OKAY uh.. It's here !! And I love this fanfic sm defos one of my favs. (It's been brewing since I saw Sinners, which was about a month ago!) about 8.7 K vampires and immortal love, ex-lovers reuniting after a century apart, heavy emotional yearning, consensual bloodsharing during intimacy, explicit sexual content (18+), detailed foreplay and biting during orgasm, emotionally intense smut, angst with a happy ending, references to past grief and abandonment, sacred bed-sharing, shirt stealing, symbolic ring scenes, lotion/aftercare moments, possessive tenderness, one (1) haunted oil painting, poetic and descriptive prose, mutual obsession, soft horror vibes, and an overall atmosphere of reverent reconnection between soulbonded lovers. This fic features Magnolia Parks x vampire!Austin Butler in a deeply romantic, slightly unhinged, absolutely feral universe.
MINORS DNI ( seriously, we're doing grown folk shit here, get the fuck on)
a few Sinners easter eggs here
It’s been over a century since Magnolia Parks last saw him—the vampire who once split his palm open under a Paris moon and promised her forever. She told him to leave, but she never meant it. He left anyway.
Now, forced to share a space for the first time in a hundred years—surrounded by paintings she made of him, and memories she tried to bury—they collide in the only way they know how: with teeth, with longing, and with love that never died. tagging my wifeys who hyped me up to write it @jackiekae @unicoo
@movingmusically
It had been centuries since Magnolia Parks had seen him—the very same man who once held her like a thousand stars: delicate, radiant, but fleeting. The same man who had sunk his fangs into her throat and promised her an eternal kind of love. They’d been together for what felt like eons, though it was merely centuries. Granted, their last argument had been... explosive. They had both said things they didn’t mean, words sharpened by grief and frustration—not at each other, never at each other, but at who they were becoming. At their future. At what life looked like when it stretched on forever, together.
When she told him to leave, she hadn’t meant it—not in the way he took it. But she supposed he’d always been waiting for a reason, hadn’t he? Searching for an excuse that would make it her fault instead of his. A way to walk away without the guilt staining his hands. Let it fall from her lips instead. Coward. That’s what he was. For all his eternal promises, for all the centuries they’d spent entangled, he still couldn’t stomach the weight of staying.
Magnolia loathed him. She hated him for not looking for her, for not tearing the world apart to find her again. She hated that he let her find love in the arms of others—brief, burning things that flickered and died like candles in a storm. She hated him for letting her map an eternity without him, for leaving her to chart the years alone. For making her believe he had stopped loving her when, deep down, she feared he never truly had.
But if he had truly stopped loving her… Then why did her heart burn the moment she saw him again?
A century had passed, yet it all collapsed in on itself—time folding like delicate parchment—as her gaze found him across the room. The air thickened, distorted, as though the atmosphere itself remembered. Her heartbeat, usually so slow it barely registered beneath her skin, jolted into motion, stumbling over itself in recognition. It wasn’t pain, not quite. Not yet. It was something older. Wilder.
Her gut twisted, and the O-negative she’d lazily sipped earlier surged up her throat, metallic and sickly-sweet, threatening to betray her stillness. A storm churned in her chest, feral and familiar. Her nostrils flared with it. Every sense sharpened.
And then—him.
He looked exactly as he had the night he left: pale as frost, eyes like thawing ice, centuries of silence weighing down his shoulders and none of it touching his face. He hadn’t aged a moment. Not that he could.
The crowd melted around her. The click and stutter of cameras echoed distantly, but all she could hear was the phantom echo of his voice—low, reverent, and cruelly tender. She froze, just for a fraction of a second. Just long enough for someone to capture it. Her spine stiffened as her name was likely whispered between shutter clicks, but the crack in her armor sealed before anyone could make sense of it.
She tilted her chin up, slipped the mask back on like velvet gloves, and reminded the world who she was.
Magnolia Parks. Unshaken. Unreachable. Untouched.
Even if her pulse told another story entirely.
Because never—not in her wildest dreams, not in her darkest hours—could Magnolia Parks hate Austin Butler.
And maybe that was the problem.
Magnolia had always been good at holding grudges. She nursed them like wounds, cradled them like a mother would her newborn—close to the chest, with a reverence so intense it festered. She let them rot beneath her ribs until they became part of her. Familiar. Intimate. A second heartbeat.
But not with him.
She couldn’t hate him—not when she still felt him. Not when her bones still hummed with the ancient electricity of a soul once stitched to his. Not when the echo of that night still haunted her: their hands linked beneath a blood-soaked moon, palms split open, life mingled with life. A vow made not in words, but in vein and pulse, in that sacred language older than time.
Until one of them perished, they had said.
And yet—here she stood, centuries later, haunted by a man who hadn’t died, but left. A man who still lived in her body like a ghost refusing to move on.
How do you hate someone who is half of your soul?
How do you ever learn to breathe without the part of you that once taught you how?
Perhaps that’s what they meant when they called vampirism a curse. Not the bloodlust. Not the night. Not the stillness of your own unbeating heart.
But the remembering.
You’re cursed to remember every soul who’s ever left you. Every goodbye that never echoed back. Every forever that turned into a lie. Because death—sweet, soft, and final—is a reprieve not meant for creatures like her. Not meant for those who do not age, who do not rot, who cannot forget.
No, eternity becomes a prison the moment the ones who promised it to you vanish.
And the bars of that prison? Their names. Their eyes. Their absence.
“Magnolia! Magnolia—over here!”
The spell broke.
Her reverie shattered like thin glass as her publicist’s hand found the crook of her elbow, guiding her gently but firmly forward. She moved as if waking from a dream—elegant, controlled, untouchable.
The black silk of her gown clung like second skin, gliding over the curves of her hips and thighs with a lover’s reverence. Every step she took was poetry, deliberate and regal. Her hair, braided into sleek ropes of obsidian, tumbled down her back like a crown spun from night itself.
The flashes began—first in flickers, then a violent strobe of light. Cameras drank her in. The diamonds at her ears and throat caught the light, glittering like stardust against her warm brown skin. And she smiled, soft and practiced, the perfect picture of serenity.
No one would have known that her stomach was twisting. That her bones still trembled with the memory of a man who once held her eternity in his hands.
But her smile never faltered. She was Magnolia Parks. And tonight, she was untouchable.
But not to him.
She felt his gaze like heat—slow and steady, licking up her spine with a familiarity that made her breath catch. Every instinct screamed at her to look. To see him. To confirm that it was real, that he was here. But she didn’t. She couldn’t.
Because if she did, she would break.
One glance, and the life she had so carefully rebuilt—the name she forged, the empire of canvas and color and acclaim—would splinter beneath her feet. Magnolia Parks, the famous painter, the enigmatic immortal who cloaked herself in silk and starlight, would be reduced to a wide-eyed fledgling all over again. That slip of a girl in the 1800s who clung to her lover’s warmth in the night to remind herself she was still something close to human.
Or perhaps to mourn the truth that she no longer was.
And across the room, he watched her—Austin, still and silent like a man standing on the edge of a cliff he’d once jumped from.
He hadn’t expected the sight of her to hurt.
But it did. God, it did.
It wasn’t just the way her black silk gown curved around her like it knew her better than anyone else ever had. Or the way the diamonds winked against her skin like they, too, were trying to touch her. It was her smile—that carefully placed thing, perfect for the cameras. Everyone in the room would believe it. He almost did.
But he’d held her when she cried blood. He’d kissed her when her lips trembled from hunger and grief. He’d carved a vow into her palm with his own trembling hand.
He knew her.
And that wasn’t a real smile.
She hadn’t looked at him. Not once. And yet he burned beneath her indifference. She used to look at him like he was the last good thing in the world—now she wouldn’t even give him the courtesy of recognition. It made his undead heart twist, violent and hollow.
A century apart. A hundred years of silence. And still, she moved like he was the gravity she resisted.
He had left. Yes. But only because he didn’t trust himself to stay. Not with the rage. Not with the guilt. Not with forever stretching out like a coffin he wasn’t ready to share.
And now she stood there—magnificent, untouchable—and all he could think about was how easily he would ruin her again, just by saying her name.
Because how do you explain to your lover that you left to save her?
That his hands were stained with centuries of blood—thick, dark, unforgivable—and every soul he'd taken still whispered behind his eyes. That she, with her gentleness, her art, her light, had no business being tethered to something like him.
How do you tell the woman you married under a moonlit vow, with her blood still warm in your mouth, that you walked away not because you stopped loving her, but because loving her was the very thing that could destroy her?
He had enemies. Always had. And while immortality dulled the fear of death, it never touched the fear of her dying.
Because if she died because of him, the world would mourn thousands lost to his wrath.
He wasn’t sure who he’d become if he lost her—not again. Not like that.
He just wanted to keep her safe.
And safe was never with him.
He watched her then, the soft curve of her shoulders, the grace in her step, the way she moved like she didn’t carry centuries of sorrow behind her smile. But he knew better.
He saw it in the tension of her jaw. In the way she wouldn’t look his way. In the pulse that fluttered just beneath her throat—his mark, long faded but not forgotten.
He had once promised her forever.
And the worst part was… he meant it.
"She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”
The voice broke through the fog like a slap—casual, crass, and unwelcome.
Austin blinked. His jaw clenched as his manager came to stand beside him, nursing a glass of champagne and staring unabashedly across the room.
His eyes were on her. Of course they were.
“Look at that dress,” the man muttered low, appreciative in the worst way, his gaze raking up and down her figure greedily. “Black silk and diamonds—like something you'd unwrap slow just to watch it fall.”
Austin didn’t respond.
His teeth were grinding behind a deceptively calm expression, but something violent sparked in his chest. Not because the man noticed her—how could he not? Magnolia was gravity. She was meant to be looked at. But because he looked at her like she was a body. A conquest. A prize to be touched and spoiled. Not with the reverence she deserved.
Not with the awe that came from knowing what her soul sounded like when she wept. Not with the trembling grace of someone who had held her while she came apart at the seams and still found the pieces beautiful.
Austin’s voice came low. Flat.
“She’s not for you.”
His manager scoffed, not hearing the warning beneath the calm. “Didn’t say she was. But damn, I wouldn’t mind a night with that—”
Austin turned slowly, his pale eyes suddenly glacial. “Don’t.”
That single word carried centuries. The weight of wars fought, of monsters buried. Of what Austin used to be before she softened him. And what he might become again, if pushed.
The man laughed uneasily and stepped back, muttering something under his breath about touchy egos and old flames.
But Austin’s gaze had already returned to her. Magnolia.
His once, and always.
And maybe—for just one more moment—his again.
It was only meant to be a brief photo op. A celebration of craft. Art meets cinema. Nothing more.
But Magnolia knew better. She should’ve felt it coming, like a storm before the thunder.
She stood before the gallery wall, a vision carved from midnight—black silk clinging to every curve, the soft weight of her braids brushing her lower back as she faced the very paintings she had bled into creation. Her name was printed beneath each one in crisp lettering: MAGNOLIA PARKS, as if that could contain the centuries of ache they held.
She had painted through sleepless days and hollow nights, dragged color across canvas with hands that remembered more than she dared admit. And now, they hung like ghosts around her. Especially that one—the final piece. The one soaked in aching reds and brittle silver, the one that screamed goodbye without using a single word.
The one he had bought before the premiere even opened.
And now she felt it. The air shifting. The gravity pulling.
Before she even heard his voice, before the crowd rustled behind her, Magnolia felt him walk into the room. Felt it like the press of a scar, old and still tender. The hum along her spine. The echo of a bond that should have long since unraveled.
She didn’t turn. Not until—
“Miss Parks,” a publicist’s voice rang out like a bell. “You remember Mr. Butler, of course?”
Of course.
Her fingers flexed at her sides, nails biting gently into her palms. She turned with the slow grace of someone who’d mastered the art of pretending, the art of never flinching.
And there he was.
Austin Butler.
Centuries had passed, but he hadn’t changed—at least, not where the world could see. The same bone-deep beauty. The same carved jaw and haunting stillness. But she knew better. She saw the quiet war beneath his skin. The stiffness in his shoulders. The way his eyes searched hers like he was still hoping to find a soft place to land.
He bowed his head, his voice a velvet echo: “Miss Parks. Your work was…” he paused, as if the words stuck in his throat, “…beyond what I imagined.”
The compliment struck her like a memory—sweet, soft, dangerous.
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I should hope so, considering how much of it you bought.”
Something flickered in his gaze—shame, maybe. Or longing. “You noticed.”
“I always notice when people take pieces of me.”
The words hung between them, sharp and trembling. The silence that followed felt alive.
And then, like fate couldn’t help itself, the gallery coordinator stepped forward with an eager smile. “Would the two of you mind standing together? Just a few photos—for the press. Right there, yes—in front of that one.”
That one.
The painting she’d made the night he walked out. All shadow and teeth and shattered moonlight.
Her throat went tight. “Do I have to?”
“You do,” Austin murmured, closer now. His breath brushed her ear. “It’s in the contract.”
She turned her face slightly, eyes narrowing. “I should’ve buried you when I had the chance.”
His smile, just then, was soft. Broken. A flash of the boy who once carried her across rooftops and kissed her with blood on his lips. “You still could. But I’d come back.”
Reluctantly, she stepped into place beside him.
Too close. Too warm. Her shoulder brushed his chest. She could feel the beat of him—not a heartbeat, but something older. Something that hummed in rhythm with hers, against her will.
The cameras began to flash.
And just like that, they became art again. Two immortals standing beneath the image of their ending.
She didn’t look at him.
But he didn’t stop looking at her—not once.
The moment the last camera clicked, Magnolia stepped out of the light like it scorched her.
Her heels clicked softly against the marble as she slipped behind the velvet ropes and into the dim corridor off the main gallery floor, her silhouette framed by the low glow of accent lights bouncing off the paintings she’d created in the darkest years of her unlife.
She walked slowly, deliberately. Like if she moved too fast, the truth might catch up.
Her chest rose and fell in shallow rhythm, but her expression remained regal, unreadable. Still, she could feel the weight of his gaze pressing into her spine like a brand.
And then—there he was.
The faintest shift in the air. A presence older than the walls around them.
She didn’t turn. Not yet. She didn’t need to. The silence thickened around her like fog. She could feel him approaching. Measured steps, as if he still thought he could walk carefully enough to not break her all over again.
“Say whatever you came to say, Austin,” she said, voice quiet but sharp, like velvet wrapped around a dagger. Her back remained to him, her eyes locked on the massive canvas in front of her—deep hues of indigo and bone-white, a painting of mourning and memory.
“I didn’t come here to fight,” his voice replied, low, rough, familiarly wrecked.
“You didn’t come here for me,” she snapped, finally turning to face him, the hem of her dress catching the light like spilled oil. “You never do. You just haunt places I exist in.”
He stopped.
Only a few feet separated them, but it felt like a chasm carved by time. He was still devastating—lit from the side by a golden wall sconce, all sharp cheekbones and sadness. His eyes, that same glacial blue, hadn’t changed. And neither had the way they softened when they looked at her. Like he wished he could forget.
“I know you never planned to stay,” she whispered, the words a slow, splintering crack across the space between them. Her lips parted slightly as she let the truth leave her. “Why can’t you just say that?”
There was a beat of silence. And then—
“Say what?” he murmured, stepping closer, his voice laced with a bitterness he hadn’t meant to show. “Hmm? That I love you? That I think about you every goddamn day, even when I don’t want to? That no matter how far I run, I still wake up hearing your voice in my head?”
Her breath caught.
He didn’t stop.
“That I remember the way you used to trace the veins in my hands when you thought I was asleep?” he whispered, closer now. His voice trembled. “That I still see your face in the ash of every city I’ve burned since?”
She didn’t speak. She couldn’t.
“I just wanted to keep you someplace safe,” he said, each word dropped with careful agony. “And that was never going to be there. Never going to be with me.”
The words hit her like a strike to the sternum.
The silence between them grew heavy again, alive with every memory neither of them could say aloud. The way she used to climb into his lap after feeding. The nights they spent on rooftops, him humming, her painting the horizon. The blood-sworn vows made under a harvest moon. Her hand in his. Palm to palm. Skin to soul.
And then—
“Don’t you dare,” she said, voice trembling now. “Don’t you dare stand there and call that love. You walked away and let me rot in a life I didn’t want without you.”
“I walked away,” he said, stepping forward now, until their bodies nearly touched, “so you could have a life. Because if you died because of me, the world would’ve bled for it.”
“You don’t get to decide what’s safe for me,” she said, each word like glass. “I chose you. I would’ve chosen you a thousand times.”
His jaw clenched, the bones beneath his skin shifting like tectonic plates. “And I would’ve ruined you.”
“You already did,” she whispered, her voice ragged now. “You just weren’t brave enough to stay and see it.”
They stood there, so close that if she breathed a little deeper, her chest would touch his. The air crackled with something neither of them could name—love or grief or the ghosts of both.
And still, he looked at her like she was the beginning and the end of his eternity. And still, she looked at him like she might let herself shatter if he just asked.
The memory did not return with grace. It seized her—crashing through her bones like thunder over a silent moor, dragging her back to the moment her soul stopped being hers.
Their wedding.
If you could call it that. No church. No choir. No family. Just him. Just her. And the moon—fat and low and watching.
They were in a clearing the world had long since forgotten, where wild things still whispered and the wind spoke in a tongue older than language. The trees bent low, branches like arthritic hands, sheltering the sacred moment from mortal eyes.
The air was velvet, thick with the scent of blood roses and damp moss. It clung to her bare shoulders, kissed the column of her throat. Her gown—if one could call it that—was made of garnet silk and sheer shadow, clinging to her like it was in love with her body. No corset, no petticoat, no veil—just skin, darkness, and intention. Her feet were bare, digging softly into the cold earth, the hem of her dress soaked in dew.
Austin waited for her in the center of it all, beneath a sky too bruised to be kind. He wore black. Always black. But his coat was open, exposing the pale lines of his chest, the slight curve of his collarbones, the scar just over his heart—the one she had kissed a thousand times and would kiss a thousand more.
And in his hands: the blade.
Obsidian. Ancient. Consecrated not by clergy, but by need.
There were no words for what passed between them in that moment—just the sound of the night breathing, and their eyes saying everything their mouths couldn’t.
But still, he spoke. His voice was reverent. Careful. Like a prayer said over fragile glass.
“Do you vow yourself to me—not for this life, but for every one after? Not until death, but through it? Until time forgets itself?”
Magnolia couldn’t breathe. She could barely think.
“I do,” she whispered. “I always do.”
“And do you accept me as I am—monster, man, madness—and bind what’s left of your soul to mine, even when it hurts?”
Her voice cracked. “I already have.”
He stepped forward, eyes full of sorrow and stars.
The blade whispered as it kissed his palm, a clean, deep slice. Blood welled instantly—rich, dark, and shimmering faintly silver under the moonlight.
He extended his hand to her like an offering.
Magnolia took the blade in trembling fingers, her breath a hitch in her throat. And without hesitation, she carved open her own hand. The pain bloomed hot and bright—but it was nothing compared to what came next.
When they pressed their palms together, time stopped.
It wasn’t just blood.
It was everything.
Their veins roared. The ground beneath them shuddered. The sky darkened as if it, too, knew the gravity of what had just occurred.
Somewhere, far away, something howled.
And her name—her name—he said it like it was the last soft thing in the world.
“Magnolia…”
She closed her eyes as he leaned in, the press of his forehead to hers gentle, grounding.
“I am yours,” he breathed.
Her reply was a vow wrapped in silk and steel. “I was always yours.”
When he kissed her, it wasn’t lips meeting lips. It was stars colliding. It was lifetimes folding in on themselves. It was devotion—feral, boundless, and ruinous.
And in that single kiss, she tasted the rest of her forever. His forever. Their forever.
No witnesses. No rings. Just blood, and breath, and the ache of eternity, sealed between them beneath the watching moon.
Back in the gallery, her throat burned. Her chest was heavy.
Because he was standing in front of her now, older in sorrow but unchanged in body. And her blood—his blood—still remembered. Still hummed with the echo of that night. The night she married a man she should have feared but only ever loved.
“You painted me,” he whispered.
The words barely reached her ears, so soft they seemed to melt into the air between them.
But she heard them. Felt them. Like fingertips down her spine.
She didn’t look at him. Not yet. Couldn’t. The weight of that truth was too much, too intimate, too raw. Her hands curled slightly at her sides, the memory of brushstrokes ghosting over her fingers like phantoms—color, shadow, him.
She had painted him.
Over and over. In every era. Every season. Every silence. In oil, in charcoal, in ash.
She had sculpted his likeness from longing. Built entire exhibitions from grief. Hung him in gold frames like penance. He was the only thing her hands remembered how to render when her soul forgot how to feel.
Austin took a step closer.
“I see it now,” he said, his voice barely holding together. “The curve of my jaw… the scar on the temple… the way you paint the light around me like it wants to forgive me.”
She still didn’t meet his eyes.
“I thought you forgot me,” he whispered. “But you remembered me in paint. In color. In everything.”
And now—now she turned.
Slowly. Deliberately.
Her gaze lifted to his, and the world fell away. The gallery blurred. The murmuring voices, the clinking glasses, the gentle classical music in the background—all of it dissolved like mist. There was only him.
And he looked wrecked.
His pale eyes shimmered with too many unshed lifetimes. His jaw twitched like he was trying not to speak, not to beg. His hand hovered near his side, trembling slightly, like he didn’t know if it should reach for her or not.
“You said you never looked back,” he murmured again, more to himself than her. “You told me you buried it. That I was part of the past.”
Her chest rose slowly. She blinked, long and slow, as if pulling herself back into her body.
“You said you loved me,” she replied, quiet but cutting, like silk over a blade.
That landed. Like a blow.
His breath stuttered in his chest.
And then—his voice broke completely.
“I do love you.” He stepped in, too close now, the scent of him curling around her—smoke and sandalwood and the faint sweetness of aged wine. “I loved you then. I love you still. I just didn’t know how to keep you safe.”
Her jaw trembled, but she didn’t move. Didn’t pull away.
"You painted me," he said again, softer this time, like a benediction. “Even when you hated me.”
“I never hated you,” she whispered. “I only hated the silence.”
He closed his eyes like the words physically hurt. When he opened them again, she was already staring at the painting nearest them—the one that captured him not in perfection, but in memory. His eyes hollowed by time. His shoulders bowed, hands outstretched toward nothing. There was no background—only color, shadow, and ruin. But behind him… faint, almost hidden in gold leaf… her silhouette.
Always near. Never touching.
“You want to know why I painted you?” she asked, voice barely above a breath.
He nodded, unable to speak.
Her throat worked, swallowing something thick. Something ancient.
“Because if I didn’t, I’d forget the sound of your voice. The warmth of your hands. The way your mouth softened when you said my name.”
Her eyes shimmered now—deep brown, wet with everything she never said.
“Because when you left me, I had nothing but an eternity to survive. And painting you was the only way I knew how.”
She took a step closer. Their bodies almost brushed. Her voice fell to a tremble:
“You left. So I kept you in color. In oil. In grief. I kept you the only way I knew how.”
And then—just for a moment—her fingers lifted, hovered near his chest, near the scar above his heart, where her mouth had once lingered after every feeding. She didn’t touch him.
But the air between them crackled like she had.
Her fingers hovered just above his chest, over that scar she once kissed like it was holy. And that close—that close—the past began to pulse between them like a second heartbeat.
Austin’s breath hitched.
He didn’t move at first. Didn’t dare. But the scent of her—warm honey, worn parchment, the faintest trace of blood and something wild—wrapped around him like a noose.
He looked down at her hand, suspended like a spell, then up into her face. God. Her eyes.
They looked the same as they did the night he vowed himself to her: wide and luminous and braver than he ever was.
“Magnolia…” he breathed, but it wasn’t a name. It was a plea.
And she—damn her—she didn’t flinch. She leaned in first. Barely. A whisper of movement. But it was enough. He bent his head like gravity had finally won.
Their lips hovered—just hovered. Close enough for breath to mingle, but not yet touching. Every nerve in her body went taut.
This was madness. It always had been.
And still, her voice came in a trembling whisper.
“Don’t kiss me if you’re going to leave again.”
His eyes fluttered shut, his forehead pressing to hers. “I never left,” he said, voice cracked and shaking. “I was always here. You’re the only place I’ve ever been.”
And then—he kissed her.
Not sweet. Not slow. Desperate.
Like a man starving. Like a creature tasting the only thing that ever made him feel alive.
Her lips opened to him instantly, memory slamming into muscle, into marrow. Her hands found his collar, gripping tight, pulling him closer until their bodies aligned like they used to—perfectly, like two halves finally slotted back into place.
He devoured the years between them in that kiss. All the silence. All the pain. All the “I’m sorry”s they never said.
She kissed him like it was the last time. And maybe it was.
But oh, god—what a way to be ruined again.
When they finally pulled apart, breathless and dazed, her lipstick was smudged and her eyes were wild.
Austin was staring at her like he had just survived drowning—and already missed the water.
They didn’t speak right away.
The silence that stretched between them wasn’t empty—it was sacred. Full of the breath they had shared, full of the years they hadn’t. Full of everything that kiss had said when words had failed them.
Austin’s hands lingered at her waist, fingers splayed wide, as if memorizing the shape of her all over again. Magnolia’s palms were still fisted in the collar of his coat, knuckles white, lips swollen from the force of remembering him.
Her chest rose and fell like she’d just surfaced from deep water. And in some way—she had.
When he finally spoke, it wasn’t loud. It wasn’t rushed. It was holy.
“I never stopped loving you,” he whispered, forehead pressed to hers again, eyes shut like the weight of that truth nearly broke him. “Not for a moment. Not for a second. Not even when I hated myself for it.”
Her hands loosened, but she didn’t pull away.
She let the words wash over her, so raw they made her ache. Her throat felt too tight to answer—but her body leaned in, her breath caught against his cheek, and that was answer enough.
“I see you everywhere,” he said, softer now. “In the rain, in the spaces between songs, in the color of things that shouldn’t remind me of you—but do.”
Magnolia closed her eyes. One tear slipped free, slow and hot down the curve of her cheek. He caught it with his thumb—so gently, like he thought she might shatter if he touched her wrong.
“I tried to live without you,” she whispered, breath trembling. “I tried to fill the centuries with other things. Other people. But no one ever felt like home.”
He pulled her in again, their bodies pressed close, hearts aligned. His next words were spoken into her skin, reverent and wrecked.
“You are my home.”
The gallery around them still buzzed faintly with life—laughter, chatter, the soft clink of glasses—but it felt impossibly far away. As if time had paused just for them. As if the world was holding its breath.
Because here they were. Centuries later. Still in love. Still bleeding for it. Still theirs.
And in that hush—full of ancient promises and trembling hope—neither of them dared move. Because in that moment, for the first time in a hundred years, they weren’t ghosts in each other’s lives.
They were real again.
“Tell me there was no one else,” she whispered against his lips, her breath brushing his mouth like a ghost.
Her voice cracked on the last word—not because she doubted his love, but because she feared the world had changed him while she was still stitching herself back together in the dark.
Austin froze.
His hands, which had been cradling her waist like a prayer, tensed just slightly. His forehead remained pressed to hers, eyes still closed like opening them might unravel everything.
“There wasn’t,” he said softly, but the words felt too easy—like he knew they wouldn’t be enough. Not yet. Not for her.
She pulled back an inch, just enough to look at him. Really look at him.
Her eyes were wet, but fierce. Brown turned molten under the low gallery lights, as if the stars had caught fire in them.
“Don’t lie to me,” she whispered. “Not now. Not after that.”
He exhaled—shaky, long, heavy with what had never been said. His thumbs brushed over her hips in slow, reverent circles.
“There were… moments,” he admitted, voice ragged. “Things I mistook for comfort. Distractions. A few faces in the dark.”
Her gaze flickered—sharp, but she didn’t pull away.
“But none of them touched me,” he continued, his voice falling to a whisper, eyes searching hers like a man desperate to be forgiven. “Not really. They didn’t know the sound I make when I sleep. They didn’t know what calms me down when I wake screaming. They didn’t trace every scar like it was a map home.”
His hand rose to cup her cheek, fingers shaking. His thumb brushed the edge of her jaw, reverent.
“They weren’t you. They were never you.”
She closed her eyes, and a breath left her like surrender.
He leaned in again, gently this time, barely touching.
“I swear to you, Magnolia…” he whispered, lips hovering against hers. “I have only ever loved one woman. And she’s standing right in front of me, asking if she was enough.”
A tear slipped down her cheek, but she didn’t cry.
She kissed him instead.
Soft. Slow. Not desperate this time, but deep—like forgiveness, like memory, like yes.
And when she finally spoke again, it was so quiet, so unbearably fragile, he almost missed it.
The kiss broke, but the tether between them did not.
Magnolia’s lips hovered near his, their breaths still mingling, as if the world around them dared not interrupt something this sacred. She could still feel the press of his vow in her mouth. Still taste the centuries they had wasted, the ache, the mourning—and the promise.
His hand slipped into hers.
There was no question. No ask. Just knowing. Just the weight of skin against skin and the silent agreement forged in blood so long ago, now remembered in full.
He squeezed once—gentle, grounding.
She held on tighter.
They didn’t say goodbye to anyone. Didn’t offer explanations or pleasantries. The gallery kept spinning without them, unaware that divinity had just turned on its heel and walked out the back door.
Their exit was quiet. But it rippled.
Because they moved like gravity belonged to them—like the earth only turned to accommodate the rhythm of their steps. Magnolia's gown whispered across the floor like smoke. Austin’s coat billowed gently with each stride. They didn’t look back.
Outside, the night greeted them like an old friend.
The air was crisp, soaked in moonlight, and the distant hum of the city faded beneath their silence. No paparazzi. No flashes. Just two immortals slipping into the dark where they had always belonged.
They walked side by side, hands still entwined, their bodies brushing with each step like they couldn’t help it. Like the space between them no longer mattered. Like it had never existed.
When they reached the car—his, sleek and shadow-dark—he opened the door for her without a word.
She slid in like she’d done it a hundred times before. Because she had. And tonight, it wasn’t nostalgia. It was now.
He rounded the car slowly, every inch of him aching with the weight of hope and fear. When he climbed in beside her, the space felt sacred. Familiar. A sanctuary carved from leather seats and midnight silence.
They didn’t speak. Didn’t need to.
Magnolia rested her head against the window, and his hand reached across the console—slow, uncertain—until it found her thigh. Just a touch. A reassurance.
Her fingers slid down to cover his.
And when she finally looked at him—her profile soft in the moonlight, her lips still swollen from his kiss—he whispered:
“Where to?”
She turned to him, and for the first time in a century, she smiled without sorrow.
“Home,” she said. “Wherever you are.”
And with that, they disappeared into the dark.
Together.
At last.
The door had barely clicked shut behind them when Austin pressed her back against it, chest to chest, breath mingling in a shared silence that thrummed like a second heartbeat.
He didn’t kiss her right away.
He just looked at her.
Hands sliding up her sides, slow and deliberate, like he was rediscovering a body he already knew by memory. Like she was music he hadn’t heard in a hundred years and couldn’t bear to rush.
“You’re still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said quietly, reverently.
And then, finally—he kissed her.
Not rushed. Not frantic. Just deep, devastating. His lips molded to hers like they belonged there, like they’d always belonged there. His hands cupped her jaw, thumbs stroking the skin beneath her ears, his body flush against hers as if to say I’m here, I’m real, I never stopped loving you.
Magnolia moaned into the kiss, her fingers gripping the front of his shirt before dragging it off him with shaking hands. His skin was warm, familiar, sacred. She kissed his collarbone, his throat, the scar above his heart—and he shuddered.
He walked her backward slowly, lips never leaving hers, until the backs of her knees hit the bed. She fell into it with a soft gasp, silk pooling beneath her.
He stood over her for a second—watching. Undressing her with his eyes before he even laid a hand on her. And then he did—his touch featherlight, dragging down the straps of her gown one at a time, exposing inch after inch of skin like it hurt him to go too fast.
“You’re trembling,” he whispered.
“I haven’t been touched,” she breathed, “not like this—not since you.”
He swallowed thickly and sank to his knees.
No pretense. No hesitation. His hands skimmed her thighs, parting them gently, his lips pressing reverent kisses to the inside of each one. Not rushed. Not possessive. Just devotion.
She reached for him, but he gently pushed her hand away.
“Let me,” he said, voice low and rough.
Then—he buried his face between her legs.
His tongue was warm and slow, flattening against her clit in long, steady licks that had her back arching and her fingers scrabbling at the sheets. He moaned as he tasted her, like he was starving—like this was the first full meal he’d had in a hundred years and he wanted to savor it.
“God,” she gasped, “Austin—”
“Say it again,” he groaned into her, voice vibrating against her. “Say my name.”
And she did. Over and over. Until it didn’t sound like a name anymore, just a prayer—punctuated by breathless cries and the stuttering, wet sounds of his mouth worshipping her.
He took his time. Dipped his tongue lower. Slipped two fingers inside her, curling them just right, learning what made her shake. What made her sob. What made her come hard, crying out as her legs clamped around his shoulders, her body writhing against his face.
He didn’t stop until she was limp. Until she whispered please like it was the only word she knew.
Then—he kissed his way back up her body. Her thighs. Her belly. Her ribs. Her throat. Her mouth.
She tasted herself on his tongue and pulled him closer, nails dragging down his back, as she whispered, “Now. I want you now.”
He lined himself up, but didn’t press in yet. Just ground his cock between her folds, slow and heavy, teasing her with it.
“You sure?” he asked, lips brushing hers.
“Take me,” she whispered. “Make me remember.
They moved like fire catching silk—fast, consuming, unable to stop. Every thrust was soaked in something ancient: lust, yes, but also pain and memory and worship. Her legs wrapped tighter around his waist, drawing him deeper, dragging him back to where he belonged.
Austin couldn’t stop touching her—his hands roamed like he needed to feel every inch of her just to believe she was real. Her skin was slick with sweat, glowing beneath him, and when she looked up at him, pupils blown wide, eyes wet with tears she hadn’t even felt fall, he almost broke.
“You’re killing me,” he choked out. “You’re gonna fucking kill me.”
Her answer was a moan, strangled and broken, hips rising to meet every thrust, body trembling as she got closer and closer to the edge again.
And then—his lips brushed her ear. “Bite me.”
Her body stilled—just for a heartbeat. The air changed.
“Now,” he breathed, “I want to feel you inside me when you come.”
Her fangs dropped instinctively—sharp, aching, hungry—and for a second, she hesitated. Just one.
He saw it. “Do it,” he whispered. “I want it. Take me with you.”
And she did.
Her mouth latched onto the soft skin just below his neck, and she bit down hard—sinking her fangs deep into the vein that pulsed just for her.
Austin shouted—a ragged, raw cry that sounded like pain, but wasn’t. It was release. The moment her teeth pierced his flesh, his orgasm slammed into him like a tidal wave. His hips stuttered, cock pulsing deep inside her, his seed spilling in hot, thick waves that had her gasping and arching beneath him.
He didn’t stop. Didn’t pull out. Didn’t dare.
Instead, he bit her back.
Hard.
His fangs tore into her shoulder, right above her heart.
It was brutal. Intimate. Instinctive. Like their bodies had been waiting to do this again since the night they split their palms open and bound their souls.
Their blood mingled as they climaxed together—him filling her, her trembling and clenching around him, their mouths locked to each other’s skin, drinking and sobbing and becoming.
It was too much. It was perfect.
Magnolia moaned against his neck, throat working to swallow him down, eyes fluttering shut as she felt the familiar burn of his blood sliding down her throat. It was warm, like whiskey and home and the ache of a hundred years of missing him.
And for Austin—her blood was fire. The kind that healed and hurt all at once. The second it hit his tongue, he saw her. All of her. Every year apart. Every touch she’d craved. Every moment she’d tried not to remember.
And he wept.
Tears slipped down his cheeks, silent and hot, as he held her body in his arms and let her ruin him again. He didn’t even try to stop them.
Because this wasn’t sex. It was ceremony.
Their moans faded to gasps, to shivers, to nothing.
And when their mouths pulled back, stained crimson, they just stared at each other—wrecked and bleeding and holy.
Neither moved.
He was still inside her. They were still biting. Their blood still dripped.
And all Magnolia could whisper, voice hoarse, was:
“Mine.”
Austin leaned in, forehead to hers, heart still pounding inside her chest where it now lived.
“Yours,” he rasped. “Always.”
The water was hot—just shy of scalding—and it steamed around them as Austin eased her down into the bath, his arms never leaving her body. He stepped in after her, tugging her back into his lap, cradling her against his chest like she was breakable and precious and something he’d never let go of again.
The blood on their skin diluted into ribbons, swirling like paint in the water. Red, then pink, then clear again.
His hand drifted down her arm, tender and slow, brushing a damp braid from her shoulder as he kissed the bite mark he left there. Not with hunger. Not with heat. But with penitence. With worship.
She leaned into it, her breath shaky as she settled back against him, her thighs still trembling, her body still open around the memory of him.
“I missed this,” she whispered. “I missed your hands.”
Austin let out a quiet, broken sound—almost a laugh, almost a sob—as he kissed the hinge of her jaw.
“I missed everything,” he said. “Even the way you kick in your sleep.”
She turned her face just enough to see him, her mouth swollen, her eyes soft with exhaustion and something deeper.
“I don’t sleep without you.”
That wrecked him.
He wrapped his arms tighter around her, one hand spread low on her belly like he could still feel himself inside her. Like he needed to mark the space.
His other hand rose slowly—fingers wet and trembling—and he wiped a trail of blood from the corner of her mouth with the pad of his thumb.
“Yours looks good on me,” she murmured.
“So does mine,” he replied, voice thick. “You should’ve seen yourself. You were—fuck, baby, you were divine.”
She smiled at that, small and secret.
His lips pressed to her temple. “Are you okay?”
She nodded slowly. “Just… full. Of you. Of everything.”
“I didn’t hurt you?”
“You did,” she said quietly, “but not in a way I didn’t crave.”
He inhaled sharply, arms tightening around her as if she might disappear.
They sat in silence, the kind that only lovers forged in blood and centuries can share. His fingers traced her collarbone. Her hand curled over his thigh. The air smelled of salt, of skin, of heat and something iron-sweet.
She reached for the washcloth, but he caught her wrist gently.
“Let me.”
He took it from her, lathering it with soft soap. Then he cleaned her, reverently. Every inch of skin. The bite mark. The bruises on her hips from his grip. Her thighs where he’d knelt between them. Even her ankles.
He held her foot in one hand like it was a precious thing, washing it as if she were royalty. His queen. His church.
Magnolia watched him, dazed, eyes full of water but not crying.
And when he was done—when the last of the blood was rinsed from her skin and the water had gone lukewarm—he kissed her ankle, then her shoulder, then her mouth.
Gentle. Grateful.
“Come to bed,” he whispered.
“Only if you hold me.”
“I’ll never let you go again.”
The bedroom was quiet, save for the muffled thump of Austin’s bare feet across the floor and the soft clink of a lotion cap twisting open. The air smelled like cedar and wax and something older—something themselves. Magnolia sat at the edge of the bed, bare legs curled beneath her, skin glowing from the bath and from him, every inch of her still humming from what they’d done.
He returned to her like gravity. A warm palm at the dip of her back, a ghost of a kiss to her shoulder.
“I brought the lotion,” he murmured.
“You still use almond oil?”
“Always. You said it smelled like summer.” His voice cracked softly at the end.
He knelt behind her, reverent, like a worshipper before an altar. And then, with hands warm and steady, he began to anoint her.
It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t lustful. It was remembrance.
He worked in slow circles along her shoulders, down her arms, the oil leaving her skin slick and honey-soft. Every stroke carried memory: of Paris rooftops, of gallery lights, of skin and pigment and laughter beneath half-opened windows.
“You used to do this after every showing,” she murmured.
“I still would have. If you'd let me.”
And then he reached for her hand. Held it gently between his own. And from his palm, he pulled the ring.
Her ring.
“I never stopped wearing it,” he whispered. “Even when I had to hide it. Even when it hurt.”
She watched him with wide, wet eyes as he slid it onto her finger again. Gold and old and right. Like it never left. Like she never left.
“I couldn’t give it to anyone else,” he said. “Because it always knew where it belonged.”
Her breath stuttered, her body leaning instinctively into him. He caught her with a hand to her waist and another to her chest, spreading warmth across her ribs like he could hold her heart steady with his palm.
Then he picked up the shirt—his shirt. Soft. Oversized. Familiar. One she'd worn while painting him nude in their flat in Montmartre, 1894. The memory nearly undid her.
The same cologne soaked into the collar. The same one he’d worn when she used to trace him in paint and kisses.
“I remember this,” she said, quiet as prayer.
“I do too,” he replied, sliding it gently over her head. Dressing her like a sacred thing. His hands smoothed the cotton over her curves, over her thighs. Like he had to feel it. Like he had to anchor himself in her.
She looked down at her ring, then up at him, and whispered, “I’m yours. But you’re mine too.”
His breath hitched, and he nodded slowly. “Always.”
And then—he lifted her.
Not because she couldn’t walk. But because he refused to let her go.
One arm under her thighs, the other spread wide across her back, pulling her flush to his chest like he thought she might disappear between blinks. Like if he loosened his grip, the air would steal her.
He carried her to the bed, the sheets pale gray and smelling faintly of cedar and the man she could never quite scrub from memory. The same scent he wore when they were young and invincible in Paris.
When he laid her down, it wasn’t a drop—it was a placement. Careful. Devout. As if her body were something to be honored.
And then he climbed in behind her—not over her, not above her. Behind. Where he could wrap himself around her like armor. Like apology. Like the home she’d never stopped being.
One arm beneath her neck, the other draped over her waist, his hand spreading wide on her belly, holding her close. Holding something sacred.
Her breath stuttered again.
“You’re shaking,” she whispered, brushing her fingers over his.
“I know.”
“Are you okay?”
He kissed the back of her ear. His forehead touched her temple.
“I’m just… still here. With you. And I don’t know how to believe it yet.”
She turned just enough that their cheeks touched. Her hand slipped back to his thigh.
“I never stopped being yours,” she whispered.
That broke him.
A quiet sound—a laugh edged in ache—escaped him. He pulled her tighter, like she might vanish again.
“Tell me what I missed,” he said, mouth against her hairline.
She hummed. “The gallery in Rome. The sandstorm in Marrakesh. The girl I almost painted because she looked like you.”
He smiled against her shoulder. “Jealous.”
“You should be. She had your mouth.”
“You know mine better.”
“I do,” she breathed, smug and sleepy.
Their bodies settled into each other again, quiet and steady. Her breathing slowed. Her fingers twitched once against his.
But Austin stayed awake.
His thumb stroked slow circles against her stomach. His lips kissed the same place on her neck every few minutes like clockwork, like ritual.
And finally, when he was sure she was asleep, he whispered the truth he couldn’t hold in anymore.
“Every night I stayed away from you, I wanted to die.”
She didn’t speak.
She didn’t have to.
Because her fingers slid under the sheet and curled around his.
Even in sleep, she heard him.
And outside, the moon burned steady, bearing witness to a love that had lived, died, and returned again—drenched in blood, in oil, in something holier than time.
