K.

Qifrey doesn't move. Once, he might have hesitated—torn between capturing you himself to spare you what mercy he can, in the only way left to him, or calling for Olruggio to carry out what he can not. Now, Qifrey already knows that he can do neither. He simply sits at the table, tea cold in his hand, and simply looks at you.

"You shouldn't be here."

"I shouldn't be doing many things," you agree, slipping off the sill with thoughtless ease. Your boots land on the kitchen floor without a sound. "And yet."

"If anyone saw you—"

"No one will see me." You step forward, a faint smile tugging at the corner of your lips, closing the distance between you and where he's seated. "I'm very good at not being seen these days."

Qifrey should probably stand. Put the table between you, if nothing else, to restore some semblance of distance, of sense. Instead, he remains where he is, drinking in the sight of you—like a man parched beyond reason, yet trying not to let his desperation show.

"Why are you here?"

"Business." That tells him nothing at all—it could mean anything from a private matter, to some nefarious plot tied to the Brimmed Hats. Your steps are slow, deliberate, as you move around the table—the same table where you'd once had tea with him every morning, where he'd guided your hand through countless spells and sigils. "I heard you've gotten another apprentice, recently. That makes four, now. Ambitious, even for you."

You know about Coco. "They're good students."

"They have a good teacher." Your hand trails lightly along the edge of the table as you walk, fingertips tracing the worn grain. "Do they remind you of me?"

"No."

He says it too quickly. The laugh that escapes you lingers in the quiet corners of the kitchen, its walls pressing in from all sides, giving the truth nowhere to run or hide.

"Liar."

Your voice is light. Teasing.

"I saw one of them today in market today, too," you continue, leaning briefly over the table as if to confess some closely guarded secret. The brim of your hat dips low. "The girl with the dark, curly hair… she carries herself very seriously, doesn't she? Like she's trying very hard to be absolutely perfect."

"You've been watching my apprentices?"

"I've been watching you." You come to a stop at his side, a smile curling on your lips. You're so close now—close enough to reach out and touch, close enough to catch a faint whiff of whatever is lingering on your skin: petrichor and night air, something reminiscent of iron, metallic, and beneath that—the familiar scent of lavendar and lemon verbana soap, mirroring his own. "I've always been watching you, Master."

The words settle over him like first frost—the kind that goes unnoticed until it is already there, quietly stealing the colour from the world wherever it goes. Qifrey should probably be afraid. Any sensible witch would be, with a Brimmed Hat standing just within arm's reach. But fear doesn't come. Instead, there is only that familiar, hollow ache inside the cage of his ribs—one he thought he'd learned to live with—now stirring back to life as though no time had passed at all.

"Why are you here?" he asks again. This time, his voice comes out barely above a whisper—something that sounds, even to his own ears, far too close to longing.

"Can't a student miss their teacher?"

Qifrey closes his eyes, forcing his breath to steady before he speaks again.

"You're not my student any longer."

You pause, your smile faltering for the briefest second. "I suppose not," you murmur. A beat passes. "Then, maybe I just missed you."

Those words hang between you, fragile as spun glass. Qifrey does not dare to open his eyes—not for a moment, at least. Not yet. He cannot bear to look at your face and have to decide which truth would wound him more: if you meant it, or if you didn't. He isn't sure he wants to know.

"You need to leave," is what he says, instead. "Before someone wakes up—one of the apprentices could come downstairs and see you. Now. Before I—"

"Before you what?" Your lips are at his ear, breath warm against the sensitive outer shell—and his good eye flies open. And then you are right there—faces close enough for him to count each lash as you blink, your face tilted up towards his, half-smile softened by the low flicker of the firelight. "Before you call for Mr. Olruggio? Before you summon the knights?"

Qifrey's hands clench into fists at the sides. His palm quire still sits in his pocket. He could—

"Master." Your voice is soft, almost gentle. Certain. "You aren't going to report me."

"You don't know that."

"I do." You reach up and touch his face. Qifrey flinches from that small contact alone, caught between pulling back and leaning in. Your fingers are warm. He knows your hands intimately—the shape of them, the faint ridges of old scars, the way they once fit so easily aginst his own. "If you were going to report me, you would have done it the first time I returned. Or the second. Or the third." The corner of your mouth curls upwards, slow and amused. "Or perhaps you were too tired to remember—I recall you were quite exhausted by the end of our previous… encounters, after all."

Qifrey's cheeks heat fiercely at the reminder, a flush he cannot blame on the dying fire creeping rapidly up his collar. "It was a momentary lapse of judgement. A mistake."

At some point, your hand has slipped from his cheek to his neck, your thumb idly stroking over the quickening pulse there. He remembers when you'd still been his apprentice—how uncertain you'd been with physical contact, how it only ever seemed to settle when it came from him. Now, it feels as though the roles have been reversed—although he's not exactly uncomfortable with your hands on him. Perhaps therein lies the problem.

"That's right." Your voice is quiet, fond. Almost proud. "I'm Master's biggest mistake."

Qifrey exhales, the immediate refection catching somewhere in the back of his throat. He doesn't know what he wants to tell you—that you were never a mistake, that it was him, that every moment since you left has been shaped and wrought by your absence—and even if he did, he doesn't know if he should. It's hard to think straight—especially with your thumb continuing its slow, maddening stroke along the side of his throat.

"My apprentices," he says, grasping for something, anything to hold on to. "They're sleeping upstairs. If they wake up and see you—"

"They won't." Your pointer finger hooks into the high collar of his undershirt, dragging it down inch by inch until your breath whispers warm over Qifrey's collarbone. "I made sure of it. A little magical sleeping device, nothing harmful. They'll sleep till morning."

His breath catches. "You cast magic on them?"

"Is that impolite? Forgive my lack of etiquette." Your smile widens, all innocence and wickedness tangled together. "I have no apprentices of my own, unfortunately—just a master who won't admit he misses me."

"I don't—"

"Liar."

You step closer again, your chest pressing up against his. Qifrey can feel a heartbeat—yours or his own, he can no longer tell—pounding so hard he is almost certain you must hear it in the quiet of the small kitchen, a traitorous wardrum echoing in the cavity of his chest.

"Tell me to leave," you murmur. There's no teasing left in your voice now, only something quieter, more serious. "I'll go and not come back. You'll never see me again."

Qifrey cannot even find it in him to open his mouth. The words lodge like river stones in his throat.

"That's what I thought." A smile tugs at your mouth, but it doesn't quite reach your eyes. There's something faintly sad in your gaze, instead. Your hand slides down, brushing past his collarbone, dragging over the hollow of his throat, before finally settling over his chest, fingers splayed over the desperate racing of his heart. "You're still the same, Master. Always so dishonest with everyone—including yourself."

"Don't call me that." His hands come up to your shoulders, fingers gripping for a fleeting second before… nothing. Neither pushing you away, nor pulling you in. As if that simple touch alone is enough to unmoor him, the warmth of your skin beneath his palms too much to bear. "Not tonight. Not when—"

"Not when?"

You always had the habit of repeating Qifrey's words back to him when you were still his apprentice—seeking his confirmation, his approval, as if his voice alone had the authority to make something true. He looks at you now. You've slipped off your hat, and for a moment he catches a glimpse of the apprentice he had once cared for—loved, in a way he had never allowed himself to name. And your eyes—they watch him the same way they always have, as if he is the sole star in the night sky worth looking at.

It's too much. You've always been too much.

"Not…" His exhale leaves him like a surrender. "Not when I'm trying very hard to remember why I need to report you."

You laugh sweetly. "Let me help, then."

Qifrey closes his eye. And when your lips meet his, deep and intent and torturous in their slowness, he doesn't pull away. Your hands are only his chest, pushing, and then Qifrey's back meets the edge of the table, the wood digging into the base of his spine as your mouth slants over his.

You kiss him teasingly at first: soft bites to his lower lip, a slow drag of your tongue across the cupid's bow of his mouth, as if you have all the time in the world. Your hands slide down his chest, finding the fastenings of his robes. The fabric gives beneath your touch, as easily as its owner, and your fingers are warm against his skin. So warm that when they brush over his nipples through the thin fabric of his undershirt, he shivers—actually shivers—like some virginal boy from the rural countryside being touched for the first time.

"Wait," he breathes against your mouth. "Wait—"

You don't. Your fingers find the hem of his undershirt and tug, pulling it up over his stomach, his chest, his shoulders. Qifrey raises his arms without thinking—without choosing—and then his shirt is on the floor and his torso is bare to your eyes, your hands on his skin, palms flat, fingers spread, feeling every ridge of muscle and bone as if you are memorising him by touch alone all over again.

"This is wrong," he mutters, because the silence while you strip him bare is too much. His voice is already embarrasingly breathless, low and wrecked, and his hands find your waist somehow, tugging you closer even as his words try to push you away. "This isn't—we shouldn't—"

You lower your mouth to the hollow of Qifrey's throat, and at once every thought in his mind scatters to the four winds, far beyond reach. "What's wrong?"

Nothing. Qifrey throws a hand over his face, flustered. "I used to be your master."

"You'll always be my master."

He groans as loudly as he dares. "That doesn't make things any better."

You laugh, low and warm just beneath the curve of his jaw. "Does Master feel as if he's taking advantage of his poor, innocent apprentice?" Your fingers trace idle patterns down his chest, over the softness of his stomach, stopping just above the waistband of his trousers. "His naive student who would touch themselves late at night with their master's laundry pressed to their face, knowing they had to be silent because he was sleeping in the room just below them?"

Qifrey nearly chokes.

"You—"

"It's alright." You lean in to kiss his cheek, then to mouth at the curve of his jaw. "My master is a very honourable man. Luckily…" Your fingers toy with the waist of his trousers, teasing at the fastenings. "…his apprentice isn't."

Before Qifrey can respond, you're already spinning him around. His hands just barely catch the edge of the table before your body is pressing against his back, crowding him forward until the edge digs into the narrow bone of his hips.

"What are you—"

You grind your hips against him, and whatever Qifrey had been about to say catches in his throat. Because he feels it—a hardness pressing against his rear, insistent and unmistakable—considerable enough to turn his breathing shallow, heat coiling low in his belly. Qifrey twists his head around to stare at you. He must look absolutely ridiculous—half-undressed and hair falling into wide eyes, pinned against a table by his own former apprentice, mouth hanging open like a fish washed up on shore.

You laugh at the look on his face. And then you lean down and kiss him, your chin catching on his shoulder, his glasses knocked askew as your noses bump together.

"Body alteration magic," you murmur, your explanation barely audible against his mouth. Qifrey barely manages to gather his thoughts long enough to form a coherent response.

"Why?"

"Why else?" Your mouth drifts to his ear, catching the lobe between our teeth gently. To make Master feel good, of course."

"But we don't… we don't have to do it like—" Like that, he wants to say. Qifrey imagines it for only a single second—being bent over the table, robes pushed down to his knees, taking his former apprentice's cock in his ass—and suddenly his entire mouth is dry, thoughts caught somewhere between a rock and a hard place, oscillating wildly between shame and desire.

"You're always saying you feel guilty for taking advantage of your apprentice." Your fingers curl against the soft scattering of hair just beneath his navel, nails scratching lightly across the sensitive skin there. His whole body shivers. "So how about you let me take advantage of you for once, Master?"

Qifrey feels almost feverish when he answers. "You…"

"I want to make Master feel good," you murmur into the curve of his neck, lips brushing sweetly over his pulse point—too innocent for what you're offering. "I'll be so, so good for you, Master. I swear it."

His hands find the edge of the table, gripping hard. This is madness. He is mad. He has four apprentices sleeping upstairs—still children, none the wiser—and a fugitive Brimmed Hat wanted dead or alive for committing taboo standing in the small kitchen of his atelier. And yet…

Qifrey lowers himself onto his elbows as though in a trance. His back arches, ever so slightly, legs spreading to his shoulders' breadth to yield the most private part of himself to your gaze, your touch, whatever you intend to do with him. He can already feel his lower half twitching in anticipation, a shameful, undeniable ache that makes his entire face prickle with heat as his hips press back against yours. It's as if his entire body is following a command that his mind has yet to accept.

"You're being so good," you breathe, your voice honeyed with approval, and it sends heat pooling in the pit of Qifrey's belly. Your hands find the fastenings of his trousers, fingers slipping easily over the strings. "So obedient for me."

His bottoms slide slowly down his thighs to his knees, then to his ankles, followed by his smallclothes. The kitchen air still holds on to the lingering heat of the fire but is fast cooling against his bare skin—his thighs, the expanse of his chest, the now exposed curve of his rear. It raises a faint shiver along his arms, the back of his neck, though not from the cold.

Your lips find the back of his shoulder. You exhale softly there, almost reverent, before continuing to trail slow kisses across his skin, following the line of his shoulder to his nape. His head tips forward instinctively, chin dropping against his collarbone to give you more access. Already, his body is moving without his permission—yielding, wanting.

"Master has done this with Mr. Olruggio before, hasn't he? I'm not the first."

Qifrey hadn't been expecting the question—and it flusters him more than he cares to admit, naked in front of you with your hands still resting posessively on the narrow jut of his hips. "Y-yes," he admits, his words barely rising above a whisper.

"And the last time?" Your hand slides down his back, following the curve of his spine until it comes to rest on one cheek, squeezing idly. Qifrey can't help the sound that escapes him—a breathy, pathetic moan that doesn't seem to come from his own mouth. "How long ago?"

His entire face feels hot. "Why do you want to know?"

You don't answer him immediately. Instead, you take hold of his other cheek and squeeze, pushing upward to part him, revealing the tight furl of his hole to your gaze. His hips jerk forward against the table edge, his own cock half-hard and leaking against his thigh, and you continue to knead his flesh in your hands, your intentions clear as mirror glass.

"To know how much I should prepare Master."

The thought is embarrassingly arousing. Qifrey squeezes his eye shut in desperation, licking his lips, trying to remember how to form words, sentences.

"Not… not for a long time." The admission feels awkward, clumsy on his tongue. "Not since the time before… before you left."

Your hand stills on the small of his back. "Before I left?"

"Yes."

"All those months ago?"

"Yes, yes." A quiet whimper escapes him when you fondle his ass, squeezing roughly, and heat drops low in his stomach, stirring his cock further. Is it really so surprising? There were moments, after you left, when Qifrey was tempted by the thought of seeking comfort again in Olruggio's arms, the familiar warmth of his bed. But he could never go through with it—could never do it without thinking of you, of how he'd failed you. "Why are you asking so many questio—ah—hah—"

Your hand has begun moving again, this time gently stroking the sensitive skin of his inner thigh. His legs part further of their own accord, as if desperate for more of you, your touch.

"Then, I'll be very thorough with Master." You sound pleased, for some reason—though Qifrey hasn't the faintest idea why.

Your hands leave him for a brief moment, and then there's the quiet sound of a bottle being uncorked. The subtle, faintly familiar scent of arnica wafts into the air, followed by soft, tacky noises of something slick being spread between fingers. The massage oil from the kitchen cabinet. Of course you'd know where to find it; he'd used it on you countless time when you were still his apprentice, massaging your hands when your wrists cramped from overuse. If someone had told him back then how you would be using it on him now, Qifrey thinks he would have died of embarrassment on the spot.

Your slick fingers touch him there, gently circling his rim, and Qifrey nearly jumps out of his own skin. A sharp breath blows out between his pursed lips.

"Relax, Master," you murmur. "I'll be gentle."

And then your finger presses into him. Just the tip, just barely—but it's enough to make him shudder. The stretch is foreign yet familiar all at once, a sensation he thought he'd put out of his mind but his body still craves without permission. Then you sink deeper, slow and careful, and his hands scrabble against the tabletop, bunching the gingham cloth beneath his palms as if it might keep him from flying apart entirely.

"Please—"

"Please what?" You crook your finger gently, the tip just brushing over the spot inside of him that makes his vision swim, and Qifrey's plea dissolves in his mouth. "Tell me what you need."

More, but before he can speak you have already supplied it, a second finger joining the first. Qifrey bites down on his moan, his breathing coming out hard and rapid. You work him open witth steady hands, waiting patiently for his body to yield around your fingers before you add a third, curling them deep inside of him until he's almost dizzy. His cock is fully hard now, nerves catching alight each time it brushes the table with every small shift of his hips, precome smearing across the cloth.

"You're taking me so well," you whisper, and the praise makes him want to whimper. "So good for me, Master. So good."

He wants to tell you to stop calling him that—that the sound of you calling him Master in the midst of such unspeakable makes his head spin with mortification and some other feeling he does not dare to name. But then you are shifting behind him, and Qifrey barely has time to twist over his shoulder to see you getting down on one knee before your mouth is on him—andthen he forgets how to speak entirely.

Your tongue traces over his rim, lapping at the tight ring of muscle there, over your own fingers that are still spreading him open, and Qifrey bites down on his fist, the desperate sound fleeing his lips muffled into his knuckles, but it's still too loud, too much. He wasn't expecting you to do that—wasn't expecting you at all, tonight—and he hadn't cleaned himself down there, hadn't prepared himself—

"D-don't—" is all he manages, voice shaking. "It's—wait—dirty… hah—ah—"

It's like you don't hear him. Or, considering the fact that the two of you are about as close as two people can physically be, you ignore him completely. The tip of your tongue probes at him, wet with saliva, before you bury your face between his cheeks, nose pressed into the cleft of his ass, tongue pushing inside and fucking him wth short, little thrusts alongside your fingers. And just like that, Qifrey's dragged untouched over the edge, his protests dissolving into a trembling, indistinct syllable as he comes.

You don't stop. Your mouth stays on him, working him through the waves of pleasure still rolling throughout his body. Still, he grows oversensitive quick—too quickly, his first orgasm in months—but when he reaches back to push your head away, his fingers useless and trembling, you catch his wrist and pin it to the table next to his hip.

Qifrey claws at open air, his other hand scrabbling desperately against wood. Still you don't let up. Your tongue is softer now, lapping at him with something almost tender, and you moan softly against him as you draw out the last shudders of his release, only pulling back with a wet, obscene sound when you've finally had your fill.

You press a delicate kiss to the back of his thighs, one each, as though you're giving him a reward. "You taste good, Master," you say from behind him, still on your knees. He can hear the smile in your voice. Qifrey doesn't know whether he wants to see it or bury his face in the table and never look at you again. "So sweet, just like I always thought you would be."

He pushes himself up on trembling hands to glare at you over his shoulder, though he doubts it's very effective with the way that his face is burning. "Don't say things like that."

"Why not?" Your tongue traces a slow circle around his rim, and his hips jerk—a helpless, involuntary action that makes him want to die. "Every part of Master is perfect to me."

"You insufferable—"

You laugh then, the sound too warm and innocent for whatever filthy things your mouth has just been doing, and then you're kissing him again. His knees, the insides of his thighs, the curve of his hips, slowly making your way up his body like you have all the time in the world and not just this stolen night. When you reach his neck, you reach around him to take his chin in your unsoiled hand, pulling him forward to meet your mouth. Your lips meet softly, sweetly—and then your tongue pushes past his lips, licking almost shyly at his front teeth. His mouth falls open a little more of its own volition, and your tongue slips inside.

Something else comes with it—the taste of oil, slightly bitter, and something muskier, unmistakably himself—and then you are squeezing the softness of his cheeks, forcing his mouth wider, before you spit into his mouth.

Some rational thought buried far in the back of his mind tells him he should be disgusted. Instead, he moans into your mouth—a wanton, needy sound that makes his own cheeks heat—and sucks on your tongue like he cannot get enough. He feels your lips curl into a smile against his own.

"You've been so good, Master," you murmur. "Let me reward you."

Qifrey feels your hand on his back again, palm dragging up the full length of his spine, pushing him gently towards the table. He goes almost entirely without resistance until his cheek is lying flat against it, the crumpled tablecloth twisted in his fisted hands. Your body is warm over his, one arm wrapping around his waist, holding him steady.

He hears the slick sounds of you oiling yourself up, before you're pressing the tip of your length to his rim. The sensation steals the breath from Qifrey's lungs. He can only feel the tip, bluntly testing at his entrance—already stretched from your fingers, already loosened—but it's big. Bigger than Olruggio, bigger than anyone or anything he's ever taken. Why would you choose to—

"Breathe," you whisper. "I'll go slow."

He tries. He tries, and then—you are pushing into him. True to your word, you move slowly, sinking each inch into him with an unhurriedness that borders on torture, splitting him open on your cock. Qifrey feels as though you are forcing the air from his lungs, and his mouth opens on a whimper that is too desperate, too loud.

His whole body trembles around your length, muscles fluttering, trying to adjust to the stretch. Have you even bottomed out, yet? He's so full, impossibly so, and yet somehow that unbearable emptiness lingers—Qifrey wants more, needs more. His hips push back in an attempt to take you to the base, to force you to give him everything at once, but then your hand is gripping at his hip with surprising strength, stilling him.

"Patience, Master," you murmur, though your voice is teasing, and part of him knows that you are enjoying this. "You've only taken me halfway and you're already panting like a bitch in heat. I don't want to hurt you."

Qifrey's head swims. The idea that he still has so much more to go seems terrifying when he is already so full, and yet he cannot bring himself to care. Something deeper than want—something that goes beyond mere need—has its claws in him now, desperate for you in a way that erases all rationality. He tries again, clenching hard around you.

Your hips jerk forward with a sharp groan, and Qifrey chokes on a moan as you split him open, the stretch burning like fire in the best possible way. But then your grip tightens on his hip—so hard he is certain there will be bruises in shape of your fingers blooming there, come morning—and your other hand comes up to fist in his hair, dragging his head back until the two of you are eye to eye.

"That wasn't very obedient of you, Master."

He tries to meet your stare evenly—which is difficult when he's currently all but impaled on your cock.

"You—ah—are the one who's being disobedient—"

"How so?"

Qifrey shifts where he's pinned between you and table. Your cock slips half out of him with all his squirming, and Qifrey nearly whines, frustration ratcheting. "Your Master," he says, his attempt at sounding sharp ruined by the breathlessness in his voice, "is telling you to fuck him."

Your grip on his hair loosens ever so slightly. For a moment, neither of you move. The kitchen is silent except for the crackle of the dying fire and the sound of his harsh, uneven breathing.

"You're sure?"

He's never been less sure of anything in his life. "Yes."

You stare at him for a moment longer before your lips, some unreadable emotion passing behind your eyes before your lips curl into a disbelieving smile. Before Qifrey can ask what that means, your fingers curl into the slightly damp hair at his nape, before you're pushing him forward again—more gently than he expects—until his cheek meets the table once more.

"Don't move," you say. He doesn't think he could, even if he tried.

And then you start fucking him in earnest.

The first hard thrust punches the breath from his lungs, his glasses clattering from his face onto the table. The second make him cry out—a wrecked, strangled sound that has him immediately cramming his own hand over his mouth in his attempts to muffle it. The hand on the back of his neck keeps him pinned even as he writhes beneath you, toes curling, bare feet lifting helplessly off the kitchen floor as you drive into him again and again.

The reality isn't as simple or easy as the fantasy; the pain steals his breath, but even that is pleasurable somehow, one sensation bleeding into the other until he cannot tell where the former ends and the latter begins. You fuck him like you've been waiting years for this—like every choice in your life was leading you to this moment—to him, bent over this table and falling apart beneath you. And Qifrey can't do anything but take it, his hands splayed flat on the table, cheek pressed against the wood where he can still smell the ghost of morning tea, the faint trace of herbs and ink, the memory of a thousand breakfasts shared across its surface.

"Please," he hears himself moan into his own hand. He doesn't know what he's begging for. "Please, please, please—"

"Shh." Your grip on his neck tights, thrusts not slowing in the least. "I'll give you everything, Master. Everything."

He comes. Qifrey's whole body arches, contorting violently beneath you—too much, too much—a mangled sound that could be a gasp or a sob or your name or all of them at once tearing itself from his mouth. He can feel you in his stomach, in the back of his throat, everywhere—and then he is tumbling off the edge, shattering into a thousand pieces. The pleasure is white-hot, blinding, and he wraps his own shaking hand around his cock, shuddering as he spills over his fingers, the last waves of his orgasm rolling through him.

He returns to the feeling of your lips all over his face—his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, his chin—kissing away tears he hadn't even realised were falling. You whisper praise every spot your mouth lands, words falling on him like a warm rain he doesn't mind being caught in, and Qifrey curls into you, blindly seeking out your lips with a desperation that has nothing to do with lust. You seem to realise what he's looking for before he has to say it, and you catch his mouth with yours, kissing him so softly it almost undoes him all over again.

His breath begins to even out, slowing to a steady rhythm. There is something about your arms around him, the warmth and weight of you still pressed against his back, that makes Qifrey feel more drowsy and sated than he has been in months. He's about to let his good eye close, eyelids suddenly heavy, when he feels you shift inside of him.

A weak moan slips past his lips. You are still hard inside him, he realises with a start. You didn't come.

He glances back at you over his shoulder in alarm to see you smiling. That familiar, infuriating, dangerous smile.

"Did you think we were done yet, Master?"

By the time the fire has burned down to embers, Qifrey stops being able to think in words. There are only sounds now—broken, breathless things that spill from his lips without permission, muffled into his own fist. He is barely even standing; his legs gave out at some indiscernible point, and you had barely paused to laugh and wrap your arm around his waist, pulling him back against your chest before your cock resumed fucking into him. He's long since passed the point of pleasure, slipping into some indistinct place—where all sensation seems to blur together, and the only thing that seems to remain is you, your breath in his ear, your body moving against his in the dark.

And yet, somehow, you still have not come. Qifrey suspects magic, some kind of body alteration spell keeping you hard and full, driving him to the edge of insanity. It should be too much. But something in him still craves more—wants to feel you spill deep inside him, your warmth marking him somewhere that no one will ever see or know.

"One more," you murmur against his shoulder. You're unbearably warm, breath hot on his skin, slick with sweat. "I think Master has one more in him."

You said that earlier, too. He doesn't. He can't. Qifrey has already give you everything—twice, thrice, he's lost count—and his cock is soft now, twitching uselessly against his thigh with each thrust. But something is building low in his belly again anyway, a pressure that has nothing to do with hardness and everything to do with the way you fill him up. Your hand splays across his stomach, as if you're trying to feel yourself from the outside.

"I can't," he hears himself beg, in a garbled, wrecked voice he doesn't recognise as his own. "Please, I can't—"

"You can." Your arm tightens around his waist, thrusts deepening to something almost cruel in the way each one drags against him. Stars burst behind his closed eyelids. "You can, Master. For me."

Qifrey sobs. An actual sob—broken and desperate—even as his fingers claw at the table and his legs tremble with the effort of staying upright. His hips push back against you of their own accord and you groan in appreciation, rolling your own into him with a deliberate precision that makes his vision blur.

And then he hears it.

A creak upstairs. He recognises where instinctively, without thinking—the floorboards outside one of the bedrooms upstairs. His entire body seizes, eye flying open.

My apprentices. The thought turns over in the confines of his lust-addled mind, just enough to partially drag him out of the fog clinging on to every other rational thought. Sleeping upstairs. If they come down and see—

"W-Wait—"

Mercifully, surprisingly, you do. Your thrusts slow to a deep, grinding motion that Qifrey suspects might be even more agonising than before, and your hand comes up to cup his cheek.

"Master?"

"My apprentices," he manages, mouth working soundlessly around the words. His throat is raw, his entire body trembling with the effort of keeping his voice hushed. "Upstairs. I heard—"

"Looks like you'll have to be quiet then."

His head snaps around at your tone, just enough to see your face over his shoulder. You don't look at all concerned by the fact that one of his apprentices might be awake upstairs. Instead you look terribly amused by the thought, your smile absolutely wicked.

Qifrey's head spins. "What are you—"

Before he can finish that sentence, you move again—a slow, shallow roll of your hips that has your length grinding into that spot in him—and Qifrey's words dissolve into a choked gasp that he barely manages to smother into the crook of his arm.

"Stop," he hisses, alarmed. "They'll hear—"

"Then don't let them hear." you do it again, your cock dragging against his sensitive walls, sending sparks racing up his spine. Qifrey bites down on his own tongue in desperation. "I'm not going to stop."

You're merciless. You sink into him with deep strokes, thrusts that pull nearly all the way out before shoving back in, as if deliberately trying to make him cry out. It's like you want him to get caught. He bites down on his bottom lip so hard he tastes blood.

"Ah, ah." Your fingers find his mouth, gently tugging it from between his teeth in stark contrast to the relentless way you're fucking him. Your thumb presses down on the plump flesh there, soothing the sting. "That's mine to bite."

Qifrey pants. The floorboards creak again, louder this time, followed by the sound of light footsteps. Agott. That's Agott's room. She's been working hard on mastering a light spell this week, staying up late to practice her sigils by candlelight even when he'd told her to get some sleep. If she walks into the kitchen and sees her master bent over the table, being taken from behind by a fugitive—

His body clamps down on the cock inside him at the thought, much to Qifrey's horror. He drops his forehead against the wood, praying desperately that you don't notice.

"Oh?" Your thrusts turn slow and shallow in a way that makes him whine, your voice almost purring in amusement. "Does Master actually like the thought of being caught? Of being seen like this?"

"N-no—"

You roll your hips again, slow and deliberate, and the sound that tears out of him barely sounds human. He shoves his wrist between his teeth, biting down hard to muffle the whimper that threatens to escape. The upper floor creaks again. And his body betrays him—clenching, embarrasingly tight around the hard, throbbing length buried inside him—as if trying to beg you to stay.

"You're not very truthful, are you, Master?" Your hand slides around his hip, palm flat against his lower stomach, fingers splaying across the sensitive skin just above where you're buried inside him. He shudders. You lean over him until your lips are at his ear. "Luckily, I think I know how to make you honest."

You resume your earlier rhythm, but now each snap of your hips seems intent on driving him past silence, every last scrap of restraint he has left. It is all he can do to muffle the sounds escaping him, his teeth sinking so deep into his own forearm he thinks he might break skin. But perhaps all his efforts are pointless anyway—Qifrey is suddenly, horrifyingly aware of aware of every obscene sound his body is making: the wet squelch of his body sucking you in greedily each time you sink into him, the slap of your hips meeting his ass, his own ragged breaths in tandem with your quiet exhales as you drive your cock into him deeper, pleasure filling him like rain flooding a river, banks overrunning.

He is close. Too close. He can feel it building again—pressure low in his belly, tingling at the base of his spine—and he tries to hold back, knowing someone will hear.

But then you shift. Your hips press flush against his ass, and his vision blurs.

He comes with a cry that is far too loud, knees buckling like an elm tree in a storm. His hands slip on the table. His body convulses—once, twice, three times—and then he's flinching, sobbing into his own hand as he falls apart.

You don't stop. Your hand slides around his hip and finds his cock, half-hard and neglected, head weeping, and your fingers wrap around his length before stroking him hard and fast, in time with each thrust of your hips. Qifrey chokes, body jerking. He's still caught in the throes of his current orgasm, desperately sensitive, and the you're dragging him straight into another. He comes again with a bitten wail that sounds more animal than human, cum spurting weakly across the rumpled tablecloth in white, pulsing ribbons, vision going dark at the edges.

"Master," he hears you whisper, as though in awe. The raw, wrecked quality of your voice is enough to make his entire body tremble. "Master."

Your hips shove against him, as if you want to bury yourself inside him forever, to stay in the tight heat of his body until nothing else exists outside this moment—and then Qifrey feels you come with a low sigh that feels like relief, your warmth filling him. Somehow, impossibly, he comes again, his spent body clenching weakly around you, milking you for everything you have to give. The hand that had been gripping his hair gentles, fingers carding through the sweat soaked strands as though he is someone precious, someone loved.

He closes his eye.

The two of you stay like that for a while longer, until you sigh agains tthe damp curve of his neck and finally take a step back. Your cock slides out of him, leaving him suddenly, painfully empty, and Qifrey's knees instantly buckle beneath him. He would have crumpled straight to the floor if you hadn't caught him—arms wrapping around his waist, your laughter warm and slightly breathless against his shoulder.

"Careful, Master," you tease. "Can't have you falling for a Brimmed Hat, now."

Qifrey wants to say something biting, or something clever, at least—remind you just who was the master and who was the apprentice, reclaim some fragments of his shattered dignity. But then you're lifting him—arms hooked under his knees, pulling his legs around his waist—before you're carrying him through the dark atelier with the easy familiarity of someone who knows it by heart. Past the cold fireplace, the stairs that lead to the apprentices' bedrooms, to the small chamber he uses for his own.

When had you become so strong?

You step inside with an easy familiarity, as if you still belong here—as if you never left. As if it's just another night, just the two of you in this atelier, and you've had a bad dream again, climbing into your master's bed in search of his comfort.

You set him down on the bed with careful hands, the mattress creaking slightly under his weight. The sheets are cool against his heated skin. Qifrey watches, dazed, as you turn down the lamp on his bedside table to a dim glow, and crawl in after him—your hat discarded somewhere in the kitchen, still fully clothed while he lies completely bare beneath you. As though he was the only one who'd been taken apart—moaning shamelessly like a brothel whore as his apprentices slept upstairs—

He sits up in alarm, his forehead nearly knocking into yours. His apprentices. He'd completely forgotten—the creaking floorboards, the footsteps. Qifrey should be angry. Furious, even, at how you ignored him and kept going. Maybe he is. Or he wants to be. But he can't tell—not when every nerve in his body is still singing your name, his thighs trembling, your spend still leaking from his ruined hole and onto the sheets beneath him.

"Master?" You're looking at him with something like concern, your brow furrowed. He should kick you out of his bed, go upstairs and figure out if his apprentices heard anything. He doesn't.

"You are insane," is all Qifrey manages instead. His voice is hoarse.

You tilt your head form where you're fluffing up a pillow next to him, looking mildly perplexed for a moment. And then you smile—bright, wide and utterly unrepentant—in a way he is starting to realise he's unable to hate.

"Pointed Hats are really so innocent," you giggle—actually giggle—swooping in to press a kiss to his cheek. Your hand slips into the pocket of your robes and retrieves a familiar object: a palm quire, sitting in your outstretched hand. Qifrey recognises the sigil for wind in the center, but not the keystones around it. "A sound manipulation spell, Master. I thought it might liven things up for you."

Qifrey stares at you. The creaking floorboards, the footsteps above him in Agott's room—so this was all it had been? He remembers the way he'd tried so desperately to stay silent, the fear of being caught, the shame of realising how much the thought of being seen had only made him more sensitive, more responsive—how you'd used it to drag orgasm after orgasm outof him until he couldn't think straight.

"You—"

"I wanted to hear you, Master." You smile, burying your face in his thigh, nuzzling there like some overgrown cat. "Don't worry—I wouldn't let anyone hear any of those precious sounds you make. The spell blocks out all noise too. I worked very hard on it."

He looks at you in disbelief. Your smile widens.

"Are you proud of me, Master—"

He smacks you.

"Ah—ow? Master?"

He hits you again—on your arm, your shoulder, your chest. Open-handed, palm stinging pleasantly, nowhere near hard enough to truly hurt.

"You're so terrible," Qifrey hisses between swats. "You—I can't believe—you manipulated me—"

"Ow. Ow, ouch, ow—" You duck away from his hands, but his bed is only so big, and you seem loathe to put any space at all between the two of you. You are pouting, though, and the expression is so unlike the reticent, closed-off apprentice you had once been that Qifrey's heart aches. You never used to pout, whine, or even complain. But now you are looking at him like a child who's been denied dessert, and he hates to admit it, but he likes seeing you like this. No longer holding yourself back, or suppressing every flicker of feeling behind that careful, blank mask, too afraid to want for anything.

"I was only trying to make it feel better for Master—"

"By lying to me." He whacks your shoulder, lighter this time. "I didn't teach you any of this sort of behaviour, you—"

His hand is halfway to your shoulder again when you catch his wrist. your fingers wrap around the delicate bone there, thumb pressing into his pulse, and then you're dragging Qifrey close, pulling him across the space between you until he is nearly in your lap, your faces close enough for him to feel your breath across his lips.

"Was it good for you, Master?" you ask softly. "Did you enjoy it?"

His breath catches.

"Don't call me that," he mutters.

"Master—"

"Call me Qifrey." The words come out quiet and uncertain, barely above a murmur, almost like an admission he isn't yet ready to face himself. He has to look away, fixing his gaze on some crease in the sheets at the foot of his bed, unwilling to meet your eyes. His ears are burning. "When we do such things next time. At least."

You are quiet for a long while. Qifrey glares at the sheets for a few more agonising seconds that feels like forever, wondering if you've even heard him at all, before he takes a deep breath and glances back at you—only to see you staring at him, eyes wide and lips slightly parted. A myriad of expressions flicker across your face: surprise, disbelief, affection… and something that looks dangerously like hope.

"So," you say slowly, as if you're afraid he might take it back if you speak too quickly, "Master is saying that he wants there to be a next time?"

The flickering light from his magic lamp catches the edges of your smile. Your fingers are still wrapped loosely around his wrist, as though you have no intention of letting go—not even for a second—and you're looking at him just as you once did, back when you were his apprentice, as though he'd hung the moon in the sky and handed you the stars.

Qifrey's heart throbs.

He smacks you again—more fluster than force, this time. "Are you some sort of beast?" he scolds, forcing the words out in a chastising tone that does little to hide the ache tightening in his chest. "If I had known how insatiable you were, I'd never—"

You're laughing. Actually laughing, bright and unguarded, the kind of laugh Qifrey had memorised and tucked away like precious jewels, each one saved for the quiet nights when he'd missed you the most.

"Qifrey," you say, delighted, as though testing the weight of it, the feel of it on your tongue. You speak it aloud like a secret, like his name is something you have been waiting for years to speak aloud. "Qifrey. Qifrey."

"Stop that."

"Qifrey."

"I said stop—"

You kiss him—quick and warm, the shape of your laugh pressing against his mouth before you pull back, still holding on to his wrist.

"Next time," you say. "It's a date."

He opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again.

"You're impossible."

"Not impossible," you correct, pressing his hand to the curve of your smiling cheek as if to let him feel just how happy you are. "Insatiable. For you."

Qifrey swallows. His throat suddenly feels tight.

"When do you have to go?"

You blink up at him, clearly not expecting the question. For just a moment—barely a breath—a quiet look comes over your face. Then it is gone, hidden beneath a smile.

"By sunrise."

Qifrey remains quiet for a moment. By all rights, he should let whatever transpired in his kitchen be enough. Say that he's tired, that you've had your fun and he's had his, and pretend this never happened until the next time it does—when you climb through his window and he falls into you again in the dark.

He looks down. There's a damp spot growing on the blanket between his legs, where your spend has been slowly dripping out of him. The sheets will have to be laundered, the stain washed out in the morning before any of his apprentices wake up and catch sight of it. And yet, for some reason Qifrey cannot justify or name, he loathes the idea of it.

What is wrong with you, he thinks faintly, almost despairingly. What is wrong with you…

But he moves anyway. Sits back on his heels, shuffling back slowly until he's propped against the pillows and his back is resting against the headboard. You blink up at him, unsure of what he is doing, until he bites his lips and slowly—slowly—spreads his legs.

He sees the way your lips part, eyes darkening. "Master…?"

"I said, call me Qifrey." His voice is hoarse, his face burning. But even as shame crawls up his spine, he reaches down around his knees and slowly pulls himself apart under your stare.

Your breath stops.

He can feel it—the intensity of his gaze. You're staring at his hole: sore, still twitching, pink and wet and dripping slowly. Your eyes go dark—darker than silverwood ink spilled over parchment—and his entire face feels hot. His ears, his chest, down to the very tips of his fingers holding himself open, an unmistakable invitation.

Perhaps you'd cast some sort of body alteration spell on him as well. It's unbelievable—unbelievable—that Qifrey could still want more after everything you've already done to him. And yet—

(Maybe the one who is truly insatiable, is him.)

"Put it back in me," he says.

"…Huh?"

If anything, he is satisfied by the way you've been rendered speechless instead for once. You always seem to have a ready quip, a clever remark at hand. But now, he decides that it would be best to show you without words.

Qifrey licks his lips. Gathers the cum trickling out of him on two fingers and slowly, deliberately—even as you watch—pushes it back inside.

The stretch makes his lips part on a moan. It's just two fingers—barely anything compared to what you've made him endure tonight—and the angle is awkward, but his body is sensitive now, every nerve ending raw and alive. He can feel everything: the drying stickiness of your spend, the tight clutch of his own hole, the way his loosened rim flutters around his knuckles even as a quiet, breathy whine escapes him. He doesnn't take his eyes off you.

Neither do you.

For a long moment, neither of you move. Then you are on him, pushing him down into the mattress, your weight pinning him flat. Your hands grip his wrists hard enough to bruise, eyes darker than the sky on a moonless, starless night—and it makes a shiver run up his spine. You look like a predator about to eat him alive.

Your voice is low, barely recognisable as you push his knees back. "You're going to regret saying that, Qifrey."

Qifrey lifts his chin, defiant. Tries to meet your eyes, even with his face flushed amd his body trembling, his hole clenching around nothing, begging for you.

"Do you promise?"

You smile.

A redraw of these scenes