Fanfiction

ACT I

Chapter 1 : Big plans require unexpected moves.

Chapter 2 : First impressions can make or break a union.

Chapter 3 : Cultural differences can cause misunderstandings.

Chapter 4 : Proceeding with caution is wise in a new environment.

Chapter 5 : Disrespect has consequences.

Chapter 6 : Desire ignites even in the coldest places.

Chapter 7 : What is said and what is meant can be two different things.

Chapter 8 : Southern court training has different strengths from the North.

Chapter 9 : Patience is a skill that can be honed.

Chapter 10 : There’s a time and place for subtlety.

Chapter 11 : There are many different ways to find warmth in the cold.

Chapter 12 : Promises must be made carefully.

Chapter 13 : Courtesy demands good manners.

Chapter 14 : Not every invitation is accepted.

Chapter 15 : One must be careful while mending bridges.

Chapter 16 : It's wise to pay attention to the signs.

Chapter 17 : Words can easily turn into oaths.

Chapter 18 : The heir to the north is raised not only to rule, but also to fight.

Chapter 19 : Honesty is the solution to many issues.

Chapter 20 :  Drinks can lead to recklessness.

Chapter 21 : Weddings can be very chaotic.

Chapter 22 : Harvest follows patience.

ACT II

Chapter 23 : After the wedding comes the honeymoon.

Chapter 24 :  Ladies of the southern court are taught to wield words like weapons.

Chapter 25 : Saying goodbye to family is always difficult.

Chapter 26 : Honeymoon is made better with gifts.

Chapter 27 : Rumors can cause jealousy.

Chapter 28 : Royal visitors can cause problems.

Chapter 29 : Fears burden the mind.

Chapter 30 : The north and the south have different approaches to nightmares.

Chapter 31 : There are lines that should not be crossed, even in enmity.

Chapter 32 : Southern ploys can be ruthless.

Chapter 33 : Even the most chaotic days can have relaxing moments.

College Student! Gojo sits at your desk, while you stand next to him, leaned over just a bit - a hint of your breasts peeking from your blouse, but you soon realize he knows everything, sighing and looking at him in confusion. 'You don't need me for this, you know,' you tease a bit, but he looks up at you, eyes dark and stormy, making your heart race when he whispers - 'I do need you' - before brushing his long fingers across the back of your hand, you don't move them, letting him slowly slip them up, your chest rises and falls with your breath. You cannot risk your career- it's not even the age, he's not that far from you, but your career. You pull back, clearing your throat then. 'I need to head home, I'm sorry.'

College Student! Gojo watches as you try unsuccessfully to start your car - surprise, it was him! - knocking on your window and smiling as you open the door. 'Need help, professor?' he asks softly, right when it starts sprinkling. 'Fuck, I think it's my starter?' he muses how smart you are internally, smiling a bit as the rain starts pattering from the dark grey clouds. 'Let me take you home for now, we can come look at your car tomorrow, it's gonna storm all night.' You tense again, the last thing you need is to be stuck in his sports car with the damn off limits pretty boy when you're ovulating and he's making your brain fucked by his proximity. But also, you can't stay here when it's about to downpour. 'C'mon, professor,' he holds out a hand, and you rush over to his car.

College Student! Gojo has the heat on for you in moments, windshield wipers quickly flicking side to side, the sound mixing with the low hum of his car - eclipsed by your racing heart. He looks over, swiping some droplets across his silvery hair, to see your white blouse got just wet enough that he can see the black lace of your bra. Seeing his gaze, you gasp, turning away then, only for him to chuckle softly, putting his hand on the gear shift now. 'I have a shirt back there, if you wanna throw it on -' He damn near grins when he sees you panic. 'No!?' he just laughs, and you cross your arms, shivering a bit even as the heat starts. 'it's embarrassing enough you just saw...' he hums a bit, his hand slipping to your thigh as he drives. 'Saw what, your pretty tits?'

College Student! Gojo has your mouth open in shock - he could find so many better uses for it, truly, fuck your lips are in that perfect O, he knows you could take his cock. Judging by your socials, your last boyfriends looked like losers, and you're just so high strung, he wonders when is the last time you cum, or if you have like he'd get you. 'Did I mishear you, Gojo?' he doesn't move his hand, burning your skin over your stockings, your heart hammers in your ear. 'No, you didn't sweetheart, I'll say it again - your tits are pretty, from what I can see,' his voice is soft, husky, and entirely too much. He's driving now, focused on the road, when you realize it 'h-how do you know where to take me?'

College Student! Gojo pauses just one second before smiling over at you. 'You mentioned your neighborhood in class, but I don't know directly where your home is,' you wrack your brain for it, but sigh. 'Oh, of course...' he looks down at you when you're at a red light, the soft red casting a glow on his face, leaning close - too close, hand higher, until he feels your heat, thumb brushing over the lacy band along your thigh, moaning softly as he pictures it, seeing them fully. 'Y-you shouldn't do that...' you manage, and he hums softly, lips a breath away while the light goes green. 'Why can't I? Feels like she wants it, hmm?' You swallow nervously, when he drives once more, lashes casting shadows on your cheeks - the car is suddenly too small, the scent of him suffocating. 'I'm older than you...' he laughs then. 'you're barely older than me, and you look my age' you hate that it makes you feel good, that you want his hand higher, self loathing mixing with heady desire, all trapped in this fucking car with him.

College Student! Gojo notices it, your blush on your pretty cheeks, how you shift, god he can sense how wet you are, a little slick on that inner thigh driving him to distraction, he feels you press them together, his thumb slipping up even higher. 'Why don't you take my hand off?' You do just that, realizing you've been letting him. Your hand is trembling then. 'You're not acting appropriately at all, don't forget I'm your teacher' his dark little chuckle makes your tummy flip, cunt drooling from just a touch. It has been forever- and your sex life has been sad to be honest - but you can't let that happen, who would that make you? Sure, if you ran into him at a fucking bar and he wasn't your top english lit student. Satoru looks over again, touching you with that gaze, murmuring. 'I haven't forgotten at all. Where exactly is your place?'

College Student! Gojo watches as you show him where to go, playing oblivious. Satoru has been here before, peering at his pretty teacher through the window. You really should keep those curtains closed, when you're his, he'll have to make sure of it. He knows he could do everything for you. He's got an entire corporation he's inheriting soon, and he can't imagine a better person to be by his side. You won't have to work and drive a shitty old Volvo, he'd take such good care of you. You're looking at the rain now, gathering your things, he sees your hands are shaking. 'Wait till the rain eases up, hmm?' He says your first name then for the first time, soft and seductive, and suddenly he's too close.

College Student! Gojo cups your face, elegant fingers brushing your overheated cheek, your breasts are rising and falling under that see through blouse. You bite your lip while the rain pours on the windshield, thunder rolling in the distance. He has the wipers off, so you're encompassed in the darkness, hidden by the rain, too close to him. 'Question, professor,' he drawls out those words, all you can do is swallow nervously, nodding. 'If you met me somewhere else, and I wasn't your student, would you kiss me?' You gasp, pulling back, for his hand to entangle in your damp strands of hair. 'Focus only on me, sweetheart.' He shouldn't fucking talk like that... you're looking away only for him to grip your chin, turning you to him. 'Why would you even want me, you're...'

College Student! Gojo glares when you trail off. 'I'd fuck every insecurity from your pretty body,' a hand slips down, you're panicking, it's too much, you can taste his breath as his words sink in like a caress. 'You're the sexiest woman I've seen, every part I haven't seen I'm sure is...' you want to pull away, when he slips your pencil skirt up, when he looks at you like that. 'You like hearing it don't you?' You take a breath, struggling to find willpower when your body is aching, and your mind is muddled. 'Satoru we can't, even if I want to. I can't risk doing that, ethics-' he's slipping his fingers over your soaked panties now, making you gasp, dripping down his finger. He gives you a white grin that's as sexy as it is fucking feral and terrifying, rubbing you over them. 'Fuck, does ethics makes you that wet? You're soaked, pretty professor...'

College Student! Gojo fingers the squelching wetness of your cunt now, and you don't stop him, no you spread your thighs. Little pants of breath escape your lips, the windows fogging with the heat from the vents and your bodies. You inhale it in your lungs, whining and clinging to his expensive dress shirt. 'Just let me make you cum, just once, I think you need it, don't you?' He slips two long fingers in, moaning as he feels how tight you grip him, his fingers stretching you. 'You work so hard sweetheart - god you're that tight? Fuck...' he's curling them like you've never felt, hitting that spongy spot in your slick walls with precision. You're arching your hips when his free hand yanks down your top, pressing hot kisses to your breasts, lapping your nipple over the lace. 'This is... insane and... we can't so... f-fuck, ngh!' You're rolling your hips, greedily tugging at his hair as he bites your nipple, grinning, looking up under his lashes at you.

College Student! Gojo can hardly stop himself from cumming in his pants, feeling your soaked cunt, tasting your skin, the rain just enhances it, how yummy you are, how he can feel the way you'll squeeze his cock soon. 'Hear how loud you are, teach... your cunt is slutty, needy' you glare at him, fingers itching to smack, but instead they grip his forearm, when he moves his fingers up and down, feeling the muscles tense and release. 'Too much... pressure... mnh!' He grins again, the lighting flashing and making him look this mix of beautiful and fucking scary, when he gently runs his teeth across your collarbone. 'Never cum before- not really, huh? Don't worry, I can teach you how to, sweetheart...' you're sniffling, tears in your eyes, while he rocks them. You finally lean forward, lips pressing his, then Satoru loses it.

College Student! Gojo presses on you, a knee on your passenger seat as the storm rages. His mouth devours yours, hungry and desperate, tongue warring with yours for dominance. It's like nothing you've felt, you try to chalk it up as insanity - work has clearly fucked you too much - but you know deep down it's not that. He's taking over every sense you have with his kisses. Satoru pulls off, biting back a whimper he'll share later- when he fucks your throat, your cunt, every hole you have. He's exhaling, watching the woman he's dreamed of fall apart for him. 'That's it, cum just f'me,' he whispers, pressing his thumb on your twitchy little clit, the combination too much, pushing you over the edge. You shatter for him, orgasm hitting your core and spreading, until you're a soppy mess, cunt gushing all over his hand, screaming out without meaning to, until he drinks your cries, kissing you again. It's messy, just like he's made your cunt, little hole quivering in aftershocks around his fingers. He pulls back and watches you then, smirking.

College Student! Gojo whispers against you - 'Fucking perfect, look at you... did I make you feel so good baby?' You're too fucked out to te him not to call you it, just nodding. 'Good girl, telling me how you feel.' You can hardly get yourself together, when he's sucking his fingers into his mouth, you inhale at the sight, making you clench around nothing. 'Satoru... what...' he spreading your arousal on his lips, eyes lit up so blue its hard to handle, looking at you now. 'I'll take you to school tomorrow, and fix the car, okay?' You shake your head, realizing what happened, trying to button your shirt with violently shaking hands. 'We can't again, ever... we... it...' he helps you button it, smiling softly. The rain is sprinkling now, revealing the sky, the fact that you let him make you cum in broad daylight. 'I'll see you in the morning.' Is all he says, watching you run in the house, stroking his thick cock then and there in your driveway, aching for release.

You can't do it again, you won't do it again, you have to stay away from him. You're arranging a ride to avoid him, but as soon as you step out, Satoru is right there, leaned next to his car with his shades. You hesitate, but he's acting perfectly normal, as if nothing happened. You ease a bit, smiling nervously, wondering if it's just a moment, but he's simply waiting, letting the days pass by. Touching you with little brushes 'accidentally' walking by you too close, dropping something right by your desk so he'll be bending down almost in front of your legs. Smiling at you the way he does across the campus. Satoru has a long game he's playing, and he's waiting for his pretty professor to beg for him.

Imma do a full one sometime or just do a part two this style?? what do yall think!

But he doesn't move away. That's the thing about your temperamental dragon. The refusal is always louder than the retreat, and the retreat never comes.

He stands exactly where he is, tension drawing his slender shoulders tight beneath his tunic, pale eyes narrowed to slits. You rise from the bed and cross the distance between you, bare feet quiet on the stone, and he watches you come the way a hawk watches an approaching hand, nostrils flaring.

You reach up without an invitation and he catches your wrist in a vicegrip. Hard enough that the bones grind.

"I said no." His voice has dropped into something serrated, all edge, no breath. "That is a whore's ornament. You will not put a whore's collar on a prince of the blood."

"I'm not putting it on a prince of the blood," you say, and your thumb finds his pulse, hammering, frantic, a traitor drumming against your skin. "I'm putting it on my husband."

His lip curls. Genuine, blistering contempt, the kind he wears like armour, the kind that has made grown men step back from him and whisper he's mad. "You've lost your mind, wife. This is beneath me. Take your Lysene filth and—"

"And what?"

You don't raise your voice. You tilt your head and watch him, patient as winter frost, while his mouth keeps shaping poison but his hand hasn't tightened, hasn't shoved you back, hasn't done any of the things Aerion is so very capable of doing when he means his refusals.

His body knows you even when his pride won't permit him.

You can see it in him, the war happening behind his eyes. Hatred and want tearing at each other like dogs. His breathing has gone uneven, the tendons in his neck taut as bowstrings. He's furious, genuinely furious, and he's half-hard already, and the combination is doing something to his expression that looks almost like anguish.

"You also haven't moved," you observe mildly, pressing a little closer.

Aerion's nostrils flare. But his grip on your wrist loosens. It's not a permission, never permission, just the muscles giving out under the weight of what he wants and won't ask for.

You step into the space he hasn't made for you and he lets you, jaw clenched so tight you can see the bone beneath that smooth pale skin, and when your fingers brush his throat he flinches like you've put a blade there, sneering down at you.

You fasten the collar with steady hands. The clasp clicks, quiet as a lock turning. Gold settles against Aerion's skin like it was poured there. Fine links pooling into the hollow of his throat, amethysts glowing dark against all that pale, furious warmth, the delicate chain trailing down his collarbone. His pulse jumps so hard beneath the metalwork you can see it in the tremor of the links.

He is, objectively, the most striking thing you've ever seen.

You let him watch you realise it. You don't hide the way your gaze tracks the gold against his jaw, the flush climbing his neck beneath the chain, the way his platinum hair glows against the gleam of metal.

You take your time with it. Look at him the way you'd look at something you own. Appraising, proprietary, openly pleased with what it's infront of you.

"My beautiful dragon," you murmur, and there's nothing teasing about it. Just a wolf admiring what belongs to her.

Aerion's whole body locks up. there's a crack in his expression and for a half-second you see the raw thing underneath, stunned and starving, before the hatred slams back down like a portcullis.

"Quiet," he warns, voice scraped thin. "Don't call me that."

"Beautiful?" You trace the line of gold with one finger, following it along the tendon in his throat. His skin is burning. "But you are. All collared up for me. All that pride and fury wrapped in gold like a gift." Your finger reaches the chain and curls loosely around it. "Like something I bought. Something I'm keeping."

"I will break your hand," he snarls, but his voice has fractured somewhere in the middle of it, gone hoarse and bitten, and his hands are fists at his sides that aren't moving, aren't reaching, aren't doing anything at all because his body has chosen you over every hateful word in his mouth.

"Look at you," you breathe, and you let your admiration sit open on your face, undisguised, almost tender. "My prince. My pretty, collared husband. Wearing a courtesan's chain because his wife asked and he couldn't say no."

"I said no—"

"Your hateful mouth said no." Your eyes drop, pointed, unhurried, to where the evidence of his body's opinion is unmistakable. "The rest of you has a different answer, husband."

The sound he makes is closer to snarl, like he's about to leap forward and throttle you.

"They tell me these are put on courtesans in the pillowhouses," you tell him, conversational, your thumb stroking idle circles against the chain at his throat. "On the loveliest ones. The ones men cross the Narrow Sea just to kneel before." You lean in, your mouth near his ear, close enough to feel the heat pouring off him. "A collar to say this one is precious, this one is wanted, this one has been claimed by someone who can afford the price of them."

Your lips brush the shell of Aerion's ear. He's shaking. Fine, continuous tremors he can't control, running through him like current through wire.

"But you're not a courtesan, are you?" you murmur. "You're a dragon. My dragon. Collared and flushed and hard for me, and all I've done is call you pretty and put gold on your throat."

His hips snap forward, involuntary, vicious, a jerk of motion so sharp the chain shivers in your grip and his breath tears out of him ragged. You feel the length of him grind against your thigh and the confirmation of what you already knew floods you with something hot and deeply, viciously satisfied.

You smile. Wolfish. The smile of a predator who's found the exact place her teeth fit best.

Aerion's hand comes up and seizes your face. A capture, fingers digging into your jaw, your cheeks, wrenching your head so you're forced to meet his eyes. They're blown black, the pale lavender almost gone, eaten alive. His mouth is a shaking, vicious line.

"You think this is funny?" he rasps, and there's something fraying in his voice, an edge that sounds like it's being held together by nothing but spite. "You think you can play with me, collar me like some—some Lysene bed-slave and then smirk at me—"

You don't stop smiling. You let him see every inch of it. The smugness, the heat, the cool Northern certainty that you've claimed something he'd sooner die than hand over. You turn your face into his grip and press your lips to his palm, unhurried, greedy, and feel his fingers twitch against your skin.

"I think," you say knowingly against his hand, "that you liked it when I called you beautiful. I think you liked it so much your whole body told me before your mouth could catch up." Your tongue skims his palm, just barely, tasting salt. "I think my pretty husband wants to be admired. I think he always has. And I think if I told him he was good right now, he'd come apart."

His hand tightens on your face until it almost hurts. His chest is heaving, every breath hauling through him like he's physically fighting something inside him. You can feel the chain taut between your fingers, connecting your hand to his throat like a leash, like a lifeline.

Aerion stares at you and you stare back. The room is so quiet you can hear the candles gutter and the chain clink, once, with the tremor running through him.

Then he crashes his mouth onto yours.

His teeth catch your lower lip and bite, hard enough that copper blooms on your tongue, and you hiss into it, fingers tightening in the chain. He licks the blood off your mouth and comes back for more, tongue pushing past your gasp, his free hand fisting in the back of your hair so hard your scalp sings.

He's trying to take it back—every sound you pulled from him, every tremor, every helpless grind of his hips—kissing you like he can swallow the evidence of what you've done to him and burn it.

You let him have the violence of it. You open your mouth and take his tongue and bite it, feel Aerion jolt, feel the groan rattle through his teeth into yours. Your free hand comes up and grabs his jaw, holds him still, and you kiss him back with teeth and intention, licking into his mouth with the focused, unhurried authority. You catch his bottom lip between your teeth and pull, dragging it out, and the noise he makes is humiliating and so gorgeous you smile.

He breaks away panting, wild-eyed, mouth swollen and blood-smeared, and you don't let him get far.

You tug the chain.

A measured pull, the gold biting into the back of his neck.

Aerion's head tips forward, forced, the angle dragging him down toward you, and you hold him there, his mouth hovering over yours, breathing your air. The chain pressed firm against his throat. His pulse hammers against the links hard enough that you can feel it thrumming through the gold into your fist.

"Stay," you murmur against his mouth. A command. A wolf's word.

You pull again. Harder. A real pressure now, the collar snug against his Adam's apple, gold links creasing the flushed skin, and you watch Aerion's eyes go glassy and his lips part on a breath that has nowhere to go.

He moans.

Not behind his teeth. A real, wrecked, open sound, the kind of sound courtesans are trained to coax from their wealthiest patrons, obscene and helpless and utterly without dignity. The kind of sound a prince of the blood should never make. If anyone else heard it, it would ruin him, you know.

He moans like a whore with your hand wrapped in his leash, and the vibration of it travels through the chain and into your fingers and settles, hot, at the base of your spine.

You hold the chain taut. His throat works against the pressure, swallowing around gold. His mouth finds yours again. Wetter this time, messier, all desperation and no technique, his teeth clashing against yours, biting at your lips like he can punish you for this even as his body bows into you.

You kiss him back with blood on both your mouths and one hand in his hair and the other wrapped in gold links, holding his throat, keeping him exactly where you want him.

Your collared, shaking, furious, beautiful husband. Yours.

Aerion doesn't break the kiss so much as redirect it. One moment his mouth is on yours, blood and spit and the taste of his own undoing, and the next his hands are at your waist, hauling you backwards. You feel your spine hit the edge of the bed frame hard enough to knock the breath from your lungs.

"On the bed," he snarls against your mouth. "Now."

You could resist. He knows it. The chain is still wrapped around your fist and his throat is still collared in gold and if you pulled right now he'd have to stop, have to kneel, have to wait. You could make him beg for it if you felt like it.

You choose not to.

You let yourself fall back onto the furs and he follows you down like gravity, one knee between your thighs shoving them apart. He wrenches them apart, graceless, nothing courtly about it.

His hands find the laces of your gown and yank. Fabric tears. You hear stitching give, the soft rip of silk surrendering, but Aerion doesn't care, doesn't pause, just drags the ruined bodice down your shoulders and off your arms with the efficiency of a man stripping armour.

"Wretched thing," he breathes, and the words land hot against your collarbone. His mouth follows the words. Teeth scraping the jut of bone, tongue dragging through the hollow of your throat. "Wretched, insufferable—"

He bites the swell of your breast through your shift and your back arches off the bed. His hands are everywhere, pulling linen, shoving wool, ripping where pulling isn't fast enough. Cool air hits your skin in patches—your stomach, your ribs, the tops of your thighs—and his mouth chases every new inch of you like he's starving and you're the only thing left in the larder.

"You think you can collar me," he hisses, dragging the shift over your head and throwing it somewhere behind him. His eyes rake down your body, naked now, spread beneath him on the dark furs, and for one raw second the hatred in Aerion's face cracks and what's underneath is so hungry it looks like pain. "Think you can put a leash on a dragon and smile about it? You smug, superior—"

"Beautiful," you interrupt softly, admiring. Your eyes trace the collar at his throat, the way it catches candlelight as his chest heaves.

His jaw locks so hard you hear the teeth grind.

"—vicious little wolf," he finishes, and his voice has gone thick with something that isn't anger anymore.

He's still dressed. His tunic is rucked, his breeches straining, and when you glance down you can see the dark stain spreading at the front of the linen where he's leaking, where his body has been ahead of his pride since the moment you fastened the clasp.

You let your gaze settle there. Deliberate. Hungry.

"You know," you say conversationally, tracing one finger down the chain at his throat, "in the Lysene houses they auction the prettiest ones. The patrons bid all evening. Wine and silks and perfumed halls, and the courtesans walk among them, collared just like this—" your nail taps a single amethyst "—so everyone knows the goods are spoken for."

Aerion's nostrils flare. A muscle jumps in his cheek.

"They'd have bid high for you." You tilt your head, considering him. That platinum hair mussed, mouth bitten raw, gold at his throat, cock straining wet against his laces. "Very high. A prince with a face like that? Those eyes? That mouth?" You smile, slow and wolfish, briefly dragging your thumb over his full bottom lip. "I'd have outbid them all. Every merchant prince and magister in the room. I'd have bought you for myself and taken you home in your collar and kept you exactly like this. Hard, and furious, and all mine."

A sound rips from Aerion, rumbling through his frame.

His hand shoots to his laces, fumbling, tearing at the ties with shaking fingers, and you watch him strip his breeches down his hips with none of the control he prides himself on. His cock springs free flushed and dripping, slick at the head, twitching with his pulse, and the evidence of what your words have done to him is obscene and unmistakable.

He doesn't give you time to admire it.

His hands seize your thighs and wrench them open. Wide, wider, until the stretch burns and your hips cant off the furs. He settles between them and you feel the blunt, wet head of him drag through the slick mess of you once, catching at your entrance, and then he drives in.

One stroke. All of him. No preamble, no patience, no tenderness.

Your head snaps back. The sound that leaves your mouth is half gasp, half snarl. He's thick and hard, furious inside you, every inch of him a declaration, and your body seizes around him in a clench that makes Aerion's shoulders shudder.

"There," he grits out, teeth bared, hips already pulling back for the next thrust. "Is this what you wanted? Your collared whore between your legs?"

He snaps forward. Hard. Your body jolts up the bed, furs bunching beneath your spine. His hands pin your hips, thumbs digging into the hollows, holding you open, holding you still while he fucks into you with furious, punishing strokes. The narrow cant of his hips drives a rhythm that's all fury and no mercy.

"Spoiled—" Thrust. "—conniving—" Thrust. "—wolf—"

Aerion bites the junction of your shoulder and your neck. Sucks the skin between his teeth hard enough to bruise, hard enough to mark, and the sound you make is shameless, back bowing, your fingers scrabbling at his ribs.

He bites lower. The top of your breast. The ridge of your collarbone. Everywhere his mouth lands he leaves evidence. Welts, teeth-marks, the wet shine of his tongue, mapping you like territory he's conquering even as the collar at his throat says otherwise.

You let him have it. The fury, the pace, the bruising grip. You let him think he's reclaiming himself.

Then you wrap the chain around your fist and pull.

The collar bites into his nape. Aerion's head jerks forward, forced, and the angle changes, drives him deeper, and the sound he makes is guttural and broken, so far from princely it would make his father weep.

"My pretty whore," you murmur up at him, and your voice is steady even with him buried to the hilt inside you, even with your thighs shaking around him. "My beautiful, expensive, collared—"

Aerion's hand closes around your throat.

His fingers find the column of your windpipe with the precision of a man who's t done this before, who knows the anatomy, who's imagined the give of it. Real pressure follows his grip and your airway narrows to a reed.

You lean into it.

Your chin tips up, back arching. You press your throat harder against his palm and moan. Open-mouthed, loud, the kind of sound that fills a room and stains the air. The look on Aerion's face when he realises you're not afraid, that you like it, that the compression of your breath is making you clench tighter around his cock, is something you will keep behind your teeth for the rest of your natural life.

"You," he manages, and his hips haven't stopped, punishing rhythm gone ragged at the edges now, his voice husky. "You're the whore of the two of us. Acting like this. Taking my cock like this. Listen to the mess of you. Moaning with my hand on your throat like a—a dockside—"

You yank the chain. Harder than before. Hard enough that the gold bites welts into his skin, hard enough that Aerion's breath cuts short and his eyes roll and his next thrust goes so deep you feel it in the back of your teeth.

Your hips snap up to meet him—deliberate, brutal, grinding him into the deepest, most sensitive part of you—and the wet sound of it is filthy, unmistakable, the slick drench of your body taking his echoing off the stone walls.

His composure shatters.

What's left is animal, narrow hips pistoning, the obscene slap of his skin against yours, his fingers spreading you wider, thumbs hooking your thighs and pulling until you're split open around him in a way that's almost too much. The stretch burns. The fullness borders on pain. You're going to ache tomorrow, going to feel every brutal inch of this for days, and the knowledge of it—the phantom soreness already gathering in your hips—makes you wetter, makes you greedier, makes you tighten around him until he chokes.

"Fuck—"

He hooks your legs over his shoulders. The angle goes deeper, filthier, the wet sound of his cock working in and out of you loud enough that you can hear every thrust, every slick drag, the rhythmic slap of his balls against you keeping time like a drumbeat.

You reach up and wrap both hands in the chain and haul him down toward you, bending yourself nearly in half, pulling him deeper by his collar until Aerion's forehead presses against yours and you're breathing the same ragged air.

"Come in me," you tell him. An order, a wolf's command.

"Do not order me—"

But his hips stutter, his jaw going slack. The muscles in his neck cord tight against the gold links and you feel him break. The first hot pulse of him inside you floods you, thick and sudden, and Aerion's whole body seizes above you like a man struck by lightning.

He spills in deep, wrenching surges, hips grinding against yours with each gush, and there's so much of it—gods, so much—you feel it flood the space where you're joined, feel it overflow, feel the hot trickle of it escape around his cock and drip in slow rivulets onto the sheets beneath you.

The heat of it, the sight of your pretty dragon shaking apart above you, collared, spilling himself into you, desperate and greedy, pushes you over.

You come snarling. Your back arches off the bed, your teeth bared, your fingers coiled in the chain. The pleasure tears through you in savage waves and your body clenches around him. A vice-grip that wrenches a shocked, gutted noise out of his chest.

Aerion's hips slam forward on instinct, burying himself as deep as he can go, and both hands grab your backside, full handfuls, fingers sinking into the flesh, dragging you onto him like he can crawl inside you.

"Fuck—fuck, you're—gods—" Greedy and petulant even now, grinding into your contractions, chasing the squeeze of you. His cock pulses and you feel the fresh hot leak of him, not a full release but close, dangerously close, his body trying to spend itself again just from the clench of yours. "Take it—take all of it, you greedy—perfect—fucking —"

The filth spills out of him unchecked, half-words and fragments, praise tangled up in profanity. His arms lock around you, both hands still full of your ass, and he folds over you, curling, coiling, a dragon wrapping around his mate with his face buried in your throat and his hips still rocking in small, helpless pulses.

Burrowing into you. Trying to get closer when closer doesn't exist.

You hold him through it. Chain slack in your fist now, your other hand in his silver hair, your legs still trembling where they're hooked over his shoulders.

He stays inside you through every aftershock, twitching, half-hard, refusing to pull out even as the mess between you gets obscene. His spend leaks around his cock, dripping in slow pearly rivulets down through your folds, pooling beneath you on the sheets.

You reach between your bodies and touch yourself, fingers sliding through the slick ruin of his release and your own, spreading it over your core, your navel, the trembling plane of your stomach. Painting yourself with the evidence of him.

Aerion watches you do it. His chest heaving, his mouth open, his eyes tracking your fingers with the dazed, shattered focus.

You bring your fingers to your mouth. Hold his gaze. Taste.

His cock twitches inside you. He makes a low, growling sound.

Then, slowly, as if his bones have turned to water, he collapses. Aerion's weight comes down on you in a controlled fall, his face dropping into the curve of your neck, his breath coming in long, shuddering pulls against your pulse. The chain goes slack between you. The collar shifts, warm against your collarbone where his throat presses.

For a long moment there's nothing but breathing. The guttering candles. The cooling sweat between your bodies. His heartbeat thuds against your ribs, gradually slowing.

You burrow into him. Turn your face against his chest and press your mouth there. Teeth grazing his sternum, his collarbone, the smooth skin over his ribs. You nip. Suck a patch of skin between your lips and release it flushed. Your tongue drags through the salt-sheen of his sweat, tracing the cut of muscle, and your hand drifts up to stroke his chest, his throat, fingertips trailing the chain at his collar, the ridge of his Adam's apple, the hollow beneath.

Petting him. Mapping the territory you've claimed.

Aerion's hand comes up and cradles the back of your head. His fingers thread through your hair, and he shifts, angling his neck, tilting his shoulder down, offering you more skin. Easier access.

"You're an animal," he informs you, voice scraped raw and dry as bone. His thumb traces the curve of your skull. "A feral, uncivilised creature who should have been left in the kennels at Winterfell."

You suck a bruise into the ridge of his collarbone. He exhales through his nose, slow and controlled, and tips his chin higher, baring the collared line of his throat to your mouth with an ease that contradicts every word coming out of it.

"Disgusting habit," he adds, as you nip the tendon below his ear. His fingers card through your hair, untangling, smoothing. Stroking, greedy and possessive. "Gnawing on your husband like a bone. Do they teach you that in the North? Is it in the wedding vows, hm?"

You hum against his skin. Your teeth graze his pulse point and his breath catches—just barely, just enough—and his hand gentles at your nape, cradling rather than holding.

You can feel him preening under it. The commentary is armour but his body is liquid, angling into every scrape of your teeth, every press of your lips. Offering himself up piece by piece while his mouth pretends outrage.

You press a kiss to the hinge of his jaw. Soft. Almost sweet.

Then you pull back just enough to meet his eyes.

"My pretty whore," you murmur fondly.

The reaction is instantaneous.

His eyes flash, pale lavender burning through the blown-black aftermath, and his hand snaps from the back of your skull to the nape of your neck, gripping hard, fingers digging into the tendons. He drags you up and kisses you. Bruising. All teeth, his tongue pushing into your mouth, tasting himself on you, tasting everything on you.

His other hand slides down your body. Between your thighs. Through the mess of his own spend. He pushes two fingers into you easily, so wet you barely feel the stretch of him, just the sudden fullness and the obscene sound of it, his seed squelching around his knuckles as he curls deep.

"Whore," he repeats against your mouth, low and dangerous, his fingers pumping into you with a rhythm that's already building toward something. "You want a whore, wife? I'll fuck you like one." His teeth catch your lip. His fingers twist and you gasp. "Over and over. Till you can't walk. Till the whole Red Keep knows what I've done to you. Till you're dripping with me for days."

You laugh. Breathless, warm, the sound vibrating between your mouths. Your hand finds the chain and you pull him closer—not hard, just a steady pressure, a reminder of what's still fastened at his throat—and your legs wrap around his hips, drawing him in, fitting your body against his like a key turning in a lock.

"Good," you say.

His fingers curl inside you, his mouth finds yours again. The collar gleams between you in the candlelight.

The Maiden, who has a memory longer than most and vividly recalls just how deeply the Sandman loves his son, despite how it may, at times, have looked otherwise, winces just slightly at the reminder of what is coming. Though the action was minute, the Mother, who is perhaps most like the name given to her in that she always wants the best for her ‘children,’ notices, as she always does.

“The oldest battle will begin, and—” the buzzing of a timer in another room cuts the Crone off. “Ah! That’ll be the cookies. One moment, lovies.”

The cat jumps off her lap as she stands from the couch with an agility that one would not expect from someone looking to be the Crone’s age and heads into the kitchen to begin preparing tea. 

“I’ll be sad to see this one end,” the Mother laments, running a hand down the rows of neat stitches. “Our sweet sister-self would call me a softie if she were in here, and maybe it’s true. How can I not be, though? Dream of the Endless is changing, though he once believed that impossible. It’s slowgoing, of course—”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less from him,” the Maiden notes with a small smile.

“Nor I. But there are futures out there where he is given the chance to change fully, futures where he accomplishes a whole lot.” This isn’t a mere guess; in the same way that her sisters can keenly recall the past and peer into the future, the Mother sees the potential paths of everybody who walks Destiny’s garden.

It comes to both Maiden and Mother at the same time that neither of them particularly wants to see Dream of the Endless’s story end in such a way as the Crone has been anticipating. 

The Maiden glances through the door, where the eldest-presenting of the three has disappeared to the kitchen. “There is…something we could do, you know.”

She gravitates towards a cupboard near the window, opening it and beginning to search through what looks to be an infinite supply of yarn until she finds the skein she’s looking for. After checking the identification tag that every skein carries, so as not to get any mixed up, she hums satisfactorily.

For a species so full of themselves, human mortals only know about five to ten percent of what they would consider to be the Universe’s mysteries. What’s waiting for them after death (whatever they decide), if there’s a god (many), if they’re the only signs of intelligent life out there (hardly, and it’s a stretch even to call the human race intelligent). Another one of those mysteries is that of love. Is there such a thing as true love, as soulmates? Though they are familiar with the concept, even going so far as to attempt to label their loves as soulmates, they truly do not know if the person they are attaching themselves to is the one meant for them.

If only they knew what almost every other species capable of higher thought does: that soulmates are very real, and finding one’s is not nearly as much of a guessing game when one’s senses are heightened. Currently, Morpheus and his soulmate do not meet. While Morpheus dies, his soulmate goes on without ever having any idea of his death. There would be a few relationships before a perfectly normal and loving marriage, but his soulmate would never know the all-consuming love of being fated to someone. Now, however…

“Oops.” The new yarn is dropped in the Mother’s lap, and sparks emit as it bounces against the other yarn.

The Mother grins, scandalized. “Naughty petal,” she teases.

“Quickly now, before she returns,” the Maiden urges, returning to her seat and becoming very interested in her own project once more.

The Mother’s deft hands go to work, relying on thousands and thousands of years of practice to begin to knit the new yarn into the well-established pattern already created. By the time the Crone returns, there is no feasible way for the yarns to be separated without stepping into one of the few domains they have no power over.

Her outrage and indignation can do nothing now, for the fates of two have been combined into one, and the future has already been set in motion.

•••

Dream of the Endless is, as he is told that the youth of today say, going through it. A simple family dinner (though is anything truly simple when it involves any of the Endless?) proved to be the catalyst for attempting to reverse one of his most regrettable and shameful decisions, only for his journey to turn into a cosmic fiasco when Lucifer Morningstar abruptly retired and gave him the key to Hell, a key that he neither wanted nor needed. Still, he dutifully oversaw the various pantheons and realms as they each vied for the key, if only to ensure the safety of the woman he originally sought to free.

Although he did not necessarily expect Nada to unilaterally forgive him for what he had done, Morpheus did hope that she would understand the sincerity in his actions at present. The opposite was true. She…struck him. Dressed him down as though he were a mere child. Still, he offered her what he once did ten thousand years ago, for his love for her had not diminished in those ten thousand years: the chance to rule by his side. The Queen of the First People, always so eloquent with words, turned him down with a barb that cut so deeply, Morpheus wondered if the wound left behind would ever heal. 

“I wonder if your kind is even capable of love,” she said to him, chin held high and looking every inch the ruler she once was.

Morpheus tried to defend himself, to make her see that he did love, and that he loved her. His efforts were futile, and she cared not what he had to say. She wished him well, ever the diplomat. Then Nada was gone, to see what the Waking had in store for her, leaving behind only devastation and loneliness, those old friends. 

That was mere hours ago, the Dreaming almost immediately becoming drenched in torrential thunderstorms thereafter. Morpheus made his way to a balcony at the top of the palace, content to let the rain drown him. Lucienne, however, would not stand for it.

“My Lord,” she said tersely, black umbrella shielding her from the brunt of the storm, “perhaps solace is not the best thing for you right now.”

Perhaps she was right, but Morpheus, who was in no mood to listen to helpful solutions, glowered as he stared off ahead into the distant mountains. “Then what would you suggest?”

She thought for a moment, then sighed. “I am sure Hob Gadling is worried after your last interaction, where you told him that you may miss your next meeting. And he has said that you are always welcome.”

Pride and anger almost have Morpheus shoot the idea down before Lucienne can finish speaking. However, as he thinks about it, he realizes that there might be some merit to her suggestion. Hob Gadling had faced many triumphs and challenges throughout his long (for humans, that is) life, matters of the heart surely being one of those. Might the immortal man have some wisdom for a situation such as this?

Now he sits in the temple Hob had inadvertently created while waiting for his oldest friend to return, the New Inn, hand loosely curled around a stem of red wine that he has not yet touched. While the majority of him wishes still to be drenched in rain, another part appreciates the way that the Waking feels real. The Dreaming is real, of course, but he can manipulate every aspect of his realm. Here, he is master of none, and experiences the sights and sounds of a small pub on a Thursday night as any being would.

Morpheus had not gotten the opportunity to ask Lucienne the question he had been meaning to pose to her before he left the Dreaming. So, here in the Waking, he finds that opportunity. “Do you believe that I am incapable of love?”

From across the table, Hob Gadling cocks his head in thought. “Did the woman—did Nada say that to you?”

Morpheus nods. “They were some of her last words to me before she…left.”

The immortal sits quietly to compose his thoughts, taking a sip of his drink and staring up at the ceiling until the words he believes will comfort the Dreamlord, while also telling the truth, come to him. “She’s speaking in anger, my friend. You did an objectively bad thing to her, and she has every right to react towards you in whatever way she sees fit. But,” he says quickly, knowing that Morpheus is a breath away from angering, “she is wrong. Do you not love your realm, the dreams and nightmares that you create? Do you not love the dreamers whom you oversee? Your family, your…friends?”

None of that is romantic love, of course, but Hob is right, as he so often is. Morpheus does experience love in every one of those instances—sometimes begrudgingly, but he does love.

“You speak true, my friend,” Morpheus acknowledges, feeling his sister’s realm loosen its hold on him just slightly as the shadows of Despair begin to shrink.

Hob grins and opens his mouth to speak, but movement from the front of the pub captures his attention, and he instead waves. A mortal approaches their table—braver than most mortals in this pub, who have, so far (as is usually the case when he’s in the Waking), taken one look at the Endless and shied away in fear.

“Hey, Rob!” the mortal greets, using a name Hob must be going by in this century.

“Now, my favorite TA wouldn’t be taking advantage of my pub to work on homework for my class that you haven’t done yet, would you?” he asks.

“I’m your only TA this semester.” The sentence conveys that this is a common line for Hob, who chuckles and waves a hand nonchalantly in the air.

“Semantics!”

“But to answer your question, a couple of us are meeting up before the history grad students’ weekly happy hour to work on our term assignments for Keller’s Archival Methods class. I would never work on your homework in front of you!”

The mortal looks at Morpheus and winks, letting him in on the secret shared between student and teacher that homework for Hob Gadling’s classes has absolutely been completed in this building before, and with one quick movement of an eye, Morpheus feels himself come undone. 

(In that little pocket realm masquerading as a cottage, two of the three Fates giggle and congratulate themselves on their impeccable timing, while the third sulks as she stares into the fire.)

The concept of soulmates is not rare among beings like himself. Indeed, out of all the species capable of higher thought, humans are the only ones who believe it to be a mere myth or fairytale (humans, of course, believe almost everything that they cannot understand is a myth or fairytale, which is why the other specieses don’t bother with them the majority of the time). To them, it’s a word one would use to describe the one whom they love most in the hopes that there are some forces of the universe out there steering them towards true love. 

Most of the gods and goddesses, fae, beings, and creatures of all kinds, who have spoken about it in his presence mention a number of “signs” that average humans, with their dulled senses and limited use of brain capacity, miss. Sometimes it is simply a feeling, as though the universe has been tilted off balance the entire time, and meeting one’s soulmate has righted it. In other cases, electricity seems to spark the first time soulmates touch. Some have known their soulmate’s name before they properly introduce themselves, and others know exactly what their soulmate’s first words to them will be. He has even heard rare tales of seeing the Fates’ work itself, strings of fate connecting soulmates when they’re first in proximity.

Morpheus has never doubted the existence of soulmates, nor has he doubted the experiences he has heard. No, what he has always questioned has been the intensity of such a bond. How powerful could true love actually be, to change the life of one so powerful? Surely, a soulmate did not exert that much sway over a being of myth and legend?

He has been in love before, of course—with Alianora, with Killala, with Calliope. For a moment, when he rescued Nada from Azazel, he allowed himself to hope that such a second chance was his sign that Nada was his soulmate.

Now, he knows that those loves were pale imitations of the love that one has for a soulmate. A single wink has transformed everything that he thought he knew about life, and where he once saw no future that did not involve taking his sister’s hand, now, he sees only possibility. It’s not just a mortal who stands in front of him now, one of seven billion faceless creatures that occupy his realm for a third of their short lives. 

No, it’s you. 

Morpheus comes to know your identity immediately by virtue of you being a dreamer, yet he thinks he will not truly be satisfied unless he hears it from you directly. For a brief moment, a black string appears around his wrist, stretching and morphing into a silver one as it loops around your own. Then, it’s gone, leaving behind only the startling realization that Dream of the Endless has met his soulmate. 

You bid farewell to Hob as Morpheus watches helplessly, uncharacteristically breathless when you, the deity he now worships faithfully, deign to smile his way before leaving. He is a mere planet sucked into the orbit of a bright, shining sun as his eyes follow you across the room, watching as you greet your friends at a large table. When you toss your head back in a laugh while removing a computer from your bag, he regrets that he’s too far away to hear the sound.

“My friend?” Hob’s voice is the life preserver he needs to pull himself out of the ocean he’s found himself treading through, and finally manages to look away. “Is everything alright?”

Morpheus is unsure. On the one hand, it seems as though he has finally found what he has spent nearly his entire, endless life searching for, right when he had decided that it might be time to stop altogether. On the other hand, the intensity of the bond forming…frightens him. Further, you’re a mortal, which means that he risks once again ending a civilization of humans thanks to his romantic aspirations. Instead of answering Hob’s question, he asks one of his own. 

“You have lived a long life,” Morpheus begins, trying desperately not to sound as shaky as he feels. “Surely you have heard of the concept of soulmates?”

Hob’s smile turns soft, wistful. “Of course. Some immortals think that it’s the universe or whoever giving them something to make unending life bearable; others, like myself, are simply romantics who are charmed by the idea of having a love to follow them from life to life. I’ve heard your lot have a much easier time finding soulmates than us regular ol’ immortals, that your heightened senses show you things the rest of us can’t see.” His brow furrows in thought as he digests the rather odd change in subject. “Why do you ask? Did…did you believe Nada to be your soulmate?”

Morpheus is relieved that Hob hasn’t made the connection between his oldest friend’s sudden odd behavior and the appearance of his student. “Yes,” he answers truthfully. “For a time, I did.”

None of his previous feelings matter anymore, though, now that the answer to his happiness is sitting across the room. 

“Forgive me, Hob, but I must end our meeting sooner than I hoped. There are…matters that I must attend to.” He needs to leave, for if he does not, he fears he may occupy this chair all night and watch you in a manner that would be considered ‘creepy’ by today’s standards.

To his credit, Hob does not act like their meeting is being cut short. “No worries at all. You know you’re welcome any time.”

“Thank you for your hospitality and counsel.”

Morpheus hesitates before leaving, defenseless against fate as his gaze is drawn back to you once more. After a moment, he opens the door to the pub and steps back into his own realm.

The ornate stained glass windows of his throne room do not allow him to see outside. But Morpheus does not require windows to know that the weather has already cleared, from booming thunder, bright lightning, and gale-force winds to clearing clouds and hesitant rays of sunlight beginning to dry the drenched landscape of the Dreaming. His realm’s weather is a direct reflection of his own emotions, and as he staggers to sit on the steps leading up to his throne, hope begins to warm his own waterlogged heart.

A soulmate. He would be lying if he were to say he hadn’t ever imagined the possibility of there being someone out there fated for him. Hob Gadling had called himself a romantic when explaining what he knew of the phenomena, and though Morpheus would never use the word to describe himself, he does think it apt. For all that he has been a being so devoted to his duties, he has also longed for someone to share those duties with.

If what he has seen is true, and he truly has become the first of the Endless to have a soulmate, then there is much to consider. There is only one person equipped to help him with this (only one person whose help he wants with this), even if she has never been through such an experience herself, which is how he finds himself in his gallery, staring ahead at the ankh placed in a frame.

“Sister,” Morpheus calls. “I must speak with you.”

“Hiya, little brother,” Death’s voice sounds from her sigil after mere seconds. “This a quick matter?”

“I would prefer that you come through, if you have some time.” Though no day can ever be slow when one is an anthropomorphic personification of a vital universal concept, Morpheus does hope that today, at least, is not busy for his sister.

“I always have time for you,” she says fondly.

One moment, there is nothing but air in front of him. The next, his beloved sister, her trademark smile the antithesis of the all-black ensemble she always sports. Said smile falters when she takes in Morpheus’s affect, likely resembling that of a wounded animal.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Death asks, placing a hand on his arm. “I figured you would be sad after the whole Nada thing—”

Wonderful, Morpheus thinks distantly, word of my rejection has already spread beyond the boundaries of the Dreaming.

“—but this is…not sadness. I’ve seen you sad before. A lot, actually.”

He tries not to take offense, for he knows that she speaks true.

“You have,” he agrees. “And you are correct.”

“Well, out with it then. What’s got you in such a state?”

He has to make an effort to say the words, a part of him worried that it might not be true if he actually voices what he’s just experienced. “It appears that I have…found my soulmate.”

Death’s smile slides off her face in shock before quickly reappearing, somehow wider than before. “Shut up!”

Morpheus’s brows furrow as anger rushes through him. “I beg your pardon?”

When she begins to laugh, those thunderclouds that were only just banished begin to build again over the palace. The Endless were never technically children, but at this moment, Morpheus feels every bit the little brother that he is as he perceives his eldest sister to be making fun of him.

“This is no joke, my sister.” His voice booms through the gallery, making the frames shake just slightly.

“No, sorry, I didn’t mean it in a bad way! You unintentionally quoted a movie, that’s all—remind me to show you that movie sometime, same actress as the one in Mary Poppins! I’m simply trying to say how shocked I am.” Death’s eyes shine as she looks at him. “Dream! Your soulmate? You’re sure?”

“The string of fate all but confirmed it.”

She squeals, a high-pitched shriek that echoes through his gallery, stopping suddenly when she realizes her merriment is not shared. “Wait. Why are you not excited? I thought you would be more excited!”

“It would appear that my soulmate is…mortal.”

Enthusiasm deflates out of her like air being released from a balloon. “Oh. Well. That is a problem, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he agrees, even though that feels to be a massive understatement. His soulmate being a mortal is more than a problem; it’s a tragedy just waiting to happen.

Death’s eyes flick around the room before she looks at Morpheus again. “Y’know who would be able to help us with this?”

He knows exactly where she’s going with this and wants no part in it. “Sister, no—”

“Destiny!”

“It is alright, truly—” 

The last thing he needs is another of his siblings involved in this situation, specifically the one who can tell him what he fears to hear, but his words fall on deaf ears as Death stands in front of Destiny’s sigil.

“Hello, big brother!” Death runs a finger along Destiny’s frame. “May we come through?”

The reply is immediate. “You are both meant to be in my realm at this time.”

“Ooh, lucky us.” Death grins and takes Morpheus’s arm so that he cannot escape, stepping into Destiny’s Garden as the fabric between realms gives way upon their eldest brother’s invitation.

Destiny of the Endless stands before them, looking as he always does—wearing his robes and carrying his Book, stern and acting as though he carries the weight of many worlds on his shoulders (which is technically true). Out of all of his siblings, Morpheus speaks the least to Destiny, for he knows that there will never be room for a friendly conversation if the Book does not require it.

“Death. Dream,” Destiny acknowledges with a slight nod. Death darts over to give him a kiss on the cheek, and though he tries his best to keep his face as stonelike as the statues surrounding the garden, his lips still twitch up just slightly at the affection.

“Brother,” Morpheus greets. “Need I explain the situation to you, or has your Book explained it already?”

“Yes, I know what has happened.”

“Then you know that our sister believes you have answers to a number of questions.”

“Do not hide your curiosity behind our sister’s actions. You also want answers.”

Even though he knows Destiny isn’t being malicious by saying it, Morpheus still feels chastised and has to fight the urge to lower his eyes to the ground. “Yes,” he says, a little quieter than before, “I do.”

“Your path has stayed the same for centuries now, with little variation.” Destiny opens the Book to a page that must contain Morpheus’s story. “Yesterday, that changed.”

He gets the feeling that the debacle with the key to Hell has something to do with his story changing. “I was not supposed to meet…”

It’s impossible to bring himself to say the word to his brother, to breathe life into his hopes in front of one who could so easily crush them.

“No. But for reasons that I do not understand and cannot say, forces intervened. The moment that you left the Dreaming, it was providence that you would meet your soulmate.”

Though he knows that he must temper his emotions, that there is still a large part of the equation that has yet to be solved, this confirmation that the string of fate Morpheus saw connecting you to him was not a trick of the eye, that the sudden intensity with which he found himself falling for you was not mere desperation to be loved after crushing rejection, is a gift. 

“The first of the Endless to find their soulmate!” Death says beside him, likely almost as happy as he is, simply due to one of her siblings finding happiness. “And here I thought that the Fates simply enjoyed being cruel to us because of our power.”

“There is still the matter of my soulmate’s mortality,” Dream reminds both his sister and himself.

This, he believes, is where the fantasy comes to an end. Death may be pleasantly surprised that the Hecate allowed him a soulmate in the first place, but he worries that their cruelty lies in the linking of his soul to a mortal’s. There will be no falling in love, no learning another in every way that matters. There will be no marriage, no everlasting partnership. No, he will be forced to know that there is someone out there for him, but that making a move would ensure your demise, and likely the demise of many others. He will be forced to watch from afar as you go through life without him, until eventually his chance at true love takes his sister’s hand and journeys to the Sunless Lands.

“We are forbidden to love mortals, lest we bring about their ruin.” His voice sounds hollow as he repeats this unwritten law, matching the hollowness that he is soon to feel for the rest of his endless life.

Death smiles sympathetically, but does not seem as heartbroken for him as he might have imagined. “I have a theory, if you’d be willing to hear it?”

Morpheus nods. “By all means.”

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while, honestly, and the past few days have made me consider that there might be some weight behind this idea. Though we, the Endless, all have our different purposes, our main one is to serve humanity. Humans hold quite a lot of power, even if they don’t realize it. They decide where they go after they die, and their belief, or lack thereof, gives the gods power. Beings with power like to believe that we have control over humans, but if anything, they have control over us.

“Nada and the First People believed that to love an Endless meant devastation for them. Might that be why the First People were wiped out, and not because it’s an unwritten law?”

Morpheus has never considered this, and mulls the possibility over. Desire, specifically, had courted a mortal in order to sire a child in the hopes of Morpheus spilling family blood. Though they did not love Unity Kincaid, he knows from Unity’s own words that she loved her ‘golden-eyed man’ very much. Yet there was never the end of a civilization due to her love, nor did there seem to be any natural consequences for such a union.

Is Death right? Has Morpheus been living under a misguided belief all this time?

“Destiny?” Morpheus asks, yet again, afraid to know what his brother might say. “Is she correct?”

“The Gray Ladies, for all of their aforementioned cruelty and disdain towards us, respect the concept of love; they relish playing matchmaker. It is one of their favorite parts of their function.”

Their other favorite, of course, is when their services as the Kindly Ones are invoked.

Morpheus must uncharacteristically swallow to clear his throat. “So it is true? I will not bring about the end of modern civilization by pursuing my soulmate?”

Destiny remains silent, and Death whoops excitedly.

“That’s a yes!” she declares, wrapping an arm around Morpheus’s shoulders and squeezing—the closest to a hug he typically allows. “Thank you. This visit has been everything I hoped it would be.”

“It is time now for you both to depart,” Destiny responds. He’s not being rude by ushering his siblings out of his realm; it is simply what the Book demands, and he must follow that steadfastly.

“Yes, of course, we’ll let you get back to it. Farewell, Destiny!” Death bids, waving once before disappearing through the tear in the veil that will undoubtedly lead back to the Dreaming.

“Thank you, brother. Truly.” Morpheus would thank him more profusely than this, but it would be in vain. Destiny knows just how thankful Morpheus truly is.

“Dream,” Destiny calls as Morpheus has one foot back in his realm. 

He turns to look at his older brother, only to see the fond twitch of his lips typically reserved for Death or Delirium directed towards him.

“Good luck.” 

It is not the usual foreboding tone of someone who knows what is to come and is merely conveying the necessary information as required by his function. No, these words are sincere, are well wishes that one would give to someone they care greatly about, and he appreciates them all the more as a result. 

Morpheus nods gratefully, then makes his way through to the Dreaming, where Death stands beaming with her hands clasped in front of her.

“You have a soulmate,” she breathes, awed.

“I do.” While he knows he should be visibly thrilled, he cannot help but to remain serious as he works to fully digest the information, works through what it actually means for him and his future.

Death notices this, as she always does, and takes his hands in hers. “You get to be loved, Dream, just like you’ve always wanted. Don’t be scared of this gift that you’ve been given.”

But he is scared. Terrified is a better word to describe how he’s feeling. What if you deny him as Nada has done? What if the gravity of a soulmate bond, of loving one of the Endless, proves too tall a task for you? He could not bear it if his love—if the reveal of so much beyond the world you’ve been raised to know—were to cause you fear. He cannot get this wrong, will not get this wrong, yet…

“I know not how to court in this day and age, let alone court a mortal,” he says weakly. It is a flimsy excuse, of course, and one that Death sees right through.

“You’re asking the wrong being, since it’s been a good two hundred years or so since I’ve been truly involved with anybody. I’m quite sure that there’s some information on modern dating rituals—it’s called dating now, by the way, not courting—in that ginormous library of yours. Your raven was recently human, too, wasn’t he?”

He need not say anything, for they both know the questions are rhetorical. She squeezes his hands softly before releasing them and stepping towards her frame.

“I’ve got to get back to work, okay? But please don’t doubt yourself. You deserve this! And you’ll figure out how you want to approach this situation; you always do.”

Death has always had an unshakable faith in him, even when he does not believe the same of himself. “I appreciate your wisdom, as always, my dear sister.”

“Bye, Dream.” She opens her own rift between realms, likely to the Waking. “I expect to hear all about this soulmate of yours when we meet next!” 

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ ONE SHOTS:

inside of you, in spite of you ⋅⋆ ── [the corinthian-centric one shot, coming soon]

midas touch ⋅⋆ ── [dream & wanderer smut, coming soon]

dreamfalling into nightmares ⋅⋆ ── [corinthian & wanderer, dreamfall]

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ DRABBLES/BLURBS:

"I wonder what I look like in your eyes."

"I broke my rules for you."

“My heart is so full of you I can hardly call it my own.”

“You were worth the wait.”

"If I kissed you, I don’t think I’d be able to stop."

“I don’t think you understand the… effect you have on me.”

when wanderer met destruction

goodbye, stardust.

s t a y.

"lady dream."

currently accepting headcanon/drabble requests and discussions for this series, feel free to send something in!