Tales of the Hells: Reader!Tav x Raphael
warnings: Blood, violence, unhealthy dynamics, Raphael with a whip
-Pre-established Relationship-
I
Raphael lures you in at first. His usual charm belies fury underneath, undetectable unless you know him. The first few times you actually fell for it, letting yourself believe that you actually dodged his wrath.
Then his charm sloughs off and he turns cold, steely. He lets everything hang in the air unaddressed, giving you time to ruminate your guilt, or to guess what you’ve done to anger him.
After a few minutes of anticipation, Raphael bites. He insults, he degrades, he lets the venom in his teeth tenderize you for what’s to come.
And my, there is so very much coming. You’re reminded that Raphael is indeed a devil, and that you’re in hell. He scorches you with his blistering rage until every shred of defiance burns away and you’re completely bare to take it all again—this time raw and breaking.
It’s hardly surprising that a devil has so much hell to give. It shouldn’t have surprised you then, when he wrenched one of Haarlep’s collars on your neck followed by a leash branded with the same infernal script.
“Walk.” Raphael commands as he yanks you towards the balcony. You follow him, crawling on all fours while the devil yanks you along with his leash. He makes you faceplant a few times and your body devours the prelude of the pain to come.
“Kneel. Stay. I will swap your place with Hope’s if you move even a muscle.”
You kneel on instinct. His voice holds an inflection that gores you inch by inch as if he were kneading his horns into your chest
Indeed, you can’t breathe. Dread pits in your stomach reaching upwards to your heart before splitting into tiny little tendrils piercing through every inch of you and jutting out your fingertips. It makes you shake which Raphael notices, coupled with the wince that’s inadvertently overtaken your expression.
“Still yourself. This is a consequence, one only natural for your transgression.”
You ball your fists, close your eyes, and breathe the best you can. Nothing stops the shaking; fear settles in you so wholly it mixes with everything else you’ve ever felt. All the memories with Raphael, your loving master, grow dense and sink you through the floor to Dis then Minarous then ever deeper through the hells. Fire, fumes, thousands of swords and millions of fangs lash at you the whole way down.
It hurts. It hurts so terribly the feeling wrenches you into living.
“You squirm, little mouse” Raphael’s voice has never sounded so vivid. “Squirming for the claw to descend.”
Crack
Pain bursts from your back and punches through to your chest. You look up to see Raphael wielding a five stranded whip. His favorite; a sturdy, brown leather with metal barbs the shape of a cat’s claw finishing each strand. He cards the whip through his fingers as he stares at you, sneering.
Crack
You see him bring the whip down and again, pain bursts from your back seeping to the visceral below in a hot, blinding embrace. Hurt whites your vision, clearing the fog that’s lingered on your mind for far too long. You scream, for now you have a reason to.
Crack
Just before the pain fades from his last strike Raphael brings the whip down again. Renewed, the delicious ache spreads deeper, stabbing at your chest making your heart skip and lungs stall. Your back feels warm, puffy— a feeling that envelops you in an embrace.
Crack
You feel the barbs, you feel your muscles bruising, and you feel Raphael’s malice behind each strike, threatening to strip you to the bone. “Haah~” The breath you let out morphs into a moan as you lap up the flashes of sensation.
“I have walked the planes longer than your line has lived, yet I know not of a single entity that has any hope of curing you” Crack. He strikes you again. Pain distracts you from whatever he says next.
“A-ah-“ The sound spills from your lips that are begging for more more more. Liquid runs down your sides—blood, you realize—dripping like melted wax, seeping downwards from the flame from your conflagrating soul, whirling the ashes of what could’ve been into heavy, red-orange smog. Crack. Raphael strikes you again for ignoring him.
“Look at me. I choose to keep you, however misaligned you may be.” His voice wedges under the crush of your torment, weaving into the pain. “Who else would want to have you, mouse? Who would care for a creature about to come from a flogging?”
He does. He does. “You do” he does.
Raphael feeds your sick little wishes. A helping of anguish, shame, sadness, pain to cause wounds which he’d deliver a morsel of sweetness into, right through your skin to blood and flesh.
Crack
The whip interrupts your reminiscing, forcing you back into the present and you look to Raphael, just as he asked. His eyes, that dark, infernal gloss fill with satiety. When else has he looked satisfied?
With you, of course. You placate his ruthless ambition, if only for a moment. How you cry as the devil traces his claws across your bleeding back, how your body trembles, stuck between lurching from or towards the pain brings him a fullness matched by little else. Raphael then leans down, collects you by the underarms to stand you up, and presses his lips to yours.
Immediately you’re embraced by the gentle heat of a fireplace as blood dries a carapace over your back. Of course it hurts; standing stretches the welts painting your skin but the pain dissolves his tenderness, allowing you to take both in a combined parcel. You feel your heart flutter in delight at a first love.
Raphael shifts his hands to under your breasts, making a careful effort to not aggravate your wounds as he moves you towards the balcony’s edge. You instinctively push your hands back to grab the handrail while he practically latches onto your mouth, feeding you the burn of wyvern whisky.
While intertwined, Raphael ghosts his hands to your back, meeting his claws over your spine and pulls.
Claws rip through the jagged mess of your skin, cutting four parallel lines from the curve of your scapula to the side of your ribcage. You scream, still latched onto his mouth and Raphael, ever hungry, consumes the sound from its very source.
Some part of you, body or mind braced itself, but did not communicate it to the other. All of this is hardly surprising; devilish endeavors involve souls. He’s tenderizing yours, fattening it up with hope and anguish before the day comes where he’ll take you entirely.
Scraps will do for now. He pulls away and goes to your neck while playing with the damage on your back. A claw here, a swipe at a reddening welt there, and you’re bleeding as fiercely as when the night began.
“Mmmm.” You take all of it: pain and pain and pain and more pain tinged with sweetness. Between the haze of Avernus and Raphael’s broad frame, a delightful shiver runs down your spine. From your skin, your loins and the ache in your soul, pain stings through them, making you one.
Never before have you felt so complete.