“sorry to barge in,” you mumble, voice slightly muffled as you move around, cheek squished against one of his pillows as you stare at the artist, “was gonna go home but ended up here.”

“this is your home too y’know,” rafayel replies without missing a beat, “you eat dinner?”

you sigh softly at his question, eyes following his every movement, memorizing the way he precisely moves the brush, blank canvas slowly coming to life. “not yet,” you reply, “just wanna sleep.”

rafayel hums at your response, continuing to paint before he pauses, turning around and focusing on you. he can’t stop the fond smile that surfaces on his face, the way his eyes soften at your half lidded eyes as you gaze at him. “mm?” you hum out, your lovers smile only widens.

“my cutie is just too exhausted to move isn’t she?” he teases, setting his pallete and brush down before heading over to when you’re laying. “let me make you something, yeah? go freshen up while i cook.” the offer is too enticing to deny, nodding groggily before you lift your arms up.

“carry me?” you sheepishly ask, rafayel all but lights up. he wastes no time in scooping you in his arms, carrying you bridal style to the restroom before gingerly setting you on the counter. he turns the hot water on for you, placing a kiss to your lips before leaving you to your own devices.

there’s warm food on the table when you exit, hair still wet and body engulfed in one of rafayel’s hoodies and a pair of pajama shorts you’d left a while back.

rafayel filled the silence of dinner for you, telling you of the pieces he was working on and the new paints he’d bought recently. you listened attentively, grateful to have found someone who knew exactly what you needed and gave you that without a second thought. he didn’t push for you to talk, accepting your short answers with a smile and picking up your plate for you.

“you gonna go to bed?” he asks, watching as you trail behind him back to the living room where his painting was, you slip under the blanket on the couch silently.

“not yet, wanna watch you paint for a bit first,” you murmur, fighting a yawn back as rafayel smirks at you, cocking his head to the side and crossing his arms over his chest.

“cutie your neck is gonna hurt if you fall asleep there,” his voice has a teasing lilt, a sigh leaving his lips as you pout at him.

“not gonna fall asleep, i promise,” you smile up at him, a blatant lie. rafayel knows you’re lying, but he just shakes his head and sit in front of his painting. he moves the easel a bit, positioning himself so he could see you from the corner of his eye, stealing glances at you every so often.

ten minutes later you’re out like a light, neck positioned in an awkward position as soft snores leave your lips. your hair falls over your face and rafayel can’t help but stare. how did he get so lucky?

silently he puts his things away, wiping any stray paint on his pants before gently picking you up. “don’t make promises you can’t keep,” he whispers, carrying you to bed and tucking you in. you stir slightly when the bed dips under his weight, vision fuzzy as you see your lover.

his purple hair is messy, collarbones accentuated by the rooms shadows. you can smell his cologne as he pulls you into his chest. “go back to sleep, i’ve got you,” he whispers, a feathery kiss on your forehead makes your eyes flutter shut.

“raf?” he hums in acknowledgment, “i love you,” you mumble, already half asleep. you don’t miss the way his heartbeat spikes, the way his arms tighten around you.

“i love you so much more, cutie.”

xavier:  

the hunter twitches awake as he feels you shift in his hold, his cock effectively slipping out from your warm cunt, the residual proof from last night trickles down your thighs. the two of you had recently reunited after being on separate missions for a month. the longing only made last night especially memorable, as you only stopped when the sun was kissing the sky. 

the curtains were still drawn shut, the two of you had nothing to do today but catch up on well-deserved rest.  

his sleepy eyes look down, frowning at the way your cunt was pushing out his cum, effectively leaving a mess between your thighs. 

xavier hisses as he feels the cold air hit his cock that was slowly hardening. he looks at your back, seeing the way your chest rose in steady breaths, you were deep asleep. he shouldn’t do this. 

but, technically, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. he fell asleep with his cock inside of you; it was only right that you wake up with the same feeling, right?

with a pleased sigh, he gently coaxes your thighs apart, positioning his cock to your hole only to pause as his shaft catches his previous cum, jerking slightly at the cool feeling. he finds himself rocking his hips subtly until you shift once more in your sleep, and his cock is now trapped between your thighs.

the sudden softness catches him off guard as he lets out a quiet moan, his hand darting to your waist, keeping you there as he unconsciously. 

“fuck… star…” xavier whispers, his breath hot against your neck. 

“‘so perfect…” he continues to whisper, eyes flitting to a close as he lets himself indulge in your softness.

“y’feel so good…” 

“xavier?” he freezes, his cock twitching against your thighs as you sleepily look back at him. 

“four rounds weren’t enough?” you yawned, eyes still half-closed. xavier’s face flushed from embarrassment and flusteredness from how adorable you looked. a half pout was etched on your face as you looked away from him. 

“never getting enough of you.” he mouths at the back of your neck. “‘m so close, my star.” xavier mutters as he pulls you closer to his chest, the tip of his cock peeking from the front of your thighs. 

you whined slightly, trying to get out of his hold to no avail. 

“s’too messy, xaaav…” you trailed off, feeling the wave of sleepiness overtake you once more. xavier says nothing as he grinds once more, testing the waters. 

“i’ll clean you up, ‘promise.” xavier moans quietly as he kisses the back of your neck. you sighed softly, a hand reaching down to palm at the tip. 

xavier jerks, your cold hand providing contrast against his wet cock. 

“‘m so close…” xavier whimpers, his arms tight around you as his hips thrust to meet your palm that was massaging his leaky tip. 

“cum.” you say, already drifting back to sleep, “and don’t forget to clean me up.”

your hand still moves, albeit slower, but the change in pace was the cherry on top as xavier cums with a quiet hiss. 

he comes in spurts, his hips thrusting until the last of his high. your hand had stopped moving, you were entirely asleep. 

xavier couldn’t help but look at your stained hand, his cock twitching at the sight of it covered in his cum. 

he scoops up what he can without moving too much before he wipes it on your thighs, adding more to the combination of fresh and dried cum. 

he’ll clean you up when he wakes up, for now, he wants to wake to his masterpiece fully dried. 

zayne: 

his back was against the headboard as he shocks himself awake with his evol. he felt dirty, not because of regret for what happened between you last night, but because he woke up wanting more. 

admittedly, he knows that he was rougher than he anticipated, how couldn’t he be? you weren’t exactly a saint. hell, you knew what you were doing when you fed him liquor-infused chocolates.

the memory of your moans was loud and clear in his mind, his eyes flickered to your body that faced him, marks from him decorating the expanse of your chest, and he could only assume it looked similar on your back. 

his breath deepens slightly, his hand reaches forward to touch your sleeping face, only for his hand to recoil as if he remembers that he wasn’t allowed to touch. 

the hardening of his cock was in no way subtle as it throbs against his abdomen. zayne hisses, closing his eyes and willing it to go away.

yet, it doesn’t help. not even a little, because every time he closes his eyes, he can see the way your eyes rolled back as you screamed for more. 

and fuck, did zayne want to give you more. 

but you were deep in sleep and he’d be damned if he woke you up because he couldn’t control his erection like a teenager. you deserved to rest, he thinks. 

with a somewhat frustrated sigh, he reaches down, cringing slightly at his rough and cold hand. 

he pumps his cock with his eyes closed, trying to replicate how you do it, but he can only do so much as your hands carry softness that his couldn’t copy. he lets out a grunt, thinking that it would make him release faster. yet his mind couldn’t get over the feeling of guilt of jerking off to your sleeping body beside him. 

his body jolts, eyes widening as he feels the soft hand he tried to replicate place on top of his. 

“not like that, zaynie.” you say, voice still laced with sleep as you guided his hand to a slower pace. 

zayne felt his face burn in embarrassment. 

“how long have you been awake?” he asks, eyes flitting to a half close as your hand replaces his. 

“since you were treating my favorite toy so harshly,” you cooed, giggling slightly at the bead of pre that escaped his tip. 

“darling, i’m sorry i—” he was cut off as you leaned down, placing a small, lazy kiss on his shaft. zayne closes his eyes, mouth falling open at the sensitivity as he tries to conjure up his words. 

“i… you were asleep, and i didn’t want to wa—” “shh.” you take a hold of his hand, placing it to the middle of your thighs as you leaned closer to his sensitive body. 

zayne’s hand clasps around your thigh, pulling you closer. his cold fingers gently traced your lips, mouth slightly watering at the sight of your wetness forming. you jolt slightly yet don’t move away, focusing on your task at hand. 

“sooo hard, zaynie.” he can feel your smile on his dick as you press a wet kiss on his mushroom tip. he says nothing, focusing on fingering you. 

his face leans in to press kisses on the back of your thighs, his fingers spreading your folds apart before focusing on massaging your still sensitive clit. 

the moan that escapes your lips only prompts his hips to thrust upwards, causing you to gag. 

“darling, i’m so—” “it’s okay…” you pull off, hand replacing your lips as you looked back at him, your sleepiness now turned to full-blown lust. 

your eyes rolled back as zayne’s fingers hit that spongy part inside of you. 

“z-zayne…” you call his attention, his fingers pausing in action. 

“hm?” 

“call in sick for today.” 

his hand barely manages to reach his phone to call in before your mouth was back on his. 

the stuttering and the awkward coughing from the composed doctor made the call very believable.  

rafayel: 

last night consisted of ribbons, paint, and a canvas that is now almost fully dried. you and rafayel spent the night searching for inspiration through… untraditional methods. 

the sun rises with the lemurian, his skin stinging slightly as dried paint stretches as he does as well. the couch was cramped, yet he felt like you were still so far away from him. one of his arms was under your body as you curled up against his chest. you looked peaceful, with strokes of pink and purple decorating your cheeks; paint was scattered across your chest, and your arms were stained by rafayel’s hands, now fully dried. 

you looked claimed. his. 

his eyes darken as he scans your vulnerable form, he zeroes in on the bruises on your neck and chest, mixing in with dots of dried paint. 

he makes the mistake of looking down. 

he inhales sharply, your lower body had a fair share of his dried cum that mixed with paint whilst it was still wet. the paint was flaky, peeling off your skin like dried glue in your hands.

he found himself peeling it off your inner thighs, salivating as every fleck removed was your cunt being presented to him. 

god, he wanted to paint you yet he knew that no visual could replicate what was in front of him. no matter how talented he was, your beauty was unmatched. 

he feels himself hardening as he traces over the paint stencilled by his hand. his touch dips lower, fingers clingier as it grabs onto your breast, squeezing slightly, the arm under your body flexes to pull you flush against him, rendering you trapped against his body as his other hand holds free rein. 

“you’re so beautiful.” he whispers before he sucks a soft kiss mark onto your neck. you squirm under his grip yet don’t open your eyes, not yet.

rafayel’s hands continue his descent, his lower body grinding onto yours in a rhythm he made in his head, his lips pressing sloppy kisses on your face as he whispers words of affection onto your sleeping frame. 

“wakey-wakey, cutie.” he whispers after pressing a kiss on your earlobe. “you can’t just leave me to complete our masterpiece.” 

you groaned, body feeling warm as his hand continued to feel on your skin. 

“raf?” you questioned, voice rough with sleep. he hums in response but he doesn’t stop his actions; if anything, his thrusts only got rougher. 

you moan in surprise as his cock slips to meet your clit, dried cum adding a texture to your skin that you weren’t sure you liked. 

your arms reach to wrap around rafayel’s neck, hips grinding down to meet his uncoordinated thrusts. 

“‘m close, mon chérie” the accent slip causes goosebumps to rise on your skin as you mouth at his neck, moaning softly at the continuous stimulation. 

“r-rafayel…” you dragged out a moan, neck tilting back to expose the column of your throat. 

“just a little more, cutie.” he murmurs against your skin as the tip of his cock presses into your clit just right. your orgasm greets you in gentle waves as rafayel grinds against you through his high. 

his cum splatters against your skin in wispy streaks, reactivating the dried paint that littered onto the expanse of your stomach. rafayel grins, looking at you with mischief in his eyes.

“cutie, i have an idea.” “you are not making a new paint color with your cum as a base.” 

rafayel huffs out a laugh, breathing quickly against your now-sweaty neck. 

“you’re no fun.”

sylus: 

sylus opens his eyes, his head feeling a bit fuzzy from your little wine testing. he was not the type of man to be inebriated by one bottle of wine; however, pair it with the taste of your essence, he would be a fool not to be addicted. 

he finds himself licking his dry lips at the memory from last night, his bleary eyes were scanning your frame, your body was covered, sure, if you could even call it that. the only thing preserving your decency was your silk, maroon, nightgown that matched his robe, or used to match his robe, as it could barely be called a nightgown. 

sylus bites his lips subtly, remembering the way his hands grasped at the flimsy fabric, ripping it with ease to feel your skin, but not enough to remove it from you. his cock twitched underneath his robe, demanding attention. 

he ignores it, for now. 

he runs his hand against your skin, smirking slightly at the slightly sticky feeling that clung to his touch. the wine.

the wine the two of you shared last night was decadent, smooth, the way you forewent wine glasses and used your bodies as replacements was just as seamless as the two of you took turns in using one’s body. 

and it seemed like sylus has not done a good job at cleaning you up. 

his tongue peeks out, tracing slightly against your neck, he bites back a pleased rumble at the taste of your skin. 

he ventures further down until he finds himself in front of your cunt. 

his mouth waters as he tests the waters, placing a kiss on your inner thighs. his piercing eyes look at your face, which was still unguarded. he repeats it, suckling a small mark this time. your brows twitch, hand coming down to unconsciously swat away what you assumed was a bug. 

a very big bug. 

sylus chuckles against your skin as he plants both his hands on your thighs, spreading them open, exposing you to him. 

his tongue teases your clit, circling the bud before he closes in, mouth gently suckling as if massaging it. 

your body was generous, responding by twitching when a particularly sensitive area gets licked. 

sylus feels like he’s on cloud nine. this was the perfect cure for his hangover. his eyes flit close, basking in your scent as his hips grind on the bed, mindlessly. 

he opens his eyes when your thighs twitch against his hold, and you jerk as if you were trying to get away from him. you looked at him with confusion before clarity took over. 

your hands snake its way on his hair, a moan escapes his lips, eyes widening at the pain, and if you looked closer, it looked like his pupils had formed into hearts as he relentlessly ate you out. 

“‘s’too early, no, sy?” you say yet made no move to get away, if anything, you slowly closed his face between your thighs. 

“you taste far better than any ripe fruit.” sylus says, words vibrating against your clit, you bite your lip, a smirk on your face. 

“are you getting off to this?” you knew the answer, sylus’s thrusts against the mattress wasn’t subtle, but you couldn’t help but tease him as you bucked your hips against his nose. 

a startled moan escapes your lips, to which sylus revels in. he amps his antics, sneaking two fingers in your already twitching hole, pumping at a sporadic pace. 

your back arches against the bed as you feel yourself squirting against his tongue. your breaths quickening as you peeled his head away from your sensitive cunt. 

sylus’ face was red, his breathing was just as deep, if not more. 

“sylus… did you come just from eating me out?” 

“sweetie, feeling you reach your zenith is enough to trigger mine. you should know this.” sylus says as he pulls away from your thighs, leaning up to cage you between his arms, his cock pressing against your stomach, slightly wet. 

“unless you’d like more proof?” 

caleb: 

caleb needs to hide his clothes for when you visit. 

it’s like you knew that him seeing your frame be dwarfed by his colonel uniform was enough to make him go insane. he’s already placed a request for an extra uniform, seeing as his current one was stained beyond ruin; not even bleach can erase the trauma that fabric endured. 

he was only satiated once you passed out from your fifth orgasm for the night; he fell asleep after, holding you close. 

he wakes up when he senses that it has been a while since you lay in his arms, his sunset eyes open to a squint, hand reaching towards your frame, only to stop once he feels his shirt draped on your body. 

it seems like you were cold for the night and stood up to retrieve his shirt. 

it seems like you don’t learn your lesson.

and

it seems like caleb was ready to teach you once more. 

it was almost comedic how the mere sight of you wearing his tank top was enough for his cock to harden against the blanket. 

caleb latches onto your neck, biting softly against your bruised skin, wanting to deepen its purplish hue. 

a sloppy smack against his arm sobers him up immediately, he pulls away, fearing that he might’ve crossed a boundary. 

“what’s wrong, pips?” caleb asks, turning you to face him, your back was planted on the bed and his arms caged you in. “do you not want to?”

you huffed out a scoff, turning your head to the side. 

“you were too rough last night, dummy!” caleb stops his lips from twitching. 

“is that so?” caleb asks as he leans down to place soft kisses on your bruised skin. 

“mm! you were mean, caleb.” caleb chuckles against your skin. 

“what if i be gentle, hm? would my pipsqueak let me?” he whispers, lips trailing to your neck. 

“but caaaleeb.” you whined. “‘m too sleepy.” 

“that’s okay, pipsqueak. leave it to me.” caleb says as he lulls you back to sleep, his cock poking at your sensitive hole as your breathing evened out. 

true to his word, caleb kept his pace gentle, not wanting to batter up your insides more than he already has.

he finds your sleepy figure grinding against him, he huffs out a chuckle, even when you’re tired, you’d want to help him. his precious, darling, pipsqueak. 

his hips stutter against your skin, a hiss escaping his lips as you forcibly push him out. 

“wha–” caleb’s eyes opened to meet yours, a pout on your face. 

“don’t wanna clean up down there, too lazy.” caleb sneaks a hand down to continue pumping himself, not wanting his high to disappear. 

“then where do you suppose i put it, pips? it would be such a waste.” caleb coos, you rolled your eyes before you look up at him, your sleepy eyes alluring as you open your mouth, a quiet “aaah.” leaving your lips. 

caleb’s breath hitches, he takes the hint, he gets on his knees, the tip of his cum tapping onto your peeking tongue. 

you placed smooches on the areas your lips could reach. 

“fuck…” caleb whimpers. “what a good meimei i have… letting me use her body while she’s tired.” he praises you, but you can’t fight the brat inside of you. 

“gege.” you rebutt, seeing him twitch as the honorific leaves your lips. “you’re such a pervert. using me like this when i just wanna sleep.”

caleb moans out, pained. “yes, i know.” he admits. “i’m such a pervert. i know, i know. fuck.” the pace on his cock quickens and becomes erratic, filthy moans leaving his lips as his bleary eyes are trained on your sleepy face, your mouth hanging open, waiting for his cum. 

“f-fuck— pipsqueak. good meimei.” caleb cums in heavy spurts; he does his best to aim for your awaiting mouth, really, he did. but he didn’t notice that you were in the midst of yawning. he couldn’t help the stray cum that droops on the side of your lips. 

as an act of service, you take hold of his sensitive cock, tongue licking at the tip, ensuring he was clean before you let go. 

you looked at him, smacking your lips, eyes drooping to a close as you find yourself drifting. 

“thank you, gege.” 

caleb takes a cold shower right away once he ensures that you’re fully asleep. 

His gentle ministrations do wonders for your tense shoulders, but nothing for your already guilt-ridden heart. You can’t help but pepper his face with kisses, light butterfly wings beating against his soft skin. “I’ve been away for too long.” 

He purses his lips. Returns a peck. “No one holds that against you, my love.” 

He’s right, but the realization makes your heart break more. 

Sylus has said no ill word against you ever, not since you started taking overtime, not since you started falling asleep during conversations. Say it be work that beat you down, but even then the choking blame you put on yourself for not being able to balance things seizes your insides and weighs you down in the tar of your misery. 

Even your children are forced to understand— though incapable of asking why, you see it in their eyes when they watch you leave how strange it is for mama to go. How sad it is mama cannot stay. 

Before you know it, your nose is burning, and the pressure behind your eyes pushes hot tears forward. Painful comets racing down your cheeks, colliding with the quick pads of your husband’s thumb. 

“Beloved…” he murmurs. Rarely does he show pity for you, but you hear it in his tone now. “Come now.” 

“I’m just so tired...” the admission is coated in a sob; you are lucky is still intelligible nonetheless. For Sylus, he doesn’t need the clarity; he already understands. 

“I know.” He holds you tighter, buries you deeper into his embrace. A pillar in the sea, bearing of the brunt of your crashing waves. 

“I miss you.” You’re shaking. He hates it, wonders if holding on will keep you from collapsing any further. “I miss you, I miss my babies, I miss my house— I miss you.” 

He has half a mind to destroy the association. For no political or moral gain aside from taking his wife home for the rest of the week. Fully aware of how irrational it may be, but willing— oh, so willing. Just say the word. 

“I miss you too.” He says, whispered like a prayer against your skin. An accumulation of the times he’s said it before, balled up into this one now. Heavy. Aching. Painful. Raw. “I miss you so much.” 

𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 ࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ

Your husband is not in bed the next morning. 

But your bags are already in the car, your carryon is arranged, your wallet stuffed and your breakfast is warm on the table. Waiting with two little babies in their high chairs, smushing bananas in their fingers and on their cheeks. 

Their faces light up at the sight of you. Legs wiggling like wild worms in their onesies especially when you engulf them in kisses. You try to push aside the fear that they’ve grown in your absence and try to focus on the few hours you have before you have to leave again. 

“Where’s papa?” You ask your littles, brushing back their hair from their sticky round cheeks. Their eyes shining as they stare at you like you hung each star in the sky by hand. And maybe that’s what you do, they think, when you’re off to work. 

“Papa nana.” Lucian tells you, offering you a piece pureed by his own hand. “Papa nana. Mm nummy!” 

“Papa… went out to get more bananas?” You deduce, taking your thumb and wiping the corners of his familiar upturned smirk. 

“Papa went to chop more bananas.” Corrects said papa from behind, circling around the kitchen island to get to you. The plate of chopped fruit is placed before you and the original owner of the smirk presses his lips to your hair. “Good morning.” 

His voice pleasantly reminds you of the night before, how his comforting words accompanied by his tender actions guided you through the storm of your distress and docked you safely and blissfully to shore. 

Heat crawls up your neck and stains your cheeks before he can even notice. 

He does anyway, of course. He kisses you a few times more before asking you to sit and eat. 

Lucian continues to offer you bananas. Kyros shows you how he can now count to three. You gather that the big twins have taught them a song, which they sing for you in their own glorious key. 

Each bite of your breakfast felt like a march to the end of the road. And to your disappointment, the food is finished and Kyros has to go potty. 

So you change him. You rarely do nowadays, and after breakfast, it’s the least you can do. You don’t mind, you like taking the time to talk to him— his speech quietly emerging at this age in clumsy popcorn imitations and patchwork grammar. He surprises you this time with it, while you’re busy fastening his diaper down, he asks. “Mama go bye?” 

And how your heart breaks. 

“Mama… has to go for a few days,” you admit regretfully. 

“No, mama,” he frowns, bottom lip jutted out and wobbling. Already fearing the ache of your absence, the disappointment of waddling into a room and seeing you aren’t there. That much he understands, that much he abhors. 

He demands. “Mama home.”

“Just a few days, my angel.” you don’t lie, but you feel as though you are. Like it doesn’t matter what you say. To him, it’s happened one time too many that he’s resorted to begging you to stay. “And then— and then I’ll be back.” 

“No!” He squeaks, perching himself up on his knees. The fabric of your shirt twist through his little fingers. “No, pease! Mama!” 

A bitterness coats your tongue and panic rises in your chest. Already you curse what work has whittled you down to, how it has dulled the edges of your solid conviction and diluted the line between recognizing want and need in your children. 

With weakened knees, you cannot find it in yourself to de-escalate your son’s emotions— offer an explanation, an alternative. None of that come to light, except— 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” you whimper into his silver hair. Seeming darker and lacking its natural luster now. “Mama’s here.” 

“No! No!” Kyros wails, already too lost in his sadness to hear your placating whispers. So seldomly does he throw his tantrums that you are at a loss with what to do, which makes you feel worse. 

You have little time to panic before Sylus enters and offers his help. With tears in your eyes, you hand him the wailing Kyros and wrap your arms tightly around yourself. Attempting to shrink, to hold fast and keep it together. None of it is easy. 

“Come here.” Says Sylus amidst him shushing the toddler, pulling you to his side too and tucking you under his arm. Adding another layer of bindings around your fracturing self. “It’s okay.” 

In his other arm, Kyros is curled in on his bicep like a koala, Sylus’s hand wrapped securely on the back of his skull. Teeth chattering and chest bubbling with hiccups that make you worry for his breathing. 

Sylus is both your tethers to this world as you threaten to collapse into the cosmos.

Once the tension dies down, Kyros demands to be returned to you, quietly burying himself in your arms. Hoping maybe the weight of him will anchor you down within the walls of the house. You regulate yourself by holding him close and murmuring in his hair. Counting, just as he showed you at the table, each breath together as your frustrations fade in the current. 

“Mama will be back, okay?” it’s a relief when he nods without protest, though the dip in his brow and the sinking corners of his mouth tell you enough of what he truly feels. 

They drive you to the airport. You sit between two carseats in the back, a pillowy fist wrapped around each of your ring fingers. Kyros continues to sniffle at you with watery eyes while Lucian names the different charms on your bracelet, saying “eat?” to ones that look like food. The way you sing no! makes him smile. 

There is little fuss when the car stops and Sylus unloads your bags. Kyros doesn’t cry anymore, but Lucian whines at the loss of your hand on his belly. With a kiss each, you bid them a bitter goodbye before slipping out and into Sylus’s arms for a quick embrace. 

Tara and Simone wait by the entrance, waving at you to hurry. You have half a mind to pretend like you don’t see them. Maybe slink back to the car, to your boys. Maybe even take the wheel and drive away yourself. 

“Onychinus will give you paid time off,” Sylus’s lips press into your temple where you feel him smile. He sees the dimness in your gaze when you look up and he kisses your fluttering lashes. The weight of an object is placed in your grip— a mysterious red paper bag stapled shut at the top. “We value our employees families and personal lives, after all.” 

That pulls a smile out of you, however faint it is, it’s success enough for him. “Consider it?”

“I will.” you say, accepting another kiss before parting ways once more.

You escape the tearful goodbye, or so you think. Tara just had to ask about the bag you received from your husband, curiosity getting the best of her. The bag goes pop! pop! as you pull against the staples.

You’re crying before you even realize it when she helps you take out the circular plushies from the bag— one red, one orange— “Tomatoes?” 

You nod, a melting monster of snot and tears, as you reach for them and cradle them close. 

Tara comforts with gentle understanding as the plane takes off. She wonders why you’re sobbing about Onychinus into your plushies, but chalks it up to the stress of the recent missions. Good on you to be focused despite everything else, she supposes. 

𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 ࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ

Sylus has no trouble cheering up his two sad sons. 

He likes to take pride in the fact that he is now an expert in detecting their current state of emotions and helping them feel what they ought to feel. Right now, the clear answer to their sadness is obviously— 

“Ey-pane!” shrieks Lucian on his arm, pointing at the aircraft they walk towards. “Ey-pane! Big ey-pane!” 

Kyros has his face hidden from the sun in Sylus’s chest and his ears covered with both hands, but he peeks ever so slightly to see what his brother is so excited about. Once he gets it, he moves to more important things. “Papa, hooot!” 

“I know, I know,” chuckles Sylus, ascending the stairs to the jet faster to get his whiny little dragons out of the sunshine. 

Once set down, they are like tiny chicks in search for something to peck at. Pressing buttons on seats, poking screens and searching for in-flight sandwiches, their little giggles filling the cabin. 

Sylus knocks on the captains’ quarters and like a magic trick out pop the big twins. Their usual dark uniforms now replaced with big floral shirts over white tank tops and shorts. 

The littles are reduced to quick, excited wheezy breaths as Luke bends down to scoop them up in his embrace. They start to chatter about in-flight cheese sandwiches so Sylus is able to escape to the helm and take his seat in the pilot’s chair.

“Does boss’ma know you’re doing this?” Kieran asks between preflight check offs. 

Sylus didn’t often smile before his the little ones, even now Kieran is thrown off by the wolfish grin that graces his father’s face—both fearsome and, if even possible, endearing. “Don’t people expect gifts for Valentine’s Day?” 

— 

You’re sure they’ve done more for you than this. 

But you’re inclined to think that after lending your years to the association fighting off monsters and being Linkon’s vigilant protector has only gained you a seat in the most boring and unnecessary conference about new age weaponry your husband probably has surpassed in improvements with his own technology by months. 

Your colleagues are just as bored as you, despite having no same sentiments, so they do little to judge your grumpy disposition and lack of enthusiasm regarding such groundbreaking work. 

Tara yawns on her seat beside you, leaning forward on the table and resting her head on her palm. “Thought we were at least going to test these things out if they wanted us all the way out here.” 

You let out a noncommittal sound from your throat, between a groan and a grunt, that serves as your whole response, which Tara agrees with emitting a sound similar to your own. 

Mercy is rationed in this conference, granted in breaks few and far between they feel accidental.

It is no balm to the irritated ego that it is set within the multipurpose-hall of a luxurious hotel— the inside is a sin of round tables with too-hard chairs doused in dull office white lights to keep the meeting straightforward and formal— pressed up against a golden shoreline and glistening waves that belonged to an entirely different world completely. 

Standing on the balcony of your double suite, the sun thaws away the chill that has crawled onto your skin and into your bones when you sat there motionless listening to protocol synthesis and evol-weapon synchronization. The crick in your neck becomes unbearable the more you think about it. 

The seaside view paints you a scene below of the beach moving in its unhurried pace. Of couples resting beneath the shade of comically large umbrellas, of children running with kites and buckets along the sand and into the water, of people with restful limbs and quiet minds enjoying the weekend with the people they love. 

The sun burns now, actually. Sweat builds on your forehead and temples, sticky and wrong. There is a heat that presses and weighs down in your chest despite the beauty of what you see. You are in desperate need of respite.

Sylus’s number rings thrice before he picks up the phone. 

“Sweetie?” 

“Hi, I just called to check in.” You say, voice pitched uncharacteristically higher. Masquerading a joyful tone. “How are the kids?” 

“They’re alright,” says Sylus. He doesn’t miss a beat when he asks, “Are you?” 

You shouldn’t be surprised that you are practically a picture book to him laid bare no matter how hard you try. “I’m fine.”

“Mm.” 

“Just… tired,” you confess. It hasn’t even been a day and you feel like you’ve spent a week’s worth of energy. 

From this morning to now, finally being able to admit it to someone else, you feel the entire weight of it all crash onto your shoulders— harsh, distant, relentless as the surf. “It’s all so boring.”

Sylus chuckles, the sound crinkles slightly on the line. “What can I do to make you feel better?” 

You hum. “Any suggestions?” 

“An airstrike?” 

You sputter. “No!” 

His laugh is rich and refreshing. “Something smaller then? I can pull the fire alarm.” 

It is you now who laughs, making your way back into the cool air conditioned embrace of your room. Too preoccupied to slide the door closed, the warm breeze follows you in. Cushions and quilts catch your indecision as you lie back on the bed, your two tomatoes roll mindlessly to your side. “Then all my things would be wet.” 

“Then how about a drink?” 

Knock, knock, knock. 

“Sylus…” you hang off the side of the bed like you’ve been swallowed by it, scrambling excitedly to get up. It’s all too timed, too planned to be anything of a coincidence. Knowing your husband, he is very good with set-up, and is the very best with executions. 

His warnings fly over your head in the haze of excitement as you throw your door open. And you almost fall into the arms of your guest. 

But instead, you blink at the Tara holding two yellow drinks in his hand. Glasses sweating, ice dripping over fingers. She tilts her head at you in amusement. “Someone sent drinks up to our room!” 

Your shoulders shake when you chuckle in embarrassment, making way for her to come in and picking up your phone from the ground. It says, “Courtesy of Onychinus.” 

“Bastard.” You murmur back. 

He grins on the other side. Unbeknownst to you, he is just sliding his keycard into the chaos of his own lodging, your four children having thought it fun to play catch the bird indoors. 

He doesn’t give you time to hear before he’s rushing to say, “I love you. I’ll have someone pull the fire alarm soon.” 

You’re thankful for Tara’s presence to lighten up the disappointment you feel in your gut when you sit with her and enjoy your complimentary drinks. He’s made sure to order your favorite, sweet and refreshingly perfect of a summer’s day. 

And at the bottom, embedded in the glass, it reads: Happy Valentine’s Day.

 𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 ࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ

You aren’t suffering, per se, but you do want to peel the drapery apart in the function room and jump out the window by day two. 

The way you passed out last night should be studied. You aren’t sure which exhausted you more, the travel over or having to upkeep the sheer will to live in the conference. Waking up to missed calls from your family on your phone only made you feel worse. 

You didn’t expect things to turn around just before lunch. They’d said— the speaker had an urgent call from their research facility. Details can’t be disclosed right now, so we’ll have to postpone the conference. 

Chairs scraped. The hall echoes idle mumbles bursting slowly into subtly relieved chatter. The empty stage suddenly felt so alluring you could get up and dance on it. 

Home. You were going home. 

The doors to your bedroom seemed to morph into the gates of heaven. Inside you’ll be able to pack, book an early flight and get out of he— 

Your heart drops. At the sight of the empty hotel room, you can’t help but cry out. Because where— where are your things?! 

Tara’s are in her corner, untouched, you realize when your scramble around pathetically. Losing all sense. Crawling on all fours on the carpet, checking each crevice and closet they could possibly be in— “Shit! Are you kidding me?” 

Your ears ring, your head is spinning. What do you mean— your passport, your wallet, your shoes, your books and clothes— they’re all missing? That you were robbed in broad daylight? That there is yet another thing keeping you from going home? 

It’s a wonder you do not scream when you reach for the phone. It clatters on its outdated plastic holder and dials up the front desk. 

“S—“ 

“This is room M18, I’d like to report a theft. My bags, my valuables are all missing, and—and my passport, too. I hope this is all just a misunderstanding, I’ll be willing to cooperate in anyway that I can, but can you please, please just get here as soon as you can. I—“ your breath catches in your throat, and you get a grip of your slipping resolve. “Please, I need to go home.” 

The world— oh, it has a vendetta against you. You can’t quite figure just what you’ve done so absolutely horrendous that would warrant such cruelty. 

But there you are, flinching as the loud alarm blares from the hallway, drowning out the sound of the hotel’s response. Screams and thundering footsteps collide in the halls as people try to evacuate as quickly as possible. 

The sprinklers go off. 

Your hair is wet. The bed is now too. 

But you can’t find it in yourself to hang up— let alone run. 

“You should really evacuate, sweetie. Doesn’t the association teach you that much?”

Your eyes search for him before your brain even registers where his voice came from. In your hand, the phone stays on the line, and Sylus speaks to you again. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, and I thought the Hunter’s Association prides itself on urgency?” 

The balcony door slides open. 

Sylus steps into the room before you in all his materialized glory. 

Taking captive each thought and drawing it to himself. 

The water bounces off his clothes like there is an opposing force engulfing him, one that he extends to you when he reaches for your hand. “Beloved.” 

Later. You’ll be mad at him later. You promise yourself that when you run to him and jump into his awaiting embrace. He buries his face in the crook of your neck and breathes in your scent. As if what separated you was as great as a war and here he is promising you victory. 

“I hate you.” You murmur into his chest, nuzzling and charging up on his presence. 

He chuckles deeply, placing a gentle kiss on your forehead. “Happy Valentine’s Day.” 

𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 ࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ

Sylus listens to Tara on the phone with you as you drive away from the hotel, your hand grasped firmly in his as he plays with your wedding band. 

“Jenna says they’re moving the rest of the convention to another time since the function hall is all wet— but between you and me, thank goodness for that.” she whispers. “Apparently, the research issue was resolved and we were supposed to resume in the afternoon only if some kid hadn’t pulled the fire alarm. Honestly? Purr.”

Sylus snickers to your side and you pinch his rib.

“Anyway, I’ll see you back in Linkon! Oh, also— our bedroom was wet but none of my things are, how lucky is that?” 

You laugh and give your husband a sidelong glance. “I’ll see you in Linkon, Tara.” 

When you hang up, Sylus is the skipper receiver of your menacing glare. But it rolls off him like water off a duck. “We’re a little ways away from the beach house, you can take a nap.” 

“You’re impossible.” You deflate, shoulders dropping finally from its perpetual tension as you slide down against the passenger’s seat. 

His hand moves up to cup your jaw, thumb gliding over the plump of your cheek. He massages the joint in your mandible, sore from all the stress it’s gone through from your high-strung clenching. “I don’t take kindly to things that wedge themselves between me and my wife.” 

“Huh,” you lean into his touch. “So you weren’t okay with me being away.” 

“I never said I was.” he says, turning onto a road in the woods. His voice drops to burning wax, dripping off a candle. “If I recall correctly, I said I missed you and showed you exactly how much I—“ 

“Tsst!” you chide, flailing your arms around, hitting him on the shoulder. Your face burns hot and you’d be thankful if the floor swallowed you whole. “I get it.” 

“I don’t think you do—“ 

“I do! I do, I really do.” you bury your face in his palm, kissing its center to placate his mischief. He finds it amusing, recognizing the technique to be an imitation of Lucian’s pacifying signature. 

He’s held captive by your eyes, wide and appeasing in the afternoon light, brows swooping together to soften your giggles. He swallows down the onslaught of affection that lumps in his throat and forces himself to keep his eyes on the road as you tell him, “I love you.” 

He wonders if a detour into the trees can be arranged.

He only realizes that he’s said that out loud when you shriek at him again. “Sylus!” 

He wishes he can bottle up the laughter that bubbles out of you and bounces off the car upholstery and keep it in his glovebox forever. 

𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 ࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ

The beach house is so uncharacteristically elegant you’d think it was plucked straight from the N109 zone and planted in the middle of a private coast.

Its tinted oak walls are swallowed by the darkness as the sun dips into the horizon. The porch lights are little stars between glass windows, curtains drawn in from the inside. Concealing your second surprise within. 

You’d have more time to drink in the details if it weren’t for your husband.

Sylus has abandoned his put-together self. His natural elegance replaced with this stumbling, lovestruck fool. Walking with a stride of a newly birthed giraffe, he bends his body down towards you, chasing kisses on your lips that threaten to run away. 

“Forgive me,” he grounds out, blocking the entrance in his open reverence. His lips capture yours in another deep kiss, as if stopping in the woods wasn’t nearly enough. His hand comes around, ensnaring your waist in a sturdy hold, practically lifting you off the ground towards him. “I just…” 

I’ve missed you. You’ve been gone for too long. I no longer know what it means to breathe without you. 

And you’d have been happy to go inside, spend the entire night with him if that is what it took, but it’s the way he stretched the seconds that concern you. As if you were about to walk into an unchangeable fate. So you hold his face, kiss him back with as much fervor as you piece it together. 

His breath is warm and ragged on your lips as he allows you to speak, “The kids are here, aren’t they?” 

He beams at your cleverness, corners of his mouth stretching into a charming smile that he presses once more onto your own. “There’s always a chance that they’re asl—“

Thud! “Papaa?” 

Through the wood, a little voice calls out, almost loud enough to make the door rattle. “Home, papa?” 

Sylus squeezes his eyes shut as you fall into him, giggling at your son’s inhuman ability to sense when his father is within range. If he were a terrible father, he would not have replied. “Lucian, is that you?”

A moment to process the question.

“Yes, I Woosian!” The thundering on the door increases as the little fist upon it starts knocking. Happy to have confirmed that his intuition was correct and papa is behind the door. “Papa, in! In!” 

The white flag of defeat flies in the air for now to make way for the excited voice awaiting inside the house. He kisses the top of your head, tender as a promise, and gets the door for the both of you. 

And as expected, the shrill delight that lights up your son’s face is compares to nothing else in the world. He hops, surprised, as he screams. “Mama! Mama home!”

You bend down to catch him before he knocks a tooth off into your knees. His hair a cool breath of snow you bury your face in. The sweet smell of him is enough to put your once raging soul at rest as it flows into your lungs in steady streams of breath. “Oh, Lucian!” 

He’s still happily wriggling in your arms when you hear the rapid and heavy thud-thud-thud-thud of feet on the wooden floor. Anticipation electrifies your soul.

Soon, Kyros rounds the corner, huffing and puffing as he pumps his tiny legs fast to get to you, and you almost cry at the sight. 

“Mama,” his voice is rough when he collides with you, burying himself impossibly deep into a hug and clinging to your clothes as if you’d fade with any less force. “Mama home.” 

It dawns on you that despite not being in your own house on the outskirts of Linkon, the children still call it home— more specifically, they are calling you home. 

And it takes everything in you not to break in their small embrace. “Mama home.” 

𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 ࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ

“Oh! Hot!” Lucian squeaks with each little step. Waddling left and right like a penguin, lifting his knees high and then gently setting them down in the sand. His little fingers wrapped around your one. “Oh! Hot!” 

“Do you need a lift, angel?” You inquire. One of your steps is three for him, and you can see Sylus and the others getting smaller in the distance. 

But your little sand crab insists on walking on his own. “I okay, mama.” 

You offer him a little smile and look towards the rest of your family. Luke’s and Kieran’s now tiny silhouettes work together to spread out the blanket and open the large beach umbrella. Sylus transitions Kyros from his shoulders into his arms, turning to wave at you. 

You mirror their waves, large, swooping arcs in the sky. While Lucian keeps his eyes on his vinyl clog-clad feet, still commentating each unique step in the sand. “Oh! Hot!” 

You tilt your head a little closer to his frame, making sure the shadow of your wide hat covers him entirely, as he so vehemently rejected his own sun hat. To add on to your failed attempts at protecting his sensitive skin from the dangerous sun, he just had to insist on dressing like papa. 

You can’t help but worry. “Is your belly cold, baby?” 

Lucian pauses his waddling and glances down on his exposed tummy through his unbuttoned floral shirt. All pudge and round, he pats it gently. “It okay.” 

You nod again. Taking another two steps. At this rate, you’ll probably get to the blanket by noon. 

“Oh! Hot!” 

“Woo-siii-aan!” Kyros screams from afar, hands cupped around his mouth to amplify the sound. His voice is already small, but his pitch pinches that specific way that tells you he’s just that little bit annoyed. “Fast-ou!” 

Lucian squeaks back, “I comin’!” 

He turns back to you. “Mama, sand in my wippurs?” 

You crouch down now, pushing him to your knee so he can sit, you take one foot and shake it out. “Because there are holes in them.” 

“It broken?” He frowns, taking the shoe from you and looking into it. You giggle, finding him endlessly amusing. 

“No, angel, they’re made like that. They’re easy to clean like this.” You shake the other. He sits fully on your knee. “See? Shake, shake.” 

Once you place the clogs back on his feet, he has the realization that he doesn’t want sand coming into his broken-not-broken shoes anymore, and clings to your neck. “Mama, can carry?”

You breathe out a sigh of relief and wrap him up in your embrace as you take him up with you to a stand. They practically celebrate from afar at the sight— you spot Sylus’s head tilt back in relief too. 

Once you arrive at your picnic blanket, you set Lucian down beside his brother. Kyros sits in the cradle of Sylus’s criss-crossed legs, floating just above the earth. Not a grain of sand on his skin. 

“What a walk.” Sylus says, voice lilting in amusement, pulling you down beside him. He reaches up to swipe your forehead, wiping away sweat and strings of hair that had stuck to your cheeks. 

“You wouldn’t believe.” You huff. 

A sharp chill touches your shoulder makes you flinch. When you turn your head, Kieran is there with a wide grin, sticking an ice cold drink to your skin. You roll your eyes at him but take it anyway. 

The stretch you feel in your muscles begin in the squeeze of your shoulders, radiating down the cords of your back and arms, so tightly woven together than you are briefly concerned if you’ll be able to lean back on your palms. You settle in the position over time. 

Seagulls flit and flutter overhead, squawking a distant melody against the percussion of crashing waves. The air blows fresh, warm wind on your sun-kissed skin. Grains of sand stick to your toes and thighs. And for the first time in a long time, your breath returns to you by the lungfuls. 

There are apologies to be made at the tip of your tongue. Endless strings of sorrow and regret you think your family deserves from you, now blanketing your tired soul, even in the aftermath of the battle won. 

Sylus teases you about being a workaholic, bringing up retirement as a thoughtful alternative to the aching feet he would rub and the heavy shoulders he would kiss. 

You have more than enough to sustain you—but he never pushed. Not with that, not with Onychinus, not with anything at all. And that only fuels the fire that he deserves the most repentance of all.  

You swallow down the anxiety building in your throat because you shouldn’t be feeling this way still having passed through the light at the end of the tunnel. That it is in this betrayal that makes all your sorries null and void— to be here and not all at once. It is an implosion that wreaks havoc, and in its ashes: the harrowing thought of being a bad mother.

Sylus has a knack for that, as he’s made well aware of by your youngest son.

So when he turns to you, eyes blank as you stare at the clouds, he knows exactly where you are and the kind of stars that are imploding in your mind at that moment. He places the pin in the grenade with a single touch. 

Muffled conversations come to focus as you are tethered back, meeting his brief gaze. Soft and forgiving. So moving that now you must do anything else but think. 

You hear Sylus talking to Kyros about getting down, Lucian asking about his plastic sand toys and Kieran shuffling to get up from the blanket to join Luke in the water. 

Like clockwork, instinct leads your attention to movement. “Pause.” 

Kieran freezes midway his squat to get up. You lift your shades over your head and inspect his cheeks. “Sunscreen.”

“I already put—“

“Again,” you make no room for argument. The sunscreen is plucked from the beach bag from its place beside the plastic bucket of shovels and molds, that is handed to Lucian who immediately stops pestering his father with a little “yay!”

Kieran rivals Kyros’s poutiness and yet he slumps before you like a child. Whining with no real weight, “Why do I have to and Luke doesn’t?” 

You click your tongue, smearing the cream under his eyes and on the bridge of his nose. He shifts slightly, but you press a finger to both dips of his cheekbones. “You go tell him to come back here so he can put on another layer too.” 

Kieran huffs again and turns to Sylus for backup. “Boss—“

“You’ll listen if you know what’s good for you.” is all Sylus spares him, barely even turning to look as he continues to appeal to a different toddler. 

“Kier, it’s not that bad.”

“But it gets all streaky,” his voice drops to a murmur. “And I don’t need your help. It’s embarrassing…” 

“To who?” your voice pitches in amusement. You turn his chin to the rest of the beach, emptiness stretching for miles you wonder if the beach house is the only property Sylus bought. Shaking your head in exasperation you swipe the final line of sunscreen over the tips of his ears. “Besides, you have the streaks because you don’t put it on right.” 

Your fingers skim over his scars more gently than the rest of his skin. Smoothening over them with feather-like force, without needing his instruction.

Kieran sits there for a moment, eyes closed and body rigid. Processing the emotions running through his body like a toddler. Feeling… new. He’s never had to put sunscreen on in the N109 zone, let alone having someone else do it for him with the intention of care. Of knowing.  

Secretly, he likes it. Sure, of course he does. 

He doesn’t remember much of his mother, nor has he really tried. Both he and his brother were raised to be weapons with no time to mourn what they do not know of. So when you act this way… kind, concerned, caring, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

But he swallows it all anyway, pushing past the difficult angst that has built up in his throat and makes his voice crack like a teenager’s. “Okay, okay— can I go?” 

You beam at the state of him: head immobilized, eyes straining to the side, watching Luke hoot and holler as he does donuts on the jet ski. 

Blissfully unaware of the turning tides within him as you think, who would have ever thought he had the capacity to match your two and a half year old with his behavior? 

“Call Luke!” is as much as you get out before he’s bolting off to the call of the sea.

Turning to Sylus, you point to Kieran incredulously. “Did you see all of that?”

He hums. Sylus seems to be seeing through more than one person today. He’s terribly intrigued by the fires being lit and put out all in one breath in his family’s minds, transparent on their faces. 

Meanwhile, he’s been catering to a little kitten up a tree who doesn’t seem to want to be saved.

“Mm, he’s stubborn.” Sylus groans, straightening his back. A sigh deep from the cave of his chest deflates him as he pokes on his cranky toddler’s cheek. “Like this one.”

“Not! Not ‘tubon!” Kyros harrumphs, kicking his little legs out to the sides. Careful not to come in contact with the ground. 

“Oh?” Being preoccupied with Kieran, you hadn’t even noticed your husband participating in a silent argument with your son. “What’s the matter here?” 

“He—“ Sylus pinches Kyros’s cheek. His hand is promptly swatted away. “—doesn’t want to get dirty.” 

“What, the sand?” 

“Icky yuck!” Kyros gags, turning his head away from you and crowding himself closer to Sylus’s torso.

“Oh, Kyros, but look at Lucian,” you try, glancing at his twin brother who was having the time of his life digging a shallow hole between his legs. Simultaneously taking away and filling the void up again with a tiny mountain. The joy isn’t in progress, you suppose. “He’s digging a hole!”

“Makin’ cake!” he corrects, muffled.

Chewing.

“He’s making a ca—oh no!”

“Lucian,” Sylus titters, light and charming, leaning forward to dust away the sand on his cheeks, while you ask him to spit the sand he ingested out into your cupped palm. 

“Blegh! Not cake!” Lucian sputters. 

Kyros’s petulant rejection transforms into a boisterous laugh at his brother’s misery, despite reaching forward to mirror Sylus’s gentle caresses. “Ah-no! Woosian!”

You turn to rinse your hand with a bottle of water and zoom out. Seeing your boys through another lens for a moment.

Time slows. Sylus’s laugh gets louder. Lucian doesn’t understand why the sand on his cheeks get worse when he tries to wipe it clean with his sandier fingers, Kyros is giggling too at his brother’s funny misfortune and how his papa’s hiccuping belly seems to jostle him around on his seat. 

Your heart swells, aches with every second. Knowing you can never frame it or recreate it ever again. Sentimentality chokes you with flowers, and you feel your cheeks heat from more than just the sun.

This is what you had been missing out on for weeks on end. This is the seed once planted now in stages of growth. 

And right in the center oof it all is your husband, bright and sturdy and strong. Holding up the fort. Keeping you all afloat. Taking up the load you cannot bear and lifting it himself. 

And for once, you do not see your mistakes or your shortcomings. 

All you see is him. 

“Beloved, we’d like some, please.” Sylus says, pulling you out of your framing thoughts and back into the portrait itself.

You blink a few times. 

He tilts his head. 

You smile.

His fingers brush against yours when he takes the bottle from your outstretched hand. 

He pours water onto Lucian’s crusted cheeks. Round and plump treasures reveal themselves beneath the dusted surface.

Kyros helps wipe it away with the short sleeve of his shirt. Unconsciously setting his one foot on the sand to reach; his hands also already sandy themselves. You stifle a giggle. 

“All better,” Sylus announces, presenting to you Lucian’s clean cheeks glistening like butter buns in the sunlight. He can’t help but lean down to bite on them with sheathed teeth. 

Kyros does the same, traveling the short distance over the sand, leaning into the cheek with a dramatic “Om!” to his head.

“Ah!” Lucian giggles, falling over, grabbing the first thing his hands latch onto—Kyros—and bringing it down with him.

Laughter joins the chorus of birds and waves. Sung by all four in your little circle.

Kyros rolls over into the sand laughing so hard his eyes can barely open. Lucian shakes his hair out like a puppy, fueling the fires of amusement.

Your own stomach hurts from the joy.

And from the corner of your eye, you catch Sylus—waves to ripples laughter shaking his shoulders and reverent eyes coming back to you. 

He wonders how you could rival the blinding sun with your light. Wonders how you, beautiful and radiant, allowed him to have this— all of this.

Relishes the beautiful look on your face, the relaxed curve of your posture, the cant of your giggles. Knows deeply how much you needed this, how important it was for you to get away from work, to come home.

You look back. Give him a genuine smile. One that can’t help but scream how you are endlessly grateful for him and swears his heart stops. 

With the littles flopping over each other on the sand, chanting “not cake! not cake!”, rewinding the joke from the start, you take the chance to lean towards your husband and gift him a kiss.

He hums into it, and naturally dips his head to taste more of you. Never getting enough. He asks for a reason through pecks, unwilling to part for you for something so confusing and yet so trivial all at once. 

But you don’t give him one. Not verbally. Instead, you devour him like a stranded sailor would land until he says enough—if he ever will.

A disgruntled “eugh,” interrupts you and you pull away from Sylus to acknowledge the shadow that has descended upon you. Sylus groans and drops his head onto your shoulder. 

A damp Luke falls to his knees before you like a knight. He spares the little ones a loving glance before he addresses you, unable to hide the misery from his voice. 

“Kieran said I had to come here.” he grumbles, flicking his glasses off. Behind him, his twin seems to taunt him with wild roars of the speeding  jet ski as revenge. “Where’s the sunscreen?”

You watch him as he applies it haphazardly, slapping it on like war paint. Globs of white in the edges of his hairline and on his brows. “How’s it look?”

You have the decency to lie. “Fine.”

Sylus does not. “Like a clown.”

Luke scowls at him, and Sylus scowls back. He won’t let go of him interrupting you two so easily.

“Why doesn’t Kieran’s have the… the white streaky stuff?” he pouts, violently rubbing the cream onto his face like a wash rather than a cream. 

You wince, catching his wrists. “Because I put it on for him.”

He pauses. Rolls the thought in his head like a pearl for a little while, and then hands the bottle to you. “Can you?” 

“Of course,” you say and try to salvage his attempt. 

Unlike his brother, Luke talks more than he likes to think. “Did Kieran act weird about this too?” 

“I think so,” you say thoughtfully, remembering the perplexing look on this same-but-different face minutes ago. You tried not to let it get to you. 

“Mm…” Luke hums, otherwise perfectly still. You’re not sure if he thinks when he blurts, “We never had a mother.” 

As one does with the information, your fingers turn frostbitten underneath the heat of the sun. He catches on quickly to your response, eyes widening to a worrying size as he taps your knee. “Wait, sorry—I’m not finished.”

So you give him the opportunity to explain himself as you contain the sob that waits just below your heart to emerge.

“No one’s really done this kind of… thing with us.” he says. Shapes are drawn in the sand, beyond the blanket that currently contained all of you. “If there was, neither of us remember. Wiped or just simply forgotten, I don’t care.”

Lucian wanders over now, quietly, barely a whisper in the heavy tension between you two and sits in the nest of your criss-crossed legs. He doesn’t even react when you squish his face with the excess sunscreen on your hands aside from a yelp. 

Luke watches fondly. “Never thought we’d experience it, so we didn’t need it. But now…” 

“Mama…” Lucian whines now, layers of sunscreen on his cheeks and forehead. Kyros crawls onto your lap as well, squeezing himself beside Lucian as if to tune in and perhaps share the moment as well. He also gets excess sunscreen. 

Luke smiles at you, at them. His eyes shift briefly to Sylus who listens too, and to his brother in the distance.

“It’s nice, you know.” he admits, catching a stray glob of white off of the tip of Lucian’s hair. “Having someone to watch out for us, taking care of us. Having you.”

Your breath catches. 

“So thank you,” he nods, shy suddenly, after it all. He looks down, clears his throat, and throws his shades back on over his eyes. “For taking us in… me and my brother.” 

You don’t have the good graces in you to allow him dignity in the face of embarrassment when you lean over and hug him. Steady, strong. It takes a while for his wet sleeves to wrap around you, but when they do, he is loath to let go. 

And like a tidal wave, you are nearly knocked over by another force crashing into you. Showering you all in droplets and sand, the littles giggle in their little canopy as Kieran joins the hug. To his brother, he grunts, “Move!” 

And it makes you laugh. They make you laugh. Your boys, your sons. Scrambling over one another to secure a space within your bubble that now you do not mind sharing. 

Overturning the lies you have believed. Being antidotes to the poison you have swallowed all those weeks you have been away. Clearing the tunnel, being the light that shines at the end of it after guiding you through. 

Sylus places a hand on your shoulder. He catches your eye and gives you a warm smile. 

With your heart bursting, you start to believe that Onychinus does value family. 

In fact, they have become it.

𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 𓇢𓆸 ࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ

The sun shines for no one else this day but you. 

Tomorrow, you will worry about sunburns and sandy ears. Maybe a little will start sneezing, or a big will be washing their hair for the third time and still be complaining about sand. Mephisto might even have water damage the way he’s dipping in and out of the waves the way he is.

But, tomorrow will worry of itself.

For now—

“Lucian, watch out!” You yell as a wave comes for him and his papa. He’s screaming, a delightful pitch, and wiggling happily as he dangles by the armpits. 

Sylus raises him up high as the wave breaks against his back. Soon he’s signing more and screaming “Again!” 

You cannot move. Buckets of sand dumped over your legs, the weight of it is enough to immobilize. Luke and Kieran are running back and forth from the water to harden the dust like concrete. Kyros stays by your waist and presses shells into your forming tail. 

“Many, mama?” he asks you. You turn away from your book to his sand covered cheeks and his shade-stained eyes. 

“That’s eleven now, sweetie.”

“Elele.” he pokes more shells into the sand. “Want more?”

“Yes please, baby.”

He huffs, determined, gives you an, “ah-key!” and scuttles away to the bucket Kieran had filled with shells. 

Lucian is shouting, “Kee-ro, come, come!” 

Kyros is an obedient brother, waddle-jogging belly first towards the shoreline where Sylus awaits, sat in the sand. 

“This way, angel.” Kyros is planted to his right. 

His feet are buried in the sand, like Lucian’s are to his left. Sylus’s arms brace on their backs and the water disperses in a loud hiss, knocking into their bellies and chests with enough force to knock them back.

“Kee-ro, hads up!” Lucian models, raising his arms in the air just as another onslaught crashes into them like a gentle flood of foam. Kyros has never been louder, giggling, screaming as if tickled. 

You’re recording from behind when a wave disperses a little too close and eats them up in the impact. They are uprooted and scattered. 

You gasp.

When it recedes, Sylus is rolling back with the sea with two wet little toddlers hanging onto his arms.

You rush to them. Finding two blinking babies absolutely dumbfounded by what just happened. 

Sylus worries if they’re shaken or even afraid now. Kyros puts that all to rest when his tongue curls to a cough that morphs into what you’d imagine to be the laughter of an angelfish. Hiccuping, bubbling. “Again! Again!”

“Papa!” Lucian rejoices too, loud. Needing to be to make sure he is heard. “Again!”

Sylus sighs. Relief cancels out worry. He’s only glad that you accept his apologetic look with a fondness, rolling your eyes and pushing him back to the tide. This time, you sit with them. 

The sun sets on your day. Bidding goodbye with the gentlest parade of golden hues, mixing to a moody purple and then cooling to a speckled blue.

Slow.

Slow enough to usher the cold of the tide, chilling the children’s toes enough that they ask to go home. Slow enough that the moon shines bright only when you stand in the balcony, a warm drink in your hand and a blanket over your shoulders. 

Slow enough to allow this of you. This reflection of what has been and what will be. This respite of having endured and having released. This quiet you do not take for granted.

One you hold like a vice, and yet like a fluttering dove; like the heart of a child, and like how your husband holds you.

He holds you. The weight of him resting on your shoulders—the only weight you will never mind— the warmth of him against the length of your back, the comfort of him settling like wax in your bones.

“… Valentine’s Day.”

“Huh?”

He kisses the crown of your head, your cheek, your neck. “I said, just in time for Valentine’s Day.”

This time you hear him. This time, you turn and smile. “Happy Valentine’s Day, beloved.”

His eyes—glowing like burning coal, a dragon’s breath, a lover’s devotion—twinkle ever so brightly beneath the star-spackled sky. Where he’d say each light is a life he’d live, a life he’d choose with you.

He leans in to kiss you, having missed you so. You kiss him too, having missed him more than he’ll the ever understand.

This time, when lips part, it is not a goodbye.

This time, you have nowhere else to be.

This time, you stay. 

✧˚ ⋆｡ read more with the little twins here || more sylus thoughts ✧˚ ⋆｡

you notice. of course you do.

“sylus-“

he closes the distance in two strides. hands framing your face. kisses you hard, teeth and tongue and desperation like he’s trying to crawl inside your skin. you taste copper and smoke and him. he groans into your mouth when you bite his bottom lip, hips grinding forward so you feel exactly how hard he is. thick. insistent. leaking already.

“fuck,” he rasps when he pulls back just enough to breathe. forehead pressed to yours. voice wrecked. “watching you fight… the way you moved. the way you didn’t hesitate. protecting yourself. protecting me.” another grind, slow, filthy. “i’m so fucking hard it hurts, kitten. you have no idea what you do to me.”

you laugh breathlessly, a little dazed. slide your hand down his chest, palm flat over the bulge straining his pants. squeeze once. he hisses. hips bucking into your grip.

“then do something about it,” you whisper. nip his jaw. “right here. right now.”

his eyes flash with danger and adoration. 

“careful what you ask for,” he growls. already spinning you, pressing your front to the rough brick wall. hands sliding under your jacket, yanking your shirt up just enough to bare skin. one palm cups your breast, the other dives between your thighs, fingers finding you soaked through your panties.

“already dripping,” he murmurs against your neck. teeth grazing. “my violent little wife. fighting like that and getting wet for me after? filthy.”

you moan when he pushes the fabric aside, two fingers sliding in deep. curling. hitting that spot that makes your knees buckle.

“gonna fuck you against this wall,” he promises. free hand working his zipper down. cock springing free, heavy, flushed, leaking. “gonna fill you until it’s running down your thighs. until every bastard in this city smells me on you.”

you arch back. push against him. “then do it.”

RAFAYEL

the gala is in full swing, crystal chandeliers dripping light like liquid gold, champagne flutes catching every flicker, the air thick with expensive perfume and the low hum of art world chatter. rafayel’s latest collection is everywhere: massive canvases of stormy seas and fractured light, all moody blues and violent pinks that somehow still feel like they’re staring back at you. he’s in his element, black velvet suit tailored to mae him looks irresistible, lavender hair swept back, grin playing on his lips while collectors and critics orbit him like moths.

you’re right there at his side the whole night, arm looped through his, fingers occasionally brushing the inside of his elbow. you’re wearing a deep teal gown he picked out himself (“it matches my favorite painting of you,” he’d murmured while zipping you up, teeth grazing your shoulder). the slit rides high on your thigh every time you move, and every time it does, his gaze drops for a split second before he forces it back up, professional and gentlemanly.

but then the night drags on.

a particularly pushy curator, tall, slick outfit, too much perfume, corners rafayel near the central piece, the one everyone’s calling “the masterpiece.” their hand lands on rafayel’s forearm while they gestures wildly about “the emotional resonance” and “the references to lemuria.” rafayel’s smile stays polite, but you see the tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth, the way his shoulders stiffen just enough to notice.

you don’t think. you just act.

you step in smooth as water, slide your hand up rafayel’s back until your palm rests possessively at the nape of his neck, fingers threading into the soft lavender strands there, tugging once. light. enough to make his head tilt toward you on instinct. then you lean in, lips brushing the shell of his ear, voice pitched low enough that only he hears:

“sorry to interrupt, darling,” you say the last part loud enough for the curator to catch the endearment, “but i need my husband for a moment. private business.”

the word *husband* drops like a stone into still water. rafayel’s breath hitches, barely audible, but you feel it against your cheek. the curator blinks, flustered, mutters something about “of course, of course” and backs off so fast they nearly spills their drink.

you don’t let go.

instead you turn rafayel toward you fully, keeping your hand at his nape, thumb stroking the sensitive skin just below his hairline. your other hand smooths down the lapel of his jacket, slow and proprietary like you’re fixing him, claiming him, reminding every single person in this room who he belongs to. your body angles just enough to block the curator’s view, hips brushing rafayel’s in a way that looks accidental from the outside but feels anything but.

his eyes snap to yours. pupils blown wide. that trademark teasing smirk is gone, replaced by something darker, hungrier. his throat works on a swallow. you feel the tremor run through him, subtle but unmistakable.

“careful,” he whispers, voice wrecked velvet. “you keep calling me husband like that and i’m going to have to drag you to the coat room right now.”

you smile, sweet, utterly unrepentant. lean in again, lips ghosting his jaw.

“i meant it,” you murmur. “you’re mine. and i don’t share.”

his cock jumps against your hip, hard, thick, straining so suddenly you can feel the exact shape of him through the fine material of his trousers. he sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. one hand flies to your waist, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, anchoring himself.

“fuck,” he hisses under his breath. glances around, quick and frantic, then angles his body to hide the obvious tent in his pants behind you. “you can’t just- say shit like that in the middle of my own gala. i’m supposed to be networking, not leaking in my suit because my wife decided to stake her claim like a goddamn siren.”

you hum. innocent. trail your fingers down his chest until they rest just above his belt buckle, close enough to tease, far enough to torment.

“problem?” you ask sweetly. thumb brushing the edge of leather.

his eyes flutter shut for a second. hips twitching forward into your touch before he catches himself.

“big problem,” he grits out. voice cracking on the last word. “huge fucking problem. and if you keep looking at me like that- talking like that- i’m going to paint the inside of my trousers before we even make it to the car.”

you laugh, delighted and finally step back just enough to give him breathing room. but you don’t let go of his hand. lace your fingers through his. squeeze once.

“then behave,” you say, echoing the words he’s thrown at you so many times. “or i’ll have to remind everyone here exactly who you belong to.”

his laugh is low, strained, almost pained.

“too late for behaving, cutie.” he leans down, lips brushing your temple in a kiss that looks chaste to anyone watching. “you already ruined me. now i have to spend the next two hours pretending i’m not painfully hard while i smile and shake hands and pretend i’m not thinking about bending you over the nearest priceless canvas and fucking my wife until she screams my name loud enough for the whole place to hear.”

you squeeze his hand again. harder.

“promise?”

his eyes flash, dark, desperate and loving.

“oh, i promise.”

he adjusts himself discreetly behind the cover of your body, exhales slow like he’s trying not to come apart right there, then straightens his jacket with shaking fingers.

“come on,” he mutters, tugging you toward the next cluster of guests. “let’s go pretend i’m a civilized artist for another hour.”

you smile. sweet. victorious.

“only if you say ‘please, wife’ first.”

he groans and pulls you closer.

“please, wife,” he breathes against your ear. “ruin me all night.”

XAVIER

the mission is simple on paper: infiltrate the high end underground auction in one of the n109 zone’s districts, blend in, eavesdrop on the buyer list for that black market protocore shipment, get out clean. no combat unless absolutely necessary. undercover means civilian clothes, nothing too flashy, just expensive enough to pass as bored rich kids with too much time and money.

you’re in a slinky black dress that hugs every curve, slit high enough to move but low enough to distract. xavier’s in a tailored charcoal suit, tie loose, top button undone, blond hair artfully messy like he just rolled out of someone’s bed (technically true; he rolled out of yours an hour ago after “pre-mission stress relief” that left you both flushed and still a little shaky). comms are in-ear and subtle. you’re posing as a couple, easy cover, familiar roles, so his arm is around your waist the whole time, thumb stroking slow circles over the silk at your hip.

the auction room is dim, velvet drapes swallowing sound, air thick with cigar smoke and whispered deals. you’re pressed into a shadowed alcove near the back, close to the stage but hidden enough to listen without being seen. the buyer’s voice crackles through hidden speakers; numbers climb, bidders murmur. you need to stay quiet. still. focused.

xavier’s chest is flush to your back. one arm banded around your middle, keeping you tucked against him. his other hand rests on the wall beside your head, caging. protective. possessive. his breath fans hot across your ear every time he leans in to murmur updates into the comms.

“target just bid. three million. stay alert.”

his voice is low and controlled. but you feel it, the way his hips shift forward every few seconds, subtle but deliberate, pressing the hard length of him against the small of your back. he’s been half hard since you walked in wearing that dress. now? fully. painfully. the thick ridge of his cock throbs against you through his trousers every time someone on stage says something that makes you tense or shift.

you try to focus. really. but his hand, the one not on the wall, slides lower. slow. palm flattening over your lower belly, fingers splaying wide. thumb brushing the underside of your breast through silk. 

“xavier,” you breathe, barely audible. warning.

he hums. soft. dangerous. lips grazing the shell of your ear.

“shhh, baby. auction’s still going. can’t make noise.”

his hips roll once, slow, filthy grind that drags his cock along the curve of your ass. you bite your lip hard enough to taste copper. thighs clench instinctively.

“you can be so quiet when you want to be,” he murmurs. voice dropping to that rare, gravel edged tone he only uses when he’s losing control. “but i can feel how wet you are already. dress is clinging to your thighs. bet if i slipped my hand under this slit right now i’d find you soaked through your panties.”

your breath hitches. he chuckles against your neck.

“careful,” he warns. “sound carries.”

but he doesn’t stop. his hand drifts lower. fingertips teasing the high slit of your dress, brushing bare skin. higher. until he’s tracing the edge of lace where thigh meets hip. he hooks one finger under the fabric, slow pull, letting it snap back against your skin. you jolt. tiny whimper swallowed fast.

“xav-“

“need you to stay still,” he breathes. lips brushing your pulse point. “but i need something too.” another slow grind, harder this time. you feel every vein, every throb. “been hard since you walked out in this dress. every time you lean forward to listen, every time your ass brushes me… fuck. i’m losing it.”

his free hand slides between you, discreet, hidden by his body and the shadows. unzips just enough. frees himself. hot, thick length springs against your lower back, skin on skin now. leaking. slick at the tip.

you freeze. heart slamming.

“xavier-”

“quiet,” he growls soft but commanding. dominant in that quiet way only he can pull off. “no one can see. just… help me. please.”

he guides your hand back. wraps your fingers around him. groans low when you squeeze instinctively. starts guiding your strokes, slow, tight drags from base to tip. thumb swiping over the slit on every upstroke. his other hand stays at your hip, holding you flush so he can rut shallowly into your fist while staying pressed to your back.

“just like that,” he whispers. voice wrecked. “good girl. keep it slow. keep it quiet. don’t want anyone knowing i’m jerking off in your hand while we listen to million dollar bids.”

you’re dripping now, thighs slick, panties ruined. every stroke makes him twitch harder. leak more. his breathing turns ragged against your neck.

“fuck- close already,” he hisses. hips stuttering. “you feel so good. always feel so good. gonna come in your hand, baby. gonna make a mess right here while everyone thinks we’re just a boring couple watching an auction.”

you twist your wrist on the next stroke, tight at the head. he chokes on a groan. buries his face in your hair. body locking up.

“coming- fuck-”

hot pulses spill over your fingers. thick ropes coating your palm, dripping down your wrist. he keeps your hand moving through it, milking every drop until he’s shaking. oversensitive and spent.

he exhales long, trembling. kisses the back of your neck reverently.

“good girl,” he murmurs. voice wrecked but tender now. “so fucking good for me.”

he tucks himself away, carefully and quiet. wipes your hand on the inside of his jacket like it’s nothing. then wraps both arms around you again. chin on your shoulder. back to normal. almost.

except his cock is still half hard against your ass.

and the auction’s still going.

“your turn later,” he whispers. promise in every word. “when we get home. gonna eat you out until you cry. then fuck you slow. make you come on my cock while i tell you how pretty you looked holding me through that.”

you clench around nothing. thighs trembling.

he chuckles,

“focus, baby. mission’s not over.”

but his hand stays low on your belly.

possessive.

loving.

ready for round two the second you’re alone.

CALEB

it’s a lazy saturday afternoon at the outdoor farmer’s market on the edge of linkon, sun warm but bearable, air smelling like fresh bread, roasted corn, and cut flowers. you and caleb are wandering the stalls hand in hand like any normal couple, no missions, no emergencies. just… normalcy. he’s in faded jeans and a plain white tee that clings a little too nicely to his shoulders, dog tags tucked under the collar, hair still damp from the shower you shared this morning. you’re in a simple sundress, light yellow, thin straps, skirt swishing around your knees every time you turn to look at something.

nothing special. just existing.

you stop at the fruit stall because the strawberries look obscene, bright red, glossy, begging to be bitten. the vendor hands you a sample punnet. you pick one up, inspect, then pop it between your lips without thinking. bite down slow. juice bursts. a tiny bead of red runs down your chin before you catch it with your tongue, quick flick, absentminded, like you do it every day.

caleb freezes mid step beside you.

you don’t notice at first. you’re too busy humming approval, reaching for another berry, popping it the same way, slow bite, soft hum, little pink tongue darting out to catch the drip. completely innocent. domestic. boring, even.

except caleb’s breathing changes.

you glance over. his jaw is tight. pupils blown. he’s staring at your mouth like it personally owes him money. you follow his gaze down and there it is: unmistakable bulge straining the front of his jeans. thick. obvious. twitching when you lick strawberry juice off your thumb without thinking.

“caleb,” you say, half laughing, half exasperated. “seriously?”

he swallows hard. throat working. voice comes out rough. low. “what?”

you gesture vaguely at his crotch with the half eaten strawberry. “that. we’re literally buying fruit.”

“i know,” he mutters. shifts his weight. tries to angle his hips away from the crowd like that’ll hide anything. “it’s not my fault.”

you raise a brow. take another deliberate bite, cruel, maybe, but you’re feeling petty. juice drips again. you swipe it away with your finger this time. suck it clean. slow. eyes locked on his.

his breath hitches. audibly. hand flexes at his side like he’s fighting not to grab you right there.

“you’re obsessed,” you say. fond but pointed. “it’s strawberries, leb. not lingerie.”

“it’s you,” he counters. voice cracking just a little. steps closer, close enough you can feel the heat rolling off him, smell soap and sunshine and him. “it’s you eating strawberries like that. lips all shiny. tongue flicking out. looking so casual and perfect and mine. how am i supposed to-” he cuts off. exhales hard through his nose. “i’ve been suffering since we left the apartment because you bent over to tie your shoe. then you laughed at my terrible joke. and now this? i’m dying here.”

you stare at him. see the flush creeping up his neck. the way his eyes keep dropping to your mouth. the tiny tremor in his fingers when he reaches out to brush a stray droplet from your chin, thumb lingering too long.

you sigh. exasperated. affectionate. step right into his space so your chest brushes his. tilt your head up.

“get a grip, caleb,” you murmur. soft but firm. “we’re in public. you can’t just pop a boner every time i do anything.”

he groans quietly, pained. forehead dropping to yours. hips shifting forward on instinct so you feel exactly how hard he is, thick, insistent, trapped against your lower belly.

“i’m trying,” he whispers. wrecked. “but you keep doing normal stuff and it’s killing me. i’m so fucking in love with you it’s embarrassing. one strawberry and i’m ready to drag you behind the honey stall and fuck you against a crate until you’re the one dripping.”

your thighs clench. traitorously wet now. but you hold your ground.

“later,” you promise. pat his cheek once, gentle but commanding. “when we’re home. you can lick the juice off me then. every drop. but right now? breathe. pay for the strawberries. and walk behind me so no one sees your… situation.”

he exhales a shaky laugh. nods. adjusts himself as discreetly as possible (not very). grabs the punnet from your hand, pays with trembling fingers, then takes your hand again like it’s a lifeline.

“you’re evil,” he mutters as you start walking again. voice still rough. “pure evil.”

you smile. sweet. innocent. pop another strawberry into your mouth.

“and you love it.”

he groans again. louder this time. pulls you closer.

“yeah,” he admits defeated. “god help me, i do.”

ZAYNE

it’s a rare saturday with zero emergencies, no hospital calls, no hunter alerts just you and zayne in the kitchen of his house, sleeves rolled up, aprons tied (his is pristine white, yours already has a smear of flour across the hip like war paint). the plan is simple: make those little custard tarts you saw on some cooking reel last week. nothing fancy. just buttery pastry, smooth vanilla custard, and a quick sugar glaze on top that caramelizes golden under the broiler.

zayne is methodical, of course. measures flour by weight. separates eggs with careful precision. temperature checks the cream before it even touches the stove. you’re the chaos to his order, dipping a finger into the warm custard when his back is turned, licking it off with an exaggerated “mmm” that makes his ears turn faintly pink. he pretends not to notice. fails spectacularly.

the real trouble starts when the tarts are cooling on the rack and it’s time for the glaze.

you melt sugar and water together until it’s bubbling clear, then brush the hot syrup over the tops of the tarts. the sugar catches the light, turns glossy and sticky. a drop falls from the pastry brush onto your knuckle. without thinking, you bring it to your mouth, slow swipe of tongue, lips closing around your finger to catch every last bit of sweetness. eyes half closed. soft little hum of satisfaction.

zayne freezes mid reach for the spatula.

you don’t notice at first. you’re too busy glazing the next tart, humming off key, hips swaying just a little to whatever song’s stuck in your head. another drop lands, this time on the inside of your wrist. you twist your arm, drag your tongue along the sticky trail from wrist to fingertip, sucking lightly at the end like it’s the best thing you’ve tasted all day.

his breathing changes. shallow. controlled. but you hear it.

you glance over. catch him staring with pupils blown, jaw tight, white knuckled grip on the counter edge. your eyes drop automatically.

oh.

the front of his gray sweatpants is tented. unmistakably. thick outline pressing insistently against the soft fabric, the head already flushed dark enough to show through. he’s hard. painfully. visibly throbbing once when your gaze lingers.

you bite your lip to keep from laughing. fail.

“zayne,” you say, voice sweet and teasing, “are you seriously getting hard because i licked sugar off my finger?”

he exhales through his nose, trying to calm down.

“it’s not- ” he starts. stops. swallows. “it’s not just that.”

“not just that,” you echo, amused. step closer. set the brush down and lean one hip against the counter right in front of him so he’s trapped between you and the cabinets. “what exactly is it, then? the pastry? the vanilla? or me being a messy eater?”

his gaze flicks to your mouth, still shiny from the glaze then back to your eyes. throat works again.

“all of it,” he admits. voice low. rougher than usual. “you in my kitchen, wearing my apron, humming, licking your fingers like that. looking… content. domestic. mine.” he shifts his hips, tiny, involuntary rock forward. “it’s overwhelming.”

you laugh and reach up to brush a streak of flour from his cheek with your thumb. let your fingers trail down to his jaw. tilt his face so he has to meet your eyes.

“poor dr. li,” you murmur. teasing. fond. “so composed in the OR, but as soon as i’m around you, you’re ruined. hard as a rock just from watching me taste test custard. pathetic, really.”

his cock jumps visibly at the word pathetic. a tiny wet spot blooms at the tip of the outline in his sweats. he groans, head tipping back against the cabinet door.

“don’t,” he rasps. but his hips cant forward again. seeking friction. “don’t say it like that.”

“like what?” you lean in closer. lips brushing his ear. voice dropping to a whisper. “like you’re so obsessed with me you can’t control yourself? like you’re throbbing in your pants because your girlfriend licked glaze off her wrist? like you’re this close to coming untouched just from me making fun of how easy you are for me?”

he shudders. full body. one hand flies to your waist, gripping you hard. the other braces on the counter behind him like he needs the support.

“yes,” he breathes. wrecked. honest. “exactly like that.”

you pull back just enough to look at him, cheeks flushed, eyes glassy, lips parted. beautiful. ruined. yours.

“then maybe,” you say, dragging one finger down the center of his chest, slow, teasing, “you should do something about it. or are you just going to stand there leaking in your sweats while the desserts get cold?”

his control snaps.

next thing you know your back’s against the counter, his mouth on yours, desperate, tasting like sugar. hands everywhere. apron strings yanked loose. dress rucked up. fingers already slipping between your thighs to find you soaked.

“brat,” he growls against your lips. voice shaking with want. “gonna make you lick the rest of that glaze off while i fuck you right here. then we’ll see who’s pathetic.”

you laugh into his kiss. breathless. victorious.

“promise?”

Contrary to popular belief, all of them came to him willingly, and they all knew that they were allowed to leave anytime they wanted. Some women came from impoverished kingdoms, where monarchs took most of their subjects’ money and prettily dressed up their corruption as ‘tax’. These women figured living in a palace with an abundance of food and clothing was better than a rickety shack that threatened to blow away with every thunderstorm. Others came from foreign lands, drawn in by whispers of an emperor in the east, who spoiled his women rotten with all his riches. A good handful even were royal and noblewomen who fled their kingdoms to escape forced marriages with men who were often four times their age. 

Harem standing at a whopping five hundred and fifty-five women, Sukuna was self-aware enough to know that some wouldn’t be interested in him. While all came willingly, some seemed perfectly content with enjoying all the luxuries being his concubine offered without ever having to be in the same room as him. This hardly offended the emperor because, truth be told, he had favourites too, and it didn’t matter how much stamina he had, trying to get through five hundred women would’ve sent him to an early grave with his cheeks sunken in from exhaustion. 

The only rule he had was that he expected all the concubines to be loyal. The irony of that rule wasn’t lost on him, but he was a possessive fucker, and he knew he would kill whoever touched what was his in the blink of an eye.

Or so he thought he would.

Fending off too many mosquitoes to count, Sukuna decided to take a late-night walk to clear his head. His physician told him it would help him clear his mind and relax, but after missing the pesky insects one too many times and smacking himself all over, he decides this isn’t for him. 

When he finds himself stalking through the Rose Palace, he slows down to stare at the pristine white building with intricate red accents all over. This palace housed the lower-ranking concubines, some of whom he had only met once, if at all, and he realised it had been a while since his last visit. Knocking himself out of his daze with a shake of his head, Sukuna turns to walk back the way he came. Relaxation be damned, he couldn’t afford to deal with more of these mosquitoes and get lost too.  

But his sharp ears pick up on a sound that has him freezing in his tracks. It is so late that the courts are empty and all the women are fast asleep in all their quarters. So, hearing a fervent curse whispered into the night, low and pleasure-filled, followed by the moan of a name, is shocking. Head tilting, Sukuna’s legs have him turning towards the sound instead of leaving, doubling back to a room just at the end of the row. The window is open, and through the slip between the curtains, he sees it.

The indisputable entanglement of two women pressed together in a messy web of soft legs and wandering hands. Their chests are plastered together so tightly that not even the thinnest sheet of paper could hope to wedge in between them. One woman is completely naked, and while she looks like a dreamy vision as moonlight falls over her skin and marks a white outline around her silhouette, Sukuna’s scarlet gaze shoots to the other woman instead. You. 

Clad in a silky nightgown, your hair falls over your shoulders, curls and waves kissing along your collarbone almost as feverishly as the woman on your lap pecks at every sliver of skin she can get to. You have an arm looped around the woman’s slim waist, keeping her on your lap, and you watch her through low-lidded lashes while she grinds down on your fingers. She whispers a name, presumably yours, and Sukuna would have found it pretty if the sight before him didn’t fill him with unimaginable rage.

It seems he has just found the vermin that has been running amok. 

The woman moans unintelligibly, and you capture her lips in a heated kiss before pulling back to whisper, “You can say it, Emika. No one’s gonna hear you.”

Oh, he begs to differ.

“Yours.” The woman, Emika, whimpers with her mouth gaping and hips picking up to buck into your hand faster.

“Hmm?”

“I—I’m yours.” 

Emika’s words are uttered with her right on the precipice of an orgasm, and a better man would have left a long time ago, but unfortunately for her, that wasn’t Sukuna. So, with two long strides, he’s at the door, and a burly arm shoots up to land a heavy blow against the flimsy block of wood. There’s a shrill scream when the door swings open, and it bangs against the wall in a loud crackle, just shy of falling right off its hinges.

Sukuna steps over the threshold, and he watches as the brunette woman’s eyes nearly bug out of her head. She grabs a nearby blanket off the bed, wrapping it around her body with trembling hands before coming to kneel at his feet.

Or at least Sukuna thinks that’s what she does, because since he walked into the room, his blood-slick eyes haven’t left yours. You’re still sitting prettily on the bed. Arms propped out behind you and the thin strap of your nightgown falls off your shoulder, teasing the curve of your breast, as you meet his gaze head-on. 

The longer he stares, the more the infuriatingly alluring smirk on your lips broadens. That look is enough for him to know who the guilty party is here.

“Your majesty.” Sukuna startles a little, as if he forgot the other woman was still there, and he finally glances down at her. At complete odds with you lounging on the bed, Emika’s head nearly touches the floor with how far she bows. “We weren’t expecting you.”

I bet. He mentally grouses.

“Am I interrupting something?” Sukuna sees the woman shudder, as if bearing the weight of the heavy baritone in his voice was too difficult a task. 

“No! Not at all. We were just uh—” she allows herself to meet his stare for half a second before glancing away again. “Just talking.”

A snicker sounds from the four-poster bed, and Emika whips her head to the side, lips thinning like she’s ordering you to be quiet.

“Talking? With your clothes off?”

She turns back to the emperor, and her face is flushed bright red. “I erm…we—”

“Get out.”

Emika jerks like she has just been electrocuted, but stands up, nonetheless. She takes a few steps to the door, then, as if remembering something, turns towards you and softly calls out your name, as if urging you to follow her, but Sukuna merely shakes his head.

“No, just you.”

There’s no movement, and with a glance over his shoulder, he sees the young woman frozen on the spot with her lips pursed as if she might stand her ground, but with a warning flash of his ruby reds, she is hobbling out the door like a kicked dog. Sukuna’s eyes meet yours again, and you finally pull the gown down your legs to hide supple bits of skin that both sets of his traitorous eyes lapped away at. 

“Your majesty.” You greet with a slight incline of your head, moving as if you were going to approach him, but choose to sit at the edge of the bed at the last minute. The lack of deference has him bristling.

“You aren’t bowing.”

“Weak knees. My humblest apologies.” You explain half-heartedly, and when you cross your legs, he once again has to wrench his eyes off their smooth expanse and back to your face. Sukuna definitely hadn’t met you yet. Sometimes he received brief descriptions of potential concubines, and he would wave them off before going back to his work. After all, it wasn’t like he would acquaint himself with every single one of them. 

But perhaps if he had paid more attention during your arrival, he would’ve caught you before you had made yourself so…comfortable. 

Remembering your name from Emika, he drawls it out, tests it on his tongue like it was an unfamiliar taste of exotic wine, and he was trying to decide whether he liked it or not. Being called by name makes you perk up a little.

“Do you mind explaining what I just walked in on?” You don’t answer right away, and it makes the last bit of his patience dry up, words now coming out as a low growl. “I asked you a question.”

“I heard you.” While he’s barely keeping his temper at bay, you’re completely calm and play with the threads that came loose from the bedding, as if they were more interesting than the entire conversation was. More interesting than he was. “I was just wondering how much detail you would like me to go into.”

The side of Sukuna’s face scrunches, and at his sides, all twenty fingers almost follow the movement, nearly balling into fists. But with how calm you were, he decides he could not be the one to break and lose his temper first. He takes a step closer to you, and finally, he sees the corners of your eyes crinkle as you narrow your eyes at him the tiniest bit.

So, you did have some self-preservation.

“When I first heard the rumours that someone was bedding my women, I thought it was one of my soldiers or maybe a cook. Hell, it could have even been a eunuch who had somehow evaded castration, but it’s you, isn’t it?” Your back straightens when he stops a few paces away from you, and yes, he knew for sure that it was you. “What makes you think you can take my women?”

Your lips purse for a moment, eyes shifting to and fro as you look for a good answer to give him. Then…“May I speak freely for the remainder of this conversation, your majesty?”

That elicits a sharp cackle from him.

“Why bother asking? You never needed my permission to do anything before.” You only arched an eyebrow at him, as if he were a toddler whose tantrum you were waiting out. “Speak.”

Your hair bounced as you readjusted on the bed, and without even knowing you, Sukuna could tell from the condescending gleam in your eyes that he wasn’t going to like what you were about to say. 

“You have half a thousand concubines and only pay attention to a select few, twenty on a good day. It’s hardly fair that the rest of us are expected to stay celibate just because you can’t keep up.”

What.

“Excuse me?”

“The way I see it,” you continue as if he hasn’t spoken. “You should be thanking me for keeping the ladies entertained in your stead.”

“Thank you?” he splutters with his voice the highest it’s ever been. 

“You’re welcome.”

Something between a laugh and a scoff comes from his chest, half incensed, half disbelieving as he turns his back to you. Hands go to rake over his face, passing over the hardened casing that covered the right side. A moment passed as he gathered himself, then, when he was sure he wouldn’t throttle you, he turned around again.

“I don’t know who you think you are, but you don’t get to come into my house, break my one rule, then tell me I should be thanking you for it.” His words wipe the shit-eating grin off your face. “All the women know that if they’re unhappy, they can leave at anytime. I’m not forcing anyone to be here!”

“You know full well that most of them can’t go back to the conditions they lived in before!” Had anyone else raised their voice at him, they would have been cut down where they stood. But Sukuna is so thrilled that you are showing an emotion other than cool indifference, he barely pays it any mind. You stand from the bed and approach him with agility that tells him you did not have weak knees.

“You live in my house. In my kingdom,” eyes red hot as a blazing sun, sneered down at you as if they were promising to burn you to a crisp. “You follow my rules.”

Glossy lips purse as you stare up at him for a few long moments. Then that carefully blank curtain falls over your face again. “Fine. Then I should like to leave.”

You turned towards your vanity, and Sukuna only saw the piece of paper lying on it now. “I was going to hand in my resignation letter later this week, but seeing that you’re already here—”

“No.”

Feet faltering, you pause, and your shoulders work when you take a deep breath before turning around.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I won’t sign it.” Sharp canines glint as he gives you a sardonic smile.

“But you just said we could leave whenever we wanted.”

“I said my concubines could leave whenever they wanted.” The distance between the two of you closes again, and he isn’t sure who stepped closer this time. “You are a thief.”

“A thief?” You sputtered with your brows raised so high they nearly touched your hairline. “With all due respect your majesty, you have a nasty habit of making these women sound like possessions rather than people.”

“They’re mine.” He says, not even denying your comment, and when you scowl, he has to crane his head down so he can get in your face. “You think you can come into my house, eat my food, wear clothes bought with my money,” he lifts his hand, and a sharp nail catches the strap of your nightgown where it hangs off your shoulder, and tugs it up to its rightful place. “Fuck my women, and I’ll just let you leave?”

You glance down at his hand hovering over the curve of your shoulder, his nails so long they could puncture through skin with ease if he wanted to.

“You can’t keep me here against my will.”

The boisterous laughter that echoes through the room almost makes you flinch. 

“Who’s gonna stop me, huh? You?”

Your lips tremble, and he preens, thinking he has finally gotten through to you. But instead of the ugly cry he was expecting, a smile curls your lips, and you take a step forward, so close he can smell the scent of jasmine and something more edible on your skin.

“Well in that case, Lady Kyomi has been staring at me a little too closely these days. If I’m staying, I might as well pay her a visit.”

Sukuna didn’t make a habit of harming people who were a lot frailer than him. He liked the dizzying thrill of heading right into battle with combatants who were on par with him. And swords, claws and teeth would meet in a frenzy of blood and gore. 

This meant that he never lifted a hand against a woman. That is, until today, when a hand closes around your neck and pushes you back until you’re pressed against a nearby wall.

Your breath hitches.

He isn’t choking you, not really, but the threat of it, as his massive hand spans over your throat with ease and sharp nails drag along your skin, is definitely there. Sukuna could handle a lot of things, but you threatening to go after the very woman in the running to be his empress consort was out of bounds. 

“Do you wish to see me lose my temper?”

His voice was scarily low now, and the tip of his nose brushed against yours.

“You mean you haven’t already?”

“Don’t test me, little girl.” Your nose scrunches, obviously not a fan of that nickname. With his grip on your neck, he tips your head up higher so you can look at him. “You are to stay away from Kyomi, Emika and all the other concubines you have bedded. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal.” You say that a little too quickly for it to be convincing, and when you move into his hand around your neck instead of cowering away, he knows you aren’t going to give in so easily. “But just between us, your majesty, tell me which upsets you more, the fact that I fucked them or that I didn’t fuck you?”

A beat passes before Sukuna laughs, long and loud right in your face. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Your cock is pressing into my thighs.” You mused, and his shoulders tensed. 

Truth be told, he has been hard since he eavesdropped on you and Emika earlier. And as much as it pained him to admit it, the longer he spoke to you, the higher the tent beneath his robes pitched itself.  

“You know,” A manicured nail skirts over the opening of his robes over his bare chest and his cock twitches. “If you had just asked, I would have considered letting you join.”

Your sheer audacity has him at a loss once more.

“I wouldn’t need your permission.” He replies through clenched teeth and tries to hold his breath so your perfume wouldn’t cloud his mind. This is probably how you got people wrapped around your finger. He thought. A teasing touch, the coaxing pull of your sweetened scent and most of all your soft, taunting voice, and they would be trapped before they even knew it. 

“Oh, but you’d want it.”

Sukuna’s hand flexes around your throat, and a beat passes with him just panting inches from your mouth. Whenever the emperor couldn’t purge his temper through bloodshed, he often turned to fucking. And it seems he chose the latter as he tugs you forward and seals his lips over yours. 

You flinch at the force of the kiss, breath coming out as a soundless huff like he just knocked the air right out of your lungs. Your hands come up to rest on his thick biceps, but you don’t push him away just yet. 

Sukuna’s tongue traces over the plush seam of your lips before it plunges into your mouth, and he stiffens at the taste that hits him. Minty freshness, remnants of hibiscus tea and a little fainter, the unmistakable tartness of pussy. A fang nips at your soft lip, and he relishes the yelping sound you make as he greedily laps at a bead of blood that flows out. He wrenches himself away from you, eyes burning as he meets your gaze. 

“You put your mouth on her?” He seethes, and you only peer up at him through long lashes, a self-assured smile firmly in place on your lips. “You are infuriating.”

Hands grasp your waist and pull you off the wall and up against him. And as he leads you to the bed, your feet never touch the floor again.

Belatedly, you start to wonder whether you have bitten off more than you can chew. 

The bedsprings whine under the weight of the burly emperor lying on them. The man is made of pure muscle, and the inky black markings that cut lines down his tanned skin bulge with every movement he makes.  Four hulking arms lay at his sides, flexing impatiently as he tries to keep himself from pulling you onto him. And while he waits, two sets of eyes, four total, glare at you through his coral hair and obsessively follow you the way a predator would stalk its next meal. 

“Since you enjoy eating pussy so much, let’s see how you like being on the receiving end.” Sukuna had said a while ago, and while your heart thrashed excitedly in your chest at the prospect of sitting on his mouth, you soon realised he wasn’t talking about the one on his face. 

You could only gawk as washboard abs quivered, then gaped, giving way to a large mouth that cut through the centre of his stomach. The mouth gave you a mischievous grin, canines razor sharp, before it licked its lips in anticipation. Between that and the monstrosities, yes, monstrosities plural, that lay heavy between his legs, you aren’t sure where to look. 

“What are you waiting for?”

Your eyes bounce up to his face, and you shift a little on the foot of the bed before moving on all fours to crawl towards him. A crimson gaze burns a trail through you when you go to his side instead of immediately straddling him. You tuck your hair behind your ear before you lean down and kiss him. Sukuna’s arms snake under you, and you gasp when he forcibly pulls you on top of him. Settling on his lap, he makes sure the kiss never breaks as he sucks your lip into his mouth, chasing the taste of iron he tasted earlier.

A tongue licks a stripe up your lips, and you feel a heated breath blow against your stomach before his other mouth lolls out against your skin. You shiver above him, hands braced beside his head and almost buckling from the sensation pooling low in your belly.

“Sit on it.” Sukuna commands, breath hot against your lips, but you don’t move. A low groan sounds when you pepper a soft kiss on his mouth, and he pulls back to ask again.

“Let me taste you.”

Your dark eyes clash with his, and he blurts the word out before he can stop himself. The word he has never had to say to anyone before.

“Please.”

An emperor begging a concubine? No one would believe you if you told them. But you oblige. Straightening on his lap and moving forward until you’re hovering just above the large mouth that literally drools with your cunt so close to it. 

Hands grope at your hips, then lower you slowly.  

Whereas Sukuna is taking his time, his mouth didn’t seem to get the memo because a disarming kiss is delivered to your clit before a fat tongue lolls out and swipes a lavish lick up your slit. You forward jerk, and strong hands clamp around your form tighter, holding then pushing you further onto the relentless mouth that laps away at every drop of your slick. 

“Oh.” You huff out with a little shock colouring your tone. 

You look at Sukuna’s face again, and you see his lips gape as a light glaze covers his eyes, almost like he can taste you on both mouths. Your hips roll against his stomach when his thick tongue thrusts into your cunt, and moan slips through as your gummy walls clamp around the muscle.

“Look who can’t keep up now,” Sukuna says, referring to when you told him that you were doing him a favour by picking up the slack of tending to his ‘neglected’ concubines. 

Your hips slow, trying to lift off his mouth to give yourself a break, but he doesn’t let you, of course. And you’re not sure what possesses you, but your fingers, the same ones you had inside Emika a few minutes ago, go to his lips and slot into his mouth. 

“I keep up well enough.” You know he tastes her essence from the way his red pinpoint eyes narrow to slits, and you smile at him. “Sweet, isn’t it?”

Teeth bite down on your fingers, and you mewl at the ghost of pain that follows. His fangs pricked your skin again, and he sucks the digits into his mouth with a heavy groan. You feel his body move beneath you, and when you glance over your shoulder to see his hips rutting into the air and both his cocks leaking with precum, your tongue instinctively wets your lips.

Maybe one day you’d be brave enough to take him in your mouth too…wait, why were you thinking about that as if you’d let this happen again?

Sukuna is drooling around your fingers and on your cunt as he alternates between diving into its tight hole and sucking your clit into his mouth. When you feel his hips shudder pathetically under you, followed by the warm spray of cum against the small of your back, you almost want to make fun of him for cumming untouched. But you can’t because you’re not that far behind either. A few more shaky rolls of your hips, and he keeps you plastered to him as you tremble with your release too.

You’re still shaking when Sukuna lifts you to move you further down his muscular body. He angles the pink tip of one of his lengths with your cunt, and you feel the other bop against your ass needily. Sliding down the thick girth is no easy feat, and he doesn’t rush you, not even when his hips beg him to thrust up and bottom out. 

Moans fill the room when you sink all the way down and your head tips back. The mouth on his stomach seals itself shut, then quickly reappears near his pelvis. You’re about to tell him how uncanny it is that he keeps making it move, but your words fall short when it flicks its tongue over your hypersensitive clit.

There are too many hands to count roaming over your body. A pair pawing at your ass and urging you to bounce on him faster, and another set squeezes your tits and rolls the hardened buds of your nipples between his fingers.

Sukuna stares up at you in awe as you ride him. The light above your head forms a halo around your hair, making you look otherworldly and the sounds you make have him believing that you were some sort of fallen angel who has come to drag him to the depths of hell in condemnation for all his sins.

Your hand goes behind you, curling around his neglected cock, and he makes a sound he didn’t even know he was capable of. Your walls squeeze unbelievably tight around him as you cum not too long after him, and his hands band around you before pulling you down so he can kiss you again.

It takes a while for the two of you to stop shuddering, and only when your lips are utterly kiss-bitten and too numb to continue, do you slide off him and land at his side with a huff. 

Sukuna is still trying to catch his breath when a thought clicks into place. He was more than happy to lock you in the deepest dungeon he had so you’d never see the light of day again, but after all that, he could think of something better.

Better for him, that is.

He rises from the bed and starts to put his robes back on. “You’ll be moved into the Ruby Palace tomorrow.”

He hears you sit up, and he doesn’t have to turn around to know your eyes are probably bulging out their sockets. 

“What?!”

Your exclamation makes a pleased smile curl his lips. 

While the Rose, Jade and Emerald palaces housed all the concubines, the Ruby Palace has always been vacant.

Because it was reserved for whoever Sukuna would pick as his empress.

With an about turn, he meets your stare and offers you a mocking smile. “You’ve touched what’s mine and believe me, I’ve killed men for less. So, be happy that your emperor is generous enough to award your insubordination with a title instead of an execution, hm?”

Your mouth opens, but he’s already pulling the door open. There’s a heavy thud of something hitting the wood and a string of colourful expletives follow him as he walks back to his quarters with a spring in his step. 

Hm, maybe late-night walks really were relaxing.