a churning queasiness in his gut that travels lower still until it's indistinguishable from his need. In this, you've trained him in your own way. When you look back up, eyelashes clumped together with tears, you look towards him first. Even when he's the cause of it, you beg him to soothe your sorrows.

It's not time yet to give you want you want. He points to the crate once more.

"I won't ask again," he warns you. You straighten your arms, hiking yourself back up, and with a centering breath you make the slow, lurching crawl to his side. When you finally reach the black wire of the crate door, you look up at him one last time. Your final entreaty misses the target and he only offers you a raised eyebrow in the face of your feeble supplication.

The door is just small enough that the squeeze in is awkward. Your hip catches slightly, and once inside you have to curl yourself up just to turn around. He wasn't entirely cruel. There's a plush bed rolled out for you and a blanket folded at the head. Caleb is a strict master, but he treats you well when you earn it.

Your knees hit the soft fabric and, with relief and shame, your eyebrows crumple together. Your embarrassment might have shaken him before he saw that video. Weeks he spent wondering, agonized over what it meant. He has years of practice playing your fool, over and over again, but it never truly hardened his heart when it comes to you. Greed stokes the flames of his possession and you warm yourself on that fire.

There's no reward for him to offer, not after your hesitation to obey. He ignores your desperate questions, finally snapping out of your roll enough to interrogate him, and swings your door shut. The clang of the metal echoes in the room. There's no lock other than the spring latch, an opening you could easily squeeze your fingers through and snap the door back open. He knows for certain that you won't even try. Maybe next time you'll even spend the night in there, plugged full with a vibrator and at his mercy, halfway between sleep and pleasure until you only knew desperation. Next time, he keeps thinking, as if there's any promise of it.

You perk up when he finally acknowledges you again, but it barely lasts before he's crossing the room to the threshold. His command allows no room for argument, "Be good. Stay."

All it takes is one hand on the doorknob for you to cry out.

"You're leaving me?" you ask, voice like glass.

It's for your own good, he reminds himself, and straightens his shoulders to shield against your entreaties. Usually, he doesn't leave when the two of you play. Times before, it's dropped you over the edge steeper than he intended, a game that the two of you never really mastered. Back then, his own self-hatred almost drove him mad himself. That he could take any pleasure from your shaking, clinging need for solace was a betrayal to you, one that he was queasy for indulging in.

At the door, he waits just a little longer, just in case you truly break. If you want to stop him, it's your last chance. Instead of doing so, you only sniffle behind him. When he steps out, the click of the door is only met with silence.

Once free of your presence, he deflates entirely. Being your colonel is one thing, to master you takes another part of him completely. It's addictive in that way, offering up a piece of himself to you just for the rush of watching you take it. The moment you accept him, embracing his cruelty, is the truest connection he can fathom. You grasp his shapeless wanting between your fingers without knowing how jagged it really is, and let it fill up a space that belongs to the two of you alone. That though wipes the smile from his face. It's a certainty that he's only yours, but you're something more mercurial to him, everchanging.

It's an unfair thought, once again throwing distrust at your feet like a dueling glove in a battle he'll willingly lose, but now that he's alone he can't stop it. With his back pressed heavily to the wall, he slides down until he hits the floor.

Pathetically, he can only huff a laugh. You're in there, waiting at his leisure, while he wallows in his worse compulsions. One deep breath in. With his Evol, he presses down on himself, the pressure encompassing him just enough to truly ground him. There's something boyish about it, the way his legs kick out in front of him while he comforts himself alone with just a wall between you. It's not unfamiliar.

When he fishes his phone out, you're waiting on the glow of his phone screen. You sit exactly as he left you, naked and kneeling in the center of your crate with your eyes trained in the direction of the door. He's certain you don't know he's there, that he's watching you just beyond the wall, waiting to return one he's pieced himself together. Part of him wants to keep you there as long as possible, until you sink to his level and cleave to him, but that's not playing fair and even he knows the boundaries of his own callousness. Still, he wonders how long you would wait if he pushed you. There's tear tracks down your cheeks, clear even from the camera, but you don't make the effort to leave. It wont be much longer, though what comes next is your last test.

In the room, his TV lights up. Your head whips around to catch it, eyes widening when you see the video flicker on.

It's you, only a few weeks ago, caught on the same camera he's watching you from now. Your gasp reaches him faintly through the wall just as it comes through tinny from his phone speaker. At his current vantage, he can't see the screen, but he's watched it enough times already. For the first time tonight, he pulls his cock free. It jumps from his slacks, painfully hard, and he offers himself no mercy. He jerks his foreskin in tight, dry strokes, squeezing until his vision goes white.

In his room, you whine and squirm with nowhere to hide from what you've put him through. You crush your eyes together, a weak attempt to run from the consequences, but he's not so forgiving. Caleb thrusts up into his hand and scrambles for the remote, biting his teeth to hold back his own sounds of pleasure when he watches you jump with the shock. It's a weak one, only meant to warn you that he's watching, but it's enough to make him see stars.

After that, you obey. He watches you watch yourself and as self consciousness seeps from you, you curl up like a kicked puppy. You need him, a gentle hand that you won't even have to ask from. When you're ready to take him, he'll be there.

Twice he has to hold back his own release, gripping the base of his cock tight enough to hurt when he catches the way your thighs rub together. Incorrigible. The TV illuminates your desire in golden light, and he knows that deep down you love seeing what you do to him just as much as you likes inflicting it upon you. He could pull you from the crate, bend you over on your knees, and let the shocks rock through you with each of his selfish thrusts, caring only for his own needs, and you would still thank him for it after. It's a heady thought, and he can't hold off the rumble in his chest.

As if you heard it, your eyes fly up to the camera. Even through the phone screen, you see right through to him, seeking his loss of control. He gives it up. Caleb rocks to his feet. With his cock bobbing rigid against his navel and his belt swinging loosely around his hips he knows he most look a mess, not quite the pristine visage of punishment he intended anymore, but he can't bring himself to care. The door slams against the wall when he crashes in and your head flies around to him. On a warpath, he grips the back of the chair near the wall and rags it over to you with a long scrape.

At your hopeful look, he laughs. No, you're not let off so easily. Just outside of reach, he falls back into the seat and locks his attention on the TV. You grip the wall of your cage, your fingers wiggling through the gaps, and reach out for him. He's just far enough away that the tips of your nails barely brush the wrinkled fabric of his pants. Eyes steadfastly trained away, he lets his attention lock on the sweet, needy puppy on his screen, offering nothing to the one at his feet. He kicks his leg away until your only point of contact is the crate.

Desperation gnaws at him and he buries it down. You can't see how much he needs you, not yet. When he picks up from where he left off in the hall, stroking his throbbing cock while he watches you through yet another screen, he holds himself back. This display is for you more than it is for him, though the sad little sounds you make have his hips twitching. From the corner of his eye, he watches you. Only once does your hand go down to your waist, greedy little fingers with a mind of their own, but you jerk back before he can reach for the remote.

There it is again, that tingle along his neck. His ownership is so absolute now, so ingrained that you obey his unspoken commands. In the video, your climax knocks you to the mattress until your uneven thrusts devolve and leave you a trembling heap in his bed. Caleb's strokes are tight, wrangling himself back down until his head clears. Only now does he realize your needy sounds are pleas to be let out. He lets you cry for more until the video comes to a slow, when you clean up your mess and walk back to your phone to finish your own private recording. That's it, proof of what's haunted him and the reason your punishment isn't quite over.

He leans over to the crate, thumb popping the hinge free from its peg and the door swings open. You leap towards it, scrambling for the exit and gasp when your actions catch up to you. Reaching hands shoot back to your sides, trembling slightly where they grip your ankles. Close to failing him, but you know better. You glow with pride when he clicks his tongue.

"Good dog. Come here, show me how sweet you are," he says.

The night is catching up with you. Extending your legs is slow, but it doesn't hide your eagerness. After seeing him, shame has unshackled itself and you hold your head up with a new lightness. All it took was that one word to free you. Good, so good for him. It carries you to his side, the crawl across the floor no longer the trial it once ways.

"There you are," he croons. Your chin rests on his knees, eyes hot and wanting along his shaft, looking every bit as greedy for him as he trained you to be. Atop your head, the tips of your fluffy ears dip slightly. From around the corner of your hips he can see the tip of your tail on the wood. He grips the back of your collar, yanking hard enough to momentarily steal your breath, and forces you to look up at him. His smile remains, the singsong lilt of his words unchanging, but his hands are harsh and unforgiving where they hold you. One finger traces down beneath the leather, digging into the scruff of your neck before he pulls you closer. Your legs fail to keep up, your chest slamming against his knees and leaving you with nothing but him for support. He doesn't wait for you to regain your bearings, only tenses his arm and holds you tighter.

Bent forward over his legs, you're level with his cock. It's an awkward angle you're forced into, one he enjoys. Your lower back bows, propping yourself bodily against him, and over your shoulder your ass sways until the tickle of your tail makes your knees shake. He wants to fold you over just like that, on your knees on his floor, and take you. Maybe you're thinking the same thing, if the way your lips part for him are any indication.

"Stay," he says, clipped, and frees his cock from his hold. It slaps your cheek, his leaking head painting your skin with the sheen of his desire. The tip of your tongue peeks out for him, wanting more, but you stay where you are. Again, he pulls back just enough, flexes his wrist, and only gives you more when you're whimpering for it. High, short keens accompany your rapid breaths.

He scoffs, "Whiny dog."

Again and again he slaps his cockhead to your face, a blissful smile overtaking you with each smack until he catches that smile with his tip and you cry out for more. He drags himself along the seam of your lips, not quite pushing inside. Eagerly, your tongue rolls out and enticing, wet heat takes him. Like a much less controlled man, one he is in these moments, he can't stop his thrust up. Before you wrest control, he jerks back. You grit your teeth, swallow your protests, and wait. If they could, your ears would bow.

You tumble to the side when he props one leg out. Jostled free, you rush to get back into position. Before you can rearrange yourself, he rolls his ankle and lets the black leather of his boot trace circles against your thigh. With a kick to the inside of your knee, he slides your legs further apart. It exposes your desire to him, the heat between your legs, and he trails his boot up, up, up to that tempting place before sliding it back to the chair.

"You should thank me. I trained you so well," he says. With your eyes fixed to the floor, you lean forward to your palms and crawl back over. This isn't new for you. Many times before, you've lowered yourself to show him your appreciation. It never ceases to knock the wind from him. Shamelessly, you run your tongue along the round tip of his boot, humming against the leather with the same earnestness you would give to his cock. You even moan for him when he kicks up slightly, parting your lips further. Kisses trail from the toe and up to his laces, where you nuzzle his leg. His pants, once perfectly tucked into place, have been rucked out of place. You run your nose against his shin, murmuring your thanks.

"Go on, then," he says and you blink up in confusion. He laughs. "A desperate little dog like you will take anything, won't you? I saw what you did to my pillow. Like a bitch in heat."

You draw back as if he slapped you, almost enough for him to drop the act entirely. He jolts as if to follow you and only stops himself when you nod. One of your legs slips around his calf until you're properly straddling him. Rough leather finally offers you the friction you've craved, but even once you're seated you don't make the first move. If he arches his foot just right he can apply the pressure need. You gasp, throwing yourself into his need when he digs the plug deeper into your ass. The core of your sex rubs along his pristinely tied laces and you cry out, pulling away just barely before your desire wins out and you thrust down for more.

Although it's clumsy, you manage to catch a rhythm. Even when your nails dig into his thighs, catching the waistline of his pants in your fingers enough to catch bare skin, he doesn't stop you. Teeth bared, head thrown back towards the ceiling, your tag flashes in the dim lights. You ride him with a pace rapid from the start, overflowing with the emotions he ruthlessly drilled into you.

"More, please, master, please," you beg between sobs. Eyes squeezed shut the way they are, you can't see his composure fail him. Undone at last, finally free to have what he really wants, he wraps his arm around the back of your head and shoves his cock fully between your lips. You don't lose momentum, continuing to drive yourself down with each merciless roll of your hips. He follows along, fucking up into your mouth with the same unabashed frenzy.

Tears and drool mingle together on your cheeks, dripping from your chin and rolling to his base. He holds you as deep as you can go, ignoring your struggle for air when he buries your nose into the coarse, dark hair at his root. You nearly choke then swallow around him and drive yourself deeper still, your thrusts never slowing against his leg.

His head falls back against the chair and a groan tears itself free as he curses, "Good dog, fuck."

You heave a sob around him when he finally pulls out, tugging you back by the collar so he can paint you in his release. Taking whatever he'll give, you open your mouth wide for him. Two thrusts through his thumb and forefinger and thick spurts of come hit your waiting tongue. Hot ropes shoot free, covering you from forehead to chin and with one harsh, near cruel drive down against his leg, you find your own pleasure.

Your whole body trembles around him, clenching against his calf like it's all you have. Being separated from you now would kill him too, just as swiftly. There's a wrinkle along your forehead that smooths over with your blissful cries, the aftershocks melting your expression into something private. Even you won't remember the sounds you make for him in a short while, but he commits them to memory. In the top corner of the room, the red light glows.

Your still shaking hands take his own in effortless affection, one so sweet that he flushes from chest to ears. Under your fingers his soul-deep grime rises to the surface, threatening to taint you too. In his lowest moments, he wishes it would. Better for the two of you to match in all ways. Despite his exhaustion, so physically and emotionally spent that even lifting his head is daunting, he knows better than to drag you to that place. You deserve the best he has to offer. There's a side of Caleb he knows you're waiting for, one who can scoop you up in his arms and pamper you with indulgent smiles. There was no way he could deprive you of that after you put yourself in his care so utterly and completely. He'll strip himself away, layer by layer, if it means showing you that Caleb.

Just when he thinks he can handle it, that he's finally ready, you take your turn. Tentative little licks to the base of his thumb become long slides of your tongue down the length of each finger. You take one in your mouth, to the knuckle, sucking him clean of his own release. A shuddering breath escapes him when your lips pop free. Attentive to every inch of skin, you lap and suckle him clean until his cock is rising to attention all over again. When he's spit clean and heaving, you smile up at him, all toothy and pleased with one last gentle kiss placed to the center of his palm.

"Oh, pet," he whispers. Hearing the gentleness in his own words shatters his control. One sharp laugh breaks loose, more a bark to the ceiling than any expression of joy, but it's close enough that maybe you'll believe he can still play along. Hardly. The twinkle in your eye quickly dies out when that laugh quivers, revealing itself as more than just the pleasure of the moment overwhelming him. It's something much more difficult to master, impossible to reign in when a sob chokes him. You scramble to your feet and Caleb can't stand to watch it. Your happiness burns away and leaves pity in the ashes, and his eyes can't fly shut fast enough to miss the way you stumble getting to his side.

He swears, throwing an arm over his face to scrub at his tears. Stupid, childish tears that come from a place not even his Evol can force back down, despite his best efforts.

It's the weight of you, your thighs securely wrapped around his and planting you in his lap, that centers him. You're cooing sweet words that aren't sticky enough to find purchase, but run over him like sugar water. Your voice is enough, soothing over him better than anything else could. For once, he doesn't need his Evol. Steady palms apply pressure just where he needs it, the same muscle between neck and shoulder he forces down with gravity when he's alone. You couldn't possibly know it. It doesn't matter, not when it works. It is working, he realizes, when your words come into focus.

"You did well, you took such good care of me" you murmur. Now it's you petting him, trailing your fingers up the tendons of his neck and scratching softly at the hair behind his ears, only to soothe your way back down, applying new pressure to his shoulders.

Caleb's breath whistles through bared teeth. Unwilling to look at what he's made of you, dragging you from that blurry space into the sharp, clear light of his reality, he throws his arm around your waist and buries his face in your neck. He noses his way around the collar, where sweat and leather mingle together, and pulls you in closer. If only he could envelop you entirely, keep you safe in the encompassing darkness tucked beneath his rib, but the loss of you would be too much to bare.

You go tense, maybe worried the tears will escalate, only to relax completely in his arms when he squeezes tighter. Too perfect for him, so willing to trust even when he proves himself undeserving. Despite how poorly he handled his own control, you hand it back over as soon as he's ready with no compunctions, as if you know how much he needs it.

An apology nearly spills out, half formulated excuses that he just needed a moment and he's fine now, he swears he's fine, but he swallows it back in favor of play. It's still there in you, he can tell by the way your breath hitches for him, and he smiles to hear it. Both of you are worn too raw to go further tonight, but he hikes you up into his arms and lifts you up off the chair with him. You squeal, clinging to him tighter, and he allows himself a moment to soak in the feeling of holding you to his chest. Sweat dampens his shirt, cooling against his chest, and your heated skin is the final balm he needs.

In easy strides he swings you around to the bed and, without ceremony, pitches you down on the mattress. Whether or not you still have it in you to carry on with this game, he's freshly motivated by your scandalized gasp when you land, as if being tossed around so casually is more shocking than anything else that occurred tonight. For his first proper look at your face again, the mischievous smile you share with him is more than he could have hoped for.

Ready to prove yourself, you roll to your side with a little extra shimmy and wink that makes him laugh despite best his efforts to rein himself it. It knocks your headband off and the ears hit the bed, just one step closer to personhood. Although you position yourself for him, on your hands in knees just as before, the air in the room has shifted. He can't lean back on the dynamic from before, you ensure it by pairing your deferential arrangement with an impish giggle that promises to wreak havoc upon him if he's not careful. Two clicks of his tongue. Let it happen, he thinks, and leans in.

His body drapes itself over yours, chest to back, to plant a kiss on your cheek. Your skin warms beneath his lips, still all his to cherish despite his embarrassing display. As he pulls back, he hooks his fingers under your collar and gives you a light tug. His free hand avoids his belt, well and truly done with the remote for the night, but he knows he won't need it. It takes almost no pressure for you to tilt your neck back.

"That's it, pet," he encourages. Fingers chart a path from your shoulder, dipping down to your nipple for an indulgent tweak until, by the time he reaches your tail, you're rocking back into him. Ceding to the pleasure, he doesn't try to hold in his groan each time your ass brushes against his sensitive cock. He twists the plug inside you, maybe still beholden to his mean streak, and you glare over your shoulder.

"Caleb, I'm ready," you whine.

He laughs, voice coming out on a lilt, "Are you? I'm not so sure."

Long and slow, he draws the plug out to the tip, only to slip it back in once it catches your rim. You shake under him, dropping to your elbows as the stimulation catches up to you. He's nice enough to stop his teasing there, finally pulling it loose and tossing it to the side.

"Not a puppy anymore," you say on a heaving breath. Your cheek presses to the bedset, barely able to keep your eyes open between your drooping shoulders. Unmaking and remaking you like this is just as much for you as it is for him.

Emptied and ready for him, he mounts you. Back to chest, hips to hips, he connects the two of you in an easy grind. You're pleading nothing little words as he slides into place, his cock filling you in the absence of your tail. From behind, you can't catch the way his eyes clench, white spots dotting the blackness. He's sensitive, easily overwhelmed by your clench around him, and the two of you moan. Everywhere he can touch you, he does, until your skin is sticky against his. He thrusts shallow, holding you in place.

When your elbows start to tremble, he's there. One arm wraps around your waist, his fingers finding you, toying where you're most sensitive until you're whimpering for less, more, something impossible to voice. You're raw from earlier, his boot having left you hot and throbbing, and he finds a rhythm gentle but firm. You try to wriggle out of reach but he keeps you close until you go limp, finally coming for him with a shudder and rasp. Spent as you are, you're helpless to the waves. Each pulse of your ass has his lower back spasming, until his fingers are bruise tight and flexing. When he can't stand the pained pleasure any longer, his head falls to the back of your neck and he slams himself in deep, convulsing weakly inside of you.

Come leaks out with your needy throbs as he pulls out and the sight sends a jolt through his softening length. Both of his hands go to your hips, rearranging you onto your back until you can go totally boneless. It settles the moment. Like petals on still water, only the tiniest ripples carry through you to him, and his smile matches your own. Your eyes meet his, barely open but still fluttering to find him.

"One last thing," he murmurs, but when he reaches out for your collar, you stop him. Your fingers grasp his wrist, loose but sure, and you hold him there.

"Can I keep it on? I'm not ready to stop being yours," you say. It knocks against his chest, real as if you'd hit him yourself. He twists to take your hand in his, lacing the two of you together finger by finger, and nods. You're his and he's yours, the collar doesn't change that, but the sight of his name still hanging from your throat, moving softly with every breath, is a claim he's always longed for. Physical proof of what he can be for you. Anything, he'll be anything.

To wipe the shyness from your face, he drops himself on top of you until his full weight knocks the breath from you.

"Caleb!" you protest on a wheeze, squirming under him. He clasps your fingers tighter, pinning your arm to the bed until you're forced to smack his shoulder with your free hand. "Gross, you're sweaty! And heavy!"

He's mature enough not to point out that you're even sweatier than he is, but that maturity only goes so far. He runs his tongue up your neck, catching the sweat there, just to hear your answering squeal. Laughing despite yourself, you give him a hearty shove.

"Get off me, or I won't tell you who that video was for," you tease. Caleb freezes. Your tone is just as playful, never edging into truly angry territory, but your words are a gunshot. He pulls back, straddling your hips, still one arm trapped beneath him, and frowns down at you. It's confirmation enough, isn't it, that the video was never for him.

Your jaw drops when you see it, whatever despair and bitter determination takes over his expression, he doesn't want to know. You gasp. Now you do smack his chest in earnest, scowling, as if you weren't the one to dangle it in front of him so callously.

"Seriously? You don't know?"

His words come out too bitter, too forcibly haughty, he's flustered before he can even get them all out. He snaps more harshly than he means to, in a tone he's never taken with you before, "Should I?"

You're stronger than he remembers, though you always find ways to show him. Without struggle, you rip your hand free and swing away, knocking him off his knees and onto his back. This time it's you that sits atop him, a prideful tilt to your chin that displays your collar brazenly. Surrendering, he can do nothing but gaze up at you.

Both of your hands go to his face, cupping his cheeks so gently he jolts from it. Your grip tightens just enough to keep him there, fingers trailing back behind his ears until you're petting him in an echo from his earlier fall. Instead of the righteous anger he expects, you look upon him now with the full power of the ownership you have over him, like that's never been in question.

"So stubborn, jeez," you grumble, "Of course it was for you. I kinda assumed you knew that."

He frowns, brow furrowing, and shakes his head against hope. It doesn't add up, does it?

It does, obviously, if he pulls his head out of his own ass. He thinks of your shyness when confronted with it tonight and feels all the more foolish for his anger. For weeks, he ran off with his own worst impulses despite knowing better and now you're the one being punished for it.

"I'm an idiot, aren't I?" he says, and despite himself, how desperately he wishes he could laugh this off, he feels bizarrely exposed despite the fact that you're the one opening up. "I'm sorry, I should have known you were just embarrassed."

You lean back, settling on your knees with a wince that tells him he'll spend the foreseeable future massaging out your aches. Your touch follows you, toying with the buttons of his shirt as you piece together your next words. He's never wanted to undress more desperately than he does right now, sticky and constricted as he is.

"I mean, I was embarrassed. I am still, a little bit," you explain. Your eyes flicker up to the corner of the room, where that red dot watches over you both, and you clear your throat. "But there's two videos, right? I seriously thought you, like, got it."

It's only once he realizes you're pouting that he finally catches up. He really is an idiot. This whole time, weeks of planning, and he thought he was walking you into his game. Not once, from the beginning, did he see your own hands take hold. The careful way you arranged yourself, so perfectly placed in his bed to be enticing from your phone and, more crucially, at an angle from the ceiling. It was never just the one video, was it? Now you sit atop him, annoyed with his inability to keep up. He should be praising you, thanking you, for the trap you've set. One that you assumed he walked into knowingly, only for him to bumble through and tear it open.

His laugh is self conscious, a little disbelieving, and completely steeped in his relief. He sits up, jostling you in his lap, and kisses you properly for the first time in hours. A real kiss, one that makes his heart pound a little harder, that's meant to stay sweet until you nip back at him in well deserved punishment. Your ire doesn't last long. He smiles into it and you swipe your tongue apologetically over his puffy lip.

When he pulls back, you're pleased with yourself, more effective in your plot than you initially realized. His weeks of self-imposed turmoil seem brighter in the new light of your game. He clicks his tongue.

"Turns out I have the most well-behaved dog in Skyhaven," he muses and smirks when you bite his shoulder. He'll take your mockery happily, wear it as a badge of honor, pleased that he's the one whose ear you tweak, whose cheeks you pinch at.

"Well, duh," you say flippantly, "But I think mine needs a bit more training. You know anyone?"

He thinks back on all of his careful research, his measurements, how easily everything can be tweaked to his size, and laughs. Whatever pleases you.

"I think that can be arranged."

[sarcophilous]

mc introducing caleb to literally any of their friends

[seiyachu]

around the sun | caleb

summary: Caleb’s birthday should be the highlight of your upcoming weekend together. It seems that the birthday boy himself had other things in mind.

tags: established relationship, fluff, light angst, banter, pseudo incest, hybrids, leopard hybrid!caleb, human!mc, mentioned birthday, slightly suggestive ending

pairing: caleb/mc (reader) ※ you/yours, vague physical descriptions for mc and is intended to be read as female (mentions of “sister”)

wc: 2.0k | ao3 version ; check out the collection on ao3 for other lovely written works! | dividers (cafekitsune)

a/n: happy 2nd xia yijune! i’m absolutely elated to be part of @yourgravity2026 ‘s zine for caleb’s birthday this year! from the artworks to fics, each one is truly so special and had me giddy; the full zine with everyone’s pieces will be released on his birthday, so please look forward to it! 🫶 (now excuse me as i go and try to manifest leopard caleb into game existence… i need him so bad)

Surprises are always easier said than done.

You could barely count the number of your own successful attempts done to him on one hand. Yet for Caleb, his stellar record always remains a step ahead. The perks of being the older brother mean that your every habit is a predictable inevitability—those wins are bound to stack up against your tall losses. And after all these years together, you still vie for that upper hand. Today is no exception to the rule.

With his birthday on the horizon, the two of you already have plans to spend the weekend together. Granted, of course. Though what the little birdie failed to tell, or rather did your best to hide, is that you’d kickstart those festivities a couple days early.

As far as you know, he’s still cooped up at the Fleet’s headquarters. Something oh-so-classified and terribly administrative paperwork-adjacent that you’re sure neither of you wanted more of. Caleb especially. He mourns over how he’d rather use this time to keep you company.

‘Be careful what you wish for’ sat pretty on your keyboard before you hit backspace. No, it would be too soon to cave in. So the encouragement of a Sunny Apple sticker and some fighting words are all you offer before the exchange comes to a standstill.

At best, you have at least the hour to yourself to get your affairs in order. Getting to Skyhaven in a timely manner is the least of your worries—this home isn’t that far, and a thumb pressed to the scanner welcomes you into his place with open arms. You make your way towards the stairs, already mapping out a game plan until he comes home. A shower to reset is a lovely start; ransacking his fridge for ingredients and taking to his kitchen is another unchecked box. It had been a while since you ate dinner together, and the taste of his mushroom stir-fry is one you’re more than excited to relive.

A hum subconsciously leaves you, pleased with the intentions yet to come. Another noise beyond yourself—a thud in great weight—seems to agree.

Odd. You should, by all accounts to your expense, be the only one here.

Your humming halts, as do your footsteps on the bottom treads. An apprehensive glance thrown behind you shows no trace of life from where you just were either. But the sound is unmistakable. By the next instance of it, you’re already on a turned heel to find the source.

Ultimately, it leads you to a solid wall. Air that once came to you in subconscious ease now lodges itself into your throat. You’ve been here before, and that alone was a tough pill to swallow. An unsettling feeling wells up in your heart at the memory, and only deepens when you remind yourself that he isn’t here. Shouldn’t be for a while longer, anyhow. So between you and whatever remains behind the wall is a more pressing concern. The chances of a Wanderer materializing are low, but never zero. Still, that possibility alone is enough to have you push the entryway open in hopes that you’re wrong.

Inside, the lights are as dim as you remembered. You squint, feeling around for a light switch with one hand and the other defensively at your front. By the time your fingers slide upwards and the room came to a gentle glow, your defenses drop alongside with your jaw. You don’t think anything could’ve prepared you for what the shadows revealed—namely, the figure of someone you confidently believed to be stuck at work. Crouching at the medical bed looking for something, no less.

Your unsure voice breaks the silence between you. “…Gege?”

Well, it looks like Caleb. His unmistakable shoulders and those brown layers at the nape are definitely him. But the long, spotted tail swishing from his lower back tells another story. Are you dreaming? The slight sting of nails digging into your palm says otherwise.

“You’re home,” Caleb says deliberately. He turns to meet your owlish gaze. As he stands, heads above you like always, there’s a familiar softness in his eyes when he fully takes you in.

Chin in hand, he tilts his head. A rounded ear at his temple twitches—part of a pair, you realize, patterned in the same fashion to that new tail of his. “Didn’t think my favorite kind of company would show up so soon,” he continues. “Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket with this kind of luck.”

“You can’t be serious,” you manage from a stunned stupor. Taking a step forward, you’re able to get a better view of these new features. Ones that are unmistakably attached to his body. “Caleb, what happened to you?”

“I…” He avoids your stare then, and both ears flatten themselves. Gone is the lightheartedness. “I don’t know. Not much, actually. The symptoms started when I returned from a routine patrol last night, and worsened into the morning.”

“What about the Fleet?” Surely, this couldn’t have gone under their radar. Another footstep plants you directly in front of him.

Caleb’s focus returns to you, his expression unreadable, though he doesn’t shy away from your approach. His jaw tenses before he nods. “They ran diagnostics at HQ, but it’ll take some time before results show anything meaningful. I’m still in one piece as far as they’re concerned.”

“…Right.”

That lingering feeling from earlier in your heart twists into something bitter. Perhaps a bit selfish, too. But the words come out regardless before you could stop them.

“And in that timeline, there isn't a pin kept in for telling your sister about this? I suppose her concerns don't exactly measure to the Fleet,” you sneer. Disdain for his higher-ups isn't exactly new territory, but it’s one you’ve always danced around. Something of a sore kept beneath a bandaid that’s only ever torn off in the worst-case scenarios.

“Hey now.” His brows draw together. “You know that’s not true.”

Of course you do. Still, the sentiment shapes into a blunt retort, despite the genuine concern you keep at bay. “Were you going to try and hide this from me? Get better on your own and act like nothing happened, even. Until I came home and on the off-chance, find you cooped up in here.”

A slight tremble to his lips parts them wordlessly, before they close and an exhale leaves him instead. Caleb lowers himself to sit on the edge of the bed. “I wasn’t… Well, okay, I thought I’d have more time to get things sorted. It’s not exactly your everyday run-of-the-mill kind of thing to talk about.”

“Oh, I didn’t know Colonel Xia demoted himself back to Captain Obvious.” Arms crossed over your chest, you frown. “We’ve been through stranger things. Those fluffy ears and tails of yours are entering the top five though. Three, if you include being hidden away in here.”

“Keeping track, are we?” Your eyes only narrow and he raises his hands in defense. “Okay, but I swear on my whole heart you were the first person I was going to tell.”

You raise a brow. “First?”

“And only,” he adds on. “When it comes to Caleb, you get first, hands-on exclusive access to everything that I am. You deserve that much at least.”

The high of your feelings begin to mellow out at his earnestness, and you sigh. At the end of the day, he’s here and that’s what really matters. You could figure out the rest, so long you’re at each other’s side. Caleb reaches for your elbows then, gently tugging them down. His left hand meets yours in a quiet acceptance, warm and dry. A thumb draws back and forth in an act of comfort over your skin.

“Sorry,” you murmur. “My assumptions got the better of me. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

“No,” he shakes his head, “you have a point. I know you’re worried. And we agreed to be more honest with each other. Besides I don’t think this room helps either,” he adds with a wry smile. “Dreary vibes and all that.”

“It could use an interior upgrade or two,” you agree. “Some more lights and a splash of color would definitely help.”

“Alright. We can add furniture shopping to a future date of ours. And you can have as much fun as you want playing designer again.”

“Promise?”

The corners of his mouth lift and his fluffy ears perk up. “Cross my heart and hope to die.” You squeeze his hand. Rather firmly, since he can feel this much. “Okay, okay. No dying.”

“Good—”

“—Yet.”

“God,” you groan, pretending to pull your hand away, “you’re awful!”

He’s quick to bring you back and press a kiss to your knuckles. There’s even little room to fully retract the second his cheek nuzzles your entwined fingers.

“Don’t go,” he purrs, deep from his chest. Your eyes widen. “You came early to keep me company, didn’t you?”

Right. The surprise. His birthday, for heaven’s sakes. These things nearly flew out the window and went back to Linkon without you—but in fairness, the present discovery took immediate precedence. Behind him, his tail turns upward, awaiting your next move.

“Maybe,” you say half-heartedly, distracted by the movement, “I could be convinced to stay if you let me, you know…” Trailing off, you could only swallow at the mere thought of what you're asking for. You tack on a small, “Please?”

“Go ahead,” Caleb confirms, implicit understanding drawing him closer. He rests his chin over your stomach and looks to you, eyes glimmering in mirth. “I won’t bite. Unless you want me to.”

“One step at a time, Gege,” you remind him.

His smile only grows. “Not a ‘no thank you, brother.’ Got it.”

You can’t hide your own grin, but play it off with a scoff. “Hush. I’m about to do a thorough investigation on our little leopard cub here. Cooperation would be greatly appreciated.”

“Yes ma’am,” he affirms. “I’m all yours.”

You bring your free hand to his temple. Starting slow, you’re careful to take one of the round ears between pinched fingers. Thick with fur, it’s a few shades lighter than his original hair and has a decent weight to it. One of your nails faintly swipes across the inner skin by accident, and the very ear twitches. Caleb huffs softly, angling himself to press his forehead instead.

“Did that hurt?” you ask, tentative to move. “I was being gentle, I swear.”

“Laugh now, because I know you will, but no,” he says against your torso. “It feels nice.”

You chew on your lip. In another time, you would’ve entertained that option. Yet, a fluttering takes hold of your heart instead, pleased to hear his satisfaction. It emboldens you to bury your fingers into his hair, and your breath quickens, stroking to this new level of contentment.

Just as you slow your paces and start to withdraw, Caleb lifts his head. His lowered lashes hide the previous light in his eyes, and they're rounded in something else entirely. He puffs out air from both his nose and lips. By looks alone, he could swallow you whole—and you’d absolutely let him.

A weight presses itself against you, found in his tail wrapping around your thigh. Another purr rumbles from him and you let out a soft gasp in turn. One tug is all it takes for you to fall into his embrace, torsos resting over one another. Caleb’s nose lingers at the place between your neck and shoulder. His half-promise to bite you resurfaces in your mind and you shiver, strongly aware of what this proximity offers.

“Caleb…” you sigh, a warmth blooming from your chest and curling your fingers into his hair once more. His teeth lightly nip your skin, quietly fulfilling the unspoken desire between your bodies.

“There’s more you have yet to see,” he says, all-too-happy to keep you close. “You’ll be thorough, right?”

[hunterrami]

cat fight (ft. fem!caleb and fem!zayne)

[byallmeans1]

[smoochfics]

pearlescent

rafayel/reader 🐟 one shot | explicit 🔞 | 6k summary: you grew up terrified of the tales of a siren haunting your village's shores. after being tossed to sea, your greatest nightmare finds you. and he thinks you're his next meal. tags: alternate universe, siren!rafayel, monsterfucking, dubcon by way of siren thrall, violent sex (from both parties), vore, tentacles, double (triple and more) penetration, knotting, unorthodox genitalia, anal sex, altar sex, angst with a hopeful ending notes: you/your for reader insert warnings: this fic has a prolonged drowning sequence and otherwise dark content, please be mindful! this raf is monstrous in many ways, but both him and reader are active participants. if you have any questions feel free to reach out! crossposted from ao3 (original 11/05/25)

In your final moments even the sea isn’t enough to wash away your rage. Your body has gone ablaze with it. Desperately, you claw at the arms of your killer. Your fiancé. Your once lover. The fight has your nails torn jagged and sharp, pinpricks of blood dotting his arms. It’s still not enough. He only grips harder. Calloused hands shove you beneath the ocean’s surface, rocking the tiny rowboat that he had so remorselessly tossed you out of. 

You thrash to the surface, coughing and gasping just long enough to prolong the torture. Raw breath rips from your chest. In your brief reprieve, you catch sight of the villagers watching from the shore. They look on in horror. Silent horror. That fact isn’t lost on you. None of them step foot towards the docks. Your fiancé’s goons are mixed among them. Guilty and innocent blur together. If you had the air left in your lungs, you would curse them all. Whatever fight that remains is too valuable to waste. 

Growing up, you were always warned away from the sea. Creatures lurked in the deep dark, beyond what even the most accomplished fisherman could comprehend. The ocean was to be both feared and respected. Without practice, swimming never came naturally to you. Now it’s the only chance you have.

You go limp. All you need is one slip up, one misplaced hand, and you’re tearing yourself from your fiancé’s cruel grasp. He tries to get a grip on your hair and fails, only dunking you under long enough to push you further from his reach. Bubbles burst from your lips. You twist and kick until you’re spun with your back to him. A fumbling escape is still an escape. Once you give yourself up to the tide, the waves drag you from the boat. Even tossed around by the uncaring ocean feels like safety. Freedom from that man.

Under the golden moon, you get one last glimpse of your home. Lampfire dims where the village meets the horizon. All you can make out is the inky blackness of the sky broken by that comforting orange light. Your mind may be playing tricks on you, but you swear you can even see the warm light of your bedroom. Anger and love become one misshapen beast in your memories. One last time, the villagers will turn their backs on you. Husbands, wives and children return to their beds tonight. As if you never walked among them at all. Families will find comfort in the hold of sleep. There’s no comfort left for you.  

Perhaps you were naive to fall for his promises. Even in the end, all it took was a honey slick smile to get you out on that dinghy. Was that worthy of the punishment you faced? 

Injustice is all you have to tether you. Whiteness envelops your vision. You go weak, unable to roll with the waves. Still you fight to live. Each tug of the current drives you a little harder. As long as your head breaks the surface even the tiniest breath may save you. 

There’s only so much one can endure.

Your drive for survival alone was never going to be enough. In the icy cold, your fingers have gone numb and blue tipped. When was your last breath? If you had broken the surface recently, you can’t remember it now. Up and down cease to mean anything. You drift face first through the sea. 

A soft, beautiful melody echoes around you. Whalesong, you think distantly. That song loves you. It lifts your spirit. You return to consciousness slowly, carried along by the musical lull. You awaken anew. 

The gaze that meets yours is arresting, purple-eyed and teasing. If you could, you would reach out. The face is pretty enough to be a woman’s, though his voice comes out low in song. Midnight moonlight breaks through the water, dappling his face. He swims face-up just beneath you. There’s nothing but you, aimlessly adrift, and the steady pace he keeps. Death, perhaps, has at last come to take you.

Gentle hands take yours. His long fingers wrap easily around your wrists. In the vast expanse of the ocean, he looms massive. This is far more than just a man. The two of you cling to each other, flowing ever downward. Soon drowning is no different from floating. 

The hands that guide you are claw-tipped. They’re slender and pale but their charm only makes the sable black tips stand out all the more. Pink and purple scales shimmer along his chest, caressing their way down to his waist. A waist that tapers into a body that you can’t truly comprehend. Pitch-black void is all that awaits. Nothingness where his upper thighs should be. The curve of his hips ends in unfathomable darkness. You think, somewhere within, you can see stars twinkle in the darkness. 

From the void, tentacles spring forth. They twist in a teeming mass, impossible to count. Beautiful and strange. They’re the same entrancing, shimmering luster of his scales. At your attention, they writhe around you. 

You have been bewitched. Knowing this won’t save you. His song drapes over you. It comes from his chest, his lips, but also from the deep cosmic space encompassing his lower body. 

By the time his tentacles take your thighs, bringing you in close, you’ve already gone slack. Mind, body and heart unfurl for him. His hands slide up to your shoulders soothingly just as his tentacles firm and tighten. At his mercy, your legs wrap around his waist, just above that impenetrably dark void. You look down between you, where creeping blackness roils. It stirs something deep in your gut.

Fingers grip your chin, tilting your gaze back up to meet his. The glow of his eyes is dreamy. Face to face, he smiles. Only now do you see the two rows of jagged teeth. Once, in your youth, the fishermen had brought home a great beast of a shark. They rejoiced as they hung it above the docks. It had terrified you, the way its mouth pulled back in rigor to reveal a grinning maw. Despite the celebration of the villagers, you couldn’t stand their cheer. For weeks, you walked the long way home just to avoid the memory of it. 

You had no desire to be that child any longer. If he was truly Death, let him take you.

The arch of your back feels natural. You cleave yourself to him. His torso is just as human as you are when you’re skin to skin. A rumbling purr builds in his chest. His eyes widen at your forwardness. 

Enthusiasm shared between you spurs him forward. His hold on you is sure and confident. Even with you in his arms, he’s unrestrained. The pace he sets is breakneck, a speed that you never imagined any creature could manage.The roar of the ocean in your ears deafens his sweet song. It clears your head just enough. 

You’re doing this. You chose this. That matters to you, despite everything. Wherever he would take you, you would see it through. This brief interlude, where every thought in your head was no longer clouded by the haze of his voice, is your one chance to decide. You grasp it tightly.

A shudder runs through the creature the moment you succumb. One hand cradles the back of your head, supporting your neck as he jolts to a stop. A cavemouth yawns wide before you. Even this far from any light, the darkness of the cavern can’t reach the same impregnable abyss of his lower body. 

Only the eerie, hollow sound of the ocean hangs between you. You ache for his song. Embraced by you completely, he no longer feels the need for it. 

His fingers curl and uncurl over your biceps. Eager like a child. When he ferries you into the cave, you’re his shiny new toy. Tentacles strip you of your nightclothes, almost perfunctory in their movement. Gooseflesh rises in the wake of his hands as he leads you out of his hold. Under his hot touch, your skin feels taut and frigid. 

“Follow me,” he says. It’s the first time he’s spoken. His voice comes out higher than you expected, tinkling like bells. You knew only his song, in a language unheard among mankind. He releases you. Each finger lingers just longer than it should. Both of you almost can’t bear to let go. 

One tentacle takes your hand. It’s surprisingly strong. The sucker sticks to your palm and locks you together. Experimentally, you flex your fingers. Musculature meets you, firm and unyielding. His request is little more than a well practiced courtesy. If you wanted to break free, you’re sure you couldn’t. 

Anchored together, the two of you slowly begin your ascent. You kick your feet lazily along, caught in his drift. There were tales of men rising too quickly from the deep sea, only for their head and chest to burn them to death. Somehow, you knew you were safe. Breath had long left your lungs.

You still gasp when you break the surface. It chokes you. Crisp, sea salt air coats your tongue. Peals of laughter bounce off the cave walls in an echo. His laugh is lovely even when it’s at your expense. The apples of his cheeks are flushed. They curve sweetly until his eyes are no more than little crescent moons, flashing in the dim cavern. 

The lagoon is sheltered within the cliffs bordering your village harbor. You instantly recognize the view across the bay, where a high lord’s manor sits atop the rocky bluffs. All children dreamed of that manor. It was a distant, impossible future. Kindled lamplight flickers from the windows like eyes looking down upon you. What did it see? You, devoid of warmth, clinging tightly to this monster. 

The very monster gives you a moment to take it all in, with his tentacle still suckered securely to your hand. You spin in the water, amazed that you had gone your whole life with the creature’s lair so close by. It’s clear that’s what this is. Water laps gently inside, untouched by the churning current from just beyond the mouth. At the deepest point sits a sandy shore. Though there seems to be decorations, the amenities make little sense to you. This isn’t a place meant for your comfort. 

What stands out the most is a stone dais at the center of the beach. The platform is round and raised, covered in brine and lichen. Decorative shells frame the edges. Mindlessly, you float closer and closer. An altar awaiting you.

The creature rises. Exposed to the air, the void warps and ebbs. It nearly overtakes his abdomen then flutters back down to its previous size. No legs interrupt the infinite blackness. Using his tentacles to lift himself, your companion leads you to land. Under the ocean, even the most impossible things seem probable. That he could glide across the sand with ease startles you. He goes backwards, never looking away from your face until one curious tentacle bumps the dais. 

It’s easy for him to lift you. Human and bestial limbs hoist you up in tandem. The stone is cool and damp under your bare thighs. Moored once again, free from the aimless drifting of the sea, you curl your fingers tightly around the stone’s edge. 

Whirling purple eyes stare down at you. He doesn’t miss a single movement.  His gaze travels from toe to tip. Towering over you, his chest is right at eye-level. He’s uncannily smooth. Only white, flat skin meets your eyes where you would expect dusty pink nipples to be. Though his abs are well defined, powerful from the pulsing strokes that propel him through the ocean, they’re easy to overlook with the void just below. In this new light, you can see iridescent flecks of color in the blackness of his lower body. Your thighs clench. It’s a pleasure to examine him as he does the same to you. The distance between you is negligible. The void entices you. Was it cold? Would it inhale you, swallowing you whole? 

His chest and neck grow blue and pallid under your perusal. A blush. You open your mouth to speak, only for a creaking rattle to shake loose from your throat. You swallow harshly and try again, ignoring his derisive laugh. 

“Are you going to kill me?” you ask. 

The snort he lets out is the first graceless thing he’s allowed. One clawed finger runs down your cheek. He stops at your lip, letting the sharp point prick your skin. He pulls your lower lip down and bares your teeth. 

“Cute thing. You’re already dead,” he coos. Your frozen heart was proof enough. Still, you flinch. He releases you from his fingers with a wet pop. “You understand what I am, don’t you?”

You nod. He’s no angel of death, come to release you from your suffering. All children from your village knew the stories of the siren that stalked your shores. You grew up with those stories hovering over your shoulder. When the slain shark smiled at you so menacingly, it was Rafayel, creature of the deepsea, that you feared hid within it. 

Fishermen would return to the harbor shaken and dazed. Any body that hit the sea was never retrieved, dead or alive. What belonged to Rafayel couldn’t be taken back so easily. Only once atop his altar were you truly lost to the depths.

He takes wicked pleasure in his infamy. When he sees the recognition in your eyes, Rafayel giggles. Gentle eyes mock you. Distantly, you hear his song. 

“Very smart,” he whispers. He leans in to kiss your cheek. It warms you all the way through. Although no air fills your lungs, you tingle back to life. “I’ll kill them all for you. Isn’t that what you wanted? You just have to do one thing for me.” 

A shudder rips down your spine. Had you summoned him in your wrath? Or was your desperate, pleading weakness so easy to exploit? You couldn’t fathom which wretched part of your soul called out to him. You swayed. In your final moments, your ultimate betrayal, this stunning creature had connected to you. That could be enough. What a comfort to know that you hadn’t truly died alone. 

You could make him happy. It was only fair, after what he had done for you.

“I’ll do anything,” you offer. Your voice comes from somewhere deep, warbling in your ears. Not quite your own.

It delights him. His kisses grow more insistent. He whispers your name into your wan skin. When did he learn your name? 

Hot, wet breath puffs against your cheek, your chin, just under your ear. It feels right to give him what he desires. That language from before, so beautiful and foreign, springs to life where your bodies meet. Tentacles spread your legs, opening you up to him. The void grows, reaching for you only to stop itself before you finally get to feel it. 

“Your soul,” he says, “That’s all. It won’t be of any use to you soon. Just your soul then vengeance is all yours. I’ll do it gladly.” 

It makes sense. It muddles you. Your stomach twists, only to flutter and float high at the lovely drag of his teeth on your shoulder. They don’t break skin. The anticipation is menacing. Wrong. You yearn to break it. Whether you mean to pull him away or drag him close, your fingers twine into his hair. 

Yes, you think. Yes, yes, yes. 

In his eagerness, he shoves you back. He’s humming happily, layer over layer of melodies dancing free from his chest. Jagged stones pierce your back. Your head hits the stone with a ringing thwack. The eerie music trembles. 

From across the bay you swear you hear your fiancé’s savage laughter. It breaks through the joyous song. That laugh disgusts you. That you had ever cared at all sickens you. Hate and pain reignite. You remember only the burning ache in your muscles as your body struggled to save itself. How long had it been, that you fought so desperately to live? 

You gasp, struggling to tear yourself away. The suction hold Rafayel has doesn’t let you go far. His head follows shortly after, pulled back into you like he belongs there. 

“No,” you snap. Your hand in his hair tugs strands free. He looks up at you in wounded surprise. Your eyes flutter weakly. It hurts to displease him. His touch is so gentle. The softness engulfs you. Anything is worth it, to punish the ones who did this to you. Yet, when you open your mouth you know it’s to reject him again. 

Sensing your resistance, his pout hardens into something fiercer. Desperate to regain control, Rafayel writhes over you. The void expands and contracts. He returns to the tender place just above your collarbone. It’s no longer a kiss he offers. Without any sweetness to spare, he rips into your skin. His teeth tear flesh easily. You scream and twist. Somewhere, distantly, you feel a shiver build in your thighs. His tentacles tighten, a grip that would once have bruised you. He stops you from kicking out before you can even try. 

It was a mistake made in his greed. You realize that. The pain licks like flames through your body. It’s yours alone again. This vessel that houses your soul belongs only to you. Not a plaything, nor something to be discarded so easily. Pain makes it real. You’re more than just a numb, hollow thing. 

You spit, “My soul isn’t yours.” 

His snarl is warped. Rafayel’s jaw clenches, sharp teeth slicing through muscle until they hit bone. He rends your flesh until your vision goes white. It’s only the stinging in your palms that makes you realize you smack at his shoulders and throat, anywhere you can reach. Your fingers catch sharp flaps near his pulse point. When you dig in, drawing your nails through the sensitive flesh, he pulls away with a hiss. 

Your shoulder is torn apart, muscle and fat exposed to the humid air. It leaks blood slowly. His chin is painted with it, dripping and dark. With great pleasure, you see a steady spurt of his own blue-tinted blood rush forth from his gills. You managed to rip him open, if only slightly. 

The song warbles out of tune. Rather than their previous magnificent glow, his eyes heat in feverish frenzy. His tentacles thrash about mindlessly. When he pants, the void throbs. Something deep within swirls. 

“I want to help you. You want to help me too,” he pleads. You bare your teeth in a snarl. If you had fangs, you would snap them. “I’ll kill them. Ask for anything. Just say yes.” 

His hysteria climaxes the more you struggle against him. When he pins your hands to the dais, he trembles. 

“It’s mine,” you hiss. Perhaps he can hurt you, but what does that matter? You have the one thing he can’t take. He whines, his rage flagging as reality sets in. He’s lost. Almost kittenlike, he leans down to nuzzle you. It’s gentle. Without his song he has no more power. 

Careful to hold the void at a distance, he climbs even further atop the altar. His body, what you can feel of it, is heavy. It’s sobering. The two of you stare into each other’s eyes, seeking something.

The kiss is toothless. He runs his tongue over your upper lip, breathing you in. It’s you, not him that nibbles. You suck his tongue into your mouth, hot muscle filling you. You wonder how much force it would take to bite it off. Your shoulder throbs. 

This time, when he pulls back you avoid his gaze. It’s hard to say if you can ever really resist his pull.

“Your body won’t last much longer. I can ease the pain,” he says gently. His voice is melodious. Two languages mingle atop one another. You scowl. More tricks.

Leaving no room for his retreat, you propel yourself forward. Although your teeth are dull, only human, they dig into his cheek with enough force to drag a pained groan from him. When he tries to shove you off, you latch harder. You can’t slice through him easily, but you can hurt. Haven’t you earned that much?

Salt coats your tongue. When he finally manages to pull you off, you go triumphantly. Under his eye, his skin is flushed a deep blue. Popped blood vessels. His eyes are wide, pupils dilated, and darting around as if waiting for your next attack. Both hands release you. His tentacles hold fast. You’ve lost count of how many of them take your limbs. One twists its way up to the hollow of your throat. 

“You bit me!” he yelps. 

“You ate me.” 

He rolls his eyes, “Just a taste. My dinner isn’t usually so stubborn.” 

Your lip curls. This petulant being has long struck fear into the hearts of hardened sailors. Moody as the ocean shore. 

“Well, you’re not much without your little tricks,” you say, “If I’ll die soon anyways, what difference does it make?” 

“I don’t like my food cold. Besides, what I want is your soul.” 

You test your luck, pushing against the hold of his tentacles. They don’t budge. Over Rafayel’s shoulder, you see the twinkling lights of the manor, reflected back by the waves. You don’t have to die alone.  

“How long do I have?” you ask.

“Until sunrise.”

It smothers you. Knowing that you’re already long dead isn’t a balm. 

You steel yourself and nod. You have no intention of satisfying his hunger. Giving up one final piece of yourself is unfathomable. Angry tears burn your eyes. It would be so easy to say yes. Even if it was a lie, you could go happily knowing retribution upon the village would follow your passing. Happily, but not wholly. 

“Convince me, then. Without the siren call.” 

Rafayel’s smile is cherubic, even with his bloodstained teeth. He no longer needs his melodious influence over you. You don’t have to ask twice. His body crawls down towards your stomach. He kisses you there, just below your navel. More tentacles burst from the void. Close to your mound, he can see your involuntary clench. 

“You like these,” he teases. Your whine makes him snicker into your skin. It tickles. 

The tentacles secrete viscous and sticky liquid. Whatever it is, it drips to your chest. You jolt with each drop. A vibrant tentacle goes to your shoulder, where a chunk of you is missing. Your skin tingles where it touches, soothing you. So it hadn’t been a lie, when he said he could ease the pain. You whimper, suddenly afraid. If you can’t feel your body, what’s left? 

“Stop,” you snap, “It’s making me numb.”

You can’t afford numbness. In this dying night, all you want is to feel. Softness comes through blunted, between layers of your suffering. Pain is sharp-edged and sweet. 

He glances up with one eyebrow poised. Testing your sincerity, his teeth prick your skin. He bites into your stomach, where fat protects fragile organs, just deep enough to puncture. It grounds you. You moan. 

“You like this too,” he murmurs. He blooms with this fresh knowledge. The tentacles that held your wrists let go gently. They wriggle across your body to your chest. Each breast is in his tight grasp, the tips toying with your nipples. Set free, your hands go to his hair. He hums approvingly. 

From beyond his bent body, you can see the void pulsing. When Rafayel kisses even lower, his plush lip catching the hood of your clit, it flutters with you. You watch the void’s rhythmic roil. It matches its pace to his tongue lapping between your lips. All sensation pinpricks that singular point. You’re embarrassingly wet. You had been since that first bite. 

He curls his fingers to press a knuckle to your folds. Careful to keep his claws away, he thrusts shallow into your entrance. Just when you want to kick him for going too soft, he nuzzles his nose into your cunt, inhaling deeply. Tentacles hold your ankles, your knees, press deep into the meat of your thighs. You’re spread open at his mercy. With the juncture of your thigh exposed, he bites. It’s cruel, but not tearing. His hot tongue follows. You choke on your gasp, air caught in your chest, and squeeze your eyes shut at the bright waves of pleasure that roll through you. 

Suctions grip your nipples raw. The knuckle between your lips moves even faster, pumping along with your needy throbs. His jaw locks until he’s latched so tightly to you that you become one wild creature. He moans, catching your release between his fingers. It blinds you. You don’t even realize you’re begging for more, harder, meaner until the pulses abate. 

He doesn’t make you wait. Tentacles weave over you. One, thick and throbbing, replaces the finger between your legs. The other traces the seam of your lips. You open up for it. 

“Watch your teeth,” he warns, breathy. You nearly roll your eyes, only for them to squeeze shut as he fucks into you at both ends. Almost naturally, you suck his tentacle in deeper, drool coating you both. Your heated walls tighten around him. The tip is small, curling up, but tapers off quickly into thick muscle. He pushes his way into your cunt until you can’t take him any further. Fullness burns through you. 

Rafayel lets you take control with your mouth, slurping desperately. He coils to the back of your throat. The tentacle in your core doesn’t thrust, but throbs. His tip strokes you again and again, finding something small and spongey inside of you. It tugs at your gut with a pleasure unfamiliar to you. You whimper and squirm. Muscles spasm with the sensitivity. Your thighs try to clamp shut and Rafayel laughs. 

He busies himself, biting his way up your body. From your thighs, to your hips, just under your ribs. Puncture wounds carve their way up your body, perfect replicas of his teeth. One row latches to your flesh while the other breaks skin. Perfectly built to subdue his prey.

The tentacles at your breasts squeeze punishingly. Tiny, desperate rolls of your hips are all that you can manage under his firm hold. You catch a glimpse of the void, glowing enough to illuminate the cavern. It casts shadows over you both, like ghosts joining in your fervor. 

Two more tentacles join the one at your apex. They bracket the thickest one from top and bottom where it fucks into you hotly. Both delve inside experimentally. They probe and stretch until all three thrust deep. The slick sound of them rubbing against each other only makes you grow wetter. Drenched in your pleasure, the bottommost tentacle squirms out and down between the cleft of your ass. You clench around the two remaining. Curved lower, it circles the tight ring again and again before breaching you. You and Rafayel keen together in your own strange song. He forces your legs back even further, folding you in half and exposing you to his gaze. The sight of him sheathed inside of you, three holes pumped full with his tentacles, rips a terrifying sound from his chest. He pulls back to meet your eyes. 

The void shimmers. Rafayel’s sclera have gone pure black. He’s divine Sweat drips down the arc of his neck. Drool, your own wetness, and the thick fluid of his tentacles pool from your entrances. The two in your cunt engorge themselves, swollen knots of muscle locking him inside of you. Pressure builds in your spine. The outline of his largest tentacle is visible under your skin, fat and deep. One of his hands reaches out to press down on the bulge. Your eyes roll back into your head, vision going black. 

You’ll burst. He can’t look away. Both of his hands run along your body. They prod at your fullness, the points of his claws tracing each place he enters you. Mouth, teeth, just one more bite will set you free. You can’t plead, throat fucked full. You want him to pull out and let you beg. You want him to disregard that entirely and thrust deeper. Fruitless arches of your body curve you up over the stone. Above you, your thighs shake. Muffled calls for more are indistinct past your occupied lips.

Whether or not he’s listening, Rafayel obeys your cries. He surrounds you. Razor-like teeth bite the curve of your breast. With you secure in his grip, he thrashes. His jaws rip you apart while his tentacles stroke inside of you intimately. Flesh from meat, meat from bone, your body gapes open for him. A crack breaks the air. Your ribcage springs open like a gift. You blink through satisfied tears. The scene unfolds in flashes. He doesn’t stop until he’s torn through you. Snarls become moans of pleasure. The two of you growl ferally. Your heart, still and cold but yours, is yanked from your chest. 

Soft coos finally open your eyes. Blearily you watch him watch you. He looks at you as though he’s the one that’s been mesmerized. Between his clawed hands, your heart looks small and weak. He cradles it like it’s something precious. Drool drips from his maw. He lowers his head. Dreamlike, he places one tender kiss to your heart and bites down. 

The slurping sounds he makes are grotesque. Your walls tighten around his tentacles. You thrust into it, fucking your ass and cunt deeper around him. The tentacle in your mouth slithers out of you. You cough only to whine in its absence, desperate to have that fullness back. 

With your heart latched tightly in his jaw, Rafayel closes in on you. 

A tentacle grips your chin, drawing your lips back open. You follow willingly, sticking out your tongue to accept the offering. A facsimile of a kiss. You dig your teeth into your own heart, old blood bursting on your tongue. It dribbles down your lips. He tears into it just as fiercely, devouring with needy cries.

It’s his broken sounds that release you. Your orgasm is electric. Pleasure and pain batter against one another. His shoulders press down against your thighs until they burn. Release squirts from you forcefully, glistening on his stomach. The viscous liquid from his tentacles spurts out of you with each shuddering constriction. Your body sucks him deeper. 

Above you, his breathing has gone erratic. He pulls your heart from your lips, placing it softly beside you on the altar. It’s nothing more than a tattered, ruined thing now.

Despite your protests, he pulls out of you slowly. The straining, bulbous base of his tentacle catches on your entrance, before shrinking down and slipping from your fluttering folds. 

Empty. He guides you up to a sitting position. Your head lolls, but you hold yourself up as best you can. Tentacles support your back, curling up over your shoulders from behind to stroke your bloody temples. His tongue laps up tears as you shed them. The cries are neverending. 

“I’m dead,” you wail, “He killed me.” 

“Please. Say yes,” your siren begs. There is no unearthly call, only the entreaties of a monster. 

Your hand falls to his shoulder. Misty-eyed, you can see the sun slowly crawling over the horizon far across the sea. Your tongue is thick with jumbled words. 

The void beats like a second heart under his heaving chest. You draw your fingers down to his stomach, right to the edge of skin where it fades into the blackness. His whole body is wracked with shivers the closer you get to that boundary. Rafayel throws back his head, where tendons pull taut at his neck, but he doesn’t try to stop you. Instead, his hands anchor you upright.

It starts with just one finger. You dig into the resistance of real, tangible muscle before faintly running your nails over the division line where he unravels. Without warning, your finger penetrates the darkness. He makes a strangled noise, jerking, and digs his claws just above your ass. There’s no force required. On the contrary, your second finger is welcomed. He takes you well. The void sucks you in greedily. You acquiesce, his moans and whines growing needier and higher until your whole hand is inside of him. 

Experimentally, you open and close your hand. Your fingers wiggle. The sun paints the cavern pink with first light. You lean in deeper until you’re up to the elbow. He won’t look. Instead, you watch the spasm of his muscles above where you enter him. 

When you’re so deep that even the wound on your shoulder breaches the void, the backs of your fingers bump something wet and warm. It’s large, bigger than both of your hands, and fleshy. It’s the only thing corporeal in the void. Just a slight brush of your skin was enough to make Rafayel’s face fall back into your orbit. You rub the mass. His forehead meets yours. His eyes squeeze shut, teeth bared, lips moving rapidly. 

You only realize he’s speaking when the words echo again in your mind. 

“Say yes,” he says over and over. A mantra. A prayer. 

You kiss his cheek. The hand still outside of him goes to the back of his neck. You tilt his face back, let his begging point towards the heavens, and expose his throat. 

Deep in the void, you stroke. You squeeze. His chest has flushed blue-pink under you. From adams apple to sternum you kiss and lick. You nibble the skin at Rafayel’s clavicle. 

Across the bay, the lord’s manor comes to life. Childhood dreams of splendor. So unattainable. You’ll have what you can grasp with your own two hands. 

“Yes, my soul is yours,” you whisper, “but you have to keep it. That’s our deal. Keep it until the day you die.”

His eyes fly open, looking down at you aghast. 

“How?” he gasps, lurching. 

“Say it. Say yes.”

Your thumb presses the meat of the mass. Tears roll down his cheeks, twin to yours, his hips thrusting until the void sucks your arm deeper and faster. 

Yes echoes across the shores. Birds swoop, the wind howls, and the morning sun rises. Your teeth meet his pulse point, where you can feel the rapid hammering of his heart. 

You bite. You tear. Beneath a sharp canine, you undo him. Deep blue blood spurts from his throat.

The void erupts. It draws you in, tentacles and hands and strange shapes you can’t make sense of all dragging you into a newly iridescent abyss. Rafayel pants through his orgasm, his sounds broken, dropping his hands from you completely. All you see is black. Rafayel’s song caresses you. That’s right. Love.

The sun reaches above the sea. The void swallows all that remains of you. 

You’re gone. 

A lone siren watches the final climb of the sunrise. He’s not sure how long he waits, curled in front of his altar. His hands clench around nothing. 

When the time comes, he rises and takes your fragile, torn heart from his altar. When he holds it to his chest, his own heartbeat echoes back in his hands. 

In the harbor, fishermen rise from their beds. Unbeknownst to them, they live another day only by your choice. Nobody wants to think of their once neighbor. An innocent life was thrown to the sea just the night before, but no name is spoken. They work in pained silence. 

When a bloated blue body washes up on shore, chest torn open and defiled, even the most seasoned of the men retch at the sight. None of them sleep in the days to come. They set sail with sallow, haunted expressions. 

Beneath them, deep in the wine-dark sea, further than any man or woman has dared to go, Rafayel places your heart into the tender muscle of an oyster. His treasure. There you will grow anew. First your heart, then your body. A vessel for your awaiting soul.

Until then, he watches. Ravenous. 

[ao3rivoli]

coup d'œil

gen 🟢 | sylus/reader | 1k summary: unexpectedly, you begin to see sylus in a new light tags: beyond cloudfall, fluff, yearning, denial of feelings, cuddling author's note: this fic can also be read on ao3!

Cicadas hum ceaselessly, the only other creatures for miles in this near-desert you find yourselves in. The ground is so dry that it cracks along dead grass, splitting into dense, cobbled masses of earth and stone. You lazily poke at the embers in your dwindling campfire, relishing in your now-full stomach. Sylus lounges against a tree that stands impressively resilient to the arid landscape, shaded from the sun, eyes closed in meditation.

You look to Sylus, wanting to chastise him for his laziness, when your breath catches at the sight. It strikes you, suddenly, that he is a beautiful creature.

Strange. It’s not something you haven’t noticed before, in fact, it was one of the more obvious things about him that moment you met in the Abyss. Aside from, of course, his draconic features. Still, you’ve met many beautiful people in your life. You, yourself, are a beautiful person. But there’s something about Sylus in this moment, his thick lashes fluttered closed, scales glistening under the wisps of sun rays peeking through the branches, that feels beautiful in a way you don’t think you’ve ever felt before. Like if you continue staring any longer, you might cry.

It’s overwhelming, this beauty. And unfair, that he can somehow move you to tears with it. How dare he make you feel this way. What has he done to earn this sudden reverence?

Perhaps he has you under a spell. Can dragons do that? Charm you like this? He could have slipped something into the food when you weren't looking, while your guard was low on your empty stomach. But you don't feel otherwise incapacitated, nor is it anything like the strange loss of autonomy you've experienced before. Maybe, you just like him weak.

You move to stand over him, fingers strumming over the dagger sheathed at your side. “I could kill you right now,” you say, matter-of-fact.

Sylus doesn't even bother to open his eyes, huffing out a disgruntled breath instead. “You could certainly try.”

“You’re defenceless.”

“Vulnerable, maybe. But I’m not without some defences.” His tail curls around your ankle, and he cracks open an eye to appraise you, eyebrow raising along with it. “Are you planning an attack? Because I fear you may have sullied the opportunity, my dear sorceress.”

“No. It was just a thought.” You don't know why you said it, really. To disturb him, maybe. To stop thinking about how pretty he is. To have an excuse to get just that little bit closer.

“A thought worth ruining my peace over. I was halfway to a nap,” Sylus groans, though he looks less perturbed than he sounds, the corner of his lip twitching up into a smirk.

“Then go back to sleep,” you say. When you go to turn and leave him be, his tail slithers up your calf and tightens, yanking you back to face him. You nearly lose your balance, but manage to remain steady on your feet.

“And leave myself exposed?" Sylus laughs. "That would be unwise following your sudden confession of bloodlust.”

You roll your eyes. “Oh, please. I’m not going to do anything.”

“Am I supposed to take your word for it?”

You huff, and meet him in a stare. There's a taunting gleam in his eyes, though you're unsure of what, exactly, he's trying to bait you into. A fight? If so, you've already lost. Easily, you're distracted again. First by the sharp ridge of his nose, then by the steely cut of his jaw, cradled in those otherworldly scales of his. Then your gaze drags down to his chest, to that dazzling gem, to the hard lines of his body you want so badly to touch, to—

Gods, just what has this man done to you?

You come to a compromise with yourself, and drop down next to him. He startles, tail releasing as you curl into his side. He doesn't make any sudden movements, so you make them for him, taking his arm and drawing it around your waist, talons draped over your stomach. His breath hitches, you think. Or maybe it’s just the wind.

“There. Now you have the advantage. You could crush me before I get the chance to strike.” To make a point, you press his palm against you. His fingers flex outwards instinctively as to not pierce you with his claws.

Sylus' body relaxes with a deep exhale, and you can feel him soften next to you. His voice comes low, almost gentle. “Hm, but you’ve gotten quicker with your knife these days. I think it’s only fair if you fall asleep first.”

“I'm not tired." You lift your head to face him, his eyes drawing you in with that magnetism you seem unable to escape no matter how hard you try.

"Then we're at a stalemate, aren't we?"

Your eyes flicker to his lips. Another beautiful part of him. "It seems we are."

He stares. You stare. And then it's up to you to lose your little contest, to break your gaze and nuzzle into his chest. His heart hammers against your ear, a speedy rhythm betraying his relaxed facade. Perhaps he really does think you'll try and kill him.

You don't make an attempt on his life. Instead, you close your eyes and listen to the chorus of cicadas, the drum of Sylus' heart, and the whistle of his breath. It's not long until you actually do manage to fall asleep, despite your protest.

It's a dull dream. One of open landscapes, of endless rivers, of a world travelled. Not one settlement raided. Not a single warrior slain. Such a boring thing to fantasize, except for every time you look to your side, a beautiful dragon looks back at you.

[smoochfics]

white-knuckle

sylus/zayne 🐦‍⬛❄️ one shot | explicit 🔞 | 4k summary: for years, sylus and zayne have been nothing more than the boss and his doctor. sylus is too used to getting his way. zayne will never relinquish control. they're better off apart. older and no wiser, they break that truce for one night. tags: alternate universe - modern setting, consensual non consent, dom!sylus, bottom!sylus, bottoming from the top, violent sex, gun kink, knifeplay, verbal degradation, slapping of all kinds, overstimulation, choking, past relationship notes: kink negotiated offscreen, please mind the tags! crossposted from ao3 (original 11/26/25)

Well over a decade after they agreed to keep things professional, Sylus creeps into Zayne’s private apartment. Very little has changed throughout the years. Newer appliances, expensive linens, all negligible differences. The same old illicit thrill of their youth crawls through time, taking root deep in Sylus’s gut. 

He doesn’t bother with the lights. Even with his eyes closed he would find his way to Zayne’s bed. Boyish rebellion spurs him forward. His shoes stay on through the hallway, beyond the kitchen, into the bedroom. He runs his fingers along the walls, tipping photo frames just slightly off kilter. 

A Friday night. Zayne will be home late. He always is. Onychinus has too many headstrong subordinates, eager to prove themselves to the boss only to end up in the syndicate’s clinic with an annoyingly thorough doctor to look over them. It’s why Sylus is here to begin with. To blow off steam, Zayne suggested only yesterday. His ears had gone pink as he said so, but his gaze never wavered. Sylus was too on edge lately, something he knew quite well. It rippled down the hierarchy, leaving young recruits with stupid ideas of grandeur. An untenable wave of recklessness.

Though Zayne never had problems levying critiques, he wasn’t one to complain. Fine hairs at his temples were streaked with grey. Dark circles framed his eyes. It wasn’t only Sylus wound tight. A break would do everyone some good.

“Any rules?” Sylus had asked.

Zayne glanced up, the ghost of a smile on his lips, and said, “You know the rules.” 

A lifetime has passed since they last played their game. Still, the rules are simple. No permanent damage, no bystanders. Play always ends at sunrise. Plenty of time for Sylus to get a headstart. 

He begins by rifling through the bedside tables. Each drawer is meticulously organized. No condoms, but a small tube of lube is lodged in the back corner. It’s the same no-nonsense brand Zayne always used. Sylus huffs a laugh. 

It’s unclear how long he’ll have to wait. Part of him fears he’ll be here all night only for Zayne to come stumbling home exhausted with the new morning. He ignores the thought. With his face pressed to the soft silk pillow case, Sylus undoes his pants. 

The apartment is kept cool. It was always something they bickered about. Gooseflesh runs up his arms. Ignoring his half-hard cock, he draws two lubed fingers between the cleft of his ass. Each perfunctory, focused stretch open reminds him of Zayne’s easy slide. 

Sylus is by no means chaste. He finds his pleasure in handsome men and beautiful women. There’s no reason to be precious about it. Still, his thick knuckled fingers feel clumsy compared to the memory of Zayne’s. In their time apart, nobody else had breached him. He’s tight and hot, unused to the intrusion. This is just another tick on his to-do list. He wants to reach down and pleasure himself more, breathing deep the scent of Zayne’s domesticity. His free hand clenches around the headboard to stop himself from trying.  

Once properly slick and stretched, with his shaft standing ready between his legs, Sylus pulls out before he can get too greedy. Another thing they once bickered about. Carefully, he tucks himself back into his pants and rolls off the bed. He remakes the sheets nearly perfect, rucked up under his ministrations, and steps away to the adjacent bathroom. It’s the only sign of Zayne’s exhaustion. Toothpaste tube left open, a knocked over bottle of contact solution, and a dirty mirror. There sits his razor, untouched. Little cracks in Zayne’s usual routines. 

Sylus looks over his own reflection. Old. He’s gotten old. When he clawed his way to the top of Onychinus it was by the only means he knew. Force. Now he’s eye to eye with the toll that takes. New wrinkles, new scars, all signs that he lived another day. It’s something he doesn’t take for granted. To grow old was uncommon in their business. That they both managed to do so was a feat. 

He nabs Zayne’s little blue toothbrush and freshens up. Only minor preparations left to do. He returns to the bedroom with jaunty steps. One ear remains perked towards the door, waiting for the telltale sounds of keys in the lock. 

At the foot of the bed, he unhooks handcuffs from his belt. They loop easily around the leg, tucked under just enough for the glint of metal to remain unseen. Strapped to his back is the rest of his arsenal. His usual pistol sits in its holster, next to the knife that Zayne himself gifted him on the day he took over the syndicate’s operations. 

All that’s left is to wait. Something he has very little practice with these days. Sylus leans against the wall by the bedroom door, breathing slow and listening close. In his hand, he grips the knife. 

At the bedside, the clock ticks. Thirty minutes then an hour then more. What little buffer of time he gave himself now seems foolish. Sylus waits beyond fatigue. 

Just when he’s ready to give up, he hears it. Zayne’s steps are slow but determined. Certainly exhausted. He fumbles with his key ring before knocking open the door. Anticipation tingles through Sylus. There’s the thump of one shoe hitting the floor, followed by the second, only for Zayne to think better of it and shuffle to the rack. He carefully puts his things in their proper places. 

Outside, even the city has finally found sleep. Cars drive by sparingly, golden light coming and going. Every step down the hall makes Sylus tense with focus. He thought perhaps age would dull the edge. Instead, it heightens the game all the more. No longer young and stupid, half running on rage and a desperate need for control, he can savor the wait all the more.

It isn’t only him that’s honed over the years, however. As he approaches the bedroom, Zayne’s steps slow. Something is off. Sylus holds his breath.

When the door swings open, they strike at once. Zayne knows his blindspots, but Sylus wields his blade well. He slams the wall once, his bicep taking the brunt of it. His leg sweeps out, catching Zayne’s heel, and he sends them both spinning. One arm bars Zayne’s chest, the other pressing the knife tip to his throat.

“You’re lucky you’re pretty,” Sylus croons. 

Zayne’s chest rises and falls, pulse fluttering under the blade. Pretty wasn’t a lie. His lip curls in annoyance. Head to toe, he takes stock. When his eyes fall to Sylus’s leather shoes, just recently shined, he scowls. 

“I told you to come tomorrow,” he snaps. Zayne doesn’t dare move but it doesn’t dull his tongue.  Despite his cold tone, his face flushes hot. Only one foot in the game. Not quite willing to submit. Sylus leans in. His erection strains against his slacks. He rubs the rigid edge against Zayne’s hip. The prominent curve of his Adam’s apple grazes the knife as he swallows. Enticing, nearly begging to be bitten. 

“When have I ever asked permission to take what I please?” Sylus teases. He offers only one concession, kicking off his shoes. He nods, “Ready?” 

It’s the only chance he’ll get to back down. Zayne hesitates just a beat, long enough for Sylus to wonder if he pushed too hard. The defiant glint in his eye doesn’t falter, only sharpening when their gazes meet. Without even the slightest twitch to give himself away, Zayne twists to crush his shoulder against Sylus’s sternum. 

He grunts, unprepared, and falls back. The blade knicks Zayne’s cheek, before his wrist is wrenched forward. Deft fingers jab sensitive tendons, unfurling Sylus’s fingers until the knife goes skittering to the floor. Taking advantage of the momentum just enough to flip their positions, he tries to leverage Sylus back against the wall. Instead, Sylus throws the bulk of his weight into the swing. He hauls them both off their feet. They go flying to the floor in a heap. One tense arm wraps around Sylus’s head, couching his fall before his skull can crack against the hardwood. Too kind even now. Sylus will make him regret it.

He tries to roll into the impact, only to catch his shoulder in a sharp jolt. It knocks the breath from his chest. Zayne straddles his hips, pinning him to the floor. Sylus leverages himself up just enough to crush his elbow to Zayne’s jaw. His head whips. Strong hands grab Sylus by each wrist, pinning them above his head. 

Heat flares between them. Their eyes meet. At his smirk, Zayne scoffs. 

“Always so pleased with yourself. This is why we never worked,” he says. Cruel words flow forth easily for him when it comes to their past. His jaw works itself unconsciously. Never applying pressure, he locks his elbow above Sylus’s trachea. So hot and cold. 

Sylus rolls his hips. Their clothed cocks brush against each other. He doesn’t need to fake it when he moans.

“And you’re not pleased?” he asks, “It sure feels like it from here.”

Outside, rain pelts the window. Steady drops against the glass. Moonlight cuts through. It illuminates the dark, singular focus of Zayne’s glare. Sylus leans up, close enough to kiss him. He is rather pleased with himself. Ever so slightly, Zayne’s fingers loosen their grip. 

Stars burst behind his eyes when he smashes their heads together. His brow connects with the bridge of Zayne’s nose. His glasses careen off his face, startling him just enough for Sylus to buck him off. Behind his back, the cool metal of his gun grounds him. He snaps it around, aiming the barrel just between Zayne’s brow. 

“Be good for me, doctor,” Sylus croons, “No more fighting.” 

It’s hardly a request. Zayne’s hands go up slowly. His eyes flick from trigger finger, to the smile Sylus wears, down to the bulge of his slacks. On his knees, Sylus takes the lead. They go in tandem. Zayne crawls back until he hits the foot of the bed. His pinky bumps the cold curve of the handcuffs. He freezes. 

“Go on,” Sylus insists.

From behind, Zayne locks one wrist in. Sylus hums his approval before moving to assist with the second. Only once he’s fully secured does the tension leave his shoulders. Fight drains from him little by little. Sylus shimmies to his lap. With locked hips. he positions himself low at Zayne’s knees. Easier to enjoy the full view this way. The pistol trails down, caressing from temple to neck. It rests securely under his chin, tilting his face up. Pale, smooth skin exposed to explore. 

He grinds down. Zayne’s thigh is taut with muscle. It tenses under him, hard and warm. 

Twice Sylus taps the gun to Zayne’s lips. When he doesn’t open up, Sylus drives the butt to his temple. It knocks his face to the bed. Obedience is never a request.

“Out of practice?” he asks. Only then does Zayne part his lips. Whether he means to protest or acquiesce, Sylus shoves the gun between his teeth. It clacks against his canines. Zayne winces. For every thrust against Zayne’s thigh, Sylus pulls the gun in and out. Stubbornly, Zayne’s mouth hangs agape. Drool pools at the corners of his lips. 

Open palmed, Sylus delivers one full force slap to his cheek. It rings through the room. Steely green eyes follow him in the dim light. Sylus delivers one more slap, just to watch that gaze falter.

After that, Zayne’s cheeks hollow in a deep suck. He follows unspoken orders well enough. Sylus hasn’t seen the sharp line of his cheekbones like this in years. Tight pleasure suffuses him. Encouragements spill from his lips. The hand that bruised only moments before strokes up into Zayne’s hair in apology. He coils his fingers through threads of inky black. 

“Needy thing, aren’t you?” Sylus says, “All that protesting just to be a little slut when I give you something to suck on.” 

A low, animal whine builds in Zayne’s chest. The sound sends Sylus spasming. Little rolls of his hips devolve into eager pumps. Before he can get too far ahead of his own agenda, he drops his weight fully. A pink tongue flashes between Zayne’s lips. It follows the wet barrel as it slips free. Sylus groans. 

He tosses the gun away, letting it hit the bed with a bounce. Beneath him, Zayne pants. That calculating stare has gone foggy. Dazed eyes track his movements. Sylus stands, pulling his cock free and kicking off his slacks. 

Cockhead thick and throbbing, he steps forward. Zayne licks his lips in invitation. Two taps of the tip, and those lips part for him sweetly. 

“You’ve missed this,” Sylus says. 

“Wait, I can’t-”

Leveraging his knee to Zayne’s shoulder, Sylus slides his cock home. Warm wet envelops him. Zayne tries to pull back, gagging when the tip rocks to the back of his throat. Sylus grasps his chin in firm fingers. With a squeeze above his jaw, he forces Zayne’s mouth open. Fucking down and deep, he finally allows himself to let it all go. No more restraint. Each choking breath from below only spurs him on more. The pace he sets is erratic and sloppy. Zayne is just as uncoordinated. His tongue fumbles along, pressing hotly to one prominent vein. 

Starving for this. Both of them. His throat contracts, trying to adjust to the intrusion, and Sylus only tenses and pushes harder. In turn, Zayne goes slack. White, blinding pleasure takes over. It crawls from tip to spine, sending shivers down his neck. Power and control, never more delicious than when they were hard won. 

When Sylus reaches his climax, Zayne’s hips jump behind them. He thrusts up into nothing and keens in time with every throbbing wave. Sylus paints his throat in his cum. Around his jaw, his fingers flex and release with each pulse of his shaft. Moans vibrate around him, shooting right to his core. He pulls back just enough, catching his head on slick lips, to rub the final spurts against Zayne’s willing mouth. 

Sylus releases him with a grin. His thighs tremble. He drops to Zayne’s lap before his weakened knees grow too obvious. With the last of his energy, he licks Zayne’s chin, lapping up his own cum. His forehead knocks forward to the mattress just long enough to catch his breath. He wants to purr, unlock the cuffs, and pull Zayne to the bed for a proper fuck. Maybe when they were younger he could have managed it. Not worth giving up their game, as it is. Neither of them truly have what they need, as it is. 

Blindly grasping, he reaches back to rub a hand against Zayne’s neglected erection. Still hard and wanting. Just as he knew it would be. 

“Feel that? Doesn’t matter which hole I fuck, you always want it,” he groans. Zayne tosses his head away. Looking over his handiwork, Sylus is rather pleased. They’re both disheveled. Zayne’s cheek is flushed and ruddy where his hand had connected earlier. Buttons have popped loose, revealing the blushing pink across his collarbone. In a different time, a gentler time, Sylus would have licked his way across it. After that, he would make his way up, where short hairs stick to his temples. Dotted with sweat and out of breath. A job well done, and there was plenty left to do. 

Tight-gripped, he pulls Zayne’s cock free of his slacks. It slaps his navel. Dark hair sends him on a trail straight down to his waistband. With a yank, Sylus shoves his pants down over his ass. Zayne’s cock is paler, longer and thinner. It curves nicely, perfectly made to hit the most delicate places inside. Rather than treating it sweetly, coaxing it to pleasure, Sylus squeezes it between his fingers until he earns a yelp. 

Zayne hisses, “Fuck. Enough.” 

Not likely. Just to prove he heard, Sylus hums sweetly. He flips himself over until they’re back to chest. Breaths tickle his ear. 

“I’ll be gentle,” he lies. 

First he goes slow. Easy. He wets his thumb on the tip and rubs it around the head. One hand pulls back the foreskin while the other trails down the shaft. No need to rush. At his back, barely there kisses melt into licks and nibbles. Deserving of a reward. 

Unfortunately, when he’s most deserving is when Sylus most wants to deny him. His pace quickens, pumping up and down until Zayne thrusts follow into the circle of his hand. Just when he nears the edge, teeth clamping down hard enough to bruise, Sylus halts. Thumb and forefinger circle the base and squeeze. In his hands, Zayne’s member throbs uselessly. Dribbles of pre-crum spill forth. Pathetic little attempts at release. 

Zayne whines. He tilts his head just enough to nip Sylus’s earlobe. With a croon, he starts them over again. This time, Zayne’s hips follow along more tentatively. They follow each jerk of Sylus’s hand, fucking himself up. Once the pace reaches a crescendo, Sylus stops them again. The same hold to the base. Another harsh squeeze. One more lovely whimper from Zayne, followed by a string of curses. 

Two more times before he’s satisfied. Into the crook of his neck, Zayne begs for more, no more, both and neither. He demands as much as he pleads. Croons and keens. Sylus laughs and starts again. 

When he’s so sensitive his thighs twitch at the smallest touch, Sylus flicks the head. Though he’s gone softer with the teasing, his cock betrays him. With each cruel flick, it stiffens. Zayne gasps. His legs scramble and he tries to pull away. In retaliation, he gets a slap. Three sharp smacks to his length. Words fail him, only humiliated huffs. 

Bending low, Sylus hovers over his prize. Open mouthed, he lets spit pool on his tongue. Drool drips from his lips down Zayne’s length. He surges. 

Before his thrashing can dethrone Sylus, he rearranges himself more securely. Between his legs, against all odds, his own erection strains. It bobs and sways with his movements. He kneels above Zayne’s hips, lowering himself. 

The stretch is searing. Earlier, his fingers could only prepare him so much. He tortures them both with a swift thrust down. Whatever Zayne’s protestations, Sylus ignores them. Instead he fucks himself open. After a moment to adjust, he slides back up. A few pumps to situate himself. 

“Me first, then you get your turn,” he promises. Zayne’s lazy tongue gives up on words. All he can muster is a half-hearted glare. Sylus takes him by the throat. Between two fingers, he pinches each pulse point. Zayne writhes. His cock rubs deep in Sylus’s walls, a slick slide against his prostate that makes him quake.

He uses Zayne’s cock like the toy that it is. Low shallow grinds to long demanding pumps. With each pull to the tip catching tight muscle, his fingers grip harder. Zayne’s life flutters under his hands. His shaft twitches inside of him. In tandem with the roll of his hips, he cuts off Zayne’s air just long enough for his eyes to roll back. Fucking down, he releases. Each time he bottoms out, Zayne gasps. He squeezes around him ruthlessly. 

Red faced and teary eyed beneath him, Zayne is irresistible. His eyes squeeze shut. The veins along his neck bulge. A smear of blood stains his jaw, where the knife had caught him earlier. Stark white teeth worry the plush skin of his bottom lip. When had he last kissed those lips? Not once in ten years. A stray thought. One that Sylus knows better than to act on. 

Their teeth clack together. It’s clumsy. Both of them are out of practice. It still makes him groan. Hardly what you could call a kiss. More spit and hot tongues running across any exposed skin. Nothing tender. 

With his free hand, Sylus reaches down to jerk his own cock in a rough grip. He fucks them sloppily. Caught up, he barely tracks the tension of his fingers along Zayne’s neck. With this new advantage Zayne manages to get his feet under them. He leverages himself to fuck Sylus hard and senseless. No rhythm guides them, only tingling need. With no regard for the man riding him, Zayne pistons in a surge of adrenaline.

He spills inside of Sylus with one last sharp thrust. It’s wordless. Any air left in his lungs is savored. Heat splits Sylus down the center. All he can muster is tiny, sharp jolts that send Sylus bouncing in his lap. Every pulse coats him from the inside. 

Satiated, smug beyond speaking, and having properly used Sylus for his own pleasure, Zayne smirks. His tongue peeks from between his lips. Sylus’s fingers spasm around his length. 

He bares his teeth to hide his smile, “You shouldn’t have done that.” 

An empty threat. He has nothing left to hold over him. All he can do is draw a deep breath and return to their punishing pace. Zayne squirms, oversensitive, but gives up his fight. Between his own hand, the whimpers he wrings out, and Zayne’s hot cock splitting him, his relief is not far off. 

Cum dribbles down his thighs. It makes him keen, high and throaty. 

“Now who’s pleased with himself?” He hisses, before his throbbing cock sets them free. Stripes of cum shoot across Zayne’s exposed stomach. It drips from his hand, rolling down his wrist. Their earlier pretense of a kiss feels well practiced in comparison to the open mouthed pants they now offer each other. His thighs quake. Sylus gives up all need for control. He hits Zayne’s lap with a grunt. Inside of him, his cock has gone soft. It slips out wetly. Both of them are too exhausted for much else. He’s unsure how long they lay there, bundled together. Outside, the streetlights flicker. Sylus squeezes his eyes shut to ignore their insistent call. Daylight awaits. 

From behind his back, Zayne rattles the handcuffs. 

“Let me out,” he grumbles. Sylus disentangles himself and pulls off enough to look them over. 

Blow off steam. He almost laughs. Is that what they set out to do? They’re a mess. Weapons and clothes scattered around the room. The windows above the bed are thick with steam. They smell of sweat and sex. It’s only a matter of time before Zayne will want to get up and shower. 

Sylus hums. He’ll take what contentment he can from this. His fingers trace Zayne’s jaw. Under his thumb, Zayne’s frown lines feel no different from his own.

“So bossy,” he mutters, “You’re always first to end the fun.” 

His fingers shake when he unclips the key from his belt. Zayne wiggles impatiently. Down his arms, under the bed, he undoes each wrist carefully. They’re bright red and chafed from their struggle. By Monday, Zayne will have them covered under a tightly buttoned shirt. Only Sylus will know it’s there. Every bruise, the cut he hopes will scar, little marks he’s left behind.

Hating the foolish flutter in his stomach, he stands. Ass naked in nothing but his own white shirt. Suddenly he hates their game. Before, his moodiness was always a sore spot between them. It locks his words tightly in his throat now. He would laugh just to voice them. What use is this desire, when he has everything? Even with age, it hasn’t gone away. 

Lost to his thoughts, he doesn’t notice the hand clasping around his ankle until it’s too late. Zayne yanks, tearing Sylus from his feet. Colors zip by in a blur. He hits the floor with none of the concern from earlier in the night. His head slams the hardwood, stunning him. When he blinks back the daze, Zayne sits atop him. There’s no playful grin, no easy banter, just a cool gaze honed on his target. His eyes are harsh and unreadable. Fluttering eagerness dances through Sylus’s chest.

“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” Zayne asks. 

Sylus shivers. One last glance up to the remains of the night. Still some time until sunrise. 

He drawls, “Do your worst.” 

[ethjayy]

COMPUTAH

[smoochfics]

frost upon camellia

sylus/reader!mc | zayne/mc | mc/reader!mc 🐦‍⬛❄️ one shot | explicit 🔞 | 3k summary: sylus invites his two favorite hunters and one high strung doctor to blow off some steam tags: ffmm foursome, sylus pov, bi!everyone, sylus/reader/mc/zayne sandwich in that order, thigh riding, squirting, overstimulation, choking, praise kink, degradation kink notes: you/your for reader!mc, she/her for secondary mc crossposted from ao3 (original 10/09/25)

Over the years, Sylus had learned many, many ways to relieve stress. His lifestyle necessitated it. Some things served him better than others, but nothing ever cured his ails as sweetly as a visit from his hunters. 

He leans back against the bedframe, arms sprawled to either side across the pillows. For now, he’s content to watch. The two of you are doing just fine without his help. In one easy swing of your legs, you straddle your hunter partner’s thighs. His duvet rucks beneath you both as you slowly rock into each other. Soft sighs float from your joining kisses. 

One of her knees slides its way between you, pressing firmly to your core until it draws a blissful shudder from you.

Though a seemingly innocent readjustment, Sylus has grown familiar with your partner’s wiles. Nonetheless it’s her that whimpers at your pleasure. Always eager to please you. The sound makes you huff a laugh under your breath. Sylus’s cock twitches in his shorts. 

Only one thing sours the moment for him. Zayne looms over you both grimly, a dark shadow standing just at the foot of the bed. In their years of finding their own fun together, Sylus had learned to enjoy that dour face, but even he’s grown tired of the restraint on display. At first, he had allowed the other man to play out his gloomy routine. He orbited the two of you like you were something that couldn’t be touched. Always punishing himself for wanting what he could easily reach out and have. 

Fortunately for him, Sylus is a generous man. One lazy leg snakes out, nudging your ass with his shin. You swat at him but don’t turn his way. He smirks. 

“Greedy, aren’t we, kitten? The doctor is patiently awaiting his turn.” 

It works better than expected. Zayne’s head whips up, his frown darkening into something more severe, but before he can protest the crudity you beat him to it. Eyes fierce, you turn fully to shove at him. 

“You’re being a pig,” you snap. 

Ah, that’s it. As if you commanded it to do so, his cock hardens painfully. All it takes is that little nibble of attention to have him greedy for more. One arm reaches out to snatch you up. He pulls you into his lap, letting your legs fall to each side of his thigh. Even pinned against him, fiery with irritation, he can feel you clench against the muscle there. He keeps his forearm locked securely around your waist and presses your back to his chest. For now, this will have to do. By the end of the night, he’ll have time to coax more expressions from you. 

He presses a soothing kiss under your ear that does nothing of the sort. The little hairs there tickle his nose. He smiles privately and you elbow his ribs. 

“Patience, please. You may like what you see,” he says. Not letting you regain the upper hand, he reaches up to grip your chin. He tilts your head just slightly, directing your gaze back across the bed, then occupies himself with unclasping your bra.  

“Wait-” you start, only to be struck silent at the sight. He hums contentedly. 

Zayne, having dragged your partner to the edge of the bed, has her spread out in front of you. Her chest heaves, one nipple threatening to free itself from her lingerie. Once he’s set himself loose, Zayne’s focus is singular. He shoves her panties to the side, lingering just slightly on the dampness already there, and bares her cunt to you. She whimpers at the cold air on her wet lips. Sylus doesn’t miss the way Zayne smirks at the sound. 

For every touch to her clit, Sylus mirrors the same to your breasts. When Zayne pinches her clit between two fingers just to wring another desperate cry from your partner, he mimics it against your nipples. You whine low in your throat and try to swallow the sound. 

He chuckles, “So sweet.” 

“She is,” you agree quietly, though that isn’t what he meant. You try to regain your composure, but he knows better. When you want to shiver for him, you stiffen. Instead of softening, your fingernails dig into his arm that cages you. As soon as your hips move against his leg, so small and tentative, he pretends not to notice. He’s learned to let you think your surrender is subtle. 

It’s clear the moment Zayne realizes he has an audience. He tenses just briefly before throwing himself into it with renewed intensity. His hand goes to the back of your partner’s neck letting his fingers thread through her hair. He yanks her head back tightly until she looks up at him alone. Even in the dimly lit room, the two of you can see the way her glazed over eyes match her dopey smile. Zayne kisses that smile, the fingers between her legs finally plunging deep inside of her. The intensity with which he fucks her open is at odds with the tenderness he brushes against her lips. 

Sylus bites down on your shoulder, not letting you grow shy in sight of their softness. You’ve given up on all pretense and ride his thigh wantonly. Wetness drags against his skin. Rather than holding you back, his arm keeps you upright as you use him to pleasure yourself. You don’t try to break free, too keen to witness your partner’s undoing by Zayne’s hand. Once or twice, your head falls back and your eyes squeeze tight just to whip back up once you remember the sight you’re missing.

When her thighs begin to tremble, so do yours. Sylus drops both hands to your hips and drags you across him harshly. One of your hands reaches back to tug at his hair. He groans. With his added momentum, you fuck his leg to the rhythm of your partner’s high, tight whines. 

Zayne keeps her face firmly turned up towards him, unwilling to share even that. All of her weight leans against him, completely boneless and trusting. Inside of her, his fingers curl. To the untrained eye, he may appear indifferent, but Sylus isn’t untrained. His tie is still on, glasses perched perfectly on his nose, not even a hair where it’s not supposed to be. The only thing out of place is the bunched up roll of his sleeve. With his forearms out, his tendons flex taut as he fucks her. The slick sound of her arousal makes his jaw clench and unclench. 

You turn to look back at Sylus over your shoulder. Your panting expression is almost mischievous. 

“Watch,” you command, but his gaze doesn’t stray from your face. He watches you watch them and shivers at the pleasure. 

It’s not Zayne’s touch, nor the ceaseless hold he has on her, but the quiet praise he whispers between them that finally shatters your partner. Her orgasm has her writhing. Zayne’s pace doesn’t slow, though he watches on raptly. He loosens his grip on her hair just enough to stroke softly over her brow as she comes apart. Your eyes are glued to the needy pulses around his fingers. Her whine pitches to nearly as a squeal as her release sprays out of her, coating Zayne’s hand with her wetness. It doesn’t stop, with each throb that runs through her she soaks the duvet, wide open to her witnesses. Zayne moans, quickly dropping the hand that was just soothing her down to her knee. When she tries to clamp her thighs together, shyness catching up to her, he forces her leg back open and fucks into her harder. She whimpers and squirms, tears rolling fat down her cheeks. Even embarrassed and overstimulated, she thrusts up to meet him.

Zayne looks up to catch your eye. It’s that look that finally snaps the coil in you. Sylus helps you along as your thrusts devolve into greedy, desperate grinding. His muscles tense against you. Every shudder that runs through you makes him needier. The soft, breathy sounds you make when you come will never be enough for him. It’s as close to trusting as you get, falling back into his chest. 

Of course, he needs more. He’s never settled for less than everything. Before you’re through the aftershocks, he’s pulling his throbbing cock free. Bodily he drags you back into him, thrusting up between your legs and shuddering when he can feel your heat. Your protest is barely a formality before you’re shivering at the glide of his head against your folds. Again and again he fucks between you just to feel the way you twitch when he grazes your sensitive clit. 

Your partner whines for your attention. She’s red faced and teary eyed, kneeling under the canopy. Zayne stands at her back, stunned by the force of what he dragged from her. Not entirely without his sense, he reaches out to comfort her, only to be met with your glare. Sylus doesn’t try to stop you when you pull from his lap to go to her side. He wonders if you ache at the separation just as much as he does. 

For a moment, he fears that their fun might have reached its end. He watches the way you wipe her tears and coo. Both of your hands cup her cheeks, then you nod your head and gesture for Zayne to join you on the bed. He kneels there, somewhat awkwardly, until you roll your eyes at him over your partner's shoulder. 

Sylus was smug to think he was the one in control of this. With ease you take over, directing everyone just where you want them. 

“So pretty. You did so well,” you say quietly to the woman in front of you. Even directed at her, the soft praise makes him flush. It’s as if the room is yours, just the two of you gazing at one another. Despite the shift in atmosphere, Sylus still feels his cock jolt to attention at the sound of your voice. You press sweet little kisses to her forehead, complimenting her with each one, before your tone grows firm. 

“I know you have better manners than this. You want to thank Dr. Zayne, don’t you?” 

Eyes wide, pink rimmed from crying, your partner nods. Behind them, Zayne’s hand drops to the bulge in his slacks. He doesn’t do anything more than that, rubbing at his hardness. His cheeks go pink. 

Sylus has little need for such self control. Feeling the voyeur and indulging in it, his fingers wrap lazily around his cock. 

“Use your words, please,” you command. His grip tightens. Her response is so quick, desperate to do whatever you ask of her. 

“I do!” she insists. You smile down at her indulgently. Both of your hands bracket her hips. You turn her around to face Zayne and urge her forward. Now that she has direction, she goes easily. All her shame was quickly forgotten the moment she surrendered control to you. You stay glued to her back, only interrupting to smack Zayne’s hands away from between his legs. With one hand to her lower back, you hum approvingly at your partner’s slow touch down Zayne’s chest. 

She loosens his tie just enough to toss it aside, then sets to work on his buttons. With his collarbones exposed, Sylus can see just how flushed he’s gotten. At his sides, his hands bunch into fists with each stroke of her skin. Finally, she reaches his pants. 

Once freed, his cock juts hard and angry between his legs. The tip is wet and shiny. Just looking at it makes your partner whine. She doesn’t have to ask. You twine your fingers through her hair, directing her head down to where you know she wants it. 

“That’s it. Be good for the doctor,” is all you have to say. Unprepared for the forceful shove you give her, she kisses clumsily along his length. Zayne’s knuckles go white. Sylus is half afraid he’ll have to replace this duvet. 

She regains her bearing quickly. In one swift motion, when you know she’s prepared, you firmly guide her until she swallows him down. At once, all of you moan. 

Setting an even pace, you control the slow, deep drag of your partner’s mouth around him. Just when the bobs of her head steady in their rhythm, you push her harshly to the base of his member. Sylus fists furiously at himself, watching the curve of Zayne’s throat when he throws his head back. His Adam’s apple is prominent, trembling in response to the way she whimpers when she takes him. Sylus wants to lean in and bite it. 

Uselessly, with nothing to ground her, your partner’s hips roll against the air. You chuckle cruelly before taking pity on her. One arm wraps around her hips. You hold her up and cup a palm against her dripping cunt. 

“Next time, I’ll fuck you like this,” you say. She gasps, pushing back against the hold on her head. Her weak grind into your hand grows faster and she moans. Undeterred, you tighten your hold and force her head back where you want it. 

Zayne’s own control is slipping. He spasms, fucking up into her mouth after you nod your permission. Drool drips down the length of him, sliding between his legs. 

“Isn’t she a good girl?” you ask, this time directing your attention to Zayne. You take pride in it, every devoted suck and whine from the woman between you two only spurs you on more. “She’ll come just like this. I bet sucking your cock alone would be enough.” 

Your partner’s whole body shivers when you talk about her. The meanness in your tone makes her and Sylus both groan. His wrist twists and he fucks into his hand. At last, you seem to remember his presence. 

“And you? Where’s your manners?” you ask. He doesn’t point out the hypocrisy, that your partner dropped to her knees for Zayne but you won’t offer him the same. Instead, he tilts his head accommodatingly. 

“I’ve been very rude,” he agrees. He crawls to your back then brackets you in tightly with the others. You may control their pleasure, but he’ll have you caged in just where he wants you. Without asking, the delight of taking advantage of your impatience just too enticing, he grabs you by the hips and fucks up into you smoothly. Your walls suck him in so greedily. Both of you moan.

“Tight,” he huffs. You scoff. 

“Try to keep up.” 

That’s the only warning you give before you fuck forward and back. You spear yourself on him, making his legs tremble, and never loosen your grip on your partner’s hair. When his pace quickens inside of you, you follow along and guide her down faster around Zayne. 

Unwilling to simply be swept along, Sylus reaches up and harshly grasps one of your breasts. Your gasp rolls right through him. He hopes his fingers bruise. With his other hand, he loosely wraps finger to thumb from one pulse point to another. He doesn’t press down, just feels the way you gulp with his hand around your throat. It’s the sweetest gift of vulnerability before you rip back control and tighten around him.

An orchestra at your command, you all find a flow together quickly. Zayne’s neck has gone sweaty and pink. A strange, wistful smile lights his face then he’s reaching up towards Sylus. For a split second, he thinks Zayne means to caress him. Instead, his fingers force themselves past his lips. Sylus squeezes his eyes shut and sucks, whining from deep in his chest. The sound makes you thrust back against him harder still. 

With one little tug at your wrist, Zayne tries to warn you of what’s to come. You don’t falter, only smoothly lead your partner until her nose is pressed to the softness of his stomach. She gags, filled, before swallowing him down. Zayne’s grunts are quiet as he comes. 

When he pumps into her mouth, hitting deep into her throat, she moans. To some secret count, you let him release inside of her with one, two, three broken breaths before you yank her head back. The last pulses of his orgasm shoot from him, painting her cheeks and eyelashes in his release. Her own orgasm hits her when his cockhead pops loose, bobbing against her lips. Her tongue peeks out, catching what she can between pink lips. You look down at her fucked-dumb, cum-stained face as it twists in ecstasy and clamp down around Sylus violently. 

He should pull out. He even tries, against every tiny piece of him wishing otherwise, but you follow him back before he can. Spurred on, he pounds into you faster and sucks hard around Zayne’s fingers while you clench and unclench on his cock. The heat of your release, the slick way he slides in deeper, finally overtakes him. At once, his mind goes white. His grip on you tightens, freeing breathy whimpers from your lips, and he spills inside of you. He grinds deeply, filling you, then pulls out just enough to coat your folds. Slowly, he fucks back in. Each catch of his cockhead at your opening makes goosebumps run down your shoulders. The way he drips out of you, coating his own cock, mesmerizes him. His fingers go down to meet his length, stretching you further. In and out he goes, even when the stimulation makes an ache build in his spine. You shiver and squirm and still he manages to catch your smirk over your shoulder. His devotion pleases you. Another victory under your belt. 

Feeling the loss of it, Sylus finally slips out of you. 

At once, you all loosen together, releasing a unified breath. You spin your partner around and let her head fall sleepily into Zayne’s lap. Unsubtly, he wipes his drool covered fingers on the bed set before he reaches down to stroke her cheek, praising her just as you had earlier. She hums at the attention, her eyes fluttering closed then she nuzzles at his softening member and presses a small kiss to his foreskin. 

Once settled, you turn to smile at Sylus properly, like he’s in on it with you. Perhaps you shared more of your control with him than he realizes. He’s all but lost his senses to you. His answering smile is fonder than you’ll ever let him verbalize. 

“And here you thought I wouldn’t be able to keep up,” he says. 

[ethjayy]

may i offer lads yuri in these trying times

[smoochfics]

lux brumalis (ongoing)

zayne/reader ❄️ multi chap (1/4) | general (ch1, explicit in later chs) | ~7k (ch1) summary: the god li shen has watched over life and death for generations, never to intervene in the affairs of the living. when word of a new ritual reaches his domain, the time finally comes for him to make the long trek down his mountain. by happenstance, he comes across you instead. tags: original alternate universe, fantasy, world-building, god!zayne, monster!zayne, priestess!reader, flirting, emphasis on hands (eventual tags: dubcon, possessive behavior, hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending) warnings: some violence and gore, "period" typical sexism notes: you/your reader insert with some gendered terms (priestess, bride, etc)! if dialogue necessitates pronouns i default to they/them crossposted from ao3 (original 09/27/25) this is a companion fic to miraculum by rivoli for anybody interested in a sylusmc take on this universe!

Deep in the blue mountains, under the shade of swaying evergreen trees, ran the icy cold river between life and death. Nearby stood a hamlet, the inhabitants isolated from the wider world but content in their solitude. The people that lived there knew to respect the fog covered ley line along the forest’s edge, lest they disturb the spirits that lingered. For generations, the living and the dead remained side by side in peaceful coexistence. 

Zayne, the only son of the local tanner, would one day break that peace. Though he was quiet and often kept to himself, he was well liked in the community. A polite boy who looked after his mother and father attentively. At nightfall, when most were long asleep and he had snuck into his father’s workshop to work the thinnest hides into scraps of parchment, he would feel the call of those waiting within the trees. They needed him, but he couldn’t say what for. Though he could ignore the entreaties of the afterlife most nights, he knew one day he would succumb.

Once he was a man grown, confident that his parents would live well in their remaining days, he carefully packed his things and made the long walk to the boundary of the forest. The lost souls of the dead, who spent night upon night pleading for him to join them, gathered to welcome his spirit among them. His self-assured steps into the fog were his final moments as a mortal man. 

That first winter morning, his parents awoke with only a letter in the place of their son, written out on finely crafted parchment. His best work. They wept, but knew better than to follow his trail.

At the mountain’s peak, with the roar of the rushing river in his ears, the god Li Shen watched on with a chill in his heart. His own nature was a mystery to him, but his duty became clear at once. He carried out that duty tirelessly. Any life ended, no matter the cause, was ushered to his domain. With single-minded devotion he led them down the river. It wasn’t his place to cast judgement, to dictate where those souls would end up, but only to stand by their side during the journey beyond. 

Something within him hardened. He promised himself he would be prepared for the day when it was his own parents who walked that path. 

When his mother’s death finally came, Li Shen’s father left peeled pears on the windowsill and prayed for her passing to be a peaceful one. It was only then, receiving his first devoted offering, that he understood what he was. The god of death, born among the living but never to be one of them again, would lead his mother on her final walk. His chest panged at the realization that he would never grow to see her crow’s feet line his eyes in his own old age. At once, he understood the true cost of his duty.

Years turned to decades, until time ceased to matter much at all. Tales of him grew alongside the village until it was a city in its own right, raising temples to house the followers of Li Shen. Their faith changed him inside and out. He watched life beget death, uninterrupted in the constant turn of the cycle, and never once intervened. Between wars and pestilence, he found contentment as the stoic guardian of the forest. 

The priests, in equal parts respect and fear, understood him to be a great beast, so a great beast he became. His teeth elongated into sharp, curved points. His hair, once carefully trimmed, grew and grew until he was covered from head to toe. In the light of the moon, his eyes glowed reflectively. God or monster, it mattered little when there was work to be done.

When he heard word, through the prayers of his most faithful, that there was to be a new sacrifice, it was the first true break in his routine in centuries. There had been offerings before, livestock brought to an altar just beneath the mountain’s shadow, but he cared little for them. Death would come for them all, no matter their attempts to appease him. 

It was rumours of a distant, dormant god in a far off land that frightened his followers. Li Shen himself was apathetic to this so-called god of retribution, so long as he never crossed into death’s domain. However, the fear that the fallen god Qin Che stoked in the hearts of the priesthood was unsettling to him.

What finally brought Li Shen down his mountain was this: the next sacrifice would be human. They thought to buy his respect by gifting him a bride. It was almost laughable. What would he do with a wife? There was no future where he wasn’t alone. 

In the snow, his hoofprints gradually lengthened until they were the clumsy, half hearted footprints of a man. He had shed his bestial skin, though it was an excruciatingly painful shift to make, and taken on the guise of a bookseller. A shiver ran down his spine when he stepped out of the fog. 

Things had changed. As a boy, he and the other children had rushed to the road when any passing merchant came through the town. Nowadays, pulling his rickety cart through the paved streets, he was nearly invisible in the flow of the crowd. That suited him well enough so long as the priesthood welcomed his presence.

Thankfully, they did. His cart was left by the gates, locked up safely from looters, and he was escorted up the long stairway leading to the temple. Inside, monks and priests mingled, though many of the young ladies looked away shyly at his approach. All were dressed in modest robes, with kidskin gloves buttoned tightly up to their elbows. He only nodded his greetings when necessary, careful to avoid any disrespect. 

The head of the library was a kind old man who was eager to speak with another who had knowledge as broad as his. Though Li Shen listened politely, his mind was elsewhere. 

Faintly, but clearly there, he could sense his bride-to-be was near. She was said to be beautiful, fair-hearted and the most devoted among the order. He had never picked out her prayers among the faithful. 

When he was at last relieved of the conversation, clutching a list of texts the library could use, he set out on his search. Free to roam, he made his way first to the gardens. They were massive, immaculately designed and well maintained with a burbling fountain in the center pond. On all sides, the towering walls around the courtyard loomed, casting an imposing shadow on the faithful. In an instant, his eyes landed on the woman he sought. 

She crouched over the water as if the very sight of it offended her. He could only catch half of her expression as she turned to look at the person at her side. A servant, perhaps. Your hands were uncovered without the gloves worn by those practicing. It was clear she was midway through a complaint. You laughed along good naturedly. 

This excursion of his had never had a true goal. He had no intention of interrupting you two. He hardly even knew what he had expected to feel upon seeing the priestess. The answer was surprisingly simple. He felt very little. Despite that, his legs carried him forward. 

At his approach, your head whipped around. You straightened up and pulled the priestess along with you, straightening her skirts before you attended to your own. It was true that she was beautiful, though the gaze she directed on him was a cold one. Her expression smoothed into glass. In his presence, she was devoid of any of the annoyed mirth she had shown to you just earlier. Up and down, she took him in, before deciding she was unimpressed. Her eyes stopped on his inkstained fingers. 

“You must be the handsome bookseller everyone’s whispering about,” she said. If this body’s long stopped heart could still beat, he was sure he would blush. 

“I brought books. The rest I’ll take as a compliment.” 

She scoffed. You giggled and nudged her with a sharp elbow. “Be nice, my lady,” you whispered under your breath. Li Shen nearly smiled, but feared what it would look like without practice. With a long-suffering sigh, the priestess tried again. 

“How may we help you, sir?” she said through gritted teeth. It was a valiant attempt at niceties.

Callously he said, “I’ve heard there’s to be a sacrifice.”

Immediately, he regretted his forwardness. Both of you stiffened and the priestess turned away. At once, she closed herself off to him again. 

“We shouldn’t speak with men from the outside,” she told him coolly. Not waiting for his response, she turned to leave. Each step was unhurried but deliberate. When she reached the threshold to the inner chambers, she paused only to seek you out. 

You remained by his side a beat longer, giving him an apologetic smile. 

“Sorry, it’s not you. She's just having a bad day,” you lied, unnecessarily kindly, “I hope you’ll come back soon. I’d love to see the books next time!” 

Just as you turned to follow after the priestess, his hand whipped out to grab yours. Flesh to flesh with another, for the first time in lifetimes. Both of you shivered. The shocked look on your face was enough for him to realize that he must be cold to the touch. His icy fingertips traced slowly along your palm as he pulled away, however inappropriate it was. Your warmth was irresistible. 

“Would you like to see them now? I’m not sure when I’ll be back next,” he said. There was still much left unanswered. If the priestess wasn’t amicable, perhaps her servant would be. 

You held your hand to your chest, one thumb idly tracing the path his fingers had taken. Perhaps he had frightened you with his impulsivity. He would blame it on this human form when he thought of it in the days to come. What else could cause his good sense to leave him so drastically?

Just when he believed he had scared you off for good, you composed yourself. It took one deep, shaken breath for you to smile again. You glanced between him by your side and the priestess that impatiently watched you from under the awning. Nervously, you nibbled your lip. This decision held more weight than he understood. 

“Wait here,” you whispered before scampering off. At the doorway, you and the priestess bickered quietly with one another just out of earshot. Even with her shoulders squared straight with pride, it was clear that she lost the argument. With a huff, she held out her arms and allowed you to unbutton each glove carefully. To his disappointment you yanked them on as you ran back over. Unlike the priestess, you skillfully buttoned them one handed.

“I lied earlier,” you said with a wink, “She definitely hates you.” 

Shocked by your frankness, he laughed. It was a creaky old excuse for laughter, coming from a man who had very little to find joy in.

“I was rude before,” he conceded. Attempting to make up for his poor manners, he gestured to the path. “After you.” 

“Not that way,” you said. With a wave, you brought him deeper into the gardens. The whole way, he could feel the gaze of the priestess burning into his back until finally you were out of sight. 

The courtyard stretched further than he had imagined. It led behind the temple, where the carefully trimmed foliage blended into untamed shrubbery. The thicket was overgrown and dense, but you traversed it easily as though you had done it a thousand times before. Whenever he believed you had reached a dead end, you squeezed between sparse bushes and confidently held branches back for him.

“I had planned to go out the same way I came in,” he said, wryly. You laughed. 

“Oh, I’m sure you did.”

After many twists and turns, the two of you broke out into a side yard. Just ahead, his cart sat untouched. Before you could go to it, he reached out with a hand to your wrist to stop you. It left him unsatisfied when he was met with only the soft leather of your glove. If he were still the shy young man he had once been, he never would have grabbed anyone the way he had grabbed you. Not only once, but twice. 

It gave him a weary sort of warmth, to think of how his mother would scold him for such a thing after so long without cause to remember her. 

“Did I overstep your oaths, seeing you like that in the gardens?” he asked carefully. 

You shrugged, “More like I understepped them.”

Your cavalier answer rankled him. He dropped your arm and narrowed his eyes. Suddenly thinking better of the whole endeavor, he took one step back. 

“My invitation wasn’t meant to cause you trouble. I haven’t even learned your name,” he said. 

You gave it without hesitation, then smirked. “Now you’re free to cause me trouble.” 

He scoffed, “Stubborn, I see.” 

“Very! Now, I promise that any trouble that may be incurred will be very worth it just to have a bit of fun,” you said insistently. Against his will, he could feel himself relenting. “It’s so stuffy in there! A break will be good for me, you know.” 

Your desperate plea, when turned on him, was very convincing. He could see now how the priestess had been defeated in your earlier argument. It felt good, strangely powerful, to be begged for something much less dire than death’s reprieve. It worked. 

At his nod, you charged ahead happily. Without a word he handed off his key ring, allowing you to open up the cart on your own. It had three major compartments, meticulously organized and packed tightly with an array of volumes. Your gloved fingers traced lightly along the spines. 

While you pored over his wares, he consulted his list. Though he supposed it didn’t matter if he fulfilled his order with the librarian, some part of him couldn’t turn his back on a job to be done. It was peaceful to carry on together, side by side without a word. The camaraderie was foreign to him. Even if today was the only taste of it he could have, he would relish in it. 

You were flipping slowly through one of the books when you finally broke the silence. It was one of his favorite volumes that you held. The spine was a deep green and shimmered slightly in the midday sun. Inside, the flora and fauna of the region were carefully detailed with meticulous diagrams. Though it couldn’t possibly contain the creatures that traversed his domain, it was comprehensive. Back on his mountain, he often flipped through his own copy in the limited free time he had. A small smile curled your lips at some of the more outlandish little animals depicted. It was that which made him understand just how small your world was.

“You never told me your name either,” you said, quietly so as not to shake the peace you had built together. 

Li Shen, he couldn’t say. I am the god of death Li Shen. I will guide you in your final moments. I will listen for your morning prayers. I will be the death of your dearest friend.

Instead, he stood there dumbly. His stupefied look made you laugh. You closed the book to focus on him wholly. Once more, you prompted him. 

“I’m Zayne,” he said finally. It came out sticky on his tongue. How strange it was to say. In one word, he mustered up the memory of a man that nobody lived to remember. Zayne the tanner’s son. Zayne who stayed up late turning hides into parchment. Zayne who never had the chance to weep at his mother’s grave. 

The glimpse of your tongue peeking pink between your teeth when you repeated it back to him sent a bolt through his stomach. In that split second, you had made him a man again. He resented you for it nearly as much as he cherished it. 

Before you could push for more, wiggling your way into breaking off new pieces of him, he changed the subject bluntly. 

“You and the head priestess are close,” he said, tone leading. 

If his abrupt shift surprised you, then you hid it well. Your attention turned back to the books, but unlike in the gardens you had softened to him now. He was beginning to believe he didn’t deserve the easy unfurling of your trust. You answered his questions without pretense. 

The two of you had grown up in the temple together. You were raised as a pair, though you readily admitted that she was the one who often excelled. No malice entered your tone, as if being a companion to the priestess alone was enough for your happiness. The fond tales of your childhood made him smile. 

“You’ll miss her,” he said. The love between you was fierce. He understood, through your lighthearted stories, that her prickly nature never truly turned your way.

You gripped your hands together tightly before you, “Forever. Desperately.” Your voice cracked on the words, “How could I live without her?” 

It wouldn’t be him that killed her, yet it would be him to carry the burden nonetheless. The burden of godhood. What a foolish thought. Unused to feeling useless, he found he handled it poorly. With no words of comfort, he was struck mute. 

Just when he opened his mouth, ready to attempt an ineffectual consolation, a voice called from above.

“Ah, good! You’re still here,” called out the librarian. He stood far enough away at the top of the steps for the both of you to be blocked from sight behind the cart. Unthinkingly, Zayne shoved you back into the bushes. He couldn’t help but smirk at the sound of your surprised squeal. 

The steady thump of the librarian’s steps was the only countdown you had. Grabbing the green bound book off his shelf, Zayne stuffed it into your hands. A wicked grin graced your lips from where you sat, flat on your ass in the shrubbery. It was a boyish feeling that came over him when he looked at you. 

“Take it and go,” he insisted. 

You shook your head, “I’m just the back-up. I can’t even read, Zayne!” 

“Take it. Think of me when you open it.”

Your eyes went wide. It pleased him to catch you off guard.

“Oh, how bold of you,” you teased. He rudely waved you away just as the librarian came around the corner. Your last words would follow him home. “Remember: the trouble was worth it!” 

You had just scurried out of sight when the librarian clapped him on the shoulder. He was good natured, offering to give Zayne a hand carrying everything back up, but his interruption had soured Zayne’s mood. 

They set their stacks into small baskets, carefully strapped to their backs for the walk back up. The librarian chattered through it all. It was altogether different from his short, quiet moments with you.  

“I do hope nobody’s been too rude. The priests get a bit squirrely with another man about,” the librarian explained, “Not that you seem the untrustworthy sort. It’s just that one of the high priestesses seems to have snuck out. I’d keep my head down while you’re in there, if I were you.” 

On the steps, Zayne’s steps faltered. He felt, bizarrely, tricked. The pieces rattled around in his head. The gloves, your argument with the head priestess, and the sneaking around all clicked together. He was the fool, taking your first appearance at face value. 

The rest of his visit to the temple was perfunctory. He dropped off his books, accepting coin that he would put into the hand of the nearest beggar. The librarian thanked him profusely, but his attention was quickly stolen by the news of the high priestess safely in the rooms. 

His thoughts were consumed by you on his lurching walk home. If those were his final moments as Zayne, he might as well savor them with the short memories he had made. 

A high priestess. One that could have easily been chosen as the sacrifice. Your self-deprecating laugh as you told him of your friend’s superior studies were suddenly cast in a new light. That they hadn’t taught you how to read, despite your rank. It was as you said before: you were the back-up.

If things had gone differently, it would be you tossed at his feet like livestock. It was unseemly of him to be relieved that it wouldn’t be. For Li Shen, all deaths must remain equal. In the few steps he had left as Zayne, something loosened in his chest. He wouldn’t look forward to the day your soul crossed into his domain, even if it meant seeing you one last time. 

The fog embraced him greedily. He had been out for far too long. Souls clamoured at him, tugging for his attention like spoiled children. Li Shen was exhausted and eager to return home, but he wouldn’t leave them to their limbo if he could help it. With gritted teeth, he began the slow, painful transition back to who he truly was. 

A crack rang through his skull as his antlers broke through bone. They protruded like a springtime bloom from the inky black growth of his hair. His thighs thickened and twisted into place until his walk evolved into a steady lope. The pulling of his skin made his vision go white. It rippled, peeling until his spine tore through with ease. Excruciating pain consumed him. 

Back in the forest, his heart began to beat again. As if he had never left at all, the god of death stalked down his well trod path to the river as the fearsome creature he was always destined to be.

The days passed. While he tended to the dead, the prayers of his faithful washed over him. They were more fervent with the sacrifice ritual just on the horizon. Despite his best attempts to close himself away, he would never be indifferent to their pleas. Many feared for themselves, that would never change, but just as many prayed for another. What reached his ears most often wasn’t selfish prayer. People wanted, above all, to alleviate the pain of the ones they loved. It would make no difference. Death was death. Unchanging and inevitable.

He caught himself, more than once, seeking out the sound of your prayers. His priestess, he couldn’t help but think. The sort of arrogance only a god could manage. Now that he knew where to look, he listened for you and the head priestess regularly. 

You both only ever prayed for one thing: each other. With a fervor and desperation he had only ever heard on the fields of war, she set aside her pride to beg the gods, any gods, to watch over you upon her death. Whether any ears but his could hear her, Li Shen didn’t know. 

He could see now why she was chosen for the ritual. Her strength of spirit was clear to him. Perhaps there was a god out there that would eagerly take her as his bride. It mattered very little. Death would take no lover. No partner could join him on this path, whether they be among the living or the dead.

Something akin to dread settled in his gut when the ritual day drew near. He caught himself more than once filled with indignation at the boastful prayers of the priesthood. They thought to placate him. They thought his regard for them was steeped in anger, just as they feared of the far off god Qin Che. 

What good was more death? It was the only thing humanity truly had in abundance. 

Though nothing would alter his course, he would give the head priestess the great respect of bearing witness. If her sacrifice was to be pointless, he could at least carry the memory of it long beyond her years. 

When the morning finally came, the forest ran icy cold. He watched, omnipresent, as the burly priests dragged all of the high priestesses to the base of his mountain. To his count, there were ten of you. Looking at you now, he couldn’t fathom how he hadn’t seen it. At your backs was the rest of the temple’s faithful, followed by city spectators amassed by the hundreds. None would cross into the fog, not if they valued the sanctity of their minds, but they drew closer than most to reach the stone altar standing before them. 

The head priestess walked in the center with her head held high. Her expression was inscrutable. All of the high priestesses were dressed in finery, wearing the deep dark blue associated with a virginal union. Perhaps once, as a very different man, that would have been the sort of thing he sought out. Now, it mattered little at all. A virgin would die just the same as any others, with their soul carried through white water at his urging. 

You didn’t attempt to match her stoicism. You wept openly. Your nose was pink in the cold winter’s wind. Desperately, your hand clutched your friend’s. It would cost you everything to let go. 

This city, his people, were they so afraid of some foreign god? Or deep down was it him they feared most? He never imagined he could feel such malice for mankind until he was watching them prepare to cut a life short in his name. 

He was proven wrong further still when it was you they took to your knees. His whole body stiffened. The head priestess gasped, but you were stunned into silence. Helplessly, you looked around, as if suddenly unsure of where you were. 

The priests went silent. A low murmur rose from the crowd gathered behind them. 

With brutish force, your hands were disentangled from hers. She held on with such strength that your glove tore off, hanging limply between her fingers. That one hand, bare and exposed to the chill, waved wildly towards the wide audience, asking for something you couldn’t find the voice for. Nobody moved to your side.  

The head priestess screamed from deep in her gut, her words lost in the swell of her rage. She was dragged away. A man, whose face would remain in Li Shen’s memory for decades to come, curled his lip and threw her over his shoulder. She pounded uselessly at his back, fists bouncing off his shoulders. 

You had finally come back to your senses, though you spoke only to yourself. If it was a prayer, even he couldn’t hear it. Your lips moved ceaselessly in unheard pleas. 

Had it been him that damned you to this fate? Was it your small rebellion, a single innocent adventure with a bookseller, that had brought this upon you? He wondered if somewhere someone more powerful than he mastered his fate. Perhaps by fixating on one of the living, death sought its due. 

Li Shen knew it was none of those things. The man Zayne could rail at destiny, but a god knew above all that death would always come with a ruthless indifference. He gripped that indifference for himself, dragging it down deep into his gut. The sight of a death, no matter how violent, no matter whose it may be, couldn’t sway him. He cleaved himself to the thought.

Duty, though often harsh, was his one loyalty to the faithful. 

Those very faithful that pulled the remaining priestesses into their mass of bodies. They held the head priestess back more with each anguished shriek. Her beautiful, cruel mask had slipped away into a hateful expression of grief. 

At the altar, they removed your other glove. Your last security stripped from you. It was their prayers that reached him, not yours. To them, you were no different from the livestock. You were a tool to serve their greater purpose. If they meant to please a god, they had fallen far short.

Behind him, trees cracked in the wind. Clouds rolled overhead. The river raced around the bend. A flock of birds broke into the skyline, screeching up at the heavens. 

First, they cut each of your palms. The blades sliced neatly through, exposing the white-pink meat of you. He thought back to his father’s careful cuts as he disemboweled a beast. Bright red blood dripped to the soil, where snowfall would soon bury it. He knew better. Your life would soak into the land, reaching him. He would taste you only once you were long gone from this world. 

With one hand across your eyes, the head priest pulled back your head. Once your neck was exposed, Li Shen finally heard your prayers. He heaved, inundated with the grasping hands of the dying. His eyes fluttered shut. It wasn’t any god that you prayed to. In your final moments, you thought of him. It was Zayne the bookseller, alongside your dearest priestess and the sweetfaced young girls of the temple that watched fearfully from the sidelines. All people you cared for. Completely laid bare, it was them that you prayed for. 

The hand that held the blade to your throat shook violently, unprepared to take a life despite how deeply the man hungered for it. The priests sickened their god. Their fear turned them to slobbering beasts, looking for prey. They would find it. 

When the ritual knife dragged from pulse to pulse, it dug deeper than necessary. Your flesh peeled back like flower petals. The crowd roared, adrenaline running through them straight to the restless souls beyond the ley line. His energy surged. The head priestess dropped to her knees, her screams gone hoarse. He heard none of it over the pained, strained gurgles of your final breaths. Your chest heaved and slowed. Blood spurted from the wound, flecking the feet of the noble priest. 

Finally, above the noise, her desperate prayer broke through to him. He realized only belatedly that he heard it through his spiritual tether just as much as her enraged, tear laden screams reached his ears. 

In equal parts, the head priestess begged him to punish them just as much as she demanded him to take you away as his bride. Death would have no bride. He could not enact her wishes. There would be neither the cruel cold cut of consequence, nor a benevolent savior swept to your side. 

Fearfully, the hands once holding her back tossed the priestess away. She wished the illest fortunes upon them, the spite in her words sending chills among those gathered. As soon as she was free she broke away. She threw herself at the head priest’s feet, spitting malice at him as she did so. Her hands stroked across your forehead, down to your cheeks, pressing her thumbs to your lips where blood ran steady. 

“Please, please,” she begged. Behind her, someone cheered. It caught among the crowd, raising them into uproar. Something inhuman in him snapped. 

Li Shen stepped from the fog. For ages to come, the tale would be told of this day. On this day, a holy day, the temple led the people astray. Down came the harsh god of the mountains. 

The thing that emerged from the forest was a monstrous beast, its eerie yellow gaze scanning across them with disgust. Some believed they saw the head priestess, lips bloodied from kisses pressed to your soiled cheeks, finally smile at the sight of his wrath. 

When he spoke, it came like a rumble from the earth. The voice of death was a grotesque one, chilling even his most faithful to the bone. A mass of fur and disjointed bones, he knelt over the near-lifeless body of their chosen sacrifice. He looked as if he meant to devour you. 

Some wept, others fainted, while many prostrated themselves in the dirt. It was only in the arms of a god that this one soul’s humanity became precious to them. All except for the priestess, who had cursed them to this happily for you. She saw what nobody else did.

One long, gnarled finger ran gently along the palm of your hand. 

He said only, “I have seen the true hubris of man this day,” then turned his back on them. A howl rose from those gathered, at once just as much a deformed creature as the god they worshipped. Some rushed to the holy followers of the temple, tearing him to the ground. Many leapt to protect the head priestess, the extent of her power unknown to them. Pandemonium broke out. Li Shen cared for it very little. 

Once back across the threshold of his domain, he moved with measured purpose. His power, fueled by the holy frenzy behind him, washed over you. He knelt to the ground. Frost gathered around him and he placed you softly into the snow. A snarl built in his throat as he looked over you. Something in him had shifted irrevocably on that day, though it would be long before he understood just how much. What could remain unchanged, now that he had brought the living into his world?

The roots of the trees broke through the soil, reaching up to hold you. He would bind you to this forest, keep your soul and body tethered to the earth far from the riverbank. Perhaps what he inflicted upon you was a cruelty, that you should remain here unchanging alongside him, but the steady prayer of the head priestess never ceased in begging him for this very act.

Once cradled in the roots, your body began to knit itself together. Your lips, which had gone pale, flushed again with life. He crouched at your side, only relaxing when you took one deep, unbroken breath. The earth freed you from its grasp, though he knew this bargain was far from over. Free to move, your body curled in on itself protectively. A low, humming sound came from deep in his chest. He scooped you into his arms. 

Against him, your heart beat a steady rhythm. Though you would tread the land of the dead, you were very much alive again. It brought him some comfort. You belonged to this place now. The only way you would leave would be down the river, dragged along with the dead. 

In time, that may be the path you chose. He told himself he wouldn’t intervene if that day eventually came. By bringing you through the fog, he had changed everything. Whether or not you would thank him for it was impossible to say. Guilt would serve you both little. 

With you nestled in his arms, he began his long trek up the mountain. Once, nearly halfway to the top, you awoke. Your eyes scrunched up in pain before fluttering open slightly. It was the only time he slowed his pace. Your gaze was groggy, but it trailed over the massive expanse of his bare chest. You wouldn’t recognize him as the man you once knew, ever so briefly. Whatever you saw made you smile nonetheless. 

He couldn’t fathom what you looked at in his face. To any eyes, he was a misshapen brute.

“Sleep,” he commanded. Despite his best efforts, his voice came out guttural. Blessedly, you could do nothing but listen. Your forehead rested in the crook of his neck with ease. 

At the peak, he looked upon the halls of his home with new eyes. Before then, he had never considered how much he had been living like a beast. His rooms were hardly fit for him, let alone a weakened human. They suited this shape and were still painstakingly organized to bring him comfort, but nobody but him could feel safe there. With time and much focus, he could shape this place as he pleased. Until then, he ripped the curtains from the window with a decisive tug and settled you into the nest of his bed. You nuzzled into his blankets naturally. Li Shen arranged the curtains around you, tucking you in further until you were a bundled mass of fabric. 

With that done, safe in the knowledge that nothing that walked this forest would harm you, he made his long journey back down the mountain. Your blood still painted his chest and throat. Once a good enough distance away that his agonized screams couldn’t wake you, he allowed his body to crack and shift. Again, for you, he would begin his deformation. He walked the rest of the way in his scarred, human body, relishing in the bite of the stones against his bare feet. His pace never faltered. When there was work to be done, his focus was single-minded. 

The clearing where the ritual was held had emptied by his arrival. Time moved strangely between his domain and the next. By his estimate, nearly a week had passed. He had ignored the desperate prayers begged upon him in that time. 

Your blood stained the earth preternaturally. It would remain there, a mark of man’s transgression against the gods. Zayne stepped over the fog and stood over it. 

It was a cold morning. So cold even he could feel it. Dew had no chance to gather, snapping frozen to the earth. Soon, true snowfall would come to the city. 

He made a slow, steady pace around the altar. Attempts had been made to destroy it, but just as many had clearly attempted to rebuild. He wasn’t sure which outcome he would have preferred, but he had intervened in the path of man enough. More than was wise.

A flash of blue caught his eye. He leaned down. Right along the ley line, your glove laid. He took it carefully. Behind him, someone gasped. He didn’t need to look to know it was her. The head priestess. She stood a good distance away, frozen in place, wearing travelling clothes and sturdy boots. Just as when they first met, she scanned over him critically. No longer concerned with mankind’s niceties, he must have looked gruesome even in his human guise. Half dressed, smattered with your blood, and holding back frenzy with scraps of self control. 

Her eyes locked on to the glove between his fingers.

“Leaving town?” He asked. She scowled. That look was nearly nostalgic to him now. 

“You’re him,” she said, something tight in her words. 

“A strange way to speak to a god.” 

She laughed bitterly, “I think our relationship has changed a little, don’t you?” 

Despite her bravado, he could see everything clearly. Her hands trembled at her sides. Beneath her eyes, dark circles sat just above hollowed cheekbones. The once proud slope of her shoulders slumped under the weight of her grief. Whether it was guilt or rage that drove her on, she remained steadfast. What more did she have to lose?

“If it’s any comfort to you, your friend is neither living or dead,” he said. 

“Some fucked up comfort.” 

In truth, he was no god of comfort. Perhaps it was better that way. Still, he had nothing better to offer her, no matter her demands and posturing. That he had granted even one mortal entry into his domain at her prayer was more than he had bent his will in all of his years. Regardless of his own feelings on the matter. 

With nothing else to say, he turned away. He hadn’t known what he would find in this wretched place, only that he needed to see it once more. Perhaps she had thought the same thing. It was a strangely human feeling, having that commonality between them. The priestess who loved you so dearly that she had never once prayed for another, bonded to her god only by their shared rage. 

Despite her pride, she threw herself after him. When her uncovered hands latched on his bare skin, he was surprised by how unaffected he was. 

“Please, wait,” she begged. He hadn’t expected her tone could grow so humbled. She dug desperately into her bag, with one hand and held him fast with the other. If he wanted to, he could easily break away. With tear rimmed eyes meeting his boldly, she pulled out a book. Green and shimmering on the cover, he knew it well. The spine was cracking where someone had opened and closed it again and again. It shook in her hands when she gave it to him. 

In return, he pressed your single blue glove into her palm. It wasn’t much, a memento from a day she may not wish to remember, but it was all he could give. Yes, he was no god of comfort.

“Leave. Find your vengeance or find your peace,” he said. There was nothing left for her here. You would never again walk among the living. 

At her shaky nod, he turned and left. Back up the mountain, where the peaks were crystalline white, a companion awaited the god of death. 

[ao3rivoli]

panglossian inventions

explicit 🔞 | caleb/reader, caleb/mc, caleb/non-mc | 4.3k summary: caleb can't stop looking for you in every girl he meets tags: caleb fucking someone else and pretending it's you, pseudo-incest, college days, size kink, choking, fingering, masturbation, light dom/sub, yandere!caleb, obsessive behaviour author's note: this fic can also be read on ao3!

Caleb kisses down your back with dedicated reverence, massaging his hands down the warm expanse of your body. You squirm with every touch, lifting off the bed to meet him at each firm press against your skin. One hand drifts to knead your ass, plush in his hand, your flesh spilling through his fingers in a way that only makes him want to squeeze harder.

Just a few centimetres over and his fingers would be on your cunt, in your folds. How wet would you be? Do you want him just as desperately? He thrills in the anticipation—the thought of touching you, of being inside of you after all these years, makes him dizzy.

All the blood normally in his brain has pooled to his cock instead, leaving him with no way to overthink how wrong it is to delight in having you under him. His sister-but-not-his-sister. The girl he’s spent his whole life wanting.

“Mmm, that feels good,” moans a different woman entirely, and Caleb is snapped out of his fantasy so fast he feels his cock soften in real time. 

Fuck. He is so pathetic.

Caleb always thought going to college would help him cope with the perverted fantasies he has for you. That the distance from you would do him some good. That one day, he’d get bored of stroking his cock to the thought of you and he would grow out of whatever delusion he was trapped in. 

He didn’t think it would evolve into this.

It’s far from the first time he’s had another woman in his bed, and he always hopes it’s the last. It never is. He just can’t help himself. 

They always have to meet a specific criteria: the right style, the right height, and the right hair. In other words: your style, your height, your hair.

His friends thought it was hilarious just how specific his type was. Every time he approached a girl at a party, the jokes would write themselves. They all started pointing out girls they thought he’d like, placing bets on whether Caleb would take them back to his dorm that night or not. Gideon even offered to introduce him to someone, once. 

Then one weekend, you came to visit.

He’ll never forget the look shared between his friends. That pitying, disgusted expression on their faces when they realized what kind of twisted person he was. They probably thought he was a freak, a loser, a creep obsessed with having sex with girls who looked exactly like the sister he was always telling them about.

The jokes about his type got awkward, fast. But at least it meant they quit bringing it up. Small victories. 

That was it, he told himself. Now that everyone knew, he’d have to stop. Time to turn over a new leaf. Do all that growing up he was talking about when he first enrolled. It was getting hard to keep up with your changing fashion, anyways. 

So what were the chances that tonight he’d run into a girl with your exact hairstyle?

From behind, he almost thought you had come to surprise him. Maybe he really is delusional, to think that you would mythically appear at a rager on a Thursday night in Skyhaven just to see him. A farfetched idea, sure, but he would do it for you.

(And if he has shown up on your campus at a random party, on a random day, where you just so happened to be there… at the very least he thought through his excuse.)

When he tapped you on the shoulder, his stomach dropped at the sound of a very different voice greeting him. Definitely not you. But nonetheless, shame quickly came to swallow him whole before the idea had even cemented itself in his head. Whoever this girl was, he’d be going home with her tonight. 

Bad habits never die, it seems.

He feels so fake like this, when he has some girl leaning in to him, giggling at everything he says without needing any real effort on his part. You always told him he was good-looking, but he didn’t believe it until he moved away. Usually he’d have you there to scare girls off of him, and now that you aren’t around, well, he’s starting to recognize his pretty-privilege where it serves him. 

And it serves him well—girls seem to fall over themselves to talk to him, regardless of whether he’s welcoming the attention. Usually he meets them with polite indifference, not out-right dismissiveness, but with enough nonchalance to make a rejection unwarranted. 

That is, unless they look like you. 

It’s a rotten thing on top of a thousand other rotten things: to flirt with girls and not really see them, to look past everything in an effort to see you instead.

The girl he’s talking to is not horrible to look at by any stretch of the imagination. Actually, she’s probably gorgeous. Caleb thinks that any guy not obsessed with his sister would throw themselves at her feet. But all he can do is compare.

Her forehead is too small. Eyes not the right shape. The bridge of her nose too sharp. Makeup too different. Maybe she’s pretty, but she’s not you. No one is.

How many times in their conversation has he zoned out? At one point she called him out for staring—even giggled when she said it, but he just felt like a creep. It’s not fair of him to judge her like this. She deserves better. He deserves so much worse. 

Yet by some miracle, she ends up back in his dorm.

They practically ran all the way there, not wanting to chance bumping into any of his friends, the embarrassment already near-crippling without their help. Her heels clicked down the hallway with each frantic step, and all he could think was how you would never wear shoes like that.

She sits on the edge of his bed as he locks the door, and when he turns around she’s awkwardly fiddling with the end of her shirt, hesitant to undress. You wouldn’t be so unsure. You were never shy, always bold and headfirst. He would be fighting for the chance to take off your clothes before you did, wanting to savor the process before you’d get ahead of yourself.

Instead, he finds himself hurriedly unbuttoning some girl’s blouse as she bites her lip, a timid gasp when he makes quick work of her bra.

Ah, her cup size is wrong too. Not that he should know that about his sister. But he does, only since he’s taken care of your laundry for years, and definitely not because of a few stolen glances when you’ve changed with your door open. 

Can he get any more disgusting?

The answer is yes, because not-you commits the cardinal sin of Caleb’s hookups: she goes for a kiss.

It’s the one line he just can’t cross. He can dance with other girls, touch other girls, fuck other girls, but for some reason, kissing feels like a betrayal. Is it possible to cheat on an idea? A fantasy?

Maybe it’s because his first kiss already belonged to you. 

You were both younger then, enough that he could hide his feelings behind the guise of adolescence. The two of you were locked in one of your secret bases, Caleb telling you scary stories until you crawled into his lap. Then came your strategic change of subject to crushes so he’d shut up about hauntings. 

“Do you think Zayne will remember me when he comes back?”

Caleb bristled, hand tightening on your leg with a criminal possession he couldn’t help. Sometimes it felt like you were trying to make him jealous. “It’s been years, pips. I really don’t think he’s coming back.”

You looked up at him with your doe-like eyes, lips pouted and brows furrowed. “Don’t be mean, Caleb. Someone needs to stay with me when you graduate. It’s not fair if I’m just alone here.”

“You know I’ll visit every chance I get, pipsqueak. You don’t need Zayne or anybody else. I’ll still be here.”

You had that lonely look again—the one he remembered when Zayne left, and now he’d become the reason for it, too. He couldn’t explain that he was leaving for you, that he needed to be all the way in Skyhaven so he could relearn how to be your brother. He had a foolish optimism back then.

He also really, really wanted to stop talking about Zayne. “You haven’t asked if there’s anyone I have a crush on.”

“Because I don’t wanna know! You’re not allowed to like anyone more than me.” You stuck out your tongue mockingly, never shy about your own possessiveness over him. A reminder of exactly why he needed to move out: it was that attitude which gave him a foul sense of hope.

“That’s not possible.” He almost laughed with how much he meant it.

“Really? How do I know you don’t have a secret girlfriend?” You poked his cheek, searching his eyes like you knew he was on the brink of a confession. He always felt like he was, those feelings bubbling in his throat like black bile, the most fragile dam of resolve keeping them at bay.

“Please, I’ve never even kissed a girl before. No way could I have a girlfriend.”

“Then I’ll be your first kiss. That way no one else can have it.”

He shouldn’t have said yes. He should have pushed you off his lap, told you he needed to make dinner, and then proceeded to forget all about the offer. It would have been the right thing to do, the brotherly thing to do. But when it came to you, Caleb’s head just wasn’t screwed on right. 

And now he knew. Unlike everything else he did with other women, he knew what it was like to kiss you. Even if it was a childish kiss, just an innocent slotting of lips, they were your lips. Soft, just a little chapped, and with a fruity lipgloss—sticky and sweet.

Nothing could ever replicate, could ever compare, to being with you. He can’t even fathom the disappointment of someone else’s kiss, not after he’s had you.

So when not-you leans in, lips puckered, he reacts so quickly that her eyes bulge when his hand covers her mouth.

“I am so sorry. I’m just… really weird about kissing. It’s a me thing. My breath probably reeks.” Caleb gives his biggest, most sheepish, puppy dog grin and her eyes immediately soften. He drops his hand, rubbing her nape instead, hoping he can bat his eyelashes enough that she won’t overthink it.

“That’s okay. I don’t mind,” she says, responding way too nicely for what he deserves. 

When he takes off his shirt, she ogles him just like all the others, gaze raking over his body with awe. She’s still so hesitant, hands unmoving from her side. When he started working out, you would count every ab with borderline inappropriate touches to his stomach. He’d have to tear your hands away when he felt himself getting hard. “You can touch, if you want.”

The girl takes him up on his offer, a light caress to his biceps, his pecs, the hard plane of his abdomen. It doesn’t turn him on even a little. “You’re so fit.”

She really sounds nothing like you, which is definitely going to take him out of it when she starts moaning. So Caleb throws on a playlist, turning the music a little too loud and muttering something about not wanting anyone outside to hear. He’s done this enough times that it even sounds natural when he says it.

Caleb climbs onto the bed behind her, and now, he can finally let himself fall into the motions. She looks so much like you from the back, her hair sitting just right, her skin tone the perfect shade. 

And so here you are—naked for him. Wanting him.

He brushes your hair over your shoulder, kissing at the base of your skull, lips dragging down your spine. Your shoulders tense with a sensitive shiver, your back arching, warmth spreading to the tips of your ears. Caleb snakes his arms around your waist, pulling you into him so you’re pressed tight against his chest. You are so much smaller than him, his body engulfing you easily and he is such a goddamn pervert for enjoying it.

It’s quick work to take off your belt even from behind, and once he’s slipped it off he presses you onto your stomach, face into his pillows.

His sister, pliant, laid out for him like he’s always only dreamed. It’s so easy for his mind to fill in the gaps—to hear you gasp as he slides off your jeans, as he gropes your thighs, lifting you to settle on your knees. He can’t get over how big his hand looks as he gropes the globe of your ass, how perfectly you fit in his palm, like you were made for him. 

Because you were—you had to be. Why else would he crave you like this, grotesque and filthily? How could he justify this black hole of longing, if not for the fact that he was meant for you alone?

You keen as he kisses the small of your back, your skin hot with arousal against the cool of his lips. Your panties are a simple, cheap lace but fuck, he doesn’t know whats more depraved—his cock hardening, knowing you really would wear something like this, or the simple fact that he knows what you wear at all.

He hopes you can feel his length rutting against you, straining inside his pants, desperate to be inside your warm heat. But he wants you desperate for him, too; he can’t stand the thought of you not needing him just as badly.

So that’s when he mouths at your neck, down your back, leaning just enough weight into his hands to feel every contour and knot as he massages you. Fingers drifting so close to your core, nearly feeling you sticky and wet and—

“Mmm, that feels good,” moans not-you, and here he is—doused in the ice cold water of reality.

Suddenly her skin is scalding with the heat of his shame, and he removes himself from her in a movement so abrupt she yelps.

Not-you rolls over halfway, just to make it worse for him, and looks to Caleb with concern. “Are you okay? Did I do something wrong?”

He is a truly wretched excuse of a person, isn’t he? How can he look at this woman, this objectively beautiful woman, showing him a completely unearned sympathy, and somehow think that she’s not good enough for him? This feeling of his, this pathetic tumor of obsession, has made him into someone so pitifully rotten he can’t even begin to reconcile it.

But when it comes to his own feelings, Caleb is nothing if not a coward. So he stuffs all of it down, locks his shame in a box with your name on it, and smiles sweetly at the girl in his bed.

“Sorry, it’s not you at all.” The lie comes so naturally. “I just forgot to grab a condom. One sec.”

She smiles back at him, warm, understanding, and so unlike you. “Hurry up, then.” He rushes to the bathroom, doing his best job to snatch his phone on the way without her notice.

There isn’t much time to spare, so as soon as he’s out of sight, Caleb scrolls through what must be hundreds of pictures of you to find something recent, something with the right haircut.

It’s with a practiced, spit-soaked grip and a desperate speed that Caleb works himself hard again. Not that it’s difficult with your help. In the picture you’re grinning, a faux smile of innocence when juxtaposed to the low cut of your shirt, breasts squeezed together with the way you’re posing. Someone else is cropped out, the only reminder of their existence being an arm around your shoulder.

There’s a sudden fight to quell his jealousy, even a shred of a thought of someone else touching you has his mind resorting to thoughts of bashing their skull open with a rock. But he breathes out, and zooms in on you.

He stares at your mouth and imagines how his cock would feel inside of it, the wet heat of your throat swallowing him down, doe-eyes staring up at him as he fucks your mouth. He pictures you choking, tears spilling over your cheeks as his cock stretches his sister’s lips wide and—

His hand stops, fingers a crushing grip at the base of his dick to prevent him from coming. There’s still a girl in the next room waiting for him. 

Tucking his hard cock back into his boxers, he quickly grabs a condom from the drawer, hand hovering over an eye-mask before snatching it too.

When he returns, she’s locking her phone and setting it aside, an expectant look in her eye as she watches him enter the room. Caleb has no idea how she hasn’t run for the hills after giving her a perfect moment to slip away. Worse, he can’t decide whether that’s a good or bad thing. 

He holds the condom in his teeth as he dangles the eye mask in front of her, a suggestion that’s not really much of a suggestion, so it’s good that she nods excitedly. When he drapes it over her eyes, he’s sure to pull her hair out from under the band. He knows he still can’t fuck her face-to-face, but at least this will help keep him hard if she tries to turn around.

“Whoa, you’re kinky,” not-you giggles, playful, suggestive. He feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand-up. Her voice is really irking him.

“I can gag you too, if you’d like that.”

“Hmm… this is good enough for me.” Well, he tried.

She gasps when he manhandles her with ease, pressing her face down into the bed as her hips wiggle in the air, becoming you for him in those panties he likes so much. You’re at just the right height, his hips slotting against your core and with a steady grind he can feel how wet you are through both of your clothes. 

But now her moans are too distracting, too unlike you, and he can’t begin to unfocus from them even with the music as loud as it is. 

So he leans over to the nightstand and grabs for his earbuds, and once they’re in, he opens up his voicemail.

There was just one time when he didn’t drop everything to answer your call. The phone rang on his desk, his eyes glued to your picture lighting up the screen, but he let it ring. His fingers twitched to pick up the call, and he dialled back almost right away, but he just… needed to have your voice.

It was just supposed to be for when he missed you, that’s it, just to hear you when he was lonely. Now here he is, about to put his cock inside some other girl, pressing play.

“Caleb! Are you screening my calls? Well, I miss you so much. There’s some crazy drama in my new dorm, you wouldn’t believe it. I have so much to tell you! Please, I need you to come visit soon. I love you! Bye!”

The way his cock goes from wilting to rock hard should have him institutionalized. It’s so innocent, nothing about what you say should be getting him off like this, but it’s you , so of course it does.

He pulls his boxers down just enough to have his weeping length out, rutting against your thigh before he rolls on the condom. His hand drags up your hips, no patience left to be gentle, unhurried. Then he’s pulling aside your panties, having wasted enough time as it is, the wetness against his fingers as he stokes along your folds the premiere evidence of such.

This is the part Caleb has no comparison for, the part where he can finally just lose himself. In this moment, you really do clench on the fingers that he sinks into your cunt, your walls tight around him as he fucks into you. And when he curls his knuckles, your whole body shakes, pleased in a way that only Caleb can satisfy in you.

“So good for me. Such a good girl, so perfect for me.” You drip a mess around him as your cunt spasms, and if Caleb waits one more second he’s going to come before he even gets to be inside of you.

If it was really you under him, he’d be so much more gentle, careful, and tender with the way he’d make love to you. But this is the version of you of his dreams, the one he can fuck into the mattress as hard as he wants.

His cock buries inside of you in one thrust, all the way until he’s grinding the hilt against your entrance. You are so goddamn tight, squeezing his cock like he’s meant to be there. And he is, because how else would you fit so perfectly together, two halves completed by the other.

He can’t thrust yet, not until he brings his whole body down on top of you, feels how small you are against the wide expanse of him. His pipsqueak, his sister, shuddering on his cock, gasping when his hand grabs onto your neck, cutting off a moan as you melt into the press of his fingers.

That’s when he starts to thrust, with his face buried in your hair and his hand around your throat.

“Good girl, take it. I know you can.”

He gives you light squeezes, just enough to elicit a strangled gasp with each rut inside of you. Do you love this as much as he does? Your submission, the power you hand over to him so easily? He imagines what it must feel like, the sensory overload with the blindfold over your eyes, your brother choking you as he fucks his cock deep inside of you. Cut off from the rest of the world, feeling only him. The only one you let have you like this.

Caleb feels himself getting close, but just teeters on the edge. His free hand reaches for his phone, scrubs through the voicemail with practiced precision, knowing just where to find the part he needs.

“—so much to tell you! Please, I need you to come visit soon. I love you!”

Yes, and just like that, he’s almost there, balls tight, fucking into you so roughly now, inhibition stripped away as he chases his release. “You feel so good, so tight, need you so bad it hurts, pipsqueak.”

He just needs a bit more, just needs your voice again, needs your permission. 

“Please, I need you to come—“

And at your command he does, thrusting in short frantic bursts as he fills the condom, releasing his hold on your throat as he collapses. 

The girl beneath him is crushed into the bed, breathing heavily. She removes the eye-mask, quiet for only the briefest afterglow before she speaks. “So, um. What did you just call me?”

Oh no. He should kill himself, shouldn’t he?

Caleb doesn’t need to pull out, his cock as soft as humanly possible as he gets up off of her. He puts on the most innocent voice he can, playing dumb and deflecting like he always does. “Maybe you were just hearing things. Sorry, I know I got a bit intense there. Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you, right?”

“It just sounded a lot like… you know what, nevermind. That was fun. We should do that again sometime.”

He knows there can’t be a next time. But he can’t leave room for her to ask for his number, so he tries his best to exchange embarrassment for boyish charm. “I’ll see you around campus?”

She doesn’t press anymore than that, accepts his puppydog eyes as enough of a promise. He’s a real gentleman too, getting her a warm, moist towel to clean up with. He even helps her dress, if only to get her out the door as quickly as possible.

Once he’s alone, the self-loathing comes to eat him alive.

This can’t happen ever again. He knows this. He’s made this same oath what feels like a hundred times, but now, he has to take it seriously. What would you think if you knew? Would you be jealous, to know he’s been with anyone else? But how could he explain that it was always about you. That you’re the only one he could ever want. Maybe you’d just be repulsed, but worse, maybe you’d be afraid of him. And Caleb can’t chance that, can’t risk ever letting you see the corruption of his very soul.

So he’ll move on. Really, truly. Starting now, he’ll be such a good brother to you. Just your brother. The only thing he’s meant to be.

He opens up Moments, not to see what you’re up to, but as a distraction from his thoughts. As he scrolls, he sees a picture of Gideon from earlier today, a groupshot of him and his study group. Nothing Caleb hasn’t seen before, except… huh.

That one girl looks so much like you.