STARRING: xavier, zayne, rafayel, sylus & caleb x reader
synopsis: you decide to be a bit of a tease to your boyfriend(s) and give them a good little peek. but you're freaks. of course it'll be more than just that. they'll always make sure you finish what you start. and if you can't, don't worry, they can take care of it for you!
warnings: porn no plot, backshots, inappropriate use of evol, super hard boners, masturbation, spanking, bathtub sex, public sex, cockwarming, dry humping, cunnilingus, panty fucking, choking, your men are just nasty freaks for you.
wc: 5.4k in total, roughly 1000 per li
an: happy belated birthday, @jadestone2!! here's one of the gifties i have for you <3. hope you all enjoy!
MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!
XAVIER
There’s never a day where Xavier doesn’t believe the moments he wakes up from his naps aren’t blessings hidden as disruptions.
Last week, he woke up to see you watering his plants looking like a cute bunny in one of his many hoodies. Two days ago he woke up to you halfway through placing a pillow beneath his head because he somehow landed up sleeping on the floor.
Today, he woke up to you cooking lunch for both of you. In nothing but one of his old sweaters.
It’s a particularly short sweater, even for him. The way it rides up your curves each time you reach for the cabinet hypnotises him. It’s like he’s in a trance, the way he hops off the couch — bedhead and all — and stalks slowly behind you like a predator about to catch his prey.
Though, in this case, he is technically your prey.
The outfit was a deliberate move from you. You had planned it the moment you realised he was asleep on the couch. You decided that instead of waking him like you usually would to teach him how to cook without burning the apartment down, you’d instead give him a surprise to wake up to.
You blame ovulation, you just haven’t gotten to spend that much time with him since you’re both so so busy. Your fingers and vibrator definitely weren’t enough to substitute for the immense pleasure he gives you. Why not give him a little treat?
Xavier can feel himself throbbing in his pants by the time he reaches the kitchen. He doesn’t even have to glance down to know that his length is poking hard against his sweatpants forming a large tent. Judging from how the pulsation and heat down there is growing by the second, he’s definitely leaking precum from his slit.
His mouth waters at the sight of you simply humming to yourself while you chop away at the vegetables on the cutting board. Each and everything you do brings his cock to an almost painful throb.
The way your ass looks so soft and plush and barely hidden beneath his sweater— his sweater— boils deep in his core, so deep that all the blood rushing straight to his cock gets him lightheaded.
His hands start grabbing the air in state of being half-sleepy half-horny for you. If you could just bend over just a little bit—
And you do. Fuck yes, you do.
You drop the your knife to the floor, quickly hopping on the spot to avoid the blade. In your eyes, you dodged a very sharp bullet. In Xavier’s, you just drove him deeper into his insatiable abyss of hunger for you.
The jump alone pushed the sweater up as far as your waist, revealing that delicious curve of your ass, your hip dips that he loves to lick and grip on, and your spine— fuck, he loves staring at your back.
“Oh my fuck,” You cuss under your breath and bend over to pick it up. The remaining blood in his brain is about to shoot out of his nose. He could cum on the spot. Being blessed with such a sight of your cunt openly greeting him makes his knees buckle. Drool is dripping from the corners of his mouth. Fuck.
Xavier has to fight the urge to just moan out loud from the sight alone. The way his cock keeps bouncing inside his sweats rubbing his tip against the fabric doesn’t make the situation any easier for him. He’s glued to the spot, hypnotised, enamoured, pussy drunk before he even gets a taste of you.
“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” He mutters under his breath. Not even a blink later Xavier finds himself on his knees right behind you— he teleported because he was mentally stuck to the ground.
You obviously sense the change in the air, along with the new sense of warmth radiating right behind you.
“Xavier- oh.” You glance over your shoulder to find him nuzzling his head on your thighs, rambling incomprehensible words so fast you can barely catch on. A warm wet slither travels up your thighs and close to your core.
“Let me have a taste.” His whines. It would have been a command if it wasn’t for how high pitched his voice becomes each time he speaks. “Fuck, let me taste— please, let me taste."
Smiling to yourself, you sigh in relief that he finally woke up. “Of course, baby, take what you need.”
His mind snaps, shatters, splits into pieces—your affirmation is everything he needs to hear to plant his face between your cheeks and slither his tongue right into your cunt.
You both moan shamelessly from the contact, Xavier from tasting you and you from feeling you after so, so long. You hand immediately drops to his head to push him closer and closer, his hands fondling and squeezing your ass like a stress toy. It’s the only thing keeping him from stroking himself.
His hips jut up your leg in rhythm, bringing him to rut on you and spread his pre all over you through his soaked sweatpants.
“So good.” His muffled voice praises you. “You taste so good, fuck.”
Your grip tightens on the soft tufts of his hair, burning hot into his scalp from his fingers reaching your bud of nerves. He circles, pinches, and rubs at your clit like he’s desperately trying to make you cum as quickly as possible.
“Xavier,” You whine, practically grinding on his face making his head bob in tandem with your needy ruts. “Need you inside.”
Literally anything you say can be a buzzword in his ears. Xavier shoots up to his feet, ignoring the dizziness that strikes his body in a flash to push his sweatpants down low enough for his cock to audibly slap his abdomen.
His cock continuously bounces up and down, smacking his skin with his leaky tip to create a sticky string connecting his cock to his stomach. The lewd imagery is riveting, mind numbing, he can barely think straight. He doesn’t even notice you aligning his cock with your hand, stroking him while his brain goes dumb from desire.
“Snap out of it!” You hiss, practically losing balance from how much your pussy aches for him. “Xavier!”
A switch must have gone off to have him immediately slip inside until he bottomed out fully inside you. His arms wrap tight around your waist and he immediately ruts into you like he’s got a point to prove.
“‘M gonna make you feel real good, baby.” He groans, licking a wet stripe of spit up the length of your neck to your jaw. “Gonna make you feel so good.”
ZAYNE
Zayne can feel himself losing threads of his control. He can feel his cock beginning to strain against the confines of his slacks.
All because you’re bending over to pick up a fork he dropped.
It wasn’t on purpose, he swears. It was just that his hand slipped while he was talking to you. One long look at that beautiful face of yours, watching you laugh and his hand slips pushing the fork to the floor. He can’t help himself, he’s just so down bad when it comes to you.
What he hadn’t expected was for you to stand and reach to pick it up, despite him telling you it’s okay. What he really hadn’t seen coming was that you’d turn away from him and bend over, showing that you were barely wearing anything underneath your skirt.
And by barely, there was a very clear opening of the crotch area revealing your pussy to his eyes and his alone.
By the time you stand up straight, ice was creeping up his neck to cool his face down and reduce the blatant blush spreading across his face and ears.
“You okay?” You ask as you place the fork back down by his plate. You fight the muscles on your face to keep yourself from grinning. Zayne only nods as if the ice has stiffened his neck.
You chuckle to yourself, he’s so cute. If it isn’t the sugar he relishes in consuming whenever he gets the chance, it’s how flustered he gets. Cheeks reddened, struggling to maintain eye contact… it’s all so cute until he starts to get back at you for putting him in that state.
You begin to turn away until his hand catches your wrist, grip cold and needy. Before you can even ask, you find yourself being tugged towards him, hearing the faint ruffle of his pants being unzipped and then the soft schlick of your cunt being stuffed by his cock.
“Not a sound.” His voice is cold as steel yet dripping with desire, holding you down tight by the waist to stop you from moving. You can just feel him twitching inside you.
“I could’ve held back and waited until we reached the car but seeing you in that lace,” He adjusts, jutting his cock up deeper into you but not giving you the pleasure of fucking you good in the middle of the cafe. “Seeing that delicious pussy… you must be shameless.”
Feeling a slew of moans brimming at the back of your throat, you bite your lip hard enough to make it bleed just to hold yourself back. You wanted this the entire time but you didn’t expect it to happen this early. Not to mention literally sitting in a full cafe while cockwarming your lover.
If anything, the goal you had in mind was to get him riled up enough to humble you in his car. This, however, looks like it’ll be so much better.
“You’re getting so wet, my love.” Zayne whispers, feeling more at ease as his evol relaxes. His lips press hot kisses on the shell of your ear. His breath is hot on your skin and his once ice cold hands tighten their hold on your waist. “Is sitting on my cock in front of all these people turning you on?”
You won’t lie, it is turning on. You’re soaked through and through to the point where your arousal slick is dripping onto his pants. If it isn’t the way he’s teasing you in that hushed sexy voice of his, it’s his girthy length pulsating deep inside you.
Your walls involuntarily clench on him, making squelches loud enough for the couple in the booth behind you to hear. Zayne can feel his control slipping, feeling the plush of your ass so comfy on his lap, the way your pussy is just clamping tight on him— he just has to remind you to behave.
He raises your hips just a bit and slams you back down on his cock with a soft plap. You both have to swallow your noises of pleasure. Zayne can’t help himself but fondle your ass beneath your skirt, feeling that soft flesh that he loves so much.
“Zayne,” You whimper, feeling your core tighten in heat. “I need you.” There’s only so much discipline you have when it comes to cockwarming him— and being in a literal public space doesn’t make the matter any easier.
“Talk to me, darling.” Zayne murmurs, nudging your legs apart with his knee to grant himself access to your throbbing clit. Discreetly under the table, his fingers find your sensitive nub covered by sheer lace and gently rubs and teases you in cruel, rough circles.
“This is what you wanted, no?” He muses, now using two fingers to pinch and pull at your clit while his hips twitch into yours— a clear indicator of him being close. He would never admit it out loud, but the risk was turning him on too.
“After all that teasing, wearing those panties here for me to see, you didn’t think I’d give you just what you need?”
Before you can even muster a response, loud screams erupt around you followed by scrambles of people rushing to leave the cafe. You both snap out of your trance to see wanderers lurking outside the cafe and citizens rushing to escape.
Out of impulse, you move to stand up only to be held back down, deeper into Zayne’s length.
“Zayne, the—“
“Look, hunters have already been dispatched.”
You glance out the window to see a hoard of hunters already in battle against the wanderers, swiftly moving people out of the way. Mind still fuzzy from being stuffed, you ease back into his embrace.
“And since the cafe’s empty…” Zayne grins into your nape and presses a wet kiss on your skin. His hands roughly push your skirt high up your waist, relishing in the sight of your plump ass so close to him.
He pumps his cock right into your cunt, shamelessly moaning into your ear as you whine from his ministrations. “Let’s take care of this needy pussy.”
RAFAYEL
He probably shouldn’t have asked you to join him in the bath.
Yes, you hadn’t seen him in a week, and yes the only time you could see him without disruption was coincidentally his bathing time. Buuuuuut… a little bath wouldn’t hurt, right?
WRONG! Rafayel can feel his cock rising beneath the water. He’s struggling to think. Look at you, reaching for the shampoo on the little side table next to the bath. Stretching so nice that he can watch droplets of water cascade down your spine and fall into the crack between your plump ass cheeks.
Don’t get him wrong, he’s seen you naked more than enough times to be well accustomed to seeing your posterior— he’s painted you like this more than fifty times. But this particular sight is something that not even paint can accurately capture.
He watches you spread your legs wider, exposing your core right to his hungry eyes.
“Fuck.” Rafayel curses under his breath. He wraps his hand wraps tight around his cock, slowly pumping his shaft beneath the water.
“What’s wrong?” You muse, wriggling your hips just enough to make your ass bounce and smack the water.
Just enough to tease him. Just enough to make him lose his patience, grab you by the hips and fuck you so good that half the water in the tub ends up splattered on the floor— along with a few other fluids.
You know just how much Rafayel loves your ass, plump and soft just for him to fondle and nibble on. You’d found paintings scattered around his studio and even more bound within his sketchbooks, all having a small note of his insatiable thirst for you.
Don’t get him started on the view he gets when he takes you from behind.
He’s shamelessly stroking his cock, feeling the heat of unbearable pleasure surge through his veins. He has a very strong feeling you know what you’re doing, rudely moving like that for him. Precum mixes with water and his breath goes heavy.
“Is it that hard to get shampoo?” He huffs in a huskier tone, one you easily recognise as him getting more aroused. “Can’t be that hard, cutie.”
“Can’t seem to reach it,” You deliberately whine, dramatically arching your back for the water to collide with your skin like a wave crashing with the shore. All that work and Rafayel just doesn’t seem to budge.
“Uh huh.” He’s in a daze. Eyes locked like glue on your ass, watching your sweet nectar start to drip from your core, almost as if your pussy could sense the rise of desire in his cock. You are his bride, after all. It’s only natural to share each other’s desires.
“Just— just keep trying.” His words slur as the sounds of his hand stroking his cock grow louder just enough for you to hear. “You’ll get it.”
The splashing and rhythmic pumps definitely catch your awareness, and that only irritates you more. Why isn’t he doing anything about it? You softly grunt and snatch the shampoo from the counter, ensuring you lean back directly above his crotch.
“Got it!” You grin and glance over your shoulder. And my, my, my, is he a sight for sore eyes.
His cheeks are flushed redder than a tomato, his hand shamelessly jerks away at his length to pleasure himself while his eyes are locked on your ass.
“You were ignoring me on purpose!” You huff, hitting his face with water to catch his attention.
“Do you even know what you do to me when you act like this?” Rafayel releases his cock from his grip and holds your hips to align your pussy with his throbbing length. “I just had to wait for you to come back.”
You can feel your eyes twitching. “I wanted you to lean over me and fuck me senseless, Raf, why do you think I was taking so long?!”
“Oh.” There he goes with that faux shock. “I thought you were just struggling. Wasn’t really surprised. But now that I know what you want…”
He swiftly pulls you onto him while raising his hips, filling you to the brim with his cock. He doesn’t waste any time to start snapping his hips to pound his cock as deep as it can possibly go— which isn’t that hard considering you’re soaked like a fucking sponge.
Your eyes roll as soon as he hits that delicious sensitive spot instantly, moans ripping from your throat to echo around his bathroom like a lewd symphony. His leaky cockhead continuously pokes that gummy spot as if it’s target practice. You can barely keep up with how hard he’s going, your balance keeps slipping from being half submerged with water despite the death grip you have on the edges of the tub.
“Rafa—“ Choke on your moans, practically hypnotised by the way the water moves with you, drenching you, him, and the floor completely. His thick length just stretches you out so so good you can barely think straight, your only ambition is to squeeze around him tight enough to memorise each vein— as if you haven’t already.
“Not— fuck— not gonna last long—“ Even better for you. You want to have him fill you up, that’s what you’ve been aching for the entire time.
“Don’t hold back,” You squeeze around his cock tighter forcing your walls to clench as hard as you can, stringing out a noise from his lips that sounds like a mix of a moan and a whimper. “Want you to cum deep inside.”
The water jumps out of the bathtub and up Rafayel’s thighs as your hips roll in tandem with his thrusts, landing a noisy slap of his sacks against your clit— only bringing you closer to unravel on his cock.
The schlap schlap schlap of soaked skin colliding in an obscene tempo begins to create a symphony in his head that he forces himself to memorise. The pieces he could create from the sounds of your pleasure could make audiences break down into tears.
“Gonna fill you up good,” Rafayel muses right into your ear. “All that teasing… you deserve it, don’t you?”
You can barely speak from how hard you’re going, grinding your hips on his to chase your pleasure while bringing him to his own undoing. All you can do is nod, and that’s all the signal he needs to keep going.
And he won’t stop for a while.
SYLUS
You have no business bending down like that.
Especially not on his bed. In one of his many tailored shirts that barely cover your torso because it keeps slipping off your shoulder. Bending over his bed to reach for your book.
Why were you bending over in such a scandalous position? It’s simple, really. You threw your book off the bed in the midst of your cuddle/reading session because you read an unexpected plot twist. A very erotic plot twist.
Sylus had made a soft yet audible whine when you pried his hands off your waist but his little noises — which only you have the privilege of hearing — fell to silence when you crawled to the edge of the bed and leaned right over the edge, leaving the image of you straddling air for him to consume.
“Need help, sweetie?” Sylus muses as he watches your struggle, both amused and aroused. A very familiar hardening length is starting to push out of his robe’s parted front— and he conveniently decided not to wear anything apart from his robe tonight.
“Nope.” You huff over your shoulder. The book is more than an arm’s length away— why did you throw it so aggressively?
You’d been in that position for longer than you intended, fully absorbed on the goal of taking your book. What’s taking you so long was the fact that you are about to fall off the bed. Feeling gravity attempt to pull you to the floor (again), you swiftly wiggle your ass as you move your legs bit by bit to push you further into the bed.
All Sylus can see is the ricochet of your soft cheeks with each movement. It takes so much deep restraint to not crawl to you and bite your ass just for the fun of it.
But he’ll have to distract himself even if his eyes refuse to look away. “How’s the search going?”
“Terribly.” You huff— but it sounds more like a suppressed moan from stretching your body to abnormal lengths to reach for that damn book.
That just makes it worse for your poor kindred lover. His hard on reveals itself by pushing his robe out of the way— that’s just how strong his love and desire is for you when you unintentionally tempt him. Now imagine what happens when it’s deliberate.
He doesn’t even try to touch himself, knowing the eventual slick noises will catch your attention. It’s becoming unbearable to watch you in the midst of your hunt, trying to keep his eyes on you when all he can see is your arched back accentuating the curve of your ass all while his length twitches and leaks in his peripheral.
Each movement of your reaching forward or rebalancing yourself made your flesh jiggle. Every. Single. Movement. That plush, softness that he’d always grip on tight when you clench on him hard, or that he’d smack soft or hard when he aches to hear you moan so deep in his ear that it’s engraved into his every thought.
When you move one more time, if you jiggle that ass one more time— and you eventually do— Sylus closes his eyes in blissful resignation.
Fuck it.
Smack!
It’s been hours. Hours since he pounced on you.
His hand collides with your cheeks to watch that delicious, cock throbbing ricochet that makes him harder and harder than he’d like to admit.
You’re hours deep into him being deep inside you, still bent well over the edge of your bed with the only thing keeping you in place being his powerful grip on your hips.
“I feel like you did that on purpose.” Sylus purrs and pulls your hips flush against his to ensure you can feel the curve of his cock dive into your pussy with each powerful thrust. “You could’ve hopped off the bed— ffuck— and yet-“ smack! “You chose to be a tease instead.”
You can only respond with a giggle that sounded more like a moan. Blood is rushing to your head like a current, your hands grip the bedding to claw at every time he pounds your weeping pussy harder and harder just how you like it.
Was it intentional? Maybe.
In your defence, you did actually throw the book out of shock. You were about to simply hop off the bed to make it quick but you had stopped and came up with the idea to tease your lover. Just a little bit. You did neglect the fact that you weren’t wearing anything under his shirt that you wore and that the book made you wetter than you’d like to admit.
Another thing you underestimated was that Sylus is down horrendously bad for you. So down bad that seeing your pussy glisten in the dimmed lights while you’re bent over the edge of the bed would drive him mad.
“Took— took you long enough!” You whined as a harder push of his hips almost threw your off the bed, bringing you closer to your edge (for the fifth time tonight).
The position you are in is just too good. The bed’s already soaked through and through with cum from both of you that somehow managed to leak out of your hole while he’s been plowing you. Your skin is warm and sticky with sweat and slick adding extra deliciously maddening friction for every time your hips collide.
Sylus is grinding— no, rutting on your ass, moaning loud into your ear from how soft and cushy it feels, how your pussy literally swallows his cock and refuses to let him out.
“Keep squeezing me like this and we’ll end up making a big mess, Kitten.” He seethes, bending over your body to lick the shell of your ear while his cock still ravages you, dragging through your gummy walls until its shape is ingrained in you.
“S-Sy!” You whine. You can feel yourself falling. At an instant, a gust of black and red mist swirls round your body and raises you both to keep you in place.
“Relax, I got you.” That purr is more than enough to make you cum again. “I’m not done yet. You teased me with this pretty ass of yours.” Another smack! hits your skin— you’re sure it’ll leave a mark of his hand.
“I plan to make the most of it tonight.”
CALEB
He can literally smell your arousal in the air.
It’s not even like you’re doing anything. He can just smell it.
That sweet musk that he chases to inhale whenever he does your laundry. That delicious scent the snorts into his brain whenever his face is locked between your legs slurping up your slick to satiate his thirst that only you can provide.
You aren’t doing anything. Just lying on the couch. Legs spread. Wearing as little as a crop top and one of his favourite panties. One that he’s definitely used for other purposes.
Lying on the couch with a pillow underneath your abdomen to keep you comfy while you scroll away on your phone. Lying on the couch with your ass up in the air, panties bunching in to accentuate your curvaceous form.
You aren’t doing anything. And that’s the problem.
Your legs hang casually over his lap, directly above his crotch. You can literally feel his boner growing beneath you but you’re playing it off, pretending you don’t even notice. Pretending you don’t even notice the strain in his voice, the need brewing in his core like a pot boiling over onto the stove.
“D-Do you mind, uh—“ Caleb stops himself before a moan slips out from his lips. His knuckles are about to turn white from how hard he’s gripping the couch to stay in place. Anything to stop his hips from acting out of their own accord.
“Huh?” You stretch your legs right over his bulge, making sure you rub just enough to build up friction. You’re such a tease.
Caleb’s rendered speechless. He squeezes his eyes shut, breathing heavy through his nostrils to gather some level of control. Jokes on him, that flew out the window the moment he saw your ass.
He can’t seem to stop staring at it. Seeing how you naturally get wet just from being within his proximity, how your slick coats your underwear and exaggerates the puff of your pussy lips especially when you’re horny, how he can literally smell it—
“Caleb?”
His throat goes dry hearing his name leave your lips. Not even, he’s salivating. Literally dribbling from the mouth like he saw a meal after weeks of not eating. He might as well assume that is the case.
“Yeah?” He chokes out while forcing himself to pull his gaze away from your ass. What was he trying to ask earlier? “Oh— you mind moving your legs a bit? I need to stretch.”
“Stretch?” You innocently ask — but that grinch-like grin slapped on your face only widens. “You just sat down.”
That is just all the confirmation he needs to know you’re doing this intentionally. He sighs and grips your thigh. Tight.
“I’m going to turn over and eat you out through your panties if you don’t let me stand up.”
You didn’t expect him to fold that quickly. Usually, when either of you play this teasing game, it can take up to hours for either of you to fold— be it literally grinding on each other or using subtle innuendoes. This time, he looks extra needy for you.
You turn to look at him over your shoulder, wondering if he’s joking. He’s not. His eyes are practically turning another colour from all that arousal brimming deep within him, not to mention the his hard length raging in his pants.
“Yeah?” You tilt your head, gracing him with a Cheshire grin. Caleb doesn’t even bother speaking. He plants his face right onto your clothed cunt while the rest of his body follows suit, laying comfortably in a makeshift sniper position to eat your pussy until you soak the couch.
“Fuck yeah.” His breath is hot on your skin, prickling goosebumps all over your body.
He can hear the squelching gush of your arousal spill out of your pussy like a bursting faucet. His tongue slurps up a taste of your desire through your panties, suckling as much of your taste through the fabric as he can.
He might ruin this pair of panties but he’s more than happy to take you out to buy replacements— just to ruin them later.
Your taste is divine, heavenly. He could worship you every damn day if you ask him to. He’d do anything to drown in your taste, your scent, in you. It all just feels too good not to rut his cock on the bed like a dog in heat.
“Oh, fuck, Caleb,” You sigh into the cushion trapped between your arms, bucking your hips back for him to ravage you completely. No matter how many times either of you try to tease each other, nothing beats the satisfaction that comes from breaking.
The way his clothed cock just perfectly fit in the junction between the cushion and couch is mouth watering. Eating you out while the stimulation going off in his cock like alarms is more than enough to make him cum, but he’d never waste his seed on something that isn’t you.
Caleb reluctantly pulls his face away from your core and strokes himself while he aligns his cockhead with your sobbing cunt. “I think I’m gonna ruin these panties, baby.”
“No, they’re my favourite!” You whine at the feeling of his cock rubbing up and down your clothed cunt, the stimulation from how wet you are makes your back arch like a cat. “Don’t you dare.”
“Don’t worry,” You can practically hear the smile spread on his face as he leans over you to press his cockhead into your cunt, pushing his panty-covered tip inside. “I’ll just fuck your panties a little bit. Then I’ll give you just what you need.”
The mere heat of his tip throbbing inside you drives you into a lust-dazed frenzy. You hump your hips in tandem with his short, torturous thrust, relishing in his swallowed moans from how your soaked panties rub on him just right.
“So tight,” He whines into your ear, arm slithering under your head to put you in a gentle headlock, just the way you like it. “Pussy’s so tight— fuck—“
Caleb’s arm slides between you to tug your panties to the side then slides his cock right inside, slow and deep. The tight fill just burns so good that you both make noises loud enough for anyone outside the house to hear.
“This is so mmmuch better,” You smile into his arm.
“Yeah?” The muscles of his biceps and triceps bulge as he tightens his headlock on you. You choke on your breath just as his cock starts to pound into your cunt, wet plaps from his hip smacking your ass sounding in the living room. “Good. We’re gonna stay like this. Nice ’n snug. Til neither of us can think."
NERD!ZAYNE TEACHING THE GUYS HOW TO MAKE YOU CUM, SQUIRT AND OTHER TRICKS. Part 3.
Guess who's free from the mature label? 🥳🙌🏻
Part 1 Part 2 Part 4 Part 5
The walk back to your apartment felt surreal, it felt like stepping out of a fever dream into something cold and sad. Zayne's dorm room had been suffocating before you left. Caleb, Rafayel, Xavier, even Sylus fought over who'd take you home. Zayne stayed by the window, quiet, but his eyes followed every move you made. You turned them all down. Heart hammering, you scrambled out the door before anyone could stop you, desperate for air, for space, for anything that wasn't his room.
How were you supposed to look at them now?
The images wouldn't stop. You had seen them hard and visibly leaking through their clothes just from watching you. The memory of Xavier’s dark eyes right before he buried his face between your thighs made your stomach flip. And Zayne—God, his voice. That calm cracking into something that ordered you to let go. It wouldn't leave you alone.
Now, sitting in the university library three days later, you couldn't focus on a single line of text in front of you. You were supposed to be studying, but the quiet just made the noise in your head louder. Close your eyes for even a second and you felt it again, four fingers buried inside you, stretching you past what you thought you could take, your pussy clenching around them in little aftershocks. The warmth of Zayne’s cum soaking through his trousers against your bare ass.
The library's silence felt exactly like the silence after you'd come.
Dread settled low in your chest. Was this it? Had you wrecked the only thing that ever felt safe? You hadn't seen any of them in days—dodging texts, taking the long way to class, hiding in corners of campus you didn't even know existed. Two years of friendship and you'd thrown it all away because a little bit of alcohol got you horny. Fuck!
You didn't hear the sneaker scuff against carpet a few rows over. Didn't notice the eyes tracking the nervous way your finger kept dragging across your bottom lip.
Rafayel stood half hidden by art history, knuckles white against the shelf, watching you with the same burning focus he'd had three nights ago.
Forty eight hours after you fled Zayne's dorm, the deadbolt on his door slid shut again. Everyone—except you— was back again.
Caleb leaned against the wall spinning a basketball on his finger until it dropped, thudding against the floor. He'd mutter something under his breath, scoop it up, start over. Rafayel paced the strip of carpet between the twin beds, flipping through a stack of index cards he wasn't reading—snap, snap, snap. Sylus stood by the window with his back to the room, fingers tapping some restless rhythm against the glass. Xavier was the only one still, flat on his stomach on Zayne's bed, chin in his hands, staring blankly at a stray bobby pin left behind on the floor. Zayne sat at his desk pretending to study an anatomy chart. He'd adjusted the lamp three times. Tried to ignore the testosterone fogging up his room. But between the ball, the pacing, and the tapping, focus was a lost cause.
He slammed his textbook shut, took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Caleb dropped the ball.
"Stop pretending," he said, voice dropping into flat calm. "You didn't come here to study. Just say what you actually want to say so I can kick you all out."
Silence. Quick, guilty glances passed between them—nobody wanting to be the one to crack first, to admit they'd all been picturing the same thing. You, two nights ago, coming apart under their hands.
Rafayel cleared his throat first, tossing his index cards onto the bed "Fiiiiine. Hypothetically. Say a guy's already inside a girl. All the way in. How do you hit that spot? Is there a specific angle?"
A muscle jumped in Zayne's jaw. "The angle doesn't change just because your dick is inside her, Rafayel. Shallow thrusts, angled up. Not just slamming into her. Though I doubt you have the stability to hold that for long."
"I have great stability!" Rafayel hissed, ears burning pink, thumb rubbing against his middle finger as the memory of you made his pulse spike.
"He once held a paintbrush at the exact same angle for an hour straight," Xavier offered, not lifting his chin from his hands.
"See? Stability."
"That's your wrist, Rafayel. Different muscle group entirely," Caleb said.
From the bed, Xavier's voice cut through again, quiet and lazy. "What about when she's on top? Or on the edge of a desk. How do you go down on her so she can grind as hard as she wants? For when she needs to control the movements herself."
Caleb snorted "A desk? Real smooth, Xavi."
"Better than what you're about to ask."
"You don't even know what I'm about to ask."
"I've known you for two years. I know exactly what you're about to ask.”
Caleb's ears went red, but he plowed ahead anyway. "Okay. Hypothetically, say a guy's bigger than average. How's he supposed to use her mouth without hurting her throat?”
"Bigger than average?" Rafayel repeated.
"I am."
"Compared to what?”
"Compared to the general population."
"You've never seen the general population's dick. You've seen yours and you've seen ours and apparently that's all the data you needed?."
Caleb opened his mouth, found nothing, and closed it again.
Sylus finally stopped tapping the glass and a low laugh rumbled out of him "If a guy's significantly bigger than average…”
“Not you too…” Rafayel groaned
“How does he make sure he actually fits, without hurting her? If she's tight. Really tight. Where's the point her body just gives up and takes it?”
Zayne pinched the bridge of his nose again. "I cannot believe I'm hearing grown men compare dick sizes in my dorm room while pretending it's for science."
"It is for science," Caleb said.
"It is not for science, Caleb."
"Reproductive science."
"Get out of my room."
Nobody moved. Zayne let out a long breath through his nose, the kind that meant he was three seconds from actually losing it.
The silence came back, heavier.
Zayne put his glasses back on slowly, fingers locking onto the edge of his desk until his knuckles went white, whatever calm he usually wore was completely gone.
“Every single one of you needs patience and a lot less idiocy than you're currently showing," Zayne said "I'll answer each question once. Once. And then you're all getting the hell out of my dorm. Am I clear?”
Their faces stayed blank. None of them realized they were all in the same boat.
Rafayel thought he was the only one picturing your breasts. Caleb thought his face fucking question was a private fantasy about your mouth, Xavier was silently planning how to put his tongue to use on you again and Sylus was quietly calculating exactly how to stretch you open and how slow he'd have to go. They were entirely oblivious to the fact that not a single one of them was thinking about an imaginary girl. Every single question in that room had your name underneath it.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The shadow over your book solidified into something real. Rafayel had stepped out from behind the art history shelves, and walked straight over, pulled out the chair across from you, and dropped into it like he owned the table.
He propped his chin in his palm and smiled at you. Easy. Unbothered. Like three nights ago he hadn't had your leg pinned wide open over Zayne's leg, staring at you with eyes blown wide and wild.
"You've been reading the same page for ten minutes," he said, voice smooth, carrying that familiar teasing lilt like nothing in the world had changed. "Is it the most boring book ever written or are you hiding in here?"
Your mouth had gone dry. You closed the book slowly, hoping he wouldn't notice your hands weren't steady. "Just studying, Raf. Got a lot going on."
"Clearly," he said, dragging one finger in a slow circle against the table, eyes never leaving yours.
He didn't take the hint to go. He pulled a sketchbook out of his bag instead and started doodling something on the margins while you tried, and failed, to read the same sentence for the fourth time. Every few minutes he'd glance up, catch you watching, and smirk like he'd won something. You'd duck back to your notes. He'd go back to sketching. The cycle repeated itself until you couldn't tell if you were studying or being studied.
"You're doing it again," he murmured eventually, not looking up from his sketchbook.
"What?"
"Biting your lip…” He flipped the sketchbook closed before you could see what he'd drawn. "It's distracting."
"You're the one distracting me."
"I'm just sitting here, very quietly, minding my own business."
"You sat down across from me, uninvited."
"I go to this school. I'm allowed in the library." He grinned, and it was the same easy, infuriating grin he always wore.
When you finally packed up, he packed up too, slinging his bag over one shoulder and falling into step beside you without asking if that was okay. You walked across campus together. He talked sbout a canvas he was prepping, about a professor who kept docking him points for too much emotion in his color theory, about some gallery downtown that wanted his portfolio. Normal things. Easy things. He never once brought up the dorm. Never said Xavier's name, or Zayne's, or anything about orgasms or the sounds you'd made that day.
But it was there anyway. In every silence. In the half second too long his eyes dropped to your mouth mid sentence before flicking back up like nothing happened. In the way his shoulder kept finding yours on the narrow sidewalk, brief and electric, like he was doing it on purpose and daring you to call him out. You grabbed coffee. He ordered for you without asking, remembering exactly how you took it, and didn't comment when your fingers brushed his over the cup and you both pretended not to notice.
The whole afternoon felt like holding your breath.
By the time you made it back to your building Rafayel was still beside you. Still talking. Still walking like he had every right to be there. You didn't stop him at the stairs. You didn't stop him in the hallway. And when your key finally turned in the lock and the door swung open, whatever fragile, careful normalcy you'd both been playing at for the last three hours fell apart completely.
You barely had time to kick the door shut.
Rafayel's palms hit the wood on either side of your head, and then his mouth was on yours and there was no easing into it, no polite preamble, just him, kissing you like he'd been thinking about nothing else for three days. He tasted like dark coffee and barely leashed desperation. Your hands found his chest on instinct, fingers twisting into the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer.
He'd been your first crush out of all of them. The beautiful, dramatic, slightly impossible artist who always seemed to exist outside of your reach. And now he had you pinned against your own door.
"Three days," he breathed against your mouth "Three days of you hiding and leaving my texts on read."
"Raf—"
"I counted the hours." His forehead dropped to yours "I had to stop because… it was embarrassing."
His hands moved before you could say something else—down your neck, across your shoulders, fingers curling into the hem of your shirt and pulling it up and over your head. He dropped it somewhere. Didn't look where it landed. He was too busy looking at you.
He'd been replaying it for three nights straight, stroking his cock raw. The light catching your skin. Zayne's hands on you. The sounds you'd made. The image had lodged itself somewhere behind his eyes and refused to leave.
His fingers found the clasp of your bra, knuckles brushing the curve of your spine, and you shivered so hard it traveled through his hands. He undid it carefully—not slowly, he wasn't capable of slow right now—and slid the straps off your shoulders, tossing it aside.
"I kept thinking about this," he said, half to himself. "Zayne had his hands on you and I was sitting three feet away going completely insane." He had been dying to see your breasts again since he had seen your nipples turn tight under Zayne's fingers.
He cupped you gently, and the slight roughness of his palms against your skin pulled a sound out of you immediately. He felt it more than heard it.
"Yeah, just like that" he murmured.
His hands were trembling slightly, he noticed and hated it but couldn't stop it. His hands never trembled. But this was you, and you were looking up at him with those eyes, and his hands were shaking like he was an eighteen year old that had never touched anyone before in his life.
His thumbs dragged over your nipples as he watched your face, not your chest, the way your lips parted, the way your head tipped back an inch. Cataloguing. Filing it away. Learning the shape of you the way he learned everything—through touch, through attention, through taking his time even when every instinct was screaming at him not to..
"You have no clue," he said quietly, thumbs circling again, "what it was like to watch you and not be able to—" He stopped. Pressed his lips together. His jaw worked like he was deciding how honest to be. "I kept thinking about what sounds you'd make if it was just me. If I got to take my time."
His hands lifted your breasts slightly, testing the weight with the same attention he gave to everything he cared about. His eyes tracked the movement.
"I want to draw you like this someday," he said, almost offhand, like the thought had just surfaced. Then his gaze flicked up to yours. "Can I?.”
Your back arched off the door and he took that as the invitation it was, mouth closing over your right breast with a hungry sound that vibrated against your skin. His tongue worked tight circles around your nipple before he pulled it deep, sucking hard enough to make your knees buckle, hands moving to grip your waist to keep you upright. When he finally pulled off, he dragged his mouth across to the other side, slower this time, lips brushing the soft underside before he bit down carefully and then sucked until a mark bloomed red against your skin, exactly where he wanted it.
He pulled back just far enough to look at it. Something satisfied moved across his face.
"There," he said quietly before he pressed his face back into your skin and groaned like you were killing him.
You didn't fully register the part where you moved from the door to your bed. Clothes came off in pieces—his shirt somewhere by the desk, your jeans a problem that took both of you longer than it should have, both of you half laughing for about three seconds before his mouth found your throat and the laughing stopped. The sheets felt cold against your back when you finally went down. Rafayel was all heat, hovering over you, weight braced on one arm, looking down at you with the same burning eyes that had been watching you from across that library for the better part of an hour.
He'd shed his pants and underwear at some point. He was fully hard, thick and leaking, a bead of moisture gathered at the tip that made your stomach flip because you remembered what he'd looked like three nights ago, damp fabric, clenched jaw and eyes that couldn't look away from you.
He parted your thighs and settled between them. He'd painted you in his head a hundred times in the last three days. He kept going back to the image of you spread open and wanting, the way you'd looked when you were right at the edge. He'd tried to work through it. Picked up a brush, stared at a blank canvas, put the brush down. Made coffee. Stared at his phone. Almost texted you seventeen times.
He guided himself to your entrance, and Zayne's voice chose that exact moment to surface in his memory. "Shallow thrusts, angled up. You have to use your hips to angle the pressure up against the anterior wall with every thrust. And internal targeting alone isn't always enough. You'll need to add direct stimulation to her clitoris at the same time if you actually want her to cum."
He almost laughed. Instead he shifted his weight and looked at you with an expression that was equal parts focused and insufferable.
"I did some research..." he said.
"Raf..."
"For artistic purposes." He pressed forward, just barely, just enough to feel the heat of your pussy against the tip of his cock, and watched your face.
He let out a slow, shaking breath and pushed inside you.
The sound he made wasn't dignified. It was pulled out of him by the way you gripped him—tight and hot—your body drawing him in like it had been waiting specifically for him. He sank all the way to the hilt, pelvis pressed flush against yours, and stayed there for a moment with his forehead dropped to your shoulder and his jaw locked so hard it ached.
He needed a second. Just one second.
You were clawing at his shoulders, nails dragging, and the sting of it helped him focus.
Pull back. Shallow. Angle up. Zayne's voice was sitting in the back of his skull like an annotation in the margin of a textbook. He wanted to be annoyed about it, but not right now, he was going to be annoyed about it later. Right now he pulled back slowly, almost all the way out, felt you clench around the tip of his dick like you were trying to keep him inside, and thrusted back in with his hips tilted up.
The sound you made rattled something loose in his chest.
He felt it, the moment the angle caught, the way your whole body seized around him, legs snapping tight around his waist and heels digging into the small of his back trying to pull him deeper. He'd hit it exactly. The spot Xavier had worked open with his fingers three nights ago, and the memory of watching that—watching you cum for Xavier—made something possessive and dark curl through him.
It was his turn now.
He reached down between your bodies, fingers sliding through the slick until his thumb found your clit, swollen and twitching, and pressed down.
"Is that—" His voice broke halfway through the question. He cleared his throat, face burning. "Is that it?"
You answered by moaning his name, which he was choosing to take as a yes.
He kept the same rhythm, thumb working circles around your clit. Your walls fluttering around him in little pulses was making it extremely difficult to think. He had to remind himself several times that he was an artist. He had the patience. He was going to make you cum and squirt just like Xavier did.
His hands were shaking again.
"I've got you," he pressed his mouth to your temple, your cheek, wherever he could reach. "I've got you, I've got you, cutie"
He picked up the pace slowly, maintaining the angle through sheer stubbornness. The sounds filling the room were obscene—wet and unavoidable—and Rafayel didn't care about any of it because you were falling apart underneath him and he couldn't look away from your face.
He'd painted a lot of things. Spent years chasing the right light, the right color, the right moment that made something ordinary look like it meant something. He'd never painted anything that looked like you did right now and he was already furious at himself because he knew he would never be able to.
He drove into you harder, felt the headboard knock once against the wall, and decided he didn't care.
"You're so tight," he choked out, the words barely making it past his teeth, pressed into the wet skin of your neck. His lips dragged down to your collarbone, teeth grazing, and his thumb kept its pressure on your clit without mercy. "You keep...fuck...every time I hit it you...It feels so good"
The pressure was building fast, coiling low in your abdomen, that same terrifying weight you'd felt under Xavier's fingers—except this was different, this was Rafayel, his chest against yours and his mouth on your throat and you couldn't think about anything else.
You bore down without thinking, muscles releasing the way Zayne had told you to, pushing back against him, and Rafayel made a sound against your neck that was almost pained.
"Raf...please, I'm gonna..."
"Don't hold it, cutie. Give it to me" he whispered right against your ear.
A rush of heat soaked the sheets beneath you as you cried his name into the quiet room. Not a whisper. Not a gasp. His name, loud and completely undone.
Rafayel groaned like something in him gave way.
Whatever control he'd been holding onto—the careful rhythm, the patience, the angle, all of it, shattered the second he felt you cum around him. He buried himself as deep as he could go and followed you over the edge, shaking, both hands gripping your hips hard enough to bruise as he poured into you in long spurts.
He collapsed onto your chest.
His heart was slamming against your ribs, your fingers were tangled in his hair from some point you couldn't remember. The room was quiet except for both of you trying to remember how lungs worked.
His lips moved against your collarbone
"I sketched you. In the library today. While you weren't looking." His fingers traced something slow and shapeless against your ribs. "You looked like you were carrying something heavy." A breath. "I wanted to take it from you.”
If you asked to be tagged and I didn't it's because I couldn't find your username. If you are not on the list and want to be tagged on the next part let me know.
i hc that all the boys prioritize your pleasure over theirs, but they do cum differently from each other.
⭐ xavier - average cummer. won't cum too fast or too slow. he probably hasn't fucked in forever though so if he goes rough, he'll cum a bit faster than usual but can pleasure you in other ways. after cumming in you, he may fall asleep on top of you at times, his softening cock still inside you, and you honestly love it.
🐟 rafayel - unpredictable cummer. can cum fast or can cum slow, it depends on how worked up he is. if he cums fast, similar to xavier, he can pleasure you in other ways (with his tongue and fingers) until he can fuck you all over again. if he cums slow, and you get too overstimulated to continue, he'll let you pleasure him in other ways (blowjobs, boobjobs, handjobs, he's all for it honestly).
❄️ zayne - self-control cummer. can cum and can stop his orgasm with pure will. if he's got exemplary self-control outside, then that applies in the sheets. good luck when you take control though—zayne always wants to make you cum first. if you wanna make him cum first, you'll have to tell him, so that he'll loosen up and let you handle his orgasm. if you try to act cute in the middle of sex though, then his self-control goes out the window; he's instantly cumming inside you. congrats, you found a loophole.
🐦⬛ sylus - a big tease cummer. has no problem with cumming anytime he wants. he loves having power over you and making you think that you have power over him. he likes teasing you with his orgasms too. you wanna ride him and make him cum? he'll smirk up at you and enjoy it, not letting you make him cum just yet, just so he can see when you start furrowing your eyebrows in concentration. when you catch on, chances are, he won't stop, but pout at him enough and he'll assure you that his orgasms are all yours and he won't hold them back anymore for the fun of it (just until he wants to tease you again).
🍎 caleb - massive cummer. cums inside you fast but has a nonexistent refractory period. when he cums inside you, he fucks you through it until he's hurtling into another one. every time you have sex raw, you'll always feel so full during it, and he won't stop even when his cum practically gushes out of your hole around his cock. yes, he likes making love to you and taking it slow, but he also loves rutting into you like a dog. can you blame him? being inside you is heaven on earth to him. it's pure bliss, and he's waited for it for so long. of course, he's gonna keep emptying his balls inside you, his cum belongs inside your hole after all.
this all started because i was thinking of caleb's cum whew, i think i've typed the word 'cum' enough for the rest of the day
STOOD UP! — LADS MEN
˚˖𓍢ִ໋🦢˚ — staring across you was an empty seat, no boyfriend, no text, none at all. as you glance at your clock you realize it's been an hour and you've been stood up.
⋆˚꩜｡ cast — xavier, rafayel, zayne
𐔌՞. .՞𐦯 sylus, caleb, valko ver here!
🔖 tags — lads x non mc reader! hurt, no comfort, mentions of injuries, wounds and blood
݁ ˖Ი𐑼˖⋆ XAVIER
You haven't stopped tapping your foot on the ground as you stare at the clock bolted on the wall of the restaurant. Two hours have passed and your boyfriend was nowhere in sight.
"Miss I'm so sorry but if you're not able to give us an order you would need to give up the table."
The waiter looked at you with pity on her face, she had checked on you three times now, and there's a line forming at the front of the restaurant, you don't really blame them—they could've gained profit instead of letting you stay for too long alone. Still you tried to save face.
"I swear he's going to be here any minute—"
"I'm so sorry Miss, but this goes past our guidelines."
Sighing you nod, gathering your things and muttering a quick apology to the waiter. You walked with your head held high as the customers sitting next to you gave you pity looks.
You checked your phone again, expecting an apology, a text to explain why he was late and what you get was
"Star, I'm staying up late tonight to help MC with her training. Don't wait up."
You chuckled bitterly. This was the third date he forgot, or he was too tired to go on—sighing you searched for your car, and driving in complete silence. As you push the door of your shared apartment; you left your heels haphazardly near the door and took off the jewelry you spent hours making sure it matches with your outfit.
You didn't bother eating and just immediately went to bed after tidying up, and then you heard the door open with two person laughing. You clutched the blanket tightly as you close your eyes as you mutter.
"At least they had fun."
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 RAFAYEL
You were pissed to say the least.
You stood there in the pouring rain, the small tree barely covering you even though you were already soaked, waiting for your boyfriend.
You and him already planned to go on a picnic date, you dressed up nice in all his favorite colors and jewelry that matches his eyes, laid out the food, and made sure everything was perfect to his artistic eye.
You waited.
Then an hour past by.
2 hours.
3 hours.
You kept spamming Rafayel with messages, first excited, then it turns to worry and now you were just not having it. As you pressed the send— a small water drop splashed on your phone, as you looked up it dawned on you that it was about to rain.
Muttering curses you immediately scrambled to pick up the things you brought but that proved to no use as the rain continued pouring harder by the second until you and everything you brought with you was soaked.
You tried to open your phone to no use, the water probably got inside. Sighing you left what was unsalvageable and walked, until a familiar car stopped and the driver immediately got out.
"Cutie I'm so so sorry, MC messaged me this morning asking for help—and I thought we would be fast but a problem happened and—"
"Save it."
"Y/N I really am sorry! please!" Rafayel begged as he took off his coat to put it around you
"Call me a cab, I don't want to face you right now Raf. Let's talk at home."
"Y/N please don't do this I'll make it up to you."
Sighing as you look up at him and you don't even know if it was water or your tears that was running down your face.
"I'll believe it when I see it."
⎚-⎚ ZAYNE
You were sitting in the ER of Akso Hospital.
You shouldn't have been here, you were supposed to go a nice place you and Zayne picked out but now you're clutching your bleeding elbow.
You look at your cream dress, the upper left part covered in blood and you were feeling a little dazed already—probably from the blood loss.
"Doctor Zayne! why are you still here? I thought you and Y/N are going on a date today?"
Greyson's voice rings out of your ear as you see two individuals in your peripheral vision.
You see Zayne with his brows furrowed, his white coat a mess and it looks like he couldn't even give a shit about what Greyson said.
"I'll deal with it later, MC's condition worsened—I can't leave her like this."
You felt a pang of hurt go through your spine. He should've left early and went to the restaurant, looking at the clock you assumed that he would've just left you waiting like a fool. Sighing, you joked that the revelation hurt more than your arm which is still bleeding by the way—
"Y/N?" Greyson asked his voice sounding more pitiful than surprised, well who wouldn't? your boyfriend of two years is literally treating another woman while you're stuck on a chair probably losing more blood than you ever donated in your whole life.
Blinking repeatedly, you started seeing double before whispering a quick 'hey' to Greyson.
"What do you mean hey? you're not looking good, I should grab Zayne—" with all your might you clutched his coat, muttering sorry for making his coat look like a ketchup packet exploded on one side.
"Don't. I-I'm fine." You said as you began seeing black spots in your vision, you were obviously not fine at all.
"Fine? you're literally about to pass out—Hey! Somebody grab Doctor Zayne!" Was the last thing you've heard until the world suddenly turned dim.
˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗ A/N!...caleb, sylus, n valko coming soon,,im out of the trenches n i'm testing the waters....
༄ summary: At fifteen, you are saved from a storm by a Lemurian boy. Three years later, he washes ashore mute and mistaken, believing your cousin Mei is the girl he pulled from the sea. You know the truth, but the sea witch’s bargain demands a price before the third moon rises. You are faced with an impossible choice - tell him… or let him go.
༄ cw: MDNI!, fem!reader, non-mc reader, little mermaid au, fairytale au, princess!reader, MC is called Mei, unrequited love, mistaken identity, major character death, angst with no happy ending, hurt/no comfort, background mc x caleb, unbeta'd, unedited
༄ wc: 9.3k
༄ a/n: HAPPY VALENTINES DAY 🥹
༄ lads masterlist ༄ fairy tale aus ༄ AO3
The storm comes on your cousin's eighteenth birthday.
You remember this clearly.
The way the sky split open, the way the sea turned from sapphire to slate in the span of a single breath.
One moment the royal vessel is cutting through calm waters, lanterns strung along the rigging for the celebration, music spilling across the deck where Mei is laughing, radiant in a gown of soft lavender, her hair loose in the salt wind.
The next moment, the world tilts.
You are only fifteen.
You are not supposed to be on the upper deck.
You are not supposed to be on this ship at all.
Your uncle, the King, though you have called him Father for as long as you remember, forbade it.
The sea is no place for you, he said, the same words he has said every year since you were old enough to ask why Mei and the other children were permitted to play on the shore and you were not. It is the same careful refusal delivered with a tenderness that almost masked the fear beneath it.
You were only three years old when the sea took your parents.
Your real Father, the King's younger brother, had been dispatched on a diplomatic mission to the southern kingdoms. Your mother sailed with him, as she always did, because they were the sort of couple who did not do anything apart.
They left you in the palace with your nursemaid and your cousin Mei, who was six and who held your hand at the harbor and said, They will come back. They always come back.
They did not come back.
The ship went down in a storm three days out of port.
No survivors. No wreckage.
The sea swallowed them whole and offered nothing in return, not a plank, not a ribbon, not a body to bury. Your uncle closed the ports for a week of mourning and then closed them around you for the rest of your life.
You do not remember your parents.
You have a miniature portrait of them that you keep in a locket, and sometimes you study their faces and try to find yourself in them, the shape of their jaws, the set of their brows, the curve of their lips.
People say you have your Mother’s eyes.
You would not know.
All you know is that the King and Queen took you in without hesitation.
They gave you their name, their home, their love.
They raised you alongside Mei, and if there was ever a difference in affection between their daughter by blood and their daughter by grief, you never felt it.
The Queen braids your hair the same way she braids Mei's. The King reads to you at night from the same book of fairy tales you loved. When you are ill, they sit at your bedside and refuse to leave until you recover.
They love you.
You have never doubted this.
But they are afraid.
The guilt of your parents' death, the mission the King himself ordered, the ship he chose, the sea he sent his brother into, has hardened into something immovable, a conclusion that lives in the marrow of their bones.
The sea takes what they love.
The sea took the King’s only brother and his wife.
The sea will not take you too.
And so you are kept from the water.
The beach below the palace cliffs is forbidden.
The harbor is off-limits without an escort of no fewer than four guards.
You are not taught to swim.
You are not permitted on boats.
When the court sails for summer holidays, you remain behind with your tutors and your books and the loneliness of a girl watching from a window while everyone she loves disappears over the horizon.
And yet.
And yet.
You love the sea.
You love it the way a caged bird loves the sky.
You love the sound of it, the smell of it, the way the light changes when the tide shifts.
You sneak to the cliffs when your maids and guards are not watching and stand at the edge, letting the wind pull at your hair, breathing in salt air like you are starved of it.
The sea killed your parents.
You know this.
You understand deeply why your uncle prohibits you from stepping close to it.
But the sea does not feel like death to you.
It feels like home.
Like something vast and ancient is calling your name in a language you almost, almost, remember.
So when Mei's birthday celebration is held on the royal vessel this year, and you are told, as always, to remain at the palace, you do something you have never done before.
You disobey.
You slip aboard in the chaos of departure, hidden among the servants, dressed in a servant’s garb you have stolen from one of your maids, carrying crates of wine and garlands of flowers.
You tuck yourself below deck and wait until the ship is too far from shore to turn back, and then you creep up the stairs because you want to see the stars over open water, because you want to watch your cousin dance, because you are young and foolish and the sea has been singing to you your entire life and tonight, for the first time, you are close enough to answer.
The sea is not singing tonight.
The sea is hungry.
The wave that takes you is enormous, a wall of black water that crashes over the railing and sweeps you off your feet like you are nothing.
You hear screaming, Mei's voice, sharp with terror, calling your name, and then the ocean closes over your head and the world becomes dark and cold and silent.
You fight.
You kick and claw toward what you think is the surface, but the current is too strong, pulling you deeper, spinning you until you cannot tell up from down.
Your lungs burn. Your limbs grow heavy.
The cold seeps into your bones, and you think, with the strange calm of someone who is drowning that this is how you die.
The same sea.
The same way.
Just like your birth parents.
And then, hands.
Not human hands.
The fingers are too long, the grip too strong, and there is something strange about the skin, smooth as pearl, cool as the water itself.
They wrap around your waist and pull you upward with a force that defies the current, and suddenly you are breaking the surface, gasping, choking on salt water, alive.
You can barely see through the rain and spray, but you see him.
Blue eyes.
That is the first thing.
Eyes that glow, luminous and unearthly, the deep blue against the darkness brought by the storm. They pierce the storm like twin flames, too bright to be human and too vivid to be real. Hair that clings to his face in wet strands. and a face that is startlingly beautiful and otherworldly.
And below his waist are not legs.
A tail.
Scales that shimmer between deep blue and iridescent pink, catching the fractured light of the storm, the blue dominant and dazzling, shifting to rose at the edges like the sky at the last moment before nightfall.
Lemurian.
The word surfaces through the haze of panic and cold.
The sea people.
The ones your tutors said were legends, fairy tales told to children who asked too many questions about the deep sea.
He is no legend.
He is warm where the sea is cold, solid where the water is relentless, and he holds you against his chest as he swims toward a rocky outcropping barely visible through the storm.
His tail cuts through the water with effortless power, and you cling to him because he is the only safe thing in a world that has become chaos.
When he reaches the rocks, he lifts you onto the flat surface with a gentleness that surprises you. Your fingers scrape against stone as you pull yourself up, coughing water, shaking so hard your teeth rattle.
And then he sings.
It is not a song you can name or describe.
It is not a melody that belongs to any instrument or language you know.
It is something older, a sound that seems to come from the ocean itself, haunting and achingly beautiful. It wraps around you like warmth and the cold recedes.
The terror of your almost drowning recedes.
Everything recedes except the sound of his voice and the blue of his eyes.
You reach for him.
Your trembling hand finds his cheek and he goes still.
The singing stops.
He stares at you with those impossible eyes, and his expression shifts into tenderness.
His hand comes up to cover yours, his palm warm against the cold of your skin.
"You are safe," he says, and his voice is the most beautiful thing you have ever heard. Low and melodic, with an accent you cannot place."I will not let you drown."
You want to speak.
You want to tell him your name, ask his, and understand how this is possible.
That a creature from legend is holding your hand on a rock in the middle of a storm.
But the exhaustion is pulling you under, and the last thing you see before you lose consciousness is his face, haloed by lightning, and the worry in his glowing blue eyes.
When you wake, it is already morning.
The storm has passed.
You are on a beach, alone.
Your cousin's search party finds you an hour later.
Mei weeps when she sees you, she holds you so tightly you think your ribs might crack, and she says over and over, "I thought I had lost you. I thought the sea took you."
The King's face when they carry you home is something you will never forget.
There is no anger, not yet, but he wears a face of a man who has already buried his brother to the ocean and has just, for one terrible night, believed it also took his brother's child, his daughter, as well.
He holds you and does not speak for a very long time.
"Someone saved me in the water," you tell him, your voice still raw from salt water. "Someone pulled me out."
"Who?"
You do not know how to explain, so you just shake your head and let the servants wrap you in blankets and carry you home.
You never tell anyone the truth, but you never forget his face.
His voice.
The warmth of his hand against yours.
You are fifteen years old, and you are already in love with someone who does not know your name.
Three years pass.
You grow up in the shadow of your cousin's presence.
Mei is the crown princess of Linkon, smart and beautiful and destined for a political marriage that will secure and strengthen the kingdom.
You are the younger, quieter ward and the less remarkable princess, content to spend your days in the palace library or walking the cliffs above the sea.
Always the sea.
The King's restrictions tightened after the night of the storm.
Guards are now posted at the cliff paths, the beach gate locked, stern lectures delivered by a desperate man who cannot lose another person he loves to the water.
But you find your ways.
A window seat that faces the ocean.
A tower room where the sound of the waves carries on the wind.
The cliffs, when you can slip past your guards and maids who are always, always watching.
You are drawn to it in a way you cannot explain, standing at the edge of the rocks and staring into the water as though if you look hard enough, you might catch a flash of iridescent scales beneath the surface.
You never do.
You never see him again after that night.
You paint him sometimes.
In the privacy of your chambers, with watercolors that can never quite capture the luminous quality of his eyes or the way his voice made you feel.
The paintings are hidden beneath a loose floorboard in your closet like love letters no one will ever read.
Mei's heart, meanwhile, belongs to someone entirely unsuitable.
Caleb has been a friend to both of you since childhood.
A boy who grew into a soldier, who climbed the military ranks with the same stubborn determination he once used to climb the palace walls on a dare.
He is tall and broad-shouldered, with purple eyes that are warm when he is laughing and fierce when he is protecting someone he loves.
He is now the youngest general in Linkon's history, and he is hopelessly in love with your cousin.
The feeling is mutual, though neither of them will admit it.
You watch them dance around each other.
Mei's blush when Caleb offers his arm, Caleb's distance when he remembers his rank is not suited for a princess.
Your uncle has made it clear that Mei's marriage will serve the kingdom, not her heart.
You ache for them.
The quiet tragedy of loving someone who is right there, close enough to touch, but separated by difference in status.
You understand that ache better than anyone.
You are not betrothed to anyone, which suits you fine.
The suitors who have expressed interest in the King's ward have been met with your disinterest because how can you consider marrying someone when your heart already belongs to a creature you met once, in a storm, three years ago?
Foolish, you tell yourself.
He is not coming back.
He probably does not even remember you.
But you remember him, every night, before you sleep, you close your eyes and hear his voice.
You are safe. I will not let you drown.
And then, on a morning in late spring, everything changes.
The guards find him on the beach below the palace cliffs.
You hear about it from a servant. A breathless maid who comes running into the library where you are reading, her eyes wide.
"Your Highness! They have found a man on the shore! He is injured, and he cannot speak, and Princess Mei is with him —"
You are on your feet before she finishes the sentence.
You run.
Through the corridors, down the winding stone stairs that lead to the beach, your heart hammering with a ferocity that has nothing to do with the adrenaline of running, because you know.
Before you even see him, you already know who it was.
The beach is crowded with guards and servants clustering around a figure lying on the sand.
Mei is kneeling beside him, her hand on his shoulder, speaking in the gentle voice she uses when she is trying to calm you when you are scared as a child.
You push through the crowd and your world stops.
It is him.
You immediately recognize his blue eyes.
They do not glow now as they were in the storm, but still that impossible shade, but now the deep blue is threaded with soft pink at the bottom, half-open and dazed with pain.
His face is exactly as you remember, beautiful and otherworldly. His hair is longer now, tangled with sand. He is wearing nothing but a length of fabric someone must have wrapped around his waist.
And he has legs.
Where his tail should be are legs, long and pale and trembling, as though they are new to him and he never used them before.
They are scraped raw, bleeding, and he keeps looking down at them with an expression of both pain and bewilderment.
Your heart stops, you know what he has done.
You have scoured every book in the library about him and his people after that night.
Lemurians do not have legs if they will it.
The stories you found spoke of sea witches and bargains.
What did you pay, you think, staring at him, your heart sinking. What did you sacrifice to come here?
"He washed up an hour ago," the captain of the guard is telling your uncle. "No identification, no clothing. He also appears to be mute."
Mute.
Your stomach drops.
His voice, that beautiful voice that sang the cold out of your bones?
It is now gone.
The sea witch must have taken his voice, the thing that you have treasured the most, in exchange for legs.
"He was reaching for me when the guards arrived," Mei says softly. "As though he recognized me and as though he was trying to tell me something."
Your chest tightens sharply you cannot breathe.
He thinks it was Mei.
The realization crashes over you like a wave.
He thinks Mei was the one he saved that night.
He came here for her.
Not you.
He does not remember you.
But it makes a terrible kind of sense.
Mei was on the ship that night because it was her birthday.
If he saw the royal vessel, if he knew a Princess of Linkon was aboard, of course he would assume it was Mei.
Not the unremarkable ward who should not have been on the ship at all and was not even supposed to be near the water.
You know you should say something.
You should step forward and say, it was me.
You open your mouth.
And then he looks at Mei with those blue-pink eyes full of desperate relief and reaches for her hand.
Mei takes it.
You close your mouth.
You do not say anything.
You are eighteen years old and your heart is quietly breaking and no one even notices.
They bring him into the palace.
Your uncle is reluctant, but Mei insists.
"He is hurt and needs care. We cannot simply leave him on the beach."
So he is given a room in the guest quarters.
You watch from a distance as he learns to walk on legs that do not know how to hold him, stumbling, falling, catching himself on walls and doorframes with the frustrated grace of a creature built for water and now forced to navigate land.
He writes his name on parchment the first day they give him ink.
Rafayel.
The name settles into your chest.
You have spent three years loving someone whose name you did not know, and now that you have it, it makes everything worse.
He is real and present.
He is walking the corridors of your home, and he does not know you exist.
That is not entirely true.
He knows you are the King's ward, Mei's younger cousin. When you are introduced, he bows politely, and when his eyes meet yours there is nothing.
There is no recognition in his blue-pink eyes, just the courteous blankness of a stranger who is forced to meet someone new.
You smile and curtsy and say, "Welcome to Linkon, Rafayel."
Your voice does not shake, and you are proud of that.
He writes, Thank you, Your Highness. You are very kind.
Kind.
The word tastes like ash.
Rafayel becomes a fixture in the palace.
He is charming without his voice, expressive and warm, communicating through notes and gestures and a smile that he easily wins over the court.
And he paints.
Your uncle gives him a studio, and the canvases he produces are extraordinary.
Seascapes in colors so vivid they seem to move, portraits that capture the subjects better than any artist in Linkon could.
He paints Mei the most.
You try not to look at those paintings.
You fail.
Mei, for her part, is gentle with him.
She visits his studio, brings him tea, and sits with him while he works.
She treats him with the compassion she shows everyone, genuine and warm and without pretense.
She does love him.
You can see that clearly, even if Rafayel cannot.
Mei loves Caleb.
You see it in the way her eyes follow him across the training yard, in the way her laughter changes pitch when he is nearby, in the way she touches the small apple-shaped pendant he gave her for her last birthday, a private gesture she does not know you have noticed.
Caleb loves her back.
You see it in the way he stands slightly too close at formal dinners, in the way his voice softens when he says her name, in the way he looks at her when he thinks no one is watching, with a devotion so naked it makes your chest ache.
But your uncle has been negotiating a political marriage for Mei.
A duke from the Eastern kingdom, an alliance that would secure Linkon's borders.
Caleb's rank, however elevated, is not enough.
A general is not a duke, and for a crown princess like Mei, love is not leverage.
Rafayel sees none of this.
Rafayel sees only Mei, the woman he crossed an ocean for, gave up his voice for, sacrificed everything to find.
And you see only him.
You discover the truth about the sea witch's bargain by accident.
You are in the library late one night, unable to sleep, when you find a book about Lemurian folklore left open on a reading table.
The pages are marked with small notes in Rafayel's handwriting. He has been researching his own curse.
The passage he has marked reads:
The sea witch's bargain is thus: a voice for legs, the ocean for the land. The transformation is maintained by the bond that is formed the moment a Lemurian's lifeforce intertwines with a human's. To break the bargain and restore what was taken, the Lemurian must receive a true love's kiss from the one with whom they bonded. If the kiss does not come before the third moon after he arrives on land, the Lemurian will dissolve into seafoam, lost to both worlds forever.
Your hands shake so violently the book nearly slips from your grasp.
The one with whom they bonded.
That is you.
In the water, in the storm, when he held you and sang and your hand touched his face, your bond with him was formed.
His lifeforce is intertwined with yours, not Mei's.
He needs your kiss to survive.
Not Mei's.
Yours.
And he does not know.
You sink into the nearest chair, your mind racing.
You could tell him.
You could go to his room right now and tell him.
But if you tell him, will he kiss you out of desperation to survive or will he kiss you because of the bond?
Will you have to live knowing the only reason his lips touched yours was because he had no other choice?
You want him to choose you because he remembers you, not because a curse demands it.
So you close the book, return it where you found it, and go back to your room and cry until dawn.
You do not say a word, but you keep reseaching.
You return to the library every night after that.
When the palace sleeps, you are awake, pulling every text about Lemurians from the shelves, cross-referencing myths with the scraps of writing from scholars who treated the sea folk as more than legend.
It takes you eleven days to find an alternative.
The passage is in an old text, so old the pages are brittle and the ink has faded to brown.
It is written in an archaic dialect that takes you hours to translate, hunched over a dictionary by candlelight, your eyes burning, your hands stiff with cold.
There exists a second path to sever the sea witch's bond. If the bonded human willingly offers their heart, sacrificed in the place where the witch resides, the bond dissolves. The Lemurian is freed, their voice restored, their form their own to choose, the human perishes.
You read it three times.
Four.
Five.
The human perishes.
Your vision blurs.
You press your fist against your mouth to stop the sob that wants to come out.
You could save him, but not with a kiss he does not want to give you.
Not by humiliating yourself, by forcing a reveal that would make him look at you with guilt instead of love.
If he has not find this part of the bargain, then you could save him without him ever knowing it was you who has bonded with.
He would get his voice back.
He would be alive and free.
He could stay on land or return to the sea, whichever he chose.
He could love Mei or not love Mei on his own terms, without a curse dictating the shape of his life.
All it would cost is your heart.
All it would cost is your life.
You close the book.
Your hands are steady now, they should not be.
You should be shaking and falling apart.
But instead there is a strange, terrible calm settling over you, the calm of someone who has been drowning all her life and has finally found the will to stop fighting the current.
This is how it was always going to end, you think.
He saved your life in the water, now you save his.
It is that simple.
The grief is not.
You have nineteen days until the third moon.
Nineteen days to find the sea witch.
Nineteen days to say goodbye to everyone you love without alerting them of your plan.
You begin with Mei.
Your cousin finds you in the garden the next morning, which is unusual, you are not a morning person, and the garden is Mei's domain, not yours.
She raises an eyebrow when she sees you sitting on the stone bench by the roses.
"You are up early."
"I could not sleep." You pat the bench beside you. "Sit with me?"
Mei sits, studying your face carefully, brows furrowing as she tries to read what you are thinking.
"What is wrong?"
"Nothing. I just… I wanted to tell you something."
You take her hands, holding them tightly and memorizing the shape of her fingers.
"You should be with Caleb."
Mei goes still.
"What?"
"I know you love him. I have known for years, and he loves you. Everyone can see it except Father, who refuses to look." You squeeze her hands. "Do not let the political marriage happen. Fight for what you want, Mei. You deserve to be happy."
Your cousin stares at you, her eyes filling with tears.
"Where is this coming from?"
"It is coming from someone who does not want you to waste the love you have." Your voice cracks. "Promise me. Promise me you will fight for him."
"I…" Mei blinks, the tears spilling over. "I promise, but you are frightening me. Why are you speaking like this?"
"I am not frightened. I am merely… clear, about some things." You smile, and it is the gentlest lie you have ever told. "I love you, Mei, more than anything. I need you to know that."
"I love you too." Mei pulls you into a tight hug. "You are being strange, and it worries me."
"I am always strange."
"True." She laughs wetly. "But this is a different kind of strange."
You hold her for a long time, breathing in the scent of her hair, memorizing carefully as part of your memory that you will carry into the dark.
You spend the next week quietly putting your affairs in order.
You write letters and hide them in places they will eventually be found.
One for Mei in her favorite book, one for your Father and Mother in the book of fairytales they read to you as a child, one for Caleb folded into the scabbard of his sword.
You finish your watercolor paintings and leave them stacked neatly beneath the loose floorboard where you have always kept them.
Dozens of paintings of blue eyes and iridescent scales and the silhouette of a boy in a storm.
You request access to a small boat, telling the King that you want to paint seascapes from the water.
It is an unusual request, more than unusual, given your Father’s lifelong prohibition, but you frame it carefully.
You are eighteen now, you point out.
Old enough to make your own peace with the ocean that took your parents.
Old enough, you say, with a smile that hides everything, to stop being afraid.
Your Father’s face is torn when you ask.
He looks at you, the way he does sometimes when the light catches your face at an angle that reminds him of his brother, and you see the war behind his eyes.
The guilt and the fear.
He knows that he cannot keep you caged forever, so he grants the request.
He warns you to take guards.
You will not take guards, but you agree, because agreeing is safer than arguing.
You cannot give your plan away.
You cannot reveal that you are a dead girl walking through the last days of her life, smiling at everyone, eating meals she cannot taste, sleeping in a bed she will never return to.
The last few days of your life are the loneliest days you have ever experienced.
And you have been lonely for a very long time.
On the fifteenth day before the third moon, you visit Rafayel's studio.
You have avoided this room since he arrived.
The smell of paint and linseed oil, the sight of his hands moving across canvas, the particular way he tilts his head when he is concentrating.
All of it is too much.
Too close, too real.
But you need to see him one last time.
Not from across a dinner table or the opposite end of a corridor, up close.
In the place where he is most himself.
He is painting when you enter.
Another seascape, waves crashing against rocks under a stormy sky.
The colors are violent and beautiful, and you recognize the scene immediately.
It is the night of the storm.
The night he saved you.
He looks up when you knock on the open door, and surprise flickers across his face.
You have never visited him here before.
He gestures you in warmly and reaches for a parchment.
Your Highness, this is a pleasant surprise.
"Please," you say. "No titles, not today."
He looks at you curiously, but nods.
You walk around the studio, looking at his paintings, every one of them is extraordinary.
They are all raw and emotional and full of a longing so palpable you can almost taste it.
You stop at the storm painting, your throat tight.
"This is beautiful," you say. "The storm, it looks so real."
I painted it from memory, the night I saved her in the water.
Her.
Not you.
Her.
"The person you saved," you say carefully. "Do you remember much about that night?"
He is quiet for a moment, his pen hovering over the paper, then he writes slowly.
I remember the feel of her hand on my face, cold and trembling. I remember singing for her. I remember the way she looked at me.
You have to turn away.
You pretend to examine another painting, blinking hard, willing the tears back.
"That must have been a powerful moment," you manage.
It was the moment I knew I would find her. No matter what it cost.
No matter what it cost.
You turn back to him.
He is watching you with an expression you cannot decipher.
Curiosity, perhaps, or confusion.
"May I ask you something?" you say.
He nods.
"Was it worth it, leaving and giving up everything you knew? For someone who might not… who might not feel the same way?"
He does not hesitate.
Yes, a thousand times yes. Even if she never loves me, even if I become nothing, I would do it all again.
You give him a sad smile.
"She is lucky," you say. "This girl that you saved, even if she does not know it. She is the luckiest person in the world."
He looks confused by your words.
Are you all well, Your Highness?
"I am fine," you say, and you leave before he can see the tears fall.
You find the sea witch on the twelfth day.
It is not the dramatic confrontation the stories describe.
There is no cave of bones, no garden of corals, no monstrous creature wreathed in smoke and malice, welcoming you to her lair.
The sea witch is just a woman who looks ancient and weary, sitting on a rock at the edge of a tidal pool in a cove three hours south of the palace.
She is waiting for you.
You know this because she speaks before you even say a word.
"The other one," she says, and her voice is like the sound of shells being ground by waves, musical and rough at the same time. "The one from the water, I was wondering when you would come."
"You knew about me."
"Of course I knew. When I made the bargain with the boy, I could feel the bond where it led, who it held, you, little princess, not the pretty older cousin." She tilts her head, studying you with eyes that are pale and depthless, like tide pools reflecting an empty sky. "He does not know, does he?"
"No."
"And you do not intend to tell him."
"No."
The witch is quiet for a moment.
Then she laughs with a sadness that surprises you.
"You humans," she murmurs. "So fragile and stubborn. He came to me begging for legs so he could find the girl he saved, and you come to me ready to die so he will never have to know she was you." She shakes her head. "Two sides of the same fool's coin."
"Will you do it?" Your voice does not shake, you are proud of that. "My heart for his freedom, that is the alternative, I read it."
"I can do it," the witch says. "But you need to understand what you are offering. It is not merely your life, child. Your heart, the very thing that bound you together. When I take it, the bond dissolves, his voice returns. His legs become his own again, no longer tethered to the curse. He will be free."
"And I will be dead."
"Yes." The witch's pale eyes hold yours. "But not immediately, you will have until the tide turns. A few hours, perhaps. Enough time to walk back to shore, enough time to be somewhere familiar."
Somewhere familiar, the beach below the cliffs.
The same beach where they found Rafayel. The same part of the beach where your Mei found you three years ago.
The irony of it is so perfect it makes you want to laugh.
"There is one more thing," the witch says. "The wound, where I take the heart, no human eye will see it. The magic will seal your flesh. To anyone who looks, you will seem untouched. As though you simply lay down on the sand and stopped breathing."
"But?"
"But a Lemurian will see it. Their eyes were made for magic, you see. If the boy finds you, he will see the wound. He will see what has happened." She pauses. "And he will know."
Your stomach drops.
"Know what?"
"That someone loved him enough to cut out their own heart so he could live."
The words hang in the salt air between you.
"So he will he know it was me?"
"That depends," the witch says, "on whether he is paying attention."
You close your eyes, it is too late to go back now.
You have already decided to end everything here.
The wind is cold off the water, and you can hear the sea moving beneath the rocks, and somewhere in the distance, a bird is calling out across the waves.
"Do it," you say.
The witch rises from her rock.
She is shorter than you expected.
She smells of brine and something older, something that has no name in any human language. Her hands, when she places them on your chest, are gentle and impossibly strong.
"You are brave," she says quietly. "Stupid, but brave."
"Is there a difference?"
"Not usually."
The pain is —
You expected agony.
What you get is something worse, a pulling, slow and unyielding, like a thread being drawn from a tapestry, and the tapestry is you, and the thread is every moment you have ever loved him.
The storm.
The singing.
The rock.
His eyes.
His hands.
The paintings you hid under the floorboard.
The three years of silence and longing and watching from the shadows.
The sea witch pulls it all out, and it takes the shape of your heart, and your heart takes the shape of a small, iridescent scale.
The deep, shimmering blue of his tail, edged with the faintest blush of pink.
It is the color of his tail.
The witch holds it up to the light.
It catches the sun like a jewel, like a tear, like the last note of a song that will never be sung again.
"Beautiful," she murmurs. "They always are, the hearts that love the hardest."
She closes her fist around it.
The scale dissolves into light, and the light sinks into the sea, and somewhere miles away, in a palace on a cliff a man who has been silent for weeks opens his mouth and makes a sound.
You feel it happen.
You feel the bond sever, like a rope cut with a blade and then you feel nothing at all where your heart used to be.
No pain.
No grief.
Just a hollow so vast and quiet it makes the ocean look small.
"The tide turns in four hours," the witch says. "You should go."
The walk back takes longer than the walk there.
Your legs are heavy.
Your body knows what has been taken from it, even if the wound is invisible and you cannot see it, even if you look the same as you did this morning when you woke and dressed and walked out of the palace for the last time.
You are dying.
You are dying slowly but gently, the way a candle dies when the wax runs out. The flame is still there, still burning, but with nothing left to feed it.
You make it to the beach below the palace cliffs just as the sun begins to set.
You take off your shoes and walk barefoot to the water's edge, letting the waves lap at your feet.
The cold feels distant.
Everything feels distant now, as though you are watching yourself from very far away.
You sit down, then you lie down, your hair fanning across the warm sand, your face turned toward the sea.
The sky above you is beautiful, painted in shades of gold and blue and deep, burning orange, like one of Rafayel's canvases come to life.
You stare at it and think that this is the last beautiful thing you will ever see before you die.
You are not afraid, you thought you would be.
You thought the end would come with fear, with regret, with the desperation to live, but instead you only felt peace.
You have done the thing you came to do.
You have paid the price.
Rafayel is free.
You close your eyes.
The last thing you hear is the sound of the waves, and beneath them, so faint you might be imagining it, the echo of a song you heard once in a storm, when you were fifteen and drowning and a boy with blue eyes held you and promised you were safe.
You are safe. I will not let you drown.
Forgive me, you think. I could not keep you from drowning either, but I could keep you from disappearing. I hope that is enough.
I hope I was enough.
The tide turns.
The waves reach for you, gentle as his hands were he saved you from the storm.
You let them.
His voice comes back like a tide.
He is in his studio when it happens, standing before the storm painting, brush in hand, adding details from memory that grow sharper by the day instead of fading away.
One moment, there is nothing.
The silence that has been his prison for weeks, the maddening absence of sound in his throat.
The next moment, a broken gasp comes from his throat.
Then a sound, that sounds primal, a mix of shock and relief and confusion.
“What —?”
His own voice, raw and not quite what it was before, but it is his.
He immediately drops the brush and a hand goes to his throat. He speaks again, testing.
"How —"
The curse is broken.
He can feel it.
The severing of the bond that has been wound tight around his chest since the day he crawled onto this beach.
The sea witch's magic is unraveling.
His legs no longer ache with the wrongness of transformation. His body feels, for the first time since leaving the water, as though it belongs to him again.
But the bond…
His hand goes to his chest, the bond is gone.
He feels its absence like a phantom limb, the severed thread that once connected him to the person he saved in the storm, the invisible tether that has been pulling him toward Mei since the day he arrived.
He stops.
Except… it was never pulling him toward Mei, was it?
He sees that now, the sudden clarity after the curse broke, like a fog lifting away to reveal a landscape he should have recognized all along.
The bond was never pointed at Mei.
It was pointed at the girl who stood in the shadows.
The one who walked the cliffs.
The one who came to his studio and asked if it was worth it, and smiled at him with such sadness that he could not sleep afterward, could not paint, could not do anything but stare at the ceiling and try to understand why your face kept replacing Mei's every time he closed his eyes.
The King's ward.
The quiet one.
It was you.
The night of the storm.
The hand on his face.
Small. Cold. Trembling.
Not a woman's hand.
You were fifteen then, like he was.
Mei was eighteen.
He has been looking at the wrong person for weeks.
Painting the wrong portrait.
Writing love notes to the wrong woman.
When the right one has been there the entire time, watching from doorways and shadows, smiling your quiet smile, carrying a secret so heavy it should have crushed you.
He needs to find you.
Now.
He needs to tell you…
But wait.
If the curse is broken… If the bond is severed…
The book said the only ways to break it were a true love's kiss or…
Or
The blood drains from his face.
He runs.
He checks your chambers first.
Empty.
The bed is made, the curtains drawn, and there is a neatness to the space that feels final, like the person tidying is preparing for a journey with no return.
He feels the pull to your wardrobe.
He opens it, pulls up the loose floorboard he has accidentally seen you glance at in one of the rare moments he passed by your chambers.
Paintings.
Dozens of them.
In watercolors, small and delicate, layered carefully between sheets and sheets of parchment.
He pulls them out with shaking hands and lays them across the bed, and he gasps sharply.
They are all of him.
Him in the water, tail and all, holding a girl against his chest while the storm rages in the sea.
Him singing on the rocks, his face lit by lightning, his eyes glowing blue with that otherworldly light that you have captured perfectly.
Him from the back, looking out at the sea, the line of his shoulders painted with an intimacy that speaks of someone who has memorized his every angle.
Him peacefully sleeping in a chair in the studio, when did you see that?
How many times did you stand in his doorway watching, while he dreamed of another person?
The earliest paintings are crude, the work of a fifteen-year-old girl with more passion than technique. But they grow more skilled as the years progress, and the most recent ones, painted since his arrival at the palace, are heartbreaking in their accuracy.
You have captured the exact shade of his eyes, the blue, the mix of pink.
The exact curve of his mouth when he smiles.
The exact expression he makes when he looks at Mei.
There is one painting at the bottom of the stack that breaks him.
You have painted yourself from behind, standing on the cliffs, looking out at the sea.
You are alone and the wind is pulling at your hair, and the sea stretches out before you, and in the water below the cliffs, barely visible, a flash of iridescent blue, a tail, a shadow, a memory of him.
You titled it, in small, careful letters at the bottom corner:
Waiting.
He gathers the paintings against his chest.
He is shaking so hard they rattle against each other.
He needs to find you.
He needs to —
Mei appears in the doorway.
"Where is she?" His voice is cracked and barely functional.
It does not matter. The words work.
"Rafayel? Your voice — you can speak? How —" She stops, seeing his face and sees the paintings. "What are those?"
“Where is your cousin?" He repeats, desperately this time, ignoring her question.
"I do not know. She left this morning. She said she was going to paint by the water —"
He is past Mei before she finishes the sentence.
He hears her calling after him, hears Caleb's voice too, the general must have been nearby, but he does not stop.
He cannot stop.
He runs through the palace and down the stairs to the beach, and his legs carry him perfectly for the first time since he crawled out of the sea.
He does not stumble nor fall.
The curse is broken and his body is his own, and the irony of it is that he is finally free and the freedom may have been bought and paid for by your own life.
He reaches the beach.
The guards are already there.
They found you at the water's edge.
You are lying on the sand, your hair spread around you like seaweed, your face turned toward the sea.
You look peaceful, and like you are just sleeping, but you are no longer breathing.
There is no wound, no blood, no indication if you were drowned. Nothing.
The guards are confused, they do not know and do not see it, but Rafayel does.
His eyes, Lemurian eyes, made for magic, see what human eyes cannot.
He sees the wound.
It is not a cut or tear but a hollow in your chest where your heart should be, glowing faintly with the residue of sea witch’s magic.
And in the center of the hollow, where your heart was supposed to be, a single scale, small and iridescent. It is the deep, shimmering blue of his tail edged with the faintest blush of pink.
It is all that is left of your heart.
The part of you that loved him, the part that bonded you to him, transformed by magic into the only shape it knew how to take.
His own scales.
His.
He drops to his knees beside you.
His hands find your face, cold now, so so cold, and he cradles it the way you must have cradled his once, on a rock in the middle of a storm, when you were both fifteen and he sang the cold from your bones.
The sound that comes from him is not human.
It is Lemurian.
A keen, a wail, a sound that comes from the deepest part of the ocean where the water is black and the pressure would crush anything that did not belong there.
It is a sound of grief so deep that it makes the waves pull back from the shore, as if the sea itself is flinching.
Mei arrives.
Then Caleb, running, his hand on his sword as if he can fight whatever did this.
Then the King, the Queen, servants, guards, all of them pouring onto the beach like a wave, and the sound they make when they see you is nothing compared to the sound still tearing itself from Rafayel's throat.
"What happened to her?" Caleb's voice is steel. He is kneeling on the other side of your body, his hand on your shoulder, his face carved from granite. "There is no wound. There is nothing. How —"
"There is a wound," he says, and his voice breaks on every syllable. "You cannot see it. Only I can."
He looks at Mei.
His vision is blurred with tears, but he can see her clearly enough.
Her shattered expression, the way she is gripping Caleb's arm so hard her knuckles are white, the way she is looking at your body with an expression of incomprehensible horror.
"It was her," he says. "In the water. The night of the storm. It was never you, Mei. It was her. She was the one I saved. She was the one I bonded to. She was the one I loved. She has known the entire time."
Mei's face crumbles.
"What?"
"The curse. The sea witch's bargain. A kiss from the bonded one, or —" He chokes on the words. "Or the bonded one's heart given willingly. She found the sea witch. She traded her heart to break my curse. And she never… she never said a word. She never told me it was her. She let me believe… she let me chase after you while she…"
He cannot finish.
He presses his forehead against yours, cold against cold, the living against the dead, and he cries.
The King makes a sound.
It is a small, quiet sound.
The grief of a Father losing his child.
He had made a promise to protect you from the very thing that killed your birth parents.
He kept you from the water your entire life, and the water took you anyway.
Not by storm.
Not by the sea.
By love.
The Queen catches him when his knees buckle.
Mei is on her knees in the sand, sobbing, and Caleb has his arms around her.
Rafayel lifts his head.
His hand moves to the hollow in your chest, the wound only he can see, and he touches the scale.
The blue scale that is all that remains of your heart.
It is warm.
Against the cold of your body, against the cold of the sand and the sea and the dying light, the scale is warm.
He picks it up with trembling fingers.
It is small enough to fit in his palm, light as a feather, luminous as a star.
The color shifts as he holds it, blue to pink, pink to blue, and it seems to pulse, faintly, like the echo of a heartbeat.
Your heartbeat.
He closes his fist around it and brings it to his lips.
"I would have chosen you," he whispers, "If I had known. I would have chosen you."
But you cannot hear him.
Not anymore.
The sea witch was right.
The hearts that love the hardest are always the most beautiful.
And the most easily broken.
They bury you on the cliff above the sea.
Not in the royal crypts beneath the palace, where the dead of the royal family are laid in marble and forgotten.
On the cliff.
In the open air, where the wind smells of salt and the waves can be heard crashing against the rocks below, ceaseless and eternal and indifferent.
Rafayel insists, and Mei agrees with him.
Your uncle, who has been hollowed out by grief into a shell of the stern king he used to be, does not argue.
He stands at the edge of the cliff and stares at the sea with the expression of a man who has spent fifteen years building a wall against the tide and has learned, at last, that the tide does not care.
It will take and take and take.
The grave is marked with a simple stone.
No title.
No epitaph.
Just the view of the ocean, stretching out to the horizon, the same view you loved, the same view you stood and stared at for three years, waiting for something that was already there.
Mei stands at the grave for a long time after the ceremony. Caleb stands beside her, his hand in her.
The two of them are finally together because you pushed Mei toward him in the garden, because you wrote it in the letter she found in her book.
Let yourself love him. Do not be like me, do not be afraid.
She found the letter the morning after they found your body.
She read it and screamed so loudly the servants thought someone else had died.
Caleb holds her and lets her cry into his chest.
"She knew," he says. "When she came to me last week and asked me to look after you. She knew she was not coming back."
Mei shakes her head, tears streaming.
"She told me to fight for you. That was her farewell. And I did not… I did not even realize…"
"You could not have known."
"I should have. She was my sister," Mei's voice breaks."I should have seen it."
But no one saw it.
You, who spent your entire life being protected but overlooked, used that invisibility one last time, to do the one thing no one could stop because no one was watching.
Rafayel does not attend the funeral.
He is on the beach.
The same beach where they found him.
The same beach where they found you.
He is sitting in the sand at the water's edge, the blue scale in his palm, and he is talking to the sea.
He does not sing, not anymore.
His voice is back but no longer the way it was before the curse.
It is rougher and thinner now.
The sea witch gave him his voice but kept its beauty, a final cruelty or perhaps a mercy.
The most beautiful parts of his voice are gone, just as the most beautiful part of your heart is gone, and perhaps that is the balance the witch intended all along.
He talks to the sea because he cannot talk to you.
"I remember clearly now," he says, his voice cracking. "The storm, finding you half-drowned. I remember how I brought you to the surface. Your face. I remember the exact feeling of your hand on my cheek."
The waves lap at his feet.
"I do not understand how I forgot, how I confused you with your cousin. You do not even look anything alike. You do not feel anything alike." He laughs bitterly. "The sea witch's magic. It must have clouded my memory, made forget you."
He opens his fist and looks at the scale.
It catches the light, pulsing softly.
"I saw your paintings," he whispers. "Dozens of them. Three years, you waited for me and you never said a word, and when I arrived here looking for the wrong woman, you just…stepped aside. You watched me court her. You watched me write her love letters and paint her portrait and make a fool of myself, and you said nothing."
His voice breaks completely. He bows his head, pressing the scale against his forehead.
"You brave girl. I would have kissed you and meant it. If you had told me… if I had known.. I would have looked at your face and known it was you, and everything after that would have been different, you would have been alive. The bond was pulling me toward you the entire time. Every time I felt confused, every time I looked at Mei and something felt wrong, that was you. The bond was trying to show me what the sea witch’s curse was hiding."
He lifts his head.
"I would have chosen you," he says to the sea. "I need you to know that. Wherever you are, whatever comes after, I would have chosen you."
The sea does not answer.
The sea never answers.
END.
༄ tag list: @seraphineash, @loreleis-world, @kingraspberry12-blog
Rafayel being forced to kill the person he loved the most because MC commanded him is peak angst. I can say with ease that I fucking CALLED IT and I love that they went with that
The way he holds her in his arms with such desperation and tenderness knowing it will the last time, allowing himself to shed tears just before she literally slips away from his arms.
"I'll become one with the sea and stay with you forever." Oh they're sick for this and I love it.
MC is the only one who could make a God pray and fall apart.
btw I looooove that he cries pearls I think it's my new favorite thing.
