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Art References in Jujutsu Kaisen s3 opening: The Kiss - Gustav Klimt // The Scream - Edvard Munch // Ophelia - John Everett Millais // Dead mother l - Egon Schiele // Two Sleeping Children - Peter Paul Rubens // Camille Monet and a Child in the Artist's Garden in Argenteuil - Claude Monet // The Three Judges - Honoré Victorin Daumier
[ warnings: fingering, virginity loss, sex content, poetic smut, angst, a detailed description of the deadly disease and the unpleasant symptoms associated with it ]
[ description: After their nuptials, the court becomes even more divided. The King, however, wishes to spend the last years of his life experiencing the joys he finds in the closeness of his wife. His bride was never to lose her maidenhood, however, is what the King has proclaimed to his subjects what he really craves? ]
Author’s Note: After the warm reception of the first part, which I didn't expect at all, here is the second part of their story! I have to admit that I had a great time writing it and I love them. I tried to leave some realism and not forget about his illness and the fact that it is contagious.
Part Two of Paradise Fruit. Can be read as a standalone story.
Word count: 4.600
* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *
My other works: Masterlist
_____
Their nuptials were humble – apart from the Archbishop, who gave them his blessing, uniting them for eternity, they were accompanied only by Sibylla and her husband, enraged, thinking that the King was just fulfilling his sneaky plan.
He truly believed that he would have exposed her to such danger, condemning her to the cruel disease that tormented his members to try to beget an heir.
She was grateful to her Princess for lending her one of her beautiful, gold-embellished robes that day – Sibylla knew what purpose this marriage was intended to serve and that it would not change the order of succession.
She was to be his comfort, a moment of relief and solace, nothing more.
Nevertheless, she smiled, feeling happiness filling her heart, her king's gaze tender and full of affection, from which she felt warmth in her chest.
She thought that she had fallen in love with him.
Their marriage was announced to all and sundry, and she became a king's wife, but not a queen.
She was not bothered by this.
She was assigned a chamber right next to his – she could now visit him whenever she wished and did not have to worry about the King's honour.
As she walked into his quarters, clad only in a thin night robe, a smile of happiness adorned her face. Baldwin, though tired, also seemed pleased and rose at the sight of her.
"Wife." He said, entwining his hands behind his back.
His figure was all clad in white as usual, though the material of his wardrobe seemed thicker to her, a silver mask on his face.
To her surprise she noticed that his gloves were black, apparently made of leather.
She bowed to him, recognising that she was not intending to think about it now.
"My King. My husband. You are the man of your word." She whispered warmly, looking up at him from above her long lashes, feeling a pleasant tickle in her lower abdomen meeting his gaze, hot and dark.
"I am." He replied. "I couldn't deny myself this pleasure. It was an act of my selfishness, not my greatness."
She blinked, cocking her head, feeling for some reason amused by his words.
"Does it matter now?" She asked lightly – something flashed across his gaze, she thought he smiled.
"No. Not in the slightest."
She looked at him expectantly, waiting for his orders – he had announced that because of his disease he would not take her maidenhood and their marriage would be white, however, after what had gone on between them earlier, she did not think her husband would want to remain an ascetic in every aspect.
"Let me see you." He said finally, his voice like a sigh.
She knew what he meant, she knew what he wanted – she could see it in his gaze. Her hands rose to the small knot above her breasts, untying it, slipping the thin material of her nightgown off her shoulders in a light, gentle motion, remaining bare before him.
She shuddered, feeling the chill of the chamber surround her body despite the flames burning in the fireplace beside her, her lips parted as she noticed her king's gaze shift, misty and filled with a familiar, hot desire.
For a moment he looked at her with his head tilted, as if he was simply admiring her, nothing more.
"My physicians have said that the leather material, as opposed to linen, will ensure that you are protected from the touch of my bare skin and what it may cause." He said, tentatively extending his hand to her, and she felt her heart thump harder in her chest with joy.
She could touch him.
They both drew in a loud breath as she placed her fingers on his palm, letting him pull her a little closer, the spot between her thighs all swollen with desire, slowly growing moist with her wetness.
Her lips parted with her gasp of surprise as his other hand touched her cheek – she snuggled her face into it, placing affectionate kisses of her lips on it.
"I would give all the treasures of this chamber, my possessions and my gold coins to feel the taste of your lips on mine." He gasped, looking at her as if she were a precious jewel, a spring water that quenches thirst, an olive tree that feeds whole nations.
She closed her eyes, listening to the sound of the sizzling fire and their hitched breaths as his thumb ran over her full, lower lip. She parted it before him and let him slide it deeper, between her teeth. Her lips clamped slowly around his finger, looking up at him with desire as she began to suck.
A low groan escaped his throat at the sight, clearly imagining that he was forcing something completely different down her throat.
He placed his other hand on her back, at the same time pulling her closer and holding her at arm's length, apparently afraid that even his breath was dangerous to her, possibly dooming her to his fate.
She moaned when he gave in, when his mask pressed against her forehead, his eyelids all red around his bright pupils.
"– forgive me –"
She didn't know why his words, filled with so much sadness and desire, made her throw her hands on his shoulders, her lips clinging greedily to the unpleasantly cold, silver structure of his mask.
She closed her eyes, hearing his gasp of surprise, placing lingering, hot kisses full of her saliva and tongue on the surface of it, imagining he was able to feel it, his hands sinking into her hair.
"– touch me, husband – I crave you –" She mewled helplessly, running her hands over the material beneath which was his head, his hair, his jaw and neck.
She squealed when he lifted her suddenly by her buttocks, the quiet hiss that escaped his lips made her understand that this sudden movement must have caused him pain.
She stroked the back of his head as he moved towards his bed with his face nestled between her breasts, not wanting to show him any sympathy now that he wanted to be a strong man in her eyes.
He let out a breath as he laid her down on the soft sheets, his gaze full of tenderness as he looked at her face.
"– lie on your stomach and spread your thighs –" He said calmly and gently, however, something in his words and their undertone made her feel a heat in her lower abdomen and a wonderful tickling sensation.
She obeyed his command immediately, feeling her legs become stiff as he caught her around the waist and lifted her hips, forcing her to buck her buttocks in front of him in a shameless manner.
She heard his heavy breath as he positioned himself behind her on his knees, running his leather-gloved hands over the soft skin of her buttocks, herself panting hard, knowing where he was looking now.
"– the reason why Paris abducted Helen of Troy – the cause of the downfall and delight of all mankind locked deep between my wife's thighs –" He whispered in such a sensual way that she moaned pathetically, clenching her eyelids as his thumb ran over her leaking, throbbing womanhood.
Apparently he liked the sound she made, because one of his hands slid into her hair, holding her in place, reassuring him that she wouldn't take advantage of his weakness and try to expose him in an act of pleasure, endangering him and herself.
"– lie still – shhhh, my love –" He whispered, hearing her innocent cry of desperation as his fingers began to trail around her oversensitive, swollen bud, waves of tingling and tickling sensations spreading through her body dulling her mind, causing her to emit uncontrollable sounds.
She could hear him panting as she watched what he was doing to her, his fingers digging into her delicate folds with a loud click of her wetness, barely teasing her – her hips began to roll back and forth, responding to his treatments, trying to find a better source of rubbing.
"– have mercy on me –" She mumbled with difficulty, her lips parted wide in a girlish moan when, at her request, the tip of his middle finger burst into her fleshy, hot interior.
The experience was at once full of discomfort and delight – at first the material of his glove was cold, but in time her body temperature enveloped him with its heat.
"– God – so warm –" He whispered in a voice trembling with emotion, in some involuntary, primitive reflex forcing her to take his finger deeper inside her, meeting resistance.
"– yes or no –" He breathed out, making her gasp.
Yes or no.
She froze, feeling her heart begin to pound like mad, knowing that he had lied: he had only declared their marriage as white so that after his death his sister's husband would not attempt to kill her out of fear that she might be carrying his heir.
The future King.
"– yes –"
Her fingers clenched on the fabric of the sheet beneath her as he pierced something inside her in one aggressive motion, along with her squeal taking her maidenhood.
She began to wriggle under him with sweet whimpers of delight as his first finger was joined by a second, opening her wide for him only to fuck her before his eyes.
Tears of pleasure and shock ran down her cheeks as she moaned like a mere whore, spreading her thighs wider, his fingers thicker and longer than hers, stretching her so wonderfully.
"– please –" She whimpered, responding with her hips to each thrust of his hand, the tips of his fingers hitting the sweet spot deep inside her with startling precision again and again, while his thumb teased her little pearl between her folds with reluctance.
She bucked up more, panting loudly along with him, feeling the drops of her own wetness begin to run down her thighs one by one, soaking his hand, the fingers of his free palm clenched in her hair.
"– go on – please your King –" He commanded in a low voice from which her weeping cunt clenched around his fingers in convulsions of ecstasy, the sweet, stupefying pleasure making her cry out loudly, her legs bent at the knees quivering all over from the exertion.
"– a-ah –" She mumbled out, her face red with emotion as her body shook with a fulfilment so strong that her leaking, hot walls began to simply suck him inside. He felt it and moaned in a boyish manner, stopping moving, keeping his two fingers slipped deep into her body, just wanting to feel how it pulsed around them.
"– yes – just like that – easy now – easy –" He praised her, slowly sliding them out of her, and she swallowed hard, letting her body fall back onto the bed, panting loudly.
She sighed as he turned her onto her back and spread her thighs, looking at her with eyes black with desire, his hand slipped under the material of his robe.
Only then did she notice that his garment had a slit in the area underneath where his manhood was.
Although he had not allowed her to look at it then, now that he had grasped it in his hand and directed it at her throbbing womanhood, she saw the fat, pink head of it, dripping with his desire.
His hand clamped down on her soft breast, careful, however, not to cause her pain as he began to squeeze his swollen erection in his palm, with sharp, aggressive strokes from the very base to the tip chasing his fulfilment.
She moaned innocently, surprised, tilting her head back as his thumb ran over her hard, sensitive nipple, playing with it, something like satisfaction flashed through his gaze when he saw that this kind of touch was giving her pleasure.
"– my wife is so eager – so devoted to her poor husband – hm? –" He gasped, his breathing heavy as he accelerated, already squeezing only the base of his manhood, rocking his hips back and forth, struggling to restrain himself from opening her up, from sinking into her, from feeling her.
She rolled her hips forward encouragingly, rubbing her moist cunt against the thick head of his erection, drawing a low, almost animalistic groan from his throat, his silhouette moving slightly away.
"– no –" He growled with pain and anger, involuntarily returning again and again to her warmth, letting the tip of it push against her swollen, thirsty slit.
"– please, my King – put inside me –" She begged, but he shook his head and simply came with a loud moan of pleasure, his pearly, sticky spend spewing onto her womanhood.
He stared at this shameless sight, his head bowed low, his breath heavy as if he had just accomplished some heroic feat.
"– you need to bathe in hot water – immediately – dress yourself, I'll call the servants –" He exclaimed, rising abruptly from the bed, covering his manhood back with his robe, wiping his hand sticky with her wetness into its material.
She stood up quickly, horrified that he was surely angry with her for not listening to him, hastily dressing her nightgown over her shoulders, bursting into sobs.
"– forgive me, my King – forgive me, do not send me away –" She begged, but he did not listen to her, ordering his servant to immediately bring the tub into his chamber and fill it with hot water.
Although it slightly burned her skin when she stepped inside, her husband-king explained that the heat killed whatever was spreading his disease, and the oils and herbs that were thrown in were to prevent any other infections.
She looked at him with big eyes as he sat beside her, dipping his leather-gloved hand into the water along with a piece of cloth, sinking it then between her thighs, making sure not a single drop of his seed remained on it.
"– will you forgive me, my beloved? –" She muttered pleadingly, watching his face. He looked at her with a chastising look and sighed heavily.
"– it is I who should beg your forgiveness – I have allowed myself to be carried away by my desires, which have suppressed my reason – do not fear, it will not happen again – after your bath you will return to your chamber and will no longer visit me in the evenings –" He said calmly, looking away.
Her heart stopped in her throat, her brow arching in pain and disbelief at his words.
"Are you sending me away?" She muttered with difficulty. He looked at her, surprised apparently by her question and reaction, his hand froze in mid-motion.
"You can't sleep here because I am here. My breath, my proximity are deadly. I am exposing you even now. Before sleep, my physicians pull off most of the fabric that covers my body. I will never let you see this." He said and swallowed hard, seeing as tears one by one began to run down her cheeks.
"You break my heart. At least let my bed be placed next to yours. Drape it with curtains so that I may not see you or your body at night, but that I may at least hear your voice, hear your presence in the same chamber." She said pleadingly, touching his beautiful silver mask with her hand, his gaze tired and sad, filled with pain.
He hesitated.
"The chamber is not locked. Place my bed by the windows, by the fresh air. Do not condemn me to solitude, show me mercy, my King." She whispered, once again placing a kiss on his mask, on his cold, silver lips, his sigh testifying that he pressed his lips on the other side, reciprocating her caress.
"You are my doom."
At his command, her bed was moved to his chamber, raising voices full of resentment from some of the monks and priests, commenting on the fact that her maidenhood might be called into question.
"White marriage, to my knowledge, does not mean that husband and wife live separately. On the contrary, we should indulge in prayers together and be each other's comfort by day and night."
Honour Knights and Lords were concerned about what kind of comfort his little wife was to him.
Each day, the physicians sent by King Saladin checked the condition of her body and whether there were any signs of infection – her husband watched it from the sidelines in horror, relief in his gaze each time he heard from their lips that his wife was in good health.
However, taking advantage of the fact that the King had left the chamber after her examination, returning to his duties, one of his medics approached her, pale.
"My Lady. Spending so much time in the King's company, you will certainly contract his disease. Often its first symptoms do not appear until years after infection. It is possible that it is already too late." He muttered, bowing before her.
She swallowed loudly, looking at him calmly, feeling discomfort in her stomach.
"Would my husband live to see the time when the first symptoms could be apparent? If it turned out I was infected." She mumbled, and he shook his head.
"No, my Lady."
She smiled at his words and nodded.
"Thank you. Assure my King that I am well and can abide with him as before."
The man looked at her, in his eyes disbelief but at the same time a kind of admiration, compassion and warmth from which she felt a squeeze in her throat.
"My Lady."
The days in Jerusalem were often sunny and hot, and as her husband rejoiced at the sight of her bare body, she walked around his chambers naked, feeling like a Greek goddess, Aphrodite or Artemis.
She would read old volumes, play the lute or embroider while spreading out comfortably on large cushions so that he could see her, and he would admire her from afar like a nymph.
"– my wife is like a fruit of paradise – like a goddess born of the sea foam –" He murmured, looking at her contentedly, bent over the dozens of parchments spread out on his table.
The servants knew that they could not enter his quarters without permission, for although he was gentle and affectionate in his manner, he did not wish to share this shameless sight with anyone.
However, what most of their days consisted of were conversations.
Her husband was a great speaker – they were discussing the Bible, faith, philosophy, poetry, art, war and history for long hours.
At nights, when he couldn't sleep from his pain, hearing his sighs and quiet moans that he tried to suppress for her sake, she would ask him questions.
She couldn't touch his hands or embrace him – his body needed rest, to breathe to keep from rotting and for at least a few hours a day it was supposed to be uncovered.
"Christ says to the adulteress: go and sin no more. However, he knows, as God incarnate, that this is not his command, but a recommendation. Sin is the fatal disease of every human being and we all sin in thought, in speech, in deed, in neglect. This is no reason to be sad. Christ is merely saying: live in such a way as not to cause yourself or others suffering, try to live with dignity, in harmony with yourself and your Father in Heaven."
"Is it known what happened to her afterwards?" She asked quietly, looking at his silhouette, seeing only its outline on the other side of his bed.
"Some identify her with Mary Magdalene or Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. But it could also have been a person not mentioned by name in the Gospel. She certainly followed Christ and became one of his disciples." He said, his voice clearer without his mask, calm and soft.
"Do you think God considers me an adulteress?" She asked in a trembling voice and heard him shift restlessly in his bed.
"Why should such an unjust and harsh judgment fall on my wife? Because she is devoted to me with her soul, heart and body? Haven't you done everything I asked of you and even more? You are as pure as the sheet I lie on, as the delicate fabrics I wear on my skin. Your beauty makes me even more aware of my ugliness." He whispered with pain that made her swallow hard, shocked by his words.
"To me, you are the most beautiful of men. Before I met you, I swore to God that I would never marry, that I would not share Sibylla's fate. He showed me mercy, filling my heart with a burning feeling for you, my beloved."
He was silent, but she heard him exhale loudly, his trembling sigh full of suffering.
He cried.
"If only you could look at my face, see what a disgusting caricature of a human I am, you would understand what a great mistake you made." He howled, choking on his own tears, clearly letting out what had been weighing on his heart for weeks.
The fear that if she accidentally saw his face, she would scream in terror and run away.
"Is your faith in me so weak? I hoped you think of me with respect." She mumbled, heartbroken, feeling a squeeze in her throat.
She heard him swallow hard at her words, clearly terrified that he had offended her.
"I do, my love. Forgive me."
"I fell in love with a human, not an earthly shell." She said, but he didn't answer her.
She watched the silhouette of her husband and his physicians each evening through the curtains, seeing them only as through a fog in the candlelight, their shadows dancing around her.
She could hear his hisses and cries of pain as they treated his wounds, see the outline of his head, always with his back turned to her.
When they were finally left alone and he lay down on his bed, she heard his sigh of relief, his face, though she couldn't see it, turned towards her.
"My sweetest?" He whispered, and she smiled warmly, feeling a wonderful delight in her heart every time he called her that.
"I'm here, my love." She murmured, twisting comfortably in her bed.
"I desire you."
She swallowed hard, feeling her warm womanhood throb around nothing.
"I desire you too, my beloved."
They were both silent for a long moment, the tension around them palpable in the air.
"– one of my physicians –" He began in a trembling voice. "– at my request, he created something that I can – put on my length so as not to touch you directly – from what I understand, he made it from the intestine of some animal and disinfected it – he assured me that it would be safe for both of us, but –"
"– yes –" She muttered, feeling her heart begin to pound like crazy at the thought that he wanted to do this to her.
"– you know it's a risk –" He said, his voice quivering with longing, the shadow of his silhouette turned towards her.
"– I knew it from the very beginning – I don't care what happens to my body – I just want to feel my beloved husband inside me –" She whispered with embarrassment and that seemed to be enough for him.
She heard him stand up, quickly putting the cloth and mask over his head as he appeared on the other side, beside her bed, looking as he usually did – the same black leather gloves on his hands, his fingers clenched on a small wooden box.
"– undress –" He commanded, and she did so, literally ripping off herself her nightgown, laying down on her stomach.
His silhouette was instantly next her, kneeling behind her buttocks, his breath hitched and quickened when she heard the rustling of something and another strange, sticky sound.
After a moment, his fingers tentatively and gently ran over her swollen, pink folds, collecting her wetness, which had already managed to trickle down her thigh.
"– no other treatments are needed – my sweet wife is leaking like a forest stream –" He hummed with delight and admiration, she felt her cheeks blush with embarrassment.
They both sighed as she felt something thick and hard begin to push against her puffy slit, opening her wide – despite her lack of preparation her cunt pulsed in delight, moist with desire.
The feeling of him deep inside her, so intense and definitive, of how hard his long, thick erection stretched her fleshy walls was shockingly pleasurable and terrifying at the same time, as if her body no longer belonged to her.
"– yes, yes, yes –" She mewled as she felt his hands clamp down on her buttocks, spreading them apart as if he were tearing a piece of fruit, another determined thrust of his hips sinking him completely into her hot core with their moans of pleasure.
"– fuck –"
She wasn't sure if he had ever cursed before, but then, as his hips immediately began to pound into her with loud slaps, nothing more than their panting, grunts and words insulting to God left his mouth.
"– we'll do it frequently – so that you can remember this feeling well – your husband deep inside your warmth –" He exhaled in a way from which her little cunt began to squeeze him greedily, sucking his erection inside, her lips parted wide in a loud, helpless whines of pleasure so strong that she had to close her eyes, her hands clenched on the bedding.
His gloved fingers dug into the delicate structure of her hips, imposing a more aggressive pace on her, his fat manhood bursting deep between her fleshy walls without slipping out of her, hitting again and again her sweet little spot.
"– yes – yes, I love you, I love you, I love you, please –" She cried out, feeling the tension in her silky womanhood reach its zenith, the pleasant tingling in her belly testifying to the fact that she was about to reach her peak with him and dreamed of nothing else.
He moaned low, slamming into her like mad, feeling her weeping core clench around his twitching length more and more, his manhood hard as a rock with desire.
"– G-God – oh, fuck, yes, yes, my sweetest, let me, ah –" He gasped in delight, coming deep inside her, filling the thin material overlying his manhood with his release.
Her eyes closed and her mouth parted wide as her peak came down on her like a thunderbolt, shaking her body with convulsions of delicious delight.
They both moaned and panted, rocking their hips for a moment more with the loud click of her slick cunt, his hands soothingly kneading the skin of her buttocks.
"– I will order more of this to be prepared – so that I can fulfil my marital duty every night –" He sighed with satisfaction.
She involuntarily smiled under her breath, looking up at him over her shoulder, the moonlight shining outside the window reflected in his mask.
"– what kind of white marriage is this? –" She asked teasingly, rolling her hips, feeling his half-soft manhood pulsate inside her again.
"– our kind – do not fret – I will explain it to God once I am before him – I will tell him that I loved my wife too much –"
_____
Author's note: Between their wedding day and this next act, weeks actually pass during which he doesn't touch her (she mentions the days spent in his company and how she is examined every day, how he watches her naked, but apart from that nothing happens between them). He is afraid that if he tries to touch her again, he won't hold back (he had already had difficulty not taking her on their wedding night), so he tried to think of something so as not to touch her directly with his manhood. Their intimacy is an act of their desperation, the pain of knowing that their marriage will last a year or two at most. The desire to touch her and feel her is as strong in him as the desire to protect her and push her away. Their love is tragic and complete to me, and she knows what she is risking (she knew from the very beginning).
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Summary: Because of a past refusal, the god who once fostered and protected your village has cursed the land and left it in constant darkness and bloodshed. But years after the island's condemnation he visits the priestess in her dreams, claiming that he is once again willing to take a sacrifice in exchange for the people's salvation.
You are left to grapple with your reality when that sacrifice is announced to be you.
Notes: 26k words, so . . . grab a snack? Also, this has not been proofread yet so sorry for any errors and misspellings. Banner is credited @saradika
Warnings: MDI - 18+ content! AFAB, Sacrifice AU, violence, horror elements, the reader is drugged physically for ritual purposes but it doesn't affect her in the Dreaming? illusions to death, an animal is harmed but does not die, a small teaspoon of stalker Dream (sorta), hints of possessive Dream but he's also soft. Oral (F!receiving), he's a switch, a bit of soft dom Morpheus I suppose, sex outside but there is no voyeurism involved, unprotected sex.
The memories of your mother are vague at best. Like gazing up at someone while being submerged under water. But what you could remember, quite vividly at that is the wild fables and stories of gods and heroes that she would tell you, sending you off to sleep with images of great serpents slicing through the waves of the seas or the behemoth hound snapping at the tormented souls of the underworld with its many heads. And she taught you of the nymphs of the ocean and the wood, and the great gods that cloak the skies with heavy storm clouds and bind the souls of lovers together.
But perhaps one of the most important to your isolated village, the one who was vital to the people's survival was the deity Morpheus. Dream of the Endless, the King of Dreams and Ruler of Nightmares. The heavenly benefactor that assured you all prosperity and wealth. He was benevolent and caring, and to commemorate the god, murals were created in his image. Some portrayed him as both beast and man. With the lithe physique of a human, the textured, taloned feet of a bird and great wings pridefully expanding from his back, stretching high in a reaching arch and a head that you could not discern if it was intended to mimic a bird or insect. The protrusion from his face reminded you of the proboscis of a mosquito but it was jointed and colored like ivory like a bleached spine.
But on occasion the paintings depict the god as a striking statuesque man, clutching a group of blood red blossoms in one hand and fragments of pale sand poured through the fingers of an opposing upturned palm. And he seems to have his wings in this form also. And they are always with feathers the color of the night sky.
Your mother had told you that he was a kind ruler. But even kindness is not without its conditions.
The people had spoken of an offering that must be made to the Endless to appease him, an exchange for his watchful eye and shelter. A sacrifice must be given. A human one. The thought had terrified you as a child. But the villagers - even your own parents seemed to accept the requirement without any qualms. No complaints were made from the people. It was taken as a fact of life. The same as how the sun rises in the east or how fire burns when touched. No one fought when the shrine guards came in the morning. When the dawn was but a smudge of lavender in the horizon, knocking on doors and collecting any woman who was of age regardless of it they were already wives with families and duties.
Not even your father or mother had protested when they came to take her away to the temple. And you had latched yourself onto her hips, refusing to let go even when she assured you that this was a good thing. That it was a great compliment to be even considered for the choosing. And that if she was selected as the offering - to join the Dark God that it would bring honor not just to the village but to your house as well. But you had refused to listen, shaking your head while your tears dampened the fabric that covered her body. The hierodules had to tear you from her hips, and your father had to secure you in his arms as she left with the guards to the join the other women who had been collected from their homes.
The next passing days for you had been melancholic and distressing to say the least but the village was a kaleidoscope of colors and festivities. And despite the joy that thrummed across the air, the world seemed to be holding its breath, waiting the day for the Choosing when the head Priestess would reveal the offered woman that Endless had deemed worthy enough to be his sacrifice.
The ceremony had been held near dusk and a heavy quiet had fallen over the collective as you all look up to the priestess, desperate to hear which womans name she would utter. The anticipation was stifling as you all awaited who would become his bride, and your fingernails had dug into your father's hand so harshly that it must have stung, but he did not flinch or jerk away once, far too enamored with the event. And when the sister had revealed the Chosen the crowd had cheered and some gasped, but you had cried. Cried with relief and joy.
But on that day the Priestess decided to deny the dark god of his sacrifice and that decision would mark the fall and despair of your village for years to come.
And now you stand where your mother once did. But instead of the cover of a gentle twilight, the unforgiving heat of the sun wafts over you, engulfing you in a sweltering heat and pounds down on the crown of your skull. Voices clamor from down below, the frenzied cries of desperate people, and it has the women standing at your sides shivering like startled doe's. You could not blame them in the slightest. You too wanted to quiver and sob to expel your fear, but you could not bear to show any vulnerabilities. Not to the hungry crowd, too terrified in their own right to empathize with your distress.
The ritual is only in a few days' time and the atmosphere that looms across the village with a heavy sort of anticipation is a conflicted sort of energy. There was an obvious air of excitement, prickling at your skin and nearly leaving you breathless but there was also the underlying thrum of . . . fear. It pained you to look out to the masses and see their jostling bodies, waiting with bated breath to hear the name of the Endless' intended. To hear if he would finally accept a sacrifice again after so many years of anguish and terror.
They had decorated the thresholds of houses, and the columns of buildings with rich tapestries and fine wreaths just as had been done in the past. The people- your people frolic about in special fabrics- deep reds and blues to herald the Endless. Gorging themselves on the five-day long feast: the meat of boar and quail and an abundance of fruits. The flow of wine and spirits did not stop. It had only progressed if the slurred shouting and rumbunctious laughter that had reached you from behind the thick walls of the commune was any indication. Celebrating their lives. Celebrating your death.
Despite your circumstances you had been nothing but pampered since your forced participation. Fed only the finest meals and bathed in expensive oils and perfumes. You have been chosen by an ancient; a harsh voice hissed cruelly from the depths of your mind. The voice of the old sister. The woman who had sealed your awful fate. The one who claimed that the mind walker -the dark god himself had come to her in a dream and had spoken to her she had reiterated animatedly, sharp piercing eyes nearly rolling back in her skull from her mania. Her body had quivered from her passion and the other women that had been selected and forced into a reluctant row had nearly flinched back at the intensity of it. You all clung to each other, hands gripping the other for support. Something to tether yourselves to the ground. All of the eligible women had been wrangled up, torn from the arms of their families. Even women with husbands and children were taken away, no one was spared in the wishes of finally appeasing the god.
You had scanned the clamoring crowd in the hopes of finding someone who would be willing to help. Someone who would disagree. Perhaps a stranger would show pity or sympathy, but you found no one. They were all hanging on to the demented rambling of the old priestess. Their silence was palatable. The crazed joyous eyes of people with hope. Hope of reprieve from the decade long curse that had tainted the village. And unfortunately, one of the maidens- one of you that stood in that horrid line was the answer to their prayers. And when you found no sympathy, you looked past the commotion and the roofs of houses to the sea in the distance and imagined yourself taking to the dark waves and escaping under the tide and froth. Emerging somewhere new and wonderful.
Of course, there would be no freedom for you. Not when her horrid eyes strayed from the desperate crowd and pinned you in your place the air had been expelled from your lungs with a harsh gravity. The realization of your fate.
And then as if to perpetuate her point further, to drive the knife in deeper and twist, she lifted her crooked finger up in the air and pointed. Right at you. And the other girls that were clinging to your body for support and comfort had jerked from you as if you were dirty and blemished, sobbing with cries of relief while they fled in search of their mothers and fathers in the crowd. But some of them had sank to the dust and clasped their hands together as if in prayer, kneeling at your feet like you were sanctified.
"The Endless has found his Chosen." She crooned and the people had roared in a victorious cry.
They took you kicking and screaming, ignoring your cries of protest while they carried you off to the Sisters commune to prepare you and the townspeople looked on, watching you feverously with a horrid sort of enthusiasm. Relief you recognized.
You had been forced into decadent silks and decorated with jewelry that at one time you would have dreamed of wearing, but they might as well as have been hot iron with the way that they felt against your skin. Restricting, disgusting.
They paraded you around for days, making you the pinnacle of the festival while you watched them all sink into their basest desires, influenced from alcohol and the intoxication of relief. You tried not to blame them. To see past your pain and hurt and summon some forgiveness. After all, they were only afraid. The same as you had been, the same as you are now. Fearful of the Night King and his spirits. The horrible kakodaimon hoard that serve at his command and wreak havoc should their emperor be denied of his sacrifice. Some are little more than mischievous deities, entertaining themselves with otherwise harmless pranks: Stealing shoes and tying the hair of women into knots while they sleep unaware. The stuff of tales and bedtime stories. But he has other creatures. Monstrous, evil things that steal infants from their cribs and drain bodies of their lifeblood and chew bone.
The same horrid beings that have been tormenting the village for a decade now, arriving in the night to snatch up any poor soul who had been foolish enough to be caught outside during the dark. Many have died during the years since he's unleashed his army of terrors upon the village. The dark creatures snatching them up in their gnarled claws, as lethal as a sharpened daggers and carrying them off with the swift whisper of wings. All because he was refused.
And now finally you sit underneath the stars again, after being forced behind barricaded doors and huddling underneath the table and hoping that the creatures wouldn't break through the door and tear themselves inside with gnashing teeth to feast upon your flesh. Clinging to the hope that you would survive until daybreak when the blessed sun would rise from the horizon and banish them away. If only for a little while.
For the first time since you were a child you may embrace the dark and breath in the warm night air, feeling it sooth your lungs like a balm. You're as full of wonder as you are paranoia. Waiting for one of the nightmares to leap out of the shadows and steal you away. But even the weight of the silver and diamonds adorning your body and the deafening laughter of the feast couldn't tear your eyes away from the black expanse that loomed above. Stretching out like a horrible, beautiful black void that threatened to eat you alive. And you nearly felt crushed with how small - insignificant it made you feel. The unforgiving stretch of the cosmos looming above seemed to force your own mortality upon you with a harsh sort of grace. And it angered you that the dark god had stripped this sight from you for so many years. He had taken so much from you all and now they all once again chant his name as though he was a savior and not the reason for their strife and agony. Celebrating his image like he was a humble god that had not punished them and their children with beasts and terrible dreams. All because he was not given a woman who had been promised to him.
You had never felt so bare in your life, having been forced on the plush velvet cushions of a palanquin to be carried around on the shoulders of the temple guards and displayed around the village. There was no shelter from the prying eyes of the townspeople who had watched you with the same sort of desperate hunger as a pack of starved dogs, shameless and pitiful. They had been pelting you with the vibrant blossoms of violets and dark seeds, and the abundance had begun to collect atop the cushions, and you had been tempted to sweep the offerings off the side of the vehicle but as if sensing your intentions one of the priestesses had swiftly swiveled her head to glare at you from her place beneath you. You had been tempted to defy her regardless, to hold eye contact with her as you did so, but despite your petty desire you held yourself back.
They did eventually lower you from their shoulders and back down onto the earth, and a few women had emerged from the boisterous crowd -servants perhaps - to hand you food and drink. You had not wanted to accept it, too prideful to take what they had given you and make them believe that they had managed to placate you with a meal and wine, but eventually your stomach had won and you hesitantly abandoned your dignity. It had been too long since you had last had a decent meal, having survived off of measly scraps for too long. You had gorged yourself on the figs and fish and honey cakes, chasing it with the rich wine when you had become parched and soon your head had become light with the influence of the fermented liquid, and it allowed you to ignore the cajoling throng of people and the sisters' that observed you.
The priestesses surrounded you like a group of statues, pillars of death. Silent and watching. Guarding. They observe when the villagers approach you, eyes glinting hauntingly like they're waiting for one of the people to lash out and attack you. You hoped someone would and finally put you out of your misery. But instead, they all crouched down low at your feet, whispering their gratitude like you had asked for this purpose and placed bundles of red flowers on the earth to surround the palanquin. Even a child had approached you, thanking you for the salvation you offered. It had nearly broken you and tears had threatened to spill down your face. It almost disgusted you to look at them. Soft, delicate blossoms that were a harsh scarlet. Red like blood. Poppies you had realized. The flower associated with the Endless. It made you nauseous to be surrounded by his symbol. And suddenly they were not so pretty anymore and there were too many. Overflowing at your feet and pilling up so high that it felt like the people were trying to build a wall around you.
"Why must I do this?" You gasp, feeling as though you were being crushed. The sister to your right is the one who speaks but she does not turn to look at you, instead focusing on the roaring pyre that the villagers dance around under the guide of the drums and flute. "Because it is your purpose." The answer is cold and matter of fact, sparing you no sympathy. It is a sentence that you have heard uttered one too many times in the passing days, almost as though they believed you would come to accept your circumstances if you heard it enough. You just could not understand why they would be so easily swayed to accept the god who had turned his backs on them so long ago. Abandoned them and tormented them because of his own hubris. Scorned because the head priestess before had not given him her own daughter.
He had plagued your village for too long. Ravaging men and women and children with horrid dreams and dying crop. Except for now. Ever since the choosing ceremony, when you had been selected the gardens had blossomed seemingly overnight, overgrown with a prosperous harvest and the hunt had been successful after many moons of coming up with little more than measly rabbits.
They would always return to his dark embrace after the horrors that you have all been forced to endure. It did not matter if he demanded one maiden or a thousand, they would spare as many women that he demanded. Even if it meant finding shelter under the punishing hand that caused all of their pain.
But it still does not explain why he had accepted a sacrifice after so many years of silence and refusal. After turning his nose up at every attempt to reconcile and give an offering he makes his presence known now. But what had changed? Why you? Surely the god that presides over dreams and walks amongst the subconscious must know that you are no longer a chaste woman. A tainted old maid is what they would whisper about you. There was no sense to any of this.
"But why me?" And the fragile strings of jewelry draped around your neck clink against each other, but it is an annoying sound that has your nails digging into the rich tapestried cushions. It is the one to your left that speaks now. Her voice is deceptively soft, bubbling like a gentle stream. "We do not question the Endless. " She responds. And although her voice is much more welcoming than her sister's her words are just as indifferent. " You will be our salvation. Our forgiveness. You will save us. "
Any bit of protest had died in your throat before you could get them out. You focused on the festivities instead, watching the people chant and sing old songs. And dancers leapt around the fire, dressed in furs and leather and colorful fabrics to mimic figures from folklore and the very monsters that had massacred your village for years. Wearing masks fashioned from old hides and animal pelts, brandishing the horns taken from cattle and deer. They playfully leapt at the crowd that encircled the fire as though they were going to swipe. And some had constructed costumes to imitate the dark plumage of the raven, one of his coveted animals.
This was twisted. A mockery of suffering and pain. Pissing on the memory of the people who had fallen victim to the dream god and his nightmares.
How could they all forget so easily?
You could feel the sting of anger simmering within your chest, prickling at your fingertips. It made it difficult to breath around the weight of it all. You continue to watch them all despite the rage and sorrow that it induces. The horrible way they galivant around and clap and cheer. It's disgusting and awful. Even the children. The poor children participate, lunging at the false monsters with wooden swords and some are dressed as the dark creatures themselves.
To get some sort of reprieve you looked to the night sky, staring up at the full moon as though its goddess would hear your silent plea and save you from your fate. Whisking you from this starving mob and your doomed fate to her hidden island to frolic with the nymphs free from your crude duty. But the glowing deity did not appear, and you were left to stare at the lonely dark void of the night while the stars winked and fluttered as though their light might dim and die. It was foolish to believe that the goddess of virtue would appear for a woman like you.
But then you could feel it. A magnetic pull that tilted your head from its upturned position, and your eyes lower onto something gleaming with a pale light. Two shimmering pieces, shinning much like the moon hanging above. It is a pair of eyes you come to quickly discern. Reflecting the bright glow of the pyre in a way that is decidedly not human. Those are the eyes of a beast: An owls may do that, or a wolf's or a cat. Not a human. But the face that they belong to is very much a man's.
It is difficult to make out the features of his face past the way that the heat of the open flames warp the surrounding atmosphere and the smoke twists and coils into the open air like deadly serpents. But you can comprehend the sharp jut of high cheek bones and pale milky skin almost as though he was cut from a fine marble. His expression is not a joyous one or celebratory like the other villagers, instead it is stoic and serious. The intensity of his glare has you pinned in place. It is you; you realize. He's staring at you.
The world suddenly feels weightless, like you're suspended in a vacuum. You had heard a story from an old hunter once. One who had miraculously survived a lightning strike and he had been shunned by many of the others for his scars. After all he must have done something to warrant the strike. He must have scorned the Lord of the Sky himself. But you had spoken to him regardless and he had told you that he had felt it before it had hit him, even though it was only for but a second. His hair had stood on end and his skin had tingled strangely before his body was flooded with a numbing white-hot heat. And you could feel that sensation prickling over you now, like the whisper of a thousand fingertips brushing you all over. It made you shiver, and you adjusted yourself in your seat in an attempt to banish the feeling, but it never faded. If anything, the steady pulses persisted and seemed to thrum with even more intensity nearly making you gasp aloud. You wanted to look away from the strange man, but you could not seem to will yourself to turn your gaze from him, and some strange part of you did not want to. He was gorgeous in a haunting sort of way, but you could not figure out why. There was an unearthly quality to his countenance, like he was he was not a man but wearing the face of one.
It was then you noticed the color of his robes. Black. But that was not right. No one else was allowed to sport the Endless' color, no one else apart from the head priestess was allowed to wear his color, as a way to display her connection and loyalty. It was considered an extreme offence for any other person to bear a cloth in his shade. A punishable offence that would often result in public ridicule and the removal of the criminal's dominant hand. Some have even claimed that the accused may be haunted from night terrors for the crime until the passing of their natural human life. So who would be bold enough to flaunt around in public in such dark robes?
He must be a foolish man. Or at least an arrogant one. And as though he could hear your thoughts the corner of his mouth quirks in just the faintest hint of a smile. So delicate that it could be mistaken for a trick of the light. But you could see it in his otherworldly eyes too. It looked as though that it did not suit him, but he also wore the expression beautifully. It was an odd juxtaposition, and you did not know what to make of it. He looks like no one you had never seen before but is also painfully familiar, like an old memory.
Oddly enough no one else seems to notice his presence at all. A phenomenon that could be blamed on the alcohol and high spirits but what couldn't be wrote away by reason was the way that a drunk seemed to stumble through the strange man, causing him to vanish like a plume of smoke and the pale shimmer of his eyes was the last to fade, piercing some buried part of you before disappearing entirely and with it something clicks into place.
The sensation that had spilled over you leaves with him, releasing you from its hold and allowing you take a deep breath that you had not known you needed. That awful wonderful stare. . . Could that have truly been the nightmare masquerading as a man? They have been known to do such a thing before. Using the guises of people and loved ones to lure vulnerable victims out for slaughter. Then another thought trickles down to the forefront and it has a cold shiver skipping down the notches of your spine. What if it had been the nightmare king himself? Come to see you, his intended bride?
Surely you were hallucinating. It has never been mentioned before that the deity has ever made appearances before the ritual. None of the other past offerings have spoken of it. If it has happened, then none have ever cared to mention it.
It had a troubled sinking feeling plummeting in your gut and it stayed with you throughout the night until the priestesses had collected you from your place and ushered you back to your temporary quarters where the servants prepared you for sleep. Insisting that you bathe, pouring luxuries oils into the steaming water and combing your hair before bed. They fret about like ghost. Silent and always moving so they are often little more than glimpses in your peripheral vision. They hardly speak. Only enough to offer commands that are loosely guised as suggestions or to whisper softly amongst themselves.
They do not like you; you could easily tell. If the unabashed away that they gossip quietly while in your presence is any indication. But one of the women in particular does nothing to hide her distaste. Watching you with scorn in her eyes and a scowl on her lips. Neither of you had made any efforts to verbally communicate your hatred for the other, instead opting to passive aggressively telegraph the fact with petty gestures. Such as when she had decided to harshly pick through your hair while preparing you for the first feast. Clawing at your scalp with the teeth of the comb harshly enough to sting and throb for the entire night. The apology that she had given you was pathetically fake, contempt framed around a smile and feigned concern. She did not do it again when you had accidentally spilt hot tea across her hip when she was selecting your jewelry.
But even now you could feel the heat of her glare against the crown of your skull and the grip that she had on your hair was harsher than necessary, but you simply did not have the energy to reprimand the action. Not after being paraded around the feast all night like a prized brood mare, sluggish under the weight of silks and pearls that decorated you.
You feel her leaning over your shoulder before she speaks, the heat of her body irritates your skin and you find yourself tensing and trying to lean from her presence, but she is gripping your hair in a tight grip that keeps you from shifting. "You do not deserve to be touched by a god." She hisses, venom tainting her words.
"Clearly you do not either," you snap just as harshly, gripping the sides of the basin so that you do not twist out of her hold and lash out. The other maids do not so much as glance over at the altercation, simply going on about their duties as though the both of you do not exist. "Or else you would be the one bathing in oils and dining on fruits and wine. " The hold on the back of your scalp goes slack somewhat, allowing you enough leeway to peer over your shoulder and meet the heated gray of her eyes. "How does it feel to know that your god has no desire for you?"
She does not respond even though you can tell that she is actively biting her tongue to hold down her barbed words. It irritated you. The way they all acted as though they truly loved him. It was not affection they felt, but fear. You loathed the lying and the pretending all in the sake of appeasing the horrid god, and yet you could not find the courage to voice your opinions. It was a fruitless endeavor you knew to try and speak to these people. As tortured and hopeless as they were. And as much as you wanted to ridicule them their actions were not unfounded. You had seen firsthand what the Endless was capable of when he was denied of promises. You had watched you own mother be dragged away by venomous claws and terrible simpering fangs. There was no room for argument. At least not a sensical one.
And so, you had remined silent for the remainder of your bath and until the servants had retired for the night, settling underneath the soft linens, but you were unable to relax. Not when you could still feel that man's eyes searing into your skin. Not from the fear of falling danger to the night terrors and horrible dreams, even though you have been quite fortunate, having not experience a single nightmare in quite some time. But that dark figures presence felt like a bad omen. An awful warning for the things to come. What if he sends his demons to come and haunt you and drag you away in the dark? What if he means to punish you? You wrack your brain to try and remember if you could have ever possibly scorned the dark god but come up empty. Granted you have never particularly harbored pleasant feelings towards the deity but not a single soul in the village has since the day that he chose to curse it, tainting it with beasts and painful dreams. Sometimes tormenting the people with dreams so intense and horrid that some have passed away in their sleep, suffering from weak hearts or fragile lungs. Other have been driven mad from the vividness and the persistence of the nightmares to the point that they have lost all sense of self and reality, some noy just taking their own lives but even the lives of others in the midst their distress and agony.
He was a dreadful god whose love was built with conditions and lies. Boasting the promise of prosperity and protection but the only thing you need protection from is him.
An airy coo breaks you from your troubling thoughts, drawing your attention to the corner of the room where a familiar black shape trots out of the shadows, almost as though he had materialized from them.
"What are you doing here you silly thing?" You could not hold in the short disbelieving laugh that escapes you in a huff, affection growing within your chest. You are not even sure how he could have possibly gotten inside the Sisters' commune and found your quarters, especially considering that the trek from your cottage to the village was a decent walk. He must have found an open window or slipped inside when no one was looking. You would not put the feat past him, he always seemed to be skulking about.
You prop yourself up on your elbow to welcome the cat as he leaps onto your mattress, leaning into your hand with the tilt of his head. And you are thankful for the familiarity and the calm that washes over you at the feel of his long fur against your palm. It is a great comfort to have your companion back with again after being away from home for so long. But when your affection became too much, he slipped out from underneath your hold and retreated to the foot of your bed with a petulant flick of his tail, deciding to watch you with the piercing blue of his eyes instead.
"Oh, my dearest apologies, " you jest, pulling your blanket up higher around your shoulder and try not to take it personally as he moves from you. "I did not mean to offend you."
He blinks slowly, a very simple gesture but it always felt like it was done with an air of judgement. But then again, the animal always seemed to carry himself an imperious sort of way, even though he is but a cat, he manages to be rather expressive when he wants to be.
"Have you been taking care of yourself?" You ask as though you would get an answer. You hate the thought of him being out so late with the possibility of those dreadful creatures roaming the ground and skies, ready to snatch and gouge with deadly claws. You know that he could fend for himself. He is a feral cat at best, coming and going as he pleases. Often vanishing for concerning periods of time before reappearing at your doorstep as though he had never left at all. But not even the beasts - the regular forest dwelling kind or the godly ones are the only threats that roam the dark. People could be just as awful. You honestly do not how he has managed to survive as long as he has with all the dangers lurking about. It was the same thing that you had wondered about on the first day that you saw him wandering around the tall grass that surrounded your home while you were out tending to your stubborn garden. But the second thought and the most startling was the realization that you were even looking at a cat at all. There had not been a single feline spotted on the village since the morning after the failed ritual all those years ago. All of the cats had but vanished from the island without a trace. Gone as though they had not been here at all, like they had all piled onto a boat and paddled to the mainland or a giant hand had descended from the sky and plucked them from their homes and alleyways. But now there was one there, slinking through the tall grass, a whisp of black against the dead golden reeds.
It had you pausing from your task of searching for an unblemished vegetable that had not been tainted by worm bites or disease (which was proving to be a pointless endeavor) to watch the cat on its little journey. But despite your awe you had noticed the lethargy that seemed to slow its movements considerably. The usual feline grace that the animals typically carry themselves with was replaced by sluggish and jerky movements. The cat was all but stumbling between the tall stalks of grass. And in your worried study of the animal, you noticed a series of angry red slivers peeking through the thickness of his fur along its side. Four angry red wounds that would have been difficult for a human to endure, but for a cat you could not imagine the tole it was taking on its body to remain conscious. Especially through the pain no doubt.
It had been entirely upon reflex to jerk up from your place on the ground, concern overshadowing your tact and making you forget that it may be a feral and undomesticated creature. And your worry did not prove to be unfounded when the cats head swung over in your direction, freezing in its walk to assess you. The both of you held a long exchange of stares and you had wondered if you should try to approach it, but then it had bolted. Lurching forward on wobbly feet and your heart had jumped in your throat, entirely frightened that he would flee to the cover of the forest and succumb to his wounds. But the cat had only made it a few paces before it was crumbling to the dirt and collapses on its side.
You had barged through the gate of your garden leaving it to creak on its hinges while you approached the cat's body, hoping that he had not given into the trauma of the lacerations. But a glance over with your eyes confirmed that it was thankfully still breathing. You had whispered your apologies when you had noticed that he was watching you as well with a tired glassy stare, scooping him up as gently as you could and carrying him into your house to provide as much care as you could.
The cat's body was already making efforts to build scabbing, the thick red having coagulated along the edges of its wounds. But the blood was still flowing too much for your liking, staining the linens that you had folded near the hearth for the animal to rest on. You were going to have to sew. Unfortunately, due to the infertility of the soil and the bad luck with yielding a healthy garden you had little herbs or flowers for medicine. And truthfully you did not know much of cats and which plants and medicines that should be avoided or would help him recover from his ailments, but with no one to confide in you did your best. Making sure to cleanse the slashes with fresh water before you began to stitch. Having no choice but to settle for the needle and thread that you used to make repairs on your clothing.
"I'm afraid you aren't going to like me much after this, but I don't think we have much of a choice. " You had said, as you knelt down on the floor of your kitchen, settling in front of the animal with your thread in one hand and the needle in the other. It had peered at you from the corners of its eyes, too weak to move its head, but you had seen something flashed in its weary gaze that seemed a lot like irritation.
You had tried to be as nimble and delicate as possible, doing to your best to focus past your anxiety to steady the mild quiver of your fingers, especially when they had become slick with blood. You tried to softly sooth the cat as gently as you could muster whenever he would jerk from pain. And thankfully you were finished before you realized, and you wrapped a strip of clean cloth around his middle to keep it clean from dirt and possible infection.
He had laid there for several days, only moving when you had to change his dressings. And in the beginning, he had hardly eaten or drank, and you had feared for the worst. That despite your best-efforts illness had gotten ahold of him and stripped him of his appetite. But on the second day of you trying to persuade him to at least drink it seemed he had grown tired of you tapping your fingertips along the edge of the bowl or the way that you would defeatedly try to spoon-feed him water from the divot of a spoon and had lapped at the water from the edge of his linens before looking up you with a pointed glare. It took even longer to get him to eat, sharing with him pieces of rabbit that you had managed to trap.
And since his presence in your home the beasts outside had been more active than usual, as though they could smell the blood of his wounds and had taken to clawing at your door. And on some nights, you could hear the muffled thump of footsteps skulking along your roof. They had never been so eager before. So persistent. Typically, the thing that mimics was the only one that stayed so close to your home, often screaming throughout the night like an animal. It even cried like a distressed woman or an anguished child. Sometimes it's true voice slips through the glamour. The sound of thousands speaking in unison, of men, women and children. Stolen souls forced to speak through the maw that devoured them whole.
As terrible as it sounds a part of you has grown used to its presence. It had become routine almost, hearing the awful imitations pouring from its mouth from behind your front door. And you have spent many a night underneath the latch that you had made in the floor of your house, sleeping in burrow dug underneath the wooden planks with a dagger clutched to your chest. But when you had the cat in your home the activity seemed to increase, and you had spent every night spent underneath your floor with the cat delicately placed in the corner on his own bundle of blankets where he would lay without moving, too weak to shift or turn.
And they had returned the next night too with the number greater than the last, stalking around the perimeter of your house. Hissing and chortling in the night like a pack of demonic rabid wolves. It had been most cruel when a familiar voice had spoken from the other side of the front door, too distorted and inhuman to truly be your loved one, but similar enough to taunt you. A mockery of your father's voice begging you to let him inside. And even within your room underneath the floorboards you could still hear it. It talked for hours and spoke as both your mother and father until tears were prickling at your lash line and threatened to fall, and you had done what you could to distract yourself. Staring at the floor above you, finding shapes and faces in the patterns and shifting shades of the wood.
It was the first time that the cat had even attempted to seek out any sort of contact. Weakly perking up from his corner and settling on the length of your legs from above your blanket and he had stared up at the floorboards above you with a startling air of intent. The voices crooned out and the rasp of talons scratched along the walls of your house. Then mercifully the voices had stopped. Seemingly all at once a peaceful hush had fallen over the atmosphere and you finally felt as though you could breathe again. The monsters had not returned that night. Or on any other night. It was as though they had vanished entirely which you knew could not be true because you could still find evidence of their existence in the forest while you hunted or washed your linens in the nearby stream.
His health had steadily risen over the next few days. The wounds on his side had healed up nicely and he had quickly grown more restless. And he had taken to occupying himself by investigating you home and snooping around the rooms until one day he had slipped out from the front door when you were not paying attention and vanished into the tall grass. You did not heal him with the intent to keep him. A part of you assuming that he may have had a family eagerly awaiting his arrival somewhere on the island, but you could not lie to yourself that it had been nice to have company even if it was just a cat.
You had not seen him for several weeks after that and a part of you had feared that he may have fallen to one of the beasts in the wood. And the more optimistic side of you had hoped and imagined that he had found his family. Life had returned to its monotony without him at your side and you were once again alone while attending your chores. But there had been some promise, such as the abrupt but not unwelcomed revival of your garden, which had now begun to sprout bits of life again. You had been shocked when you had seen a green hue returning to the withered remains of the mint and thyme and beginnings of a humble pods growing along your fig tree, promising the growth of fruit. And then one day he surprised you with his return, trotting from the golden meadow while you were beating a rug of the dust and grime that it had been collecting and you had smiled and greeted him like an old friend. And he would begin accompanying you as you went about your chores, always sticking by you closely and observing, even if you ventured all the way around the other side of the island to hunt for oysters and scallops, though the harvest you returned with was always slim.
And you tried your best to name the creature, but he would not accept any of them. Not Akakikos or Thales or Arye. They were all promptly ignored when you had even tried to address him as such, and you were met with looks that could only be described as unimpressed. Of course, you could not find it in yourself to blame him. You did agree that none of them seemed to suit him all that much. But you could not call him nothing and so you had aptly christened him as 'Cat' which had been even less enthusiastically received as the others. But he would follow you everywhere despite the displeased looks that he would give you every time you addressed him as so, accompanying you when you washed your laundry in the nearby stream, and when you visit your parents' empty graves (you had never found their bodies) to tell them of your day. But he had especially surprised you whenever he would trot alongside you on your strolls down the shoreline of the ocean. It had shocked you to say the least, when Cat had wadded in the gentle waves after you, unaffected by the way that the water lapped at his paws.
A strange cat indeed.
It struck you suddenly, the realization that you would never see your home again. As empty and cold as it could be. Forced to live on the outskirts as a pariah, assuming that you would fall to your death underneath the claws of a nightmare. Many had perished living so close to the wood, and they surely had no intention of you surviving the forest on your lonesome. But you did and you made your vacant house your own, even with the bad blood-stained memories haunting the walls. You accepted your life alone rather early on and have even learned to love it in all of its solitude and freedoms. But they have once again bent you to their wills, selling you off like a lamb for slaughter to appease a selfish god.
You cannot fight of the stinging lump that has risen and lodged itself in your throat. Not this time. And it burns and pushed up tears that spill down your cheeks and stain the bedding. You could not stop yourself from mourning everything. The loss of your life, the waning humanity of the townspeople, the bloody deaths of your loved ones. You tried to clamp your teeth shut to conceal your sobbing, worried that the guards posted outside of the door may hear you. And even more crippling was the sudden painful awareness that tomorrow was the night of the ritual. You had been ignoring the date, too distressed to acknowledge it. But it was coming. It was coming at there is nothing that you can do to stop it.
There is the brush of something soft against your face, and it is not until your opening your eyes that you realize that you had even squeezed them shut. You look past the blur of your tears to see register two vivid blue irises watching you.
Your heart ached at the sight. Torn between a flicker of affection and your unignorable grief. But you smiled regardless of your tears and stroked his chin with your fingertips. It always surprises you when he chooses to crouch down against your chest, snuggling into your body. He was not always one to seek out affection, often preferring to lie somewhere near by while watching you finish up your routine chores and tasks. His favorite spot was the window seal of your kitchen where he would perch and observe you while you would knead dough or slice the vegetables for stews. But whenever your sleep was fitful, and you would wake with a layer of cold sweat dampening your clammy skin and the anguished cries of your parents still echoing in your ears he would scurry into your bedroom if he was not already there and curl up with you as he is now until you were able to fall sleep once again.
It troubled you to think of how he would fair for himself in your absence. You had been taking care of him for many moons now and you could only hope that in your effort to keep him from starvation that he had not grown to become too dependent of you. You could not bear the thought, that in your attempt to help and offer companionship that you had unwittingly ushered him closer to death. Would he go back to being alone after the Priestesses had sent your soul off to the nightmare god and all, but your lifeless body remained?
Would he once again wonder aimlessly with no one to care for him?
You could only hope that he would find someone else.
"I'm sorry." You whispered into his soft fur and clutched him closer to you and you remained that way until your grip of time had slipped and the only thing that told you that it was still the same night was the darkness that encompassed the room, most of the candles having long since burnt out of their wicks apart from one that was little more than a pinprick of light. Even with the pull of sleep turning your limps into heavy, useless extensions and the weariness burning at your drooping eyes you could not allow yourself to fall unconscious. You were desperate to keep as much time between yourself at the ritual as possible, even though it was a fool's errand of course, as the moon was still drifting along its path in the sky and the sun was still on its way to rise over the horizon. Tomorrow would come regardless of your distress and fate. Time was cruel and it stopped for no one. But still you could not let yourself sleep even with Cat embraced in your arms, and his body thrummed with a rare bout of purring. . . It was loud. Oddly so and you opened your eyes that you were not aware that you had even shut. And when you looked down, Cat was absent from his place against your chest even though he had just been there a second ago.
Worry broke through the exhaustion that sapped your bones and you were up in an instant, sitting up in the bed with the linens pooling around your waist while your gaze roves around the room and it does not pause until it finds a familiar shape in the darkness, watching you from a shaded corner. His eyes reflect the light from the dimming candle, and they bore into you with that pale shimmer. An unsettling chill trickles down your neck and raises the hair at your nape. The gleam of them disturbs some part of you, but you cannot place why. It is a look you recognize but it feels wrong and alien.
Its eyes. There is something wrong with its eyes.
"What are you doing over there?" You ask, and your voice is little more than a whisper, low from sleep and unease. But he does not so much as blink, continuing to stare steadily and the candlelight wobbles on its wick and the cats shadow flickers. It is a strange shadow, much too big for a creature so small.
Then without any warning he shoots up from his place, trotting across the expanse of the floor and slipping from the door that had been left ajar.
Had it always been open? No
You hardly question it before you are scrambling from the bed to take after him, harshly whispering for him to come back as you pick up what little bit remains of the candle to light your way before hesitantly peek your head between the open gap of the threshold and door, scanning the hallway. But there is not a single guard in sight. The hierodules that had been stationed outside of your quarters were absent. Another peculiarity that is brushed aside when you catch the tip of Cat's tail vanishing amongst the heavy shadows that blot out the hallway and you chase after him regardless, shielding the tiny flame with your hand lest it blow out from the hasty speed of your walking.
You are being watched you can tell, and your mind distantly supplies that it must be the murals observing you. The painted eyes of the old priestesses and spirits that adorn the walls in robes and vines made from strokes of scarlet and hunter and cerulean. But you could not let yourself look to their judgmental and buoyant faces.
"Come here!" You hiss lowly through gritted teeth and cast a wary glance across your shoulder to briefly study the black void behind you, hoping that there is nothing lurking within it.
And you walk for what felt like forever, chasing after the cats wavering tail that turns around twisting halls that do not seem to end, never catching up no matter how quickly you shift your pace. And it is not until you come across another bend in the corridor that the suffocating walls finally seem to open up into a massive room of dust and stones, and the light from the candle casts a glow across the space that was much too abundant considering the modest size of the flame. But he is nowhere to be seen, almost as though he has vanished from thin air.
The air is damp here, clinging to your skin like the spray of the ocean's waves but much less pleasant. It is much more akin to the sweat that covers you when under the influence of a sickness, you decide. And the aged earthy aroma that permeates the air is even more troubling. Musty and cloying like rancid grapes. It has your nose wrinkling, and you suppress the urge to gag while you investigate the room. It takes a moment for you to make sense of what you are seeing, making out the details of the great room from underneath the oily yellow glow of the candlelight.
There are large rectangular divots that had been crudely chiseled or dug into the stone near the base of the floor and the many burrows line above each other and descend up along the wall and towards the high tenebrous ceiling. But nestled delicately within each one is some sort of lump, gently wrapped in a rich red clothe.
That nasty sense of unease washed over you again, prickling at your skin and your heart skips a beat at the sudden burst of fear. But there is curiosity too. It emerges from the recesses of your mind and seems to take a hold of your body, nudging you towards one of the burrows, and with each step you forget why you are even here. The search for your wayward cat completely discarded. Your focus is completely arrested one the form hidden underneath the vibrant silks, and that apprehensive part of you dislike how large the hidden shape seems.
You mouth has gone dry and your tongue sticks uselessly to the roof of your mouth and a part of you wonders if you would be able scream should you need to. You feel helplessly trapped within your body, like a reluctant passenger, once again forced to be paraded around in a vessel that you did not want to sit upon. And all you could do was watch and feel as your shaky had rose over the red silhouette. You felt the silk underneath your fingertips, too soft and too smooth. Like water. Like blood. And your mind ceaselessly chants no, no, no even as your body refuses to yield to its commands and your fingers pinch the cloth in a hold and pull it back from the shape. And the blood in your veins seems to freeze despite the way that it races, and the pit of your stomach drops like a stone.
You want to look away, but your head is locked in place and every muscle has coiled inside of your body tightly. You are paralyzed and pinned where you stand, forced to stare down at the gaunt remains. The sunken eyes and withered, leathered skin pulled taught around its bones like the skeleton is trying to break free from its own body. And brittle hairs still collect around the skull, that once probably shimmered yellow like the rays of the sun but was no lackluster and dry, frayed in its braids. Pinned in place underneath the wring of a ceremonial crown. Vine leaves and olive branches that is embellished with the bright blossoms of poppies. The crown you would be forced to wear tomorrow to symbolize your union with the Endless.
A shaky exhale rattles out, a dry rasping sound that you would have easily blamed on yourself and the fear squeezing your body in a harsh grip if not for the way that you see the mummified bride's chest quiver unsteadily. She is still alive with her body forced into some sort of permanent sleep. You cannot help but wonder how long she has been held captive here. A hostage in this awful, animated state. And all of these other shapes swaddled in red silks are other sacrifices. And they too are all still awake you realize once you hear the dry whispers of their breath echo across the chamber.
You want to scream. You can feel it rising and clawing at your throat, but it never escapes, balling up harshly in your chest and just sitting there. But whatever spell had been casted over you finally slips and you stumble back from the burrow and the mummified bride, and your knees shake and give, and you fall onto the chilled floor, dropping the tiny candlestick on your decent. Your knees scrape the rough granite, erupting with streaks of red but you can't be bothered to care, too focused on crawling away from the looming walls, towards the center of the room while your eyes search from the entrance, but it is nowhere to be found. You spin on your knees ignoring the sting, expecting to find the threshold, but all you see are the cold painted walls, adorned with stars and poppy fields and strange beasts with wings and horns and some have the faces of men and the bodies of beasts. But even worse are the open tombs carved into the walls, and they suddenly seem like gapping, hungry mouths and the red silks that adorn the bodies seem more like lashing tongues.
The candle flickers unsteadily, melted wax pouring around the weak flame, threatening to drown it and douse you in darkness. You make to crawl towards it before it before it can be snuffed out, but your stopped short by a pair of gleaming eyes watching you. The dark fur tells you who it is but your gut lurches at the sight of the cat. And some buried instinct tells you that something is not right.
The eyes you realize, are tinged with a faint scarlet around the edges, staining the pale silver glow. And it was wrong. That was not the right color. This was not your cat. How did you not notice before?
It was an imposter. The face too narrow, its shadow too big. Too sharp.
Your heart flutters like a startled bird and your breath seizes in your lungs when the red silks bound around the brides starts to drip and flow down from the stones like liquid. Blood. Their garb has shifted into blood and is pouring and merging into a massive pool around the edge of the wall and it steadily grows.
The brides labored breathing whistles across the air, raising in volume until it hurts, harshly grating in your ears in a shrill pitch. And the sound mutates into a chorus of screams that you swear you can feel dragging over your skin like claws. You cover your ears with your hands to muffle the impact of the tortured shrieking, but it offers you no solace from the pain. And all the while the cat - the thing - stares at you from its place on the bloody floor, stained by the very red that is closing in on you from all corners, but you cannot find it in yourself to look past the agony to find strength and collect yourself from the cold granite.
The red pours around the remaining bit of the candle and the small flame at the end of the wick hisses and sputters at the liquids touch. The light emitting from it dims considerably, threatening to enclose the catacomb in a void. And the cats shadow seems to expand underneath the waning fire, stretching in a jagged way that looks like arms trying to tear free from cloth or skin.
And the cat - a mere extension of the true monster - steps forward while its eyes burn brighter. And the blood is upon you, threatening to touch you. Nausea churns in your stomach and all of the muscles in your body draw taught. You are forced to watch as the creature grows closer, and all you can do is try your best to prepare to fight it, as pathetic as your odds no doubt are. And the brides screaming warbles and shifts into a painful mocking laughter as though they could sense your thoughts. And it makes you feel like an animal caught in a cage. A bird pinned between jagged teeth and the jaws are closing in. The walls and shadows move in closer and their joyous howling and giggling rises in a crescendo, celebrating your anticipated death. You brace as best as you can, balling your hands into fists so tightly that your nails break the skin, watching as the monstrous shadow builds up and prepares to lash out with obsidian talons.
But the killing blow never comes. Instead, a pair of steady arms wrap around your body, encasing you against the comfort of a chest. And a rush of scents washed over you with its presence, and you struggle to place what it reminds you of. The musk of the soil after fresh rain, the salt of the sea, a calm breeze on a summer night; light and floral and earthy, but those descriptions also do no service to the fragrance that engulfs you. And with it something magnetic dances across your skin and it steals your breath away and your body threatens to melt against theirs.
Your mind can hardly catch up with what you are seeing. The bloody floor of the burial chamber dematerializes from underneath you, but you do not fall but your body tenses in preparation regardless. The walls shake with a tremendous groan, splitting under the seize and giving under spills of sand and the murals bleed with the fractures. And the air is electric with something heavy and alive and angry, and it courses across your skin and siphons the air from your lungs from the gravity of it. Even the beast made from shadows lurches back as if it was struck and hisses underneath the heat of the rage permeating the atmosphere, clawing against the wall that was rapidly disintegrating and losing tangibility. And the beast screams along with the brides as they vanish from existence. One final baleful cry that rattles your bones and shudders over you before it drowns out completely and with it the catacomb all but vanishes and instead of the blood-soaked stones you are looking down at the expanse of the night sky with stars spread out underneath your feet.
You brain fails to register that you appear to be hovering over a cluster of distant galaxies and you are left to stare down dumbly at the dark mass of the sky, taking in the stretch of the rich splashes of blues and stellar remnants and stardust gathered like clusters of diamonds and the scale of it nearly makes you forget about the press of someone's body along your back. Their arms around your waist in a tight hold, but there is also a sort of reluctance in their grip made known by the rigidity from the muscles of their arms and the narrow gap left between your bodies. But even between the space you can feel the low heat of them radiating against you. A part of you wanted to look over your shoulder, to discover the face of your savior but some pull in your gut warned you not. That you would not like what you would see. And so, you keep still underneath their embrace, staring off into the quiet breadth of the cosmos where comets drop across the darkness like crystalline tears. Seconds pass without either of you moving, as still as statues. As though if either of you so much as breathed the delicate emanation that cocooned the both of you would shatter. But despite your hesitation there was a prickle of curiosity tugging at you, and you could not deny the pull and you made to slowly turn your head in an attempt to sneak a glance over your shoulder.
You barely manage to twitch a muscle of movement before they seem to shed their initial diffidence and nestle their face near the nape of your neck, and you can feel the tip of their nose brush against your ear like they mean to hide their identity from you. Their chest expands against the flat of your back, and it takes a moment for your overstimulated brain to realize that they are drawing in a breath, taking your scent into their lungs and holding it there like its oxygen. For some reason it sends of thrum of heat over your body, and combined with the steady, pulsating hum of otherworldly power that courses through the air, it makes you feel as though you may collapse. That you might come apart and burst into flames. There is no chill of fear and disgust does not rise in your stomach like nausea instead their presence feels welcomed. And despite the foreign sensation of their touch, there is also a sense of familiarity to it. Like finally falling into the arms of an old lover.
They move their head from your by just a few scant inches, and a strange part of you mourns the loss. You wished that the hover of their lips would land on your skin, but they do not. The circle of their arms seems to press you in closer, like they cannot bear even the possibility of you parting.
For a moment the cosmos seems to halt, the intersperse collection of individual galaxies and stars pausing in their rotations and the night holds its breath and so do you. Then a sound purrs out, a heavy baritone that pours across the silence of the universe and fills you with honey and warmth. A deep, smoky cadence that you can feel curling inside the cavern of your chest and running deep across your bones and the nerves and sinew of your entire being.
"This dream is over."
You wake with a start. Sucking air into your lungs with a strained gasp while your hands reach around the bedding in a mindless scramble, struggling to orient yourself, but eventually you are able to at least prop your body up on shaky arms. Your eyes rove across your surroundings, no longer taking in the breathless view of stardust and nebulas but the dull clay walls of your vacant quarters and apart from yourself the bed is empty. A quick press of your hand against the stuffed mattress confirms that Cat - you're Cat had been there at some point in the night, the heat still trapped within the fabric from where he sat next to you. And you had shakily removed from yourself from the bed and searched the room for him. You had even approached the door, pressing your head against the wood and contemplated opening it but you could hear one of the guards shuffling behind it, trying to find some reprieve for their aching feet. And so, you returned to the bed with that dark voice still echoing in your ears. You could not sleep. Not even if you wanted. Not with that shadowed creature lurking and that familiar stranger invading your mind. The Nightmare Ruler, your brain supplied without forgiveness, and the thought sent a shiver down your spine.
And you lay there for hours, now awaiting the sunrise despite the threat that it posed, clinging to your own body with shaking arms as you stare into the darkness, waiting to find something looking back. But soon the maids are pouring into your room and scattering around the foot of your bed, and they must have noticed the panic on your face as a hint of curiosity bleeds through their blase expressions, apart from that single one who always seems to be plotting your demise.
"Is something the matter? You look troubled." And even in your tired haze you know that it is the voice of the one who openly dislikes you. The one with the sable hair and venomous words. Euthymia, you had learned her name to be. She makes no effort to hide the delight in her tone and in turn you do not even try to school the scowl that takes over your features, pinning her with an open glower, but it does nothing to extinguish the joyful gleam in her eyes. The other servants are ushering you out of bed, already cooing and gushing over the prospect of preparing you for the day ahead and you suddenly feel as though you have been tossed into a lake of ice. The five-day long celebration is coming to a close. The ritual is tonight.
They ignore your distress, urging you to shed your slip and climb into the bath full of steaming water and oils to prepare you for the ritual. And they had patted you dry when you had gotten out of the tub so that they could dap at your skin with lotions and perfumes. Running marjoram in your hair and something faintly sweet but heady and spicy beneath your jaw. Even spreading fragrances across your inner thighs and palm oil around your breasts. It had an embarrassed heat prickling across your face, and you nearly scoffed at their presumptuousness. And then they were guiding you to kneel on the cushions placed before the large, polished bit of bronze propped along the wall, using the reflection so that you may observe the process as they worked. You were in a fog as they combed your hair and set it and pinned it in a way that they deemed worthy, but you cannot stop thinking of that velvet timber and the feeling of being watched by concealed eyes prickles along your body. And you try to ignore the sensation, telling yourself that it is just paranoia.
But you could not dwell on your troubles for long before you had taken notice of the strip of fabric from the corner of your eye. And a better look had confirmed it was indeed that dreadful gown that had been laid out along the cushions. You stared from your peripheral vision and each time your head moved even the slightest degree out of their disliking one of the maids would jerk it back into place, scolding you underneath their breath, but your eyes did not stray from the pieces of clothing once. It would have been a gorgeous thing if not for the horror that is comes with it. A vibrant scarlet and intricate gold and black stitching and embroidery. But you could not marvel over its beauty, instead you eyed it warily as though it was poisonous. And perhaps it was.
It truly disturbed you. That horrid red thing that signaled the final chapter of your life, and you could hear the anguished cries and manic laughter of the brides from your nightmare echoing out from the depths of your mind. You could not suppress the way you shuddered. Was that meant to be your fate? A captive in her own body, suppressed underneath a spell of eternal slumber while her body wasted away in a forgotten tomb? You had heard rumors of what happened to the nightmare king's brides after the ritual. Presumptions truly, fabricated speculation that had no true foundation as the priestesses are very private about the affairs of the ceremony that do not require the presence of the villagers. And the townspeople are typically guided out of the temple after the connection between the Chosen and the Endless has been successfully tethered.
Most speculations were good natured enough. Painting the role of becoming one of the Dream King's brides in a lavish light. Something to be envious of, with many saying that to be one of his Chosen was to spend eternity of nights in endless pleasure, with the world at your fingertips.
But there had been other more sinister whispers, idle gossip that the unconscious brides were taken to a subterranean set of tunnels built underneath the temple. Dug to house the women as they slept on, not killed so as not to sever the link between them and the dream god but kept animated and sleeping within the icy tombs of the catacombs. Kept that way so that the deity could torment them in the halls of kingdom for all eternity. Feasting on their souls and flesh. But many refuse to believe the rumor, even your own father had rebutted the very possibility, as he was a firm believer that the Chosen were simply killed off after the ritual and their bodies were burned so that the ashes could be released upon the winds and lifted to the gods along with the plume incents and smoldering herbs.
But neither option fared well for you.
"You had seemed quite distressed when we came in. Did you have a nightmare, my lady?" Euthymia asks, voice sickly sweet with false sincerity. "How strange that the Dream King would allow his Chosen to be harassed by his spirits." And she pats the juice of crushed mulberries onto the rise of your cheeks to add color to your skin, but the push of her fingertips was much too harsh. You were tempted to lunge at her but restrained yourself.
"Not at all. In fact, I had a rather pleasant dream. " You reply cooly, not allowing her to see you shaken and you tilt your head, pretending to admire the way that they had dressed your hair and decorated it with flowers and pieces of jewels. " It was a rather pleasurable one."
"Pleasurable?" Comes her nonplussed response and her hand pauses, simply hovering.
"Oh, yes." You speak lowly, like you are sharing a scandalous story, and your tone is all smooth and honeyed. " It was not a nightmare that visited me, but the Dream King himself. " And you cannot help but internally gloat at the way that some part of her seems to waver, visibly deflating underneath your lie. " He had crawled between my thighs you see and ravished me with his tongue in ways that no mortal man ever could." Even the other ladies had halted in their routine, stopping to listen to your hastily spun fib. And you casted your gaze downward to your hands demurely, like you were shy or embarrassed that you had lost your manners. Scandalized, the other maids had bent towards each other and exchange giggling whispers, but Euthymia was less than enthused. And for the remainder of your time together she had been tightlipped and scowling, and you were surprised that a storm cloud had not been following her every move with how bothered she seemed to be.
But you could not deny that she made a good point. Why had you suffered from a nightmare at all? It had been sometime since you had. You could hardly recall when it had been last. Perhaps you truly had done something to anger the god. But that had been him, had it not? The one who had come to your aid and taken you in his arms and spoke to you with that smoky cadence. It must have been if the way that he had ended your dream so easily was any indication. And that primordial vibration that had surrounded you both; it was the same that you had felt at the pyre when that strange man was watching.
And perhaps tonight you would get the answers that you seek, but then you might not want them.
The rest of the day pours in a distorted stream, and you hardly register slipping into you into that disturbing red garb and you barely notice when the priestesses and temple guards arrive to collect you from the maids and guide you to the dinning haul of the commune where you are assisted down to the sunken floor in the center of the room as some sort of center piece, once again forcing you to sit underneath the eyes of hundreds. You feel exposed, as though you were not wearing clothes at all. Stripped for them to criticize and leer at. You were sure that every person in the village was here to enjoy the banquet. Even the servants were allotted freedom from their duties for the final night of the ritual and were free do dine alongside their masters as equals.
And once again they had provided you with the best meats and fruits and wine available. The finest of the bounty collected over the farms and orchards for you to gorge yourself on like a swine before its slaughter and because of that you could not bring yourself to eat despite the hollow pit in your gut that begged you to do so. And you could feel the Priestesses dozen eyes boring into from their place from above, no doubt taking your refusal to eat as not just an insult to themselves but to their god as well. Good.
But the townspeople did not seem to care, laughing freely and enjoying the festivities without pause and you had been forced to sit as time waned and the sun drifted closer and closer towards the edge of the earth, no matter how much you wished and willed for it not to. And once the townspeople had finished indulging on mead and wine and satiated their hunger, the shrine had collected you once more to climb upon the palanquin that awaited outside, surrounded by servants who prepared to march you across the town from the strength of their shoulders to the Temple of Morpheus where death awaited you. You had tried to struggle against the shackles of the hierodules hands that had seized your arms and shoulders like bands of steel. But you could not shake yourself from their grip and they were mercilessly placing you upon the extravagant cushions of the human-powered vehicle to be suspended high in the air.
And the townspeople congregated around you as you were carried from the walls of the commune and into the streets, lighting the way with burning torches. And many people had once again adorned themselves in the beastly costumes and danced and cavorted around the palanquin and through the crowd. The Sisters' lead the collective. And you had noticed in the head priestesses' hands, she cradled an obsidian bowl covered by a lid decorated by strokes of gold. A harmless item that on its own would have done nothing to inspire fear in you, but you had heard hushed conversation of its contents before. Some sort of vapor that smoldered from the extract of the poppy flower, and it would serve to tether you to the gods. Or in this occasion one god in particular.
And once again blossoms and seeds were being tossed over the procession in a celebratory display. In the hands of men and women and children alike people carried votive offerings for the Endless, such as figurines of animals and carvings of a humanoid figure. And in the cavalcade, musicians were present, playing from a kithara and an aulos, and a lyra. But even over the cheering and commotion and music you could hear a soft repetitive ruffle along the low breeze. You had jerked your head up to search the sky, nearly straining a muscle in the process but the pain had faded into the background at the sight of a dark bird coasting along the current. And a faint iridescent sheen had gleamed on its feathers from underneath the dimming sunlight and the Priestesses - and in turn the crowd had all rejoiced at the bird's appearance, as it no doubt heralded good fortune.
But you did not share their positive reactions. You heard all the stories, that the ravens were the dark god's familiars, serving as his eyes and ears when he himself could not be present. Your anxiety had not time to settle no matter how much you tried to swallow it down and the presence of the circling bird did nothing to quell the bubbling fear in your gut and bones.
And soon the procession ventured from the village and the pale marble of the temple seemed to rise from the hill behind the security of its protective wall. It was the only building that had been spared in the initial siege from the Oneiroi when the Nightmare King had abandoned the village in his scorn. It is just the same as when you had last saw it as a child. The ghostly white columns that reminded you of the remains of a skeleton, and the sculpted pediment that depicted beastly creatures in various poses; lashing out and snarling while some seemed to be frozen in the motion of dance. But in the center was a more human figure. No doubt the Endless himself. And the scene was painted in blues and black, with hints of red and gold embellishments.
And the closer you got to the temple the more your anxiety climbed, until you trembled where you sat, staring into the vacant eyes of the god's sculptured image. And even those they were not real they seemed to bore into you and flay you open until all of your emotions and shaky breaths poured out. Even the sheer fabric of your veil did little to lessen the feeling.
It was not until you felt hands circling the shape of your arms that you came to and were able to discern that you had been lowered to the ground of the courtyard and were being pulled from your knees, and you were wordlessly guided up the temple. But you did not feel the stairs underneath your feet and the music and laughter sounded as though it were coming from miles away, carried in on a foreign wind. And even when you stepped upon the landing and two of the sisters spun you around to face the crowd down below that had not felt real either. It was like looking at a tapestry of faded figures and blurred colors.
Then the head priestess stepped in front of you in a flash of black, blotting out your vision of the crowd like the moon obstructing the sun in an eclipse, but you were thankful for it. Then her voice broke out in a shrill bellow, the passion expelling from her cracking it around the edges. " Tonight marks the emergence of our return to grace and glory from underneath the compassion of our god! " She cried and the crowd cried along with her, waving their torches animatedly to show their elation. " No longer will we be shunned by His Sovereignty for we have been given a chance to correct a wrong that should never have happened! To bow our heads in humble plea and return to him which was stolen all those years ago!"
It made you nauseous the way they spoke of you. As though you were some frivolous token to be bartered. How they did not see you or any of the women before you as human beings with lives and wants and futures but as a cow to be slaughtered. A coin to be exchanged for lavish fabrics and abundant crops. And you could feel the stinging heat of anger filling your chest and pushing out heavy breaths from your lungs. But when the Head Priestess had shifted and moved from out of your vision it left you to make eye contact with the cheering masses; her voice had faded into a low, distant drone. And inside their crazed sort of jubilation, you could see every other emotion that you had felt since the Endless had descended his hoard upon the village in incessant torment: Loss, pain, fear, hunger, sorrow, confusion.
Many lives have been lost since the day that he had seemed you all unworthy of his gratitude and sanctuary. He had turned the land barren and dry and the animals that had once flourished here have all been culled by his nightmares and their numbers have suffered and dwindled greatly. But as much as you sympathized with these people, understood their plight, you did not owe them anything. Certainly not your life. Especially since they had casted you from your home without so much as a backward glance, forcing you live along the forest all because you were not a kept woman.
And in five years' time there would be another there would be another girl here, standing just as you do now, willing or unwilling to bear the collectives sins, to pacify the Endless for the good fortune. It would be a ceaseless loop. History repeating itself one poor soul at a time.
A part of you considered fighting free from the sisters' hold. Of running down the steps and out of the temple grounds without looking back. But even if you happened to make it past the massive crowd of desperate villagers and to the sea, there were no ships, no small rowboats left for fishing. All of the seafaring vessels had been all but demolished by his spirits to keep all of the locals who wronged him trapped on the island to endure the full brunt of his punishment. And even those who have managed to hide the construction boats - avoiding the Ruler of Nightmares many scrutinizing eyes and pushed their watercraft into the dark waves while underneath the shine of the sun, when his influence was claimed to be at its weakest had all disappeared into the heavy wall of fog that surrounds the coast. Only the remains of their boats would float back to shore, sometimes with blood staining the waves.
You truly were left to the fate that these people and their god spared you to.
Then the head priestess was spinning around in a flurry of robes, and you could not evade the fervor of her gaze, could not flee from, still immobilized by her sisters and their rigid hold of their hands. The gleam in her eyes was detached and wild; the darkness of her pupils swelling, eating up the colored rings around their borders until they were nearly gone. It was the expression of someone who could not be reasoned with. Poisoned by power and hope. But you did not waver underneath the weight of her fixed stare.
Then one of the sisters was gripping you by the nape of your neck, the movement unexpected enough to pull a startled cry from your lips. It did not give you time to register the obsidian bowl being lifted to your face, the lid being removed to release plumes of smoke. Even through the veil you could feel the warmth of the vapors caressing the skin of your cheeks. It is all so abrupt that you inhale a large lungful in the midst of your struggle, and the scent of it overwhelms you. Stuffing your mouth and nostrils full of something sweet and floral, tinged with the musk of the earth. It reminds you of flowers, of incents but also not at all. And your lungs are too busy heaving around the unexpected rush of smoke and your mind too confused and scrambled to feel or focus on the world around you, and the Priestesses voice was the last coherent thing to break through the fog: "Do not fight this, my dear. " Her voice crooned. Too sweet, to gentle for her cruelty. "To you we give thanks for your sacrifice for our prosperity."
And in your distress, you tried to think of anything to keep yourself grounded and present. Anything to keep you here in your body, terrified of crossing over and falling into the Nightmare King's gnashing teeth. So you think of your list of chores awaiting you at home; tending to the garden now that life was coming back to the soil, setting more traps in the forest, plucking wild strawberries from the small cluster that you had discovered growing in a small grove, seeing Cat again - the little beast refuses to eat unless you prompt him to (there is no one else to take care of him) - and walking along the beach during the sunrise. Feeling the sand and water underneath your toes and watching the sunlight reflect and dapple the surface. But soon the thoughts were drowning out underneath the impression of the fuzz and haze that blanked your mind. You felt as though your soul was rising from the casing of your body and floating up to the sky above the temple, but you could still feel your knees making contact with the cold marble floors, though the feeling was far off and dull. But there was still anger simmering through your veins. Hurt and betrayal. What were you mad about?
And the world around you is a rush of colors and blurred shapes and muffled sounds. But you do not want to focus on it regardless. You can't when the weightlessness is pulling at your fingertips and threatening to take you away with it (but you can't leave, what about him?) and deposit you among the stars, and the only thing that gives you even a scrap of connection to your own body is the repetitive pulse of your heartbeat coursing in your ears. The floral sugar and salt of the smoke still coats your tongue, and you can feel it in your lungs, heavy and syrupy. And the drag of your relaxed limbs seems to pull you down now instead of up, with the thrum of your heart doing little to center you anymore. But its less of a pulse now and more of pound -an angry crash. That's not right, is it?
You try to blink. To get some scope of reality, but it's difficult to keep your eyes past the blurred sting. Are you crying? No, that is not right either. It is no longer a steady beat, but a deafening layered rumble, muffled but also painfully loud. You can faintly see past the red sheer of your veil glimpses of black and blue streak across your vision, with peeks of flashes of tiny pale dots.
It is all to distorted and airy. Too muddled for your mind to make something tangible but then your body is being tossed by some unforeseen force. A sharp, unrelenting pull that moves your entire being like it weighs nothing and the air is snatched from your lungs, and you choke on something. Some deeply imbedded survival instinct awakens and your body flails, limbs dragging and reaching through the thick atmosphere in attempt to grab ahold of something. Anything to orient yourself and make sense of what is happening to you, but your hands come up empty. Your lungs twitch, trying to draw in a breath but instead they burn, and the sting is so potent that it licks a trail up your throat and the pungent taste of salt blankets you tongue.
Water, some faint thought breaches the cotton that stuffs your skull. You're in water.
And your body moves on its own, arms and legs kicking to propel in what you hope is the direction of the surface. In a glance upward you notice the distorted expanse of what must be the waves, and through the commotion above you see that glimpse of those burning pinpricks of light again and with no other alternative, fueled by an animalistic sort of fear you swim towards it. You can only hope that you make it up in time, with your lungs aching and burning like smoldering embers within your chest. You can already feel your limbs growing sluggish from the lack of oxygen and the heavy tow of your ceremonial robes, but you try your best to keep moving, dragging yourself forward with weak arms and legs. But death still hangs heavy in the back of your mind. And for the second time tonight you're terrified that this may be your final moments, with your legs flailing uselessly and the darkness clouding at the base of your senses like a layer of winter ice. It makes it difficult, but it is sheer instinct and panic and hope that burns at your muscles, reviving them of their vigor and pressing you onwards.
It is your hands that break through the surf first, quickly followed by your head and you could have sobbed with relief if you were not busy trying not to remain afloat and actively choking on the water in your throat. And you push yourself forward, even as the waves toss you in their angry roll against the shore. But blessedly under the current that threatens to drag you under and drown you it also serves to propel you forward towards the beach, jostling your body with their great power and you feel like a child's toy that had been lost over the side of a boat. It is on the pale crest of an angry wave that you meet the shore, being carelessly discarded on the sand and the rush of water pelts across your back, soaking you one final time before retreating back into the ocean behind you.
You gather as much as strength as you have left to prop yourself up on your hands and knees, carrying yourself across the beach with wobbling limbs while your abdomen and chest shiver and heave in a violent fit. The muscles of your body squeezing you tightly to expel the sea water from your lungs in a shaky grip that has you gasping and wheezing. And even though your lungs sting like a raw wound as you suck in a ragged inhale, the dim feel of oxygen filling your lungs is wonderful, like a healing ointment smoothed over a fresh burn. You allow yourself to collapse onto your stomach once you escape the reach of the sea, but it is difficult to see, to hear and even still hard to breathe with the thin fabric of your veil clinging to the shape of your face from the weight of the water pulling the material down, pressing it against the divots of your nostrils nearly waterboarding you with each breath.
You blindly yank at the veil, tearing it and your Stefana from your head with an angry huff, carelessly tossing it. You do not see where it falls but you can hear it land with an unattractive wet plap. You blink freely now able to take in your surroundings now that, that cursed thing is no longer tainting your vision. You deduce quickly that you are on a beach. Obviously. But it does not appear to be the one that you often find yourself strolling down on your free time, fantasizing about distant lands or the Isles of the Blessed, or the islands where the sirens live and lure sailors to their deaths. The sand was far too pale. Too soft. And when you moved it seemed to glitter like snow underneath sunlight. But it was a glance upward that confirmed your awful reality. The sky above was not yours. The scattering of stars not sparing enough and the expanse of it was not simply a dark backdrop but splashed with vibrant rich nebulas of azure and silver and pale golds against the black velvet of space. The stardust seemed to shift as though the heavens were a living breathing thing. And the constellations above you are unrecognizable. There is no Orion, lunging forward to strike or brace against the blow of a foe, and the scattered knot of the Pleiades is absent from the sky.
Your heart sinks to the base of your gut and a heated rock seems to lodge itself in your throat, rising with the threat of tears all from the bruising reality that you are no longer home. Not just the island, or your house, but the entire plain of your existence. Plucked from everything you have ever known by the hands of your people to appease a monster. Heartlessly thrown into the deity's domain. Forgotten and used.
You remembered the tales told by your mother and the words that had been passed down from priestess to priestess across the centuries that spoke of the Nightmare Ruler's world: The Dreaming, it was called. The place that served as the cradle of the universe's collective unconsciousness, housing the minds a mortal, beast and god alike while they slept. An extension of the Endless himself. The entire realm was a dream in its own right. That means that you must be able to wake from it. Perhaps you could will yourself awake if you concentrated enough. You have been never much of a lucid dreamer. Only able to do small feats of altering landscapes or changing the color of your dress. You had never been aware enough to wake yourself. But maybe here in the Dreaming you would be able to conjuror some sort of exit.
You centered your attention down to a single thought: Waking up. Of feeling the drag of consciousness slipping back into your physical body and opening your eyes. And you pushed that thought until your body responded with the ferocity of it, your muscles tensing under the strain of it, and you are left gasping, the same as you had when you crawled ashore. You think of your body, still and induced in that horrific stasis, being purified underneath the smoke of incense and wrapped in the red silk and voile fabric by the Priestesses to be carried and stuffed down in the catacombs like a forgotten relic. You thought of waking suddenly. Of tearing yourself from the cloth and fleeing home and dropping to your knees to burry your fingers in the soil there and crying with the relief that would swell within your chest and blossom with the joy of being home.
And you had found that in your desperation you had actually crumbled to your knees, but you did not feel the gentle earth beneath your hands but sand.
You take to pinching at your arm in a pathetic attempt to try and escape the Dreaming, twisting the flesh between your fingertips until it stung but to no avail.
And a low, heavy wind rumbled across the beach, howling over the waves and the field of crimson blossoms and golden wheat, punctuating the silence and the loneliness that hung over you like the aftermath of a tempest. Defeat weighed down your shoulders as you watched the thrashing ocean with a sense of detachedness. Then something in the air seemed to shift, pulsing with something alive. That distantly familiar alien thrum and you could feel it against your skin; a magnetic pressure that reminded you of a brief night in the cosmos, held in a tight embrace. You did not have to turn to confirm who the presence was. You did not know if you had the strength to. The fear and gravity of the beings pull nearly seized your lungs, and you clenched your hands into fist to bear the feeling of it. And then that velveteen rasp speaks out, moving down your body like a flow of water and smoke and you can feel the hum of it in your bones.
"I had no intention of your arrival being so distressful. Had you not struggled your coming would not have been so violent. " His tone is a placid timbre, but you swear you can detect sympathy - perhaps a sort of regret - tinged into the edges of his words. But it does little to placate you. His detached surprise at your anguish only serves to mutate your sorrow and defeat and it gives way into anger, searing at you like a burning fire that needs something to burn, and chars any remaining pieces of your self-preservation and wit, making you forget that you were in front of deity that has seen eons come and go in its lifetime and was currently holding your mind and possibly your soul hostage. But you did not care. Not now, with your entire life in an upheaval. And even then, you still can't bring yourself to look at it - the source of that primordial electric pulse. To confirm all of your fears, that home was truly out of reach, that you were entirely out of depth and in a plain that you did not belong in. There was a safety in your delusions, your self-imposed ignorance. And so you stared at the angry, rolling waves and pretended that they were your own, not daring to turn yet. "What was your intention? " You inquired, not even bothering to hide the scorn in your broken voice. Not caring of the consequences. " That you'd just steal me away from everything I've ever known, and I'd be content with it?"
"Look at me. "
It is a simple set of words, but the conviction of it beats across the very fabric that binds and creates the Dreaming, rippling over the sand, shifting stars and stirring the already tumulus waves to threatening heights and the power of it runs through your unconsciousness as well, tingling across your body and it commands you to move. An unwelcome reminder of your mortality and the scope of the deity and his domain. You turn slowly, helpless to ignore the order even while you dread looking upon him. Wondering if he would wear the skin of a monster to punish you for your ire. Perhaps contorted limbs and bloody jagged teeth or stretched flesh and the lifeless abysmal gaze of that otherworldly helm.
There is none of that. No cloak made of nightmares or terror. Just a man. But that is not right either.
Regardless of the glamour he had casted this was no man. Ignoring the information as told by the naked eye all of the minute tells became glaringly obvious, such as the way his skin was too soft and free from blemish or flaw, like the statues crafted in his commemoration; the messy tresses of his hair that appeared as though they were spun from the night sky itself and the impossible blue of his eyes that mimicked the shade of a crystalline sea, or perhaps they were a reflection of the very nebulas above you now. He is so beautiful that it is almost cruel. You have to wonder why he chose you specifically. That he has been watching over you since the night at the pyre. Long before that even. That, that same voice had spoken to you during your sleep and commanded you to wake, and once again you are unable to ignore it, standing from your place on the sand.
The brunt of his gaze is too much- scrutinizing. You felt like you were stripped bare. Every nerve, every want or worry or promise that you had ever made was laid out across the shore for him examine. You quailed underneath the breadth of it, the sheer intensity was maddening - that there seemed to be no secret that you could hide from him. The entirety of your mind held within the webbing of his domain for him study and toy with.
"Why do you fear me?" He asked, and you could laugh or cry at the question but neither would do proper service to express the severity of your emotions. The turmoil and confusion. He sounded so sincere. Just as perplexed as you even though his stance was devoid of any body language. Rigid and exact, with an almost clinical posture. But you could see it in his eyes. A small, fleeting glimpse of his own confusion, a slight furrow of an eyebrow, but it vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, erased and blotted out by that aloof expression.
You were not even sure how to respond, and for a moment your mouth hangs open silently while you collect yourself and find your voice: " I - just - all of the death. " You finally answer lamely, trying to swallow around the dryness of your throat. " The slaughter and starvation. The disease. The suffering."
"They broke their promise. " It was said so simply. As though it was enough to justify the atrocities and it made nausea bubble in your gut, and hatred too.
"All because of a woman." You cannot contain the way you scoff, shifting on your feet like you do not know whether to approach him or step away and create more space, your body prickling underneath weight of his aura and his unwavering observation. "You had hundreds slaughtered because you were not given one woman."
"That is the price for bargaining with an Endless and taking back your word." He replied easily. A simple matter of fact for him, like it was a natural law, a part of his nature that should be expected and understood without consequence, that all failures to comply could not be faulted on him. It was just another tough reminder that this was no mortal that you stood before and that he could not be expected to obey or sympathize with the jurisdictions of your human morality.
And there was a shift in his expression, something steely and resolute, and the distance between your bodies seemed to close in even though neither of you had placed a single step until there was only a scant space left between you. " I will do the same for you. "
There was no past tense used. And perhaps under different circumstances you could have seen it as an intimate declaration of love, but it was uttered with a conviction that you could feel and the threat - the promise was hauntingly clear. That he would lay waste to the remaining people of your village if you refused. And although his body remained unmoved, the pressure of his influence hummed and molded against you and robbed you of your breath. It felt like you were standing within the deluge of a summer storm, caught within spires of stardust and the heat of a nova.
"Their crime is no longer yours to bear. " He said calmly - soothingly like he was trying to placate you. " You will not be harmed. "
"Is that really true? " You ask, still full of disbelief and contempt and this time you do venture to take a step back and blessedly he allows you, and you cannot help but be thankful that he does not shift the sands to draw you in closer. "They tell stories of what you do to your tributes once you have them, I'm sure you've heard. That you mold yourself into the likeness of a beast and hunt them, chasing them down the halls of your palace and tearing them limb from limb for eternity: A cycle of death and pain."
And that pale animal gleam from the bonfire burns alight in his eyes and it does little to quell your steady stream of anxiety, but his indignation does not seem to be aimed at you specifically. " Is that truly what you believe?" And there is a gentleness to him, the annoyance receding as though he was more perturbed than angry, and a part of you nearly regrets having told him, but you squash that scrap of emotion before anything can come of it. "That I am some heartless monster than means to torture you for my entertainment."
"Well, what else am I supposed to be led to think?" Surely a being of his scope, of his age and power must realize the severity of his actions. The violence and heartache that has bleed across the island and tainted the soil at his command. The senseless slaughter and starvation, forced to helplessly watch as your loved ones succumbed to it. The horrid, twisted sleepless nights and soiled dreams, and then you can hear it again, that twisted vacant laughter, rushing blood and mutilated shadows. " Especially after you sent your nightmares out to trouble me."
"I promise that I have done no such thing" He assured, but it did little to soothe your frazzled state. " I gave them all specific instruction not to harm you, but they are not without their own free will, and I have delt with it accordingly." He spoke of his creatures as though they were misbehaving children. Simply spoiled and wayward, and not cruel, sadistic beasts. And perhaps he truly did not mean for one of his Oneiroi to haunt you in the night. After all, he did arrive to banish the spirit from your unconsciousness, to wrap his arms around your body in a secure embrace before ending the dream. But regardless of the fact, you could not forgive him.
"I don't care. I want to go home."
"Is that truly what you are clinging to? Those empty cold walls, vacant of family or companionship? Or is it them? The very people that so freely discarded you. Abandoned and out casted you as though you were a leper."
He was right of course. You were already well aware of the fact, but it did not make it sting any less to hear, and the old memories that rose up were less than welcome. A painful reminder that even your own father and mother had rejected you, not physically but the emotional disconnect had been there. A rift had torn between your dynamic like a gaping, festering wound that had never truly healed. They had never looked at you the same, the both of them loathing you for marring the family name and social standing. And the other villagers would all murmur and stare in disdain whenever you had ventured into town to collect fruits or fresh meats at the local market, all because you had slept with a man as an unmarried woman. And your alienation was palpable. But you did not want to give him the satisfaction of admitting it and caving in.
"No- they didn't-"
"But they did, didn't they?" You could not stand his confidence. How he held his head high with that resolute air of certitude and kingly ego, how the air pulsed over you and tingled at your flesh like a balm. "Leaving you all in alone in that quiet little house, hoping that you'd fall prey to one of my nightmares."
He steps forward crowding into your space with that pale wicked gleam in his eyes and the stars hanging in the sky behind him seem to warp towards his person, as though they were trying to leave their heavenly cradle to follow him. You heart speeds from apprehension surely, but you don't find yourself leaning away from his body or trying to flee. You are stock still, hardly able to spare any pieces of your attention on anything other than him. And then he is lifting a hand to brush against your cheek, featherlight but somehow still reverent in its glide and you can feel the life radiating from it. Ice and heat simultaneously, cosmos and earth.
"I can give you everything you crave. The life you've always dreamed of having." His voice that dark velvet purr, draping around you temptingly. "You will want for nothing." But you are hardly hearing his words anymore too preoccupied with the tender trail of his curled fingers; his knuckles tracing a blaze of warmth down your throat, slipping down dangerously close to the bit of your chest exposed by the low hang of the garment. But his hand pauses in its descent, stopping just a few inches from the valley between your breasts, and you cannot hide the way that your body shivers at the contact, a heat stirring within you. "But it is a decision that must be made of your own accord."
And then he is backing away from you, allowing the atmosphere to clear of its electrical charge and for oxygen fill your lungs, but your body mourns the loss of his touch regardless of your returned breath. And it is then that you are able to realize what he had said, and some bit of hope blossoms, and now it is you who makes after him, following his path as he glides through the field of red and gold.
"Wait? I can go home if choose to?"
"No."
"But you just sai-"
He turns to you so quickly that it is surprising, whipping around in a stream of darkness, and in the distant stars held within the fabric of his chlamys adjust with the movement. "You are a part of the Dreaming now. There is no place for you in the mortal realm - not anymore."
The revelation has the same effect as a pail of ice water being doused over you. Unforgiving, paralyzing. And this time you do not have the ability to respond, far too busy grappling all of the emotions that are clamoring for the forefront.
"Your home is here now. " He insists, lips pursed in a petulant sort of way. " Regardless of if you decide to take your place alongside me, this is where you must stay. Even if you were to leave this instant, time within the Dreaming does not abide by the same laws of your world. You would return to a point not of your own. Lost in a time entirely unfamiliar."
And the chasm that has been threatening to break seems to grow deeper, fissures and cracks breaking at the foundations. And you vehemently want to deny him. To call him out for lying. Surely, he must be, how good can the Nightmare Ruler's word truly be? Is he a being that can possibly be trusted? But if he is correct, telling the complete truth and you were able to return to your realm would you be able to survive it? The sight of your home now years, if not decades old crumpled and dilapidated from the unforgiving pressure of time might break you. He must notice that vulnerability wearing down on you, because something in his gaze softens and you wished that he didn't look like he cared because some horrid part of you - the same one that had preened underneath his touch - is comforted by his attention, left wanting for it even and you are finding it difficult to be revolted or angry anymore. You would like to blame it on remnants of that perfumed smoke being still in your system, but truthfully you have not felt its influence since you had been dunked into the ocean. The brackish water and chaotic waves seeming to have strained it from your system. Or perhaps it had been the Dreaming itself that had done so, assisted with the fact that you may not even be tethered to your body at all anymore, the effects of the smoke too distant to reach your spirit that has drifted too far from its body. Maybe you truly do belong to his realm now. And you wait for that coal of anger to burn again, but it never comes, leaving you feeling hollow and broken. Exhausted even while you stand in a world fashioned from dreams. "I'm just tired . . . " You mourn weakly, watching the reeds and blossoms sway in the soft wind.
"Then let me ease your burden. " His voice is much closer than it had been before, and when you jerk your head up, startled from the proximity of it, the point of your nose nearly brushed against his. You are immediately drawn into the all-consuming center of his gaze, and it feels like you are being held within it, called to the edge of something yawning and consuming, beckoning you to jump and you do not think that you have the strength to pull back from it. And you found that you did not want to.
He has not made any means to move, leaving it to you to close the distance and you do, the hesitation thawing. He tracts you as you draw near, seeming to hold a breath that he did not need, and he appears tense, rigid like he was physically restraining himself with a practiced sort of patience. And it might have frightened you earlier, but the fervor in them does nothing to dissuade you now if anything it only serves to motivate you. Inside those pale irises you see cyan and indigo and sapphire flaring like nebulas drawing you in like a flower leaning towards the sun, and for a moment you swear you caught a glimpse of something else lurking inside of them, a glimmer of his true self perhaps; something vast and entirely beyond you. It felt ancient and ever-expanding, ignited and twisting and looming. And you felt like you were on the horizon of making sense of it and both entirely too far, slipping through your muddled understanding like sand and smoke, scorching like a harsh ice.
It is the whisper of his nose brushing against yours that draws you from your fixation, a delicate sensation but it was blessedly enough to bring you back to the present, assisted by the rich rumble of his voice. "Come back to me. "
"I nearly fell in, " you murmur back. And it was not a lie, you had nearly lost yourself in the paradox and cosmos that created him but it was also said in an attempt to jest. And you succeeded it seemed if the light, barely there rise at the corner of his mouth way any indication. It all feels fragile, unsure but not unwelcome. Like life returning to the earth after a harsh winter, blossoms breaking through sheets of snow, guided by the tender thaw of sunlight.
"May I touch you?" He asks, tilting his head to just barely skim the fulness of his lips against yours, not kissing you but just enough to leave your skin tingling in their wake. It is a simple question, but it is enough to have that burning ache coming alive again, taking root deep in the base of your abdomen and you find yourself nodding. Frustratingly enough he does not move, ever a pillar of restraint and he leans his head back when you tilt to close the distance between you. And you catch the smug air that surround him, and you would have snapped at him if you had the gall to, if you did not want him to just kiss you already.
"Use your words. " That dark honeyed resonance tramples any semblance of a barb that you had even fleetingly entertained. The Dreaming has long since gone quiet, seeming to betray its creator's appearance of undisturbed control with the febrile energy that tangled around the both of you, fueling your own growing need with its charge. And you were unable to withhold the plead that leaves you, a floaty sigh: "Please touch me."
You do not compute him nearing, eliminating the remaining space that divided you to press his lips against your own, suddenly they just are. It is soft, explorative but not without longing. And the sheer need behind it has your knees going weak, and if not for the appearance of an arm around your waist you feared that you might have actually fallen. Your body thrums with a sort of unsuppressed elation, a syrupy heat spreading across your limbs and dripping down your spine, settling between the cradle of your hips from the swipe of his tongue against your bottom lip, silently asking for your permission. You thread your finger through the silken tresses of his hair and lightly scratch across his scalp. You can only feel the groan rumbling against your lips when you allow him to lick into your mouth and you immediately decide that you need to actually hear it. You are sure that the sound of that husky timbre breathing out in a rapturous moan will haunt you for the rest of eternity, and you could not wait to hear it.
He cups your face in a single hand, securing your head with the curl of his fingers, allowing him to slant the plush of his mouth against you in an angle that let him to pull you in closer, enfolding you into the warmth of his chest. And the remaining doubt and restraint that had seemed to hold you two back was quickly beginning to melt, giving way to carnal sort of urgency. And already you are left panting, sweeping your hands across any part of him that you can, gripping the watery flow of his robes to center yourself through it all.
You had not felt yourself tipping but your back is now pressed against the textured terrain of the Dreaming, the crushed stalks of reeds and flowers lightly digging at your skin, though it does little to take precedence over your current focus. And he is pulling away from your mouth to duck his head neath your chin, nipping and sucking at the skin there until its tender and you can tell by the way that he tucks your flesh between his teeth and licks that he is leaving marks in his wake, staking his claim upon your body and the mere idea of it has you lowly keening into the night; your body going lax underneath his. All things considered; he has not done much but your brain is already clouding with want, eyes glazing over. And then the heat of his mouth is sealing over your breast, the silk texture of your robe only adding to the pleasure as his tongue circles around your taut nipple. You can't help the way that you arch into it, seeking out more mindlessly but it is not enough. It is does little more than tease you, even with the way that he has draped himself over you he has himself suspended in a way that keeps you from being able to achieve the friction that you desire, stoking that heat inside you with eat nip and suck from his teeth and mouth.
You can hear him chuckling from above you, the vibrations of his low smug amusement tingling across your chest, adding to your pleasure. If you were not so preoccupied with thoughtlessly trying to grind against his abdomen like a whore, you might have snapped at him for it, but instead you are removing your hands from the rich earth to sweep through his unruly hair, holding him against you instead, melting underneath the feel of his tongue.
He does not let you have that for long either, releasing the swell of your breast and ducking from your grip, nuzzling a path down the plain of your abdomen and taking your thighs into the smooth glide of his hands, ignoring your protesting cry as he licks at your stomach from over the barrier of the silk. And once again you find yourself cursing that dreadful fabric, swearing into the night while you squirm in his hands.
"Easy, sweet thing. " He coos, the image of patience. And if not for the wild, glow twinkling in both of his eyes like a beast you would not even think he was affected in the way that you are. That burning light serves as a reminder that he is not normal man, that you are rabbit ensnared within the jaws of a wolf, a mortal lying with a god. But it does not frighten you anymore. Instead, it douses fuel over an already steady flame. And you find yourself hoping to be consumed, taken between the teeth of this dark, cosmic deity and eaten alive.
His descent does not stop, the point of his nose dragging down until it stops over your mons pubis and your whole body tenses in anticipation, waiting for him to move just a bit lower, to bundle your skirts in his hands and take you into his mouth. But he does not do any of that. He simply hovers there. His clutch on your thighs tightens, threatening to turn your flesh tender and you swear that you can feel the points of talons pricking at you, but it is too dark from the cover of the moonless night to see if he truly has grown claws in his passion - if they have drawn blood. Not that you would have minded if they had. You wanted it. Wanted his claim visible on your body, open to be seen by anyone who may gaze upon you. A trickle of concern does make it through the honeyed smoke of your want, as fleeting as it is, and it is quickly forgotten. Casted aside at the sound of a soft repetitive panting filling the silence. It does not take you long to realize that it is coming from him. He is breathing in your scent, hovering over the heat of you to take lungful's of your arousal.
It is completely debased. Dirty. But the sight of a this primordial being kneeling between your legs and drawing in the scent of you in this perverted display that you would expect from man and not a god has you moaning into the air. Your cunt throbs, clenching around nothing while you rock your hips near his mouth. His grip tightens once again, smarting your skin while he tries to pin your body even while he chases the shift of your hips. And for one moment you think that he may finally ease both of your discomfort, feed the hunger ravaging your bodies but then horribly, he is pulling from you, leaving you to pant into the open air in a confused daze. "Why did you stop? "
"Let me taste you. " He said thickly, and his eyes shimmer again like the stars suspended in the heavens behind him. "Let me drink from you- worship you."
His words have your mouth going dry and that aching heat pooling between your thighs. Never in your life have you ever known a man so desperate to pleasure you. To practically beg for it with a barely concealed avidity. That an Endless would ask for your permission. But he is no man after all. And you are nodding once again, but he does not move until the echo of that old sentence chimes in your head, use your words, you remember, and you manage to utter a rushed, "please" out from a shaky huff.
He rumbles in a pleased way, the Dreaming trembling lightly with the resonance of his satisfaction. You hardly have time to blink before your ceremonial garb all but vanishes, baring you to the soft breeze and then a soft warmth enveloping your wet cunt, leaving you to jerk in surprise and scramble to grab something, anything to tether you. You claw at the field, the soil, before combing them into his hair while you gasp. All the while he is completely immovable, fixed to you throughout your writhing, lapping at your slit to collect the taste of you on his tongue and drink it down with a content purr, before licking up so that he can suckle your clit into the clutch of his mouth. Prompting that heady warmth to drizzle up on top of itself within the base of your abdomen.
He alternates between that for a few moments, completely unhurried as he switches between lapping at your slit and sucking at your engorged bundles of nerves. And then his tongue is slipping inside of you, working along the walls of your cunt in a way that has your eyes rolling and your back bowing in a taut seize. But it does not stop. Extending into an inhuman length. It is thick and textured near its base, working so deep inside that you have to cry out. The repetitive drag and pull of it ushering you to roll your hips to match its delicious rhythm, building up a rising tide, dangling you over the precipice of something debilitating.
"Oh gods - I - "
But he is jerking away from you leaving your cunt to squeeze around the absence of his tongue, biting into the meat of your thigh like he has to preoccupy himself or else he will bury his face back into your heat like you so desperately want him to. You clumsily prop yourself up on your elbows to look at him and the intensity of his gaze would have been intimidating if you were not in your current position.
"Why did you stop?!"
"When you come in will be with my name on your lips, " and something possessive layers the rich rumble of his tone. It is heavy and bears no room for argument, but you have no wish to do so. "Say it."
"My Lor- " But his pointed glare is enough to cut you off, but you find yourself yelping from the reprimanding nip at your sensitive skin. It did not hurt but it took you by surprise regardless.
"My name." He repeats carefully, and laves his tongue over the dull sting to soothe it, all without breaking eye contact, keeping you within the scope of his watch. And it takes you a moment to sift through his abundance of monikers and titles, trying to think past the sensation of his teeth and lips on you, but you finally manage to settle the same one that the Priestesses would often whisper with reverence.
"Morpheus. "
A pleased hum greats you and then blessedly he is spreading you open with his thumbs to subject you to the calculated, blissful lashing of his tongue. And you allow yourself to fall back onto the ground in a boneless heap, easily falling back underneath the sway of that fuzzy Elysian pleasure. Unrestrained moans now freely spilling from you, but you cannot find it in yourself to be the least bit embarrassed by the way you openly keen and whine in bliss. You head tips as you toss in reckless abandon, staring up almost sightlessly at the star cluttered sky. And in your drunken haze your mind oddly remarks that the twinkling stars remind you of peering eyes. But before the thought can take flight a strange sensation is enveloping you, like the brush of water rushing over you. Rolling textured waves, feathered touches and the brush of fingers.
Hands, a distant thought supplies weakly. It does feel like hands. Thousands of them all scattered about your body. Running over your hips, your stomach, your chest, your throat. And then it feels as though a pair of mouths are taking your breasts into them, and you just barely manage to jerk your head up to confirm that Morpheus is still nestled between your thighs, slurping at your messy cunt even while those phantom hands and mouths stroke over your body, sucking at your nipples in a way that has a gutted moan tearing out of you.
He is watching you from his place between your legs and the gleam of his eyes are nothing short of smug, taking absolute pride in the way that he is unraveling you at the seams.
Your body moves as though it is possessed. Writhing like it can't decide which sensation it wants to arch into; the ghostly grasp of a thousand hands or the needy, warmth of his mouth.
And the squelch of his tongue is sinful, noisily plunging into you. Its passage completely frictionless with the combination of his saliva and the way your cunt drips around the intrusion. He takes the meat of your ass into his physical hands, guiding the jerky rock of your hips into something deeper while he drinks you down, swallowing the obscene slick of your coupling down his throat. And you are babbling now, unable to recognize or understand the scattered way that you beg and cry. Lost to drift in the ceaseless ecstasy, a willing prisoner forced to take it. It feels as though your mind is breaking around the edges, fraying from the sheer scope of your pleasure, leaving you a weightless passenger, no longer held within the restraints of your own body. You soul is alight, burning and drowning in a rapture so sweet that you have no choice but to sob from it all.
"Morpheus - " You choke around the raged heaving of your chest. And the hands on your body are joined by the phantom lapping of tongues, invisible teeth nipping at your skin and the mouths on your breasts pull and tweak at your nipples. The pleasure is too much, too great for you to fully comprehend and that wave is climbing once again, hurtling you towards that cliff. And now you are begging - pleading that he does not stop and leave you wanting. His name falls freely from you now, and endless mantra pleading for him to guide you into the sweep of fire and bliss.
You barely feel it approaching. Suddenly your body is tensing, going rigid underneath the curl of his tongue and your thighs clamp around his head while you sob through the convulsions wracking through you. Completely swept up in a tide of heat and electricity. But he has not pulled away from your cunt, still nuzzled between the clutch of your thighs while he drinks your come with a satisfied sigh. The vibrations of it combined with the idle way that he continues to lap at you despite the sensitivity and it has your muscles twitching in response.
"Morpheus, please. " You gasp underneath him, and he finally pulls back from you, albeit reluctantly before he is crawling over you, leaving gentle pecks across your body as he moves. And you can still feel those phantom touches across you, but they are feather light now, melting into the background as his lips meet yours in a hungry kiss. It has you moaning into his mouth, and even with your recent orgasm you can already feel a syrupy heat building up within you coaxing the gentle rock of your hips. You can taste yourself on his lips, earthy and somewhat sweet. The weight of his arousal presses against you from underneath his robes, heavy and hot and the Dreaming thrums with his want, the soil trembling beneath you both.
You reach a hand down to paw at him through the dark fabric of his chlamys and the smoky, ragged groan that escapes him is a reward all in its own. And you were right. The sound of his breathless, rumbling satisfaction is something that you will never tire of hearing, and you are already desperate to drag more from him. But what truly has your attention is the length of him. You are unable to see it from the cover of his robes, but you can feel it, the thickness of it, the length. And you drag your thumb around its head, the cloth clinging to the shape of his cock from the precum leaking from the tip. He jerks in your hand, breaking your kiss to duck his face into the crook of your neck, sucking at the skin, prompting you to moan breathlessly.
"I need you inside of me. " You whisper unsteadily.
"Take what you need. " Comes his response as he mouths along your neck, taking your ear lobe into his mouth and pulling it between his teeth. Just as yours had, his robes vanish from his body, baring himself for you admire. And admire you do. Gazing upon the milky hue of his skin. The lithe muscle that ripple and flex and the added detail of blue vessels spidering underneath his flesh. Your eyes drop lower, settling on his cock, and the tip has flushed red from his arousal, and you briefly entertain the idea of taking him into your mouth, tasting him on your tongue as he had done to you. But the throbbing heat that has settled between your thighs is the only thing that keeps you from doing so. You need finally feel him and so you are gently pushing at his chest, guiding him to remove his head from your neck and to lie on his back. And he allows you to so - a god obeying your wishes.
His gaze does not stray from you, even as he settles against the ground and allows you to climb astride his lap. Now that you are here atop him you find yourself wavering under the intimidation of your self-imposed task. It is a stupid thing to be fearful of. You have done this before. But those was a man, not an immortal deity that has seen centuries come and go, watched curiously as humanity's ancestors evolved and give way to empires the ultimately rose and fell. You are sure that he has lain with deities beyond your comprehension. Gods and goddesses, nymphs and spirits, pure divine beings from the heavens. How could you compare? How could you possibly please him? Would he want you even as a tainted woman?
And as though he can sense your discomfort, he sweeps his hands along your hips, the action breaking through your internal struggle, and he is once sitting himself up enough to plant a kiss between the valley of your breasts. And then he is guiding you to look down on him with the gentle brush of his fingers, fixing your attention solely on him.
"Take what you need. " He reiterates. But it is not said in a scathing or annoyed way, it is gentle, loving you want to believe, and you nearly melt against him. Those ghostly touches are back, no doubt an attempt to draw you out of your head. And it is working to stoke the fire, the fervor returning to your bones, but your mind still struggles to return you, still tangled within the confines of your insecurities. You could not manage to pin them down no matter how hard you tried to.
"Speak to me, " he murmurs against your skin. "What troubles you?"
"I - " you choke around the shakiness in your chest. You want to speak but it is difficult to do so around the rock in your throat, the disconnect between your head and your tongue stalling the words before they can even truly form. He begins to circle his thumbs against your hips. It is no longer sexual but completely tender, meant to coax your feelings from you rather than your desire and it does serve to ground you somewhat, offering you some clarity to articulate yourself. " I - you do know that I'm not . . . " You trail off and you attempt to meet his curious gaze, but you find your own quickly darting away, scanning the kaleidoscope fields that surrounds you like it might help you find your courage. " . . . What if I'm not good enough?"
His expression becomes stormy. Something menacing and severe and it is a stark reminder of the darker side of his nature. He had been so gentle and giving with you that it had been easy to forget the depths of his anger, and for a moment you had feared that you somehow managed to offend him personally. His lips have pursed in that cross way, his eyebrows pinched, and you would have anticipated him molding himself into wicked shadows and talons, if not for the flash of something soft showing through the cosmic blue of his eyes.
"Have I not worshiped you thoroughly enough?" He asks, but he does not necessarily sound affronted out of concern of his own pride but rather disappointed that he did not please you. The mere notion of that could make you scoff; you were certain that he ruined you for anyone else. No man would be able to touch you in the way that he had. And now you were opening your mouth to reassure him, but he is responding before you can utter a single word. " Then allow me to rectify my transgressions."
And you whole heartedly expect him to once again knock you on your back and take you, but he does not. He keeps you secured on his lap, grip firm but not controlling and fixes you with a stare that seems to hold you open and reach inside, melting at your frayed vulnerabilities. "Now. Take what you need." His voice has dipped into something deep and orotund, clearly enunciating to make sure that his intent is clearly broadcasted. And the intensity that he projects is enough to pull you back into the moment, his power coursing over the Dreaming and rippling at its seams. But it is more than that too. He has been nothing but gentle with you this entire night. Patient. Without judgement. And it is as though he has been plucking you apart piece by broken piece, stuffing you full of sunlight and helping you mend your shattered edges. Not fixed or magically repaired, but it is the closest you have felt to peace and adoration in a long time. And you feel like you are choking on the affection that he openly displays. The want and the need.
You become startlingly aware of the way that your cunt drips, come smearing the insides of your thighs while that warm honeyed ache steadily thrums within your abdomen. And it is difficult to ignore it now. The sheer scope of your desire could smother you, threatening to take you under and drown you. Everything else after that is instinctual -needy. You take his face in your hands, smashing your lips to his in a bruising kiss trying your best to project your emotions into the exchange of tongue and teeth, stroking the sharp edges of his cheek bones with the same reverence that he had shown you. And you blindly reach down to take the rigid heat of him in your grip, throbbing and wet with a steady flow of precum, and he rewards you with a heady groan when you circle your thumb around the leaking slit of his cock.
You are quick to line him up with your entrance, and without little fanfare sink down onto him. The relief that comes with the fulness of his girth tears ragged sighs from the both of you. And you give yourself little time to adjust before your already working yourself down his length, toes curling when the blunt head of his cock brushes against that devastating spot inside of you that has you jerking from him to gasp into the night. And unable to ignore the all-consuming passion that takes you over, the pulsing, electrifying power that permeates around Morpheus you draw yourself up with the strength of your thighs, using the push you can achieve from planting your feet on the ground to bounce on his cock in a hedonistic display.
It is debased and vulgar, fucking out in an open field, in the soil like animals. Completely lewd, but so right.
Morpheus lies back against the ground on his own accord, reclining like spoiled royalty and allowing you to plant your hands on his chest to assist you to deepen each thrust, letting you take from him. And already his name is spilling from your lips like a hymn while you watch the Dream King with rapt attention, enthralled by every minute expression that flickers across his schooled features. The way that his eyebrows pinch together, how dim but eager pants puff past his open mouth, the dazed sort of pleasure that shows in his eyes while he gazes upon you like you're a deity that has descended down from Mount Olympus, a nymph fashioned from Aphrodite herself to encapsulate his every wish.
And those delicious, invisible hands have returned to roam about your body in their sweet exploration, plucking at your body like it is an instrument that they have played for years. The sound of your coupling rings across the Dreaming, the smack skin against skin, your unrestrained moans. It all has that thick, deep-rooted ache spreading further throughout your body, reaching from your core and all the way to your fingertips and toes. But there is something missing, a nudge needed to push you over the edge. "Morpheus, " you cry weakly, thighs already beginning to sting from exertion, but you refuse to stop, continuing to drop yourself on his cock, working tight circles with your hips with each descent.
You can see something smug bleeding into his features, your neediness nurturing his hubris, and his lips quirk in just the faintest hints of a barely there smile.
"What is it, my love?" He asks, feigning ignorance and it irritates you how put together he sounds, voice having dropped into a low, rumbling cadence, but apart from that he sounds seemingly unaffected despite the glazed over quality to his gaze. You whimper around a particularly harsh thrust from him that has your back bowing, pushing your breasts into the palms of ghostly hands. Your eyes nearly go cross at the drag of his cock, but you manage to keep your concentration around the sweeping torrents of smoke and ecstasy.
"Please!" you keen drunkenly. "Please, I need you! "
A satisfied purr resonates underneath your palms and his pupils flash in that pale tantalizing, dangerous way and you cannot believe that the look of it had frightened you at some point. Now it only serves to pool more liquid heat down the base of your spine. A heaving mewl is all but punched out of you when he takes you by surprise, using his place along the ground to thrust up into you with wicked rolls from his hips. Fucking up into you with a ferocity that has you struggling to meet his pace, and you are hardly more than a passenger at this point. All coherence is stripped from you and your entire body feels like it has been doused in honey and fire, and the timbre of his raspy voice speaking out only serves to nudge you closer to your undoing.
"You'll stay here with me, won't you?"
"Yes!" You agreed in a slurred whine.
"And you'll give yourself to me?"
"Yes!" You are near sobbing now, body jerking and writhing atop him while the phantom touches roll your nipples between soft fingertips, and his cock pumps into you with depraved, filthy squelches of your combined arousal. And that primordial energy is pulsating around the Dreaming. The same power that creates the ground you both lay upon, that fashions the field and the sky above you too, permeating from the deity that is currently fucking every shred of a possible thought from your brain. And the power feels charged now, like it is growing and expanding into something great, seeping into your skin and soaking your bones. Then a transparent grip is taking your jaw between its fingers, directing your gaze to the god underneath you, and another slips down your stomach, reaching down to drag tight circles around your neglected clit.
"Then come." It is a command that your body cannot ignore, seizing up tight, trapping the strangled wail deep inside your lungs while your mouth hangs open in a silent scream. Your eyes roll into the back of your skull, stars exploding against the darkness there and you lose all sense of tangibility. Your sense of time, place and self slip from perception like water pouring through spread fingers, and now you are just floating. Caught in bursting cosmos, pinned before the scalding light of the sun, caught in a torrent of arresting, unyielding rapture. And your cunt clamps down his cock like it means to milk him for all he is worth, your orgasm ushering him into his own and thankfully your coherence begins to return to you in time for you to admire him while he is subjected to the throes of his pleasure. And you are still gasping and moaning while his thrusts become sloppy and uncoordinated, observing as his eyelashes flutter and his mouth opens for a long husky moan to escape him as the warmth of his release pools inside of you.
You all but collapse on top of him in a boneless heap and your cunt spasming weakly around his spent length but neither of you make any effort to move. Simply basking in the afterglow of your highs. It is your sense of touch and hearing that serve to orient you. The distant crash of waves rushing over the surf, the whisper of the breeze dancing across the grass and blossoms. And you can feel him underneath you. His chest is moving with a breath that you are certain is simulated for your own comfort, an attempt to appear more human. But he feels too heated and simultaneously too cold to be a person, like he has no idea which temperature to project. But you decide that it is not at all unpleasant, instead it feels good against your feverish skin.
But you still wait for the sting of disappointment to strike you - for disgust to bleed and taint the satisfaction now that the lust has died, but it never rises to meet you. And so, you rest, satiated upon your god. Pliant like melted wax. But there is the insistent nudge of something burrowing at you. Concern, you quickly identify. And it has your sluggish mind wandering back to the root of the thought, trailing after it until it finds the conclusion which takes that shape of a memory. The memory of perhaps the only companion you have ever known, and it is bitter and sour reminder that they may not even be alive anymore. That centuries may have passed during your brief stay in the Dreaming, and that they may have succumbed to the passage of time.
"What ails you now?"
You want to say that it is nothing, sweep it aside and ignore it while it festers and grows. But you know now that he will not accept nothing as an answer, not when he can possibly feel your distress across the threads of the Dreaming. You feel foolish in your answer, but it is the only one that you can manage. " My cat. "
"Your . . . cat. " He echoes slowly, and you are certain that amusement is lacing his tone. You bristle a bit preparing to defend yourself, your right for being worried, but he is nudging you from his chest so that you may see each other as you speak.
"I can assure you that your companion is safe. He's quite content." He says. His gentle mirth still very much alive, but you do not return his light-hearted attitude, waiting with bated breath for him to answer the question that hangs heavy in the air. And a part of you fears that he may have somehow managed to converse with Death of the Endless, or that he was still connected to the passage of time that operates outside of the Dreaming and was able to deduce that the feline had long since passed, joining Teleute in the Sunless Lands. But then he is brushing a hand along his side, drawing your attention to his ribs where the skin there ripples like the surface of a disturbed lake, and a set of angry jagged scars emerge from the mirage, appearing across his pale skin, spanning from his armpit down to the notch of his hipbone. It is hauntingly familiar. The placement, the number of claw mark left in stretched healed tissue. One, two, three . . . four, you count.
You understand what it is that he is implying. And betrayal sinks its enamel into your heart, but the bite is shockingly dull and not the unforgiving split that you were expecting. And you can tell that he is calculating something, surely waiting for you to lash out. To scream at him and demand that he take you home. Perhaps that is what you should do. But you do not. "How? Why did you- a cat?" Is all you manage, more perplexed than irate.
"I had been injured by an old foe of mine, " he explains, allowing you to curl into his side, curiously running your fingertips over the marred flesh. And you have suppress a shudder, wondering what sort of being could be strong enough to injure an Endless. A god. "As for why I assumed that particular form, I needed to conserve energy. It was small. Familiar. It served to save much needed strength. "
There has always been something strange about that cat and his watchful stare. Admittedly you had always swallowed down the suspicion that prickled at you whenever he had curled up within your house, but you had been too desperate for some sort of friendship to truly question anything. The barrage of emotions flooding you, making you a muddled unsure mess, but one thing that you do know for certain is that you are completely and undeniably relieved. And truthfully you are still far too tired, simply uncaring to have been tricked by the god. You are happy- actually well and truly happy to embrace the joy and serenity.
"And then there was you, " he murmurs in your ear, devout and soft.
The both of you remain there for an insurmountable length of time. Lounging in each other's embrace, delighting in your shared presence. Listening to the peaceful noise of the Dreaming and the warmth of your lover. And for the first time that icy gapping pit of loneliness no longer gnaws and tears at you. You finally feel at home, and the desire to flee and leave eludes you. Perhaps because you have finally found a place to belong.
tags: gn reader, yandere, very brief implied nsfw, still ignoring GER’s canon limits, jjba but make it eldritch horror
It’s a wonder that you can still find ways to get yourself hurt despite the many safeguards your captor has put into place. No razors in the bathroom, no glass in your room, no knives at the table unless he is with you.
Tonight Giorno has joined you for dinner, and the knife you’ve been allowed to cut your food with proves itself to be a weapon in your sleep deprived hands. The blade only slips for a second, but it’s long enough slice deep into the meat of your finger, and you hiss as stinging pain races up your hand.
Giorno’s hands are on top of yours before you can even think to ask for help.
“It’s all right,” he soothes. “I’ve got you. I’ll take care of it.”
His hand covers your bleeding finger and something in the air around you seems to shift. A change in the energy, intense and disorienting, and somehow familiar. A creeping sensation begins to overtake you, frigid like ice water dripping down your spine. You’ve felt this energy before.
It retreats only a moment later, leaving you swimming back to your senses in the quiet of the dining room. Giorno unfolds his hands and your fingers rest in his palm, perfect and unmarred except for the smear of blood on your skin. Your head spins.
“What…?” is all you can manage in response.
Giorno looks at you contemplatively, choosing his words carefully as he thumbs over the skin of your fingers for as long as you’ll let him hold them.
“It’s an ability I’ve had for most of my life,” he says. “I understand this must be disorienting for you.”
You want to ask him to explain what just happened, where you’ve felt this before, and why this feeling of dread settled under your skin the moment he showed it to you. But Giorno stands and lifts you up with him by your newly healed hand.
“I should have noticed how exhausted you are,” he says. “I apologize. You must want to lay down.”
He begins leading you to your shared bedroom, and there’s a finality in his tone that tells you he won’t be explaining what that was just yet. He leaves you in your bed with a final brush over your hand, and turns the light off behind him.
—
It’s late when you finally decide to forgo your attempts to sleep. The clock on your bedside reads “12:45 AM” in faint glowing numbers, and Giorno has yet to join you in bed. You have a feeling that you know where to find him.
Padding softly to the door of his office and knocking twice, he calls for you to enter.
It’s clear that he wasn’t expecting to see you at all, much less clad only in the thin fabric of your night shirt. It brushes against the tops of your thighs and you tug the hem down as you step into his office.
“I couldn’t sleep,” you tell him.
“I understand,” he says. “I’m sure you’re confused about what happened earlier.”
You take a seat in the chair across from his desk.
“I do have a lot of questions,” you tell him. “I get that you didn’t really want to talk about it, but it’s keeping me up. And kind of, uh, freaking me out a little bit.”
Giorno takes a deep breath. “It’s…difficult to explain,” he begins. “I suppose it was inevitable that you would learn about it eventually, but I don’t know if it will bring you any comfort to hear an explanation.”
“Giorno,” you nearly whine, and his expression brightens at the sound of his name on your lips. It isn’t something he’s had the pleasure of hearing often. It isn’t often that you seek him out willingly for a conversation, either.
“I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about it. Can you just tell me what happened? Please?”
He looks at you with a torn expression and says nothing. You know he doesn’t like denying you anything, but his desire to please you is second only to his need to keep you under his careful control.
“I won’t bother you about it again,” you add. “I just—I really need you to help me make sense of this.”
You need him, you said. You know that you’ve won when his shoulders slump the tiniest bit, and he lets out a long breath. Giorno takes a pen from his desk and holds it up for you see. That energy permeates the air again, the one that you know but can’t quite place, and before your eyes the pen begins to warp and twist into something else. A stem pinched between his fingers, a pale pink bud growing and unfurling into petals at the top. He places it into your hand. It’s a flower. Delicate and beautiful where only moments ago it was mechanical steel.
Giorno smiles at your awestruck expression.
“This is my ability. I can create any living thing out of inanimate objects.”
You look up at him with wide eyes. “You can make anything?”
“Nearly anything,” he says, pleased at your rare lightheartedness. “Do you have any requests?”
You hum quietly in thought, still thumbing absentmindedly at the flower between your fingers.
“What about…a frog?” you ask, your expression open and hopeful.
It occurs to you that this is one of the only positive interactions you’ve had with him yet. Giorno is basking in this moment before you, clearly trying to mask how pleased he is with his usual composed demeanor. He plucks another pen from his desk and that same energy permeates the air again. It cuts through your mood like a knife, shocking you back into focus. You remember why you came here. There’s something wrong with all of this, and you’re going to find out why.
The pen becomes a frog in Giorno’s palm, and he motions for you to give him your hand. You swallow hard and hold it out to him, schooling your face into an expression that’s as relaxed as you can manage. You want him in a good mood. You want him answering your questions.
He places the frog gently in your waiting palm, where it settles into the warmth of your skin. It’s real, but your appreciation for the moment has been soured by the reminder of what you have to find out.
“It’s cute,” you say, and Giorno smiles at your praise.
“You made an excellent choice,” Giorno says. “I’m partial to frogs myself.”
You don’t know if you’ve seen him looking so hopeful in all the time you’ve been here.
“How do you do it?” you ask. “Is it like…magic?”
Giorno laughs quietly and you feel almost like a child for saying it.
“It’s not quite magic,” he says. “Although you’re not that far off. It’s more like—well, it comes from my soul.”
“Your soul?” you ask, not quite following him.
“Yes,” he nods. “It’s my spirit, you could say. The manifestation of my will. It has the ability to create life, and if there’s ever anything you want to see, you’re welcome to ask me for it.”
Giorno poses it as an offer to you, but you hear it for what it is. A request. Please come to me. Please talk to me. Please smile and laugh with me again. What a breathe of fresh of air this would have been, a break from the boredom and anxiety of your days, if you hadn’t just begun to put the pieces together. Giorno’s spirit has powers.
“So, if your spirit does all this, is it kind of like a ghost?” you ask.
“You could say it’s something like that,” Giorno says. “You can’t see it, but it’s been here each time I’ve used it for you.”
A spirit that you can’t see. A spirit with magical powers. You remember every night that you’ve been here, every night that you’ve felt haunted in the space of your own dreams, that lingering, otherworldly, familiar feeling following you into your waking hours.
You remember a voice like Giorno’s and piercing eyes standing over you. A spirit. Giorno’s spirit.
You must look like you’ve well and truly seen a ghost, and you suppose you have. Giorno’s expression falls as he senses the change in your mood. He calls your name softly.
“Is something wrong?”
You can’t be near him anymore. You place the frog on the table and stand, the flower falling somewhere at your feet.
“Sorry. I’m going back to bed,” you say, and as you whisk yourself away you hear his dim voice calling out to you in confusion.
You can’t go back to the bedroom. Can’t lay down and sleep where you’ve been watched—stalked—night after night by this thing that has haunted you ever since you were brought here. Your legs bring you to a guest room, sterile and unlived in, and you drop to the floor against the pristinely made bed. Knees to your chest, bare thighs prickling in the cool air.
This is a nightmare. A waking, living nightmare. You can’t let yourself fall asleep again, where that thing will be there, waiting for you as always. You imagine opening your eyes and finding yourself back in the void, with nothing but the presence of a monster you now know is real. You cannot. You will not. You have to stay awake.
You sit in the dark room until your exhausted body begins to betray you. How long has it been since you slept? Really slept? You sit until you begin to nod off and then you stand, and pace, and crouch with your head in your hands. Anything to stay awake.
You feel, for a moment, that oppressive energy filling the room again, but there is nothing there. You wait, and it fades, and you don’t know if your sleep deprived mind has finally begun to unravel or if that thing has finally begun following you outside of your dreams.
—
Giorno isn’t surprised when, by the time he finally retires for the night, he doesn’t see you in bed. Normally he insists on you sharing his room, for your own safety, of course. He can’t risk leaving you unattended all night. Tonight, however…his gut tells him it would not be wise to search you out. No matter how much he wants to take you by your shoulders and have you explain what that was all about.
He folds himself under the blankets and falls into a fitful sleep.
He dreams about you. Or rather, he sees you and himself, living your lives together, as if watching a film play out before him. There’s a tug on his soul. What is his stand up to?
He sees you walking with him in his gardens. Chatting to him about the flowers you pass and the care you’d done for them that morning. You look happy. Not in the way you were before—before he brought you here—but in a way that approaches it.
Like a sixth sense, Giorno is suddenly aware of his stand’s presence somewhere near him. The scene fades away from him like a tape being rewound, and then it rebuilds itself around him, different now.
He sees you crying in the bedroom, storming into the bathroom and shutting the door behind you. It doesn’t have a lock, but he knows you would be flicking it if it did.
“I’m doing this for your safety,” Giorno watches himself tell you through the door. Does he always look this tired? “I promise you, everything I’ve done is for your benefit.”
You sob quietly behind the door, and the world breaks down and rebuilds again.
He sees you and himself seated at a table in a restaurant. A public venue, where you shift nervously in your seat. Giorno places his hand over yours and you don’t pull away.
“Are you all right?” he asks quietly. “We can always go home if this is too much for you, carina.”
You shake your head and fluster. “No! No, it’s ok. I think I need to—I mean, I just have to get used to it. Being out here again.”
Giorno watches himself nearly flinch, and feels the same pang in his own chest at the understanding that he’s made you so afraid of something so normal. A restaurant with people in it. People who aren’t him. You curl your fingers into his and give him a shy smile.
“And I want to be here with you,” you say.
The world breaks down, the world builds up. Giorno catches sight of his stand over his shoulder, and calls out to it in the chaos.
“Why are you showing me this?”
His stand meets his eyes for a moment, and then the world is rebuilt.
He sees you sitting across from him at the dinner table, pointedly looking anywhere but at his face. Looking like you could start crying in a second.
“I’m sorry,” he tells you. “I’ll take you outside as soon as I have the time, but you know I can’t allow you out alone when you’re acting like this.”
You don’t answer.
Breaking down, building up.
He sees you sipping mocha from a mug he raises to your lips. You, cursing at him and declaring your hatred of him. You, sweaty and flushed beneath him. You, turning your back on him.
You. Bloody and broken.
Giorno has seen enough.
He wakes drenched in sweat. Sheets stick to his skin as he hauls himself up to sit on the bed, and he turns to face the window where his stand is illuminated by the pale moonlight.
“What was that?” he asks, nearly out of breath. It does not respond.
“What was all of that? Why would you show me this?”
The stand does not reply. It knows, and Giorno knows, that he already has the answer. That these are just a fraction of the countless outcomes of your lives together, his deepest desires, his greatest fears, and somewhere in between, the choices that lead him there. His stand watches him. Quiet.
“I know,” Giorno says. “I already know what’s at stake. I’m going to fix all of this, I just need time.”
The stand watches him. It doesn’t need to speak—it doesn’t ever speak to him—but Giorno knows in his soul what’s being communicated between the two of them.
Don’t fuck this up for either of us.
Giorno throws the blankets from his body and takes a hair tie from your nightstand, imbuing it with the form of a butterfly and following it out the door. He leaves his stand in the room behind him. He needs to find you, now.
Everything he wants and everything he fears has been laid out before him, as vivid as anything else he has lived and breathed through.
One of these outcomes is destined for truth, and Giorno has never failed to reach a goal once set in front of him.
The butterfly comes to rest on the door to a guest room down the hall.
Giorno takes a long, steadying breath, and knocks.
tags: fem reader, yandere, ignoring canon to make my silly little stories cooler, read a bunch of those poetry tiktok slideshows beforehand and now I think I can write like richard siken or something
In the dream, you wake up in the void. It’s the only dream there is, ever since he brought you here. The dream always begins the same.
There is nothing in the void. Not a body for you to kick and flail with, not a voice for you to call out. There is only you, floating, and the prickling sensation of something watching you all the while.
You learn to accept it. The emptiness. You learn to tell yourself that you’re only dreaming, that it will pass as it does every other time, that you can simply ignore the clawing, gnawing feeling that you are being watched with the intensity of a predator stalking the sole object of it’s attention. It works, even as you begin to hear echoing whispers of words you can’t quite make out.
The voice is distantly familiar, the smooth tenor being one that you hear nearly every day, since he brought you here. If it would just come closer, speak a bit more clearly, maybe you could finally make out the words it speaks to you. Maybe they would be familiar, too.
You learn to manage, in the void of the dream that’s always the same, until the night it changes.
When you wake in the dream, you are in his bed, in the room he brought you to. It’s quiet, dark, and when you turn to face the other side of the bed, he isn’t there (you don’t like to say his name). You think you’re awake, really awake, until you glance out the window and see that it’s black outside. Not black with the night. Not black in the absence of light. Black in the absence of anything.
Your skin prickles. You are being watched.
You roll back onto your side quickly and the sound of rustling sheets is the only noise in a room far too quiet. There is something in the room with you, a shape in the shadows at the far end, rigid and unmoving. Your eyes strain to adjust to the darkness. At the top of its form, where its head must be, two eyes stare back at you, wide and unblinking and nearly glowing. Blood rushes through your ears. Your body is frozen, and you cannot look away. The eyes pin you where you lay.
“You are always afraid,” it begins in the familiar voice, “when we meet.”
Your tongue is heavy in your throat. You couldn’t respond even if you knew what to say. The figure begins to move, the eyes and the blurry shape of its body stalking slowly along the lines of the wall. It’s stays within the darkest throws of shadow, approaching you as if you would bolt at the slightest startling movement. Maybe you would, if there was anywhere to go. If you could feel your fear-stricken legs under the sheets.
“You have no need to fear me,” it says. It’s mechanical voice seems to soften. “I could never harm you, as my user could never bear to cause you harm.”
White-knuckled fingers clutch the sheets to your chest, and you take a long steadying breath as you command your body to move, speak, anything.
“Wh-who-“ your halting voice begins. “Who are you?”
The figure comes to a stop across from your bed. It regards you quietly for a moment, it’s unblinking eyes flitting over your body, your fists, your face. How helpless you must look below it.
“I will never harm you,” it says, it’s voice hardened and determined. It’s making a promise to you. A vow. “I will never leave you. My devotion to you will never wane.”
It takes a step toward you and your fingers lock again. It stops before you by the bed.
“There is nothing and no one that can take you from me, or from my user.”
It leans over your body and in the dim light of the room you can finally make out its face. Its smooth, hardened features. The crown of its head. The arrow shape pressed into its brow and its piercing, doll-like eyes. A mimicry of a human being. Something only half-way there.
There is no heat coming from its skin, you realize as it nearly cages you in. There is no warmth, no coldness, as if it occupies no space at all.
“In every eventuality, in all of life’s diverging paths, I will keep my promises to you.” It raises a pale hand to your face, and you realize that you’re crying at it wipes a tear from your cheek with a single finger. Not warm. Not cold. Not quite there.
“You will understand,” it says, in a voice that’s softer somehow. “In time, you’ll come to understand why we do what we must. I’ll see to it.”
A trembling breath rattles through your chest. It raises its hand in front of your face and you see that there’s a flower between its fingers, small and delicate. It tucks the bloom into the folds of your hair.
“I will see to it. No matter how many times it takes.”
—
The tea in your cup is getting cold. The china has been switched out today for something more colorful and ornate. To match the coming spring season, you suppose. He always is attentive like that (you don’t like to say his name).
“Should I have another drink brought out for you?” he asks. His voice registers somewhere in the back of your mind. Smooth tenor. Not mechanic. Familiar, in more ways than one now.
You take a steadying breath. You remember waking up in his bed this morning. You remember feeling the residual warmth of his body on the sheets he had just left. You remember the sunlight filtering through the curtains and onto your skin.
You remember picking flower petals out of your hair and gagging over the sink. You’re awake. Not asleep. Not in the dream. Awake.
His hand slides into your peripheral and you hear the soft clinking of a knife as he spreads jam onto a pastry for you.
“Did you sleep well?” he asks.
The sunlight is warm on your skin. The scent of his coffee is light in the air. His hand dips into your view again to set the pastry onto your plate. You’re awake. You’re awake. You’re awake.
In the back of your mind you register his sigh. His hand comes to rest tentatively over yours, and you finally give him the eye contact he wants (you don’t like to look at him. You don’t like to speak to him or be touched by him or sit in the parlor and have breakfast with him either, but he doesn’t always give you the choice).
“You can tell me if you’re having trouble sleeping,” he says. “You know I’ll help in any way that I can.”
His blonde hair sits in perfect curls against his face. He’s trying, you can tell, to school his expression into something relaxed and amicable, but you can also tell it’s taking more of a strain than he would like you to see. You are driving him mad with worry. You know, because his face is beginning to look a lot like yours. Sunken, dark-eyed, bleak.
“I’m fine,” you say, and move your hand to take the biscuit from your plate. You begin to eat, finally, and his shoulders seem to relax a bit.
“I’ll bring home a supplement for you. Some melatonin, perhaps,” he says. “And you can tell me if there’s anything else you need.”
His voice is too familiar. But his hand was warm on top of yours and there’s sunlight in the windows and food in your mouth. Awake, awake, awake.
“Thank you,” you say, and raise the beautiful cup to your mouth. Your tea has gone cold.
—
Giorno wakes late into the night with a tug on his soul. His stand is out, and up to something.
He rolls to his side to see the stand crouched low, eyes locked on his, it’s face close to yours and it’s fingers threaded through your hair. It isn’t the first time he’s caught it like this.
The stand pets your hair in long, affectionate strokes, and you don’t stir under its ministrations. You had been so good for him that evening, sitting quietly at the dinner table as he sorted through paperwork, tucking yourself into bed and accepting the melatonin gummies he handed to you without fuss. He knows you’re only being so cooperative because you don’t have the energy to put on a stubborn face anymore. You haven’t been sleeping well since he brought you here.
The medicine seems to have done it’s work and then some. Giorno can see lines imprinted in the skin where your cheek was pressed into your pillow. Your hair is splayed around your head in a mess of a halo, and you don’t stir as he props himself up an elbow to better look at you.
They sit in silence, he and his stand, watching your peaceful visage. It isn’t an expression they often have the privileging of seeing any other time.
Giorno is often struck with the sense that are things going on beyond his awareness. That his stand, powerful and intelligent in ways he doesn’t yet comprehend, is pulling strings he cannot see. Often, he is struck with the sense that his ultimate weapon is not as well under his control as it allows him to believe.
The stand removes its hand from your hair and looks at him. The hand trails lightly across the length of your body, curving over the lines of your shoulder, your waist, ruffling the fabric at your hip. It watches him expectantly, and Giorno’s fingers twitch.
The stand removes its hand and Giorno raises his own, guilty like a child reaching out for what’s been forbidden. He starts at your shoulder, smoothing the sleeve of your shirt and feeling emboldened when you don’t so much as breath in response. He flattens his hand against your warm skin, brushing down the dip of your waist, the hard line of your hips, the soft flesh of your belly. There are inches between his chest and your body. It’s the closest he’s ever been to holding you.
His heart swells with adoration, every little interaction a blessing that renews his devotion to you. He looks at his stand that has not broken its line of sight with him, and wordlessly they come to their constant understanding.
More than anything, he wants to keep you safe. More than anything, he wants you to understand that he loves you, and selfishly he wants your love in return.
Giorno lays down beside you, his arm draped over your form. He thumbs at the sliver of skin where your shirt has ridden up over your belly, and trusts that whatever his stand may be doing, whatever hidden things lie outside of his control for the time being, it’s all being done for their sake. It’s all being done for your sake.
He closes his eyes and leaves you under the watch of his unblinking Requiem.
The duality of Tamsy’s hair is directly tied to his psychology and narrative function.
Before color symbolism comes into play, the structure itself carries meaning. The top layer represents the self he presents to the world, visible, and intentionally constructed. Beneath it lies the underlayer, the concealed self, closer to truth than performance. Tamsy discloses himself selectively, allowing what is acceptable or misleading to sit above what is genuine.
The blonde top layer symbolizes the false innocence he performs throughout the narrative. Blonde, often associated with purity or harmlessness, creates a visual and psychological contradiction when placed against his actions. It suggests a detachment from corruption, a cleanliness that does not belong to him, and in doing so, it actively lies about who he is. The audience is meant to feel unsettled by how easily his appearance contradicts his behavior.
In contrast, the blue beneath carries an entirely different emotional register. Blue is commonly associated with detachment, control, and emotional distance, and at times with sadness or emptiness. Here, it implies something colder and more deliberate, a restrained cruelty and a depth he keeps hidden from immediate view.
Together, these colors form a visual manifestation of Tamsy’s character. This is not a conflict between good and evil, nor innocence and corruption, but a conscious choice to act as he does. The coexistence of blonde and blue reflects his willingness to operate behind a mask while fully understanding what lies beneath it.
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summary: you and marcus live lightyears apart within the city walls when emperor geta takes a greater liking to you than expected. you start to find a strange sense of understanding within the crazed emperor, while general acacius plots your escape. (11k)
pairing: marcus acacius / f!reader, emperor geta / f!reader
contents: established relationships, angst, hurt/comfort, cw for mentions of war, mentions of sex work, brief mentions of emotional abuse (geta has anger issues he's working on), swearing, smut 18+ (dubcon, unprotected sex, exhibitionism & voyeurism) (this is another dark fic!! please heed the warnings!!)
“Meet me in the garden,” you pant against the General’s mouth as you kiss him with a desperate sort of fervor. It’s all wet and hungry and unforgiving, like biting into an apple. “At sunset, on the morrow. Say you’ll meet me there.”
Despite your delicate touch, you cradle Marcus in a most violent hold. You keep him impossibly close with one hand wrapped around his neck, tanned and taut with the strain of war. Your other twists in his hair, dancing through the greying curls of fine silk. You embrace the General within the candlelit crypt where, before now, only death seemed to roam.
Marcus stands as still as the statues of ghosts surrounding you. You lick into his mouth like you plan to breathe life back into his lungs, even while he withers into nothingness at your feet. A thin layer of your spit coats the scruff of his chin. He balls his calloused hands into fists at his sides and pretends a part of you isn’t glittering upon him. He holds onto plausible deniability like a shield.
“It is not safe,” Marcus murmurs in a gruff whisper when you pull back to take a breath. His lidded eyes dart over your kissed face — gaze heavied, lips swollen. Beautiful devil, fallen angel. “You know this.”
Not anymore, he wants to say. Not while you belong to Them.
“Why not?” you challenge, always so girlishly gentle in your stubbornness. “Everyone will be at the feast, Marcus— No one will see us, I’m sure of it.”
Your eyes flit between his kissed mouth and dark-eyed gaze. Universes shine in your irises despite the shadows of the labyrinthine tomb. Marcus feels a white-hot knife twisting in his chest as he resists the urge to hold you.
“It’s the world we live in now, petal. There is little use in questioning it.”
“But why?” you question, anyway. “Why must we live in this world, hm? The war is over— We could make our own, somewhere far away from the city. Somewhere no one could ever find us—”
You create heavens with your naivety.
Marcus burns them down with words.
“The Emperors would not stand for losing their general. For them, the war is never finished,” the General interjects in a sorrowful deadpan, aching when your face twists with grief. “And if they misplaced you? They… They would burn cities to the ground in their hunt… They would set the world aflame before they stopped searching for you.”
Marcus knows this because he knows himself — every star in the sky would burn out before he stopped looking for you. He knows this, too, because he knows the Emperors. Perhaps better than anyone else in the entire world.
Geta and Caracalla were born with the belief that they possessed ownership over everything they touched. Anyone stealing from their Empire would meet a swift and tortuous demise. They were merciless gods who dangled life and death on their fingertips. Only those who kissed the ring would make it out of their rule alive.
And you knew it, too.
That was the worst part of it all: you knew it.
Tomorrow comes and passes like rolling summer clouds, slow and heavy and suffocating. You watch from the royal garden as the sky turns from a glittering sapphire to milky shades of peach and lavender. Another day gone by that you’ve spent grieving on your own.
Though time marches mercilessly on, threatening to untie unbreakable bonds, it changes little of how much you and Marcus have grown together. Like cherry trees kissed with the promise of spring, with your roots tangled gracelessly together. It’s a knot that cannot be undone, not even by the promise of death.
And for that, you figure you must be grateful.
Because as you sit on the stone steps of an artificial lake, twirling your fingers in the warm water of the koi pond, you wonder how dreadful it must be for the multi-colored carp. To swim in circles your whole life, to think the world is only as big as the bricks holding you hostage.
At least you know what it means to grow up in the rolling green of an infinite countryside. At least now you have gardens to roam in the greatest city in the world. At least now you get to live.
A breeze sweeps suddenly through the garden, rippling the crystalline water and rustling the bright green leaves over your head. It carries the soft sound of footsteps scraping the stone trail. Your ears perk, your heart stops, and your head whips over your shoulder. You hope to see Marcus standing at the steps below you.
Your chest tightens and deflates all at once at the sight of Emperor Geta.
He’s adorned in his white-gold cloak, with his laurels sat atop his strawberry-blonde curls, and carrying a jeweled ring on each finger. The sunlight paints the man in flaxen rays of light. The rainbow-colored flowers seem to bloom with every one of his steps. All you can think is how beautiful he is — much too pretty to be so cruel.
“I did not mean to frighten you,” the Emperor concedes, eyes wide and palms splayed in surrender. His sandals scuff the cobbles with each hesitant stride.
“No, of course not,” you blurt with a rapid shake of your head, a quickness sure to give away your choked-back terror. “I just… I only thought you’d be at the dining hall with the rest of the court.”
“I was. Until the handmaidens notified me of your absence.”
You meet his wide-eyed expression with a narrowed gaze, lips curling into an unsure smile. “How can I be absent from a place I do not belong, Your Majesty?” you quip, though your voice threatens to shake.
Geta’s brows furrow. His ringed fingers twitch at his sides. “Belong?” he echoes.
“The feast is for nobility, and I grew up in a brothel,” you answer, giggling quietly under your breath. “I am certainly the farthest thing from royalty.”
You flash him a gentle smile and playful gaze, but the Emperor only frowns.
He can hardly stomach the thought of it — of his most precious thing living in the countryside, surrounded by filth, touched by unworthy hands. He’s glad you’re now, where only he can touch you. Where he can make you clean.
“There is a place for you there, nonetheless,” Geta tells you and takes another step closer. He stands at the bottom of the stone steps and tilts his chin to his chest. His chocolate eyes harden as he presses more firmly, “And I will see that you attend.”
His sudden glacial disposition makes your stomach wrench. You’ve grown so used to him now, learned all the ways to keep him satisfied, that you’ve forgotten how quickly angered he can be. You don’t want to remember his wrath.
You nod at the invitation with a wavering smile, knowing you aren’t at liberty to turn him down, and rise from your spot by the pool.
You hold your gown in both hands as you descend the stairs, flinching slightly when Geta rushes to help you. Sometimes, you think he can sense your worry, or that he regrets snapping at you the way he does. Either way, his efforts to pivot the situation are apparent to you — like he never learned how to apologize, so he’s forced to improvise in the matter.
His warm, petaled hand engulfs you to ease you down the tricky cobbles.
“I only mean that… it is strange. Being without there… Or anywhere, really,” he admits, talking slowly like each word is foreign to him. His gaze darts from yours to the vacant path ahead. “I find that I am looking for you in places I knew you could not be. It’s foolish, I know.”
His gentleness is perhaps more striking than his rage.
“It isn’t foolish, Your Majesty,” you insist as you reach the bottom of the staircase. You peer at him through your lashes and fake another smile. “I just didn’t know you were such a poet.”
Geta doesn’t understand your meaning. Where was the poetry in his words? How did such burdensome feelings of tenderness make him a poet?
“Neither did I,” he muses, guiding you out of the garden with his hand in yours.
Though still riddled with feelings of uncertainty, Geta is strangely moved by how you’re looking at him now — with the sun sparkling in your softened gaze, more gentle than anyone deserves to be looked at. So he figures he can be a poet for you, if he must.
You bathe again in the rosehip oil Geta always insists you wear, and dress yourself in the fine silk gown you know he prefers. The pale blue fabric drapes off your shoulders and flows to your ankles, cinched at the waist with a jewel-encrusted belt of gold. Your skin and body are adorned, in this moment alone, with perhaps more money than you’ve ever seen in your life.
The thought makes your head swim as you amble to the dining hall.
The silent guards at your side make no effort to rush you for fear of the Emperors’ wrath. Still, though, the notion that they are commissioned to ensure your attendance is not lost on you. Any attempt to flee will surely be met with force — if not from the knights, then from Geta himself.
The feasting is long done by the time you arrive. Mingling bodies flit around the crowded manor in a blur. Live music swells distantly as rose petals fall from thin air to decorate the marble floor. You wring your hands nervously together as you weave through the bustling court, gravitating to the large open window at the back of the hall — where you know the Emperors rest on their plush, velvet chaises.
Caracalla notices you first.
The boy rises from his lounged position — laurels crooked on his blonde head and robe shifting up his pale thighs — and smiles at you with all his crooked teeth. His lone golden tooth glints in the sunlight.
“You showed,” he announces to no one in particular, just before his wild head swivels to his brother on the other side of the couch. “See, brother? I told you there was naught to worry about. Did I not?”
Geta does not appear happy to see you. His features remain in an emotionless scowl while his smokey eyes rake over your form. “You did,” he responds distantly, if only to appease his younger brother.
Caracalla doesn’t seem to notice the tension caging him on both sides as he flashes you another toothy grin. “He threatened to send the Praetorians after you,” he lilts like it’s some kind of silly secret.
The Emperors’ bodyguards line the wall behind them, as well as all the entrances and nearly every window. They were like your Marcus — military veterans, strong and sharp and ruthless — though you imagine the only soft side you’ll ever see of them is a fist. They are certainly not the kind of people you want sent after you.
“Well, you were right, Your Majesty,” you grin. “There was naught to worry about. I was simply making myself presentable for the court.”
Caracalla holds his ringed hand out for you as you near him. You bend at the waist to kiss the emerald on his ring finger. The motion is muscle memory to you now. “You look beautiful,” he slurs like a child. “Like a fairy, almost.”
“You flatter me, Your Majesty,” you nod politely and rise to full height again.
You feel his ocean eyes on your body as you pass him by, glassy and sparkling with a boyish sort of wonder. A stark contrast to the way his brother glares daggers at you.
“You certainly took your time,” Geta monotones in place of a greeting.
You stand obediently at his side and twist your clammy hands into knots. “I was only getting dressed, Your Majesty. I wanted to look pretty for you—”
“Nonsense,” the Emperor spits and turns away. You’re always pretty, he’d say if he could get the words out. Instead, he softens his suddenly hardened edges and flashes you a gentler glance. “I thought you’d defied me,” he confesses, as though in lieu of an apology for his fleeting hysterics.
“I couldn’t,” you murmur with a quiet smile.
Not wouldn’t, he notices. Not shouldn’t.
But couldn’t. Like your body was fated to listen to his command.
A funny feeling sparkles like gold in his chest. It makes him fidget uncomfortably on the couch. “Sit down,” he instructs with a wave of his ringed hand before slouching back in his seat, pale arms splayed along the edge of it. His brows pinch when you descend onto the empty spot beside him. “Not there.”
You freeze in place. Your eyes widen and dart to his thighs, spread out and hidden beneath the skirt of his robe. You look to Geta once more and cower beneath his expectant look. You sink hesitantly onto his lap, feeling like your heart’s in your throat as you lean into his chest.
Your unsure hands curl around his shoulders. His curls brush your cheek. He smells overwhelmingly of musk and wine and cinnamon. Something about it makes you dizzy.
You survey the room from your position in Geta’s lap. Most people aren’t looking, you find, too busy talking and flirting and dancing together. A few noblemen across the way leer incredulously at you, though, like they’re trying to gauge if they know you from somewhere. You presume you likely slept with one or more of their sons during the war, most of which are likely dead now.
A few women crowd behind the chaise — all dressed in muted shades of silk, all dripped in jewels and gold. They’re pretty, effortlessly so, as they talk into their goblets full of wine. Some looked relieved to have the Emperors’ attention off of them. Others sneer at you for it, having no idea you’d switch places with them in a heartbeat if you could.
Your eyes dart across the dining hall, almost instinctually so. They lock immediately with Marcus the moment he enters the room.
The General wears his black-gold armor and a faraway look in his eye as he leads a group of foreign gladiators into the manor. A hush lulls over the crowd, which parts for him without thinking. Marcus navigates through it with an absentminded sternness, like every step is muscle memory.
He softens only when his gaze meets yours.
His puffed-out chest deflates with a wavering exhale at the sight of you, a lamb on the lap of a man who holds a knife to your throat. He blames himself for it most of all, knowing he’s the one that brought you to slaughter.
“Finally!” Caracalla shouts into the silence, voice ringing through the hushed court. “Where have you all been— In the showers together?”
A bout of laughter rolls over the crowd as the blonde boy leans over to you. You try not to grimace at the bitter smell of wine on his breath. “Who nearly missed the games, little dove,” he croons too close to your ear.
The nickname makes you tense. You muster a smile, anyway, and remind yourself to breathe. “What a shame that would’ve been,” you lilt in response.
“The armor is tricky, Your Majesty,” Acacius confesses, voice deep like a cathedral organ. “Especially for those who have not donned it before. Such as yourself.”
There is a bite to his words despite their monotoned delivery. Caracalla pays it no mind as he lounges back on the couch, wine sloshing in the chalice he holds in a limp hand. “Get it out with it, then,” he slurs.
Each gladiator faces the other. One is tall and sturdy, like an oak tree. The other is shorter and lankier, much too young and far too pretty to fight in such gruesome battles. As Marcus’ voice booms throughout the quiet dining hall to introduce them — The Barbarian versus The Might Vincenzo — Geta presses his mouth to your ear.
“Which one shall we bet on, little dove?” he whispers to you as his hand curls tighter around your waist. His other idles over your skirt, pale and jeweled and warm, though his long fingers threaten to dip between your thighs.
You blink hard to keep your head from swimming. “Hm?”
“Which one of these imbeciles do you think will win?” Geta repeats.
“Oh, um, I— I don’t know, Your Majesty,” you stammer in response. It’s hard to think about anything other than how close Marcus is to you now. How pretty and wartorn he looks. How desperately you wish to hold him.
“Just guess,” the Emperor presses, squeezing softly at your hip. “It’s only for entertainment, anyway.”
How could certain death possibly entertain you? your mind races as your mouth blurts, “The little one, then.”
“Really?” Geta hums in amusement. His dark eyes, smudged with brown liner, squint softly at your glossy profile. They flit across your features like he’s seeing you for the very first time, though you aren’t looking back at him to notice. “Hm. I would’ve picked the oaf.”
“Well, it is the most obvious choice, Your Majesty. Though, I find it’s often the smaller ones that surprise you—”
You turn your head to look at him. Your breath catches audibly in your throat when you find the Emperor much closer than expected. He’s so close your eyes nearly cross to meet his gaze. So close, that the tip of his large nose threatens to brush the bridge of yours. So close, you get drunk on the alcohol tainting his breath.
Geta’s wine-stained mouth curls upwards in a cynical smile. “They do, indeed,” he croons quietly, raspberry breath fanning warm over your jaw.
Chills pebble along your skin accordingly. It takes great strength from you to break his magnetic chocolate gaze. You turn away from the Emperor and focus instead on the gladiators circling one another. Vincenzo moves in seemingly practiced motions, unfazed by the brutality of such duels. The nameless Barbarian houses a great sadness in his young eyes — a hardened look of regret, perhaps, for what he knows he must do.
“Let’s not entertain them for our amusement, brother,” the Barbarian mutters lowly to his opponent, blade hanging limp at his side.
The larger man charges like a rhino. A deep roar sounds in his throat as he thrusts his knife towards the younger boy’s neck. The Barbarian dodges the swing with ease, possessing all the swiftness of a snake as he ducks past his opponent and slices his muscular bicep with one fell swoop.
The crowd gasps in a mixture of horror and amusement as Vincenzo’s blood drips onto the floor like deep red wine. It stains the marble in fat droplets, blending with the rose petals littered at the gladiators’ feet.
You flinch at the sight. Your breath hitches as you turn away — eyes squeezed shut, brows tightly furrowed. Geta chuckles with merriment. You feel it rumbling in his chest as he murmurs, “Don’t be frightened, little dove. It’s only a game.”
Something in you aches when the Emperor reaches for the jeweled goblet at his side. Your fearful eyes remain fixed on his face while the hall erupts in a symphony of violence — of battle cries and laughter, of dropped blades and dull smacks.
“Here,” Geta offers with the wine in hand. “Drink. It will calm your nerves.”
He presses the rim of the chalice to your mouth. His gaze never waves from your lips as they part to welcome the bittersweet raspberry. The wine pools like blood on your tongue. It tastes like guilt going down.
Dusk falls over the city like a wounded swan. The velvet darkness outside your window makes shadows of everything it touches, only partially diminished by blinking stars and waning silver moonlight. The crescent shape of the bright white orb would fit just perfectly beneath Marcus’ jaw, you think to yourself.
The thought alone sends a warm, melancholic feeling down your spine — with such an intensity only the tenderness of twilight could elicit.
You slide from the crimson satin of your mattress with a tight chest. You migrate towards the entrance — bare feet padding faintly along the floor, thin cotton nightgown trailing behind you. You stand before your bedroom door and rap your knuckles rhythmically against the wood.
Twice, once, three times.
And then you wait.
“It’s me,” you hear Marcus murmur from the other side.
Your heart swells like sunshine in your throat. You smile wide despite yourself, with no one else around to see it. “It’s been Romulus for nearly a fortnight,” you tell him, panting slightly from where you’d held your breath in anticipation. “I was starting to think you’d been banished from your post here forever.”
“You know the Emperor likes to torture me,” he quips, though his usual monotone never wavers.
It might’ve been easier on you both, if Geta had shipped him off to lead another meaningless campaign. At least then Marcus could miss you from leagues away. Instead, he has to guard your bedroom door and miss you from the other side of it. Torture is an understatement.
“Well, I quite like it when you’re here,” you confess quietly, tracing shapes onto the doorframe with an absentminded hand. “Makes me feel safe.”
You wait patiently for a response.
“Good,” is all the General can think to reply.
Your face pinches with concern. Your chest does, too. “Are you angry with me?”
“Why should I be angry with you?”
“I don’t know… Our conversations together have grown so short— I worry you do not wish to speak with me at all.”
Though you cannot see him, Marcus flinches at your words. He stands like a statue outside your door, in the middle of the dim corridor, and glares over his shoulder into nothingness. “It isn’t true,” he insists, voice low but honeyed still. “I wish to speak with you always.”
“Then why do you not?”
“Because it isn’t safe,” he repeats, though you never seem to hear him.
“Will it ever be?”
Marcus goes silent as he ponders for a moment. Quiet engulfs the bedroom all over again, filled only by crackling candles. “No,” he answers after a few long moments. “Not for a long while.”
You feel like he’s stabbed you with a freshly sharpened blade, right between your ribcage and into your bleeding heart. It would hurt less, anyway. “Why?” you wonder aloud in a pained whimper, knowing the answer will do nothing more than twist the knife.
The answer sits ready on Marcus’ tongue, as though the question of why has plagued him long before you asked it.
“Because I… I ruined you. By bringing you here.”
“You saved me,” you correct.
“I destroyed you,” he retorts, voice heavy with choked-back emotion.
“I would be dead if it weren’t for you,” you remind him of the blatant reality, which threatens to consume you every time you see his face. You wish you were holding it now, cradling Marcus’ bearded cheeks in your supple palms, so that he might understand the weight of your words. “I would’ve lost everything if you hadn’t taken me with you. I would’ve been tortured, probably killed. But now I get to—”
The word gets caught in your throat. You swallow hard and fake a smile at nothingness. The pretending comes naturally to you now.
“Now I get to live. Both of us do.”
There is a brief moment of knowing silence. This isn’t what living is supposed to feel like — fleeting touches in dark crypts and whispered conversations through bedroom doors. Both of you know it, but it’s a truth too brutal to admit out loud.
“Marcus?”
“Yes?”
“You know… We aren’t unspectacular things, Marcus,” you speak slowly and with a strangled intention. “We’ve already come so far. We’ve survived so much— We can survive a little more, can’t we? Until it’s safe again?”
“I don’t presume we have any other choice.”
“We don’t,” you sigh. “Because I love you.”
“I know,” Marcus nods, with an air of surrender in his words. “Because I love you, too.”
You fall into the heavy wooden door as though it were your lover’s body. You did not need to see him to feel held by him. He hadn’t touched you, and he didn’t need to. His presence alone affects you in such a way that it feels like he has been caressing you for a long, long time.
Marcus’ heavy armor clunks faintly on the other side of the door as he stands up straighter. Emperor Geta enters his line of sight, a shadow slinking down the candlelight corridor. He clears his throat. “Your Majesty—” the General announces, for you and you alone.
He hears your feet pad against the floor as you scurry from the entrance.
“Dog,”the Emperor greets in a cynical deadpan.
His sandals scuff the cobbles when he stands before the taller man. The torches hanging on the walls bathe Geta’s face in flickering amber hues, highlighting his tired features where the makeup had worn throughout the day. He seems weighed down by a certain kind of grief. The kind that makes Acacius feel ten feet tall.
“Have you been guarding my Empress like a good little hound?”
Marcus nods politely, though the term of endearment catches him momentarily off guard. To be the Emperor’s whore was one thing, but it was entirely another to be referred to in such high regard. The General tries to contemplate what that must mean as he answers, “Of course, Your Majesty.”
Geta grins despite his visible fatigue. “Good boy.”
You’re already back in bed by the time the door swings open. You lounge along the expensive satin sheets and pretend you’ve done nothing but wait obediently for the Emperor, while simultaneously swallowing down any remaining feelings of longing and heartache.
Geta enters the room like a rolling storm cloud. He wears all the chaos of the day in his mussed blonde curls, smudged makeup, and wrinkled garb — a palpable sort of disarray. You scramble on the mattress to greet him, like you often do, until he dismisses you with a wave of his hand.
“No. Don’t,” he commands. “Stay there. Don’t get up.”
You obey, freezing partially upright, with your elbows holding most of your weight. Your face swirls with concern at his look of annoyance. Your heart drops to your stomach in fear.
“Are you alright?” you ask him, though the Emperor pays you little mind as he migrates to the table by the window.
He pours himself a chalice of wine. The glugging flagon fills the heavy silence. You swallow hard and stare timidly at the back of him. “Are you angry with me?” you repeat once more — a question that seems to accompany womanhood, especially when bound by the innate violence of man.
“I couldn’t be,” Geta answers like it’s obvious, sparing you a fleeting glance over his shoulder. He turns away to down the full goblet in three lengthy gulps, then wipes his stained mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s only my brother,” he confesses through labored breaths.
Your worry lessens, but only slightly.
“Is he alright?”
“He’s acting like a child,” Geta spits, angered all over again, as he pours himself another cup. “More so than usual.”
“Has something happened?”
“Nothing that should concern you.”
“Well, it’s certainly bothering you, Your Majesty,” you coo in slow and calculated measures as you rise from the many cushioned pillows. “So, forgive me, but it cannot help but concern me as well.”
Geta is unaccustomed to such tenderness. He tenses beneath it, glances hesitantly over his shoulder like he plans to find a ghost sitting in your place — as though he’d only heard the words in the wind and not from your mouth. A foreign feeling swirls again in his hollow chest, like a blizzard of snow or a flurry of rose petals.
“He’s jealous of me. Just as he always has been,” the Emperor tells you as he stalks toward the bed. He gestures mindlessly with his hands, and the wine sloshes over the rim of the gold chalice until it hits the stone floor. He raises it to his mouth, tips his head back, and down the bittersweet pomegranate.
His neck is long and milky white. His protruding adam’s apple bobs with each languid swallow. A drop of deep red trails from his mouth and down his chin once he’s finished. He rubs it away with a fist. You forget to stop staring.
“Lay down,” he commands, chest heaving.
Your body obeys without a second thought. You lie back on the velvet cushions, docile and willing, in a way that comes naturally to you now. You’ve been Geta’s thing for so long that a part of you has grown used to it. Needy for it.
The mattress dips beneath the Emperor’s wait as he kneels beside you. Your mind starts to reel.
Your brain seemingly anticipates an inevitable pleasure, which comes to you like clockwork most nights. It makes your mouth water like a drooling hound that knows when it’s feeding time. A funny feeling stirs in the pit of your belly and pools like honey in your undergarments. Your thighs clench together when a subtle throbbing begins to pound between them.
You should be grateful when Geta crawls beneath the sheets only to rest his head on your chest.
You’re shocked, most of all, by such a foreign act of tenderness.
Your breath catches when his cheek presses to your breast. He nods gently to rub his burning skin over the smooth cotton. A deep exhale fans from his nose as he rests his body weight against you.
You cradle him with hesitant hands and remind yourself to breathe. Your fingers scratch lightly over his clothed shoulder while your others comb through his strawberry-blonde locks. It’s a warmth so foreign to the two of you that it threatens to bring you both to tears.
“He says he wants someone like you— my brother,” Geta admits after a few moments of long silence.
“A whore?”
“A paramour,” the Emperor corrects, face twisted in irritation at your use of the term. He focuses on the muffled sound of your heartbeat when anger threatens to consume him. A heavy sigh deflates his chest. His anxious fingers twist in your nightgown. “I told him he could have his pick— Between us, we have plenty of women to go around, but… He insists his mind is stuck on you.”
Your bated breaths come to you in trembling inhale-exhales. You hope he doesn’t sense how frightful his words have made you.
Geta is cruel, yes, but he is at most times predictable. Though Caracalla may be kind, he is most of all volatile. And there is nothing more dangerous than an erratic, easily excitable ruler.
“And what did you tell him?” you wonder with a feigned sense of curiosity.
“That you were mine, of course,” Geta blurts like it’s obvious. “He offered to share, to which I told him that he should be grateful that I’m sharing the throne alone with him… And now he’s off with his monkey, crying like a child…”
You feel strangely comforted by his words. You breathe a sigh of relief through your nose and rake your fingers through his blonde-brunette curls. “Your brother is a fragile thing, Your Majesty,” you advise in gentle murmurs. “You must be gentle with him.”
“I don’t know how to be gentle with anything,” Geta confesses, half-muffled into your chest. “Least of all, with someone like him.”
“Shall I speak with him? Perhaps I can calm him— make him understand?”
“It’s my burden alone.”
“It is mine as well, Your Majesty. So that mustn’t be true.”
Geta turns slowly to face you, with all the hesitance of someone unused to such kindness. His chin rests on your clothed sternum and bobs with each word. “You shouldn’t have to carry it,” he whispers into the honeyed silence of the candlelit bedroom.
You muster a small smile. “I know. But I will, anyway,” you shrug. “When you care for someone, your brain has little say in the matter.”
Geta falters at your admission. A foreign emotion swims in his chocolate button eyes. He’d rather blame it on the flickering flames strewn around the room. “Is that what this is?” he mutters, almost to himself, when he finds the breath to say the words.
Your fingers in his hair slow to a stop. “What do you mean, Your Majesty?”
“This… This tenderness,” the Emperor answers, spitting the word like it’s the first time he’s ever tasted it. His face scrunches distantly, as if it were sour on his tongue. “Sometimes it overwhelms to the point of tears. It’s a… a blinding radiance, like… a knife— lodged somewhere deep in the body…”
You cup Geta’s freshly shaven face between two, gentle hands. He swears he sees the sun.
“Why do you speak of love like it hurts you, Your Majesty?”
He swallows hard. “Because it does,” he confesses before rising from your body.
You mourn his warmth as he swings his legs over the side of the mattress. He sits with his back facing you. His dove white robe hangs off one pale shoulder when he bows his head.
“I never believed in it as a child— the permanence of it all, of… love. And yet, I… I find myself longing for it anyway. Like a fool.”
You rise on one elbow and resist the urge to touch him. “Wanting to be understood by someone doesn’t make you a fool, Your Majesty.”
“I know that I… That I haven’t been the most gentle with you at times. But I am… I am sorry for it,” Geta tells you in near inaudible murmurs, flashing you a sheepish glance over his freckled shoulder. “I understand it must be difficult for you.”
“What, Your Majesty?”
“To be caught between all that was. And all that must be.”
Your stomach wrenches at his words. Your chest tightens beneath the weight of them until you have to fight for every wavering breath. You take a trembling inhale and rise so you’re sitting at his side, taking careful calculation in the following words you speak.
“We cannot… We cannot choose who we love, Your Majesty. We can fight ceaselessly against it, perhaps, but it doesn’t change fate.”
You reach out for him with one tremoring hand. You rake a rogue curl behind his ear and hope he doesn’t know Marcus’ face is the one stained permanently behind your eyelids.
“We love who we love, Your Majesty. And the rest stay ghosts.”
Geta’s eyes glitter with an emotion you’ve not seen from him before. His dark eyes flit between both of yours, as though searching for something in your gaze — sincerity, perhaps, or maybe an equal sense of longing.
You blink, and his mouth is on yours. Geta kisses you back onto the velvet-satin and settles over you once more. It’s wet. Hungry. Unforgiving.
You kiss him back with a similar intensity, clutching his robe in both hands, desperate to understand him.
Marcus remains on the other side of your door — an invisible ghost, an unwilling witness. He hears all of it, as clearly as he would if he were seeing it with his own eyes. A hollow feeling of yearning and hunger gnaws at the pit of his stomach as he tries to imagine your pleasured form. The painting behind his eyelids is blurred and distorted with time.
He wishes he could see you now, even with Emperor Geta fucking you into the mattress. He could pretend that he was the one fucking you, at least, and let the image alone bring his withered form back to life.
You’re together in his head, entwined still, with your mouths bruised in a relentless kiss.
Marcus hopes you’re still together in yours, too.
General Acacius spends most of his nights in the crypt, which he feels is rather fitting for a half-dead thing like him. When he is not surveilling your bedroom door, or being otherwise taunted by Emperor Geta, he finds a strange sanctuary in the dreary tombs. It is perhaps the only place where he is left alone.
Caracalla is petrified by thoughts of ghosts, and Geta detests history, so neither is likely to show their face in such an ancient mausoleum. Which is ideal for someone plotting an insurrection.
You find him there in the wee small hours of the late, late night. He wears a deep red cloak over his white robe, perhaps to conceal himself, as he shuffles around the room to snuff out flickering candles. You wonder who he lit them for because you know he does not need them. He’s grown too used to navigating in the shadows.
Your sandals scuff suddenly against the damp cobbles. Marcus does not seem startled by the intrusion. He knew you were there by the sweet scent of your perfumed body alone. There is nothing about you he would not immediately notice.
“What are you doing here?” he wonders with his back facing you, voice low with a timbre that bounces off the tomb walls.
“I wanted to see you,” you answer sheepishly.
Marcus says nothing in response.
You wring your hands into knots and shift your weight on your feet. He extinguishes the torch on the far wall, and shadows engulf the windowless crypt — save for one lone candle flickering atop Emperor Commodus’ cracking tomb. Your eyes flit from the flame to Marcus’ silhouette, gaze swimming with uncertainty.
“May I ask you a question?”
“I don’t see why not,” he monotones and flits across the room like a ghost.
“What do you do down here?” you ask. When your voice inevitably trembles with distant alarm, you quip, “I only mean it mustn’t be healthy— Spending so much time in the dark.”
“It’s none of your concern,” Marcus insists with a venom that makes you flinch. He hooks his pointer finger around the hook of the candle holder, and the dancing flame paints his statuesque features in shades of amber. He softens immediately at the sight of you.
“I just do not wish to incriminate you,” the wartorn man confesses.
Your chest aches with an immediate concern. “What does that mean? Please do not tell me that you’re doing something perilous—”
“No,” Marcus interjects firmly, then amends. “Not yet, at least.”
“Explain it to me, then. Help me understand.”
“It’s best you do not know, petal. It’s safer that way.”
The word alone makes you cross. You wish he’d stop using it.
“But I will tell you when the time is right, I swear,” he assures you, though his voice threatens to tremble with wavering strength. His dark eyes flit between both of yours, heavy with an emotion you cannot place. “I will keep you safe no matter what, you know that—”
“It’s not me I’m worried about, Acacius,” you murmur with a stern glint in your eye, clutching the downy fabric of his robe in your fists.
“There is naught to worry about, petal. I assure you.”
Marcus takes a step closer to you despite the voice of reason in his head telling him otherwise. He lifts his free hand and swipes a callused palm over your cheek, soft and warm with sleep. You lean into his touch like a cat. A funny feeling blossoms in his chest.
“I’ve been thinking… About what you said some days ago… Making a new world for ourselves…” He talks slowly and deeply and nearly to himself. You nod against his palm to egg him onward. “You were right. We deserve better than this— Why should we have to live like dogs?”
Marcus swipes his thumb over your jaw and takes another daring step closer. You feel the heat from the candle he holds in his free hand, though your eyes remain on his face. You couldn’t look away from him if you tried. A part of you is hesitant to blink even, for fear that you might miss him for a millisecond too long.
He angles your gently head upward with his weathered palm. You can smell the musk on his tanned skin from here, as well as the ale and mint leaves on his breath. It’s dizzying. The ground seems to sway under your feet at the dwindling proximity between you.
“We love each other, don’t we?” he murmurs in a honeyed voice.
You nod without a second thought. Your mouth waters with the hopes of tasting him.
He nods with you. “So fuck the war.”
Marcus ducks down to press his mouth to yours. His lips swallow your own in a kiss, lingering and languid and deep enough to drown in.
You melt into his touch with a heavy sigh exhaled through your nose. The warm breath fans across his unshaven cupid’s bow while your hands migrate to his hair. You twist the greying tendrils in your fingers, keeping him impossibly close against you.
When Marcus goes to grip the fabric of your nightgown in both his hands, the candle holder tumbles to the ground. The gold clatters audibly across the cobbles. The wax light falls on his side, and the flame begins to dwindle on the murky stone floor.
You wonder, briefly, if it will take fire — if the smoke will give you away, or if the tomb and all its history will burst into flames, or if the inferno will take you and Marcus with it.
Though it snuffs quickly out, bathing the two of you in a navy blue darkness, you figure you wouldn’t care if it did burn you to ash. Not as long as Marcus was there to kiss you into embers.
Marcus’ face consumes your dreams.
The details are blurred with the haze of sleep, but he was there — touching your face, asking to try again. You merged into one another like ghosts. Like drops of melted honey. Like lovers of Pompeii turned to ash. Every day, you tell yourself that it is unsafe to love him more than you do now. And yet he haunts your dreams, and yet you find more love in you for him.
And yet…
A violent hand pulls you from your gentle slumber. It jerks mercilessly at your arm, snatching you from your peaceful dreams and waking you into a nightmare.
“Wake up!” a strident and familiar voice bellows into the quiet bedroom, lit only by the faint blue of an early morning. The words are punctuated by another rough tug at your wrist. You awake to the sharp aching in your fingers.
“Wha—” you slur, trying to blink away the bleary mist as you lift your heavy head from the pillows. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”
“Up!”
You’re urged from the mattress by the unforgiving fingers digging bruises on your arm. You squint through the sleep and ebbing darkness to find Geta looming over you — blonde curls mussed on his head, swollen eyes wide and wild, velvet robe askew on his shoulder to reveal his pale chest. His skin there is flushed red with anger. You don’t know what you did to deserve his wrath.
“Geta?” you gasp through a faint whimper in your throat, trying to pull your wrist from his grip. He only holds you tighter. “What are you doing— You’re hurting me.”
“Liar!” is all he shouts in response, like he doesn’t even hear you.
The crazed Emperor drags you out of bed just to drop you to the cobbles. The thin sleeves of your nightgown slip off your shoulder; the skirt of it bunches at your thighs. You make yourself as small as possible as you shrink away from the man towering above you.
“I don’t understand,” you squeak through the heart in your throat.
“Liar!” he shouts again.
His voice rings through the shadowed bedroom. You cower in response. He sobers at the fear twisting your features, but only slightly. His heart pounds hard against his ribcage, beating red-hot rage through his veins. He can hardly hear you through the rushing in his ears.
“What have I done?” you whisper, voice trembling.
“You have made…” Geta trails off, swallowing the emotion threatening to strangle him. He blinks away burning tears and spits, “A mockery of me.”
Fear ebbs into confusion. “I have not—”
“You lie!”
“I do not!” The volume of your voice startles even you. You blink up at him with wide, pleading eyes, searching for any ounce of mercy within him.
You find none.
Just a man made of towering orange flames, threatening to set you ablaze.
“I have given up everything to be here,” you whimper. “To be at your side. To understand you—”
“Make no mistake… Your lies no longer have an effect on me, little dove,” Geta interjects through a bout of cynical laughter. He shakes his head and grins despite the tears glittering in his eyes. “You think you are so clever. That you were brought here, to my Empire, to be cherished...”
The Emperor takes slow, daunting steps towards you. You shrink away from him and choke back a sob bubbling in your throat. Tears fall from your lashes in fat droplets down your burning cheeks.
Geta grins like it pleases him.
“Let me be clear, so there is no longer any misunderstanding…” he tells you, speaking in slow, deep murmurs as he crouches before you. You can see the flecks of gold glimmering in his deep brown eyes from here. You can see the fire swimming within them, too, as he assures you, “You were created merely for me to destroy you.”
The throne room is absent of its usual bright red roses and ornate gold decoration. The chandelier overhead has not yet been lit. Instead, the spacious room is illuminated by an ever-rising sun — which basks everything it touches in shades of melancholy blue.
The servants light torches along the wall while you and Marcus stand together before the scowling Emperor. Something about it strikes a feeling of nostalgia in your chest, though these circumstances are much different than the ones you were brought here under. Geta no longer looks at you with lust in his dark eyes. He looks at you, instead, with betrayal.
“Thanks to the civic virtue of some good men…” the eldest Emperor quavers into the silent room. “…Your insurrection has been revealed.”
Your stomach twists at his words. Your mouth falls softly agape with shock. Of any explanation you could’ve been given upon your sudden imprisonment, you couldn’t have expected this one. You thought, perhaps, that he had somehow found out about your meetings in the crypt with Marcus. You would’ve been able to stomach that, at least. Your love for Acacius is something you’d be willing to die by.
But not this.
Not something you were completely unconscious of.
Geta continues tearily. “The honor… The dignitas that Rome has bestowed upon you— All this, you have forfeited by your treachery.”
“Emperor Geta, please,” Marcus sighs. His deep voice echoes through the empty throne room like a heavenly, sorrowful instrument. He bows his head and swallows hard, knowing now that he must beg for mercy. Not for himself. But for you.
“Torture me, if you wish, but let her go. She had no part in this—”
“Forgive me,” Geta spits emotionlessly. “But I have no cause to believe you, General.”
Marcus turns to you then, tired eyes wide and pleading. “Tell him. Go on, it’s alright,” he urges gently, though your silence makes his chest ache. “Petal, tell him— Tell him you were unaware.”
You say nothing.
“Tell him!”he repeats in a shout that rings through the quiet throne room. His trained apathy splinters for the first time in front of Geta. He is perhaps more fearful now than he has ever been before. No war was nearly as frightening as the thought of losing you.
“What does it matter?” you mutter in response, voice fragile like glass. “He made up his mind the moment he found out.”
“Then take me if that’s what you want,” Marcus says, pleads to the merciless Emperor. His sandals scuff the stone floor as he takes a step closer in surrender. “Put me in the Colosseum— Crucify me on the royal steps, if you must— But please, do not make her suffer for something I brought upon her. Do not punish her for my sins.”
“You are the Great General Acacius…” Geta croons bitterly. “What could one more splash of blood possibly mean to you?”
“Everything,” Marcus answers without a second thought, voice heavy with a predestined grief. “It would mean everything.”
Something in Geta shifts. You see it flickering in his dark, teary eyes. A surge of power, almost, like a stroke of bright white lightning. The corner of his pink mouth twitches as he tilts his chin upward. “Step back ten paces,” he commands suddenly.
Marcus’ brows pinch first in confusion, then relax a moment later when he inevitably obeys. His feet sound along the cobbles as he takes ten slow steps backward. He mourns the distance it puts between the two of you.
“Turn around,” Geta’s voice echoes through the vacant throne room.
You hear Marcus take a wavering breath in. He spins on the heel of his leather sandal until his back is facing you. His heavy eyes flutter shut as his chin falls to his chest. He searches for an ounce of hope within himself, knowing he’d lost all of it some time ago now.
The Emperor smirks. “Good dog.”
Acacius seethes.
Geta’s dark eyes, rimmed red with emotion, flit back to you. Something heavy settles in the pit of your stomach — dread, perhaps, or maybe acceptance for what’s surely to come.
“Was it a lie?”
“What?” you ask with bated breath.
Geta shrugs, then readjusts his robe when it falls from his shoulder. “Any of it.”
“No.”
“Tell the truth.”
“I am.”
Geta snarls at your subdued emotion. “I am the Emperor of Rome. I could have my pick of whores— You being here is a privilege. Do you understand?”
You nod once. “Yes.”
“You came from filth— to the greatest city in the world,” Geta spits the words like so many drops of venom. He waves his hands up and down your form, pale fingers now void of their usual gold rings. “You were just… some whore without a face before I made you better. I did this!”
He gestures wildly around the darkened manor, voice breaking at the volume of his shouting. His robe falls askew to reveal more of his bare chest as spit coats his bitten lips. You remain in place while the Emperor inches closer. The fear has left you, as well as any instinct to cry — your grief is too violent for that now.
“I brought you here,” Geta convinces himself. His saliva splatters on your cheek in faint droplets. Tears glitter on his cheeks like stained glass windows. A fire flickers in the deep brown of his eyes.
“I willed this— I cared for you with every bit of conscience as I was born with.” He takes a deep breath and steps back, shaking his head in disgust. “And yet…”
He turns away.
You’re able to take in a deep breath for the first time in several minutes when he parts from you. The leadened weight on your chest remains.
“If you do not wish to be here, I certainly will not make you,” Geta rambles in teary blubbers. “One whore is as good as any other— Perhaps I can find one who is capable of pretending she cares.”
You step towards his retreating form. “Geta—”
“Go!” he shouts, looking back at you with a crazed look in his sleep-worn eyes. He wipes spit from his chin and quietens, strangled by an unavoidable emotion. “Now. Walk through those doors, and I promise no harm will come to you. Just do not stand before me and patronize me in this way, I will not stand for it.”
His promise makes your chest swell with hope. You remain frozen even still, stuck at an unnavigable crossroads. Such assurances of safety mean little to you when Marcus
has a sword to his throat.
You look at the man over your shoulder. He has not moved from his spot some feet behind you. His back still faces you, though you notice his hands are balled into trembling fists.
Even if it were true — even if Geta really planned to let you go without a knight slitting your throat — it would mean little without Marcus. You would not know where to go without him. You would not be able to live with yourself if you left him here, not knowing what Geta planned for him. You would be away from the city, yes, but it would not be freedom.
Your instinctual will for survival is replaced by the primal need to keep Marcus alive.
To do that, you must reach for the bloodied hand of death.
You turn away from your lover — away from the opened cage door and the promise of freedom — and rush to the heartbroken Emperor. You clutch his cotton robe in your fists and tug at the gold trim to pull him closer. You meet him in the middle, entwining your mouth with his.
You kiss him. Hard. With enough ardor to snatch the breath from his lungs. His pink lips part for yours, almost instinctually so, and you swipe your tongue over the rough pad of his own. He tastes of sleep and honey and very distantly of wine. He gets heavy against you as he falls into your kiss. His hands cling to the skirt of your nightgown until his fists start to shake.
You pull away only when he’s melted for you all over again, when the red-hot anger has ebbed from his milky white body. A thin string of saliva keeps you connected until it splits against your chins.
“I know… I know you are hurt, Your Majesty,” you speak in slow murmurs, and through uneven breaths. Your fearful eyes dart over his face and find him utterly kissbitten — mouth swollen, eyes heavy, cheeks flushed. “And I know that it is difficult to forget pain. But I’ve found it’s harder to remember happiness. Glory.”
Each word from your mouth is stamped with intention.
You speak of glory only with the hopes that he might remember his many useless wars, all of which Marcus has won for him without complaint. There would be no Empire to rule without the Great General Acacius, who dares not to sneak a glance at the two of you over his shoulder. He, instead, keeps his heavied gaze on the torch hanging by the door. The flame sears his vision until he can see you dancing within it.
“We have no scar to show from sweetness, do we?” you quaver with a forced smile, cupping Geta’s burning cheeks between both your hands. You swipe your thumb over a fat tear clinging to his cheekbone. “How can we allow ourselves to be blinded by anger when there is still so much love?”
Geta snivels and rests his forehead against yours. His long lashes flutter against his glowing cheeks.
“I wept for you,” the Emperor confesses quietly, words weighed down by tears. “I had come to believe that… If I wanted something badly enough, the sheer strength of my desire would make it mine. I see now that it was foolish—”
“Perhaps it is true,” you whisper to him, breaths entwining and kissing both your cheeks. If he notices your voice shaking, you hope he confuses it with desire and not with fear. “Perhaps that is why I’m standing here now. Because I am yours…”
A moment of silence lulls over the blue hour. The quiet feels deafening in the large throne room, quelled only by the sound of heavy breathing. Yours hitches in your throat when Geta parts wordlessly from you. He sniffles once, then exhales hard through his mouth.
Your gaze remains fixed on his face in an unwavering stare as you try to gauge his reaction. His features are emotionless, but his heavy-lidded eyes flit back and forth between yours — as though he, too, were trying to measure your sincerity.
Your fate, in that split second, teeters on a knife’s edge. You hold your breath and wait for him to raise his hand. Not to hit you, maybe, but to sic his guards upon you like dogs — either to drag you into a cell or to be kind enough to kill you on the spot.
Geta lifts his palms only to cradle your jaw between them. His long fingers wrap around your neck like he intends to choke you there. He drags your mouth back to his instead. Your noses smush together with the intensity of his touch. It’s all teeth and tongue and spit. Desire and anger and grief. A billion things he licks into your mouth.
The weight of his hunger smothers you. Consumes you. He could kill you this way, if he wanted. There is little difference, you’ve found, between a bite and a kiss. It only matters how deep he buries his teeth into you.
Your chin shines with his spit when he parts from you. Geta’s chest heaves with labored breaths, flushed and swelling with proud. He hasn’t yet let go of your neck. You wonder if he can feel your thrumming pulse against his fingers.
“Show me, then,” he pants. “That you’re mine… Prove it to me.”
The Emperor goes to step back from you. Your hands dart for his wrists, holding him there when he threatens to pull them away. Geta’s eyes widen in shock.
“Don’t make him watch,” you plead in a delicate whisper.
His wide, chocolate eyes flit over your shoulder. He seems to forget about Marcus’ presence until that very moment. He looks back to you, at the plea swimming in your eyes, and nods once in response.
“Take him,” he calls to the knights lurking in the darkness.
Their heavy armor clinks together as they comply without complaint. They lead Marcus to the door with their hands on the hilts of their swords. You watch him leave from over your shoulder, in the very corner of your eye. You hope he understands, but you wouldn’t blame him if you didn’t. You find it hard to forgive yourself even now.
Marcus always said that people find out who they truly are during times of war. Maybe this is who you are. Maybe you cannot kiss the devil without taking some of his sin.
The door closes with a heavy thud across the room.
The weight of being alone with the Emperor washes heavily over you. Like drops of ice-cold rain. Like warm, melted honey.
Geta peers at you with a similar uncertainty. Head bowed slightly, wide eyes glittering from beneath his lashes. You do what you have always done — take care of this man the way he’s asked you to, placate his anger with your body. Giving yourself away is as natural as breathing most days.
“Sit down, Your Majesty,” you urge in a gentle whisper.
The Emperor listens as obediently as his knights.
The sound of his sandals padding along the cobbles fills the suffocating quiet. He descends upon his throne like he was made for it, spreading his legs before him and propping his arms along the golden rests. He looks like a painting upon his seat of power, bathed in the deep blue of an early morning. An angel dragged to hell.
Geta watches you with an unwavering stare as you take slow steps toward him. His brown-eyed gaze goes glassy at the sight of you, an angelic thing all dressed in white. His thighs part to welcome you between them. He tenses under your palms when they smooth over his milky white chest, past the sparse chestnut hair littered there and down to the tie of his robe.
His stomach rises and falls in heavy, uneven pants under your touch. You unknot the string with bated breath, then brush the golden trimming to his sides. He’s bare underneath it, likely from where he’d been brutally roused from his slumber. His cock is on immediate display — resting on his fuzzy thighs, half-hard and glowing red at the tip.
You descend to your knees to take care of him on instinct. His hands dart to your shoulders to stop you. “Ride me,” he commands, though it sounds more like a plea as it spills his swollen mouth.
Wordlessly, you straddle his thighs. The cotton fabric of your nightgown bunches at your hips. You spit into your palm and reach between your bodies for his cock in a single practiced motion. He feels like velvet in your fist.
Geta’s nostrils flare with a heavy exhale when your hand drags up the length of his cock. His head tips back onto his throne when your fist falls back down again. Your lips find the expanse of his long, white neck like a deep-seated compulsion. You kiss his pulse as though it were his mouth. He cradles the crown of your head and brings his lips to your ear.
“You love me,” he sighs within a moan when your thumb brushes the head of his drooling cock.
You can’t tell if it’s a command to repeat the words back to him, or an affirmation he repeats only for himself. Either way, you nod in response and line his stiff cock at your entrance. Geta’s mouth parts in a silent moan at the feeling of your silky cunt.
“I do,” you whisper just before you mount him.
There is a dull ache in your belly when he pierces you, though you’ve grown accustomed to his length with time. Your satin folds split to welcome every inch of him accordingly. Your hips rock back and forth over his supple thighs and your velvety walls pulse around him, swallowing him further inside.
Your breathy moans entwine and fill the air. You keep a white-knuckled grip on the back of the golden throne as you ride him, without break and without mercy — in spite of the burning sensation in your thighs. You tell yourself it’s to finish him quickly, though a primal part of you chases after your own pleasure.
Geta’s breaths leave his parted mouth in huffed exhales as you bounce on top of him. He mourns the sight of him disappearing in and out of your glistening pussy but fights to keep his eyes open to watch the rest of you. Your fucked-out face swirls in a mixture of concentration and pleasure as Geta lifts his hand for the collar of your gown.
He unties the dainty knot at your sternum and tugs the fabric down your chest, baring your breasts for him. His mouth waters at sight of your plush skin, moving in time with your rhythmic grinds over his lap.
A strangled moan sounds in your throat when he takes your left nipple in his mouth. You caress the back of his head, twisting your fingers in his honey hair in an effort to keep him close. He runs the rough pad of his tongue over your sensitive tit and smiles when he hears you whimpering.
“You love this,” he mutters against your chest. “You love when I fuck you. ”
You nod until the words catch up with you. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“God—” he grunts through gritted teeth, tipping his head back when one particular grind makes him twitch inside you. His hands grip your thighs over your skirt. His fingers threaten to sear bruises onto your skin. “Your pussy was made for my cock, wasn’t it?”
You nod again.
His right hand parts from you only to come down a moment later. The dull smack of his palm against your clothed hip echoes through the throne room. “I don’t think I heard you.”
“Yes,” you squeak with your face scrunched, trembling when your clit drags across the thatch of pubic hair at the base of Geta’s cock.
“Who’s cunt is this?”
“Yours—”
His hand lifts again. You hear the impact of his palm against your ass before you feel it, a subtle stinging you find a strange comfort in. Geta laughs in maniacal, breathy chuckles when you keen for him.
“I can’t hear you.”
“Yours!” you exclaim in a feeble gasp, clutching the Emperor to your chest. You shudder on top of him when an orgasm rakes suddenly through your body. It flows quickly and without mercy, but never quite ebbs. You’re left a whimpering, weeping mess while the aftershocks of your pleasure consume you.
“It’s yours,” you squeak in nearly inaudible blubbers, pressing your kissed mouth to the shell of Geta’s ear, repeating the phrase like it’s the only one you remember. “’S your pussy… It’s yours…”
The words alone are enough to make Geta burst inside of you.
He tenses all over. His dull nails press crescent shapes into the skin of your thighs. His rosy mouth parts to exhale a guttural moan. You feel his cock jerk with your drooling confines right before he spits several loads of cum inside you. Your cunt pulses around him, instinctually milking him for every drop of liquid pleasure, and a whimper sounds in Geta’s throat.
You feel it bloom in the pit of your belly like a flower — something soft and warm and seeping. As the two of you relax against one another with wavering exhales, you feel his cum leaking out of you like drops of summer rain. It pools on his lap and drips down to the throne underneath him, tainting the gold with a mixture of your sin.
It proves a point. Marks a territory.
Geta swells with pride.
Your back slouches as you melt into his body. You hide your burning face in his neck as his feverish grip on you loosens. Geta twitches beneath you when your cunt pulsates around his softening cock. “Mm…” you hear him hum, mixed with a laugh you feel rumbling in his chest. His head tilts back as a lopsided smile tugs deliriously at his mouth.
He runs a gentle hand up and down your spine, a reminder of his being there despite your feeble efforts to dissociate your brain from your body. You can’t ignore the warmth of his touch on your tingling skin, or the way your hearts press together and beat to the same rhythm.
A distant feeling of acceptance pools in the pit of your belly along with the Emperor’s cum. Your grief is a much more discreet thing, however, and you miss Marcus like an unstitched wound that won’t stop bleeding. Like a knife lodged somewhere deep in the body.
“I think… I think I’ve found an adequate punishment for the General,” Geta pants, the crooked grin audible in his words. “Perhaps he will learn his lesson when I’ve fucked a child into you—”
You tense when the Emperor’s palm splays over your stomach.
“—Perhaps then he’ll understand that you’re mine.”
summary: in ancient rome, where survival is determined by the whims of a mad ruler, the empire's beloved general gives you – his first and only love – to the crazed emperor to ensure your safety. (6k)
pairing: marcus acacius / fem!reader, emperor geta / fem!reader
contents: established relationship, strangers to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort cw for mentions of war and violence, mentions of sex work, swearing, smut 18+ (dubcon, m receiving oral, unprotected sex, cuckholding, exhibitionism) (this is a pretty dark fic so pls heed the warnings!!!)
Marcus Acacius was the name on the lips of a thousand fallen empires. His ledger ran a deep scarlet color, which dripped like proof from his sword. The war had destroyed the General over the years — had turned the man into an empty thing filled only by untamable ghosts. The relentless battle had wrung his boyhood from his body like a slow, merciless death. Any remaining innocence has since been replaced with violence.
Rome made a legacy of his grotesque evils, turned him into a saint. Marcus Acacius did not want to be a saint. He did not want to be angry; he did not want to be cruel. He only wanted to love and to be left alone with his tenderness. His mouth filled with blood instead.
You loved him like all doomed, grotesque things are meant to be loved. In the dark. In the shadows of war. In the depths of the soul.
“This is me,” he confesses, the great General Acacius, returning to you like a ghost to its haunt. “This is who I am.”
His golden armor is sullied from a victorious battle, tainted now with blotches of soil and dried blood that’s not his own. His dirtied, unholy fists tremble at his sides as he fights the urge to cross the threshold of your quarters to meet you. Marcus knows he doesn’t deserve to be held by you now. Not when he still wreaks of death.
He can still feel the breath of a fist on his bruised cheek, but the way his sword felt plunging through the beating heart of an enemy soldier plagues him most of all.
“Love turned on me long ago— It is not a burden I compel you to carry.”
So, please, do not love me, he doesn’t say. I only know how to destroy you.
You smile at him, eyes soft with sympathy, and cross the threshold of longing with an admirable effortlessness. You cradle his weathered, war-torn face in your palms, willingly staining your delicate hands with the blood stained there.
“I love you despite. So I imagine I’ll carry it anyway,” you coo to him, gentle eyes locked firmly with his heavy ones. “And I’m certain you love me in return, regardless of what you think the siege has made of you.”
“There is naught I can do about it,” Marcus admits, words heavy with choked-back emotion. He melts into your touch but continues to deny himself the want to hold you back. “Not while I still oversee this campaign. Not while there is a war to be won—”
“We love each other, don’t we?” you interject, pleading eyes searching for emotion behind his dark, stoic gaze. Marcus swallows hard. His scruffy chin scrapes your palm as he nods once in response. You grin and say the unforgiving truth out loud. “So fuck the war.”
You pull him down by his face to press a kiss to his unclean lips. Marcus rests his shaking hands over your waist and lets you build cathedrals in his mouth with your tongue. The blood in his teeth turns to holy water.
Marcus long understood that bringing you to the city would be his last act of love.
Keeping you in the heart of Rome was the only way he could ensure your safety, with the surrounding towns still under merciless siege. The people there were docile, and loyal most of all to the General who had won them a thousand wars. They would not hurt you because it was not in their kind too, and because they feared General Acacius’ wrath as much as they respected his mercy.
This was known to everyone in Rome except its Emperors.
Geta and Caracalla ruled together following their father’s untimely demise but shared not a brain between them. They were boys, after all, the oldest being hardly two-and-twenty –– it was in their nature to talk more than they listened, and to pretend as if they knew the world despite never leaving the city walls.
They were as cruel and as stupid as anyone who wished to rule an empire would be.
But the two of them relied heavily on their General to keep the restless public at ease. It made it easier for Marcus to bring you with him, knowing he had the trust of the most powerful men in Rome. He knew Geta kept meticulous care of his most precious gifts — all Marcus had to do was get you there, really, and the Emperors would do the rest for him.
It was simple, but it was not easy; though he imagines no war ever has been or would be. Both of you had survived, yes, but neither of you had been spared. Bringing you here was a testament to that, which you seemingly could not comprehend. You were as soft and green as the countryside he plucked you from, too naive for politics.
Marcus tells himself that this was the merciful decision, anyway, as he gives you a tour of Caracalla’s labyrinthine gardens — the place farthest from the feasting hall where the noblemen dined. Hidden behind climbing leaves, free from prying eyes.
“I can’t imagine why you would be so apprehensive in bringing me here. It’s beautiful,” you marvel aloud as you walk ahead of the man guiding you.
Your sandals pad faintly along the cobbled trail as you skim your palm over the bed of blooming roses. The petals feel like silk against your skin. You pluck one from the soil, careful to avoid its thorns, and hold it up to your nose. You turn to face Marcus with the crimson flower resting on your cupid’s bow.
“And it smells better, too,” you quip softly, tilting your head to your shoulder as you smirk behind the budding rose.
Marcus just barely manages to bite back his own grin until you reach out for him, tapping the delicate flower against the bridge of his strong nose. He exhales hard through his nostrils in place of a laugh.
Your giggling comes carried on the breath of a warm summer breeze — a symphony of salty ocean, dainty florals, and the pretty oils you’d bathed in. The wind billows through your thin, white gown and creates music with rustling leaves. You squint one eye when the setting sun peeks through the swishing tree limbs, bathing you in a golden-hour aura.
You’re as beautiful as sin. Sweeter than death. Smiling at him like this is the beginning of something that died the moment you entered the city walls.
Marcus clears throat and gently guides your hand away. His cautious eyes flit around the vacant garden. He’s constantly looking over his shoulder, you find, despite being the strongest man in all of Rome. You feel safest at his side, so you don’t know why he always looks so frightened.
“I know you are drunk on youth and immortality, petal, but we cannot get ahead of ourselves,” he advises, all stiff and stern, though the term of endearment spills effortlessly from his mouth. “We’re in the city now. So we must play the part. Like we discussed.”
He speaks to you with an unintentional sort of vagueness that makes you bow your head like a scolded child. Your arm falls limp at your side. A scarlet petal slips from its stem and hits the unforgiving stone.
“I know,” you murmur with a poorly hidden frown that conveys otherwise. Your sheepish gaze flits from the ground to Marcus’ unwavering stare and to the ground again. “I just thought— whenever we were alone, that we might—”
“We aren’t alone. We must behave as though the city is full of eyes. Understand?”
“I can’t,” you confess, peering up at the General from beneath your lashes.
Marcus’ chest stings, like the fiery sun blazing his newly-fashioned armor. “What do you mean you can’t?” he bites emotionlessly.
He looks like a corrupt sort of angel in this light, unnaturally handsome and hopelessly wartorn. He was as hard as the earth below your feet — a statue made of clay, iron, and marble — cold to the touch and melting only for you.
His heavy eyes were so brown they looked almost black, and they shone with a perpetual sort of gloom. His gaze swam with the prophetic darkness of a man who’s seen too much, though you often felt like you could drown in its void. For a man so adept at killing, he looked at you with a remarkable softness.
It wasn’t as shallow as physical desire. It was something far more cruel. You wanted Marcus Acacius the same way flesh wanted to knit itself together over a healing wound. It was simply in your nature to love him.
“I mean, it’s impossible,” you ramble with a concerned furrow to your brow. Your grip on the flower’s papery stem tightens until the bulb rattles with the force. “How am I to be here with you but not touch you? That’s like asking the seasons not to change— It’s unnatural, and it’s cruel—”
Marcus swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His hands begin to ache with the urge to touch you. He balls them into fists instead.
“It’s the only way I know to keep you safe!” he confesses, words sounding heavy in his mouth. His eyes flit across the garden in a paranoid search of something that isn’t there. “Emperor Geta will take care of you. I know he will. And his brother is a half-wit, but he is kind when he wishes. He’ll take a liking to you, I’m sure of it—”
You interject his anxious rambling with a stubborn shake of your head.
“I can’t be someone else’s,” you murmur, voice as wet as the tears glittering in your wide-eyed gaze. “I don’t know how.”
“You will learn,” Marcus tells you with an emotionless stare. Not because he’s sure you will, but because he knows you have to. “For me.”
Your pretty features swirl with anguish. “Marcus…” you whisper his name in a feeble whimper caught in your throat.
He does not soften at your emotion like you’re used to. He’s practiced apathy for so long that it comes naturally to him now. He bites his tongue to keep from kissing you and lets the blood stain his teeth all over again.
“If not for your own sake, then for mine. The Emperors would have my head if they understood the pretenses I brought you under.”
You flinch at his words, perhaps finally understanding the weight of the unforgiving world in which you live. The surest example of such cruelty stands before you now, in the only man you ever loved now using your purest devotion as a means to keep you pliant. But your anger for the merciless arrangement is long eclipsed by your yearning.
“Then I will,” you tell him, rigid with a glacial disposition Marcus hasn’t seen before now.
The choices here were few. Either you were slaughtered outside the city walls by soldiers and pillagers, or you were slaughtered within them — in the metaphorical sense that burns physically in your chest now.
Being without Marcus feels like a fate worse than death, but you want him so desperately to live. So much so that you’ll fall on the sword of your longing and bleed out at his feet. Knowing that you’re under the same sky would have to be enough for you.
You can’t tell which it is — sacrifice or self-slaughter — but Marcus knows it isn’t as poetic as all that.
Death is death.
Emperor Geta staggers drunkenly down the spiral stone steps of the west wing of his castle. The path to his chambers is illuminated by several dwindling torches hung along the brick walls. The subtle squeaking of his leather sandals sounds much louder in the quiet — filled only by crackling flames, a distant dripping noise, and the song he slurs under his breath.
The latter ceases suddenly when he stumbles to a stop at the sight of General Acacius. The man stands like a statue outside his bedroom door — arms crossed behind his back, old spine perfectly straight — like the obedient guard dog he is.
The thought makes the Emperor’s lips curl into a crooked smile. “What are you doing here, dog?” he calls to the General as he approaches him, voice echoing down the soulless corridor.
“Your nameday present, your majesty—” Marcus answers and tries not to make a face when the Emperor stands before him. The bittersweet scent of wine stains his breath, overwhelmingly so. Geta was never one to practice temperance. “—I was told to see that you got it.”
The younger man hesitates. “From my uncle?” he wonders aloud.
Marcus nods wordlessly in response.
Geta pauses for a moment. His wide, glassy eyes flit over the General’s shoulder to the arched doorway behind him. His stomach swirls at the thought of what may lie inside. The last nameday present his uncle sent from overseas was a monkey his younger brother has grown much too attached to.
“Well… What is it?”
Marcus swallows hard and steps aside. “Look inside, your majesty.”
Geta takes a deep breath in and swings the creaking door open. His bedroom is lush with crimson silk and golden candlelight, familiarly fragranced with cinnamon and sweet myrrh. It’s accompanied by something foreignly floral, a feminine rosy-lavender that catches his attention before his eyes ever find you.
He steps through the threshold and finds a strange girl standing by the window, before a platter of fruit and wine — bathed half in the silver beams of a full moon, and half in flickering orange flames.
White silk adorns your frame, so delicate it’s nearly see-through. One of your shoulders is mouthwateringly bare, and there’s a slit in the fabric that rises to your hip. You look as pure as a dove, though you’re so obviously built for sin.
The ground sways beneath Geta’s unsteady feet.
You crunch audibly into an apple before you realize anyone’s there. The juice runs down your chin before you swipe it away with the back of your hand. Only then do your eyes lock with the Emperor’s, who seems equally stunned to see you there. You tense and say nothing as you hide the bitten fruit behind your back.
“It’s a woman,” Geta observes to no one in particular, though his dark eyes have not yet wavered from yours.
Marcus stands behind him and nods — hands still clasped behind his back, heart still pounding against his ribcage. “Yes, your majesty. In plain terms.”
“Well,” the Emperor glances over his shoulder. “What does she do?”
“Whatever you want,” the General answers, though the words taste like vinegar on his tongue. He swallows the bitterness down like bile and leers at you, looking upon his lover as though she were a stranger. “You need only ask.”
Geta, satisfied by his answer, turns back to you. His initial surprise has ebbed into something more pleased, diabolically so. His pink lips curl into a sneer as he walks slowly towards you, eyeing you up and down with curious eyes — a predator stalking its prey.
“Is that true?” he asks you, voice ringing through the quiet room. “Or is he confusing you for a dutiful hound?”
“A dutiful whore, your majesty,” you correct with an acquiescent smile, following the story as Marcus intended.
The half-truth comes easily to you. Not a lie exactly, but not the whole tale either. You’d spent many of your years working in a brothel on the outskirts of Rome. You were a young woman, unmarried, without family or viable prospects — whoring seemed the most obvious decision then, though it feels so long ago now.
You’d waited your whole life for something, for Marcus, though you hadn’t expected it to kill you when you found it. You won’t die a saint if the crazed Emperor decides to take your head, but perhaps you could be a martyr. Perhaps that’ll be enough.
Fear beats through your body like a second heart, but your eyes never waver from the Emperor’s. It’s easiest to meet his gaze. He feels more like a human that way.
There are flecks of gold in his dark eyes, and dark strands in his gold hair. He’s got stubble on his long neck, spots on his broad nose, and wrinkles on his forehead. Not quite as perfect as the pristine white-gold armor would let on.
His eyes flit down your form once more. Something sparks in the deep brown of them, a flicker of silent realization. He spins suddenly on the heel of his sandal to flash Marcus an accusatory glare.
“Is she your whore, General?” he lilts into the heavy silence. His brows raise when he receives no answer from the man across the room. “The question was not rhetorical, Acacius.”
“No, your majesty. She is not mine,” Marcus answers, then clears his throat when the words get stuck there. It’s like he’s plunging a knife through his own heart. He can feel the cold sting of the sharpened blade and the burn of the blood on his skin. “Though, I don’t believe whores belong to anyone.”
A boyish chuckle spills from the Emperor’s mouth. “No. They don’t,” he says with an airy giddiness. “Not before now, anyway—”
Geta spins back again, pleated skirt fanning around his pale thighs. His smile fades with an eerie swiftness. “What are you waiting for? Undress,” he commands with a wave of his ringed hand.
Your wide eyes flit instinctively past him to Marcus, who still idles in the doorway. Only then does he realize how long he’s been staring at you. He forces himself to glance off in another direction, but his gaze keeps finding yours — like a magnet, or a planet with its own gravitational pull.
Your eyes lock, and the only thing you hear is each other, though neither of you has spoken a word. This is the only way, you hear his voice in your head as clearly as your own. This is the only way to stay together. The only way to survive.
Geta mistakes your fear.
“Don’t worry about him, little dove,” he coos, and taps the bottom of your chin with his fingers — as soft and petaled as your own. He smiles when your attention turns to him again, speaking loud enough for the General to hear. “He’s only the guard dog. And good boys get scraps, don’t they, Acacius?”
Marcus’ face screws like he’s tasted something sour. He’s grateful the Emperor isn’t looking at him to see it. “They do, your majesty,” he monotones.
“So you will watch. And report to my uncle how his lovely present fared,” he calls to the older man, though his eyes remain locked with yours. You tense when his pale hand reaches suddenly for your face. He holds your cheeks in his fingers until your lips jut in a soft pout. “Let’s hope I don’t have to send him back your head, little dove.”
He says it with an absentminded effortlessness, as though it’s something he’s done before.
Still, you manage a small smile and blink up at him with innocent eyes. “What good is a dead whore, your majesty?” you quip.
Geta’s grin widens. “Precisely. Now undress.”
You reach for the singular sleeve of your slip with trembling fingers. Your right hand sweeps across your left shoulder, skin blazing with fear and anticipation. The fabric trails down down down your arm before falling to your feet in a puddle of milky white silk. Your bare body glows silver and gold between moonlight and flame.
Goosebumps pebble over your skin despite the humid summer night as Geta circles you like prey. His eyes trail slowly down your form in time with his rhythmic steps. The sound of his sandals scrapping the stone floor, crackling candlelight, and subdued breathing are the only sounds in the quiet room for several long moments.
The Emperor disappears behind you, and you forget how to breathe. Your wide, wet eyes find Marcus once more — pleading, though for what, you cannot say. His face reveals nothing but wrath burns in his gaze.
Geta reappears at your right side. You smell grape wine on his breath when he nears you, breathing heavily through his mouth as he reaches out to touch you. His ringed hands smooth over your collarbone. Your breath catches in your throat. He smiles as though your fright pleases him.
“You’re skittish for a whore,” he muses, playful in a way that makes your stomach wrench. “Are you sure the General didn’t bring me a virgin?”
You swallow hard as his hand trails down your body. Over the swell of your breast, skimming his thumb over your taut nipple, before tracing the expanse of your ribs. His fingers run down your stomach and past the thatch of hair between your legs. They dip finally between your thighs.
Geta hums a faint moan at the velvet feeling of your pussy. The way your lips part for his fingers, silky skin warm and wet to the touch.
“I’m whatever you want me to be, your majesty,” you answer, breathing hard through your nose when he pulls his hand away — a warmth you find yourself begrudgingly grieving.
“I need only ask…” the Emperor coos, running his middle and pointer finger over your bottom lip. They shine with the honey you leak despite yourself. Your mouth parts, and he rests the pads of them on your tongue. “…Do I not?”
You nod wordlessly through the salty fingers in your mouth, trying to imagine their Marcus’.
Geta smiles when he parts from you. “Undress me,” he demands.
You work at his tricky armor with nervous hands and bated breath.
You unclasp his cape first. The white fabric, now free from its chain, falls heavily to the floor behind him. Your fingers have gone noticeably clammy as they struggle with the sleeves of his tunic. It takes you a beat too long to loosen the laces at his shoulders. The cloth falls finally and puddles around his feet, leaving his lean body on display before you.
His torso is lean and mostly hairless, save for splotches of chestnut on his sternum and stomach. His skin is smooth and flushed from the alcohol. His stomach is slim but noticeably full. The Emperor is well-taken care of, though his subjects outside the keep suffer from the consequences of war.
Your trembling fingers curl around the hem of his loincloth. His pale skin is warm to the touch, boiling with desire while you freeze over with fear. You crouch before him as you drag the garment down his scruffy thighs. You hear Geta sigh above you when his half-hard cock meets the cool summer night air.
He’s paler there compared to the rest of his golden body, though the mushroom tip glows a faint strawberry-red color. A vein trails in jagged lines to the base of his heavy cock, fading as it reaches the thatch of dark blonde hair at his pubic bone. He’s not nearly as thick as Marcus, though not many people could hope to be — but he is long and thin and soft like velvet.
“How do I look?” Geta wonders as he steps out of his loincloth. He tilts his chin to his chest to peer down at you, on your knees to untie the intricate laces of his sandals. You blink up at him with wide, uncertain eyes. “Without my armor,” he adds, then repeats. “How do I look?”
You realize, then, that he wants your praise. Though you’re unsure why, you’re not in any position to deny him of it. “You’re a— a very handsome man, your majesty,” you respond cautiously, with a wavering smile.
You hear his breath catch at the compliment. The corner of his mouth flickers upward, and his nostril flares as he takes a deep breath in.
“Well, go on, then,” he insists suddenly, nodding his head to egg you onward. “Good whores don’t keep their masters waiting, do they? You don’t want to see me impatient, little dove.”
You wrap his stiff cock in a tentative fist, averting your gaze as you give an experimental kitten lick to the bulbous, strawberry tip. Your tongue swipes away the pearlescent pre-cum beading there. The salty tang is foreign on your tongue, sweeter and thicker than you’re used to.
You imagine your lover when you take the Emperor’s cock in your mouth. A practiced form of dissociation that comes naturally to you now.
You focus on the way the stone floor digs into your knees as you cup his balls in your hand — a desperate attempt to finish him quickly. Geta shudders when you swallow him whole, burying your nose in the coarse thatch of hair at the base of his cock. His head tips back as he groans at the ceiling.
“You are a proper whore…” the Emperor moans with a delirious smile. He tilts his flushed cheek to his freckled shoulder to sneer at Marcus, then frowns when his eyes meet the back of him. “Are you distracted, General?”
The man keeps his back turned and his eyes trained on the wall, counting the bricks there to distract his racing mind. His mouth snarls at the Emperor’s words. His hands ball into fists as he fights to keep his composure.
“Just giving you your privacy, your majesty.”
“Nonsense!” Geta laughs, loud. “You should watch! You should observe— so you know what to tell my uncle.”
Marcus can hear the mischievous lilt in the younger boy’s voice. Like it’s all just a game to him. Like you’re just a whore to be played with, and like Marcus’ only hope of companionship is warfare. Both might’ve been true once, but not since you find each other.
The general smacks his lips against his teeth. “As you wish,” he deadpans and spins on the heel of his sandal.
He’s strangely grateful to find the Emperor’s body obscuring your own. Geta’s lean, pale form towers over your kneeling one — back muscles flexing, hips thrusting, fingers knitting in your hair.
But Marcus can still hear the sounds of your mouth on the other man’s cock. The room fills with heavy breathing, wet noises, and the Emperor’s unabashed whines. Embers of envy burn in the General’s empty chest. A wildfire of want and wrath rages behind his ribcage.
You swallow with Geta’s cock in your throat and squeeze softly at his balls. You hear his breath hitch just before a lengthy moan spills from his parted mouth. Several loads of salty cum spit down your throat a second later. The man shows you little mercy as he holds you by your hair, keeping your nose pressed to his pubic bone. You take shallow breaths through your nose and try not to choke.
You pull off of him when he lets you go. A string of saliva threatens to keep you connected. You take a deep breath in and swipe at your swollen mouth with the back of your hand, staying on your knees while the Emperor tilts his head back. He exhales a breathy laugh of relief at the ceiling. You peer up at him with wide, wet eyes, still so uncertain of your fate.
“Proper whore, indeed,” Geta muses, almost to himself, as he drops his heavy head once more.
His flushed chest sparkles with a foreign feeling at the sight of you beneath him — eyes teary and fearful, lips swollen and rosy, features flushed with sweat and sex. His cock jerks, still sensitive but threatening to harden again. He grips himself with a loose fist.
“On the bed,” he instructs suddenly, then grins madly at your shock. “You didn’t think I was done with you, surely. Not until I mount you like a mare, anyway— Treat you like the bitch in heat you are…”
Geta cups your warm cheek in his free hand. His touch is strangely gentle as he cradles you there, right before he smacks gently at your jaw to urge you upward.
Your bare feet pad towards the bed, then. Geta swats your ass as you go and laughs when you squeak in response. You fight the urge to look at Marcus, lest you see the rage burning in his eyes — lest he see the heartbreak swimming in yours.
Marcus watches you crawl over the silken sheets, both of you sporting similar far-off gazes. He feels a bit like a ghost now. An empty, invisible thing, doomed to watch the rest of the world go on without ever being able to live in it. It’s dreadfully symbolic of how he’s lived most of his life, and how he’s spent the years loving you. Because even if a ghost is full of love, the only thing it knows to do is haunt.
The silk pillow feels cool under your burning cheek. The mattress dips under the Emperor’s weight when he kneels behind you. His ringed fingers smooth over your ass and down the arch of your back. He treats you with an uncharacteristic sort of tenderness, as though he were molding you out of clay.
“You are a pretty thing, aren’t you?” he whispers under his breath. “And timid, too… I like that…”
Your pussy clenches at his words despite yourself. Geta’s chest swells with pride accordingly. “You don’t have to be scared, little dove. I’m going to take such good care of you.”
Despite his words, he does not bother to ready you for his cock when he positions himself at your pulsing entrance. You hadn’t expected him to, of course — not many men were as kind as Marcus in that way, who often treated your pleasure as if it were his own. But the slick sticking to your thighs has made your pussy more than pliant. Your velvet walls swallow Geta’s cock with a pulsing vigor.
The Emperor groans as he fucks into you, savoring every inch as he buries himself to the hilt. His ringed fingers dig into the plush of your waist, as though you were a toy he didn’t want getting snatched away.
“Look at the hound!” Geta giggles boyishly to himself. “He’s itching for a feel of you— I just know it.”
Marcus remains as still and stoic as the battalion trained him to be. He reveals nothing on his face, though his skin prickles with flames of envy beneath his armor.
Marcus Acacius was not a jealous man. His love for you was a testament to that. He visited the brothel you boarded in and spared the same coins as every man in the establishment did. But it was different now. Because the Emperor does not deserve you, and he forces Marcus to watch as if he knows it, too.
Something within him seethes, like a feral animal trapped behind his ribcage, desperately clawing its way out.
“Look at him,” Geta snaps when he sees you staring at the wall, eyes glassy and glazed over. He’s grinning all over again when your gaze snaps to Marcus’.
The soldier’s weathered eyes burn with tears then. General Acacius has faced death a thousand times over, but it wasn’t quite as heartwrenching as this. His wrath simmers to a boil. He swallows it down like fire.
This is her salvation, he tells himself. This is how she survives.
Your features twist with the anguish of being seen as the Emperor lays himself over your back. His slick chest sits flush with your spine, pinning you to the mattress. “I bet he can taste you now. Smell you,” he murmurs in your ear, chapped mouth brushing the shell of it. “His mouth is salivating at the thought of putting his tongue on you— Isn’t it, dog?”
Marcus swallows through the emotion threatening to strangle him. He blinks away stinging tears and feigns an air of nonchalance. “It would be… impolite to talk so brashly about something that doesn’t belong to me, your majesty,” the General responds. Obedient. Loyal like a hound.
Geta grins wide. “Good answer, Acacius.”
When the Emperor finally fucks into you, it’s with a sloppy sort of precision. There is no rhythm or care to his thrusts. He is led only by his blinding pleasure, like a man who has only ever fucked playthings and his own fist. He props himself on one forearm and curls the other beneath you, holding your breast in his ringed hand.
Geta’s flushed cheek presses against your own while he slides in and out and into you again. You hear his groaning as you feel it rumbling in his chest, still laid against your back. You stare at a framed portrait on the wall across the room and wait for it to be over, even as your body refuses to dismiss its simmering orgasm.
Your swollen clit ruts against the silk sheets with each of the Emperor’s sloppy thrusts. You can feel a wet spot forming beneath you, and your stomach twists at the thought of seeing proof of your own pleasure.
His balls smack your leaking cunt, creating a symphony of lewd noises — moaning, whimpering, clapping, smacking. Marcus thinks the sounds of war were more merciful than this.
“Do you understand what that means, little dove?” Geta croons into your ear, words choppy through his labored breaths and irregular thrusts. “You belong— to me now… So whatever you used to be— whoever’s you used to be— no longer matters.”
He thrusts once, hard, and shudders above you with a choked-back groan. You grit your teeth to swallow down your own noises of pleasure. The assault on your clit, though unintentional, is still yet relentless. You feel the distant white-hot burning feeling begin to swell in the pit of your stomach. A coil about to snap.
“Fucking me— Making me feel good—” the Emperor pants, punctuated by his hips against your ass. “—Is your only duty now. Understand?”
You nod, cheek running over the silk cushion as you grip it in your fists. “Yes, your majesty,” you gasp.
Geta presses his smile to the apple of your cheek. He can feel you leaking around him. You’re enjoying this just as much as he is, to be sure. A proper whore, indeed.
“Now… Take my spend like a good bitch, and thank me for it—”
He fucks you harder, and your face twists with a pleasure you’re too weak to fight away.
Your gaze falls instinctively to Marcus as your orgasm threatens to swallow you whole. Your eyes squeeze shut in a feeble attempt to hide. Your mouth parts with a silent moan as you cum around the Emperor’s cock.
“Thank you, your majesty,” you whimper obediently into the pillow as you tremble beneath him. “Thank you.”
Geta buries a whine in your neck when he cums again. He gives you only two pitiful, warm loads but still possesses more stamina than your Marcus. He stills, then shudders, then rests his unforgiving bodyweight on top of you when pleasure makes a puddle of him. And of you, you assume, as a mixture of your spend leaks out of your cunt and onto the sheets.
“Write to my uncle, Acacius—” Geta slurs into your skin, heavy through labored pants. “—A thank you for my nameday present.”
Marcus forgets, until then, that he can still be seen. He felt more akin to a corpse hidden in the walls, forced to spend his afterlife in a merciless purgatory. His heart has stopped beating, frozen over, and now sits dead in his chest. He will never be as gentle as he was with you. He will be bloodied knuckles and pulsing wounds. Rough and cruel and angry.
“Yes, your majesty,” the General nods, thankful that it’s over now.
Geta rolls off of your body and onto the empty spot beside you — not shy about his nude form or yours. The sudden lack of warmth makes you shiver.
“And tell him to send another— To keep the General’s bed warm, too,” he says, patting your ass with his palm before smoothing tenderly over the skin. “One whore’s as good as any other, I’m sure.”
Marcus flinches at the thought of being with anyone other than you. He couldn’t hide the look of disgust if he tried. It makes the Emperor laugh loudly in response.
“Oh, did you— Did you want to try this one?” Geta muses knowingly, pointing to your limp body, still trembling beside him with the aftershocks of your orgasm.
“No. No, no, no— See, this one’s mine,” he corrects the General as if he were a child. “And it would be impolite to touch something that belongs to me, would it not? It would be treasonous, even.”
“Yes, your majesty,” Marcus nods, lip flickering in a mere hint of a smirk as his plan finally comes to fruition. “It would be.”
The Emperor sees you now as his property, and no one hurts what belongs to him without meeting a certain death. Marcus is comforted only by the thought that nothing can touch you now. Not even him. But perhaps that’s the price he pays for love. Perhaps, in the end, love is grief.
“So best tread lightly, Acacius,” Geta warns with a crooked smile, petting you like a dog. “I’d hate for someone to get hurt.”
Summary: There's something wrong about Tamsy. A strangeness that you can't quite place. It's always made you wary. So it's fitting that a dust storm would leave you two trapped alone together. Miles away from civilization, where not even the walls around you are enough to make you feel safe.
Contents: 16.7k words. MDNI. 18+, AFAB, fem pronouns. enemies to lovers-ish (more like reader is incredibly suspicious of Tamsy but ignores the red flags anyway). Tamsy has a jacobs ladder piercing because it's canon. PinV, creampie, choking, dom/sub dynamics, spanking, pussy slapping, biting, degradation, praise, naked female/clothed male, mild dubcon (she's into it, this tag is just here as a precaution), a dash of aftercare.
Notes: he's taken over my brain. Gif made by @ianime0, divider by @pixopix
This day could hardly get any worse, though you're almost paranoid to even have the thought, lest the universe throw a curve ball in your direction just to prove you wrong. That it could indeed get so, so much worse than it is now. Maybe you should count your blessings. You are still alive. That's always a plus — well, you feel mostly alive. Your bones ache, knees pulsing with the dull throb of exertion, and you know that as soon as you make it back to the safety of HQ that you're going straight to bed to pass out.
The trash beasts you had to deal with had been particularly nasty today. Persistent bastards, and they refused to go down. You would have been impressed if the entire ordeal hadn't been so incredibly frustrating. Formidable monsters, made almost impossible to ward off by their scale and ferocity alone. They'd tanked the first barrage of your fire as though the twisting pyres had been nothing. Barreling straight through the heat like the inferno had been flies bouncing from their armored bodies and nothing more.
It had only served to piss you off really. This entire day had gone down the drain as soon as you had managed to track them down. They weren't exactly difficult to find, having wandered a little too close to Hole Town for comfort. Four hulking beasts, all big enough to make the ground tremble whenever they took a step. Team Eager had been assigned to deal with them before they could do any damage, and by Team Eager you mean yourself and Tamsy, because Delmon had requested the day off. To do what exactly, you aren't sure. As far as you know, the guy doesn't even have friends outside of work (not like any of you do, honestly), so you don't have the faintest clue as to what he could be doing.
Knowing him he's out trying to buy exotic plants on the black market again.
It's not the fact that he's gone that's the problem. You can manage trash beasts just fine on your own. You have before and you'll have to in the future. It's the fact that Delmon's absence has left you alone with him.
You could say that it's a blessing in a way. It can get grating, listening to Tamsy's irritated huffing when Delmon projects his voice a little too loudly — which is near constantly. His absence offered a reprieve from that. But on the flip side of the coin, it also meant that you would be alone. Just you and Tamsy. With no other soul around for miles.
You'd think after all of this time in Team Eager, you would have grown used to him by now. But there's always been something strange about him. Something that you've never been able to properly place. It settles around him like an invisible veil, an undercurrent, projected around his body in a field that no one seems to be able to peek through. It prickles at your skin, the kind of primal unease that happens when you're in the sights of something that you can't properly comprehend. Dangerous. Like a predator lying in wait, anticipating the moment it can flash its fangs and bite.
Paranoid.
That's what you've come to call yourself. Or maybe a little crazy. It's the pollution probably. The fumes have finally gone to your head. Realistically, he's given you no reason to assume anything insidious. He's always been kind. Welcoming to you even when you were brought into HQ clad in torn clothes, soot and grime and blood smeared across your face.
A supportive teammate. That's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Tamsy. He's aloof, always walking around with an air of placid reticence, but as much as he unsettles you, he's reliable. That's an aspect of his nature that can't be denied. He's proven that he's tactful, a mindful comrade out on the field time and time again and today was no different. He was always there to back you up, seamlessly slotting himself within the line of danger when the beasts had weaved outside the path of your fire.
All it had taken was for him to bind a pair of them in place, the wide scope of his thread slicing through the thick atmosphere with a speed and agility that's always left you a little breathless. In the blink of an eye, he had them trapped where they stood, living garbage and rusted steel left to struggle as any caught animal would. They were as good as dead once they were arrested within his grasp, two insects twitching flutily on the adhesive silk of a spider's web.
It had given you a good opening with your attention and power reduced from four beasts to a more manageable pair. You didn't have to worry that he wouldn't be able to handle the other two. You knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had them right where he wanted them, and now that they had been spun within Tokushin's threads, you were able to focus your attention into a more narrow scope.
Your flames had become more direct, more focused with your targets decreased to a smaller number, and the fire that spilt from your vital instrument had burned hotter; it licked and swept wide and high. In a burst of a lashing gold and searing red, they had been gone. Obliterated, eaten away by heat as though they never existed at all. Reduced to ash and fragmented rubble that glowed like embers, winking dimly before completely dying out on the parched, toxic earth.
And it was all thanks to Tamsy's help.
It sets your teeth on edge.
But the universe wasn't finished in its goal to irritate you.
A damned dust storm of all things had swept up. You swear that bastard on the TV hadn't mentioned anything about it, but it was there. A thin, but blatant bruise on the blank horizon. Dark and troubling, like a warning of what was to come. You knew what it was as soon as you'd seen it. You've spent enough time out in the field to notice the subtle shifts in things. You both have. There wasn't any denying what it was that you were looking at. It had seemed miles away, but the speed that it was moving at was quicker than the eye could properly track, growing larger — closer by the second.
It wasn't anywhere near as brutal as the damage that a Trash Storm could dish out, but dust storms still hold enough violent force to flay through skin. And it would only be minutes before howling wind and dust would be upon you, spitting air so wildly that the fine sand blowing through the storm would be lethal enough to rip through your clothes like bullets.
Hole Town couldn't have been more than ten miles away, but without a vehicle close by, it might as well as been in an entirely different dimension. You two would die long before you'd ever reach it. But it was by sheer luck that you had passed an old scattering of dilapidated buildings earlier. An odd cluster of them far outside the limits of Hole Town, and they couldn't have been more than a few miles off. Sure, they had looked like they were being held together by hopes and dreams, but they were the most viable option for shelter against the oncoming storm.
You were able to see them with your naked eye, tiny and in the far distance, dark dots on the dunes ahead. Torn, flimsy shanties, but they'd be better protection than just the clothes on your backs. If you hesitated any longer, you'd both be dead. Torn apart by sand and shrieking wind.
You hadn't spared a single though when you had snatched ahold of Tamsy by the back of his coat, scuffing him like a cat with a hasty, "We've gotta get the hell out of here Tams."
He didn't have time to properly spit out a complaint, only a clipped "What are you do—" before you were flicking your lighter open behind you. Fire had spilt from the Zippo in a powerful stream, heat and energy spilling out like thrusters. In a single breath you two were being hurtled through the air in a smooth arch, fast enough that you would narrowly escape the dust storm before it could sweep you up inside of its reach.
It sounds angry outside now. A relentless wail. Shrill as it claws across the structure of the shack, tearing at the shutters, heaving at the metal panels that create the roof like it wants to tear it apart. The building groans from the weight of the storm. Shifting with metallic sighs and groans. The entire structure wobbles around you, rusted walls flexing like a spasming throat, thrumming from a scream that it longs to release. A pained wail like the badgering of the tempest physically pains it.
You feel as though you're being swallowed whole. Eaten alive. But you aren't sure if it's the storm that you should blame for that, or him.
He's seated himself on the other end of the shack, legs crossed at the ankles, back slumped against the tattered cushion of an old, collapsed sofa. His eyes are shut, expression calm and unbothered, as though he can't hear the wind howling outside. He looks peaceful despite the circumstances. His chest rises and falls, gentle beneath the layers of his uniform, a steady rhythm that softly lifts his hands from where he's folded them across his stomach. You could almost let yourself believe that he'd fallen asleep, but you know better.
The room is dark; any possibility of light having been mostly blotted out by the storm outside. The only scraps of it that exist come from your Zippo. And the glow of it blinks in and out of existence from how you listlessly flick the lid open, thumb catching on the flint wheel long enough to spark a flame only for you to snuff it out second later with the flick of your wrist. The lid snaps shut with a thin noise, but a split second later you jerk it back open, over and over again.
A small fire gutters on its hidden wick, tiny but bright. Bobbing around in place, blue and amber. The shine it casts spills across the room, creating shadows in the corners, painting the walls an oily hue. It swathes over him, tracing over his shape in warm strokes, catching on the strands of his hair in muted flecks of gold. If you allowed yourself to think of it for longer the necessary, you'd even go as far as to acknowledge that he actually looks pretty with that tranquil look on his face. The shape of his mouth settled in a relaxed pout, lashes thick and heavy against the ridge of his cheek bones.
You find yourself staring at him like this more and more now, like some kind of freak. It happens without you being aware of it, like your mind is trying to figure him out on some subconscious level. That if you study him enough, the answer might reveal itself to you in some microexpression playing across his face. You swear that you've noticed hints of what lies beneath the surface before —or at least you've convinced yourself that you have. A glimpse behind the curtain in the form of kind smiles that are a little too strained around the edges or words that are too clipped to be truly noble. But really, it's his eyes that betray the most.
You see slivers of emotions break through the façade. Blink and you'll miss it glimmers so fleeting that half the time you believe that you've completely imagined them. And maybe you have.
Tamsy is an enigma in his own right. His entire existence is a mystery to you, held far beyond your reach, and nothing seems to encapsulate that daunting feeling more than his eyes. After all of this time, you still haven't quite been able to figure out what color they are, analyzing them from a distance as best as you possibly can, but you haven't been quite able to nail it yet.
More often than not, they seem like some kind of shade of yellow, but on occasion, you swear you've seen them shift with fragments of gray. The color of metal, cold and detached, the silver flash of a blade caught within the expanse of a muted amber. But when he uses his jinki, they become something else entirely. Bright and electric blue scintillating within the rings of fiery irises.
A kaleidoscope of hues. Sunlight trickling through stain glass.
"Would you please stop fiddling with that thing."
Of course, he has to go and ruin the moment.
He didn't yell, but he doesn't have to. Tamsy isn't the type to shout, and even when he reprimands someone, the pitch his voice reaches could hardly be considered aggressive. His tone was raised certainty, only by a small scale, but the firmness behind it has you going still. When you sweep your attention back over to his corner of the room, his expression has hardly changed except for the subtle furrow that's wedged between his brows. Though he hasn't bothered to open his eyes to look at you, you can feel his annoyance, scattered across the space between your bodies, prickling like an itch.
"Alright, damn. There's no need to bite my head off," you snap, venomous and exasperated. It left you more aggressively than you intended, but the following apology never leaves your lips. Instead you close your Zippo shut with a sharp twitch of your wrist, and when it snaps closed this time, you don't flick it back open again. You leave the room in darkness, and the only thing that keeps it from drowning in a horrible silence is the wind screeching outside.
"You aren't subtle." It's said softly, but the accusation hangs heavy in the air.
"Hmm? What do you mean?" You tilt your head to look at him as best as you can through the shadows that eclipse the shack. It takes a second for your vision to adjust to the dark, but once it does you can make out the outline of his body, a vague silhouette still perched on the sofa, hair pale underneath the gloom.
"Staring at me like that. You do it quite often. Is there something on your mind that you'd like to share?"
You're actually glad now that your lighter isn't on, because you don't know if you'd be able to handle it if he opened his eyes and looked at you right now. Not to be dramatic, but you're pretty sure that you'd die on the spot. You should have expected this, really. Not much slips past Tamsy. He's exceptionally perceptive, it's one of the things that makes him such a valuable teammate to have out on the field. All sharp wit and cunning.
You've been kidding yourself this entire time to think that he hadn't noticed. Or maybe you'd just been too caught up in your own mind to truly try and be discreet about it. Now that you've been caught, you struggle to formulate a proper response. You could be honest about the entire thing. You are on the same team after all; there's not much use in having secrets. But what the hell are you supposed to tell him? That his vibe his off? That he seems a little weird to you for absolutely no reason and so you've been watching him like some kind of creep?
Your face cringes, mouth twisting in a grimace as though you've swallowed something bitter and you're thankful that he can't actually see it.
You feel words forming on your tongue, but they don't actually take a proper shape. Not enough for them to be pronounced, to make it out from the trap of your teeth. You just sit, back tense from where it's pressed against the uncomfortable support of the wooden chair you've been resting on. The rails dig into your spine, harsh and biting through the layer of your clothes.
You know that he's waiting for a proper response, patient and relaxed on his corner of the shack while you're busy tussling with your internal struggle.
"Your eyes."
That's the explanation you spit out instead of the truth. But it's not technically a lie. It borders on honesty just enough that maybe he won't be able to tell that you aren't entirely being candid with him. You almost feel silly for it. That strange instinct to hold your suspicions close to your chest. (Suspicions of what, exactly?) They're so inexplicable that you aren't sure yourself. It's only an urge, deep seeded, rooted somewhere down in your marrow that keeps the confession from slipping free. You feel that odd paranoia creep up the back of your neck, like fingers tracing over the flesh there to raise your hair on end.
Your voice catches in your throat and you sweep the pad of your thumb over your lighter to collect yourself, tracing the familiar grooves of the engravings on your skin. You've known Tamsy for a while, long enough to become intimate with the kind of person he is. You've spent free time with him and Delmon, chatting amongst yourselves inside the booth of some hole-in-the-wall restaurant, laughing and recounting missions while you eat. You've gone out of your way to tease him, joking and prodding at him all out of the intention to get under his skin, to see his lips tug into a bothered frown. And despite all of that, it never fails for that odd worry to creep its way inside of your head like a cold draft sweeping inside a house. Drifting in though the cracks and crevices.
Tamsy is a paradox. Pleasantly familiar and yet completely other. Like a stranger wearing the face of a loved one you never had.
"What about them?" He asks. His voice is as gentle as it always is. Gliding through the bleak atmosphere with an almost hypnotic quality.
"I've never been able to really figure out what color they are. Whenever I think I've finally pinned down the shade, it's like they go and shift into something completely different. It's frustrating."
He hums, not in agreement or rebuff, just acknowledgement. It sounds almost musical. Bells chiming in the distance. But what he says next is more comparable to a bomb detonating. You feel the impact of it explode inside of your chest.
"If you're really that curious, you could come in for a closer look."
He says it was no consequence. As if it was nothing. Now you actually hate that it's dark, that the storm outside has shunned even the most delicate scraps of light because you wish that you could properly see him. Though you're sure that his expression probably hasn't changed. He's probably just as serene as before, eyes closed, hands draped over his stomach.
You can somewhat make out the shape of his body, and he hasn't so much as twitched since this entire interaction has begun. You see the hair that he has done up despite the dark, vaguely visible through the shadows from the pale color of its tresses. The long, blond strands spanned out to frame his head like great antlers or the plumage of a striking bird.
You've never exactly put Tamsy above you. In talent regarding his handling vital instrument, absolutely, but in terms of being a teammate, you're both equals. But right now, he seems so far beyond you, shrouded in shadows. A figure from a myth, past basic human understanding. You've hardly felt like you've been in control this whole day, but whatever confidence you were holding onto has been singlehandedly tugged out from beneath your feet with nothing more than a few words from him. Worse than all of that, is that you're not entirely sure if that was his intention. If he only means to tease or if he's being authentic.
"Are you being serious?"
He has to be joking.
"Come now, we've been co-workers long enough, it's nothing embarrassing." You hate how polite he sounds, like he's genuinely entertaining your inquisitiveness. No taunting or underhanded intentions, just pure cordiality. "I have no problem in indulging your little fascination with me."
"Ugh, you make it sound so weird."
"Do I?"
He actually sounds surprised and somehow that's so much worse than if he was mocking you. This whole thing is stupid. There's no reason why this situation in particular has you tripped up. You've been in circumstances so much more compromising than this. You've literally sat in his lap before, your group and Team Akuta all smashed into the same vehicle, contained within the walls like peaches packed inside a can. You'd be uncomfortably wedged between Tamsy and Zanka, and when the car had abruptly swerved over a rough patch of terrain thanks to Enjin's exceptional driving, the jerk of the wheel had sent you careening into his space (not that you hadn't already been in it, technically).
You hadn't realized that you'd gripped onto his thigh in an effort to stabilize yourself, but before you could attempt to right yourself and fit your body back between the sliver made from his and Zanka's shoulders, Tamsy had grabbed onto your waist. His hands were just there. Firm around the shape of your hips and then he was guiding you onto the seat of his lap, voice brushing against your ear and purring out a low, "Is this okay?" that you had struggled to respond to. You all but forced yourself to practically spit out the confirmation that it was, breath catching on the rapid pulse of your heart.
You awkwardly sat there on his thighs, trying desperately not to focus on how he felt beneath your body. How good he smelt, perfumed by something light and fresh. You especially tried not to notice how Zanka had passed you looks from the corner of his eyes, brows furrowed like he wasn't sure if what he was seeing was truly happening. You were just thankful that Rudo had been passed out, slumped and drooling against the door and that Enjin was too focused on driving to glance back in the rear-view mirror. You never would have heard the end of it if either of them had they noticed how you were curled against Tamsy's chest, his hands still holding onto your waist.
You swear that his fingers had swept over you, tracing vague shapes over the fabric of your uniform. Absentminded, but terribly intimate.
But this somehow has you on edge. Maybe it's how he offered it. All casually, voice stretching out in the soothing hum, as though it was nothing. It would be easier to believe that he was only teasing you, and you almost hoped that he was.
"The wide-eyed, ignorant look doesn't suit you Tamsy." The accusation slips from you before you can fully process it. Low but heated around the edges. You grip onto your lighter harder, squeezing it within your palm in a desperate attempt to ground yourself. It doesn't work.
The quiet that follows is uncomfortable. Well, as silent as it can be with the squall outside screaming and tearing at the shack like it might be able to rip its way inside if its persistent enough. Maybe you'd let it put you out of your misery if it did. Allow it to snatch you up within its current and cut you down to the bone. That would be more merciful than whatever the hell this is.
Your paranoia is a chill, and it had crept in since day one. He was so pleasant when you'd first met, welcoming you onto the team with a warmth that had unsettled you, that you had been convinced had been fake. But you had assumed that everyone at the Cleaners HQ had simply been luring you in to a false sense of security. They had all urged you into the fold with little fanfare, no hoops to jump through or grueling tests. All it had taken was a simple evaluating glance from Semiu and it had been done. You were one of them.
You hadn't believed it at first. You expected some sort of catch. It was a dog-eat-dog world, and kindness wasn't bestowed freely. But they'd given you a roof over your head, a place to call home, a family, and Tamsy had been there to guide you through it all. He and Delmon were the two people who had taken care to show you the ropes, to assist you in getting your footing in the new territory that had been set out before you, and they did so with incredible patience.
But as nice as Tamsy has always been to you, there was something to him that you never could quite place. His kind words, his tender smiles, the way that he's always there to rush in at the first sign of danger to push you out of its path. You think that it all just may be hollow. But you can never come up with a solid reason as to why and it's maddening. There's nothing more than that tingling along your spine, a persistent flutter behind your ribs that urges you to stay vigilant. To look out for a threat that you know isn't really there.
Tamsy has only ever been a good teammate to you. Diligent, reliable. He's a familiar comfort, the kind of person that you'd follow into a fight without hesitation. It makes the uncertainty that's creeping down your back feel like a betrayal. As though you've somehow harmed his trust by just thinking that maybe there's something lurking beneath the surface, right behind his eyes. A danger that you know doesn't exist, but your subconscious demands that it does anyway.
You're going insane and there's nothing you can do about it.
"You know, I've always had the feeling that you've never liked me all that much," Tamsy reveals. No warning, no preamble.
Your skin crawls. "What makes you say that?"
You see the outline of him shift in the dark, the slightest tilt of his head but it makes you feel trapped all the same. As though you've foolishly stumbled into the direct path of a predator.
"You say that wide-eyed ignorance doesn't suit me, well it certainly doesn't suit you either. Don't play coy." His voice is calm. Hitting the same steady notes that it always does, placid and amiable, but there's something else there beneath the veneer. Something sharp. Like a bite. But it's subtle, so minute that maybe you've only just imagined it.
"I don't hate you Tamsy," you answer and it tastes like ash on your tongue. But you don't hate him. Not really. You've tried to, keeping yourself off at an arms length, hiding the tenderness you feel for him behind snide comments and sarcasm. You think that might just be impossible with how important he's become for you. He's a permanent fixture in your life. The ground beneath your feet, a hand guiding you forward. And maybe that's what this all is. It's fear. A fear for the worst. That maybe, he'll turn out like all the others. That he's only here to use and discard, a carrion picking meat from a bone. That once he's used you for all of your worth, he'll discard you. Toss you away like all the other garbage down here.
"No? Then what is it?" He presses, tone flowing like the soft trickle of water.
"I, uh. . . " you sigh lowly and shrug. "It's nothing really. Just personal shit. Dumb stuff." Your reassurances feel flimsy, even to you. Weak on your tongue. But you try to salvage it as best as you can, hoping that he won't be able to sniff out your trepidation. You will yourself to smile, instinctively shaping your expression into one of joy; your voice comes out teasing. "I mean come on, you know you're my favorite team member."
"Oh, really? Well don't let Delmon hear that, you'll break his heart."
For a moment, it's nice. This casual back and forth. The sort that you're used to engaging with him, and you're almost able to forget your paranoia entirely. For a split second, it flickers, water sprinkled on a small flame, and you're able to sit and enjoy his presence unencumbered. And you've been like this before with him. Sometimes you find yourself sitting at the bar on base with him, unplanned. Two creatures in the night, silent, lost within your own worlds but only feet apart. Connected by proximity only. Quiet, solitary, all while everyone else sleeps soundly within their rooms.
And the two of you will just sit, idle beneath the warm lights and burning neon. Something about it feels private. A secret only for you both. An indulgence that you weren't entirely aware you've been committing.
You rarely ever speak and yet a connection has tethered between you, translating far more than words ever could. A hushed, reluctant companionship. An ease that you've been hesitant to name, much less acknowledge. The simplicity and assurance that comes with just sitting with someone, hearing the gentle rise and fall of their breath, feeling the low brush of their body heat seeping past the barrier of your clothes. No expectations, no promises, just the presence of another.
Damn, he's dug his way past your skin, and you hadn't even realized it until now.
You hardly notice he's moving until you register the hushed shuffle of footsteps brushing along the floor, the wooden boards creak lowly under their moving weight, barely discernable beneath the shriek of the storm. You can hardly see him at all in the dark; there's only the sound of his approach, diluted from the wind that tugs and rips at the corners of the shack, making the metal whine like a wounded beast.
You're an animal that's fallen inside a snare. Made as still as a statue while you wait for him to come closer, lungs motionless within the cavity of your chest. It's only once he's directly in front of you that you're finally able to make out his shape, traced over in scant, muted brushes of light. His stare locks onto yours through the cover of the shadows, appraising and weighted, like he's searching for something, and it strips you bare. He's so close that you can feel the heft of his coat press against your knees. You have to angle your head back to properly see him from where you're sitting, but it only feels like you're baring your throat.
He just stands there, a figure looming in the dark.
"You good Tams? You're being kind of creepy."
He doesn't respond. He lets you stew in the silence. In the anticipation. Of what, you aren't sure, but it's there, thrumming inside of your bones and veins like a second heartbeat.
And then he's lowering himself, hunching himself over until he's balanced only on the balls of his feet, crouched so that now he's the one who's looking up at you. Despite the shift in perspectives, you still feel as though you're being stared down upon, not him. Even in the dark, the way he's watching you is flaying. It's like his gaze has locked you in place, an insect pinned down on a cork, exoskeleton carefully dissected to display its delicate insides. It makes your skin prickle, nerves flaring with cold and heat, a conflicting reaction that has your breath snagging in your throat.
"Spark your vital instrument."
His order coils through the atmosphere, almost melodic. Your hand seems to take on a life of its own to heed the command, thumb slipping up to nudge the lid from its place with a metallic click. You can't manage to tear your focus from his face, not with how intently he's observing you. Attention narrowed down and settled on you with a weight of its own. It seems to glide over you, murmuring over your flesh like soft hands mapping over the shape of your body.
When you strike the flint wheel, the flame flares to life and dances. Wobbling on its wick, and as it twitches, the glow spills over the room like gold paint spreading across a worn canvas.
His eyes are there in the shadows. Made incandescent from the small fire. They graze over somewhere close to your soul. Too deep, pressing where they shouldn't. A place that's too vulnerable, one that you want to pretend doesn't exist. But now, it's like you're forced to confront it. That hesitant warmth that rests within the pit of your chest, delicate and saccharine, humming like a second pulse. It expands against your will, fluttering and molten, shifting like a roused animal beckoned by the weight of his stare.
He's unfairly pretty. Made of rounded edges, almost cherubic in nature. You can't help but admire the soft shape of his cheeks and the pronounced swoop of his nose; eyes framed with lashes that are unnecessarily thick. You've always been jealous of them, as long and full as they are. Just another part of him that's stupidly beautiful.
The scar on his face isn't enough to mar how attractive he is. It's just another thing that makes him more of a mystery to you. For as long as you've known him, you've never bothered to ask about it. And he's never attempted to divulge, to share what had harmed him, or who. But you know that he has more scars than just one. Gnarled, pink flesh peeks out past the collar of his button-up, raised with old and damaged tissue. The fringes of it, just like the one that spills down the right side of his face, are jagged and broken, like glass that's been dropped and shattered.
You almost dare to ask him about it now, but decorum keeps the question from slipping free. You can't be sure if he's insecure about the wounds, if being reminded of them would dredge up hurtful memories. He's never struck you as particularly ashamed of them. He doesn't shy away when people gawk or stare. There's been a number of times while ambling down packed street corners or interacting with civilians from neighboring towns that he's been openly goggled at. Mostly by children, too young to understand that what they're doing could be perceived as rude. But he's never shied from the attention, never wavered or flinched like it made him uncomfortable inside his own skin.
Still . . . you can't manage to ask. The very notion of it feels like too much. Like if you dared to prod at the mystery, if you went digging for answers that weren't freely given to you, then you might not like what you'd find.
The flame sways on its wick unsteadily, caught within a fleeting draft sneaking in from the outside storm. It wobbles unsteadily, like it might just tip over from where it burns and vanish. But it doesn't. It persists, still bright, bathing the ramshackle space in a dusky radiance.
The light of it reflects in his eyes, and finally you can see them so clearly from the aid of your proximity. His irises are a motley of shades. An almost cosmic burst of champagne, pale and mesmerizing, broken up by scattered fragments of gray and dusty brown. The two hues that you've always struggled to nail down, trying to guess if it was one or the other, but it's actually both. Delicate flecks of silver and muted bronze. It's like the cosmos are held within in his eyes, nebulous, stardust and sunlight, caught within the cradle of his skull.
Just like the rest of him, his eyes are pretty. So, so pretty—
A burn bites at the edge of your thumb, and were you not used to it, you might have dropped your lighter. The pain douses you with reality. You snap back into yourself, and it's with a cold realization that you become aware of how close you've leaned within Tamsy's proximity. So close that the point of your nose is separated from him by only a few scant inches, close enough that if you angled your head by a hair or two, they'd brush against each other.
You flick your Zippo shut with an abrupt jerk of your wrist. The noise cuts across the atmosphere, seeming to sever through whatever spell clouded your judgement and made you tilt towards him, back bowed like a flower straining to reach the sun.
The dark engulfs the shack once again, and while under its cover you allow yourself to lean back. The chair groans with the shifting of your weight, a punched out, thin noise. Your palm squeezes tight around your vital instrument, fingers sweeping over the engravings made into the metal, the familiar texture of scales and the shallow lines that make flared wings felt beneath your thumb.
You don't hold onto it for much longer even though letting it go feels like giving up a lifeline. You slip it down safely inside the front pocket of your pants, and you cherish the weight of it on your thigh.
The shadows aren't enough to protect you. They can't make you feel unseen. You're terribly exposed, stuck underneath the persistent hold of his stare. But it's the subtle press of his knees against the front of your legs that give you no other option but to be aware of how near he is.
"Did you finally figure it out."
It creeps out lowly through the dark, satin gliding, rich and delicate. The sound of his voice makes you motionless. As angelic as it is, something about it makes ice scatter over your flesh, goose bumps raising; unsettled and captivated all at once.
"What?" You ask dumbly.
"My eyes, remember?" He clarifies, and he almost sounds amused. "You wanted to know what they looked like."
"Oh, yeah." You adjust on your seat again. A simple attempt to keep your mind centered on something that isn't him. He's so close that you can smell him, clean musk and resin. Far more mouthwatering than he has any right being considering that he spends his days fighting sentient garbage piles.
"You seem nervous."
There's barely any light to properly see. It's all vague outlines and silhouettes and yet he's still able to see you so clearly. You're sure he can hear it, the wariness held inside of your voice, the way it trembles around its fringes.
"I do?" You're playing dumb now. Like feigning ignorance might save you from wherever this interaction is heading. You already know that it's a lost cause. Worse than the need to stay afloat, to try and keep ahead of whatever this conversation is, is that you don't think you'd actually mind getting swept under it. Not really.
"You do," he replies. Point blank, blunt. "You know you can talk to me about anything, don't you? We are teammates after all. It's important that we're able to speak to each other about things that might make us uncomfortable."
His amiability chills you to the bone for reasons you can't name, not even after all this time. But it makes that stupid, starved thing inside your chest grow bigger, throbbing like a hunger pain. You like it when he gets like this, caring, gentle. It makes the paranoia that haunts the corners of your mind go numb. The longing that you've been carrying with you, an open chasm, a wound torn behind the protection of your ribs cage, is placated. Soothed by words that you've always wanted to hear.
It's awful, more than a little pathetic how deeply you want him.
You really are hopeless.
"I know—"
You don't get the opportunity to try and save yourself. To make excuses and pull yourself back together, because the chance is stolen from you before you could take it.
His hand cups the side of your face. You stop breathing.
This isn't the first time he's touched you. It's pretty common to sustain injuries on the job, and on occasion you've all helped each other as best as you can while out on the field. As a team, you're all familiar with the motions of cleaning lacerations made by trash beasts or making temporary braces for sprained ankles and wrists while out on the field. You've done it for Delmon and Tamsy before and they've done it for you. Caring for each other is all second nature, as easy as breathing, and the skin-on-skin contact is obligatory.
But this is so much different. This isn't done out of necessity. He already had your attention and he knows that, and yet he's gone out of his way to hold you anyway. His palm is warm, fingers spanning around your ear, thumb moving in a short caress over the swell of your cheekbone. A gesture so small it almost didn't seem real.
It leaves you stuck. Seized under the tender weight of his hand.
When he speaks next, it's said softly. Like he's making a confession that he only trusts you with. "You know, you worried me earlier today, trying to take on all of those trash beasts all at once. It's been a while since you've been so impulsive. If I'm being honest, it worried me a bit."
Suddenly you're stripped bare. Exposed in a way that you haven't been in a long time. And he is right. You haven't been so reckless in a while, not since you'd first become a Cleaner. Back when you were a little younger and had something to prove. When you would run directly into the fray without bothering to properly gauge the situation before you did. You didn't worry about danger, or death. All that mattered was that you would become stronger, that your worth to the team would be solidified. Made undeniable.
But today hadn't been that. You were trying to outrun your own thoughts, and combat, the heat of your fire scorching earth and breathing metal, is the surest way to do that. You hadn't bothered heeding Tamsy's warning from where it rose out behind you. You only acted, ignoring him because it was easy, because it got under his skin. Charging in towards monolithic jaws flashing with jagged, steel teeth, flames pouring from your instrument in a blaze. It was all to try and escape the pandemonium inside your head. To shake free of the voice that murmurs and chants that you can't trust him, you never could.
That can't be the truth though, can it? He's here now, crouched in front of you, holding onto your cheek as though you're something fragile and important. Like you could break if he handled you too roughly, and he's trying to diligently to keep that from happening.
You've encountered manipulative people all your life. Those who only wanted to use and pick you clean for all you were worth, demoting you down to little more than a tool. A thing to be used and cast aside once your purpose had been fulfilled. Murderers, petty thieves, the lowest of the low who feed on the weak and indulge in cruelty, they all have the same look in their eyes. And Tamsy isn't one of them. You know this, and yet that little voice, the very one that kept you alive when you'd lurk within grimy alleyways and fight inside blood-soaked basements for money, won't shut up.
It screams from the sidelines, demanding to be heard. But for the first time in what seems like forever, you choose to ignore it.
You draw in a tight breath, all but willing your lungs to expand in order to draw in a gulp of oxygen, and you hope that it will help clear your head. All you want to do now is lean into him. To bask in the warmth his skin provides.
"You're right," you admit. "It was dumb of me. I don't know what I was thinking."
"You weren't." The tension that seeps into his tone surprises you. The faintest traces of irritation coiling underneath his usual placidity in an undercurrent. A riptide you didn't realize you were wading towards. A tremble skips down your spine, but it isn't out of fear. It's a different animal entirely. One that you always knew was there, pacing around the corners of your subconscious, but one you never dared to confront. But it's here now, and with him so close, the traces of his body heat and scent curling around you, you have to see it for what it is.
Maybe it's the darkness the storm provides that emboldens you, but something that feels a lot like courage ignites deep in your gut, white-hot and vibrant. You're no stranger to having disagreements with Tamsy. You're both able to go from squabbling to being cordial at the flip of a switch, a phenomenon that not even you understand. But it's so common that the occasional back and forth's have long since become a facet of your dynamic that everyone back at HQ has accepted. And whatever this is — this new, unexplored territory that's expanding out in front of you, seems a lot like that. It's perilous but also perfectly familiar, an intoxicating blend that nearly blindsides you with how much you like it.
You lips shape into a smile, one that he must feel more than he sees. The corner of your mouth twitching beneath the heel of his palm. "Would you believe me if I said I'm sorry?"
He actually leans closer to you. You hear the rustle of fabric as he moves, and your eyes struggle to track the vague outline of his body when he tilts his head up to properly assess you. He watches you through the shadows, eyes narrowed. But it's not aggressive. It's the heavy-lidded look that comes from someone who's intrigued. Who's been surprised and pleased with an outcome they didn't expect.
His breath sweeps over your face and the hand on your face flexes like he's tempted to squeeze. Like he might sink his fingers in hard enough to leave bruises while he pulls you in closer.
"No."
All of a sudden, you're standing in front of a yawning precipice. A chasm that runs deep. One that if you dare to step forward and plummet, you might not come back out the same. But the trepidation that might have held you back once seems to thaw. Snow bared to smoldering coals.
"Is there some way that you might be able to forgive me?"
You hardly recognize yourself. The voice that reaches your ears is hardly your own. You've teased him before but never like this. All of the taunts that you've snubbed at him in the past have been out of irritation or a playful malice, but this is provocative. Saturated with something hungry and wanting. You don't even know what you're doing at this point. But that's a complete lie isn't it. You know exactly what you're doing, you just don't want to admit it. To confront how debased you've become by nothing more than the weight of his hand.
For one dreadful minute, he's silent. It makes your stomach drop. You second guess everything in a matter of seconds. Terrified that maybe you've stupidly misread the signals you though he was sending. That you were seeing things that weren't really there — that you've gone and made a damned fool of yourself.
You almost pull away entirely, jerk out from his grasp, but then you feel it. His thumb moves. A light glide, dragging over your cheek, navigating softly. It's almost agonizing how slowly he trails it over your face, as though he's memorizing the feel of your skin, leaving fire in its wake. And then his thumb settles, right there along the corner of your mouth to tease over the shape of your lower lip. Feeling you in a way he never has before. Intimately. With a quiet admiration.
It's not even intentional when your jaw parts open, tongue lapping like he might actually let you taste him, but the press of his thumb doesn't move from where he's left it. It leaves you starved for it. Longing for the simple taste of his skin.
This whole thing has gotten out of control. You aren't sure how you've even managed to find yourself here, but all of your shame has apparently left your body because you hardly care. There's no humiliation stinging at your cheeks, no worry shrieking from the fringes of your mind. There's only him.
"Is that what you'd like to do?" He asks, and it's layered in mockery. Scathing in that gentle way of his. It makes your body burn. "Apologize properly?"
You have no idea what 'properly' entails, but it your imagination runs wild with the possibilities. Each one lewder and filthier than the last. It should cloud you with mortification, but it doesn't. Because this isn't the first time your mind has been flooded with obscene images, all revolving around Tamsy, the very guy that you've been futilely trying to convince yourself to hate. Endlessly feeding yourself the unfounded notion that he can't be trusted. And yet nearly every night, while you're alone and too awake to properly fall asleep, the fantasies always creep in. Involuntary and pornographic. You can't even get yourself off anymore without picturing that it's his hands coasting over your body, playing with you just right and not your own.
You don't fight it. Not like you used to. You tried hard in the past not to visualize him. It used to feel dirty and wrong, imagining your co-worker while you had yourself spread open on your bed, fingers working deep inside of your cunt, but it couldn't be helped. An incurable sickness. One that couldn't be shaken by reason or denial. The guilt, the shame was never enough to keep your mind from taunting you, bleaching images of him across your eyes. Always him.
So you shouldn't be surprised that you've found yourself here. Maybe this was always bound to happen. You were just resisting the inevitable, fighting an uphill battle all this time.
"Yes," you answer. Something inside you seems to fall loose at the admittance. A strip of armor cracking and falling, exposing the tender sinew that lies beneath.
His eyes are there, even in the dark, made visible only by how near he is to you. His attention has a weight of its own. He's studying you, watching like you're the most fascinating thing in the world, pinned under his palm. When his thumb begins to move again, slipping around the center of your bottom lip, you feel as though you're being tested. Like he's waiting to see if you'll flinch or yield. But you don't.
You meet his stare through the shadows, and lean into the pressure of his touch. A challenge going unsaid. A soft noise leaves him, something like a sigh, barely heard under the wailing of the storm and the metallic whine of the shack shifting and breathing beneath its angry squalling. But you manage to hear it regardless, the anticipation held inside the sound of it.
His thumb pushes in your mouth, and all of your thoughts draw down into a blank. The weight of it drags over your tongue, the traces of salt on his skin spreading across your palate. Your jaw drops further, letting him press it in deeper until the second knuckle sits right against your lips, and then he just holds it there. His other fingers are still spanned across your face, curling around the hinge of your jaw to keep you still. Not that you have any desire to slip away from him now.
Something about him like this, thumb held in your mouth, staring at you with an intensity that burrows down into your bones makes you realize how alone you are out here. It's just you and him, hidden underneath the cover of a violent storm. He could do whatever he wanted to you out here, and no none would be able to save you. It's a thought that would have haunted you before, it still might deep down, but in a way that's completely twisted, it's also thrilling.
You can't keep yourself from sealing your lips around his thumb and sucking. Lapping the tip of your tongue around the length of it with a contented hum.
He doesn't so much as twitch. He remains composed, annoying unaffected. But you can see the faintest glimmer of it in the dark. Smoldering in his stare, lurking within his flat stare. Hunger.
"Are you actually going to listen? You didn't earlier today, running headfirst into danger like a common idiot."
The thumb in your mouth presses down more, almost painful in its pinch, the pressure sitting right on the edge of being uncomfortable, but you don't allow yourself to jerk beneath it. You stay firm, suctioning your mouth around it as best as you can, your throat bobbing while you swallow down the spit that's begun to pool behind your teeth.
"You deserve to be reprimanded, don't you think." But it isn't a question. He's not really asking at all. It's embarrassing how it makes the nerves across your body light up, pale tension coiling deep inside the base of your stomach. Whatever shred of resistance your psyche might have been holding onto evaporates, tugged easily from the back of your mind like the threads of sun-bleached satin clutched in a controlling grip. Roots plucked from soil.
You don't remove your mouth from his thumb, you keep it there. Opting instead to answer him in an agreeing hum, nodding your head in confirmation, and the motion has your lips dragging up and down the finger in a lazy glide. Softly fucking it on your tongue like you would a cock.
His eyes blaze despite the schooled expression on his face. The only indication that you've had any impact on him at all. It has satisfaction curling around your spine, smoky and languid.
"We could keep this mouth of yours busy," he supplies conversationally, but it's mean spirited. All mockery because he's still got your mouth occupied, stuffed full around the gag of his thumb. "But something tells me you'd enjoy that too much. It would make a lousy punishment for someone so desperate."
The point of his thumb bears down on the flat of your tongue. Enough that pain smarts, darting across the sensitive nerves, bright and sharp. You almost wince, tears threatening to well up along the corner of your vision, but you level yourself through the sting. Determined to keep your composure, to deny him the satisfaction of seeing you tremble.
"Wouldn't it?" He asks, tilting his head inquisitively. He doesn't wait for you to even attempt to answer. He does that for you, using the leverage of the grip his still has around your face to nod your head for you.
It's sadistic. Arrogant. A side of Tamsy that you've never witnessed. Even during your little spats he's hardly been comparable to something like this. He may get annoyed, voice clipped and strained with exasperation, but he'd never been so needlessly cruel.
And somehow, you like it. You actually like it.
"Hmm." His voice glides out, silk coasting on air. It makes you thrum with anticipation, every ounce of you electrified with what he might possibly do to you, but then he's retracting his thumb from your mouth, intentionally smearing spit across your lips as he does it. You feel dazed, and it has you struggling to track him once he moves, abruptly standing up from how he was crouched in front of you. His body unfurls in the dark, the pale hue of his dual-toned hair shifting from how he cocks his head and appraises you.
You probably look pathetic. Eyes glazed over, mouth parted from how you pant around your stuttering breath. You're thankful once again that it's too gloomy in here to properly see all the proper details because you must be a dazed mess, and he hasn't done anything to you yet.
"Stand up." That all he says to you before he steps away, footsteps brushing along the floor as he returns back over the other side of the room, reclaiming his seat on the tattered sofa.
You just sit there, for a second or a few minutes, you can't exactly tell. Time seems to blur into an undefined circle. A thought forms, temporary, as delicate as mist. Are you really going to do this?
Once you open this door, once you step past its threshold, there will be no going back. You won't be able to turn around a pretend that it never happened. When it's done, it's done. You'll have to live with the truth of it. That you've seen Tamsy in a way that you've never imagined you actually would. Remembering how his skin tasted on your tongue, the heat of it, how his voice sounded in your ears, degrading and smooth. That's all it takes for you to have your answer. To make a decision. You shed the final remnants of your hesitation and stand.
You cross the space dividing you carefully. Treading slowly as though he's a threat that might strike. But he remains poised, trained on you as you draw closer. You don't let yourself stop until you're directly in front of him.
He considers you for a moment, lashes low while he stares, a lazy kind of focus. Unbothered and appeased. Like a predator that's convinced its prey to walk directly into its open maw.
"You're going to strip yourself of your clothes and then you're going to lie down across my lap." It's matter of fact, delivered as though it's a future that's already been done. As though he's managed to peek inside of your mind and found that you won't resist him. That for all of your bite, all of the petty arguments you've entertained in the past, here and now, he's got you pliant. Or that's what he believes, at least.
"And if I don't?" You challenge, brows raising even though he probably isn't able to fully see it.
"Then you get nothing." And with that he snuffs out whatever little bit of superiority you had. Out like a light. It's not cold per say, it's just said with the briskness of someone who's already made their mind up. A person who won't be dissuaded and you hate it because you know that Tamsy isn't the kind of individual who relents easily. You'll have to play by his rules or not at all.
"I always knew you wanted to get me naked, Tamsy." You're reaching for security at this point, falling back into the safety of your usual dynamic to try and keep yourself from feeling so unmoored.
"Well, the same could be said about you, couldn't it? After all, our rooms are right next each other, and the walls seem so terribly thin sometimes, don't they."
You think your heart quits beating. It's pulse hiccupping inside of your chest before flatlining all together. Horror drapes over your body like a second skin, too tight and itching, made worse by the embarrassment that sinks down to your gut like a rock.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
He's smiling now, the bastard. "Oh, was I not supposed to hear? What a shame, you sounded so pretty saying my name like that. And here I thought you were putting on a show just for me." He pretends to be hurt, voice raising in a playful but biting lilt.
Your mouth opens to defend yourself, to call him out on being a pervert, but the words never leave your mouth. It would be another case of the pot calling the kettle black. You realistically couldn't accuse him of being a creep without owning the fact that you really weren't any different, getting yourself off to thought of a co-worker who you had assumed was ignorant to your perversions. But it makes you both a little depraved, doesn't it. Dirty. And you like it, knowing that the each time you've been in your room, toying with your own body, pumping your fingers inside of yourself, he's been on the other side of the wall. Hanging onto each sound and muffled moan, just as eager and wanting.
He pats his lap invitingly, the soft thump of fabric on fabric rustling beneath the wailing tempest. "Come one now, there's no need to be shy."
You don't allow yourself to hesitate, fueled only by the desire to prove to him that you aren't some timid thing that he can humiliate and back into a corner. You make steady work of your uniform, working on your coat first, shedding it from your shoulders and allowing it to fall to the floor behind you. It meets the wooden boards with a dull thump. The tight fit of your undershirt comes next. Slipped over your head and discarded alongside your coat.
You're emboldened by the dark. To him, you must be nearly undiscernible, made from shadows and the weak traces of light that have been begun to peek through the barricaded windows. You don't waver or worry about how your body might look; you only focus on your current goal.
You work your boots off next, sliding them to side with the nudge of your foot so that your pants will be able to pool down freely around your ankles once you unzip them. You thumb them off alongside your underwear, hooking your fingers through the elastic band and the belt loops to aid you in rucking them past the shape of your hips. Once they're around your feet, you slip them from around your ankles and step out of them.
Now you're completely naked. Bare with only the exception of your choker, the temperature cold on your neck. His blood is housed inside the cord, clasped directly around your throat, and the thought of that alone turns you on more than it should. Carrying a piece of him always, secure around your flesh.
You don't give yourself the chance to think any longer. If you think, you'll hesitate, and there's no place for that now.
He pulls his arms from his lap when you lean over him, allowing you to plant one of your knees on the sofa, using the support to begin settling yourself over his thighs. You hold your breath when you stretch yourself over him, stomach balled into knots with the suspense of it all, the vulnerability of it. You're right on top of him, so close that your body thrums with the proximity. Everything in you is pulled taut, muscles bunched, lungs tight.
He gives you the curtesy of getting comfortable at your own pace. Remaining silent as you settle on your knees and elbows, smoothing your body downward until your stomach is stretched flat upon his lap, snug within the cradle of his thighs and torso. You fold your arms over the other, using it as a way to rest and prop your head, cheek pillowed on the length of your forearms.
He hums like he's content once you go still. A syrupy sound that pours from him like honey. The graze of his hand follows soon after, the curl of his knuckles and thumb gliding exploratorily down back of your neck to tease across the divot of your spine. It's the kind of touch that someone would hold something delicate with, porcelain or fine glass. Handled with reverence, as though you might shatter into a thousand tiny shards if he were to be too harsh. And it continues downward, sweeping low until he's curiously palming the swell of your ass. Somehow, it doesn't even feel sexual. It's appreciative, like an artist molding clay with their fingertips.
It has something guarded but soft splitting apart inside of you, weeping open with the desire to be held and cradled. A gasp escapes you without you meaning for it to happen, shuddering and dim. As though even your body was reluctant to release it, but it couldn't be contained. The warmth of his palm sweeps over you, fingertips tracing over your hips and ass, tensing to grope and squeeze at the fat.
You didn't expect to be handled this carefully, and if you weren't in the right head space, it might have broken you.
"How many do you think we should do." It's murmured in a way that you know isn't truly directed at you, a musing only for himself. Coasting over the form of your body like satin. "How about four. One for each beast you tried to face without thinking. Hm, no. That seems too easy." His pats you on your right cheek, deceptively gentle considering what he has in store for you. "Let's double it then. Eight strikes in total for misbehaving. You'll be able to handle that, won't you?"
You're already wet and it's humiliating. Arousal damp, leaving your pussy to clench around nothing.
"Yes, I can handle it," you choke out.
"Really. Let's test that, shall we."
You don't get to linger on how the tone of his voice spikes, raising the slightest degree with what sounds suspiciously like delight. You hear the impact before you feel it. A sharp, pronounced crack that splits across the heady air like kindling being broken over a knee. And then comes the pain. White-hot, doused over your nerves in a rush that throbs.
It has you more shocked than anything. You expected him to take things slow, to work you up into it, but maybe you were just being delusional for trying to convince yourself of that. The way he had dug his thumb onto your tongue earlier should have proof enough that he wasn't going to be sweet. He's bearing his full weight into his arm. Hitting you strongly enough that you know you'll be tender after this, skin inflamed and sore. Covered with bruises that will take weeks to heal.
"What the fuck, Tamsy—"
"Is it too much for you?" He asks, but there isn't an ounce of care to heard. It's all mockery. Gloating sadism.
"No," you grit through clenched teeth.
"Good. Then start counting."
You center yourself with a deep breath, stilling yourself as the flare of pain decreases and melts into a raw pleasure. Violent but blissful in its own right.
"One— "
He doesn't let you get the first number out before he's striking you with the second blow, palm flat and harsh, brought down directly over the same cheek that he's already hit. Absolutely determined to leave you tender, wracked with pain and pleasure. It makes you toes curl, muscles flexing as the hurt sears through you.
"Two." You spit it out like its toxic and dig your nails into the sofa's worn fabric in a feeble attempt to brace yourself.
"There you go," he coos. "So you can be good. You just need a little directing. A firm hand to keep you in check."
His words, as much as they piss you off, reach some needy part of you. The one that longs to please, to be wanted and kept. Captured and embraced. A feeble thing, starved for attention. The musical cadence drips inside your ear like sap, saccharin and intoxicating. You find yourself arching your back, spine bowing to press it against the palm of his hand when he sweeps it over your ass, soothing and irritating your screaming nerves all at once.
His sweetness is temporary. In a blink, he draws his arm back and brings it down where you're still raw, one, two strikes in quick succession. It douses you in liquid fire, a burn that has more cum smearing down your inner thighs, soaked and shameless. It ebbs through in deep, vibrant rolls, cresting over the other, and you have to concentrate to breathe through it. Manually urging your lungs to expand and contract around the air.
Through the haze you just barely remember to count the two hits. You breathe around your voice, a trembling noise that sounds pathetic to your own ears, but your mind has become too muddled for you to truly care about things like pride. Your ego having been weighed down, buried underneath the brutal ecstasy boiling through your veins, clouding your skull in an intoxicating vapor.
"Look at you, you're already halfway there," he says, managing to praise and degrade you in a single purr. "Such a pretty thing for me."
You moan without meaning to. The sound is more of hitch. A strangled whine, but it pours out you anyway, lewd and punched out. Everything about it is jarring. The noises coming out of you, the sting of his hand, this entire interaction. It's all unexpected. Never in a million years would you have imagined that you would actually end up here, naked and laid out on Tamsy's lap in the middle of sandstorm. It almost makes you laugh, delirious, but you swallow it down before it can escape.
He's like a juxtaposition. Balanced dangerously between tender and malicious. He's usually so soft spoken and demure, you should have known he'd be a sadist—
He traces a finger over your pussy, gliding it down over your entrance to soak it in your arousal. It's dirty how he smears it, a second finger joining in to crudely slip over your clit and then back up again. Back and forth, over and over, feeling the way you involuntarily clench around nothing when he circles the tips over your hole, spreading you open. You're so soaked that you can hear it, how wet it is.
You nearly get lost in it, hips lifting on their own to chase after the pleasure, but you should have known better. You should have expected it. His fingers leave you, and you aren't able to mourn the loss, to complain like you want to. He touches you again, but it isn't with a hand that gives. It isn't gentle or rewarding. It's an open palm, flat and firm, brought down directly against your cunt.
It's molten. Light explodes behind your eyelids — you hadn't realized you'd squeezed them shut from the impact — bright and searing, the blaze of a thousand suns. The hit seems to reverberate through you, sparking through your blood and setting your skin ablaze in a confused torrent of a rapturous torment. It is painful, but truly it's the surprise of it that really gets you, muddling every thought in your brain, burning them down into ash, insignificant. Leaving you dazed and helpless, caught within the cage of his body while everything seems to roll through your entire being.
You're tempted to lash out at him, to call him out for neglecting to at least give you a proper head's up, but the words melt on your tongue, turning into another useless whine.
". . . asshole." That's all you can manage. A weak insult on a shuddering breath.
His free hand settles on the back of your neck, fingers looping around your choker and gripping it until the cord hugs your throat, making your lungs feel tight, airways shallowly restricted from the pressure. It makes you lightheaded.
"No, I don't think that's the word you're looking for. Did you forget to keep count?" He taunts. Sharp teeth disguised behind the veil of geniality. "If you can't remember, then maybe we should start over all again. Give you the chance to get it right."
Alarm reaches you despite the haze, lighting splitting through fog. Your head tries to tilt, just enough for you to glare at him from over your shoulder but the press of his hand on your choker keeps you pinned. Cheek held down on the couch from where it's slipped off of the folded support of your forearms, skin shoved on worn polyester. You can just barely make him out from the corner of your peripheral vision if you strain enough, and your eyes meet his over the slope of your shoulder. They're just as tranquil and unfazed as they always are, pale in the darkness, watching you with the relaxed satisfaction of a predator that's got its pray trapped between its claws.
A taunt is right there, on the tip of your tongue. Burning hot like the point of a heated poker, but the insult never comes. Instead, there's a shaky exhale, and then: "Five."
Disappointment echoes through you, scathing like a venom, but it's vanquished just as quickly as it appeared. Extinguished underneath the tide of pleasure that froths up when you see how gratified he looks when you give him the response he wanted. He's smiling, like the smarmy jack ass he is. It's one you've never seen on him before. There's an element about it that's alarming, lips pulled just a bit too wide to seem normal. Stretched to a degree that hangs on the fringes of the uncanny valley. Gloating, arrogant, inhuman. Eyes glinting with a fervid contentment. The expression of someone who's relishing in the sight of you vulnerable, quaking from the rousing blend of pleasure and pain.
You've seen him smile before, of course, but never anything like this. They're always soft, pleasant, showing a kind of quiet restraint and manners. Nothing like this, all sharp edged and cruel spirited. But some twisted little part of you, small and buried deep behind your ribcage, seated between the crevice of your lungs and sinew, likes it. It would creep you out — it should, but you're already a lost cause. You were since the moment he held your face with his hand. Probably further than that, honestly. All those quiet moments in the bar, sipping on bad booze and lazing in each other's company, every time he's protected you against trash beasts and traffickers, have all lead to this and you were just too blind to see it.
He had you from the very start.
His fingers caress between the apex of your thighs, calming the sting he made. The cool temperature of them is a balm on the ache, and you can't help the way your eyelashes flutter, how you sigh in relief when deft fingertips trace low to circle your clit. The pleasure melts through you, draining the tension from your muscles. You go lax across his lap instantly, turned docile with only a few nimble strokes of his fingertips.
"See. This is how things can be when you don't act like a brat."
You hum in response. The scowl you meant to flash him ruined by how your eyes squeeze shut instead. Lulled into a stupor by the way he's still pulling at the choker around your neck, keeping it firm around the base of your throat, and the steady rhythm of his fingers on your clit has your reasoning turning liquid.
"But you've only got three more to go. Keep being good for me, and I might just reward you after." He leans in just a little then. Enough that you can feel the strands of his navy hair tickle over the flat of your back, drawing out a shudder that trembles through your bones. "Do you think you can manage that?"
"Yes."
"Yes, what?"
Your brows cinch close, lips parting dumbly. It's instinctual to want to snark back. And there's bubbling under the surface, and you can tell he can see what you're contemplating. Recognition dances in his eyes. It isn't frustrated but delighted. Like the prospect of you defying him would only entertain him. The temptation to oppose him is there. To offer some scathing jibe.
But it doesn't come. You're shocked by the discovery, how the vexed heat beneath your skin simmers and dies. You're tired of the constant fighting. The resistance, the battle you've been ceaselessly struggling against. For just this once, if only for an hour or few minutes, you'd like to simply exist. You don't want to think, you want to feel.
Your gaze softens, the fire in your eyes reduced to sparks that extinguish into cinder. You swallow unsteadily around the saliva that's pooled inside your mouth, and the flex of your throat strains against the restriction of the choker. "Yes, sir."
"There's my good girl. I knew she was in there, buried down behind all of those petty insults, the stupid fighting. You really needed this, didn't you?" Something like a laugh puffs from him then, pleased with himself. "Well, I suppose I don't have to ask that. I already know you did with how often I got to hear you moaning my name like some cheap slut late at night. All worked up over your fingers. I wonder what you'll sound like on mine."
Of course that's when he chooses to slip them inside of you, two at once, agile and long, stretching you open. You gasp into the sofa, a ragged moan, drawn out like you've been wounded breaks from you. Your cunt spasms at the abruptness of it but ultimately yields to the intrusion. You're so wet already that they slide in without any resistance, your body giving in. Your hips move on their own, gingerly rolling to try and build the pleasure deeper.
He's hard. You can feel him right there against your stomach, prodding at you through the thick layers of his clothes, and you can't help but to loathe the fact that he's still wearing them. You don't want to get your hopes up, but he feels heavy, long based on how the length of his cock spans along the shape of your abdomen.
Your jaw drops when he curls his fingers and strokes them in further, and it feels so good. Each brush and crook building up a delicious euphoria that flows through you, thick and smoky. Every drag earns another noise, low and thin, but you can't keep them back. It all floods from you uninhibited, spilling like wine from a tipped over chalice. And it makes you greedy, spine bowing into a bigger arch, arms lifting as much as he'll allow to push yourself back on the stretch of his fingers. When you moan this time, it's not another insult, but his name. Spoken out on the foggy atmosphere as though it were a prayer.
"Knew you'd sound prettier like this," he hums. "Those pathetic fingers of yours just weren't cutting it, were they."
But his generosity is temporary; it always comes at a price. His fingers are gone, slipped out of you without a single warning, and the gutted sob that leaves you is pitiful. There's no chance to mourn the loss or to curse him for it. The weight of his palm connects with the swell of your ass with a sharp impact, one that leaves you reeling, nails clawing at the sofa to cling for a shred of stability.
"Six," you hiccup. The word leaves you without a single thought, as though it's become instinct. Second nature.
"Very good." Simple praise, but you're suspended on it.
The next comes just as swift, just as brutal as the previous. Except it hits lower, right there over the back of your pussy where he still has your thighs spread open. It makes your teeth clench, involuntarily writhing as the affects of it lash through you, making your eyes roll when you shudder. The grip he has on your choker keeps you centered through the barrage. The fingers he has around the cord release so that he can sweep them over the nape of your neck, reverent in its touch.
"Seven."
Anticipation draws up in the pit of your belly, it pools down between your thighs, and you want it so badly. The hurt is rapturous, the ache made from the first blow merging and growing when he delivers the final hit. It lands directly over your cunt, the splay of his fingers sparking a heat over your clit that's so intense, you swear you almost come.
You body clenches like it just might, pleasure lapping through your marrow, twisting like a hot coil in the cradle of your hips, but the release never crests. It just stays there, holding you in an awful limbo. One with no beginning or end. You're stuck, right on the precipice of ecstasy. So close that you can taste it, vivid and bright, but just outside of your reach.
"Eight," you manage. Watery from unshed tears. You don't even realize that you've started begging until you feel your voice reverberating through your throat, airy and desperate. A string of, "Please, Tamsy. Please, I wan' it."
"You do, do you?" He asks, but it's performative. Meant to humiliate you more than you already are. But you can't manage to be humiliated at all with how starved you become for it, soaked and aching. "You want me fuck you. Think you've earned it?"
You're nodding, no contemplating, no hesitation. "Yes. Yes, please. I'll be good. I swear."
It's quiet for too long, and his hands don't move. Firm around your neck, the other traces unintelligible shapes and symbols on your ass, making the tender flesh more sensitive, aggravating the nerves. You hiss at the throb, but you don't flinch. You're too focused on the moment, of the feel of him under you, the steady fluctuation of his chest rising and falling, the warmth of him. Grounding, pleasant. And yet it manages to slip your notice that his hands have shifted until it's too late.
In a disorienting blur he's shoving you further up the couch, using the gap between your bodies to lift himself out from underneath you. The material of his uniform rustles and drags over the sofa, the heavy drape of his coat framing your waist as he leans over your back. His hands are hot and rigid when they close around your hips, latching onto you with the strength of steel bands, enabling him to use the leverage to jerk them up. Guiding your spine into a pronounced arch, giving you no option but to hold yourself up on the support of your knees so that you don't completely collapse in a lust drunk sprawl.
He completely folds himself over you, nudging his head next yours, tracing the point of his nose against your temple. An action so tender that it makes you ache far more than his hand did. His cock drags against your pussy, bare and thick — when the hell did he even pull down his pants? — smearing your arousal over its length. Getting it wet and sloppy, and teasing you all at once.
"If you want it so badly," he pants. "Then take it." His teeth nip at your ear just as he lines up the tip with your pussy and sinks in until his hips are flush with the backs of your thighs. He's so much bigger than you expected, stretching you open, spreading you thin on the length of him. And then you feel it — or them, rather. The rounded points of three individual bars, smooth metal, rubbing across the tight clench of your cunt as he drives himself inside of you, so deep that it robs you of oxygen.
Piercings.
Of course he has his dick pierced.
They feel far better than they have any right to be, providing a texture that you didn't think you ever needed. He fucks himself into you in heavy strokes. Driving so deep that you frantically search for something to hold onto, a single hand blindly reaching in the dark, fingers grasping for anything to hold. When his hand finds yours, straying from the vice grip it has your waist to hold your palm, it's unexpected. Too intimate for whatever this is, but you cling to him regardless, unable to resist.
"Tamsy, I— fuck."
"Just like that, pretty girl." His voice sinks in, hypnotic, tantalizing. "Be good for me and take every inch just like a good slut should."
He fucks you like he's angry. Quick, brutal thrusts as though he's trying to carve himself inside of you. Wet sounds echo throughout the shack, loud and filthy over the howl of the wind. Filling your ears with the crude smack of skin on skin — a damp plap, plap, plap, accompanied by his panting and your unrestrained moans. All of it reverberates off of the metal walls, a ceaseless echo. It's all you can hear, all you can feel is him, inside of you, around you. You still taste the salt of his skin on your tongue, and it makes you crave more.
Your hips lift, greedy to meet the pace he's set, to bring you both pleasure. Pain flares across the tender skin of your ass each time he drives into you, the press of his body amplifying the raw heat sizzling over the inflamed flesh. But the ache of it also intensifies the pleasure. It has it twisting in your stomach, an unforgiving knot, lightning spiraling in taut loops.
You aren't going to last long. You know you aren't; you can feel it. He's worked you up so much already. Shoved you close to that delicious edge with every strike he left on your ass. The bruises that are forming, the tender skin, it all licks through you. The rawness of it hums at your clit. It's like you're being consumed. Eaten alive by the pleasure and pain that seems to douse every inch of you. He has you eclipsed inside of him, the bliss he feeds you, the curl of his body over yours. It's almost too much, but also not enough, and yet you can already feel the orgasm welling up inside of you, blazing, picking you apart piece by piece.
You try to stave it off as best as you can. You don't want it. Not yet. Not so soon, but it's persistent, pooling inside of you like molten honey pouring through your blood stream. Your fingers clench around his hand like it might save you.
"Tamsy, wait, I don't — not yet, please."
"You gonna come?" His voice curls in your ear, condescending and smooth like silk. "But we just started. So pitiful, baby."
He's so cruel, you should have expected it as soon as the hand around your waist vanished. It's back on you less than a second later, shoved directly between your thighs, fingers pressed on your clit.
"Wait," you plead. But he doesn't stop, and it's too late.
You're wound up so tight that all it takes is a few sweeps of those fingertips, the vigorous thrust of his cock splitting you open, the press of his piercings dragging over your walls. You get taken under without any time to brace for it. Abrupt and violent. Everything in you seizes as though you've been electrified, muscles bunching up viciously. Your pussy clenches around him in a vice grip, squeezing to wring out every ounce of bliss from your body, and it makes your lungs too tense to properly breathe. Stars cloud your vision, iridescent and flashing against the dark. Vibrant from how floaty your head has become, thoughts muffled.
Still, you notice through it all, that he's not stopping. He hasn't come yet.
The pleasure is dulling, and what takes its place is too tender and sharp. He's merciless, fucking you despite your hypersensitivity, relentless even when your hips writhe in an impulsive attempt to try and escape the onslaught.
"It's too much."
He lets go of your hand, prying it from your fingers and that makes you whine more than the mean way he's toying with your clit. There's no opportunity to gulp down a proper breath, to plead or beg him for reprieve. His free arm hooks around your ribs, as giving as a band of iron, to haul you up and onto your knees. Fully drawing you into the press of his chest, pinning you onto his body while he drives up into you. No where to run or move. There's not an ounce of give within his hold on you. All you can do is take it, reduced to little more than a doll for him to fuck.
His chin hooks over your shoulder, nose dragging over your cheek when the fervor behind his thrusts jostles you both. Something about the angle has him brushing a little deeper, and the head of his cock strikes that debilitating spot inside of you. The one that makes your spine bow and toes curl.
"You'll come as many times as I want you to." He angles his head lower, lips tracing over sweat-damp skin, and then his jaw is parting open. Teeth sink into flesh. The agony that rips through your split nerves is so awful that the way your pussy clenches tight around his cock almost seems like a betrayal. It shouldn't feel good. You shouldn't like how it throbs with hurt, but you do. The euphoria of it simmers in your stomach, it splashes like a galaxy behind your eyelids, and you whine liked you've been gutted open.
There's a reprimand in the strength of his bite. A claim too, unspoken and hedonistic. It feels like he's cutting his name into you, making a pact with blood and teeth. It confronts you with a reality that you hadn't bothered to ponder until now. What comes after this. How things will be when the high is over and you're both left to face the consequences of what you've done. It leaves you with the horrendous truth that you don't think you'll be able to pretend that this never happened. Now that you've had him like this, breathless in your ears, covered in a sheen of sweat, speaking words to you that you've only ever imagined, there's no way you'll be able to forget it. This. Him.
Your neck goes slack, head lolling onto his shoulder. Your arm feels shaky when you lift it, bones gone lax and useless but you don't let it stop you from raising it up to thread your fingers through his hair. It twines through your grasp like silken threads, water spilling through a tense palm. You don't think when you nudge at his head, urging him to release the pinch of his jaw from around your shoulder. Thankfully he relents, allowing you to guide his head at an angle, and you lean your own so that you can press your lips to his blood stained mouth.
He groans. A throaty noise that tapers off into what could have been a whine. He doesn't pull away like some tiny part of you, briefly ignored by your impulses, had feared. He leans into it, matching your fervent rhythm and then surpassing it, dominating the metallic kiss through an exchange of nipping teeth and the sweep of tongue. Licking into your mouth as though he wants to drink you down. It's sloppy, a little crazed. It's not the kind of kiss you would have initially expected from Tamsy. You always imagined a reverential restraint, prim and gentle, lightly teasing. But this is sybaritic and ravenous.
There's a violence to it, as though you're both trying to consume the other, sinking your teeth into the plush of the others lips. Determined to leave a mark. To stake a claim on each other's bodies. Unified by animalistic desperation. But under the frenzy of it, there is an adoration. It's worship made from the scrape of canines and the smear of spit. It's raw, unrestrained, and in the display of unrestricted lust, is true devotion.
The weight of it splits you apart from the inside. It caves your chest in, turns you vulnerable and bare. But you can't stop. Can't shy away or flee within the safety of yourself. You let it all spill over you, the piety and the affection you feel, as dangerous and startling as it is. Even if it destroys you from the inside out, eats you like a disease, you know you won't stop wanting him now.
You're not in love with him. Not yet, but you're already somewhere hazardously close to it. Balanced precariously on the fringes. One misstep or push and you'll collapse right into its unforgiving embrace.
You want him to devour you whole. You want to swallow him down until you bleed into each other.
The grip you have weaved through his hair tightens, nails clawing down his scalp enough that it must sting. He hisses into your mouth, but he doesn't pull away. If anything, he kisses you deeper, his hips drive into you harder, splitting you open on his cock like he wants to wedge himself inside of you permanently.
"Tamsy," you slur, tongue stolen by how he traces it with his own. "Please, I wanna come again. I need it, I want you to fill me up."
"Is that what you want," he murmurs against your lips, the chilled metal of his piercing a shock on your heated, bitten mouth. "But I thought you couldn't handle it. 'It's too much.'" It's a patronizing mimicry of your voice, pitched high and whiney. But you can hear it, how equally affected he is. Breathless and trembling.
It's difficult to be annoyed by his mockery, irritation dwindling into nothing when he draws his fingers around your clit in tight loops, reducing your thoughts into incomprehensible mush. You jerk, still teetering between a limbo of hypersensitivity and the need for more. More friction, more pleasure, more pain, more him.
"I know," you gasp, ribs shuddering from the full body tremble he wrangles from you, keeping you full and spread thin on his girth. The three piercings lined down his cock drag inside of you, brushing up against tender spots, places you didn't realize you had and your eyes nearly go cross from it. "I didn't mean it. I need you, need you to make me come, please." You pepper kisses along the cushion of his lips, soft and adoring, tilting your head back a little further to trail them over and past the corner of his mouth, feeling the texture of his scars. The angle is hell on your neck, straining the muscles, but you can't be bothered to care. Your voice trickles out, a hushed, shameless stream of "Please, please, please, please."
"Should have known you'd be this way. All that snark you always like to give me; you just needed to have it fucked out of you." He groans when your fingers snag at his hair, his hips twitch. "I should keep you like this all the time, pinned down on my cock. Maybe I'd even use Tokushin on you. Have you all bound up and pretty for me."
Your cunt seizes tight around him, muscles flexing while you moan. The thought of it and the persistent strum of his fingers, the roll and grind of his hips has you going dumb.
"Of course you'd like that. You'd let me do anything I wanted to you."
You nod, the movement sluggish and loose, like a bobble head.
"Go on then. Let me see how pretty you are when you come."
It tears through you then, inevitable, bigger than the previous. It engulfs you in its scope, sweeps you under, stronger than the storm raging outside. Your hips jerk, spine arching while you squirm against the band of his arm around your torso. It keeps you trapped. Forced to feel every ounce of pleasure, every inch of his cock as it fucks up into you.
You hear yourself sob from it all. A warbled cry of his name as the ecstasy shreds through you. He groans when your pussy bears down on him, locking him inside to draw out your pleasure. And he doesn't stop either, urging you through your orgasm while chasing after his own. You can hear how wrecked he is, just barely concealing his fracturing composure behind tight gasps and thin whines. Whispering in your ear to guide you through it, hushed praises of "Let yourself have it" and "Keep going. Keep fucking yourself on it, pretty girl."
His fingertips keep stroking over your clit, steady circles that have you seeing stars, making your cunt tighter and sloppy with your cum. And then his hips are lurching, pace made choppy, bouncing you up and down on his length to chase after his own end. He reaches it just as yours begins to ebb, coming deep inside of you with a guttural moan that fades in a hitched whimper. The warmth of his release pulses through you, reaching deep and settling at the seat of your stomach, pooling inside.
He grinds into you, drawing out your shared pleasure for as long as he can, keeping you both floating and intoxicated on the high of it. He stops only once it becomes uncomfortable, the blissful heat fading into something that's too much, too raw for either of you to handle. Both of his arms draw close, encircling your middle, and he drops his head to scatter open mouthed kisses over the wound on your shoulder. Apologetic, doting.
You're too exhausted to move. Panting and loose-limbed, sated with a satisfaction that's rooted in bone deep. You don't resist when he slips himself from you, though it's uncomfortable to enough to make you hiss. The combination of your cum drips from you, smearing down the inside of your thighs, wet and filthy, but you don't voice any complaints. You don't care to despite how gross it feels. You're still happy regardless, shrouded in a fine mist of your elation, body thrumming with balmy aftershocks.
You half expect for the atmosphere between you to turn stale and awkward. For him to nudge you away from him, indifferent now that he's gotten off, but he doesn't. Instead he's drawing you closer while he shifts to settle you both down, sorting out the curl of his limbs until he's able to comfortably splay them out. Carefully directing you until you're both reclined on the sofa, legs tangled, skin slick with sweat, curled into each other like you're the only things in the entire universe that matter anymore.
It's a reflex for your mind to try and take off with what happens next. How this will impact your dynamic, but you shut down that stream of thoughts before they can get out of hand. Sealing them like the tightening of a valve on a faucet. You don't want face reality yet. To stress and concern yourself with the what ifs. For now, you just want to exist. To indulge in the moment, to laze in the warmth of his body against yours, even if it won't last forever. Your neck pulses with the pain of his bite, but there's no anger over the bloodied mark, just peace. The kind of calm that comes with being claimed, accepted.
For now you can just be and bask in each other's presence, consequences be damned.
Right now, there's only you and him. The absentminded glide of his fingers tracing down the divot of your spine, the warmth of his breath caressing the crown of your head, his heart beating vigorously under your ear. Within this pocket of space you've made for yourselves, the wind outside doesn't sound so monstrous. It's no longer the wailing of a lonely animal but a song. One made just for the both of you.
When he speaks next, satin-soft, it's a salve on an open wound. The relief of water flowing down a parched throat, embodied as a hum caressing against your heated skin. "Let's stay like this for now. At least until the storm passes."
You don't argue or resist. You settle, going lax, body curving to fit with his own. You can't help but to smile, your agreement going unsaid but definitely felt by how you tuck yourself into him, turning your face into the cradle of his neck, breathing in his scent.
You can't imagine anywhere else you'd rather be right now.
You don't notice the unsettled chill that creeps up your spine.
[ warnings: watching each other masturbate, soft, poetic smut, a detailed description of the deadly disease and the unpleasant symptoms associated with it ]
[ description: After being treated by King Saladin's physicians, King Baldwin begins to leave his chambers. The people of the court whisper around her that the young ruler will not even live to be thirty years old. As a lady of waiting of his sister, she attracts his attention. ]
Author's Note: I said it and I did it: I know this isn't your typical Ewan Mitchell character, but I couldn't resist. I'm glad I wrote this because I had too many thoughts after watching this movie and now my soul is at peace! For those who haven't seen Kingdom of Heaven, I highly recommend it, it's an amazing production.
Word count: 3.900
Part 2 – White Marriage
* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *
My other works: Masterlist
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Jerusalem seemed to her at once a paradise and a hell on earth, both beautiful, sublimely sacred, as much as broken, dirty and cruel. The reign of King Baldwin IV was a reign of restraint and peace, the greatest evidence of which was his rich diplomatic correspondence with King Saladin himself.
Baldwin gave permission for the Muslim part of Jerusalem to hold prayers as it wished, on payment of appropriate taxes – a huge step towards reconciling the city's disparate population and a cause of contention among the Christian knights.
As lady of the court, she accompanied the royal sister, Sibylla, like her shadow, serving her with conversation, reading books in her company, being the equivalent of her friend and confidante, watching over her welfare.
She was the third daughter, and was therefore a burden to her lord father, who sent her to Jerusalem to the royal court when she was thirteen. Her father hoped that Sibylla herself would find her a suitable husband and put up the coins for her dowry, allowing her family to glory on the Old Continent in the fact that her chosen one was favoured by the God in the Holy Land.
Looking at Princess Sibylla's marriage, she prayed that she would never meet her fate, preferring to eventually fade into old age in a monastery.
Her Lady abhorred her husband: not in a physical context, for he was not unlike other great knights in stature or appearance, but in his heart, which was filled with the lust for power.
Although he believed that he was acting in the name of Christ on the Earth, he represented neither his mercy nor his prudence, being a simply unkind and spiteful man.
Sibylla was given in marriage to him at the age of 15, and she watched her sufferings and humiliations in silence, only being able to allow herself occasionally to close her hand on hers, giving her encouragement.
It was known that her husband's dream was the death of the King, for it would then be his wife who would become heir to the throne. Someone might laugh at this wish, knowing that King Baldwin was only 16 years old when she arrived at court.
However, despite such a young age, it was known that the King would probably not live to see his thirtieth year.
The cruel disease that had descended upon his body when he was still a young child, leprosy, was the reason why his whole body was covered, and his face was adorned with a beautiful silver mask – the only thing visible through it were his eyes, bright and wise, the skin around his eyelids all red.
His sister despaired at his undeserved suffering, at the thought that his body was falling apart, his skin peeling and pulling away from his muscles, causing him excruciating pain. He could not touch anyone or be touched directly because his disease was contagious.
Thus, one of the greatest rulers of Jerusalem, a man who had accomplished the impossible and ushered, at least for a while, the Kingdom of Heaven into this forbidden holy land, suffered daily torment.
As she prayed for the health of her family and his sister, she also prayed for him – since Christ was able to miraculously cure lepers, as the Bible itself said, perhaps there was hope for him too.
As a sign of respect and friendship, the Muslim King Saladin sent a retinue of his best physicians to relieve the King of his pain, which must have helped at least to some extent, for although she had previously only seen him in audience standing by his sister's side, now the King began to walk through the palace gardens on his own.
One day, when Sibylla noticed him standing next to one of the monks, she approached him immediately, praising his name, and she moved humbly to follow her, feeling grateful at the thought that the King was indeed feeling better.
That perhaps her prayers had been answered.
"Brother. It rejoices me to see you in the fresh air, away from the suffocating comfort of your chambers full of books and parchments." Sibylla said, pulling her shawl from her mouth, revealing her face to her brother.
As a married woman, she covered her face out of sheer decency, as her husband was a jealous man, but she, as a maiden, in addition almost always being in the presence of her Lady, did not have to do so.
"Your judgement is too harsh, dear sister. Books and parchments are my solace in the hardest of times." He said calmly and lazily, effortlessly – it was the first time she had heard his voice this close and she thought the words coming out of his mouth were like humming.
He had a white linen cloth draped over his head that reminded her of the headgear of the pharaohs, a richly embroidered white robe and gloves on his body, a silver mask portraying the features of a handsome, masculine man on his face.
She swallowed hard as his gaze shifted to her, catching her looking shamelessly at her ruler's face, causing her to lower her head immediately.
"Let's take a walk. We should take advantage of the beautiful weather." Said his sister, wanting to take his arm, he however moved away immediately and shook his head.
Pain and sadness crossed Sibylla's face, but after a moment she only nodded and forced herself to smile, walking ahead with him, letting her and the King's servant walk a few steps behind them.
That evening, for the first time, the King summoned her.
"Do not fret." Sibylla said. "My brother is a man of decency and sensitivity. Rest assured, he will not set upon your virtue or force you to do things unworthy of a lady. He confessed to me that he would like to look at your face for at least a moment longer and asked me to convey his wish to you, indicating that you may refuse."
She looked at her in disbelief, feeling the blush of embarrassment appear on her cheeks at her words, feeling her heart begin to pound like mad.
"If it is the will of our beloved King, I will do so." She said, and Sibylla nodded, giving her one satisfied smile.
She wore her most beautiful robe and hair adornments as if she were about to attend a nuptials – the material cast over her body was blue, fastened at the shoulders and waist with golden buckles, in her hair at the sides jewellery resembling a wreath of laurel leaves.
As she entered his chamber, candles burned all around, she was also struck by the intense scent of lavender – she noticed immediately his white, seated figure bent over thick tomes. His head turned towards her, in his mask she was able to see the reflection of everything around him.
"Do not be afraid. Come closer." He said softly and she nodded, feeling her heart flutter in her chest like a bird.
Her footsteps on the stone floor echoed through his chamber, the rustling of her robe as she sat down opposite him made her sound similar to the rustling of leaves.
She swallowed hard as she watched him sigh and spread out comfortably in his chair, looking her straight in the eye – she immediately looked away, unaccustomed to such confidentiality with anyone.
"No." He said. "Don't deny me this pleasure."
She tightened her fingers on the material of her garment, lifting her gaze to him again, feeling herself involuntarily begin to breathe through her mouth.
She could see the calm and curiosity in his eyes – his head was tilted slightly to one side, as if he was thinking about something, silence all around him.
"I'm making you uncomfortable." He concluded.
She shook her head quickly, horrified, thinking that something in her posture or gaze had discouraged him.
"No, Your Grace. I just don't know how to behave. What is appropriate for me to do or say in your presence. Silence is safe." She confessed in shame, lowering her eyes to her fingers again, reminding herself after a moment that she should not do so.
The King hummed at her words.
"Do not take my words as my attempt to mock you, however, knowing how little time I have left in this wretched world has made me tread lightly in courtly etiquette." He said with amusement, not taking his eyes off her, something flashed in his gaze as if someone had lit a candle inside them.
"We waste time feigning care and respect, hiding what is true, arising from the depths of our hearts, because that is what etiquette demands of us. When we stand before God, will we say to him: I have never really loved or sympathised, but my lips have left many beautiful, great words?" He asked, and she looked at him in disbelief, completely surprised by his approach and what she had heard.
Some part of her knew he was right.
"In this world, only the King can afford to lack beautiful words." She muttered, hearing after a moment that something akin to a chuckle had left his lips.
"You are mistaken. One word from the King can either create or destroy."
She lowered her head, wondering if he had just rebuked her, he, however, seemed satisfied.
"My reign will end with my death, which will be in a few years at the latest. I will not beget an heir to whom I can pass on my philosophy of ruling, the values that are essential. My sister's husband and his greed will sit on the throne, and Jerusalem will fall." He said calmly, as if he were telling her about the weather, his fingers clad in a white silk glove tapping rhythmically against the table top.
She swallowed hard, feeling a squeeze in her heart, wondering if perhaps the reason he had summoned her was quite different from what she had suspected.
"What shall I do, my King?" She asked, and he laughed again, louder this time, looking at her as if something in her question gave him pleasure.
"Your devotion rejoices my heart. Do not think, however, that you will hear from me an order that would condemn you to eternal damnation. I could not then leave this world in peace. No. I wish that when I disappear, someone will watch over my sister. To help her escape when all is lost here, no matter what her husband will desire. Do you understand what I have in mind?" He asked softly, and she nodded, thinking she felt more respect towards him than ever.
"Yes, my King." She replied.
He smiled at her words, she saw it in his gaze. She lifted her gaze higher, towards the windows by which the shoots of dried lavender hung, surrounding them with a pleasant, refreshing scent.
"I had these beautiful flowers brought in from far away. They mask well the unpleasant ailments of my illness on hot days. The smell of rotting flesh is one of the most disgusting to man, for nature equates it with spoiled food from which he can die." He explained, and she looked at him in disbelief, feeling hot shame ripple through her body at his words.
His suffering must have been unimaginable.
"Knights praise their own greatness and bravery during battles wishing for songs to be sung about them. I, for one, hope to hear songs about Baldwin IV, a wise and prudent King, a merciful Monarch who fought each day with his own suffering and triumphed. I do not know the words that can convey my admiration for your person." She mouthed in a trembling voice, feeling that her hands lying on her thighs were quivering all over with emotion, burning tears for some reason squeezed under her eyelids.
The King looked at her for a long moment in silence, something in his gaze that made her feel a pleasant tingling in her fingertips.
"Your soul is as beautiful as your body. You are like a breath of cool wind on a hot day. I am grateful to you for allowing me to experience this joy."
As she left his chamber, for some reason she burst out crying.
She could not understand why: it seemed to her that her heart squeezed all over in pain, not only out of compassion, but also out of a sense of injustice that a man so great and enlightened was experiencing undeserved torment every day.
Or was it through his ordeal that he became such a man, such a King?
If the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven were to open before anyone in the second life, it was before him, she thought.
That night she could not sleep: she was ashamed of herself for thinking about him. She tried not to pay attention to men, knowing their nature, knowing that they might consider it an invitation on her part to sin.
However, the time she spent with him, although she might perceive his words as ambiguous, seemed to her something almost spiritual, a moment of awakening, as if she had been in a half-sleep until the moment she looked into his eyes.
His gaze would find her in the audience among the other servants and ladies of the court. She knew this because his eyes stopped on her face, and although he listened intently to what his subjects were saying to him, she knew that for that one moment he was focused only on her.
The flutter of her heart shamed her, allowing her to realise that, like a flower, a warm and pleasant feeling was blossoming within her, coming from God.
"You occupy my brother's thoughts. He follows you with his eyes." Said Sibylla as they walked together through the corridors of the great, cold stone fortress.
"It was not my desire to distract him from the affairs of the Kingdom." She confessed with shame, entwining her fingers on her womb, looking sadly at her fingers. His sister snorted at her words.
"Jerusalem is destroying him. It is the Kingdom that is his disease. He has taken upon himself all its sins, purified it. He gave it years of peace and dignity." She said with a pain from which she felt a sting in her heart.
Why was it that whenever she thought of him she wanted to cry?
"I want to relieve him." She said finally, looking at her uncertainly, afraid of how the words sounded when they left her mouth. Sibylla stopped, looking at her with furrowed brows.
"Don't be a fool. My brother will not condemn you to a fate similar to his own."
"There are many ways to experience relief. You said so yourself, Princess."
Sibylla looked at her thoughtfully and after a moment nodded, giving her wordless consent to whatever she wished to do.
The trust she had in her intimidated her.
As the siblings' chambers were next to each other, walking along the corridor from one quarters to the other was not a problem for her – Sibylla dismissed her guards so that no one could see in what negligee she went to the king's chamber.
Her long hair was loose, her body covered only by a thin nightgown, rubbed with fragrant oils, on her shoulders a cashmere shawl with which she covered herself to protect herself from the cold.
When she closed the door behind her and turned to face him, his eyes were wide in shock. He was silent for a moment, clearly not knowing what to say.
"No." He said finally. "Go back to your chamber."
"I have not come to you to sin. Does the sight of me disgust you, my King?" She asked in a trembling voice, feeling that she was breathing heavily through her mouth, her heart pounding like mad in her chest.
She saw something in his gaze that looked like he felt pain, his figure creased slightly, as if he had run out of strength.
"God created you to subject me to the ultimate trial. He is torturing me like Job."
She felt a single, warm, heavy tear run down her cheek at his words, her body trembling all over, hot and cold at the same time with desire, though she did not know what kind or what was causing it.
"God sent me to soothe your suffering." She whispered.
They looked at each other like that for a long moment that lasted an eternity, and only after a while did she realise that his silence was due to the fact that he wanted whatever she was going to do to be due to her free will. Therefore, she moved tentatively towards his bed, on which she saw a clean, snow-white sheets, and lay down on her back, putting her shawl aside.
She looked up at him – his gaze was fixed on her, his silhouette sitting in a chair by the window frozen in stillness, the whiteness of his attire seeming to her to shine amidst the candles and the surrounding darkness of the night.
She swallowed hard, feeling the dryness in her throat as her fingers lifted to the ties of her nightgown – she untied the knot, a pleasant squeeze spreading between her thighs, something sticky beginning to leak from it onto the sheet beneath her buttocks.
"– does what I am doing disgust you, my King? – is it a sin? –" She asked, sliding the thin material off her shoulders in a gentle, soft motion, unashamedly revealing her plump, sweet breasts. His gaze fled to them, as if what he had just seen simultaneously terrified and excited him.
"– looking at you, all I feel is desire – it's me sinning in my mind, not you –" He whispered so that she barely heard him, his hand sliding from the table top to his thigh.
Though she knew it was wrong, her whole body screamed, wanting him to touch her, to check for himself how soft and warm her flesh was, her moist, swollen womanhood, pulsing around nothing in desire.
"– not just you, Your Grace –" She muttered in a trembling voice, shamefully mimicking his movements, her long, small fingers sliding down her belly between her thighs, sinking into her warm folds like the moist flesh of an exotic fruit.
His head bowed as they both made a strange, unnatural sound full of surprise at the same moment, a moan as if they had caused each other pain, but yet all she could feel was a wonderful, hot tingling in her quivering womanhood, in her lips, in her nipples, in the tips of her fingertips.
He did not allow her to look at what he was touching under the material of his robe, she could however see the shape of that part of his body outlined on the material – his manhood was long and fat like a piece of stick, growing larger and larger with each squeeze of his hand.
She threw her head back, imagining feeling something that big inside her, in an involuntary reflex finding with her fingertips her puffy slit, slick and tight, resisting her as she tried to slide it inside her.
"– let me see –" He whispered, as if asking for something dirty, disgusting, repulsive.
She, however, felt only the heat of pleasure at his words shake her body – her thighs involuntarily parted, her legs bent at the knees allowing her nightgown to shamelessly reveal all that only her husband should be able to look at.
She felt tears under her eyelids at the thought of wanting to be his wife.
"– you have my love, my King – you have my heart –" She breathed out, digging her fingers deeper into the delicate structure of her folds, teasing again and again the small bud from which her body went through shivers of wonderful, familiar pleasure.
His eyes were fixed on what was between her thighs, his gaze hazy and hot, his breath heavy, the sound of his hand smacking against his flesh sticky and lewd.
"– like the inside of a ripe fruit – like Eve in paradise –" He breathed out, staring at her as if he were looking at something delightful, accelerating the splats of his hand with a low grunt of pleasure. "– so beautiful –"
She felt a thrill of pleasure shake her, shivers ran through her cheeks, breasts and legs at his words, so shameless and yet poetic, beautiful, like the Song of Songs of King David.
"– her breasts are like two fawns –" She hummed, quoting one of the biblical verses, the gaze of her King again fixed on her face, full of fire, heavenly or infernal. "– like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies –"
"– her lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb – milk and honey are under her tongue –" He whispered in reply, quoting another of the songs from the manuscript, making her involuntarily allow her own fingers to invade her insides at last.
She threw her head back with a girlish moan, her free hand gripping the frame of his bed, rolling her hips back and forth, stretching her tight interior with the sticky clicks of her wetness.
"– she is a spring enclosed – a sealed fountain –" He muttered and let out a low, helpless groan of relief, leaning down, his hand lying on the table top clenched into a fist.
She felt a wonderful convulsion shake her body at his words, her fleshy, moist walls beginning to throb and clench around her own fingers.
She imagined that her body had just sucked his seed deep inside her, which would take root in her like a tree, giving him a future and an inheritance.
She moaned as she felt her pleasure reach its peak, seeing for a moment only the darkness before her eyes – her fingers, all wet with her moisture stroked for a moment more the little spot deep inside her, her whole body hot and sweaty from the exertion.
Her release was wonderful and sweet, as if she had tasted the most delicious of fruits.
She opened her eyes and met his gaze, his figure relaxed and spread out comfortably on the chair, his hand laid back on its armrest, his glove sticky with something pearly and shiny.
They breathed loudly for a while, just watching each other – she decided not to cover her body, wanting to give him that pleasure, wishing only his gaze could see her like this.
Bare.
He sighed quietly, cocking his head, his gaze satisfied, indicating that he had clearly made a decision in his heart.
"– I will marry you tomorrow at dawn –"
She blinked and raised herself up on her elbows, horrified.
"– my King – that's not –"
"– I know that this was not your intention – I also know that you will understand that it will be a white marriage, which I will declare to all and sundry – you will not lose your maidenhood – you will not bear me children – the Kingdom will treat you after my death as a saint who stood by the dying King in his misery – when I join my Father in the Heavens, you will be free to remarry –" He explained and she shook her head, feeling offended by his words.
"– I will not take another husband –"
He fell silent and swallowed hard, as if something in the certainty in which she said this moved him deeply.
"– very well – I have only one condition: you will never take off my mask – not even after my death – you will see me as I am only in the Kingdom of Heaven –"
WOOOOO I LOVE THIS!! I recently got into kingdom of heaven (specifically Baldwin IV) because of @brandnewhuman so thank you bestie and I was so delighted to see that people wrote for such an interesting character. Your writing style is absolutely beautiful and I enjoyed every second I spent reading. Will definitely be thinking about this piece for a while (probably coming back to it too lol)
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A moonbow, also known as a lunar rainbow or white rainbow, is a rainbow created by moonlight rather than sunlight. It's formed when light from the moon refracts and reflects off water droplets, like those in rain or mist, creating a visible arc of light in the sky. Moonbows are generally fainter and less colorful than regular rainbows, and they are much rarer due to the need for specific conditions like a full or near-full moon, clear skies, and dark skies.
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