#tw. dubcon

[pranabefall]

⠀⠀HAMARTANEIN. ⠀⠀⸺ ⠀⠀kyryll chudomirovich flins.

syn. ( wc : 22.7 ) kyryll chudomirovich flins is a kind man, you will tell yourself. he'd swept you away from the cold winter storm. he'd given you a place to stay for a time. you should be thankful; you ought to be...and yet, yet, yet.

TW. ⸺ female ! reader, yandere + smut and dark content ahead. kind of an au with a very skewed time period but still reliant on a few bits of canon worldbuilding, schrödinger's canon??? divergence??????, reader is from sumeru and has some semblance of a backstory as well, another fic where she is not daijobu at all, some allusions to fae folklore with a few creative liberties taken ( flins how tf can you hold iron- ), spectral hauntings and past references to suicide on the ghost's part, flins is not human in this fic and it shows through at times, typical standard fae atrocities(tm), past murder, this fic is 90% just the reader getting her ass haunted, references to stalking and obsessive behaviour, imprisonment and magical bullshittery, the smut starts vanilla and gets freaky as it usually does with me, flins cops a feel out of you but it's quite literally him touching your organs with fire hands, there's fire hands btw ig but the fire doesn't burn yay, is there a tag for organ touching intimacy???? i need to check.

LOG. ⸺ the amount of research i put into lighthouses for this is ridiculous. also i was bullied by my ( alleged friends ). i hope your pillows are warm ( love you ). and yes, many thanks to @meimeimeirin, @silentmoths @euniveve and @stickyspeckledlightt for being the victims of the yap ( and speckled, to you for the little lighthouse videogame XD. i could finally relate certain mechanics like the motors turning the lenses and all that in ). this work has been marked mature for containing smut & dead dove content. readers below the age of 18 / ageless blogs and antis, do not interact. PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS BEFORE PROCEEDING.

HAMARTIA n. ha·​mar·​tia : tragic flaw. hamartia comes from the greek verb hamartanein, meaning "to miss the mark." aristotle used the word in his poetics to refer to the error of judgment which ultimately brings about the tragic hero's downfall. ( mariam webster )

You’re still not used to the cold that settles in Nod-Krai.

You grew up kissed by the Sumeru tropics, after all. Warm sun, humid heat and belting rain and all the lushness and green bunched together against the crevices and roadsides of its little towns and cities and on the threshold of your grandmother’s house. 

But in Nod-Krai, the weather is something oppressively alive, densely jarring you against its unpredictability. Oppressively alive yet swathed over with a sense of debilitating sleep. It tires out and seeps away and freezes into skin and bone and muscle; singing you into a lull that almost baits you to a peaceful sort of rest. And Nod Krai is beautiful too the way the fangs of a beast are, you came to learn as well.  

You’re trembling now, when the storm rolls by and you’re stranded in the woods heel deep in snow. A part of it was your reckless foolishness — You’re on your last flame flower corolla and you’d shut your radio off, missing the usual report to stay indoors. Now you pace past the dip and over the snowbanks, trying to find the way back to the main road. The snow has blanketed the stillness around you and has covered away your old trail and the crisscross of your footprints.

You do not know where the main road is. You grip your corolla a little harder, feeling it’s fading warmth over your fingertips. 

The woods seem to have closed in around you ( it’s gotten denser, darker, darker still ) and its trees loom over with its rustled whispering. There’s nothing else to hear — just the wind buffeting past your bare face and the ebb and flow of the little lake a few sprints away as it kisses its shoreline. You could be watched between the shadowed edges. You could be dragged deeper inside its hollow body. 

( It certainly feels that way, the more you walk. The suffocation comes with an angry buzz in the air. You’re not welcome here, it seems to say. You are not welcome here, it seems to insist, as it wrangles out the breath in your lungs. )

When you realize that, it sets off an old fear inside — a familiar sinking panic that throws you deeper into that pit. You’ve ventured a ways off from familiarity. This isn’t Nasha town anymore, or the pale blue of Hiisii Island. This isn’t the surrounding countryside within the safer limits you’d wandered.

Are you going to die here? You think. A bitter taste stays on your tongue. It’s acrid, hard to swallow. You feel stupid. Foolish, stupid, reckless. There’s nothing to trace your steps back to. You can’t pick out the shape of the path in front of you. You’re tugged in too deep till you run around blind to the world you’re stumbling past and now, now you’re lost. 

( And the woods, it still rustles and it still whispers, and it still veers and goads you in deeper and deeper with its malice slickened like blood over steel. )

You want to go home, you think then. You’re weakened from walking in circles and the cold only spikes as the residual warmth fizzles out in your fingertips. The corolla is pressed to your cheeks as you try to reach out and pick into any lingering remnants just as the whistling in your ears pitches to a deafening loudness. You want to go home, to your little house and the worn-down walls you were surrounded by. You want home, and its shuttered windowpanes and the plants by the wayside of your kitchen.

Home, and even that is seized by some unwelcome, edged grimace barely a moment later. Even that doesn’t quell the ache that keeps building up in your chest.

You mustn’t stop moving. You think you could find something. Shelter, a shack somewhere. Nod-Krai is populated. There were a few scattered oddballs who lived far away from the main town and maybe just maybe, just maybe there’s a place that could let you in —

Your knees buckle. You’re on the ground, coughing.

The locals had their own horror stories to share over counter tops. Hikers going missing, who had grown too cocky and ventured too far and too deep into places they probably never should have crossed into. Nikita, who managed the library had mentioned, off hand, that sometimes the land itself seemed to persist with an old scar that refuses to fade. That the beings that lay within it could steal hearts and voices and people and return mangled corpses days later.

He had shown you the faces who’d gone missing. Obituaries upon obituaries that listed old newspapers and an even longer line of missing posters that dated decades ago. All of them smiling. All of them so seizingly alive in those photos. All of them, perhaps grieved for and loved by a family.

( “But those are fairy tales.” you had told him then, pulling the book you’d checked out to your chest. Nikita considered you, keen blue eyes raking over the spine of your book and picking into the foolhardiness that you must have exuded.

“You’ll do well to respect it, no less.” He’d said, settling for a simple warning. “It’s always the mouthy ones that get picked off first.” )

You try heaving yourself back up. Your limbs feel heavier than usual, sluggish, clumsy and slipping over and falling again and again till the panic sputters into hopelessness. You manage to haul yourself a few feet forth, leaning against a tree trunk to catch one raspy, icy breath in, then another. 

There’s no sensation left in your hands. You see white around your eyes and white everywhere. White and blurs of black swimming past your field of sight with splotches intermixed between. Your next few breaths are pained, slow. It feels like dying.

You’ll probably end up as another unfortunate instance in the end. A name on that register that could be written off and forgotten.

You wonder who’ll feed the remaining cats in the neighbourhood. One of them is expecting a litter soon. She’s taken residence at your neighbours and comes to you for her dinner despite your attempts to drive her off. Sometimes she used to nap by the overhanging roof near the shed, rolled over to the side with her small, soft face tucked beneath her paws. 

A moment passes. You try one last time — and you’re waddling through the rising layers of snow with the scraps of strength you had leftover. You’re spared a few more steps till exhaustion crushes you down. You sit back, fist deep in snow and stare up at the cloudcover. The mist coalesces, thickens, swallows you in its canvas.

It’s so cold. It’s so, so cold. 

You press your palms over you eyes and stave back the tears. Then you gather the air in your lungs. 

“Help!” you call out and it’s a soft, feeble thing. “Help!”

There’s no answer. 

You sink into your jacket, trying to huddle into the heat of your body. You can hardly see past the condensed puffs blown out from your mouth, shaking off some of the snow in your hair and staring straight ahead. There’s nothing to see past the thicket in front of you. Just more lines upon lines of trees growing closer and closer together.

Then you hear something past the wind’s howling. You brush it off at first.

And then it comes closer. It’s just a little louder. 

A crunch, crunch, crunch.

Footsteps, you jolt and sit up a little straighter. You nearly fall forward, keenly stretching out to the source of it. It’s there, masked beneath the white noise in your ears. You open your mouth and push back that lump in your throat. “Hey!” you yell out. It breaks halfway and you cough. It hacks through your body, and it aches. 

You don’t pick up on any more sounds. Then the crunching closes in, faster, a little more urgent. A thought betrays any notion of hope — that perhaps you had called on something that you probably shouldn’t have and —

Blue cuts past your line of sight. It’s bright enough to have you reel back, hissing a little against it. You could barely make out the black of the person’s boots in front of you and archons, archons, archons, the beat of your heart spikes and strays and spirals. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.

“Are you one of the living?” a voice speaks up. Your head swims at the strange question. 

A person. Another person. It’s another person. The floodgates batter, so dangerously close to breaking and it’s nearly too much to bear. You’re quiet for a tense few moments, clawing away at your throat to get a word out. The man paces closer. The light shines even brighter and you…you can’t sense warmth from it. You shudder and twitch away, raising a hand up to cover your eyes.

“Am I…” you start. “Y-yes. Yes I am — ” You wobble, forcing your body up till you stand a little taller. You’re still unwieldy, arms snapping up to balance yourself out and your weight tips over and you’re sent hurtling back into the snow again. The man doesn’t flinch, sucking a breath in as his hand rests on your shoulder and he takes a knee next to you. You feel the burn of his gaze against the top of your head. 

“So you are.” he muses, sounding pleased. “For a moment I assumed you were one of the graveyard’s residents…apologies, if I came across the wrong way...one can never be too careful.” You shake your head, at this point, desperate enough to blow past the unconventionality and the macabre lilt in his wording. The lights lowers, casting itself across his face and you make out the shape of a lantern and a gloved hand holding it. You squint up at him.

A pale face looks back, the kind often painted in pictures of storybooks about princes and princesses and noblemen and women. Despite it all, it’s his eyes that stick out the most, half obscured beneath his windswept hair. The stuff the colour of minted gold and marigolds.

“It’s you!” you blurt out, because you know this man. You’ve caught glimpses of him in town, slipping past the doors of the Flagship during weekend nights and skulking by the shelves of the stores with his groceries under arm. You’ve caught him at the tram lines, so easy to spot against the height he stood at. As strange a man as he was, according to some locals, you let your relief show at the corners of your eyes and the sag of your head.

The man blinks a slow, careful blink, searching you as well and he smiles ( a buttery sort, a little disarming in its sincerity ). “I could say the same.” he muses. “But this weather is hardly ideal for any conversation and…” he trails off, appraising you with a sharp look. “My residence is close by. You may warm yourself up there.”

You nearly weep. “That…yes. Yes, that would be nice.” you nod, bumbling about like a newborn. You feel bogged down like dead weight, but he pays little mind to it, easily tugging you along with him as you both trek through the building storm. Maybe it was the delirium speaking, but you think the woods slowly loosened its hold around you, making way for a route you’d missed out while running past.

“What are you doing this far from Nasha Town?” he asks when you spot a flicker in the dark and a tall, dark outline in the distance. The overhanging fog clings to the both of you, but he seems unbothered by the lot of it, his lantern held aloft. 

You chew on the inside of your cheek. You will not answer that. The idea of it makes something stir in the depths of your guts and bite into the tender flesh of it. It refuses to let itself settle past the trembling steps it tracks. The crackling from the branches makes you flinch and stumble over to keep close. You spot the man staring from his periphery.

“Hiking.” you lie. 

“Hiking?” he echoes, half scolding. You feel the weight of something settle on your shoulders. “That was a very foolish choice on your part.” he adds, but he staves back the mockery for consideration, pulling a bit of dark fabric a little past up your chin. His coat, you guess. It sits on you, heavy weighted but perfect for staving the freezing winds off.

You spy the shirt and the thick sweater he had on underneath. It still felt wrong in all sorts of ways, how exposed he looked momentarily. “You’ll get cold.” you protest. 

The man waves it off, his focus trained ahead now. “We’re close to our destination.” he assures you, hips tugging up at the corners. You’re a little taken by how awfully pretty he is. “I think I can manage. The worst of it is yet to come anyway.”

You let yourself be lead, craning your head back to catch the shadows prowling the treeline when you step out of the cover. There’s a glint behind it, a smattering of pale eyes peering over at the two of you, cast by the shadowed light of the moon peeking through the clouds every now and then. The deer do not advance any further. You see them creep over the borders and throw their antlered heads back.

Inhale, hold, exhale. You bundle yourself under the jacket, guilt chewing at your insides. It makes its home there, and a meal out of the deluge.

"Thank you." you croak out. His smile simply widens.

( And with it comes the click. A manacle you don't see, a shackle you don't hear. "Look, look, look." the chittering in the trees seems to echo then shift into laughter. "She has no clue at all, the poor thing."

You are none the wiser.

None the wiser to all of it, save the absent warmth of his body. )

The-Man-Who-Saved-You is named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins.

“Flins, is just fine, of course.” he finishes smoothly when he turns up the heating and sets a kettle to boil. You curl up by the hearth, bitten fingertips grasping at the swelter around the grate’s edges. Some of the tension in your shoulders start easing and you turn to him, feeling a little pathetic over intruding into his space. 

( Said space is worn away, like the rest of Nasha town and its older streets. Metal walls and metal doors and patchwork panelling held together by dogged spite. But you can’t quite put your finger on the ‘something else’, a disconnect, as if it were shrouded so thick in it’s isolation, even the sun can’t quite reach it.

You’re suddenly aware of the fact that you’re in the middle of nowhere, with a man you barely know. )

“Mr. Flins…” you test carefully. You still have to grasp the way some letters here are pronounced, but you think you got this one right, at the very least. You tell him your name in turn, playing with the well worn corners of the blanket he’d provided ( hand knit from white and blue wool. It’s a pretty thing. You wonder where he got it from ). 

He tilts his head, testing the way the syllables rise and fall against his tongue. Your cheeks flush and your traitorous heart, amidst the strain and tire, still lets itself speed up for just a second ( and then it aches, it aches, it aches ). 

“I hope I’m not causing you any trouble.” you add, sheepishly as exhaustion tugs your words loose. Flins glances over, sharp, searching and huffs out through his nose, the dulled yellow of his eyes raking over your form with something incomprehensible. If you’d been a little more awake, you’d have been put off, perhaps. But that churlish, scathing side to you scolds the flicker down and stamps it out. He’s been helpful. He saved your life, you ungrateful thing.

“Hardly. I’m actually quite embarrassed with myself…” He gestures around the little living area, lit by low watt bulbs and panelled with wood and odd trinkets. You don’t see any photos, like some of the houses you’d been to. Flins probably isn’t the type to set his history on display — or perhaps there is little need to. “I’m afraid I do not receive guests often, save for the occasional shipment of supplies. I’d have cleared the room up a little, otherwise. I hope you don’t mind the untidiness…?”

Oh that…does not stave away the guilt. You’ll be eaten alive at this rate, as you brush the heel of your palm against your cheek and wipe away the melting snow. 

“It’s fine…It’s fine…I just…” your words peter out. It feels like grabbing at water, at this rate. You can find yourself thinking straight under the dizzy haze you sink into with the passing tick on the clock. “Mr. Flins, do you know when the storm will die down?”

Flins pauses, in the midst of straightening out the table. “The storm…” he intones. “In a few days, I'm afraid.”

Wonderful, you think to yourself viciously as the consequences start tearing your throat out. Swell. Simply swell. 

You muster up a defeated “Oh.” and feel that gnawing intensify and core your insides hollow. Your clothes have dried out, thankfully and your head wafts against the howling outside. Black spots start flooding into your line of sight, clearing out only when your weight starts tipping forward and you catch yourself in time.

You yelp, sputtering back. Flins considers you, his expression blank. “Well…” he speaks up, schooling his amusement. “I’ll get a room ready for you.” 

“Alright.” you sigh, defeated. You should have stayed home. You chew over it, slowly, steadily, the aftertaste leaving behind iron and bile on your tongue. “Though I’ll do just well on the couch…” And you glance over at it. You could, if you tuck your legs in. The thought of treading further into his life seemed an awful idea now, and you feel uneasiness swell up in your chest and fester around that open wound. You’re still too on edge to let yourself settle into your skin and wait out whatever was outside. 

“Nonsense. That would be improper, on my part as a host.” he states, a matter of fact finality edging every syllable. You have no more strength to argue, trailing his footsteps while he ducks into the hallways. He almost seems to melt into the shadows licking the walls, save for the occasional flicker of his shape by the dim light from the windows. You hear a switch flip and the lights flicker on.

You swallow that cloying terror and manage a wobbly smile. “Come along.” he urges, though not impatient. “You look like you’ll collapse.”

A heaving sound escapes. It rattles your chest. “I certainly feel it…” you mutter. 

“And we certainly cannot have that either.” he agrees, a droll lift to his voice. You listen for the brush of his footsteps against the wood flooring. “Here.” he stops, the door creaking open. “It isn’t much.” he admits, and some of that sheepish embarrassment trickles in. It’s disarming, the sight of it on a man dripping with platitudes and you rub at your shoulders. 

“It’s more than enough.” you shake your head, drinking the room in. It’s small, a little downtrodden but the sheets were freshly laundered and looked so soft you think you could sink right in and never want to wake. “Thank you again, Mr. Flins.”

The indescribable look in his eyes returns, keenly basing in it. It’s so stark yet so missable you wonder if you’re going mad at this rate. Your stance falters. “I should…” you mumble. “I should turn in for the night, I guess.”

“You should.” he complies quite placidly. “Do let me know if you are in need of anything. I’m making myself a pot of tea and if you’d like a drink before retiring, I’d be happy to bring a cup in.”

“Maybe tomorrow.” you shut your eyes, your lip wobbling as you sway in place. No more talking, your mind whispers. Rest, you need rest. It’s cold enough as is and even with the heating whirring through the vents, you’re still struggling to retain some of that warmth. Your fingertips are still cold when you touch them to your ears. The lobes are empty and your mouth purses ( of course they are ). 

Flins bows his head and steps back. “Good night, Mr. Flins.” you whisper through the crack of the door, staring up at him with a tired smile. 

“Goodnight.” he returns it with one of his own. You shut the door and lean your head into the old wood, taking one breath in, then letting out, then taking one in again. You pace each breath, as you’d taught yourself over the years. There’s nothing to fret over for now. You’ll need to leave the moment this storm dies down and get back into your own routine and the comforting motion it brought you.

It tempts you, that near future. But your house…

It feels a foreign thing now. You cannot imagine living in those walls, picking up the shattered glass from your broken windows. You can’t find what old fondness you had for it anymore, when you’d surveyed those walls the first time and taken it in, as small and modest as it was.

( You cannot taste that freedom it once held. You cannot taste anything. )

Your vision blurs over a bit and you pad over to the bed, slowing down when you pass the mirror by. It’s a small one, small enough to be held by your hands with the most beautiful ornate frame laid atop a small table. Flins seemed to like old things, shiny things, much like ravens flock to coins. He’s done you plenty of favours so far and you know better than to leave a deed like this unpaid. Maybe you could treat him to food at the Speranza. Would he like a Lackaberry Madame?

There’s a creeping feeling that cuts through the air around the room bit by bit. Then the temperature plunges, and you double over, head spinning as you grip the edge of the table too tight. Your lips part when your sight starts clearing out bit by agonizing bit as you feel hands pull you back and they’re cold, cold, so very cold over your shoulders and an incessant thumping over your temples. 

You cannot scream.

You try to call out, but it rams into your guts and batters your ribs. You cough, that invisible grip tightening against your heart and archons, archons archons were you dying what’s going on —

Something shifts in the mirror. You take a step back ( and oh, it’s pained agony, like you’re being stabbed at the soles of your feet ), ears ringing louder and louder as the wailing slowly starts to hitch into an agonizing chortle. You feel torn open, bloodied and flayed alive just as the alarm starts to spill into sheer anxiety-inducing panic like you’d been pushed headfirst into the freezing depths and held there flailing and drowning in sea water. Your hands jolt. Your face peers back, frozen in apathy as the undercurrent brims just beneath your skin and in the way your brow twitches.

Someone else peers back with you, pale faced and dead eyed. His hands hold you in place and dirt cakes the underside of his broken finger nails just as his gaze widens with some inexplicable manic to it. You feel cold breath against the shell of your ear, the ghost of something brushing your hair. 

“Don’t eat what he gives you.” it whispers, sharp, hoarse, cracking at the corners like his vocal chords had given way. It’s debilitating, the memory of desperation imprinted and seeped into every half whispered syllable. Then he’s gone, with the cold he brought and you drop to the floor, your voice returned to you and wailing into the floorboards like you were shot.

You can’t quite guess for how long. Time seemed to have bent and blurred it’s segments. You could make out the shape of Flins by the door and the way he eases you up as the weariness crunches down at your throat and you claw away at him with incense, then with a defeated, helpless series of warbling “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry — ” You also don’t register him leading you out of the room and tucking you into warmed sheets with practiced ease, pressing his hand over your eyes with a soft sigh. 

“It’s alright.” he soothes. “You’re quite alright.”

“I didn’t — ” you choke out, panicked because you saw something in there. You saw something in there. Flins draw his hand back and you look up at him. His hair shadows the glow his eyes held. He offers a kind smile. “I saw…I could have sworn I — ”

“I shouldn’t have hauled you up so unceremoniously.” he muses, more to himself than anything else. You’re pressed beneath the weight of a throw pillow. “Rest for now. You’re exhausted.”

You shudder. You can’t sleep. You don’t want to, if it meant seeing whatever that thing was haunting your dreams. He shakes his head. “You are safe.” he reiterates, firmly pressing your palm. You’re trembling, you realize. You’re trembling like a damn child and you bury yourself into the pillows, weeping into the sheets and your shame. 

The exhaustion was what took you in the end, quick as a flash, right into its yawning mouth. Outside, the storm still moans through the shutters.

You have another nightmare that night. 

( A person with hair like flaxen gold is seated atop your stomach with a too-sweet smile. They’re beautiful, beautiful in ways that scare you, that makes your insides hurt. It’s a haunting look on them, tragic as water drips down steadily past your cheek and into your hairline and over your eyes. You suck a breath in, insides twisting.

“I’m sorry,” you barely get to whisper as they lean forth, nose to nose with their long lashes pressed to their cheeks.

Their touch trails over your collarbone, over your chest. Then they peek at you through the locks shadowing their face, mischief on their lips, in the forest green of their gaze. The flash of a mirror shines in their hands and the shattering follows, sharp and loud. Broken glass tears your chest open with a sickening, messy crunch.

In the visceral aftermath, you can feel the blood soaking your sheets and the way your ribs are broken into your lungs and the last persistent thumps of your weak, beating heart.

You wake after that, in cold sweat, the lingering aftermath of her laughter still fresh on your mind.

And outside, the storm still moans through the shutters. )

The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to people-watch.

It’s the leftovers of curiosity that still pulled him back onto the streets of Nasha town during his free time, where he pored over Tarno’s wares and sorted out the pretty trinkets that caught his fancy. It was also the leftovers of curiosity that let him linger post shopping, to let his gaze rove the by lanes and the bustle at the ports.

The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins knew the ebb and flow of humanity and the faces that came and went with it. He’d counted the generational lines he’d lived past and the graves bearing his familial name, for every dead father and mother of Poor Kyryll and Poor Chudomir who lived within the lighthouse. 

He’d learned the routes the tram lines traveled when they were first set down decades ago. He’d walked past this stop every new moon and caught a ride to the edge of the town where the port lay winding down a few feet past the teetering housing. This was where he’d take the ferry to Paha Island and the cemetery off-shore and his residence and its isolation.

He’d waited by the stop that day. The sun was up, dim as it usually was and the residents had thrown on an extra layer to greet the encroaching lull of winter with. His line of sight followed the people who’d walk past. And then he saw gold, on the ears of a foreigner, gold so openly displayed in a place like Nasha town and he almost laughed at the absurdity. They were a lovely set of earrings, though, he’d deigned to admit it. The metal work was delicate, and the product itself small against the centerpiece; a little white pearl embedded in the middle.

How pretty, how pretty, how pretty. The impish side of him chants and sings and giggles away with all that hidden snark. Had he been younger, a little less tempered by human touch, Flins would have followed and magicked it for himself. How pretty, how pretty, how pretty —

And then it stopped when you turned your head to lean against the stanchion by the entrance ( so tired, with your taped fingers and that half-asleep slouch to your shoulders. ). You seemed to have caught on to it and you looked around you, back a little straighter and your stance wearier — till it landed on him. You froze, swallowed nervously and you waved his way. It was a small gesture. An innocent one. And oh foolish, foolish you — you with all your blissful ignorance hadn’t a clue of what you’d done then. 

Flins blinked.

Oh.

Hello. 

“Have you slept well?”

You’d awoken in his room, you quickly learn. Flins is plain with that admission when you asked, and brushed it off as he usually did when he set your tea down next to you. You draw your legs to your chest, the after-image of gold still burned into your eyes and you fight the urge to tear your hair from your head as the shudder between your ribs grows to a rampant, hungry thing. 

You shutter, when Flins repeats his question carefully and you bite your cheek bloody for being so rude. “No…not really.” you rasp out, feeling more and more like a nuisance. It’s his room, and it repeats in your head and rattles and rattles till it festers into something deep seated and annoying. 

“Was it a nightmare?” he probes.

You swallow. “I…I guess.” It’s a slow admission and you feel stupid saying it aloud. When you’d graduated, you assumed adulthood meant growing up and casting away the childish things. The fairy tales and the anxious nag of something stirring in the shadows of your bed. The old fears that let you run to your parents’ room with babbling, warbling cries. “Nothing too bad and all. I’m just…easily flustered.” You laugh it off and lay your sights on the tea, feeling your insides shift with nauseous protest. 

Flins taps his chin. “And yet you’re distressed.” he retorts with a hasty followup: “I won’t pry. Will the tea help? Or a meal?”

No, you sound out in your head. That pale face flickers back and forth, death-like, corpse-like with its grip digging into the flesh of your upper arms. Don’t eat what he gives you. 

It’s strange, the familiarity of that warning. Nikita had uttered it once in passing when you’d checked another book in. Then there’s the bile stinging at your throat and burning your insides out. The last thing Flins needs — even as some old, dulled instinct screams at you to run — is a sick resident ( and oh, how like you, you coward to unearth the ugliness that is your own loathing ). “I…I don’t think I have the stomach for anything right now.”

The corner of Flins’ lip twitches and that was that.

Strange. Strange. Strange.

He dips his head down, collecting the cup. “Alright. A little later, perhaps” he hums, sliding the saucer into one hand. How graceful, how proper; you’re admittedly a little enthralled by the action. “I have my own duties to attend to now. If you wish, you can amuse yourself and look around. You’ll be here a while, after all.” And that smile returns, all buttery warmth against washed out marigold. 

( You want to flee into your blankets — but these ones aren’t yours. They’re unfamiliar, and you tell yourself this over and over because you are, for all intents and purposes, something alien disturbing this little corner of Nod Krai. You should never have been here at all. )

He hasn’t asked about the previous night yet. You shake your head a little before offering him a smile of your own. “I could help out around the house.” You state. “Actually, I think I will. It’s the least I could do.”

“There’s no need.”

“I must.” you insist, a plea creeping into your pitch because you can’t be dead weight, you simply cannot. “Again. I’ve barged in with little thought or care for your space. It’s only right…”

“You were freezing to death.” Flins intones, a gein hiding away rather sneakily as he speaks. “Now I doubt there’s any room to protest ill manners in a situation like that, don’t you agree?” You mouth purses and you clench your teeth when a grin threatens to pull at your face. You see what Katya meant when she spoke of him now. He’s polite, easy to talk to if not a little off. Then again most keepers like him are, living so far out in isolation.

“Do you step out often? From this island?” you ask, sneaking a glance around you. The walls are bare here too and there are more shelves, more boxes and a large desk with days worth of papers upon papers stacked atop it. Flins follows your gaze.

“Reports.” he waves off. “A nasty thing to deal with. You don’t have to bother with those.”

You huff with a quiet, “I don’t think I can help with that.”

“Pity.” he comments. “Would you like to head down to the living room?”

You shouldn’t linger and you know this. Still, given what you’d seen, leaving felt like something horrible and maligned. You…you could hear the thump-thump of your heart at the thought. But you could have been hallucinating ( you tell yourself this over and over. A figment of your imagination. That boy was never there. His grasp on you never existed. You saw nothing in that mirror; just the flayed mind of someone who has to eat her terrible choices ). Were the last few hours easy on you at all to begin with?

He helps you up and you rub salt on your wounds, hissing at yourself for it. How pathetic. 

“I can manage, Mr. Flins.” you pipe up and it’s a reedy attempt at sounding bigger than you were. He shows you the bathroom and you run some hot water for yourself, scrubbing away the stale stench of sweat off of you. You almost expect to catch a pair of eyes peering at you through the mirror or past the parting the curtains provided. There are no eyes. There are no shapes hiding away past your vision.

You still feel watched.

You hate every second of it.

But you lay your anger flat and leave it in some corner to rot into itself. Flins provides you with spare clothes while yours are put away for washing. You accept them, your cheeks burning from behind the door ( he wasn’t looking at you; and you had stifled a weak, awkward giggle; it comes out more a strangled croak ). They’re too big on you, and you’d folded the sleeves of the sweater and trousers a few times so that you could walk around with them with little issue.

He says his usual, “Call if you need me, yes?”

“I will.”

( Something is burning into your shoulders when you turn away from him. That same voyeuristic hunger, that same uneasiness lighting up and gagging you. )

You make yourself useful, as the itch compelled it. clearing a few tables out when he allowed it and washing any used dishes. The morning beat on that way, as he disappears off, probably to see to the reports and keep the lighthouse running.

From your knowledge, as limited as it was, you doubt he does leave this place as much to begin with. You can make out a few of the graves; the closer ones poking out of the haze of grey outside your window. That and the faint outline of trees bent over against the gusts that rattle by. In Sumeru, you only knew the rainstorms and how the palm trees bent over till some snapped against the sheer force of it. It was a rare moment of you facing the cold back then.

Now it’s…common.

You feel homesick, putting the washed dishes away. You miss the basking and the green and climbing the trees you did when you were young. You missed peering over walls and sorting jasmine with your grandmother. You miss the smell of the earth when the rains ceased and the momentary cool and then the sweltering heat that followed. You miss Sumeru, as infuriating as it got and you miss your family and the messiness they brought with them.

( You can’t face them anymore. Not after this. )

He has nice ceramics. The hand painted kind, locked away in a cupboard. Your grandmother loved to hoard away her good cutlery too — the nice plates, the nice glasses and when fanciness permitted it with fancy guests, the nice cutlery ( but never family, because that ease and casualness seemed to magically brush aside the metal plates passed around ). 

Your eyes land on the knives and their sharp edges ( and you remember the feel of skin and you remember the way it divots ). Your mouth runs dry and you tear your eyes away from them, pushing away those memories — all of them into a locked corner. 

You dry your hands like clockwork. They’re numb and you move to the hearth, reaching out for the warm flicker within it. The fire swells, burns. You watch it, transfixed, perhaps intent to curl up beside it like a cat and think about the sun you miss so much ( and the sun itself and nothing else even at s tails after you like a restless creature so intent on being noticed ). Maybe you can make a few games up on the spot to pass the time.

Then it sputters and the lights around you flicker off.

You almost crumble then and there, sitting upright. It’s dark, save the warm orange behind you, and even that casts its ominous shadows over the wall. And they shift, they twist, they morph and blend and melt in together and you stay stock still, bells tolling in your head as you wait and watch and wait and watch and wait.

You retreat back, closer to the light and heave a breath in. Nothing yet. Nothing too alarming. You watch the dark and you watch it hard till you feel some of your nerve start to splinter and calm. Your head hangs down and the drumbeat in your chest starts easing just a bit. 

Look at you. This is getting ridiculous.

It is, you agree, palms to your cheek. You give them a firm smack. You need to pull yourself together. You haven’t seen any sign or sight of Flins yet and you wonder if he’s trying to manage the shut power. You have no clue how the lighthouse even has electricity, given it’s so far removed from any notable settlements…

“Mr. Flins?” you call.

No answer. He’s probably a little too far to hear you. You weren’t very loud to begin with.

Your face feels bitten, pulled taut against ice water. You draw your legs back, exhaling sharply.

Then something grabs you. It holds fast to your ankle and pulls. You brace yourself as you skid into the wall, freezing in place for a bare second like a deer in headlights. You feel the way it batters against you and the white hot searing swallowed up by numbness and the blood roaring in your head. You scramble to your feet, slipping once, twice and run. There’s a scrape and scramble and the heavy footfalls that follow till it feels like they surround you and echo past the and down every turn and every bit of cramped space you squeeze by.

( Thump, thump, thump goes your heart, loud enough to mask the scratching, the soft undertone of hurried whispers echoing from the floorboards beneath you. They grow louder and louder till you fear them reaching between the spaces of wood and hauling you down thrashing and screaming. )

That chill settles fast and you push yourself off  to one side, meandering into one narrow hallway till you ram right into a snowswept Flins holding his lantern aloft. He’s shaken a moment, just as you press into the space beside him, only just catching something retreating back farther away, as if terrified of the blue light that cuts across the dark. “Did — ” there’s hysteria there and it drips out of you, in trembling, shaking gasps. “Archons what was that — ”

Flins looks eerily calm. “The neighbours.” he replies. 

“What?” you swallow, grimacing. “What?!”

“The neighbours. I do live next to a graveyard after all.” he repeats firmly. “We have residents on the island who often linger past their time. They’re rather loud today…”

Oh. Oh. You slump back, back hitting metal as you press a hand down and rub it over your face, your breaths erratic. Flins’ clothes rustle and he hovers, his presence still so cold against the emptiness of the hall around you. “I’m…What I saw yesterday — oh god I'm being haunted — ” When his touch brushes against your arm, you draw back as if shot and he takes a step away. “Sorry. Sorry I didn’t — ”

He shakes his head. “They must have given you a scare.” he notes, brows pinching just a little. “Given how they’re usually so docile, I didn’t quite expect them to lash out as much…” He pores over you while you inch into him, following the timbre of his voice and screwing your eyes shut. “Are you hurt?”

The burning on your back is starting to smart. Your nose twitches and you shake your head. 

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.” you tell him, a little too hasty, you think. “Will they keep…” you stop, eye stinging just as you dare to sneak another glance out, jumping against the slow rock of the lantern and the shape of the space seemingly distorting. “I don’t want to keep seeing them — ” Flins looks at you with something akin to sympathy, gently meandering you back to the living room.

“If you are scared, you can stick a little closer to me.” he offers. “They tend to steer clear my way…”

You sniffle. “Why?”

He offers a dry smile. “Why indeed? I’m under the assumption that I put plenty of people off.” You’re seated down on the couch, where you absently nurse your shoulder blade and hope he doesn’t notice the way you wince when you press down a bit too hard. The lantern is set down on the table and you turn your attention to that, and the blue flame dancing inside it ( it shrinks, then swells and shrinks again, dimming and brightening all at once ).

“People in town call you ‘odd’.” you concede, the pads of your thumb smoothening over your knuckles. 

“I’m aware.” Flins laughs a little. “Do you think I'm odd?”

What a question, you shake your head. Is there a correct answer for this one? Flins is expectant though, even if he turned it over as a joke. He’s leaned forward a little on his seat and there’s a prickle there that you…you can’t quite put your finger on. 

You mull over it. You’d met his gaze a few times already and you meet it now; dull yellow against the lamplight and the ghostly paleness of his skin. “A little.” you mutter. “But when it comes to speaking to you, it just…comes out…? I don’t know how to say it but…” you shrug, cheeks starting to burn a bit. You haven’t lost the taut set to your jaw. You still duck just a little when something seems to move in spots. “...It just is.”

Flins hums, seemingly satisfied and you’re left to the silence filling the space between the two of you for a little time after. The rattling outside seems to grow wilder, wilder still till you almost fear the window flying off of the hinges. He waves it off. “It’s quite normal.” he says, bent over a book. You open your mouth, nearly commenting on the poor lighting ( “your eyes will strain.” Your grandmother would say. “And then you’ll go blind!” ).

You keep quiet. It would be very rude. You barely register him saying something about fused wires, and power outages, as if he sensed your unspoken query and you wither a bit from embarrassment. 

The pelting slowly starts to slow. “It’s stopped?” you squawk out, wide eyed, a little hopeful. 

“It’s slowed.” Flins corrects. “Which is a good thing. I may not have to keep clearing the windows of the lantern room over and over…” He pauses, considering your frame, curled up on his couch. Your heart leaps; you’ll have to be left alone again at this rate and given the last instance? You shrink a little, too much of a coward to speak up while you pull against the hem of the clothes you’d borrowed.

No more ghosts, you want to wail. No more ghosts. But you ask too much of him as is. It feels like you’re digging yourself too deep into a pit to really climb out of at this rate.

“You could come with me.” Flins offers. “I’ll need to refuel the lantern again while at it and an extra set of hands could be of some help.” 

You blink and look up. “Could…could I?”

“It’s nothing too complicated. Just pouring some kerosene in and handling a hand pump.” he states, dipping into the halls. You follow him as he ventures back to his sleeping quarters, fishing out a spare coat and scarf from the cupboard after some rummaging. “It is still quite cold out.” he reminds you just as you shoot him a distressed glance. “We don’t want your tongue to freeze off. You don’t deserve a liar’s omen, hm?”

You sputter a little, your own coat clutched against your chest. 

“That’s not going to keep the cold out.”

“I’m aware.” you mumble, securing yourself beneath layers upon layers of heavy fleece. Flins circles you once, hiking your scarf up a moment then passing you a curt nod. “So all I have to do is pour the fuel in?” You run over it again, still so uncertain with yourself. He leads you a little further into the house, opening the door at what you could surmise was the edge of it. A circular room lays beyond, iron walls and all with a single stairwell spiralling upwards.

Flins ascends first and you test your weight on a step before scuttling after, stopping by the windows to watch the ground slowly plummet below the two of you. He finally stops at a circular room, walls bare and a chair or two strewn into the shaded parts. You catch a table here too and the vague scrawl of a weather report streaked across it as well as a few white shavings. “Pay that no mind.” he says, as you shift and bounce on your feet. There’s a terrible mix of nervousness and excitement welling up — heat and cold turning over and over and upheaving itself through the space between your ribs. 

He wheels a barrel over to you, patting the top of it. You pull your mittens off and stuff them into the pockets of the jacket. “Two of these into the vat.” he instructs, clipped, precise as he taps at the little tank. Then he points to something vaguely shaped like a bicycle pump. “And I’d mentioned it before, but you’ll need to pump this after pouring the oil in. twenty should do just fine. The needle should point right here and stay there.”

He taps at the gauge and turns to you with an encouraging smile. “Could you manage that now?”

Your lips purse. “Seems simple enough.” you jerk your head. “Fuel in tank, and then pump…right…right…”

“I’ll be up in the lantern room.” Flins continues on. “Don’t worry too much now. You won’t be bothered by any spirits up here. I’ll be in the next room over as is.” And you keep that bit of comfort close, as greedy as you were for it at this point. There’s far too much going on as is. The nightmare struck that match and burns your insides out and you’re stuck tripping over every corner like some quivering child.

Be useful, you tell yourself and it starts tasting bitter in your mouth. It stings into delicate skin and it lingers in its aftertaste. You vaguely hear Flins climb the ladder up as you get a grip of the handles. You’re not unused to manual labour, but the container is still heavy, nearly jerking you forward. The oil nearly tips and spills over and you throw yourself back just a bit to salvage it and straighten yourself up.

You try a second time, staggering and angling the neck of the barrel straight into the feed till you’re left with an empty vessel. Rinse and repeat and the repetitiveness offers just a little comfort as your mind shuts off and you lose yourself and your thoughts and the feeling of drowning.

You hadn’t noticed the light, the shape of it muted initially when you had deigned to glance out earlier. You were momentarily caught off guard by the clinking of machinery and a chain slowly lowering itself down, followed by an apology from Flins. By the time you hear the sack hit the bottom of the stairs, you’re done with the pumping, and turn your attention to the ladder. You can hear the winds slowly starting to pick up once more and the storm slowly gathers its battering weight. 

You’re starting to feel the iciness in the room and the mittens are slid back on to spare yourself. 

Outside, a dark shape hurtles past the gallery deck. It disappears down below.

You jump, glaring at the window in stunned silence. “Mr. Flins?!” you call out right after, alarm scratching at your throat, at the prospect of him falling. 

“Yes?” he answers, his voice far away and slightly muffled.

You heave a breath in. You were probably just seeing things at this point. Pinch at your cheek and square your shoulders. “Nothing. May I come up?” you ask.

He sounds a little closer now, answering with an absent: “If you’d like.” So you pull yourself up there and slow yourself down, a little wide eyed at the sight of the lenses slotted in the center of the room. There’s glass slid into place, turning over and into each other in a display you’d call beautiful ( and it is, the sight of it makes you a little dizzy over the intricacies ). Blue light filters through the glass, so glaringly bright and so pretty in how it dances against the edges of it. 

“Apologies.” Flins calls out, clearing the last bit of snow out. He takes a walk round the lens, his eyes a little wide as he gestures at you to follow. A knob is turned, and you watch the little bulb and the wick inside slowly light up and the room bathes itself in buttery gold. “Don’t look at it directly.” He breathes. “You’ve helped me with half the work here already. I’d have been up here a while, I think.”

“It’s quite cold. We wouldn’t want your tongue falling out.” you crack a small smile ( he narrows his eyes in a cheeky display, an unspoken “oh really?” ). “But archons this is…” You can’t find the words for it, every smart little bit of vocabulary you know, crushed underweight by something so big it wells up inside and walks against the edge of exploding. “I…I’ve never seen this before. Just in textbooks.”

The lens turns and you try to crane your head up a bit to catch the world outside from over the surrounding wall. Flins huffs, holding a hand in a gesture that is delightfully chivalrous. “I’ll have to warn you beforehand to brace yourself.” He advises,his hand hovering by your arm. You flinch when it accidentally brushes at your back, aggravating the faint ache from your bruise. He bats his lashes, looking you dead in the eye and you clear your throat.

The door creaks open. You pull the scarf up to your face ( it smells of nothing, conveniently stripped away of any sense of use or history ). The beam of light cuts into the fog before you, tearing through like a blade, like some kind of homing light that seems to span on and on till forever. “How far does it go?” you let out that hushed question, looking over to him.

“Far enough to see it till Hiisii island on clearer knights.” He replies. “It’s an old lighthouse…perhaps not as good as what one would find back in the port of Nasha town. But it does it’s job well, no less.”

“It does.” you whisper, the expanse of grey in front of you suffused in a soft glow. “And you see this every night?”

“Every night.” he whispers back. “I’ve grown used to this view…you on the other hand seem taken by it.”

“I’ve mentioned it.” you play with your fingers, tap-tapping them against your knuckles like you had too much to do and let out and it builds and builds and builds inside. “We’ve only studied them in passing in textbooks back at school. Port Oromos, back in Sumeru has one of its own but it was decommissioned before I was born and well…we just tend to pass by the outside of it.”

“And you’re from there, then?” Flins asks, looking mildly interested. It feels a little sudden as you wrestle with the door and try pulling it shut ( he steps in to, help, an amused lift to the corners of his lips ). 

“I am.” you bob your head. 

“Interesting.” 

The two of you make way downstairs, and you melt into the warmth of his home. “And you’re still not used to the winters here, it’s safe to presume.” He glances back your way, while you pull the jacket just a little bit closer to your body. You catch a few graves down below poking out of the mist’s line. It’s a strange spot to build a lighthouse. Or perhaps the lighthouse was here first?

It’s still pitch black inside and Flins guides you over back to the living area, where he nestles the lantern close to you. “Lunch is due.” he says with a small smile. “Are you hungry?”

There’s an emptiness in your stomach that has spread its teeth back while you worked. You nod. “I am…” you admit, even as the rattling warning starts up again. Flins straightens up, something akin to a hungry delight set ashine in his eyes.

“Good.”

You should have said no, something inside protests, angry. You keep it quiet, too tired and too famished to give it any sense of concern or comfort in the thick of it, letting yourself pry its gnawing teeth from your shoulder. It’s just a few days. A few days, nothing more and nothing less with a kind man — a strange man, yes — but a kind man.

You eat what he brings you, some smoked meat with a side of pickled vegetables that you carefully take a few forkfulls of, all too aware of the way he watches you as he urges you to have some of the soup as well. It’s a bit much, the attention and you reason that he’s anxious to see your reaction to it. “It’s really good.” you speak up. And it is; well seasoned and well cooked. You wouldn’t mind having more if you’d dare to ask for it. “Won’t you be eating though?”

His side of the table is empty. Flins rests his elbows on the armrest, leaning his chin into the heel of his palm ( so disconcerting yet so sweet lipped ).

“I don’t have much of an appetite.” 

“No?” you parrot, dubious. It doesn’t sit well with you. You can’t put a finger on why.

“No.” he finishes, a low, steady hum trickling into the silence. 

“Oh. Okay.” you look down, stirring your soup. “You’re a very good cook though, Mr. Flins. I’ll have to steal away a few of your recipes, I think…” Another mouthful, another spell, another wave of humming that you can’t seem to wrap your head around. You shut yourself off, too far away, maybe, to take in the almost mechanical way your body bends its joints and feeds itself. All you could feel is the cotton fogging up every inch of your head and layering itself over like molasses.

You were hungry, and somehow satiety curls its claws inwards.

( It’s nice enough to feel a hint of dazed contentment seeding itself deep, deep inside you. A whisper, a suggestion, a quiet lull. What if you stay, what if you stay, what if you stay? It’s a captivating thought, something you would have wring your hands at in any other instance. 

Stay, stay, stay. It keeps insisting and you close your eyes, swaying a bit. It sounds so far removed from the speech you know and yet, yet, yet, you know it in a way you know an old friend. Stay here.

Stay forever. )

Flins tilts his head. “I’m glad to hear that.” 

The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to visit the library.

He knew the man who checked the books out — old Nikita who’d once fought in the army with him, who knew better than to nod along and wave away his seeming agelessness. Nikita, who had a sharp eye and a sharper head; and perhaps that had delighted Flins with the very novelty of having a bit of push and pull and knowing acknowledgement.

He’d asked for recommendations that day, then perused through notes on modern art and photo albums littered with pages upon pages of pictures taken by those newfangled handheld kameras he’d heard so much about. He’d stalked the quieter shelves and picked out a few novellas that had gone out of print years ago, with those inky little drawings scrawled in between pages and paragraphs of stories. 

The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to visit the library, and on that day, he spotted another familiar face that had pattered right past him. You hadn’t noticed his presence this time and he had let himself linger about a little longer as you had tucked a light novel close with a collection of other books, so hurried and everywhere and nowhere all at once while you pulled your hat over your face and moved on to deliver your packages. 

Quaint little think that you were, with your silly taped fingers and that perpetually anxious furrow to your brow — Flins had noted the harried feeling about you being edged with something brutally desperate. It came with that sharp scent; the fear that would nestle in the ribs of wild animals cornered. He hadn’t meant to try and pry as deep into the details of it, but he’d still gone to Nikita after you had left and asked a few questions. 

Nikita was weary. He’d told Flins to turn his gaze away. You weren’t something to be toyed with and Flins knows this. He wasn’t a cruel man, by any means. Nikita knew this too and reiterated that statement — that you were a little too spread thin, too easy to knock over and break. Flins had soaked this in, and those little attempts to try and appeal to gentleness. 

He smiled at Nikita and thanked him. When the old man had looked away for a mere moment, Flins’ gaze happened upon the register perched atop, listed with library card numbers. Your collection was a little list of odds and ends and titles some of which he vaguely recognized. One made him pause.

On Folklore: Snowland Fae and other Snezhnayan Legends.

A passing fancy, he mused. Snezhnaya’s legends were legends with reason. People knew of the truth that would come with every little story uttered by the bedside and the warnings that would accompany every single one. Flins looked away when Nikita’s attention slipped back to him, probing, almost accusatory. 

( He’s whispered under his breath, that you were getting curious. Nikita had people as about old stories, but the way you had taken to him, scared, as he’d described it, was enough to set off that sense of trepidation that had haunted his own old heart for years. )

He asked Flins if he was responsible for it. Because to Nikita, Flins’ ilk were the dangerous sort. He had good reason too — he knew well how the revelry of the fae would often drive one to near madness. He also knew well that even he, and his body sewn together with flesh and viscera and the blood and face of a human man couldn’t quite shed the core of him.

Flins also, however, spoke nothing but the truth. He told Nikita he’d barely entertained your presence, if conversed with you at all. And Nikita bowed his head and sighed ( he was tired, from a lot of things ). Flins offered his regards, gathered his material and left for the tram stop. His assigned day off was coming to its close and he had his work to see to, in his isolated little territory.

Then he slowed.

Ah, he had realized then, rather belatedly — and it sparked a string of pity there when the uncertainty you had held yourself with stricken his field of sight. Your earrings were gone too.

( They are back in your dreams. 

They pull you into the deep end of it, curtailing their breezy laughter as they take your hands. The water — and this is when you notice the lake, comes to your knees and it rises higher and higher the further out they lead you. They don’t speak to you, an analytical shine sparking in their gaze, as if cutting you apart and baring you naked before them. And you hate it. You hate them. You hate, hate, hate.

You try to pull away but their nails dig into your wrists. You gasp; it’s a deep, rasping cry and it strangles at your chest when it lets itself out. The trees around you start to blot into itself, nothing more than spurs of inkblots speckling out amidst the grey and white and this person — the creature only smiles wider when you let that terror be known. It’s all wrong, your thoughts slur. This is all wrong.

You stretch on till it’s up to your hips, then your waist and they go on deeper and deeper still. Your feet dig into the mud. “No — ” you hiss out, eyes stinging against the cold that pinches at your cheeks. You feel how the blood starts rushing into your face, into your stiff limbs and the creak and rattle of your joints as they start freezing over. “I’m not going there.” You speak up again, you assert, snatching yourself back.

The creature’s expression shifts to contemplative blankness. The apathy makes you pause just before you turn and try to wade out, breaths falling short just as your body starts shutting down. You’re pulled back and you catch the gold of their hair by your cheek for a speck of a moment. Then you’re under, water rushing into your lungs.

You flail against the ironset of their grip. It’s inhumanly strong, dancing close to breaking bone. You scream, scream and scream and fight and bite and scratch against the pale expanse of their skin and they only push you deeper and deeper till your vision starts to fade out.

You caused this. You caused this. You face it.

Then you are pulled back up, coughing and limp and all you can see is blue — blue everywhere as you’re cradled by too-cold hands. You feel lips slant upon yours in a way that’s starved out and wanting and you know the dread that claws its way in all too well. Push back, push back, push back And you try to as the sting in your eyes turn to tears. The newcomer doesn’t budge.

You aren’t drowning anymore, you hush. So you let it be. )

“I still can’t radio anyone from the mainland.” Flins tells you after breakfast, his hair tied up after clearing away the bits of frost that had stuck itself onto it. You’d taken residence on his couch now, worn down and pulled taut — just in view of the outside world and the storm that still beats on. “The lines must still be down given the state of things and the weather. Maybe when it clears a little more…”

You hold fast to the pillow, taking it in with a sinking down to the very pits and in-betweens of you. “Are you disappointed?” he asks, a half-tease testing the silence. 

“No…well, yes.” You bury yourself into the pillow, feeling fatigue gnaw at you till you start teetering forth. Flins reaches out, steadies you and gently pushes you back against the couch ( and the gesture comes so naturally. You’re honestly a little abashed with a lick of defeat edging itself in ). Your back stings in protest and you right yourself up into a position that is a little less painful. “I feel like i’m overstaying at this point, and you’ve been so good to me.”

“And…?” Flins urges, plucking away at the ties and buttons of his coat. You have far more to say and he has an uncanny habit of knowing. For a man so isolated, Flins scrutinizes the world around him with an uncanny amount of veracity that puts you off. Or maybe you have let yourself steep in assumptions — and you’re more inclined to the latter.

You trace the hem of the pillow. “When you come to town next time, you can come visit me at the library Nikita runs.” You tell him. “I need to buy you lunch. Many lunches, in fact.”

“Next time.” he repeats, an odd look in his eye. “And will there be candlelight?” he asks after, the ghost of a smirk playing into the impassivity on his face. 

You sputter. “Not unless there’s a power outage.”

Flins hides a chuckle behind his hand. “There won’t be any need for that.” He says with a heavy kind of certainty. “But it is a kind offer…what other plans do you have once the storm clears?” And oh that has you blinking over at him, a little jarred by the suddenness that enquiry brings about; or rather, your inability to formulate any other coherent thought. A part of you, something so quiet and childish curls up. It’s a stationary creature and it clings on fast to the disjointed routine you have started here.

“I’ve not thought beyond that.” you say it before you could stop yourself. You feel punched in the gut. “It’s not been long, I know but — ” you struggle, cheeks starting to burn. It’s so foolish, this attempt at grabbing at things like a petulant little brat.

“That’s alright.” he flicks his head up a bit, his gaze luminous. You can’t tear away from it, or the sinking in your gut. 

After a while, you prod again. “Won’t you be eating, Mr. Flins?” you curl up, knees to your chest. “You didn’t seem to have breakfast today either.” And he didn’t. Last night, on your request, you’d moved a pillow to the couch to not inconvenience him any further ( even if the rest of the  night was restless ). His rest is important, and the room was the closest to the stairway and when you’d awoken and eaten what Flins had offered, he made no moves to join you at the table, save for watching.

It doesn’t sit well.

He’d seated himself down on the chair across you, something of a silent watchman and he’s bent over with a carving blade in hand, chipping away at a small white piece. “Hm. I ate what I needed to eat earlier.” His eyes shut and his breaths are low, almost missably quiet. “Please pay it no mind. My eating habits are a little jarring and unreliable at the best of times.” And there’s a matter of factness in how he says it.

“Okay.” you mumble. “And what are you doing now?”

Flins holds the object up. “This?” You eye it, picking out the smoothness and its shape as it presses into the palm of his hand and the clasp of his fingers. You couldn’t quite put a finger on it, on what it was at first. Not till you push past the sleepiness to rise from the couch and pad over to him with a sheepish little “may I?” His gaze crinkles at the corners and he complies.

“This is…a bone.” you blurt when he hands it to you and you test the weight of it. There’s one side to it that opens up into a hollow curve and a faint resemblance of a skull. 

“It is.” Flins nods. “When you walk over the beach, you often find fragments of whalebones washed ashore. Some of them span larger than the boats that occasionally pass by. While I do let those ones be, there are some that are just the right size to make something new out of.”

“I mean…” you reason, handing it back to him. “I’ve known people who collect twigs and acorns and make little people from them.”

“Then I suppose it’s just a difference in material.” Flins finishes, enjoying himself a little too much, you think. 

“This doesn’t look like a whalebone though.” you note. It’s too small and much too light to be one.

“Oh no.” Flins shakes his head. “This one is an Ibis. You can see where the beak was over here.” He shows you a chipped away part, filed down carefully till the cracks had given way to a somewhat sleeker finish round it. “It wasn’t a whole skull when I found it. The rest of it must have been taken by the dogs.”

Despite yourself, you find yourself asking, “What else do you have?” It keeps your mind off of things, and the looming that traces your footsteps and shadows your movements. You’re a little too soft hearted and scared to tell Flins that you couldn’t stay here, not when the dead are turning in their graves and deriding your very presence.

( And the nightmares too, and the way they come to weather down and erode the corners of you bit by bit till you lose your sleep and you lose your senses. You want to tear the skin from off your arms, to gouge your eyes out as the phantom feel of your lungs collapsing into your chest continues to persist. )

“Hm.” 

You didn’t expect the collection to be as expansive. Flins has a little work station dedicated to displaying his bone puzzles, some of them a mismatch of species slotted together to make new ones and others bearing carved models of birds and animals trapped mid-flight. And all of them, every last one, were whittled down from bones.

He places his lantern down and points to a few, ever so polite, ever so proper with explaining things. A couple of them had ornaments decorating them. Little bits of metal flicking their feathers or small gems in their ribs ( you are admittedly a little smacked at the sight of a pair of brilliant sapphires; just a little bigger than a ball bearing, affixed in the eyes of an eagle ). But strange hobbies in isolation aside, they’re well made, well crafted and you balk at the detail put into it. 

What a strange, strange man, you muse to yourself. It explains some of the antiques and the plethora of odds and ends that lay scattered across his shelves and tables. “Do you collect gems too, Mr. Flins?”

“I often do, yes.” He shows you another. This one simply holds a chain round its neck, more a display than anything else. “Have you come by Tarno? I often go to him to occasionally buy myself a thing or two when I receive my monthly salary. You can find all sorts of things on his shelves. Books, showpieces, uncut gems, jewellery…” 

Tarno. That name guts you, and your smile freezes into the shape of your face. You can't bring yourself to say it, while Flins seems lost in his own thoughts; his touch sweeping over the wood surface and past another line of carved pieces. You know about the shop he’s talking about. You've been inside. You've walked out with that pocket of grief, lodged deep into your heart. But Flins is Flins; and you've never met him in person. He wouldn't know.

“Can’t say that I have.” you slowly work away at some chance to move away from this conversation.

Flins however, seems intent on keeping it up. “I recently bought a few things.” He continues, pulling away at the drawers to produce a little casket. You can’t bring yourself to look at his face, catching the rustle of fabric and the faint clink clink clink of metal and beads. Then you feel his touch on your chin, soft, deliberate as he holds something to your ear. “I’d noticed they were pierced.” he tells you and there’s a hushed sort of tremble buried deep down. “These suit you well.”

The lantern light seems to swell into a brighter glow and when you blink, it shutters and dims. He draws his hand back. You see gold-work, twisted into a loop, a circle encasing something round and small. A pearl.

The floor falls away. There’s the feel of a yawning chasm eating yourself through from the inside, something so akin to numb emptiness and your jerk back, nails digging into the flesh of your palms till you feel wetness crest into the pads of your fingers. “It’s lovely.” you force out.

Flins watches you, silent, waiting. You tell yourself he couldn’t have known ( he couldn’t, he wouldn’t. You can’t be certain if this would count as betrayal but that gesture would have shattered you and left the fragments to rot away in some dark space ) and you lie and lie and bite your tongue and call yourself a stupid thing for lapsing so easily. “It is.” he agrees. “Tarno told me they were cared for.”

They were loved, he seems to say. They were loved. And they were, you want to nod. You’d treasured those earrings, you’d treasured them and the memories they came with. You treasured it in every instance, with how you kept up maintaining its shine for years. And now it’s bitter fruit and something, something that makes you sick the longer you stare at them.

Why does he have this. Why does he have this. Why does he have this. Why does he have this.

“I’m tired.” you whisper to him, as the room starts to shift in and out of sight. 

“Tired?” he echoes, his voice distant, dipping down to a staticky baritone, his stare flickering, searching. “You do look exhausted.”

Flins lets you go. You didn’t sleep all that well the previous night anyway and he stays behind to put the jewellery away. You can’t shrug the burning on your back; both the bruise and the way he surveys every little shift in your muscles ( or at least, you think he is ). But it’s Mr. Flins. The same Mr. Flins who had taken you from the cold. The same Mr. Flins who let you stay.

You’re being rude. You shouldn't have snapped like that, like some wounded dog, like some unresolved idiot.

But the earrings. Oh the earrings. You’ve had them since you were a baby, bought for your first birthday with your grandmother’s savings. It’s such a materialistic gripe, but it’s also the love that had littered itself into the years you’d spent wearing it. They were all you had till you were in your teens. They were all you had when you came to Nod Krai, so naively insistent that you could live on your own.

They were all you had of her. 

( And then those greedy eyes had set their sights on it and kept trying to snatch, snatch, snatch till your cupboards were overturned and your face and neck bruised and bleeding. Nostalgic sentiment, you quickly learned, was not worth your fracturing sanity. You’ve come to regret it since. )

There’s an eerie chill that you don’t quite register, with white noise flooding in and your lips being bitten raw. And then you see that ghost again, watching from a corner. There’s no accompaniment of fanfare or the usual violent terror, save for him wafting in and out of sight, his features diffusing further and further into obscurity. You can only make out the shape of his scarf and the messy state of his clothes.

He brings the winter cold with him. And then a despairing absence of it after, ribbing you of sensation for moments at a time. Cold then not, cold then not. 

And he seems to be watching you. Watching, empty eyed as if he could reach into the spaces between your ribs and perceive that swell there, that unhealed cut, that puss ridden centre that keeps you awake and hurting and empty all at once. His garbles are nothing more than muffled distortions, like he was trying to call in from a badly tuned radio. They peak into urgency, then stop with a helpless lilt.

And you watch him back, waiting. You wait for the voices, for the mounting weight. You dare him too, wound up, ready to fall apart and break your skull against something because lords about there's too much to think now. There's too much to think.

The boy draws back as if shot. He dissipates and you breathe.

You’re tired. And it comes down hard when you slip back onto the couch, holding your head against the rise and fall of your chest. You see the dozens upon dozens of shapes drawn out into the mist and the way they seem to dance against the wind and the snow’s pelting. And you see how it circles, how it comes in closer and scurries back.

Your mouth twists to a grimace. 

You sleep a few hours, your dreams disturbingly empty. When you wake, Flins brings you dinner, content with the silence and the seeming layer of tenseness it runs thick with now. You could liken it to rotten fruit or stale honey and you eat the food with that hysteria slowly starting to clatter against your insides. 

Flins doesn’t touch his food. 

The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to buy antiques.

He wasn’t picky on what kind — so long as they held weighted sentiment and a story engraved into its body. Rusted coins, old shoes, bracelets and stones and stamps and books and cowry shells strung together with string; Flins would set his sights and pass his mora over the table. He’d decorated his lighthouse with it; spruced up what Illuga and Nikita called the perpetual doom that clung to the walls and ceiling. 

Sometimes he came across particularly beautiful pieces. Watches, for one, that had stopped at certain times ( Flins took to collecting ones that had stopped at every different hour. He’s yet to acquire a few but it was a growing collection he was pleased with ), and lovely looking cufflinks with silver finishes that glowed like moonlight. He would fuss over them like a magpie with its horde and he’d survey the shelves for more till he’d satisfied that itch.

The man named Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins liked to buy antiques. This time around he’d found a few gramophone records, all of them tunes once played in the old courts of the Belyi Tsar ( as monotonous as the droning of cocktail parties were, Flins had come to see how easily history would fragment and die away with its passage. Plenty of music had failed to survive past the Tsaritsa’s ascension decades later ). 

He didn’t have a proper player but on the occasion that he did come across a working model, he would be delighted to listen to some of those songs again. Tarno packed away the discs and in the meantime, Flins counted his mora, till his prying eyes laid upon one of the displays with its multitude of jewellery. 

Tarno must have smelled a new opportunity for a sale and brought a few of them out. Some of them were Liyuen hairpins plated with gold and jade. Some of them were brooches worn by ladies in the Fontanian courts. But he zeroes in on one that Tarno produces. Earrings with the gleam of pearl slotted in a cradle of gold. 

Now that he could take a closer look at it, Flins could pick out the way the gold was worked into the semblance of a flower. He didn’t quite know how you’d come to acquire them; Tarno told him that they’re well past a decade old, from what he’d gleaned. And Flins could imagine you growing into these. Something whispered in with so much love he could taste it on his tongue. They’re well cared for, Tarno had said with a pleased look. And they were and they were lovely.

Flins turned them over, and marvelled at they way they caught the light, at how small they were and how his heart beat with a visceral sort of greed that he’d often chided away into silence. He wasn’t something the wild had spat out; not since the dregs of his youth where mischief came so much easier and so much more viciously as Kyryll the Azure Flame. 

But he could have this at the very least. He could have this piece of you here, and the thought of it was, in a way, an exciting one. It took more mora out of his pocket, and he reminded himself to budget a little better next time — no more impromptu buys, Kyryll and he tucks those earrings and the little velvet box they were housed in into his coat pocket.

He’d often stared at them, trying to rummage through the noise that layered itself over the years upon years it had. Sometimes he could see the afterimages of you and the smell of summer and the crinkle of a smile he never quite had the chance to see and oh, oh, oh, that greed would return and bite away like a rabid animal till he’d shut that lid and cut away those traces. 

He couldn’t imagine why you’d sell something like this. But that child, perhaps could have danced a bit too far past a certain line, with that same reckless passion that sparked in the midst of his flames once. You probably didn’t like their games, with how your fear had muddled the aftertaste with sharp iron on his tongue. 

But oh you were so warm too, so very warm. Kyryll could drink it in; every moment of it. But for now, the earrings stay here, locked away with the rest of his treasures. In a fantasy, he could return them to you and you’d be pleased with it and Kyryll could live with that instance locked away in his heart forever. 

The storm starts slowing over the next few days ( and so do your nightmares ). 

It’s come to a point where you can catch glimpses of the cemetery outside, with its snow-capped graves and the scattered budding of frostlamps just beneath the windowsill. For once, you tug away at the fogginess clutching in your head and the perpetual ache your chest thrums with, just to press up against the glass ( you count the minutes in between every spurt of snowfall with bated breath. They’ve started stretching out longer and longer ).

And with the fog clearing, you had come to see, are the shapes sputtering in and out of view. Some of them are solid. The blurry, stiff figures of woodland creatures who tease around the edge of the island itself. You see how a few patter up the straight from the Maroon Basin, curious, oh so curious. And then they run; every single one of them, like this place itself compels the very stench of fear.

It’s the deer who are the most cautious. You often catch how they corral at the border and simply watch, too far for you to really see the look in their eyes. But you think it to be wide, a little lost, a little scared. You don’t understand why that is. 

( A lie. Yes you do, you do, you do. You’ve seen this before, with the cats back at Nasha town and how they meandered away from you one day. You’ve seen the terror in their little faces and the taste of heartbreak so strong on your tongue. None of them ran to you, anymore. None of them save for the mother cat who’d curled up by your shed with pathetic eyes.

By then, all you could do to spare yourself, was drive her off. )

It’s not the ghosts. They peer up at you from the outside too, shifting in and out of view with haunted looks on their faces. The animals do not run from them. They draw close, as if to find a scent they can’t quite match to the still, human figures that linger on by and dot the beach and the space between the tombstones. And the ghosts throng in and around the lighthouse like moths to a flame, locked in their soundless screaming.

Flins has already started taking rounds, collecting fuel and tools from the shed and a spare lamp that he gives you when the night starts to draw. The thousands upon thousands of gazes in the dark would disappear under the blue flame he carries.

“Just in case,” he says, when he steps inside and sheds his coat. “It can keep you company, if you get scared again.”

You wrinkle your nose in a gesture that’s tired but playful. There’s still an air of awkwardness hung heavy between the two of you. You don’t quite know how to break it down any more, even after the shamed apology you had given him a few hours after the incident. But Flins, ever gracious and a bit too sweet-hearted, let it be. 

Flins, Flins, Flins. A strange man, a distant man and you can’t quite look at his face anymore. It’s the most foolish, most stupid thing you’ve felt so far with how unfounded and unnecessary it was. It’s just nerves, it’s just panic, it’s just you slowly going mad, it’s just you imagining things that aren’t there at all. “...I’ll keep that in mind.” you call to him as he passes you by. “But I hope this won’t come across as too jarring, sir but…” you stop. Your tongue twists itself into knots and you wince. “Well I — I…I wanted to ask — ”

“Yes?”

Don’t ask, a raucous, angry thing hisses. It tries to steal away your voice until the thought dissipates. “Since the storm is starting to clear.” You continue, and you curl your fingers around the lantern handle a bit too tight; tight enough till your knuckles start to pale. “I — I think I should leave.”

That snatches his attention back to you. Flins turns and stares, face dappled in blue. “Leave…” he echoes. You can sense something unspooling in the way he said it, furrowing his brow as he glances outside. He seems to be taking it in; the receding whiteout and the earth unfurling beneath it. You play with your fingers, and you feel a wrongness all over. 

“I know.” you mutter, gathering yourself together. “It’s quite sudden but I can’t keep staying. You’ve entertained my presence for long enough and well, I think I’m starting to come off as more a nuisance than anything else…”

Flins gazes at you, unblinking and there’s a stirring that you can't keep ignoring. It scratches at the edge of its cage. It warns you to run. “Is this about the earrings?” he asks carefully. “Or the ghosts?”

You jerk back. “W-what? No, no of course not! I’ve been out for long enough. Heavens I have a job to return to, too! They probably think I'm missing or dead — ” Who, who precisely? You aren’t sure if you last in Nikita’s memories, or anyone else’s for that fact. It’s simply a facet of you; someone who knows all too well to disappear in and out of obscurity. You don’t like the way that hesitation slips past his expression, or the tightness round his jaw. 

“There’s still some time left before it calms.” Flins finally says, clipped and sharp. “Rest, till then.”

You take a step forth. “I’ve just woken up.” you point out. Your hands are trembling. “It’s fine, we can talk about…” you swallow, shrinking away from him. “...whatever it is you want to, right now.” It’s that stubborn insistence that makes you want to twist yourself up inside out. But you cannot falter now, even if he’s acting so strange. 

“And simply running off into the wilds won’t bode well,” he says. “The waters are still choppy and the mist still hangs overhead. Sending you out now would be far too much of a risk.” And you can see the reasoning behind it all. Of course he’d worry. Of course he would, even as you feel that tinge of dread creep in. There’s a buzz in the air you can’t quite name but oh, had you missed the signs? Had you missed the little tells?

So you try to be gentle about it. “...I’m honoured to know I’m worth your concern, Mr. Flins,” You start. “But I barely know you as is. I think I've far overstayed my welcome. I must go soon." 

It’s just Flins, you remind yourself. Just Flins, who had taken you from the storm. 

Somehow even that is slipping away into a darker, messier state. There’s a finality there, steeply simmering in the yellow of his stare. The tightness melts and he’s soft cheeked ease all over all while he closes the space in between. The gifted lantern is set aside and his hand sweeps up, lifting your chin with just a slight touch. You shiver against the cold tingle it leaves behind.

He speaks with that same levelled, cool tone; your name whispered in the tail of it. “You’re still exhausted.” Your eyelids start to droop and you feel your senses start to clog as if you’re strummed to some inaudible tune. “Ah, look at you. Sleep for a while; we could think about everything else a little later now…” 

You’re guided to the couch and you’re there but not there. You curl up, back to the backrest and Flins brushes against the healing bruise with a click of his tongue. You passively try to push him away and he complies, still watching with his silence as your limbs seem to be pulled tight against inaudible strings and your body crumbles to a whistle in your ears. 

Teetering off into dreamland comes easier. 

( Flins often told you stories to pass the time through the past couple of days. Folk legends and fairy tales, some of which were tersely macabre with their endings. He often delighted in your questions, his voice lilting to something lighter, airier when he would recite the spectacle in the old Tsar’s court and the revelry that would sweep away unsuspecting mortals from their homes. There were spirits too, spirits who threw windows open to abduct sleeping children from their beds.

“You can guess which ones the parents were fond of telling their children.” he added in between, stirring some tea in for you. 

You laughed. “Did yours?”

Flins simply smiled, pouring a single cup. He’d settled for some wine for himself after offering you some — which you politely refused and you watched the way the deep red of it turned translucent when he’d held it up against the dim light outside. “Alas, bedtime stories were not a staple in my youth.”

You took a sip. And you thought there’s something lonely that had taken its roots inside Flins, when he’d peered out into the expanse of white outside the window. Yet, you think, he seemed happiest this way; content with his distance and with being the singular resident on this island with nothing but the waves for company. Then you can’t think of anything else past that, entrenched in a sea of cloying tartness and cotton wool.

How nice, you mused to yourself, shutting your eyes to this singular memory. “Did you have someone staying with you, once, Mr. Flins?” you asked. “Given there is a spare bedroom.”

“Lighthouse keepers often came in pairs.” He confessed. “I suppose it was built with that in mind.”

“And the graves outside?” you did a little tap-tap against the rim of your teacup.

“Previous residents. They’d often be buried here as well.” You must have made a little face then with how he hid away his humoured smirk. “To be fair it’s a lovely burial spot around early spring. The frostlamps would glow a most lovely shade blue and you could see them stretch on till the cliff edges in whole swathes.” He takes a sip of his wine after twirling the glass. “And the auroras would streak across the skies above it. Have you seen them yet?”

“I only moved in recently.” You admitted. “And there’s too much light pollution around Nasha Town to really get a good look at them. All I saw were bits of grey…” The lantern sputters. You could see how the dark around you licks closer still, teasing the heels of your feet and your periphery. 

“Ah.” there’s a distorted blanketing in his speech. There’s a thump in your ribs. A wrought whisper freezing the shell of your ear. “Then I ought to show — ” he’s cut off by that feel of being immersed underwater, of your senses shutting down bit by agonizing bit till the panic lilted garble turns to clear words. Flins is nothing more that a disjointed, muffled call in the background.

Wake up, wake up, wake up.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up.

There are a thousand hands pulling you farther and farther away from the memory and it’s fizzled out outline. Wake up, wake up, wake up it continues the resolute chanting and there’s something pulling at your teeth, at your jaw, trying to coax something out of you. It starts fragmenting, the aftermirage of old festivity and the grasp of something tugging away at your mind. 

You struggle and struggle and struggle.

And you wake. )

The boy is hardly noticeable when you see him. Your nerves are set alight and you stumble past, nails to your cheeks when the effects of whatever had compelled sleep into you, forced it into your body starts to dissipate. There’s still the fallout in how you feel close to collapse, some parts of you still yet to catch on to your wakening. 

Breathe in, hold, breathe out. Your grandmother’s voice cuts in this time. You’re close to drawing blood and breaking skin and you sit up a bit straighter with a pained sniffle. It’s an awful sort of drop in your stomach, the kind that follows the tail end of something so dopamine inducing and then being left to recover from that plummet when the world settles around you. You shut away the sweetness on your tongue.

You fix your focus on him and how he blurs in and out of the walls. There’s so little detail left to garner; just the shadow of a face and a few wisps of hair catching itself the way the sun would have if he were solid. A bowl knocks over, then a plate and you could tell the fury in every gesture. You flinch at first, then square your shoulders and grimace.

“What do you want?”

It’s not a brave demand. It’s strained. You feel like you’ve been drugged; but you know you’re not. It is something that runs so much deeper — so, so much deeper.

You know it. You’ve felt this once, before. The shutting away of sensory input, the euphoria encroaching spaces it shouldn’t. 

Flins, Flins, Flins who never ate, who never seemed to sleep, who seemed to roam against the wilds as the animals cower away from the very presence of him passing through and the cold he carries under his flesh. What the hell is he? You’re gutted by that awful feeling, a mockery, a chortle so perverse it drives that statement deeper still. You know the answer to that.

The boy steps closer, urgently dancing just shy of the hallway. And you follow, beholden, perhaps by your slow realization. When you pass the kitchen by, you slip in and out, knife in hand, the feel of it heavy and familiar. The lantern is held up, heavy and debilitating in the other, lit up with yellow fire. The boy lingers, stepping out then down the halls. He disappears and you startle, chasing after. 

You can vaguely hear the pull of chains. Flins is up in the lighthouse.

You suck some air in through your teeth and speed up, weaving down another turn. The boy stands stark by a door. His study, you recall belatedly. You’d been inside it for a fraction of an instance to help sort past a few old files. It’s where he did most of his bone carving and most of his gem polishing. But the boy is insistent and the death in his eyes seems to glow like a pair of lamps.

“What if he finds me?” you ask.

He speaks. You cannot understand the fuzzy static that he tells you. So you follow him, past the door. It’s dark and the walls are cold against the brush of your shoulders. You grasp the handle of the knife just a bit tighter. It’s the same as it always was when you pore over the sight of it. An old table, a chair, a few bits and pieces of half finished projects and the starched white sheet that was spread over the tabletop. 

The boy leers and you question yourself, if trusting him was ever a good idea.

Then again, you trusted Him.

You feel so foolish. But you cannot scream that frustration out.. You cannot shed your tears. You’ve eaten his food, you’ve given him your thanks and if he were, if he was one of them —

You find yourself reflected against the glass of his cupboards. Faces stare back, ashen, dead, in wait with their pale fingers tangling and pushing you along and away, deeper and deeper inside. The boy circles around one spot, as if possessed by a feverish daze and then he’s gone, with the shine of his hair and the last few imprints of his scarf round his neck. 

You stumble forward. You can hear the beat of your heart in your ears. You can hear that rush of blood.

You come down to your knees, lantern set down and you drive your knife through the floorboards, puppeteered by some unseen force that whispers its suggestions and carefully directs your hand. You can feel all those presences, all of them patterns d crowd closer and closer and closer still and you can sense a pressure throw itself over your shoulderblades.

The wood comes undone after some tugging. Your nails scrape against the surface, and you pull as hard as you can. It shutters and falls back into place, nailed hard. You try again, pulling, pulling with all you could muster and there’s a crack. It falls apart and you are met with a finish of packed dirt underneath.

Dig.

Dig, dig, dig.

There’s fervour there. Your veins burn hot, like you’re being boiled from the inside out. You dig, catching the mud beneath your fingers and scraping your knife against loose rocks. You dig and dig and dig through, even as your wrists chafe against the wood and your digits grow numb. Your face is flushed, a hot-and-cold sensation that seeds itself in and flowers into being.

You unearth a bone, caked in dirt. A tibia, then the remains of the skull and the rest of the fragmented skeleton just peeking out of the damp earth. Your lips part, brushing away some of the soil to pull out the tatters of a knitted scarf and the worn down, mud caked bits and pieces of clothing. The crying around you, the audience to all this hitches up to a deafening howl.

Then comes silence, the lingering notes of panic and the stuffiness of the room is replaced by heat.

Flins takes a knee beside you. “I must have missed this one.” he eases. ‘And you…” he observes you, how you turn your neck to stare with twisted horror. “You were certainly not supposed to see this, silly girl.”

Not you, you want to cry out. There’s instinct biting into your core and it tells you to scramble away, and there’s terror that tells you it’s pointless because you know, you know how strange magic moors you to this spot and keeps you still. “It’s him — ” you choke out and the knife comes up, barely held in your shaking hands. “What did you do to him?!”

He looks hurt when braced with your strangled shriek and at the sight of the weapon, as flimsy as it was. It’s all you had against him and it feels all too little in the face of it. “I did nothing. Vasily…yes, Vasily, if I am not mistaken, threw himself off of the widow's walk of the lighthouse.”

“And why,” you grit out, “Is his body under your fucking floorboards — ”

“When I buried him,” Flins smiles. “There was no study. I simply must have missed out on this one while moving a few graves.” There’s a reasonable enough explanation it seems but you’re still seized by that persistent, stumbling thing on your shoulder. You’re still edging away.

“That’s the truth?” you eke, every bit a cornered animal with your hackles raised at him. “The whole truth?”

Ah, and there it is, a shine in his gaze. There’s an unbrokered wideness to Flins’ smile when he gazes down at you. “Your questions are awfully direct.” he murmurs. “You’ve found out, then?” There’s no suggestion, no place to argue otherwise and you want to empty your insides out onto the floor. Flins fixes that gaze of his to your knife and the hurt, it seems, has given way to amusement. 

“A knife won’t be enough to kill me at least, you know.” He supplies helpfully. 

You falter. “Shut up.” you hiss, as he shifts closer. The sharp end of it hovers just over his jugular and he tilts his head with a curious lightness in his expression. 

“Put it away. It’s dangerous running amok with that.” You drop the blade, to your shock and your body quietly complies to his touch when he winds his hands round your wrist, almost fixated on the pulse thrumming there. The fight in you has dissipated into flimsy embers and you push back, clawing at him, trying to scrape away at some modicum of control.

“Let me go — ” you don’t recognize the creature that screams it, or the force it comes out with. “Let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I swear so please, please — ” you descend down to wet sobs, pushing away the weight of him till your elbows start bruising from knocking against the floor one too many times. Tearing your body asunder just to escape hardly seemed daunting at this rate. 

Flins purses his lips, the luminosity in his eyes nearly swallowing you whole. “I won’t hurt you.” he says, carefully navigating through your panic as he reaches up and tucks your hair behind your ear. “Oh I wouldn’t dream of it and you know well that we can’t lie.” Bare fingers press against your cheekbones, knuckle white and gentle. You flinch back, teeth borne like some wounded dog and Flins coos. 

He’s fae, you think and it reeks of betrayal and it aches, how he touches you with a hint of twisted reverence that makes you reel. He’s fae.

( You’re at home, picking up broken pieces of glass. The little patch of earth you’d grown your plants in were upturned and the flowers were missing. )

“The same cannot be said about the others though. If you leave, should you leave.” he drolls on, lifting your boneless body up. Your hands are caked with dirt and he inspects them with a click of his tongue. “Let’s get you cleaned up, hm?”

( The cats started turning up dead on your doorstep when you’d set the bells up against the fence. Their insides were torn open. You recognized one you’d fed earlier that week. More and more start showing up, some of who you’d only deigned to look at in certain instances. )

“What?” you manage to say, your tongue weighed down like lead. 

“A wash.” He repeats. Then he huffs, his eyes but yellow crescents. “Oh you mean the rest of them? Dear one, you’ll be torn apart if you venture too far out of my grounds. Or have you forgotten the way the woodlands ensnared you so?” 

( There are greedy hands tearing and scratching at you, at every inch it could find. Some of the jewellery you’d had is gone now from the safe. Your grandmother’s karimani and the anklets you were gifted. Gone, one by one. And it, with a prideful voracity, demanded more. )

Your head swims and the tears hitch through. Flins wipes them away, patiently taking you to the basin to scrub off every bit of skin and the underside of your nails. A few of the splinters were carefully removed. “I saved your life.” he reminds you. “You’d have been carried off into their snare. They’d have made you run till your feet bled and they’d have stolen every piece of you for themselves. And now they’ve asked to keep you here, given how you’ve angered them so.”

“Why?”

You bat at him, still trying to muster together a little more fight. Flins straightens you up, bending to your level. You can see your scared reflection in the mirror, glassy eyed with horror and him behind you, his hands curled round your shoulders. 

“You know why.” He reminds you, blankly. 

( And the misfortune had built itself like a festering wound. When you saw them, the cause of it streak past your window in peals of raucous laughter, you had surged, dragged them back with every bit of vicious intent you could muster then. They fought. You fought. And at some point you’d begged, begged for a reprieve. To let you be, let you live. You had precious little to offer but it could be anything, anything but this.

“But it’s fun!” they had laughed at your battered form and the scratched up state of your arms. Something in you, a fundamental lock and chain, had snapped open and fury dulled the rest of the world out.

When you came to, they laid there, silvery blood twining with the gold of their hair and your hands soaked in it. )

No, no, no not that. You jerk away, trying to make a break for the door and he pulls you back. “Was it you?” you ask him, voice shaking because he knows — and it’s the possibility of how much that tears you out on the inside. “Did you send them — ”

“Of course not.” Flins shakes his head. “The one you killed was young, a foolhardy thing.” He addresses it with a disconnect that you can’t begin to fathom, a lack of sympathy peeled down to the very roots of it. Perhaps it’s what they’re known for, their kind with their morals so far removed from the tiny flashes a human life had to give. “Do you regret it? What have you done?”

You skitter, squeezing your eyes shut while he watches through the mirror. The chill is seeping into tissue and muscle. “No.” you spit out against your better judgment. 

Flins’ lips twitch. “Liar.” he whispers, fondly, gently. “Oh, don’t cry now.” He soothes when you start to shake. “I’m not the cruel jailor they’d expect me to be. I’ve been good to many; to Maria, to Vasily. There’s much you’ve lost here, I do agree but you’ll be treated well. I’ve come to be so terribly fond of you, after all.” You think this is a sick, cruel joke. You think you’ve stumbled right into the pits of some horrible dream. 

“Yes, and I'll have to restock. You need your food and you need a decent enough space to rest in. The couch, as comfortable as it is, is hardly feasible at all.” He threads his hand with yours. The coolness of his palm presses against yours and Flins flushes. 

“But I can’t — I can’t stay!” you try to argue, even if there are so many other worse things that lay in wait.

Flins takes you to the guestroom. To the same walls you’d run from that first night. “You don’t have much of a choice.” He confesses, sympathy touching his features. It’s a cruel thing, how they’re all so pretty yet so viciously inhumane in a way. 

But honestly, are you any better? You’ve killed one of them. Their body is somewhere in that lake you’d immersed them into, undecayed, unchanged like the underbelly of bedrock and you;re still here, alive and yearning to forget about any of that. You’re cut open and raw and bleeding and Flins lowers you down against the sheets, removing your shoes and socks.

Your breaths begin to shake. Flins shrugs off his coat and sets aside his scarf. There are no more ghosts scraping their hands to the walls. Just you and him and the weighted silence this room has to offer the two of you. He kisses the back of your hand, just above your knuckles, then the tips of your fingers. 

“Stop that.” You mumble. “You do not know me. You do not care for me.”

Flins reaches out and pinches at your cheek, feeling the softness of it between his forefinger and thumb. “But I do know enough,” he insists with that odd smile. “I know the shape of your breath and the way you scraped your knees climbing trees too high for you. I know why you left your home and the dogged insistence of your family. I know how you like cycling down by the docks where Hiisii island comes to view during your deliveries and how you pout when you write long letters.” He presses a finger to your lips, a little hungry, a little expectant. He breathes in, unfurling your hand to press it against his cheek, his own flattened over it. 

“You’d be mad to think I'll feel anything for you.” you tell him, venom dripping through every enunciated consonant. 

“I have time.” he sighs. “Plenty of it, and I can wait for you, I think…” Flins dips his head down and kisses you, testing the way you give beneath him and the feel of your lips. He pulls away, the tips of his ears running red and you stare up, open mouthed. “Oh.” He breathes, the makings of a laugh stirring under his tone. 

A flush betrays you, burning your cheeks. He presses his lips to the corner of your mouth and when the tears spring forth, he kisses those away too. 

You did this to yourself, some miserable part of you rattles. You shutter in your sniffles, and close your eyes to the sight of him. Flins down not mind, pulling himself away just to leave a slow stroke over the line of your jaw, up, up up to your earlobe. You shiver against his touch. 

“It won’t happen.” you repeat. “It won’t.”

Flins hums, straightening you up and bundling the pillow beneath your head. You could laud him for the imitation of sweet faced love he wears so plainly. You could believe him. Maybe it is real. But Flins himself seems to distort and bend into the air and you only remind yourself of his inhumanity and the mess you’re in now. 

“Stubborn creature.” he comments with affection. He steals another kiss from you, chaste, gentle but so, so hungry beneath the surface of it. “I ought to return your earrings to you too.” Another kiss. “You always looked so lovely in them…”

You think about the woods outside and the chanting promise of death. You think freezing over from the cold would have been a far better mercy than this. 

When Flins shifted that line from host to jailor, he lets you fall into the simple routines of lighthouse keeping with him. Keep the lamp running, keep the motors clean, wipe the lenses down and clear the windows out. He helps you put your earrings on and marvels at the sight of it. “You were wearing them when I first saw you.” He says.

Oh, you think, bitterness light in your mouth.

The storm finally dies out a few days after and he manages to get the generator running after a few calls in to Ms. Aino. When the lights blink back on, you still can’t find any bit of comfort in the hallways past; even when he comes to walk with you to the kitchen and back. He’d played some music to celebrate, dulcet tunes reminiscent of the classics and the waltzes they’d go with. 

Flins offered to dance with you. There’s little need to use your name, to pull on any strings; the hours seemed to have scraped by slow enough for you to consider it. When you fall into step with him, he is patient and he is kind about you stepping on his feet, first by accident, then the next few times out of pure spite. 

He did not flinch in the face of it. There was only a quiet coring, a tender display of affection and a kiss to your cheek and Flins would gaze upon you with an affection too inexplicable for you. The stuff that makes the treasures in his collections, the quaint oddities he liked to collect. 

When you left Sumeru, you left with the hopes of burying away old grief, to tell your family that your helplessness isn’t something to tail after your shadow when they’d started treating you as such. When you left Sumeru, you couldn’t let yourself fall into the patterns of a show piece, even if the intent of it, as cutting as it was, is drawn in by love.

And now look at you. Look at you, spooled into the webs of something inhuman that lurks behind the visage of a handsome man. 

Perhaps, in the end of it all, you did deserve it. You had thrown away any instance of the fae who came by your house and unravelled every facet of your life. Every reminder, every part of you that could behold any form of recollection and the consequences were something that was bound to come along and tear you apart.

Yet, “Is it fair to call it love if I’m trapped here?” You tell him, your voice an echo in the hallways. Flins gently undoes the tie of your scarf, a newly knitted thing he’d commissioned just for you. He slows his movements, contemplative. 

“I am confident in what I feel,” he states. “It may not be love, from the view of what most mortals know. There’s little affection in the idea of wanting to hide away and covet every visceral inch of their lovers but…” he lifts you up by the chin and you think you see how his eyes settle, marigold yellow to the lamplight. His knuckle presses over your pulse and he smiles a secret smile when it quickens. “...It’s love to us and it’s love no less, no?”

“But I’m not you.” You mumble. “You scare me.”

“You don’t have to be.” Flins takes your hand, and the two of you start the waltz once more. “You are safer here.” And you know it’s true, even as the call persists to something frenzied, even as it compels you to throw the doors open and escape. If not the angered fae, then Flins himself would reel you back, stubborn and covetous as he was. He’ll reel you back in, back into his collection of shinies and keep you squirrelled away.

So you patter around the house. Your first winter here in Nod Krai comes and goes.

When spring comes along, the thicker coats make way for lighter ones. Flins visits the lighthouse a little less and the windows are thrown open to let the breeze in. You aid in sorting out his fuel then keep count of his bones and you have him buy a sewing kit just to keep your thoughts together as you embroider in your free time. Then one day, when you were tired out from wandering over the uneven crags of the island and the way the land seemed to shift and bend itself and your path back to the lighthouse, you called him by his first name. 

“Kyryll.” Not Flins. 

He freezes up. “Yes?” he returns it, eagerness slipping in so easily. You could have loved this man, perhaps and it’s a thought that starts to haunt you in the wee hours of the night. You could have loved his willing silence and his gentleness if he’d come to you in Nasha Town with flowers and a willingness to know you.

“I’d like to head back inside.” 

His lips press up against your forehead. “Alright.” And Flins leads you back, hand held tight in his, like you could be blown away by the passing winds or slip back and melt into the receding snow. You can taste the way the air around him shifts; electrifying, sudden and all too much at once. He doesn’t say all that much after, attending to his tasks down to the minute detail till dusk comes along and the clock calls him back down for dinner.

That night, after setting the lantern down by your bedside and you’re half wrapped under the mound of blankets, he whispers to you, “Say it again.”

“What?” you blink. Flins draws a layer back. 

“My name.”

You look at him, really look at him. His gaze is bright. “Kyryll.” You test it on your tongue. He closes his eyes and knocks his head against yours. 

“Again.”

“Kyryll.” you repeat, feeling yourself dig a deeper and deeper hole.

The weight of him rolls over onto the mattress. His touch is a slow, deliberate thing. “I could eat you up.” he mutters, nose pressed into the apple of your cheek. “Keep saying it, dear one.”

“Kyryll.” you whisper it, quiet as death in an instance where you should have shut up completely. His eyes snap open and he watches you, and listens to the thumping of your heart. You’re doomed, you realize, plummeting far past that point of no return. The sheets come loose, pulled down to your knees. 

“I’ve overestimated myself, I think.” he murmurs into your neck, teasing you just shy of your pulse. He comes close to testing the straps of your slip. “May I have you, dear one?” and you witness the greed, the affection, the twisted up echo suffused into the thing he calls love. You can’t bring yourself to say no. Maybe in the midst of this madness, you could let yourself forget. You guide his hands to your hips, slow, steady, and his breath hitches to mild shock. He probably didn’t expect it, your affirmation. 

“You are certain?”

“This is the last time you’ll ask me.” you warn him, gripping the sheets a bit too tight below you. “And the last I'll bother saying yes.”

He peppers kisses over your forehead and cheeks. “Oh you spoil me.” he murmurs. “You spoil me so.” He slides the hem of your slip up, up past your thighs. His breaths are laboured, heavy. “Could you lift yourself up just a bit?” he asks, prompting you with a nudge. You comply, lips pursed as nervousness peels itself into the workings of your bones.

“Easy now…” he whispers, kissing the pulse at your neck, then down further and further still. The fabric comes to bunch just below your chest when he settles between your legs, and he keeps his hand pressed over the softness of your thighs. 

You curl your fingers into the wool of his sweater. Flins fixes his gaze on you. “Scared?” he asks.

You swallow. “A little.” you admit, the tenderness of it all feeling so out of place. Flins hums. 

“It makes the two of us.” He admits. “It’s been years since…well…” and that statement alone strikes you — reminding you that he’s so much older than he makes himself seem. You try to ground yourself against something, anything, wincing against the shock his colder touch brought to your bare skin.

“But you know how to start at least, right?” you peep out.

“I do. Right now, let me see what I can test out, yes? The act would be terribly one-sided if you don’t enjoy it…” he trails his forefinger up your torso, tracing a line till your slip. You stop him, teeth drawn into a snarl and Flins faces it with a tilt to his head.

“Just…I don't know! Do something! Anything!”

“Anything?” he intones, raising a brow. “Well I was attempting to — ”

You shake your head and it feels like you’re going to fall apart. It’s all too visceral, too embarrassing and somehow, you wanted it to be put to rest. “Not like this. It’s not enough. I…” your grasp on his clothes tightens into a fist. “Kyryll, Kyryll, just make me forget it all. Please.”

“Ah.” he closes his mouth and you feel the way his hands grasp and shift your body further up his thighs, just shy of the part between his legs. Your face is on fire and you try to sink yourself down into the mattress, just as his prodding touch returns. It’s everywhere, slipping beneath your slip, over your shoulders. One travels up to your face, and you let out an exclamation when his digits slip between the seam of your lips, testing your teeth against the pads of his fingers.

There’s a fascination, you think delirious. A fascination he has with your pulse in particular, just as the air becomes a little hotter and a little heavier. Flins can’t quite stop himself from touching. “It’s the warmth.” he smiles, rubbing his cheek against yours like a cat. “You are so warm.”

And then he kisses you. 

“And you are mine,” he concludes. There’s no possessiveness, or jealousy. It’s stated with a sense of knowing and matter of factness. 

He tests the space between your legs, pulling your underwear to the side to run a finger over your clit. Your lips part and you press your face to his shoulder with a keen. There’s a clumsiness in his movements at first, before Flins eases himself to the shape and the rhythm of your body and he’s slipping a finger in just as you try to gather your senses.

You can’t quite keep up. One finger, then another and you want to tip yourself over and sink into it. It feels wrong, it will stay that way and you still curl up and buck into him and to the whispers in your ears spun in another tongue. You curse at him in your dialect and he laughs at the spunk.

“Are you still with me?” he asks as the pleasure starts its steady build. You nod, lips parted. “Words.”

“Yes!” you force out. 

You can’t even step away and deny the hunger in how he takes you apart, spreading your legs just a bit more to fix a single charged look down at you. The heel of his palm presses up against your clit and you’re reeling once more with the inside of your cheek bitten raw. “Kyryll.” you whimper. “Kyryll.”

His teeth nick at your shoulder. “You test me.” he mumbles. “You’ve been plucking me apart, my beloved, playing me like an instrument. Have you any clue of it?” No and it’s awful and it’s so much, your eyes starting to sting. “A sweet thing like you, a poor, sweet little thing.” he keeps nibbling, finding new spots, new places, just shy from plain sight to hide his bites. He lays his teeth just over your sternum, your heart. 

Flins groans, restraint hitching itself further and further off. When he finds that spot in you, one that arches your back and blots your vision out, he bends over your frame and keeps you still, grabbing and touching and grabbing with so much fervour you fear he might just lose himself in it. But it comes with a sharp toothed vexation, the feel of it not quite whetting his own appetite in any way.

He tweaks a nipple, starting a slow grind against your bundle of nerves and you squirm under him, hooting softly. “There you go.” he whispers. “There you go, my sweet thing, all mine…” He keeps his promise; there’s so little your mind could properly formulate, even if there is the barest hint of fear tinging certain spots in your ribs with how he probes and prowls over the shape of your curves. 

“It’s…strange — ” that buildup starts it’s crest. Flins snaps his head up, intent on watching and that has you attempting to hide away. The pillows are pushed aside and you twist your body, ears starting to burn. “Wait — ”

One last thrust of his fingers, one last brush against your clit and you release, panting helplessly. Flins looks struck, a little awed as he takes in the sight of you, a little sweaty and very unravelled and he sets you closer to the crook of his arm, where you stay clinging on for dear life. It’s all wool and fuzz and the blurry outline of the room. 

You could vaguely make out the rustle of his clothes, of his clothes slipping off. When he winds your arms around his shoulders, they’re bare and your hands splay out over his back and just past his shoulder blades. He moans into your throat. “Relax.” he directs. You try, you really do till you feel his tip breach in through the stretch makes you want to cry.

Flins murmurs his comfort and something in that pain guts a sick sense of satisfaction in. You revel in it, nails scraping at his back, and that draws a gasp from deep inside his chest. 

“You.” he murmurs, watches the way your flesh divots neath his fingers, and how you curve up to met his shallow thrusts. He soothes your bitten lips, lidded eyes searching, searching, searching and you try to goad him on to move just a bit faster. “Not yet.” he mutters, words slowly running into melded slurring. “It’s not enough…hardly…”

What more could he want, you think, half there, half not. He pushes your legs up, up to your knees and you think you see the sun in the horizon. What more could he want from this; a timed surrender and your mind undoing itself over and over through, purging the venom, shading the anger, letting that whiteout glare against the breadth of it till it’s just less thought and more sensation.

But there’s always something there that Flins never quite fully states. It comes with that interest in bones, in his attention to your heartbeat, in his honey dipped insistence when he hovers his hand just over your stomach. The pink flushing against his pale cheeks aside, he’s digging into you just barely and there’s a look in his eye that stills you, even through the daze of pleasure.

Like he wants to tear you open. 

He swallows back a pool of saliva. “Dear heart.” he says, pleasant yet roughed by the shake and the stutter of his hips. He’s hardly up to the hilt and you start to push back against him, letting more sink in. You want some of that sweet friction, and the buzz staticking just below your skin. “Forgive me but if I may…”

This kiss is deep, demanding in how his tongue intrudes and coaxes your mouth open. There’s a debauched rawness burning itself into your ribs and Flins slants his lips, silently drawing out more and more and more.

And more, till there’s a lick of blue and you feel something cold and hot shift through skin and bone and tissue to cradle into your insides. You gasp, and it times with his first proper thrust, something inhuman phasing in and out of his visage — and afterimage of a monstrous face and so much blue. Blue, blue fire, blue like his lantern, and it moulds itself, not quite burning, not painful but strange.

Flins shudders, euphoric. 

“This, yes, this.” he whispers, awed. He steals more kisses from your lips, all while the feel of those hands, one dipped into your chest and the other cradling your neck, with the tease of claws to flesh and the burn of azure light stifling back the yellow-orange glow from the bedside table. That steady warmth starts to build, the feel of him cupping your heart, moments away from fraying something asunder and then him, dragging against your walls with a jerk of his hips.

He quite literally holds your heart now. You try to wrap your head around it, the feel of fire, the stirring and its terror and a traitorous sting of pleasure disturbing the stagnancy. Flins strokes the line of your ribs, raking his fingertips through the expanse. Then there’s him, the transfixed fever that burns ever so slightly against the flickering glow of his stare. Every bit of him, strung up. Every bit of him oozing a sense of want.

It’s want that has him still and steady your hips when you start to move away, that alien feeling making your face burn and your world start to stutter. You feel like you could be tugged loose, body and soul, like you’re on the verge of blinking out of existence and falling underwater. It’s panic, but not quite, in how it’s immersed in something else altogether. 

( You can’t be enjoying this. You can’t. )

And then he draws it back and they dig into the sheets and spot a few scorch marks onto the surface. You’re drawn in, tugged by some spectral leash and your start to warble against his pace and the taste of his satisfaction biting at the crook of your neck. 

It feels like a wave, something that descends upon you like a battering crash, marked by a desperate mewl from you; a jumbled string of “Kyryll”’s sputtered out in the wake of the moment, as you come undone and feel every part of you fall into that pitching height of pleasure circuiting every instance of you.. 

Flins sucks a breath in. “Oh you’re perfect. Perfect…” he mumbles. Your nerves are still alight and you’re still all too aware of every small move he makes. He pulls himself out after he empties into you and you whine, whine at the emptiness.

The cold he leaves behind on your skin is fast fading. Flins fusses over you and you start to recover from the blankness and the haziness prickling at your body. It’s a shroud pulled over your eyes and you let him work away, oh so thorough in cleaning up the mess.

“You did wonderfully.” he coaxes, spreading your thighs to wipe at the white residue at the inside of them. The mattress dips under his weight. He gathers you into his arms, and you could barely pick out what he’s saying after that. But the adoration is there as it always was. 

It only dawns on you, the next day when you stir awake and take the sight of Flins fixing his attention on you, taking in the way you breathe. Last night had happened and you clutch at your chest, as if you could still feel that phantom sensation haunt your body. “What did you do?” you warble.

Flins smiles. There’s no answer from him and you don’t expect it. “Will you be going outside?” he asks when you throw your slip back on and teeter off to find your underwear, then your coat and socks.

“Yes.” you mumble, and you are. You cannot stay in this room much longer. You cannot stay in his presence. You feel the edges of yourself start falling apart, blurring against the starched edges and you fall back against the feel of him weighing your back down as you pull your boots on.

He lays his lips on the nape of your neck, gentle, loving almost. You break away from him, nearly running out, out of the house, out into the open. The aurora burns overhead and the lighthouse cuts past the faint mist cover and into the endless dark sea. You stare up, mouth agape and then you look forth. 

When you walk a little farther out, you note how the fog thickens over and shies away from you just till the strait to the basin across the waters. You see the shapes of things dancing along the beachside, lost in the taste of revelry and wine and merry tidings. They call to you, try to coax you farther, closer even as some fall to deathly silent and distort their shape and form.

You take a step forward. Your boots sink into wet sand. Come here, they ring out. Come here, come with us!

I really shouldn’t, you tell yourself rather tightly. Then you turn and leave and you can hear their mockery ring against the air. You’re dizzy and you feel some kind of consuming emptiness start expanding and collapsing into your heart. The ghosts are now mere faint outlines. You’re the only living, thinking thing breathing in the too-chilly air. 

Slowly, softly, you make your way back to the lighthouse. Your line of sight blurs and you’re crying halfway through, clawing at yourself, disgusted, angry and so, so strained and spread thin. You want to burn it off of you, that feeling. You want every single inch of you scrubbed clean of that decision, that damned decision and —

That last shackle clicks in place. And you know you’re never leaving, with the paths winding themselves to and away and back again. You walk past and circle every inch of the beachside and you watch the ocean lapping at the shoreline, spreading a hundred white fingers across the sand and evening the ground out beneath it.

( There, you whisper your last few goodbyes. To Sumeru, to your family, to your old life and the forgotten details through the bustle you’d been caught up in. )

The quiet continues to follow when you stumble back up the cliff face. It’s getting colder, even with the sunwarmed rocks radiating the last few vestiges of their heat. Pulling your coat around you tighter, you draw past the shed and over the dirt path, up the slight incline and the scattered frostlamp buds. 

At the threshold, Kyryll waits with his lantern, fully dressed. He holds his hand out when you come closer. You take it.

The door swings shut behind the two of you.

[matchflame]

✷ SAMPIGE. TO BE MINDFUL OF THE COMING END

synopsis. ornamental flowers and ornamental jades are better seen than heard. a pity, baoyu thinks, that his sister happened across you first.

tags warnings. yandere ! lord of hongyuan honglu x reader, ooc characterization i'm afraid ( help me i have not played canto 8 and i am girlfailing too close to the sun ), reader is not referred to in a gendered way for the most part but does have female anatomy, the reader is southern indian coded due to the source literature of their character, mention of assassination attempts and some body horror, hong lu being a little shit in general, me trying to get a grasp on yi sang's dialogue and failing miserabely, pathwork lore going yolo there WILL be inaccuracies pls pls spare me, not much hong lu tbh since this is very yi sang and ishmael heavy.

content and notes. chapter one ueueueue. this covers the first three chapters i've posted on ao3 as a whole ( hence the ridiculous word count and all ) while this current installment does not have any explicit content, i will caution minors to not interact with me in any way directly. ✦ AO3 MIRROR . SERIES MASTERLIST

wordcount. 13.8k ( chapters 01 to 03 )

VERSE 1 : PREPERATION FOR DEATH.

A few hours before the start of Lady Ishmael’s banquet ( one held in honour of her birthday, if your calendar is marked right ), Yi Sang pulls you aside for a brief exchange. 

“I have been cautioned by one of the guards. We may have another incident.”

Something sour settles in the back of your throat. “At mealtime?” you guess. He leads you past the halls of Nuanxiangwu to a quieter spot, a little ways from any direct lines of sight within the opposing rooftops across its inner courtyard. You recognize this one immediately, with its door-to-a-very-inconspicuous-closet and your head starts to ache. 

“Hyenas oft strike when one’s head is turned.” he quotes in response, his tone oddly placid. 

“Even hyenas aren’t this cowardly.”

He smiles a little at that. Despite it being your first time in Hongyuan since your employment amongst the Young Miss’ retinue of attendants ( the count being just Yi Sang prior, with a two guards in tow ), you had noticed the way the gloom almost latched onto them with parasitic intent. You’ve never seen either of them look this weary. 

But then again, you’ve already marked off six different assassination attempts in the records you kept up. Even you were beginning to feel that pull of ire somewhere at the recesses of your mind. Any longer here and you might just snap from that pit of anxiety. 

Yi Sang notices. “We endeavour to leave as soon as possible.” He assures you. You snap your head up at that. “The Young Miss is hardly fond of this place.” 

( Lady Ismael had initially avoided leaving her room as well from the sheer inconvenience of it, before you’d discovered a sour smell in her water jug during dinner. She chose to step out to tear a few of the training  dummies apart till their insides leaked out and left a mess upon the stone tiles. Passing by the scene, you had entertained the morbid thought of them being more flesh and less straw.

‘Hardly fond’, you decide, was an understatement. )

Yi Sang pats your shoulder, snapping you out of your train of thought. “For now, I trust you will stay vigilant?” he urges. “Take cover if there is any conflict. Recover the Young Miss if needed and escape with her. She won’t be out fighting for long, as one knows.”

“And you’ll handle the rest?” you finish.

“As always.” There's a hint of pride there. You want to laugh a little at that. 

“Alright then.” You glance over to the side, to the door behind him. “Will they need to be taken in for questioning as well?” Yi Sang shakes his head and your shoulders drop, a little relieved. “Oh good. I don’t think I want any unwanted guests here. This place isn’t as bad when it’s quiet.”

“Hush. Do not speak ill of the dead. It is disrespectful.” He chides, much like a mother. “Which brings one to this question.” He reaches out and cracks the door open. It swings outwards with a slow, agonizing creak and your senses are hit immediately with putrefaction masked with a sick sort of sweetness. Perfume on rot. You almost throw up then and there.

Yi Sang’s stare is trained on the insides of the very-inconspicuous-closet and the contents within it. The clothing on them is still intact; the usual wear assigned to servants in Nuanxiangwu. Gifts from the Xue family, as you’d recorded within the scrolls, a pair of assassins specializing in poison. Yi Sang had plucked them out when they’d tried to hide amongst the multitude while he was questioning them.

They are very dead now. The branches growing from their stomachs have already started flowering. Sampige, as your sister had called them once when the two of you were staying within the temples at home. Sampige, the flowers that clog your own lungs during rainfall. You watch Yi Sang reach down and absently collect one of them, taking in the white blossom before handing it to you. 

“I guess we should dispose of them.” you offer, your stomach twisting with something inexplicable as you crush it in your fist. It could be a flavour of guilt, of fear, of disgust. You can’t stand looking at the corpses anymore. “I don’t want the Young Miss to see them in this state.”

“It will be seen to, well and proper.” he nods. “I simply wish to know if the trees will keep growing.”

“Not if you burn them.”

Yi Sang turns to the bodies. “Their cremation will be arranged for,” he decides. A pause. You think this mind has started to wander, given the glassy distance his eyes take on. “Thank you.” he finally speaks up and you flinch a little at that. 

“Huh?”

“For aiding me here.” he clarifies. “Even as the discomfort persists, you still…” he looks at the flowers. Even he seems a little at a loss for words. 

You shake your head and he leaves it be.

Yi Sang was right. The two rats had friends scurrying beneath the floorboards of the banquet hall. When he took you along for the routine inspection of the food, he'd picked out most of the dishes hosting toxins prepared by poison mixers. It was shoddy work; any able bodied Heishou could set it apart with a single sniff of it's contents.

Whoever is behind this, you reckon, is an idiot. “Or young.” Yi Sang adds. “The fangs of young snakes are the unwieldy sort.”

“So many proverbs.” you utter under your breath. He lets out a long drawn hum, sifting past the Thousand Year Egg to pull a plate of braised duck to his nose. 

“This has been tarnished as well.” he calls out. You scramble, pulling up the sleeves of your coat to reach out and collect it from him. You nearly drop under the weight of the plate it was laid in. Pure gold; the sight makes your eyes pop from your sockets. “Steady your steps. Call in a few attendants, have them removed from the premises.”

“What will you do with it?” you ask.

“Dispose of it.” Yi Sang replies plainly. You wince at the very thought of it. The idea of wasting food…but food couldn’t be worth it if it melts your insides out, even if a younger version of you would have screamed and thrashed in protest. You hold the plates over for the serving staff to take; all their faces affixed with a dizzy nervousness. One of them looks close to tears. 

“Are you alright?” you enquire.

“Are we going to die?” he asks.

“Did you put the poison in?” he shakes his head. “Then no, you shall not.”

You haven’t convinced them. You could hear whispers of Jia Mu’s name amongst the growing unrest as one platter after the other is passed along. By the time Yi Sang was done, half the food was gone and Lady Ishmael was standing by the doorway, her jaw taut. 

The moment you catch that flash of red hair, you bend your waist in greeting. “I’m sorry,” you start as she passes you by, cut off by a raised hand. 

“It’s fine.” she states. “Honestly, this is drawing out into more of a problem than there needs to be. It’s not like I would have eaten the food anyway.” 

Yi Sang is the picture of patience as Ishmael crosses her arms, tapping her fan to her chin while inspecting what was left of her banquet. She doesn’t seem to care for a ruined birthday in the slightest. She looks vaguely satisfied, to be fair and you close your eyes to it. Better to leave your own horror unvoiced. “It’s better safe than sorry.” He reminds her.

Ishmael scoffs. “No one will be here anyway. When I went upstairs to seat myself at the tables, all I saw on the seats were bouquets and trinkets and notes. My guests haven’t even bothered showing up.” She waves a hand at one of the dishes, then calls your name. “If there’s anything you and Yi Sang would want to eat here, then help yourselves. Leave the rest for the servants. I’m not staying here any longer than I should.”

“Lady Ishmael…”

Yi Sang tilts his head. “Is young master Baoyu not here?”

She freezes at that. Ishmael’s lip then curls into something inexplicable. “Of course he is.” she practically spits out.

“He awaits us upstairs?”

“My brother doesn’t need to be coddled. It’s fine. He’s probably just going to pick at his food and talk about the weather or something.” ( There’s nothing remotely interesting about the weather here, in your opinion. This older brother of yours, perhaps one of the many in the Jia family tree, seemed the boring sort ).

Yi Sang sighs. “Young Miss…”

You see her bow her head down, brow scrunched up. Whatever wound this is…it’s raw. “Fine.” she snaps. “Bring what you can upstairs. The two of you stick by me though. And you…” she turns to you. “He’ll try speaking to you, I guess. He’s got a penchant for odd questions the moment he sees a new face around. Answer what you can…”

You start alongside her, tucking your arms behind you. It takes a moment to recall your etiquette and gather yourself as expected of an attendant ( after fixing your sleeves ) and Lady Ishmael rolls her shoulders and falls back into her role. The change unsettles you.

“If I may ask, Young Miss…how…odd?”

Lady Ishmael purses her lips. You almost see a smile there. “The silly sort. Don’t worry too much, he’s the kind who engages in superficial blathering. There's not much substance in the small talk he seems to adore so much...”

“That’s quite disrespectful, milady.”

She huffs. “It’s the truth.” she insists. She doesn’t believe it though. Not with how she grips her fan too tight. “Baoyu is Baoyu. My silly big brother. Try not to strangle him…grandmother will probably have you skinned alive for it.”

You exhale. “Not before she decides to make me an ornamental plant.”

“No.”

“It could happen.” you smile. “Rich people have an awful habit of doing that. Honestly, I think I ought to be flattered.” Lady Ismael wisely opts to not answer that, letting you fall into step as Yi Sang joins, pushing his glasses back up his nose. A comfortable sort of silence settled between the three of you, till you slip back into the banquet hall and Lady Ishmael takes her seat again. 

You take a good look of the place from the corner of your eye. You see tables upon circular tables set within different patches within a hall too big for you to seep in from your limited view of it. You don’t dare raise your chin though when the Young Miss leans back against her chair, folding her hands over her lap neatly. 

“Apologies for the wait, Baoyu-ge.” You hear her say. “There was an incident in the kitchens that needed seeing to.”

A ringing sort of laugh sounds out. It’s airy, soft, not wholly there. A little like biting into a cloud. “No hard feelings, meimei.” he assures her. Ishmael inhales, slowly, sharply and the hold on her fan tightens — stopped by Yi Sang clearing his throat. “I’ve had plenty of fun chatting with some of the staff here! And oh, from what I’ve heard, they made your favorites too! Isn’t that nice~?”

Ishmael pauses. “I suppose it is.”

He laughs again. “Serious as always. You reeeaaalllyyy need to learn to loosen up, you know. You might just wind up like those stone faced nobles father often speaks with. No sense of humour or whimsy…” The food is brought in. The back of your neck starts to prickle. “Nice weather today, by the way~” he adds. 

Ah. 

Your throat tightens and for once, you do dare to look up a bit. Just a little. You see the hem of his robes; a blue-white like the surface of a pearl. The man you presume to be Young Master Baoyu leans forward. “And oh, Yi Sang, it’s been a while!” 

“Greetings.” Straight to the point. Yi Sang doesn’t dally save for a bow of his head. “I hope you’ve been faring well, Young Master?”

The man draws out a sigh, the affect almost dramatic. “Oh I'm fine. I’ve just been doing a little this and that. The elders have told me to run along and see the sites beyond Hongyuan so I've been travelling quite a bit! There’s so many strange new things to see…”

Ishmael takes a bite out of her duck and swallows. “That’s nice, Baoyu-ge.” she says, her tone painfully bereft of feeling. This whole affair feels awkward. You wonder if poor Yi Sang is faring any better here.

Silence. Baoyu hums an absent tune under his breath. “The weather really is lovely today.” he repeats. His shifting draws your gaze again and his hands give a little flick. You jolt, some old instinct seizing your nerves and you look up — actually look up and freeze. There’s blood hemming the collars of his robes. “I think it might rain.”

What? You swallow, so disoriented, disoriented to a point where you struggle to gather your thoughts. What had rattled you to begin with? The mention rain?

You face Jia Baoyu. 

The man in front of you is painfully, awfully, unfairly pretty. Soft skin, long hair and a slow-spreading smile on his face, coming to him as easily as slicing through soft butter. He leans his cheek against his hand. What catches your attention ( and the sight makes your cheeks blood run cold ) are the bandages across his face; wrapped tight against his left eye. It wouldn’t have been all that much to falter over. 

But the bandages are wet. 

“Hello.” he greets, the lilt in his voice soft, melodic. He’s still bleeding, staining more white with dirty red. “And who might you be?”

It takes a long, shameful moment for you to fully register the question in the midst of the static in your head. Young Master Baoyu, in some merciful twist, is patient enough to wait for it as you straighten and fumble, tugging and tugging at the lump in your throat and the knot on your tongue for you to blurt your name out. Yi Sang tilts his head just a bit, watching you from his periphery. There’s concern there. 

“They’re my attendant.” Lady Ishmael adds, eyeing him down. She takes a delicate sip out of her water. “I’ve had them with me since I was seventeen, I believe.” 

He’s far more interested than what you’d normally consider necessary. Young Master Baoyu makes a little sound of acknowledgement ( the very tone of it, practically thick with that aforementioned airiness, makes you feel a little lightheaded yourself ). 

“Your attendant?” he echoes with a hint of contemplation, tapping his chin for effect. Till now, he’s not bothered touching even a bit of his food. “I don’t recall them being amongst the batch grandmother had assigned to you…” 

“They weren’t. I met them a few months after I acquired Yi Sang’s leash.” She replies. 

“Ah~ I see!” his attention snaps back to you. You’ve recovered enough at this point to present a stretch of competence. It would tarnish Lady Ishmael's image if you kept blundering about and you doubt she needs another reason to be poked, prodded and pointed at within the ranks of her family. “Seems like you’ve been following her for a good chunk of her adventuring, hm? My sister does have a penchant for picking up strays…you seem well taken care of.”

You assumed he’d have eaten by now. But you swallow that bitter thickness your ire steeps in and force a smile on your face to match his. Do not look at his face. “I am lucky.” you acknowledge. “The Young Miss has been nothing short of gracious. I’m honoured to assist her as a member of her clan.” It comes out easy, a partial truth, a partial lie. While there is a jilted hitch in your chest, you could liken this to stretching out an unused muscle.

He pulls a hum out, slow, so agonizingly slow. Then he sets his hands on the wood surface. “I like you~ How about you come with me?”

Lady Ismael chokes.

( You, by some miracle, do not react. You’re not alien to listening into the schisms of the wealthy over dining — though your time here seemed to have filed away some of the edge and spoiled you. But security is still security in the end. You wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

This flow of conversation, you are a little used to. Even as your guts squirm. )

“Stop bothering them, Baoyu-ge.” She speaks up, a warning concealed beneath the curtness. He giggles in response, finally taking a bite out of his food with a cheekily uttered ‘So possessive’ half muffled by his lowered voice. 

The silence lets itself rest, jarred only on occasion by the scrape of ceramic and cutlery. You start counting the minutes in your head as water is repoured and by the third round the attendants made, Young Master Baoyu is opening his mouth to speak again. 

“I remember how we used to sit together and eat during our birthday. Really takes us back, huh? You had such chubby cheeks back then, and the smallest hands too.” You’re grateful for the pivot in topics, averting your eyes to the way Lady Ishmael’s quiet agony seemed to make her shrink further and further away from her older brother as if she wanted to cease what pitiful existence her life had twisted into.

But ah, you could hazard a guess as to where the rest of the guests had headed off to. Young Master Baoyu, well beloved and looked after seemed blissfully unaware of this notion.

“...and back when we used to fly kites too. You couldn’t get yours off of the ground without help from me or A-Yu and you’d get so red faced and teary eyed over it~.” the Young Master continues, as if possessed by the whims of an elder. Nostalgia, cheek, pettiness, whatever it was that fuelled this, Jia Baoyu seemed to wind through a tangent of embarrassing little stories mired with a concerning doggedness. 

It keeps testing and testing and testing, until the Young Miss sets down her empty plate with an audible enough clink. He stops immediately, his expression shifting back into a genial smile. Yi Sang had been ready to step in, pausing only when she’d waved away his advance. 

You start counting the seconds again, your mind starting to fizzle out once more. You could taste sampige on your tongue and throat.

Lady Ishmael bows. “I will be taking my leave, Baoyu-ge. I hope you enjoy the celebrations grandmother has arranged for you.” she announces in a tone that reads with a seething, embarassed ‘shut the fuck up’. “I have an early start tomorrow and I must oversee the preparations for our departure.”

He sits up. "Oh? You aren't coming to Yihongyuan?" he asks. He isn't particularly upset. That must have ticked her off even further.

"No."

“Alright.” he muses. “Take care, meimei.”

It’s an empty phrase. You can’t quite put your finger on why it was; or if you could muster a reasonable explanation for it. The weight of his stare as the three of you turn to depart, however, burns against the back of your neck. There’s an itch to your skin that starts to fester into a feeling; as if it was stretched too tight, too thin across your muscle and bone. 

You mull over it as Yi Sang hurries you past the door, deigning to turn back for a second. 

He still wears that odd little smile. And you swear there is a hint of satisfaction there.

Lady Ishmael does not speak through the palanquin ride from Dahuating once.

It’s a cause for worry on your side, but Yi Sang, perhaps half an effect of knowing far more about her and the inner workings of the families within Daguayuan’s walls, let her simmer in her anger. Comfort and pity would have done naught but have her hackles raise more, he would explain into the later hours. The last thing the Young Miss with all her keenness wishes to be, is weak under the scrutiny of of the Jia family. A brother she once held in sentiment is hardly different.

It’s a little easy to forget that, you had realized then, that you were only a few years the Young Miss’ senior; and perhaps that little gap in age and the wake of your escape from the Old Madam had torn away and skipped over the typicality of teenage insecurity and what thirst one had to tear at the chest. Family was everything --- you once knew this. And even in the midst of hatred, it still beckons you to keep stepping for it. 

It still seemed a little too much for someone as young as her. 

For the present, though, she calls you into her room. You find her seated in front of the oval mirror, staring straight into her reflection. “Do my hair, if you please.” she asks. “I don’t want it getting tangled up in bed again.”

“So my advice is sticking?” you half joke, taking the comb she hands you. 

“It seems to be.” A pause. “It’s strange, isn’t it?” She asks. 

You run the comb through her roots, undoing the tangles caught from the day. Lady Ishmael shuts her eyes. “What is?” you prompt. 

“Do I look like him?”

You stare at her through the mirror. “Like Young Master Baoyu?” You sound a little unsure of yourself as well. She did stand out in the midst of Hongyuan but there’s little ground to argue any legitimacy, if that’s what she was worried about. Her name is in the registry. Jia Mu acknowledged her place. 

You hear the distant boom of fireworks. Some of the light flashes across the room from the windows; and you see it reflected in the frame of the mirror.

She purses her lips. “It’s strange.” she says again. “How, for all intents and purposes, we’re still related somehow.” She fiddles with her hands and her eyes snap open again. The Young miss seems a little lost, stuck in some far away place. “It doesn’t make sense at all and yet…” she sighs. 

Ah. Your expression softens a bit. “Young Miss?”

Lady Ishmael grumbles. “Keep combing. I’m feeling a little sleepy from it.”

You crack a smile, a genuine one, your fingers working away to section her hair out. You don’t draw it too tightly across as you braid it, letting it go to sit across the curve of her spine. She plays with the end of it when you step back before shuffling to her bed. Her hands grasp at the sheets and you sit by the edge, watching her. 

“Gege used to do my hair when we were kids.” She mumbles sleepily. The anger seems to have subsided by this point. ‘All the time. I’d ask him all the time and he’d always sit down and do it for me.” She closes her eyes. “I think he’s changed. I know he has.”

“I’m sure he still loves you.” You assure her. 

Ishmael takes a shaky breath in. “Maybe. But this place is…it ruins everyone…”  her words fade off against the lull of sleep. You hold a finger to your lips when you spot Yi Sang hovering, an unreadable look in his eyes. You slowly rise to join him once her breathing has evened out and you make sure the windows of her room were properly locked. There were no tell tale signs of tampered surfaces either. 

Yi Sang is waiting for you by the hallway, having traded his high-collared hanfu for a nightshirt and pants. You wind apart the tense knots on your back and pad after his barefooted steps down the stairs and into the little kitchenette pushed aside. “Have you eaten yet?” he enquires. 

You shake your head. “No.”

“You aught to.” he replies. “Better eat now than to wake to a worse hunger in the morning. Come, the attendants had packed away some of the leftovers.”

“From the banquet?” you peek into the bags that Yi Sang sets on the table. It’s still warm to the touch. “These are not poisoned either, yeah?”

“None are.” he nods, pulling out a pair of chopsticks from the cabinet. You take them with a grateful sigh, taking apart a few of the bamboo boxes to mull over the dim sum inside. Yi Sang sits by the table, his head craned to the general direction of Ishmael’s room. “The night today is blessedly silent.”

“Nothing to hear or smell?” You blink, a little shocked. 

“Apart from a certain someone’s rather emphatic chewing and the ongoing celebrations for the Young Master's feast.” he looks at you. “And the smell of chicken. It seems I am not immune to the temptation of famishment. If you could pass me some…?” 

You hold a hand to your mouth, abashed, handing him some to take when he holds his arm out from across the table. Yi Sang leans back, satisfied. He isn't one to really eat much as is, nor more than he should at his age. A little ironic given his fussing just a little earlier. His assurance of Lady Ishmael’s state was quick and knowing when you asked it. Now all you have left in the end is that pit in your stomach. 

"Why has the Young Miss been overlooked?" you question. It upsets you more than it should. Even Lady Ishmael didn't seem particularly bothered by the blatant favouritism anymore than something else entirely.

He stalls. "Court and familial politics oft confuse me as well." He confesses. "I am but a simple man now, and was but a simple beast in my past. What obscene animosity that bodes within these walls...I am not a good enough teacher to wholly explain it." 

"But families aren't meant to be like this." you try to say. "Families are...are..."

You appreciate his waiting. Your tongue keeps betraying you.

“He scares me.” You blurt out.

Yi Sang turns his head to you. 

“Young Master Baoyu.” you clarify. “I don’t know what it is. I mean, ‘scare’ is a strong word anyway but…I don’t know.” You hiss it out, jabbing your chopsticks a little too aggressively into your rice.

That unreadable expression is back. Yi Sang cradles his chin in his hands. “He unsettles you, then?” he proposes. You consider it.

“Yes, that seems about right.” You mumble. “‘Unsettle’.” 

“Lady Ismael holds him with more fondness than she cares to confess.” He reminds you gently. “And he does hold himself with a certain degree of pleasantness as well. At least, far more than plenty of others.” He stares down at his half empty plate after. “But if need be, one shall speak to the Young Miss. We could avoid any meetings with him in your presence.”

You shake your head, stricken. “No, no that’s a bit too much — ” you blurt out. You look away, setting the chopsticks down to nervously press your thumb over your knuckles. There’s a shame burning against the tips of your ears. You were probably making too much of a big deal about it anyway. “I won’t inconvenience her.”

Yi Sang sighs. “She is fond enough of you to allow it.” 

“It’s silly.” you argue back. “And inappropriate. I’m probably making a mountain out of a molehill anyway.” You were. You are. Who were you to dig your feet in and throw a fuss anyway? There could be times where you scrape your mind raw enough to assume and assume and assume. And you are assuming far too much. 

He relents. “If you say what you think, then I have precious little power to convince you otherwise.” Yi Sang draws your attention back to him again and you unconsciously tuck away your hair and rub a hand over your cheek, feeling out the phantom prickling that beset it a moment ago. “Even the Young Miss has occasionally expressed a sense of unease.”

“But you just said…”

Yi Sang looks to you. “Two different things can co-exist.” he says. “But one simply speaks from the eyes of a servant. If the Young Miss can care for a brother she has naught but anger for…” he trails off. It doesn’t help you in the slightest. But even Yi Sang holds himself with that lack of surety. His memories from a more human life were nothing but muddled blurs and perhaps, after eating too much rot, he craves for a thin line of hope.

You’re all stumbling about in the end, grabbing at what works.

You bite your teeth against your lip to that. “It’s a little contradictory.”

Yi Sang draws his lips back. It’s an almost-smile, just about playing at the corner. “He is well loved amongst his family. And he is well loved amongst the people. There is reason to his name, after all.”

You slump over a little. “Baoyu.” you test the two syllables. “It means ‘precious jade’, right?”

“It does.” Yi Sang is pleased ( his lessons seem to have paid off ). “For now, you aught to tread with care with him.” He fishes out his bolus from the little bottle he keeps on him. A tiny, unsuspecting thing nestled on the palm of his hand. He ingests it with little fanfare.

“Do you think I’m wrong, Yi Sang?” You feel a little childish for even thinking it, let alone saying it out loud. 

He purses his lips. “One could only hope so.” he mumbles. “It would break her heart, would it not?”

It would. The conversation ends there, with Yi Sang leaving. You’re still a little too highstrung to properly let your mind and body settle into any sense of restfulness and take to sorting away and recording the last few possessions Lady Ishmael chose to take along with her.

When the last chest was packed, you do yourself one last favour and pull yourself onto your bed, curling up against the soft sheets and the smell of clean silk.

VERSE 2 : DISTENSION OF THE BODY.

To the thing in the temple, the darkness was routine. There was scarcely any light inside to illuminate the stone pillars or the last few remnants of its abandoned hallways. People had rarely come to visit it to begin with; and with the thing’s arrival, they stopped altogether. So it would often peer into the distance and briefly wonder if it had gone blind before the shine of the watchman’s flashlight would bounce against stone.

The thing, in the end, wasn’t a sight most wanted to look at. It was a pathetic heap slumped against the wall, armless and legless and practically buried under the winding work of sampige branches and sampige flowers. A temple plant, an ornament, a freak with some sickening elixir-affliction. The thing was many a subject of theory but it heard none of it. 

( Even the rats found precious little purpose in its presence. Whole organs sold better than torn ones and their hungry hands had shied away when they dug their knives a bit too deep; nicking against the root system that wound within its body. Its flesh and muscle and tendon and bone and every oozing drip of blood and lymph was too far gone, in this strange process of propagation. )

So the thing would seat itself in the darkness, fed at intervals, as the silence started to weigh. Sometimes a few were brave enough to come for the sampige and dart away when the thing would so much as stir. And to the thing, with the monotony and the burn in its ribs and every harrowing, croaking breathful of air and the taste of iron coating its mouth — it could care less of itself.   

There is no human here to pity, after all. That silly thought was ripped out of its head the moment it stepped into that house.

A few hours before Lady Ishmael was due to depart, you’d broken away from the rest of the clan to spend a portion of your salary at one of the stores down by the hub. You had reason to yourself that some indulgence wouldn’t be too painful to experience with what you have now. There was enough ahn on you to procure a hairpin set for yourself, a pretty one carved from lacquered wood and tipped at the end with sculpted jade. 

Jade. you turn it over in your hands and slip into some dazed admiration. You consider wearing it for official matters. It’s simple enough to pass off in your every day job and you doubt the Young Miss would kick up a fuss seeing you in it anyway. 

“Baoyu.” you roll it against your tongue, keeping with the right inflections. Jade. It was a known fact to you by this point that the older brother of your mistress was well beloved by the people here. Jade in District 8 has become a commodity so widely used and fitted into charms and into blessed bracelets and jade in turn, had come manifested in the form of a baby birthed to one of the four houses. Of course, of course he would be loved. 

Though the thought of him makes your stomach turn, you’re equally as disturbed by the idea of someone coming under such greedy scrutiny. Eyes on you, eyes everywhere, eyes trained to your back — you feel nauseous at the thought. Maybe that might explain why he seems so off. Anyone would be.

You slide your notes across the counter and leave with the velvet box tucked away into your bag. There’s two hours to spare. You may as well tie away any loose ends before setting off and your steps take you to the heart of the Nest where Daguanyuan stands. There were a few cursory gifts that the rest of the Jia family were pushing forth; odds and ends and useless paraphernalia that you are half convinced is either poisoned or rigged or both.

Perhaps you should take help from one of the clan members. Boluses to strengthen olfaction aren’t a far off concept and you could risk a few casketfull of hidden darts; so long as any nasty surprises don’t crop up later down the line. It would be a headache, running around in a panic at the last minute.

In fact, you decide with a set to your jaw, you’d like to avoid it altogether. The banquet was already a source of stress for plenty of different reasons.

You count three security checks and one long verification process when you stop by the gates; with your tablet being reviewed with near painful scrutiny. One of the guards in question had snatched away your velvet case to inspect it, raising a singular brow at the sight of the hairpins. 

“You plan on giving these to someone or something?” he asks. 

“They’re for me, sir.” you reply, watching him inspect the end of it, as if the bunted tip could somehow stab through skin. “To wear.” you add. Theoretically, it could if you were to aim for the softer spots — the eyes, the jugular, the insides of one’s thighs. Your training was rudimentary at best but Lady Ishmael made sure you could drive a knife into someone’s guts if the need be. 

( The assassins-in-the-closet were another story and mess altogether. )

“Hm. Alright.” 

It’s a dismissive statement, and you stand in place with an increasingly obvious tic in your jaw. 

“Your bag.” The guard grunts. You sigh, feeling your shoulder give a little as you slide it over and plop it down in front of them. They sniff through its contents. Nothing past your cellphone, wet wipes and a bottle of water and a napkin. The only thing of note was the dagger. He leaves it be the moment he sees the sigil on it and hands you your belongings. “That’s settled then. Should have mentioned you were a Jia attendant.” 

“I did though…?” you begin.

He raises a hand. “We can’t be too careful here.” he shrugs. It’s nonsensical. The four families were trying to kill each other anyways; one more assassin sneaking into the walls would hardly count when there were fifteen more in the bushes leaving behind corpses in the gardens. But you grab what you can and store the velvet box back inside carefully. “So uh….you free later tonight — ”

…you start walking immediately. 

You pass by a couple of servants sent by the Xues on their way to Nuanxiangwu, heaving with them caskets upon caskets of silk. Yi Sang will probably strike some of it out and store it away into one of the spare rooms save for anything that serves a more practical purpose. You consider walking with them; it would be nice to have some company at least on your way to the Young Miss’ estate and Daguanyuan was notoriously bigger than it initially seemed on the outside. 

A notification has you stop. It’s a text from Xiling — hastily typed out and followed by a few one-line follow ups. Lady Ishmael’s fans were missing. She asks you to head to Dahuating to help her hunt for it amongst the seats.

You stop, chewing on the inside of your cheek.

Something about it is wrong. Even with the seeming innocence colouring the statement, you’ve been doused down by enough paranoia to stare long and hard at the message and reconsider the words within it. Is the Young Miss really all that careless to begin with? You’re certain, fairly certain you’d seen her tie shan tucked away into her belt post her departure yesterday.

What an obvious fucking trap. It makes your saliva curdle to something repulsive. 

You tap away to Yi Sang’s contact and glance up at the retreating servants. There is something sharp inlaid in their gazes and you narrow your own eyes at them. They jump and skitter off, one of their ears flushing red. 

“Yes?”

“Is anything amiss? Any of the Young Miss’ belongings?”

A shuffle. “Yes. Her fans, if one were to recall correctly. We are unaware of where they are.” he replies. Your shoulders slump but your stomach churns. 

“Didn’t she have them before?” you ask. 

“I am certain she did.” Yi Sang states, and there’s a sureness you couldn’t refute in his delivery. Ironfast, steadfast. “Is something wrong?”

You look to the side. The estate is just within sight, a faint blur of colour behind the series of sloped-roof buildings dotting the scape. “Xiling is at Dahuating looking for it. It might be there.” you confess

Yi Sang falls silent. You could practically see him wrinkle his nose in suspect. “That is…odd..” he decides ( and you hold back on berating him for the pun — you are already ready to split your head in half over the slow-forming migraine eating away at your grey matter ). “If you do intend on departing to the banquet hall, you aught to keep your guard up. One does not trust the walls of this place easily.”

You force a laugh out. “The walls move, Yi Sang.” you remind him. “I’ll be careful. If the situation seems too much for me to handle, I’ll make a break for it.”

He hums, thoroughly unconvinced. 

You step quickly, taking a turn away from Nuanxiangwu. They hurry you down the stone path and the cut through the arching trees and the trimmed bylanes. You slip through one of the doors into Dahuating, one discreetly enough to the side for most of the serving staff. You count the steps as you ascend the stairwell and slip into the empty room. You do not see Xiling.

Ah. Your gaze darts up, upwards over the pillars and the carved beams above. You don’t see any shift in the light or suspicious shadows. You advance. “Xiling?” You call, your gaze darting over through the tables. It’s barren. The last meal was a few hours ago; you suspect another will be held by the time the dinner bell strikes. 

The quiet makes you a little uneasy.

You wave past the tables. No tie shan. Still no Xiling. You stop in the middle of that room.

You hear a shuffle. Your hand tightens round the handle of your dagger. 

Young Master Baoyu steps into view. He blinks, long and slow, then smiles. “Hello!” he greets. “Surprising to see you all the way here.” He doesn’t seem all that surprised, and he doesn’t bother hiding it. You consider walking away; but the gesture is far too disrespectful for one from your station. Jia Mu would have your head for crossing that line. 

He sets his plate on the table by the time he approaches you and gestures at you to sit. 

“That is far too high a gesture, Young Master.” you shake your head. 

He laughs. “Ah, and yet you didn’t even greet me back.” Your genial smile falters and you quickly slip into one of the chairs, a fair distance from him. He tilts his head, then shifts his seat closer. A part of you withers. Thankfully, blessedly, he isn’t all that insulted. “So, what are you doing all the way here?” he asks, poking his head into his dish. You catch a whiff of rice cakes. 

You straighten. “I’m looking for one of my clansmen.”

He hums. “One of my sister’s attendants?” he asks. You nod. “Tall? A little excitable?” he continues. 

“Her name is Xiling, sir.” You reply.

“Yes, yes her!” he replies emphatically. “She seemed near collapse when I met her. She was searching for a misplaced fan I think. I’d found it by the table we’d eaten at yesterday and I'd guessed that was what she wanted…” he trails off, his stare flicking up to your face. There’s something so profoundly dead in his good eye. You try to school the way your cheeks twitch, hoping he wouldn’t see the taut pull against your shoulders and hands. 

“Milady’s tie shan.” 

Young Master Baoyu giggles. “Fuhu~. She’s pretty forgetful, huh? My little sister? I handed it in and she set out right after.” Xiling didn’t text you after that initial request. 

“She’s quite capable.” You can’t help but say. You need to shut up now. Young Master Baoyu ignores you, taking a bite out of his rice cakes. You note the absence of any servants about him; unlike the last time. You doubt the family elders would send him running about without an entourage. The Young Miss rarely stepped out in the absence of Yi Sang at her shoulder.

After a few thoughtful bites, your restlessness starts giving out. You open your mouth, ready to request your leave but he cuts you off. “I never got the chance to really talk to you yesterday.” He muses. “Meimei can be a bit of a spitfire sometimes. I have a sneaking suspicion she didn’t want me sniffing about your business.” There’s that airy laugh again. The man speaks like he’s taken in mouthfuls of cloud and fluff. 

You pull your lips back. “I apologize if what few responses I gave were unsatisfactory.” You relay. 

He shakes his head. ‘Well they kind of were.” he sniffs. “Never mind that! I think we have a chance to host a proper conversation here. Hm?”

No. Your eyes flick to the door, then back at him. “Young Master…” You start, trying to sound as pitiful as possible, if only to glean some sympathy from him ( you doubt it. His gaze is a pit. It’s empty. It’s so empty ). “I will be departing in an hour…”

He makes a small sound of amusement, his smile too wide, too unnatural, too clinical and washed of any inch of warmth. “Right. You’re leaving. That’s a pity.” He leans his head into his hand. Terrible table manners, if you were being honest, but you do not speak of it. He focuses on you, silent, calculating almost. “I’ll make this quick then.”

He leans back. “My sister plans on joining the evaluations, yes?”

You pause. “That's why she left Hongyuan.” You reply. 

“Fuhu~ I know that. I was quite shocked to hear it, to be fair.” he waves his hand, flippant. “Nainai is always so secretive over things like this so I was quite sad to hear I never got the news until a few months had passed. But as her attendant, you are aware, yes? Of the implications such a decision hosts?”

You…do not know where this conversation is going. It seems fine; you think Young Master Baoyu, in his own avoidance, hosts a strain of worry for a younger sister he may have held an unspoken fondness for. Lady Ishmael would speak of his kindness and the ways he’d sit her on his lap to share his birthday feast with her. 

( Perhaps that bleeding heart in you grasps at a familiarity, a thread of relatability you doubt is wholly there. You’d have done anything for your older sister. She would have done the same for you — and she had. You’d taken her ashes to the canal on that thirteenth day and oversaw her immersion yourself. )

“Yes, I am.” 

He shuts his eyes. “That’s good! I’m glad to know you and Yi Sang have her back~” a pause. “Has she progressed well over the past few years? The first round is rather tricky, after all.” 

( Yes, you could desperately try to glean some optimistic strand in his questioning. But you also know better than to keep talking. )

You bow your head politely, apologetically. “I’m afraid I cannot reveal too much, sire. It’s rather sensitive information.”

The Young Master holds a hand to his lips. “Hmmmmm, not even a little?” he prods in a sing song voice. 

“No sir.” Please let me go. “This humble servant simply cannot, in good faith.”

He considers you for a tense instance, that hollow, empty gaze of his oddly hot and focused on your face. There’s a painful neutrality in his expression, almost as if every wrinkle and divot was sanded and smoothed over. Jia Baoyu’s face then splits into a too-wide smile and you catch a flash of that gluttonous shine in his gaze. It’s some unholy mix of displeasure and want. You’re convinced now that you’ll die here.

There is a clear line to the door. Your nerves rise and tingle and scream at every fiber of you to get up and run. Run away. Run away now and —

“You like saying ‘no’ to a lot of things, hm?” he intones. You open your mouth, ready to drop an excuse, that you are short of time, that you must leave now, that you’re being waited for. “Sit, please.” It’s not a request. 

Your breathing falters. You slump in your seat. He shifts his head a bit and the white of his bandages stain an even deeper red. You do not understand the nature of such a wound. It must be recent, given the state of it ( even though the scarred tissue that draws a stark line from it has, oddly enough, healed ). “Have I scared you?” he asks. 

“No, sire.” you lie.

“Okay~” he obviously does not believe you in the slightest. “It’s alright. I understand the sentiment given all the backstabbing. We’re quite fond of it, in this family!” The recitation his lined with a rather nostalgic sigh. “Thankfully it’s petered out for me but meimei…well she has a lot on her plate as a heirarch candidate.”

While his tone slips back into unhurried breeziness, you cannot wholly shed that layer of apprehension  thick above your skin. Wetting your lips, your gaze flickers back to the door, then him. “Aren’t you taking part as well, sire?” you ask. 

He turns to you, vaguely surprised. Then he looks thoughtful. Then he looks pleased. “Wellll….” he draws out. “Not really. I have no plans to partake in the testing.”

“So you don’t wish to take over the seat when Lady Jia retires?” you bow your head again, with an addition: “Forgive this servant, if they have overstepped.” 

Jia Baoyu smiles a secret smile. “That is a strange question. I’d have had you tossed out of the Daguanyuan if I were insulted.” he claps his hands. “Never mind that though~ I forgive you and all.” You taste poison in your mouth, threatening, raring to be spat out. You keep it in and swallow even when the condescension starts to burn against your skin. 

He pushes aside his now empty plate. He seems a dainty eater; though you doubt anyone would have much during a mid-meal snack. 

“By the way, have there been any renovations near Nuanxiangwu recently?”

You blink. “No, sire.” you reply. 

The Young Master taps his chin. “Really now? I went to visit the place before the banquet and saw quite a large pile of jidanhua just by the wayside. My sister wasn’t in of course but…aha she probably likes flowers more than she wants to admit~ How cute~”  

Jidanhua…

Jidanhua? Your shoulders run taut. Sampige. He saw the remains from the assassination attempt. He saw the flowers. 

“I see.”

He’s too keen eyed, too insistent in his demeanor to ignore. “They’re pretty ones, aren’t they.” he adds. “There was talk in one of the foreign districts of elixir drinkers who’d sprout branches worth of them. I’d thought of acquiring one during my travels to send over to my family as a gift…something nice to look at and study, perhaps.” he absently runs a finger over the surface of the table. “Have you happened across any? They’re rare stock these days.”

You feel sick.

You feel sick.

You feel sick.

“I.” You want to wince, to scream at how easily your voice cracks, like you want to cry. It’s just a few stupid words. Just a few but wings, wings it’s too much, you need to leave now. “I really…I’m afraid I must depart, young master.” It’s acid rolling off of your tongue. Every syllable hurts to say. Every bit of it is so unbearably heavy. 

You stand, hands shaking. Jia Baoyu mirrors your movements to your horror, bending down a little to murmur a sweet-tongued, “Allow me to escort you out.” into your ear. When you are at the door, his cold fingers pry your fist open, slipping something onto your palm. “A thank-you for entertaining me.” he giggles. “Come visit me more next time. I would like to talk about my sister more.”

It’s suspiciously round and small- small enough to nestle with your grasp and stay hidden away. “I cannot.”

“Hmmm. Then I'll seek you out then. I can’t exactly go see her face to face…she gets awfully upset.” he decides. You have precious little say in the matter as he turns his back to you and leaves with an unsuspecting wave. You watch his figure grow smaller and smaller, watch him be beset by worrying servants, watch him disappear from sight.

Then you open your hand. Its hard candy, with the wrapped paper slipping open just a little to show off the smooth, pearl like surface of it; dyed a soft blue. The sight of it is tempting enough for a child to eat. You could nearly get a taste of the unhealthy amount of sugar upon it; heavy on the tongue and heavy on the senses. 

The Young Master’s smile flickers in your memory. Your body chills. Your hair stands on end. 

Absolutely not. That voice asserts itself with finality. You throw it into the nearest garbage heap.

You made it back with time to spare. The last of the Young Miss’ belongings were packed away. You sorted past the few gifts remaining within the pile she was handed in and drowned yourself under piles upon piles of records. You wrote until your wrist ached and the very phantom feel of Jia Baoyu’s touch was purged from your memory. There was something fundamentally wrong with that man. You didn’t want the young Miss anywhere near him. Not her. Not Yi Sang, not your clansmen ( even foolish Xiling ) and certainly not yourself. 

( The last time you’d felt the tell-tale flare up of the elixir’s traces were during your first few months within Lady Ishmael’s services. You’d spent a day-and-night within the confines of your quarters, a dagger in hand excising every hint of a sprouting bud from the confines of your skin. 

Every miniscule presence of those sampige on you, torn away one by one till you could feel the roots wither. Your body would be marred and mutilated but it was a small enough price to have paid for any adjacent feel of normalcy. There was such little fondness attached to them — not as much as you once felt, and that caustic mouth-feel was unbearable even on the quieter instances where your body didn’t feel used.

One by one, one flower at a time till you’d have a pile of white speckled red and your nose was clogged with an iron-rich stink. Then you’d eat the boluses and let flesh knit itself back together, freed of that burgeoning wrongness that would wiggle in your guts and chest and body.

And you could finally breath again. )

If Yi Sang was worried — and you were certain he was — he did not address it. Departing took priority, and after telling Xiling off for snubbing you at the last minute, you had finally let yourself relax when the carriage exited the complex. You doubted you’d miss the likes of District 8 anyway.

Foe now, your priorities shift. Lady Ishmael had the skeleton of a plan set up for her first trial. Whether willing or not, it was something-to-be-done under the guidance of her parents. An instant push on her back to walk along the lines with the other children of the four families ( familial duty, filial piety, every inch of her carefully crafted to set across the city with a bidding on her shoulders and an awfully unfamiliar future to be tread ).

Following her was all you could do. It’s all you can do. 

You’d have still been that thing in the temple, if not for her, after all. 

VERSE 3 : RUPTURING OF FLESH.

Lady Ishmael’s first stop is the eastern branch of the Dieci Association. 

You learn then that one part of her trip back to Hongyuan involved scrounging through a few of the archives of Daguanyuan; an endeavor made on her own partly out of dogged spite and partly out of a need to garner a new lead to the answers she sought. She’d left with one thread of possibility; a name in the records by the name of ‘Bari’ and one off handed conversation she’d had with an old Heirarch years upon years ago.

This particular Bari-person was a fixer. And if there were traces of her left within the city, in Lady Ishmael’s words, the lot of you may as well “Seek out a few persistent busybodies.” She had a limited amount of intel to go off of and the second hand report from an observing chronicler was far from accurate. 

( “I’m sure it’s not that bad,” you had tried to naively reason. The Young Miss wordlessly handed you the scroll in question. 

“‘Lady Bari, ten feet tall in stature and knightly and chivalrous in countenance; with locks as dark a blue as the midnight sky and a stately bow upon her back, larger than a great palanquin — ’” you trail off with the stretching paragraph, passing her an abashed grin. “Ah…never mind.” )

So the three of you seek out said busybodies after alighting from the carriage. The east branch library stretches onwards for a kilometer; long enough for you to strain your neck to spot the end of it in the distance. The city was no stranger to buildings this large. The Nests were filled with an abundance of them in certain districts, but even with the splendour of the Dieci library, you half expected something bigger.

Ah, but who were you to assume? On your way in, within the sprawling gardens stripping round the structure, you spot the grounds of what seems to be an orphanage and a group of children playing within it. It's downright cacophonous, with a mix of screaming and accusations and laughter and you think you see a shoe being hurled over into the bushes somewhere. It’s the closest thing you’ve seen to a charity within the city. The spectacle is almost jarring. 

One of them stops, cocks their head up and looks right at you with a rather solemn gaze. You hold it, quietly, watching how they shift on their feet with discomfort before managing a small greeting wave. Then a caretaker calls for them; one dressed in a black and gold stole and they all round up like ducklings in a line and march back inside.

Lady Ishmael calls your name. “Don’t dawdle.” she states. “We’re short on time.”

“Ah — ” the sound slips out and you dust your robes down, hastily joining her side once more as the doors behind you swing shut. You could only hear the tail end of laughter from some of the children still lingering in the grounds, and an ache in your chest that flares upon receiving it. 

You stand corrected with your judgements when you take a proper look at the interior. While the building outside was rather modest for what you’d assumed to be a sprawling archive, the inside appears to have space folded into itself; just enough to hide high walls and a sprawling network of shelves stretching on and on beyond reason. Bent spaces are not uncommon within the city, let alone associations as wealthy as this one. Most people with half a head would have taken one look at the depleting space and the ongoing housing crisis a critical eye and throw in a few precautions to keep an office running with a few cuts on rent. It figures that the fixers who devoured knowledge both metaphorically and literally would zero in on a few loopholes. 

“That’s…” 

“The books here number into vast quantities.” Yi Sang sounds rather wistful. “One is rather taken by the view.”

You blink, and discreetly to some of the stained glass renderings set up across the sides. Some of the fixers who stood below it were miniscule in comparison. “Must have taken ages to make those.” you add, your voice dipping to a whisper. And you know it’s handmade. Even if handicrafts are a rarity under goods that were mass produced; there’s money where human ingenuity and finesse stands. The notion rings a rather dark but it stands alone as a simple truth. 

Lady Ishmael appears vaguely contemplative as she stops by the reception, snapping her fan shut. “Good day.” she greets the rather miffed woman by the computer. Said woman passes her a cursory glance then trains her gaze back onto the screen, click-clacking away. Lady Ishmael’s smile wavers at the corners. “Good day.” She repeats, her voice hitching louder, the tail end of it frayed with that usual snippiness.

Another glance is cast and this time, she actually takes a good look at her, right down to the Young Miss’ rather expensive pair of shoes. You could almost here the 'click' that sounds in her head when she registers the sight and sits a little straighter, a little wearier. “Good day.” she greets in turn. Now she scans over you and Yi Sang. “May I help you with anything?”

“I’ve come to meet this branch’s acting saint,” in the curt reply, getting straight to the point. The woman purses her lips. “I have an appointment booked in the next half hour.”

“Sir has many appointments.” The receptionist states slowly. The clock behind her ticks louder and louder and louder. “May I know your name?”

“Ishmael, of the Jia family.”

The receptionist pauses, then lets out a half-squeaked, “Come again?”

“Ishmael of the Jia family.” The Young Miss echoes, emphasizing her name just to set that point across. You can sense how her patience gradually starts unravelling thread by thread by thread at the edges. That initial ire, once fast subsiding, makes it's return. She has the grace to not let it show, but judging by that white knuckled hold she has on her fan, you half worry it might wind up snapping from the pressure.

The receptionist lapses into stunned, bog-eyed silence, double checking her computer and swallowing back a nervous lump in her throat. “Yes.” she manages out, a tremble in her words. “Yes, You’re right here. He should be waiting for you now…I’ll call in one of our fixers to guide you over…goodness a scion of the Jia family…” she utters the last part to herself, shaken. “I’ve been rude…so very rude — ”

Lady Ishmael hunches her shoulders. “It’s fine. I don’t hold grudges.” she says, detailing the flattest lie you’ve heard spilling out of her lips. Yi Sang shuts his eyes, turning his head just to allow the glare of his glasses to hide away the mirth pulling at the corners. The receptionist flinches, then deflates a bit. 

“O-oh yes.” she manages out, moving on to relay her request into the telephone set up. A new face shows up in quick succession, pattering away rather excitedly at the sight of the three of you. “Zareen…? Zareen!”

A warm presence seemingly materializes at your side and you step away, letting her approach the desk with her hands tucked away behind her back. Her focus seemed to dance and weave between the table, the computer then settling rather intently on you. 

The receptionist fixes her glasses. “Zareen, be a dear and take them over to Saint Chudomir.” she directs, handing in a few visitor cards.

The new girl bounces on her feet, angling her back to bow in greeting. “Yes ma’am! Right away!” She turns to address Lady Ishmael, her chipper persona calming over to a far more professional visage. It’s instantaneous and you’re a little impressed with how easily she melts into it. “If you could please follow me, milady…”

Her footsteps are quick as she makes way through the corridor. “Excitable, isn’t she…” The Young Miss murmurs, delicately sliding her fan open as you trail behind her. “I may have to see to these dealings alone. Yi Sang, stay vigilant in my absence…I am not risking the possibility of my family sending in anyone to do me in here.”

“There is reason to doubt that they would so brazenly send as assassin within the bounds of a known association.” Yi Sang confesses haltingly, then lets out an unsure sound. “But…ah, one does recall a certain face…”

“The Si pack leash holder?” you guess, barely concealing your exasperation — and perhaps, in some twisted sense, your delight. “The blundering fool?”

He raises a brow. “Hush, we shall not speak ill of those above our station. Do you not oft quiet the Young Miss’ own misgivings?” You bite the inside of your cheek and Yi Sang, poor, sincere Yi Sang spots the cheeky shine in your eyes and lets out a long suffering sigh. “Hypocrisy coats your tongue as pollen lines the bee’s legs.”

“And how much pollen lines a bee’s legs, Yi Sang?”

“We are here on official business.” he reminds you, catching the way Zareen turns her head to glance back at the three of you. Lady Ishmael is used to your occasional prodding at this point ( and the childish delight you took in it ), remaining ever impassive as she locks her gaze in on ahead. “As for the pollen…”

Zareen pipes up at that, her chest puffing with a hint of pride. “They can carry over 20 milligrams a trip on an average. Of course, the variation between species means differing quantities. What specific bees are you referring to?”

You and Yi Sang snap your heads her way. She heard the two of you. 

A flush creeps up against your cheeks at that and you straighten. “None come to mind.” you reply in time with a series of rather awkward throat clearings from Yi Sang ( “Stop that.” Lady Ishmael whispers with a frown. “It’s not good for your voice.” ) “But thank you for the tidbit…fun fact…uh…” 

You lapse into silence, folding your hands in front of you. Somewhere between your fumbles, Zareen thankfully loses interest, her line of sight bouncing between the shelves and then to a passing fixer pair and then down to the storey below. The gaggle children from the orphanage were scattered in small pockets, noses in books.

( You could hear a few stumble over their letters, reciting and breaking down words to piece together when they got too long and complicated. It’s nostalgic to watch, the kind that set alight some odd, warm fuzziness in the recesses of your ribs and mellows out into something soft. )

The Young Miss watches you from the corner of her periphery. “Done?” she asks, just a little teasing. You feel that biting urge to sink into the floors wholly, completely and it persists as a few turns are taken with an additional trip via elevator. 

Your group’s pace slows to a stop at the doors to an office. “Here we are.” Zareen chirps as she raps her knuckles over the wood surface. “Sir is waiting inside.” and as if on cue, a muffled — if not slightly disgruntled ‘Come in’ rings out from the other end. You take to fiddling with your sash, retrieving a smoothed wood box from one of the pockets tucked away underneath.

“Shall we have to wait out?” Yi Sang asks. Zareen eyes him down with a rather intense look.

“I suppose attendants could accompany her.” She reasons, casting her attention on you next. She seemed so much younger than you; just freshly set into the path of adulthood…but oh those eyes of hers. You were already halfway through pouring some ink into your pain and retrieving your scroll, and you take care not to move too much lest it spills. “Just…try not to make yourselves too obvious. Sir doesn’t like too many people talking over him.”

“We will keep that in mind.” Lady Ishmael jerks her chin into a sharp nod, letting herself in. Yi Sang lapses into his usual silence as do you, feeling sudden heat against your face the moment you step inside. Even the Young Miss seems vaguely uncomfortable with how stuffy the interior was, practically filled with books and tomes and scrolls and stone tablets over every conceivable surface. 

The man in its midst was on the older side, his hair peppered white at the roots. He was peering into a glass piece, wordlessly poring over book after book like a soul obsessed. 

“Saint Chudomir.” Lady Ishmael tests. 

“Yes?” he calls absentmindedly. 

“I’m here to speak with you.” 

He doesn’t look up. You don’t think he cares to do it, so entrapped within the words of those pages. “Yes. The Jia girl. Seira mentioned you.” He mumbles something to himself and turns the page. “Make it quick. There’s a lot to learn.”

She casts a glance over to the room around her. “Alright. There’s no point beating around the bush.” She starts fanning herself as you begin to write. Record keeping was delicate work for the most part and you mostly secluded it to events important enough to warrant a need for it. Any miscellaneous information is to be filled in later. “I’m here to buy out any knowledge you have on a fixer named Bari.”

Chudomir lifts his chin ever so slightly. “The knight?” he clarifies.

“Who else?”

“Just to clear things up.” he huffs mawkishly. “We have over a thousand two hundred and forty nine Baris in the city. Five of them are prominent enough though they’re mostly stuck within the corporate sector. Two are fixers themselves.”

“...and?”

“Well, do with that what you will.” he waves the conversation on. “We do not broker knowledge without a price. Most of our records here are set up to be consumed by our employees and the younglings in the orphanage. To have the common public get their hands on sensitive information outside of the scope their every day lives allow them is unheard of.”

Lady Ishmael offers a pragmatic smile. You quickly switch to shorthand for some of the dialogue then back to proper words once you’ve gleaned the necessary details. Some ink spatters at the corner but you pay little heed to it. “If it’s money you want then I have no qualms about offering it.” She relays, utterly sure of herself. “Name your price. I’ll even donate to any drives if you wish for that.”

He lets out a short laugh. “Oh, the money will be appreciated. But that’s not all we wish for. Lady Ishmael.” He tears his eyes away from the page. You see a glint there, considering, conniving. “We need access to certain records from within the Jia’s archives ourselves. Mostly records from a hundred or so years ago. There are a few gaps within our own books that need to be filled in and I believe your own libraries can aid in that.”

Yi Sang turns to Lady Ishmael. 

“Fine.” She relents after some deliberation. “In fact, should I ascend as heirarch, I’ll be more than happy to supply your Fists with any pre-approved knowledge you need from the annals of our libraries. We have plenty in there catching dust that i doubt my current generation would care to make use of. That seems a good deal, yes?”

Chudomir levels her with a stare. “Generous girl.” he nods, a hunger smoothing away at his features. “Mh, yes, a long-term alliance would do well for us. Of course, what we seek won’t bring harm to your position in any way…” he adds in hastily.

“As for the price?”

“Three billion ahn should do.” Your grasp falters ( three billion, three billion. ). Lady Ishmael remains unfazed, producing her chequebook. She plucks one of your pens from your drawstring puch to scrawl the details on. Yi Sang then moves to hand that signed slip of paper in, his gait belying nothing.

“Done. Tell the records you need. I’ll have my attendant send it in.” she gestures your way and you perk up, snapping out of the haze you were sinking into. “It may take a while to send word to my servants back in H corp. I trust you can wait a while?”

Chudomir draws that small magnifying glass closer with a hum. There’s a lick of amusement; just a scarce, near missable amount that flashes across his expression. “So long as the young lady before me knows to keep her vows. Do not back down from our agreement — I am not afraid to file a lawsuit if needed. Even against the child of a Wing.” 

She scoffs. “Only cowards turn to deception. Are you referring to me as such?”

“Hardly, Lady Jia.” He replies smoothly, running a thumb over the cheque. He trains his focus back to his books after slipping it between the pages of his pocket diary ( quite careless, in your humble opinion. Who the fuck would leave 3 billion inside a to-do list? ). “The list will be sent to your hotel room shortly. Just email the scanned copies in. I’m not picky so long as the writing is legible.” 

The Young Miss straightens, pleased with the progress made thus far. “Is that all?” you whisper, some part of you doubtful that the exchange would carry out this easily. Lady Ishmael hides her grin behind the fan. 

“You will be surprised to know what money can buy.” She reminds you, her voice low. “Cooperation just happens to be one of them the moment it’s on the table.”

“Three billion yuan is still a substantial amount.” Yi Sang cuts in. “Young Miss, is the bargain worth the pay?”

Lady Ishmael shakes her head. “You know me by now, Yi Sang. It’s pocket change. Nainai won’t even notice the numbers dropping with how much Hongyuan rakes in on a daily basis.” She leads the two of you to the doors, leaving Chudomir be in stride with his growing annoyance.

“A little too much, if you ask me.” you utter under your breath. “Really now, Young Miss. I think we should consider being more mindful of expenditure…”

She hums, her lips twitching at the corners ( they only just betray the barest hint of a curl ). “I’ve grown up knowing precious little about limits. Besides, If I can treat my clan well with what I have, then so be it.”

It’s easy to melt a bit on hearing that. Or maybe you were a little soft, a little squishy on the inside ( the sort of way that would make it horrifically easy for a place like the City to tear you apart ). Struck out of her trance, she lets in a sharp breath and motions ahead of her. “Enough of that. We have to finish this errand.”

“Here.”

Lady Ishmael hands in the pen drive once the two of you were on the carriage and you finish up with the last few paragraphs with the day’s records. She sits herself down next to you with a heavy sigh, resting her chin in her hand. “This is all they gave?” you ask, incredulous. 

“It’s everything they have on her. Every reference, every related topic, every transcript and every recorded conversation from camera feeds and old livestreams.” She rubs her cheeks down with her hands, exhausted. “I took the initiative to sort through and take what I could.” You nod along, wordlessly booting up your laptop and connecting the drive into the port. There aren’t a lot of documents within the files and you lean back against the seat. 

“Is this all?” you ask, unsure of yourself. 

“It is.” Yi Sang affirms. “Every mention of Lady Bari one could seek numbered in single digits.”

“Fuck…” you half mumble to yourself, opening up one of the PDFs. It’s an old conversation from a magazine preceding the Fixer’s Weekly; the kind of stuff filled with articles about new hotshots and up and coming fixers as well as pages detailing associations and games on ‘finding your own colour name’ based on your birth date. “Yours is ‘gold magic’.” you tell Yi Sang who bends over to take a peek. 

“Grey would suit me far better.” 

"Yes, but you'll have to be born on march, to get grey. So you're gold."

Yi Sang frowns. "But I'm fond of grey."

You eventually find a mention of Bari in one small paragraph of text; an article detailing her exploits within R corp right down to dealing with a few street thugs who’d broken into a local school. Surprisingly heroic, though your biases might have weighed into any prior judgement. “R corp, huh?” Lady Ishmael half mutters to herself.

“We could start there.” You offer, opening up a new document. You’re greeted by a thousand paged monstrosity of an old registry from the Hana association. A strangled sounds escapes your throat. 

Lady Ishmael looks at you, unabashed. “Get to reading then.” she urges. 

You want to weep at the audacity; but bidden and beholden as you were, you hunch over the laptop for the remainder of the day, in the carriage, then the common room of the hotel the Young Miss had bought out for the stay, while the rest of the clan unloaded the luggage into the designated rooms. Xiling and Mudan had stopped by to share some cookies they’d picked up from the store. After that, you remained mostly undisturbed. 

Bari, you think at the end of this, practically brimming with vindication, was a bitch.

You had skimmed through the registrars of the Hana association and encountered her name a few times already. You faintly recollect Chudomir’s words; of the many Bari’s within the city. It’s not out of pocket to assume — there’s always going to be someone out there who shares your name, especially back in your hometown. At some point, her name had reappeared again after skipping over a hundred years and the sight of it felt like nails upon a chalkboard.

There’s another who cropped up in office records. A salarywoman who lived a rather uninteresting civilian life within the M corp nest. Another mention was a man this time, who was jailed for 90 years for replicating and smuggling patented drugs from a well known pharmaceutical distributor at the time.

Curse you, you half mutter, mulling over her details. Curse you, curse you —

You come across an information log, and a photo in the midst of your maddened scanning. The woman who stares back had her face wiped of any telling emotion with pale skin and dark blue hair. Your mind rings and the chronicler’s words slip back into your train of thought. ‘Lady Bari, ten feet tall in stature and knightly and chivalrous in countenance; with locks as dark a blue as the midnight sky and a stately bow upon her back, larger than a great palanquin. She boldly strode through the halls of Daguanyuan and gazed upon our heirarch, esteemed and noble, with an offer of discourse — ’

“Well…” you start. The ID is dated a hundred years after the chronicler’s records. Pressing your lips to your palm, the wheels resume a slow, agonizing turn. “Well…” you breathe, and a tendril, a tinge, a telling surge of excitement takes over. 

Now, if these two women were the same person ( stripping down the verbosity of some of the chronicler’s words ), you’re either looking at a descendant or the same person. And if she were the same…

It could be a scratch. The ID detailed a different woman altogether, under a different name. But on finding Bari’s own, you could spot the telling similarities; right down to the height and choice in weaponry. It’s a shoddy job at hiding away any traces; and a part of you doubts it’s an accident or an involuntary choice. Rubbing your hands together to dispel the numbness encroaching in, you keep going. 

“It’s night.” Lady Ishmael finally breaks you out of your fevered stupor. 

You snap your head up. She’s dressed in her nightwear and you think you see the remnants of a pout playing across her face. She opts to not look you in the ey, a hand on her hip. “It’s good to see that you’re putting your all into this but i doubt you should be neglecting your other duties in the process.”

“Ah.” You sit up, sheepishly setting the laptop aside. “Would you like me to brush your hair?”

She holds the brush out. You take it, tucking your things under one arm as you herd her to her quarters. Lady ishmael sits herself down on the chair, knees and feet together and her hands upon her thighs. “How would you like it tonight?” You ask. 

“You spoil me with choices?” she muses. You undo the ox horn tie and let her hair fall over her back.

“Have you decided?”

The Young Miss shuts her eyes. “A crown braid is fine.Nothing too fancy…just make sure to keep the hair out of my face.” You comply, delicately parting her hair between brushing it out. “How is the search going so far?” she asks. 

“Well enough. I have a potential lead.” 

You hide away your smile when you see the excited perk in her back. “And?” she urges on.

“Lady Bari.” you start. “Is actually five feet and 10 inches tall.”

“Do not make me call Yi Sang on you.” She warns. You guffaw. 

“Alright, alright. Jests aside, there have been instances of a woman with a similar appearance appearing on and off again over a span of two centuries.” You confess, divvying her hair up and looping in the first braid to pin it back with her white bows. She holds up the rope for you to use. “If we are to assume that they are all Bari, then the only reason someone can live for as long is…”

Lady Ishmael’s eyes shine. “...She’s found a source of immortality.” she murmurs. “The chronicler detailed her mentioning a possible wellspring of longevity…”

“Is there any particular reason why they didn’t seek it any further?” you ask. 

She shrugs. “Tradition, for one. Another could have been a lack of resources. Bari probably never revealed more than what was necessary, save for a hint..” You loop the second braid in. “A hint was enough for me though.” she mutters. “Yi Sang will come in to help you tomorrow. Rest for now.”

“It was quite a bit of work.” you agree placidly. 

She tilts her head a little. “I’ll see to it that you are duly compensated when I ascend to the seat.” she promises. 

“That would be lovely, Young Miss…though I was alluding more to a raise.”

“I’ll grant that too.” she waves off. She looks at herself in the reflection then. “How pretty.” she comments lightly. “Had I met you or Yi Sang earlier, I’d have had far less grief with managing my hair.” A familiar shadow crosses her face. You watch her stand, watch her gently fiddle with her braids with a pursed lip. 

It’s not just the hair, is it?

You wish, you wish you asked her that. You wish you mustered up just a little more courage to prod away at the utterly stormy look she let show across her face, while she shuffles to bed, while she lays down. “Pass on your findings to Yi Sang.” she instructs after the silence starts to span on and on for a little too long. 

You bow. “That, I will.” 

“Good.” 

You head on back to your room. It was a long day for you in the end, and the exhaustion bogs you down heavier than you’d initially anticipated. The idea of a full night’s sleep sounds downright erotic at this rate, post the unsteady nights spent within the carriage. Mudan was seated by the Young Miss’ room to keep up his vigil and you assure yourself of the last of your duties, and a quick dinner. 

When you enter your room, you spot a singular drawstring pouch placed upon your pillow and the slightest hint of cigarettes permeating the air. You still at the sight of it, then approach, carefully, wearily, peeking a look at the contents inside once you have it in your hand. You’d initially assumed it to be boluses, but the scent of sugar pervades all else. 

You stare, and stare, and stare, your thoughts flailing and ripping themselves apart against radio static and something that sounds like screaming.

Inside it, pearl-like and soft-blued, were hard candies. 

[vivinomi]

— bully!shoko x fem!reader, commander!toji x fem!reader

cw: dubcon/noncon, sexual assault, sexual harassment, pussy eating, spanking, both toji and naoya are bad people, naoya is a simp for toji, overprotective nanami, that's all i guess

a/n: pt3 is here!! i think this is the most hardest chapter i ever written and it's so rush sorry 🥹 my writing is getting bad :') anyways enjoy this new chapter and thanks for being patience

likes and reblogs are appreciated

masterlist ✨

1.7k w.c

He shouldn’t be seeing this, let alone enjoying this- the view of you kneeling in front of a man with puffy eyes and your cute mouth trying its best to suck a cock turned him on. He's supposed to look away but not when you’re so pretty. He immediately left the scene wiping his eyes, mumbling apologize to himself as if it was towards you, making his way back to his dorm. Choso might have a slight crush on you because you’re so sweet and cute. He eagerly wanted to be your friend after you helped him find a book in the library as he was lost at that time- the campus library is so big. But whenever he wanted to approach you, this slight heat came to his face and his heart couldn’t stop beating so fast. Is he nervous? Storming into his dorm room with a red face and slightly heavy breath, he plopped onto his bed, staring at the ceiling to forget all the events that had happened.

—

“Shh… Be quiet, baby. Don’t want anyone to find you like this hm?”, Shoko mutters as she snuggles her face to your wet cunt, licking and sucking onto your clit making you a trembling mess. Your mouth is covered by your hand to muffle all the moans. It was supposed to be a peaceful night, not until Shoko barged into your room, getting her permission from your roommates and tormenting you the way she wanted just like her best friends.

Shoko instantly inserts a finger inside your cunt while licking aggressively on it, moving her finger faster as your liquid kept spurting from your hole. Your hips were gripped to make sure you were not moving away from her face, Shoko enjoyed eating your pussy- she says it taste sweet and she wants to keep it for herself, doesn’t want to share it with Gojo and Geto. You on the other hand trying your best to not make a single sound or else you will get caught which is your biggest concern ever. Hours ago, you were scared of getting caught by sucking Gojo’s but now it’s Shoko's turn.

“Damn! I wanna fuck you so bad but I don’t have my strap”, Shoko pouted slightly. You let out a shaky breath and your vision blurred from all the pleasured tears. You squirm as Shoko embraces you with a hug and kisses your temple. Weird? Why are they acting nice all of a sudden?

—

“Here”, Choso shyly hands you a cute handkerchief to you which you tilt with confusion. Who is he? You didn’t have any memory of him.

“Go away”, Nanami said in a cold tone as he shielded you with his big muscular arm. Just now, you, Nanami, Haibara and Ino are eating lunch together until Choso walks to you and hands you a handkerchief with a red face, Nanami interprets Choso as a typical bully who just wants to make fun of you, without any thought, Nanami stepped up to protect you. While Haibara and Ino stand in front of you, crossing their arms, making scary faces as if they were your bodyguards.

To your eyes, it seems that Choso just wanted to be your friend. You pushed Nanami’s hand away which caused the male to be in confusion, you flashed your usual smile which made all of them melt and gladly accept Choso’s gift. “Thanks even though I don’t know your name”.

Your cute voice made Choso’s heart beat even faster than before and he gulped, gathering his confidence. “My name is Choso Kamo. Call me Choso”.

“Hi Choso. My name is Y/N”, you said which caused Choso to blush. This got Nanami's attention to which he gave Choso a surprised face. In Nanami’s eyes, he had a hard time accepting Choso as one of your friends, he was afraid that he might be plotting something bad to you but brushed it off.

“Hey Y/N, have you registered for the military marching programs?”, asked Haibara as he was chomping on his chicken sandwiches. You stopped chewing your food and told him you didn’t register it yet.

“You better hurry or else you will get a penalty”, Ino added and continued eating to which Nanami nodded in agreement. Military marching is a compulsory cocurricular activity in your college for semester 1 only. You didn’t know why your college had it and the benefits of it but your problem was that you were very weak and had a low stamina. You may had a hard time doing this activity as you heard a lot of news where soldiers fainted during the marching and some of them ended up in the hospital because of their bones dislocation.

That night, you register the cocurricular online on the college’s website. A few days later, you were met with bad news (that was what they thought). You, Nanami, Haibara, Ino and Choso were in different platoon which they considered were not good because who the hell gonna took care of you from getting bullied?

“Guys, it’s fine. I can handle it by myself”, you said, trying to reassure them not to worry about you. You were not some kid who needed someone to protect you, you were a grown up. They sighed in defeat and bid you goodbye. Haibara patted your head while Nanami couldn’t stop worrying about you, giving you some advice about what to do when someone bullies you.

You went to your platoon and saw a lot of people were already there, it was scary because most of them were men but you shook your head to ignore all those worries. You got on your position standing beside a male with blond hair with dark roots and sharp eyes. You glanced at him as you found him somewhere scary, he looked like a delinquent.

The man noticed your glance and looked at you with annoyance. “What’chu lookin' at woman?!”.

His tone made you flinch and you faced forward without daring to look at him any further. He laughed at your reaction, “guess being in this platoon was not so bad”, he thought.

Suddenly, everyone stood erect which caused you to do the same. A man with a huge build and black hair walked in front. He looked so scary with his piercing green eyes along with a scar on his lip.

“The name is Toji Fushiguro. You're either gonna call me commander or sir. Got that?”, the male said. His deep voice caused a shiver down your spine. He’s creepy. But the man beside you thought otherwise, everyone was afraid of Toji but his eyes seemed to sparkle whenever Toji was around. You later found out his name is Naoya Zenin while taking the attendance.

You felt uncomfortable. During the training, Toji can’t keep his eyes away from you, sure you made a lot of mistakes by not doing it properly and were always scolded by him for not doing it right. But you didn’t expect him to glare at you every single time. It was way worse when Naoya couldn’t stop insulting you or throwing any mean words at you, he looked jealous that you got Toji’s attention but not him.

“Oi, small fry!”, Toji called after the training ended. You froze and looked at him, bowing slightly to give him some respect. “Meet me at my office now!”, he instructed which you immediately followed him. In the corner of your eyes, you could see Naoya’s face burning in rage. You gave yourself an experimental note to not talk with him.

As soon as Toji closed the door, he instructed you to sit on the chair in front of his desk. His office was not clean but not too messy, it was a perfect example for an old man’s office. All of the furniture looked old too, it felt like you were in a five night at Freddy’s office.

Toji took a seat in front of you as he let out a heavy sigh. “You are really bad at this and I chose to train you extra time. Sound good?”.

You gulped and gripped your trousers to ease your nervousness. “I’m not sure, sir. I mean it’s just the two of us… Don’t you think it’s a bit-”.

Your words got cut off as Toji flashed his devilish smirk. “I don’t care. Plus, if you don’t pass this training ya have to repeat it”. A moment of silence passed as you frowned, thinking whether to accept his offer or fail the class and have to retake it. Toji was not a man with patience and grabbed your wrist to catch your attention.

“Is it yes? Or no?”.

“Y-yes sir”, you declared after some thoughts.

“Good girl”, said Toji and grabbed both of your hips to put you onto his lap, his hot breath fanning your mouth. Both of you were so close that you tried to shove him away by pushing his chest.

“S-sir, what is this?”, your face flushed as you stuttered your own words.

“Ya think I’m gonna let you get away from being punished?”, he grinned and lay your stomach on his lap.

“Sir please-! T-this is embarrassing…”, you plead when you felt his hand slide down your trouser exposing your panty with your plump ass. Toji ignored your begging and decided to land a hit your ass leaving a red mark on it. You yelped as tears started forming in your eyes. You bit your lip as another hit came to your ass. You gave up a long time ago when he kept spanking you, your ass was full of red marks and your face became a sobbing mess.

“Sir, t-too much”, you hiccuped. Toji rubbed your ass and kissed your temple to ease the pain. “Yeah yeah sorry but that's what ya get for being a bad girl hmm”.

“Sorry sir. Promise to do better”.

Toji smiled, helping you with your trousers and walked towards the door. He kissed your temple one last time before he shoved you outside, “See ya next week”.

After he closed the door, you walked towards your room while wiping the tears on your face. You hope your friends won’t find you in this condition. You didn’t want them to feel worried and enraged. But someone saw you, he saw your crying face and felt slightly worried for you but he brushed it away because Naoya was not the type to care about people other than himself.

[ilygetou]

hii evey, i was recalling our conversation last time and i just couldn’t stop thinking about feral! rin. it’s haunting me. please. sos help.

‎╰─▸ ❝ S‎ER0T0N1N!‎ ❞

C/W: dubcon just in case, jealous! feral! rinny :(, pwp, unprotected sex, thoughts of baby trapping but rin isn’t an asshole, overstimulation, marking, lots of biting, possessiveness, hair pulling, ass slapping, no aftercare kinda of a sick twisted ending but rin turns soft >_<.

notes. AVAAA‼️‼️ NO BECAUSE ME2. that convo was wild, had me giggling n’ kickin my feet i literally screamed into my pillow. like. jealous rin? jealous rinny going feral?? sign me the fuck up😭🙏🙏😭

psa. this is kinda rushed ?? i wrote this during my two hours plane ride cause i was saurr bored and had nun 2 do☹️ so please excuse the terrible ending! + not proofread pls be aware of grammatical mistakes if there’ll be any.

Your moans were echoing throughout the huge room, with every thrust of rin’s hips, an audible moan left you. Rin was fucking you in an absurd pace, ignoring your sobs n pleads for him to slow down, to give you time to adjust to his size. All to which fell on deaf ears.

After all, if you didn’t want this you wouldn’t go and throw yourself all over his brother. Giving the other itoshi a cheeky smile, as you engaged in a small conversation with him before making him sign a shirt that had sae’s name and jersey number.

It all happened in front of rin;

You went up to his brother, sae, with a huge grin on your face, approaching the other itoshi while wearing a tight black dress that hugged every curve in your body. Rin’s eyes went up from you to your body & to the white jersey you were holding, expecting it to be his–only to notice his brother’s name and number on it. He immediately frowned, a confused mixed with an angry look covered rin’s face–which didn’t fit him, your boyfriend always had a boring, plain expression on his face—occasionally giving you small smiles and not-so-noticable pouty faces every time you two were alone.

So, seeing you holding his brother’s jersey as you approached him, turned on something within him. Rin continued watching from a distance, waiting for your next move as you continued speaking to his brother.

Rin watched as you moved closer to sae, your shoulders particularly touching. Sae gave you a confused look before going back to the same dull expression except his green eyes were now studying your face features, green eyes bore into yours as he kept checking you out. Sae looked you up and down, he smirked as he bent down a little, he was now face to face with you.

Rin’s eyes fill up with anger, his eyes twitching as he awaits for yours or his brother’s next move.

Sae suddenly brought out his hand and placed them on your chin–making you look up to him as you two held eye contact, a huge grin covered sae’s face before muttering something that only you two could hear.

Rin couldn’t take it, veins popping up on the side of his head, both of his fists were clenched to his sides as he let out a low scoff. This was unusual for rin. It was usual inside the field–getting angry at his opponents and teammates but for him to get this angry outside the field? He could say it was slightly unusual of him.

After what sae said to you, a noticeable blush spread across your face before you shyly nodded your head & handed sae the jersey you were holding. Sae let out a snicker before signing the jersey and rin could swear this was it for him. Millions of questions ran through your boyfriend’s head; were you secretly a fan of his older brother? Even after rin has told you about his and sae’s rocky relationship?

Sae handed you back the jersey, he gave you a wink before he walked away from you. And you just stood there, dumbfounded.

Shortly after sae left, rin quickly appeared in front of you. He had an unpleasant look on his face, “oh rin!” but rin ignored you, letting out a scoff as he walked past you. You were confused by rin’s cold and obnoxious behavior, you were about to go follow him only for rin to already be out of your sight.

The ride back home was silent, you kept trying to make up small conversations with rin; asking him ‘how did practice go with his older brother’–only for rin to click his tongue, pressing harder on the accelerator for the car to go faster.

And this was how you were brought on to this situation;

Rin dragged you to your shared bedroom, pressing you against the wall as he pressed his lips against yours, pulling you into a sloppy kiss–not giving you time to breath, rin continually kept giving you rough sloppy kisses.

He pushed you down onto the mattress, pushing your head down with his hand while his other hand traveled down to your ass, he grabbed on the plush of your ass before slowly moving them to meet your clothed pussy.

Rin immediately pushed down his fingers on your clit, massaging it from above your panties. You were letting out gasps, trying to look back at rin only for him to push down your head even harder.

You figured that rin’s cold attitude towards you was because he was sexually frustrated or maybe tired from practice and that he needed something to release his stress too, so you didn’t try fighting back or make him stop.

Rin quickly ripped off your panties, his slender fingers running through your wet folds–he pressed his fingers down against your slit before he slowly pushed two long fingers inside you.

Your slick was dripping out onto his fingers, staining the mattress beneath you. Rin immediately pulled out his fingers, not intending to make you cum around his digits.

You let out a whine, trying once again to move your head and look back at rin–only for you to fall right back as a slap landed on your right cheek, making you wince in pain. Rin didn’t waste a single second before landing another harsh slap against your other cheek–tears pricked on the corner of your eyes, your cheeks were flushed as small cries left you.

You were confused by your boyfriend’s rough attitude & movements. Rin was always so soft and gentle with you in bed, taking his sweet time preparing you before making you take his cock–giving you kind, tender kisses the whole time he was inside you. He was never the rough type, so this sudden change was all too disconcerting for you.

Rin’s whole focus was on ruining you, label you you & mark you. So the next time the other itoshi sees you knows who you belong to.

Rin’s cock was painfully hard, he started rubbing & grinding against your sopping cunt–holding the tip and circling it around your clit, he kept pressing his girth against your clit until it became all swollen n’ puffy — “r-rin, wa–!” and you were caught off by a sudden tug on your hair, rin pulled your hair to get your face closer to his, he then placed his hand on your chin and pulled you into another sloppy kiss to shut you up.

His grip on your hair was firm, no sign of him letting go any time soon. He pulled back your hair, moving your face away from his, and for the first time–you managed to take a quick glance at your boyfriend’s face. His eyes darkened, the inconspicuous sparkle in his eyes that he always had every time he was with you or fucking you was no longer there. His eyes grew dim as his lips curved downwards.

His grip on your hair loosened up & you falled straight back to the mattress–this time rin flipped you, and you were now laying on your back as you were now facing him. Rin was gliding his cock down your slit, rubbing it against your hole until half of his tip slipped in. A few mewls left you, tears falling and staining your cheek.

Rin gripped your thighs and pushed them back to the point where they’re almost touching your breasts, a broken whimper escaped you as Rin put almost all of his body weight on you. He quickly shoved his cock fully inside you, his balls pressed against your ass. Rin wrapped his hands around your neck–squeezing until you could barely breathe.

Rin’s hands didn’t budge, squeezing your neck harder until your face turned pale. That’s when his grip slowly loosened up, you were coughing and gasping for air–tears continuously kept falling & staining your cheeks with every blink you made. Despite all this, rin didn’t utter a single word.

Rin was always quiet during sex, even when he’s like this, he was still quiet–the only audible thing were his groans and grunts.

Rin started moving his hips, in a quick, animalistic pace. His hips kept slamming against yours, your velvet walls wrapped around his warm length causing his cock to throb n’ twitch inside you. Rin held your knees, pressing them harder against your chest as he kept ramming into you, his cock pulsing with every squeeze of your walls.

His cock was deep inside you, a guttural sound left rin before he attacked your neck, his tongue dragged down your neck–leaving a trail of his hot salvia along your neck. Rin gave your neck a slight bite before he started to suck on the delicate skin of your neck.

He was moving his hips in a rapid speed, his tip kissing your cervix with every jolt he made. His mouth still connected to your skin, biting and sucking until the spot he was sucking on turned into a dark shade of purple.

Rin kept sucking and kissing on your skin, his dick still stuffed deep into the warmth of your cunt, your whimpers turned muffled, biting on your fingers to stop your moans and whimpers from slipping out. Once rin was finished from bruising you, both your neck and collarbones were completely covered with purple marks that looked painful.

Rin still had your knees pressed against your chest as his creamy tip breaches your soaked walls and brushes against your cervix and the way his weighty balls slap against your puffy clit made your brain go fuzzy, his pace remained rough and fast. You could still feel the pain sting you caused by rin abusing your neck which made you let out choked sobs n’ whines.

Tears started mounting your waterline and lower lashes as rin grabbed your face–pressing both of your cheeks together, his hips still slamming against yours, “s-shit, what should i do with you?” rin mutters that it almost seemed like he was asking himself instead of you. Every time the scene of you and his brothers replays in his head his grip he has on your face stiffens and he would pause for a moment before resuming his actions.

Rin thought of many ways to make his brother stay as far away as he can from you, he doesn’t even want his brother to take a quick glance at you. His eyes went extremely dim, darkening completely. Maybe, maybe he should bless you with a child of his, one that looks exactly like rin. So, the next time his brother sees you two together, you’d have a swollen tummy, one that bears rin childs in. And the next time he sees you two, you’d be three, and you would be holding a kid rin lookalike, imagining his brother's shocked and pissed off expression would satisfy rin.

Rin knows that what he’s thinking is wrong, you two talked about it before. You didn’t want a child now, it’s too early, you said. And Rin himself knows that having a child would have an impact on his football career but does he really care? Seeing the other itoshi’s reaction to you bearing rin’s child would quickly make him forget about all the side effects your pregnancy would have on his and your life.

And rin wasn’t in the right state of mind to be thinking this hard, he was balls deep into your cunt, your gummy walls kept fluttering around his cock getting him closer to his orgasm but the thought of not pulling out, cumming deep inside your womb that he’d be sure you’d end up pregnant kept luring in his mind and he was so close to submitting to it. He could just make it up to you with apologies and kisses. Besides, it’s not like you were fully against the idea of having kids with him so what’s with the problem if he did it now?

Your moans and whimpers snapped him out of his thoughts, looking down on you to find a trail of tears staining your cheeks as you kept mumbling about being close, and so was rin, he was already at his limit and it was obvious by the way his cock kept pulsating and throbbing inside you but he held it in, not wanting to let go and cum inside because he still hasn’t decided on what shall he do with you yet.

“rin,,please..rin ‘m close, don’t think i can–ahh– keep going anymore…” you threw your head back, feeling the growing pit in your stomach grow even more before it snapped–your legs started shaking, your jaw hung ajar as nothing but loud moans left you. Milking rin’s cock completely as you gripped the sheets beneath you. You weren’t given much time to recover from your shocking orgasm before your boyfriend was already back at it again, slamming his hips mercilessly, your body went limp as you tried to stop rin from moving.

“rin e-enough, i can’t handle anymore..r-rinn–!” rin grabbed your legs and placed them on his shoulder, allowing him to go even deeper, “nono..rin stop!” As if rin wasn’t present here in the room with you, your words kept falling into deaf ears, his thrusts grew sloppier, he wasn’t giving you any type of attention–his attention grew on your sopping cunt that was pulling him even deeper and kept gripping around his girth. Pulling his whole attention on ruining and staining your pussy, fuck, maybe even mold the shape of your little cunt into the shape of his cock.

His hair covered his eyes, blocking the view in front of him but rin didn’t care as long as he can feel the warmth of your cunt then that’s all he needs to keep going with his obscene acts. You clamped down on him with slippery walls, keeping rin deep in your pussy right where it feels good and he swears he made up his mind right then and there to cum deep in your pussy, after all, you were the one tightening and keeping him stuffed inside your cunt.

Rin held both sides of your waist, his cock shudders and his lips tremble and when he was about to release his seeds inside, you suddenly tugged on his hair and as if you were reading his thoughts you suddenly went; “not inside, p-please” and rin watched as everything he worked hard to do; tame you, bruise you, and work up the courage to baby trap you just all go down a drain. Because he can’t explain the unimaginable guilt he was feeling just from your words alone and the way your small hands managed to tug on his hair to get his attention and the way you looked up at rin with teary pleading eyes, made him break.

Rin slowly pulled out, in time before his release. He wrapped his hands around the base of his cock as he started covering your chubby pussy lips with the fat globes of his cum, getting it everywhere on your pussy. Rin fell on top of you as you whined about the sticky feeling between your legs.

“move rin! i need to talk to you” and rin was surprised that you still had the energy to talk because despite him always having so much energy and stamina as a football player, he couldn’t utter a single word, his body had already given up on him.

Rin moved from on top of you and was now laying down next to you, facing you as a frown and a pout covered your face. And he knew what you were about to ask, ‘what was this all about’ so rin beat you to it. “Can we please talk later? i’m tired” without giving you any time to give him a response rin pulled you closer to him before wrapping a blanket around both of your bodies as rin snuggled into your neck, his fingers tracing the bruises and marks that he left on both your neck and collarbones.

Maybe next time, rin should fuck you from behind, that way you won’t be able to stop him from committing the sinful acts of babytrapping you.

[tyangdoll]

i can imagine going on a school trip with enemy hanbin and you two are forced to share a bed 😣 then in the middle of the night, you wake up to him cuddling you and teasing your sweet spot

what a coincidence i’m going on a trip in 2 days hehe !! tw for dubcon

hanbin’s hand slides along your thigh, fingers brushing against the fabric of your shorts. “i know we hate each other,” he whispers as he teases your clit through your clothes, “but god, you feel so good.” his other arm wraps around your waist, pulling you closer to him. his nose fills with the scent of your shampoo, feeling your heart beat rapidly against his. “h-han-hanbin,” you whine sleepily, tensing under his touch. it sends a thrill through him, encouraging him to continue as he leans close, lips against the shell of your ear as he whispers, “shh… you’re okay. i’m here, just let go.” his fingers slip beneath the elastic of your panties, finding your cunt already slick with wetness.

“hanbin, please, nee-,” you’re unable to even finish your sentence before he slides a finger inside. “so wet, pretty girl, is this for me?” he asks, pumping his finger slowly in and out of you while his thumb continues to rub your sensitive clit. you nod hesitantly, embarrassed about how wet for the guy you’d claimed to hate for so long. he smiles to himself, pleased with your response, his touch remaining gentle yet insistent. “that’s it, just trust me,” he coos, leaving a trail of kisses along your jawline as he increases the pace of his strokes inside you, thumb pressing harder against your clit. “gonna make you feel really good, i bet you look so pretty when you cum…”

[seranextdoor]

DO I WANNA KNOW ? ~ LEON S. KENNEDY.

Summary: Leon just had to take the chance.

Word count: 3.814k / Warnings: stepcest, dddne, mild dubcon at first.

Contents 18+: unprotected sex, missionary, he eats your pussy thru the damn panties, he got a big dick (canon), praising, clit-slap (?), creampie, risky sex.

Pairing: Stepbrother! Leon S. Kennedy X Fem! Reader.

Author note: writing got a little rusty.... but!!! i had fun writing this （＾ν＾）stepbro leon is 2 die 4. kudos to the anon who sent the idea of stepbro leon into my inbox. ilyyyyy 🩷

🖥️ MAIN MENU

🎬 MDNI. DARK CONTENT.

DO NOT COPY, TRANSLATE OR MODIFY ANY OF MY WORKS. ©️ KENNEDYBABY

have you no idea that you’re in deep? i dreamt about you nearly every night this week. how many secrets can you keep?

You drive him insane. Literally. And it’s not even your fault, you were nothing but a sweetheart and Leon was nothing but a complete, degenerate mess when it comes to you.

You were the forbidden fruit that Leon desperately wanted to devour.

There’s a time when he’s left alone in his room after a long, exhausted day at work and all he could think about was you. It doesn’t help how he always had to come home late due to his late-night patrols around the city and all he can hear within the thin walls was your muffled moans and the sound of your fingers squelching and pushing into your cunt. You didn’t know about two things; One, Leon coming back home late because he always makes sure not to make too much noise when he’s downstairs. Two, Leon pressing his ear against the wall with his cock in his fist, furiously stroking up and down to the sound of your mewls. By the time you were done, all he can hear is the water running and splashing in the marbled sink of your bathroom as you washed your hands clean while he was reaching for tissues to wipe his semen off his sheets and abs.

It sort of become a daily routine for Leon. It’s wrong, he knows, you’re his stepsister and the thoughts he had for you in mind were nowhere near appropriate for someone who he should consider as his little sister. But he can’t just suppress the thoughts and feelings he had, the more he pushed aside, the more it grows and torments him, basically eating him alive. The fact that he lives under the same roof as you alone makes things harder for him, but he wasn’t complaining. Not one bit.

Leon gets to see you, a lot. He’d see you laying on your stomach with your shirt slightly ridden up on your back and your shorts hugging the curve of your ass, baby pink panties peeking thru its hem without you noticing it. And sometimes, his eyes would linger on you longer than he anticipated, his teeth biting the inside of his cheeks as his feet nervously tapped on the wooden flooring. You’d bend down in front of him to pick up the spoon on the floor and his breath would hitch seeing the outline of your pussy strained against your shorts. You were none the wiser, oblivious to the way his eyes flittered on your body and your lips but never directly on your eyes.

Because if Leon did look you in the eyes, he would feel guilty for thinking about bending you over the kitchen counter and fuck you stupid when you genuinely wanted to know how his day went at work.

“Leon?” You softly call out his voice, knuckles knocking on the door of his bedroom before Leon rushed to answer you. The sweat on his forehead was quickly wiped with the back of his hand, and his breathing ragged as he adjusted himself. “Yeah?” His voice was strained, exhausted from his work. “Can I come in?” Your fingers toyed with the steel doorknob, leaning your forehead lightly against his door. You heard the small ‘yeah’ before he opened it to you. Lips curling into a small smile, you looked up at him before you stepped inside his room. “Were you sleeping? I didn’t mean to bother.” You said to him, sitting on the edge of his bed before you crossed your legs. “No, no, I was just... Resting.” He replied, his eyes following your every move. Pushing the strands off your face, you tilt your head to the picture of you and him on his bedside.

“Aw, you still kept this?” You hold up the photo frame at him, your thumb glided on the glass surface gently as you gaze at it. “Why wouldn’t I?” He shrugged before he takes a sit next to you on his bed, purposely grazing his fingers against your thighs as he bite back the urge to let out a content sigh.

“I was so cute back then,” Your lips slightly puckered out, pouting at the sight of your younger version in the picture. A warm spread throughout your chest, it’s nice to know Leon keeps this photo of you and him— it makes you feel special. “You’re still so cute now.” His compliment brings heat to your cheeks, your elbow finding their way to playfully nudge his ribs before a soft chuckle left past your lips when he nudged you back. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.” You rolled your eyes, placing back the picture frame on the table before you leaned back and lay on his bed with a small thud.

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not.” He grinned at you, laying back next to you before he take a deep breath. He’d glanced at you, once, just one look on your face before he quickly avert his eyes away from you and glued them back on the ceiling. Leon knows he would end up staring at you, it’s a bad habit. He can’t help it, just the way your eyes drowsily looked up to the ceiling, your lips slightly parted as your fingers cling to his pillow. He wondered if your fingers would cling to the meat of his thighs if he was fucking your throat, filling every corner of your mouth with his cock until hot tears streamed down your wet cheeks— “They didn’t even tell me they were out of town.” The sound of your voice cutting thru the silence pause his thoughts before Leon tilts his head at you. “Why? You wanna go out or something? They’re just out attending my— our dad’s work party somewhere out of town in a hotel.” He stated.

‘Yeah, right, our dad. As if I wasn’t just thinking about fucking my stepsister.’ Leon thought to himself. God, he’s a sick, sick man.

“I know, I’m just really bored. That’s why I came here.” You said to him, completely oblivious to the fact that his eyes practically gleamed at your w. Leon sits up on his bed, his fingers pushing back the strands of hair on his face before he turned to look at you, a small smirk dawns on his lips. “So you come to me to have fun?” A small giggle left past your lips, the faint blush on your cheeks doesn’t go unnoticed. “Please, you make that sounds weird.” You shake your head, only to quickly shut down the fit of giggles you had when you feel his fingers brush against your thighs. Heat courses to your cheeks before a low hum emitted out of you, “Weird? I don’t know what you’re implying.” Leon does, he does. Fuck, this was probably the most he could do to you, just stroking your thighs as his fingers grow higher and higher as the warmth of your cunt radiates against his skin. He swallowed thickly, his fingers lightly squeezing the fat of your thighs before he leaned down to you. “Maybe you’re the weird one.”

Your eyes slightly widened, fingers quickly latching on his wrist before you stopped him from going further. “Leon,” You made a pathetic attempt to sound stern when you called his name when in reality, your voice sounded more like a whine as if you wanted him to keep going. “We can’t.” You didn’t say no, you would be lying to yourself if you didn’t want this too. You lose count of how many nights you spent, staying up watching taboo porn under your blanket with your fingers desperately stuffing your cunt and trying to relieve the ache between your legs while having Leon at the back of your head. You lose count of how many times you muffled out his name into your pillow every time you climaxes around your fingers during the darkest hour. And now that, Leon’s hand is practically inches away from grazing against your pussy, all you could do is looked away from his piercing gaze as you clench your thighs around his wrist. “It’s wrong.”

But it doesn’t mean neither he nor you wanted it less. Leon probably wanted it the most, his mind practically going haywire from how close your body is pressed to his.

“I can stop if you want, just say the word.” His voice was soft and you can’t help but look back into his eyes, before you lay there, contemplating if you should just go for it. Either you do it now, where no one’s home or never do it with him and to be honest, you would pick the first option in a heartbeat. “Keep going,” As soon as you let those words out, Leon leaned in to kiss you, his tongue pushing past your lips as explored every inch of your mouth. His hand resting on your cheek while the other is rubbing your clit thru your shorts with his index and middle fingers until there’s a damp spot forming on the fabric. Pulling away from the kiss with a string of saliva connected on the tip of each other tongues. “You’re so wet already,” He grinned, his face diving between the crook of your neck before he gently nibs your skin and sucked the fresh hickey he gives you on your neck.

“You love getting your pussy played by big brother?” When did that innocent nickname you used to call him make you so flustered? The way it smoothly rolled off to the tip of his tongue and the way his voice slightly dropped an octave made it sound lewd. You hated how much it turns you on, your cunt dripping with your arousal just from his little teasing. “Leon, stop embarrassing me.” You huffed in slight annoyance at his teasing before you hide your heated face with his pillow which Leon was not too happy with. He quickly takes the pillow off your grasp and throws it behind him, “No hiding, princess. D’you know how long I waited to do this?” Leon whispered to you, his lips kissing your jawline. “Too damn long.” He grumbled, pulling away from you before he kneels on the floor. His hands easily dragged you to the edge of his bed before he parted your thighs. “All I can think about is fucking you stupid, do you know how much that tortures me knowing I can’t?” He groans, his fingers were quick to slip the shorts off your legs and let them fall to the carpeted floor.

Leon couldn’t be bothered to take off your panties, instantly latching his lips on your clit thru your panties as he vigorously sucks on it with sheer fervour. The suddenness illicit a sharp gasp past your lips, your elbows and heels digging into his mattress as you watched his mouth clung to the bundle of nerves like no tomorrow with your thighs clamping around his head. “Shit, Leon...” You curse under your breath, head thrown back as he slurped every drop of you thru the thin undergarment. A soft moan croaks out of you as Leon finally pushed aside your panties, his tongue flattened before he dragged a long line on your pussy. “Taste so fucking good,” He can feel his cock straining in his pants, causing some discomfort but that was the last thing he care about, not when he was nose-deep into his stepsister’s sweet cunt. He could care less about anything when his mind is fixated on the way you rolled your hips and rides his tongue, smothering him before he pulled away for air.

“You’re so needy, baby.” Leon littered kisses on your inner thighs, the tip of his tongue flicking your clit causing your hips to jerk forward. His forearms push your hips down to the bed before he lightly slapped your clit and chuckles when you wince from the slight pain. “Don’t do that.” You whine, biting your lower lip back as you let yourself relish back into the pleasure when he kisses your clit, giving it a little suck and pulling away with a small pop. “I know, baby. Just wants you to stay still.” He said to you softly, his eyes shifting up to lock eyes with you. He loves the way your eyes tear up, your cheeks growing hot as your fingers cling to the bedsheets. He loves prodding his tongue into your warm hole while his thumb rubs your sensitive clit until you throw your head back into the pillow with your back arching into his tongue. “I’ll stay still,” It’s surprising how you can still talk properly despite being so high from the pleasure he’s giving you. A dribble of spit already starts dripping at the corner of your mouth, your eyes rolled to the back of your head each time Leon flattened his tongue and dragged it slowly on your dripping cunt until your body shuddered in pleasure.

Your fingers interlocked with his brown hair, tugging and pulling him closer as you slowly reached your climaxes. He didn’t mind, he like the feeling of your nails slightly digging into his scalp while you desperately chases your high. God, Leon probably won’t even mind if his head is bleeding from how hard you're tugging onto him if it meant having the chance to get a taste of your pussy and your soft thighs wrapped around his head. A strained scream sputtered out of your throat when you finally come undone in his mouth, your hips stuttering into his lips as Leon licks every drop of your juices and drank it down with a content grin. His hand reached down to his pants as he palmed his throbbing cock thru his pants, his fingers rubbing up and down on the outline of his shaft before he stands up from his knees. Leon pulled down his shorts until they slipped off his legs leaving him in his black boxer. The bed shifted as his knees digs into the cushion of his mattress.

“Want your cock,” Your words were slurred but you manage to whisper the words into his ears when he gets on top of you. You bring your fingers crawled up and cupped his face before you pulled him into a sloppy kiss, letting his teeth clashes against yours without a care in the world as his hands grip your waist. “Yeah? Beg for it.” He pulled away from the kiss, his blue eyes back into yours as you tucked your bottom lip under your teeth. It’s clear he won’t give you what you wanted until you actually say it to his face. A heavy sigh left your swollen lips, “Please, I need you inside of me. Fuck..." You paused, nuzzling your face to hide your warm cheeks into his neck before you continues, “Fuck your stepsister.” Leon grinned at your words, his lips leaving a small kiss on your collarbone before he pulled away to push down his boxer. “You got it, baby.”

Your eyes watered up as you mumbled a low curse when you feel the tip of his cock pushed into your cunt. It brings immediate weight to your chest as your breathing grows ragged, a part of you still refuses to believe this was happening— you’re fucking your stepbrother, allowing his fingers to gently pinch your hardened nipples while he buries his cock inch by inch. Your fingers quickly pressed against his chest, stopping him immediately as Leon shoot you a concerned look, his hand coming up to rest on your cheek.

“You okay?” He whispered to you when you let out a small wince, eyebrows knitted together before you looked down to where the two of you were connected. “It won’t fit, Leon.” You croak out a small cry, he’s stretching you apart and he’s not even all the way in. “It will, princess, just... I’ll take it slow, okay? It’s going to be okay.” Leon smiled after you weakly nodded your head to his assurance, your arms trails up to wrap around his neck before he slowly pushed himself inside of you. A low moan guttered out of his throat once he finally sheathed himself fully inside of your tight, sopping cunt. Cold sweats run down his forehead and body as he takes in every little noise you made underneath him.

He stayed in your arms for a few seconds before he retracts to prop up the back of your knee with his hand. Leon stared down at the way his cock formed a small bump on your pelvis before he moved his hips slowly, the pad of his thumb rubs your skin in a circular motion. “You’re taking me so well, baby,” Leon said to you in a hushed tone, his head slightly thrown back before he gulped down to the feeling of your inner walls pulsating around his cock. Leon averted his eyes from the ceiling back to your body, staring at the way your shirt pushed up over your chest, your fingers keeping your panties aside as he pushes himself in and out of your cunt at a slow, consistent pace. “Fuck, you feel so good.” He moaned eyes shutter tight before he exhaled a sharp breath. “God, you’re clinging to me,” Leon let out a soft chuckle, his lips finding their way to peck on your swollen ones. “Can’t help it... You’re too big. S’all your fault.” You mumbled, eyes dazedly looking up to him as drops of his sweat drips down to your body.

“I know, baby. It’s all my fault.” He cooed to you, his lips coming in contact with your forehead as he leaves a kiss. You didn’t even realise he had picked up his pace, his hips rocking back and forth faster than before as his balls slaps on your ass, filling the room with nothing but the sound of skin slapping and your wanton moans. “You’re taking it so well though, you love getting fucked by your big brother?” You hummed to his question, “Mhm, love gettin’ fucked by you.” You breathed out. Leon can feel his cock throb inside of you, the grip at the back of your knee tightening as his knuckles gradually whitened. The bedframe rocked back and forth, scratching the blue paint off his wall into straight, white lines as it squeaks under the weight of the two of you. You tried so hard not to glance at the picture of Leon and you on his bedside, almost staring back at the both of you with nothing but utter shame.

The two of you had crossed the line you knew you can’t back out from. Not that Leon cared, every logic in his head was thrown out of the window the second you told him to keep going.

Your eyes rolled to the back of your head, the way you digs your nails into his shoulders made his breath stagger. The friction between both yours and his body sends your mind into a frenzy that you almost, almost, made you miss the sound of the front door being unlocked and the sound of your parents happily chatting downstairs. “Fuck,” That was all Leon had to say to put a small pause on what he was doing, his forehead leaned against your shoulder as he bit his bottom lips back. He stayed silent for a few seconds before he rocks his hips back, taking you by surprise, “Leon, we should—" You parted your lips to speak only for his hand to go over your mouth, “Just be quiet. Be a good girl for me, yeah?" He says. You nodded, letting his hand press against your lips, your eyes shooting wide when his thrusts became more and more fervent as you wrapped your legs around his waist tightly.

Leaning your head back into his pillow, he took the advantage to leave marks all over your neck, nipping your soft skin until it turns into a slightly darker shade from your skin. Leon moves up to your face, giving you a small peck on the lips thru his hand before he let out a low chuckle. Removing his hand from the back of your knees to hold onto your waist while his other hand is over your lips, you can feel he’s getting faster and faster. Leon can feel it, he was getting so close and he can feel you were too with the way your inner walls tightened up around him, sucking him in deeper and deeper as the squelching sounds fills the room. “Can I cum in you, princess? Please, can I?” He begs, keeping his tone hushed as he whispered into your ear, sending the back of your hair stand up.

You frantically nodded, muffling out a small high-pitched ‘yeah’ to him before you glanced at the way his cock pushing in and out of you, glistening with your arousals under his bed lamp as Leon pushed his hips towards you, burying his cock deeper into a rougher pace. A choked scream left your lips when the orgasm comes washing over your body as you shut your eyes close, the grip around his shoulders tightening before your body falls limp under him. A sharp breath left his lips when he feels you finish around him before he quickly did the same, shooting his cum deep inside of you before he removed the hand over your mouth and pressed it against his bed to support himself. His muscles flexed as you watched his cock throb inside of you, spilling his warm seeds into your sensitive cunt before he pulls out from you with a groan. When he finally rides off his high, Leon looked down at the way your panties were scrunched up to the side as they pressed against your inner thigh— he was so eager to fuck you he didn’t even bother to take off your panties. Not that he’s complaining, it keeping his cum from spilling out of you.

“Fuck, baby..." Leon breathed out, a strained laugh falls past his lips before he leaned in to kiss you on the lips and pulled away afterwards. He stared back into your half-lidded stare, your chest heaved as you catches up with your breath. Your lips curled into a small smile when Leon brush the strand of hair off your face, “You should probably go back to your room, princess." He suggested, helping you sit up on his bed. His fingers played with the strap of your panties before he looked back at you, the corner of his lips curled into a playful smirk.

“Keep this on. I want you to go to bed with my cum inside of you. ”

[maddyguru]

tw: incest, dark content, dubcon? noncon? (you guys decide) nagumo's little sis is a journalist and knows nothing about his assassin life, yandere! nagumo, nagumo is secretly in love with his sis, kissing, little bit of knife play, all characters are 18+, MINORS AND ANTIS DON'T INTERACT

follow @maddygurus if anything happens!

nagumo who has a baby sis way younger than him, just graduated from college that he pays for. The little girl is all grown up with a real adult job, getting out of her shell.

He's proud of his imouto, really. But his heart aches everytime he thinks that someday you will fly away from niisan. And your job... he doesn't like it; the idea of you snooping for scoops that can get your life in danger, and even the possibility of knowing his true identity... Nagumo dislike that.

His parents barely care about them, and eversince they were younger, he has been taking care of his baby girl since you were younger, and he never complained- instead, he loves his job in being your caretaker.

But because he loved taking care of you so much, that's why he hates it when you decided to chase your passion in being an investigative journalist. But in the end after you pleaded so good to him with your beautiful eyes, one he also possessed, he doubled over and let you chase your passion. After you graduated, it became a different story, though.

"Are you sure, baby girl?" "do you really have to be a journalist, baby?" "why?" "you know you don't need to get that far, baby. I got all my money and it's enough to get you everything you want."

He tried persuading you, but you just wouldn't listen.

Fine, he lets you become what you want. And after awhile, you got accepted into a famous press. He knows he got to keep his profile down abit. And afew months later, he got a job to assassinate the president himself, and you got in the way of his job.

You live with him. And he listens to everything you told him- how tiring it is to keep an eye out, and how you're hunting down the possible killer of the president, and that you think you're getting close to your clue.

"I will be the one to tell the story, niisan." you say with so much confidence.

He smiled sweetly, and reminded you of the danger of getting involved. "Baby, sometimes, it is best if you don't get involved with these things."

You pouted, "niisan, you should be more supportive of me-" He jumped out of the couch that you were lying on with him.

"The less you know, the better, baby."

Which leads to the situation right now, where you're tied down in front of him, with your expression so confused, and looking at him for answers. You struggled a bit, calling out for him. But he just... eerily smiled at you, his baby sis.

You're not supposed to be near his working ground, but here you are; it's your fault, and not his. He couldn't help you with this situation, and it's your own stupidity that brought you here. Now you get to see the real him. The big, bad. Nagumo Yoichi. Not oniichan.

"Nii-"

"ah, ah, ah, baby girl. It's nagumo for you." His tattooed finger landed on your lips, and he was so damn close. His lips moved closer to your lips, and suddenly niisan is kissing you passionately, with his other hand reaching out to your tied ones above your head and intertwining your hands alongside his together, caressing your palm with so much gentleness.

"niisan..!" he knows you must be shocked that your own brother has kissed you. "Baby, you should just quit, but now here you are,"

"what...????"

"foolish younger sister," he bites back, and brought his small knife to your flawless skin, making your breath hitched, and he pressed down a bit until you drew a bit of blood.

He brought his lips closer to your ears, and whispered, "I am the killer my baby."

"You're surprised, aren't you. Well, baby, I have been an assassin since forever. Since you were in college, I was already working. How do you think I can make so much money on my own? do you really think working as a "lawyer" a believable answer?"

He laughed at you, remembering how he showed a fake lawyer licences. He made it so believable too, for you. What can he say? his job is always clean.

"niisan, you...?"

"this assassin money feed you, baby girl. Paid your college fees and spoils you rotten. My love for you shows no bounds." He paused, kissing you once more.

"And now, I wanna stuff your mouth full of my cock, take this pussy that I've been caring for since forever, and have you under my skin until we both die."

[marimology]

summary : a little situation where noah was mean to mirage makes him regret it later on

pairing: sub!noah diaz x dom!transmasc reader x switch!mirage

warnings : nsfw minors dni, overstimulation, toys,just nsfw shit, dubcon(?) WOMEN DNI

nsfw under the cut

“bebé please m sorry” noah had hiccupped with a toy attached to his dick being on full power while being in the backseat of mirage. he’s been in this position for a

while now. this was due to mirage whining to you how much if a jerk the boy had been to him, and you just so happened to walk in on him using one of his favorite toys. a white vibrator that you don’t know where he got it from

“no puedo no puedo” he begged as he was about to cum for the upteenth time.legs shaking and mirage making the air flow towards his exposed area making him moan and jerk his hips more as the cold air had hit

“awe aren’t you adorable” y/n whispered to noah as he was tracing his lips up noah’s neck and kissing it and making sure to leave hickeys in places that would be easy enough for him to hide. “if you wanna stop you gotta apologize to mirage love”

“mmhm s-“ he started but was caught off with a moan as y/n started to insert a finger into his ass and slowly move.

“yeah, you can do it Chiquito, apologize to me” mirage had said teasingly as his holoform had appeared in front of noah , gently cupping his face and making him look at him.

“ah~ mm sorry mirri,won’t be mean to you again” noah had attempted to apologized as he felt y/n starting to hit his prostate . making him start to leak out onto the mech (man?) in front of him.

“yeah yeah i know you won’t” mirage shook he’s head and gave noah a peck on the lips and made eye contact with you. “look at you so close. can you give us one more?” mirage ask him forming a one with his finger. Noah was too fucked out but was able to somehow understand what was being asked.

“yea baby just one more then we can go back home” y/n whispered into his ear as he took off the vibrator and mirages holoform started to jerk him off.

“m boutta cum m boutta cum” noah had whimpered hips bucking more wildly but y/n holding him down with his hands had made him stop. “yeah? let it all out” y/n had said playing with noah’s hair, as noah had came

with a loud moan causing him to pant tiredly after his release

“you did so good, get some rest “ y/n had kissed his temple and placed a blanket over him, letting him rest in the back seat before hopping into the front as mirage started the drive back to the apartment.

“come on babes let me please you” mirage said as he used his holoform to place a kiss on y/n’s forehead.

“let’s get him home first then maybe” y/n said referring to the fucked out boy that was in the back seat.

“gotcha boss man”