elyx

After a day of locking himself in his house, he had come up with his very own poison. Made from the remains of a dendro slime, mixed with a few crushed petals of Dendrobium, and a generous splash of expired alcohol stolen from the Cat’s Tail.

He didn't know if it was truly toxic. In fact, he just mixed random ingredients he found revolting.

He wasn't planning on truly poisoning you after all. In its current concentration, it would merely cause temporary numbness (maybe).

And so he placed a cute little package in front of your house (he stole the documents that held information of those working under the Grand Master to find your address). Inside the package was a plate of Hash Brown he had cooked himself.

Of course, the poison was sprinkled on top as well.

He knocked on the door to your house and hid in a bush nearby.

He watched the door open, a shiver of excitement going down his spine.

But when you stepped out, his eyes widened. You weren’t what he had imagined. Not old, not bitter, not hunched over with tired eyes and stained robes.

You looked... young and composed. Normal in fact.

You glanced at the package, shrugged, and brought it inside.

The next day, he had half hoped there would be some commotion. Instead, nothing happened.

Lohen found that significantly more unsettling than if you had screamed.

Did you not open it?

Did you die?

Worse, did you throw it away?

By the second day, irritation curdled into curiosity again, and curiosity dragged him back to your house.

He hadn’t even reached the door when something stopped him.

A box.

His box.

He stared at it, then at the note pinned neatly on top.

It read-

---

Observation Log

Possible dendro slime derivative.

Taste profile:

Slight bitterness.

Floral aftertaste.

Perhaps traces of alcohol.

Symptoms:

Tingling lips.

Mild numbness in fingers.

Onset approximately twenty-five seconds.

Conclusion:

Sloppily made poison.

---

He stared at the handwriting. The faint smell of alcohol lingering on the hastily ripped paper.

'..... Sloppy?' he scoffed, annoyance creeping up into his face. He crumbled the paper, staring at the door with a sadistic smile.

"Fine then. I'll show you real poison."

The next morning, another box appeared at your doorstep.

Like last time, you took it into your home. You had no idea who was delivering these, but the last package being drenched in a mild toxin made it interesting enough for you to open.

You tore open the box.

This time, it was a plate of mushroom pizza.

"Oh, that looks delicious." you muttered to yourself, noticing the unusual purple coloring on the crust.

You reached and held a piece of the pizza near your mouth. And without a care, you took a huge bite from the area where the coloring was the brightest.

The following day, Lohen returned to find another note on your doorstep. This time it was more detailed than the last.

---

Observation Log

Low concentration of Aconitum.

Taste profile:

Initial sweet-bitter note.

Followed by burning sensation.

Symptoms:

Numbness.

Dizziness.

Loss of strength.

Conclusion:

Good posion. Easily countered.

Although, I liked the taste of the pizza.

(attached are my other observations)

---

There were six pages attached.

Six.

Lohen stared, flipping through the pages with a smile. "God. She's insane."

This started the exchange of poisons and paper notes.

The next package that Lohen put on your doorstep had a small note of his own.

---

To the Medic

Firstly, fuck you.

Secondly, you missed a secondary ingredient. (Hint : It was Naku weed)

Thirdly, thank you for complimenting the pizza.

I made it myself.

---

Your response appeared the next morning.

---

To the Poisoner

1. Rude.

2. I did not miss the ingredient. Naku weed has no toxic properties. Just color.

3. The posion on the crust was obvious. Are you perhaps new to this poisoning thing?

---

Your responses pissed the Vice captain even more. Because how dare a lowly medic like you have the audacity to critic his cooking?!

He tried even harder after that.

More precise blends. Better masking. Controlled dosages. Carefully calibrated ingredients. Tried perfecting the recipe so you couldn't find any faults.

Everything.

After making sure everything was perfect, he delivered the next package. A plate of Northern Apple Stew.

The reply next day was written in a crumbled paper with messy handwriting.

---

Rules for Future Poisoning

1. No explosive diarrhea.

2. No permanent injury.

3. No organ damage.

4. No blindness.

5. No poisoning children.

6. Food should remain edible

---

Lohen rolled his eyes at the rules. "Killjoy." To him these rules just were unnecessary boundaries that ruined his fun.

But he never wanted to stop this exchange between the two of you. It was much too entertaining for him.

Unknown to him, that night ended with you locking yourself in your room. Having non stop diarrhea for hours.

Soon the notes became longer than the poisons themselves.

One morning, the package you opened had a plate of Cream Stew.

And this time the note attached had a list of ingredients used.

---

Current Theory

The toxin should produce localized muscle weakness.

Estimated duration:

Two hours.

Possible side effects:

Dizziness.

Drowsiness.

Complaining.

Will you be able to guess what I used (Y/N)? °^°?

---

Three days later Lohen received something he could only call a report.

A dossier.

Twenty-two pages which included diagrams, charts, annotated symptom timelines.

And corrections.

So many corrections.

---

Page 14: dosage error.

Page 17: please stop using kitchen spoons as lab tools.

Page 19: “Did you eyeball the concentration?”

---

Unfortunately Lohen had. And he hated that you noticed.

Months passed and somehow it became a routine.

Your medic colleagues grew increasingly worried seeing you drowsy every other day.

"Do you know who keeps sending you poison?" one asked.

You shook your head. "No, not really."

"Shouldn't that concern you?"

You looked confused. "Why?"

"Because they're poisoning you...?"

You blinked. Honestly, if the person wanted to kill you, they could have used other deadly toxins. Yet, they always made sure to use small doses and non lethal ingredients.

You smiled to yourself. "They are very considerate actually."

"... Oh." the medic froze.

You tapped a finger on your cheek. "They also have lovely handwriting."

"..."

The medic walked away. Unable to continue the conversation.

Lohen, meanwhile, was also not doing well.

Varka had his suspicions when he first saw the crazed man laughing while tasting the exotic plants he had ordered.

One day, while Lohen was away on a mission, he broke the lock of his drawer and read through all the papers in there.

Papers about toxic plants. Possible ingredients. And of course, all the notes you had written to him.

He ran a hand through his hair. "What the hell is happening in Mondstadt?"

Varka immediately dragged Lohen by the collar and pushed him into the store you worked in to apologize.

You looked up from your desk and instantly recognized him as your mysterious poisoner.

Not by his face. But by his hands.

The stained fingertips. The chemical burns. The ink marks. The quiet proof of obsession.

"Oh," you smiled softly. "It's you."

Lohen blinked.

Varka shoved him forward. "Apologise to the lady Lohen."

Oh. So his name was Lohen.

The boy looked deeply offended. "I don't want to."

"Apologize." The Grand Master repeated, his gaze cold.

Lohen sighed dramatically. Then glanced toward you. "...Sorry for poisoning you."

You immediately shook your head, a small laugh escaping your lips. "There is so need for apologies. I should be thanking you actually."

Silence.

Even Varka froze.

You continued, brighter now. "The poisons were genuinely fascinating."

Varka looked horrified.

"I learned to make dozens of new antidotes!"

Lohen stared. Mesmerized.

"Also the toxins were quite creative! Honestly, every morning became something to look forward to."

Varka took a breath, and turned his gaze to the ceiling, perhaps praying to Barbatos why they allowed these two people to exist.

"Also the notes were fun!" you added, opening your drawer and placing a the stack of notes you had carefully stapled.

Lohen wasn't even listening anymore.

Because you were smiling.

At him.

Because of him.

Because he had poisoned you.

It was a stupid conversation. The girl in front of him was grateful for poisoning her. It was reckless, idiotic and yet...

At that moment his heart made some several terrible decisions.

He realised.

With a lot of hesitation...

That-

'Oh.'

'Oh no.'

'You were kinda cute.'

He had known your name for months. Known where you worked. Known your habits. Your favorite medicinal herbs. The way your handwriting became messier when excited.

But seeing you in person? Actually talking to you?

He was finished.

Absolutely in love.

That night he didn't sleep. Instead he sat at his desk surrounded by herbs, powders, vials, and failed formulas, staring at his next experiment like it might hold divine answers.

Most men wrote poetry.

Most men gifted flowers.

Most men confessed.

But Lohen was not most men.

He lifted a vial of deep red liquid, watching it swirl under lamplight with a manic smile. "If she barely liked the last one... I'll just make one that is even better."

And thus began the greatest romantic pursuit in history.

Not through gifts or heartfelt letters.

But through an escalating series of increasingly sophisticated poisons.

Lohen's new life goal was simple.

Create a poison so fascinating, so beautiful so perfect....

That when you tasted it—

You'd fall hopelessly in love with its creator.

Unfortunately for him, the only thing you fell in love with was the chemical composition.

Fin

😭 😭 😭 I CANT WITH THIS GUY. I FEEL LIKE HE'S SOMEONE WHO'D GIFT YOU A BOMB CUZ HE LOVES YOU.

Some of the ingredients used r actually toxic while others r just bs. I tried making it as Canon as possible but I'm sure there r some mistakes. Sorry abt tht.

Moment of Morning Dew

The chandeliers of Dewlight Pavilion glimmered like suspended constellations, their fractured light spilling across polished marble in soft gold and pale violet. Even in the Dreamscape—where beauty was manufactured to perfection—this place still carried a certain weight; a stillness that pressed gently against one’s lungs. Amidst the grandeur of the Pavilion, you stood a step behind Maeven Ellis’s absence—your adoptive mother—her authority as Iris Family Head lingered in your posture in the way attendants lowered their gaze as you passed.

Third to the Head of the Iris Family, yet today, you felt oddly like a child again; waiting in a suffocating office as you were summoned by the Dreammaster himself, you weren’t aware of the reason why he had called upon your name but judging from your senses, you weren’t going to like it.

Across the room, not far off from where you stood, was Sunday, he was situated beneath a stained glass window, its colours painted him in shifting hues of amber, indigo and rose where it bounced off his gleaming halo, depicting him as some kind of reverend being. When you had entered the Dreammaster’s office, you were greeted by the Oak Family Head—a mere formality, a simple nod of his head. No words, no nothing.

It had been a while since you’ve last stood in his presence like this, most of the time you’d see him around Penacony or during grand Family banquets but that was about it, nothing more than a hollow distance between the two of you.

Minutes of deafening silence passed before the doors to the office opened once again and in came Mr. Gopher Wood, it wasn’t his original form, merely someone else’s body—presumably someone from the Oak Family—he had possessed.

“Come closer.” He had instructed before taking a seat behind the wooden desk, his tone was calm yet it held unparalleled authority—as a child, it would always send chills down your spine; countless Family gatherings where he spoke to your mother in such a tone. The Dreammaster was a kind man yet something about him unsettled you.

Without another word, you stepped forward just short of his desk, heels echoing faintly against the marble floors. Sunday mirrored your actions, standing a few centimetres away from you—it was enough to get a whiff of his scent.

Vanilla and musk, something sweet yet pierced one’s senses. You tried to ignore the way his shoulder almost brushed your own and how his figure towered you.

“I’m sure you’re both well aware of rumours that are circulating around the Dreamscape,” Mr. Gopher Wood began, hands folded neatly atop the desk.

You sucked in a small breath, you’d heard them too. Whispers that drifted through velvet corridors, murmured between the cracks of reality that there was in-fighting between The Family lineages which ultimately questioned the Dreamscape’s stability. For a space designed to eliminate unfavourable factors, it wasn’t hard for negativity such as baseless rumours to start circulating within its walls.

Dangerous words which challenged The Family.

But . . as for summoning you and Sunday, you were clueless. Why did the Dreammaster specifically choose you? You weren’t skeptic about Sunday as he held authority over the Oak Family, in other words, he was Mr. Gopher Wood’s successor but as for you . . it didn’t quite make sense.

Neither of you answered, instead, you both waited for the Dreammaster to speak once more. 

“Rumours are . . fragile things, if they are left unchecked, they fracture trust. And in Penacony, trust is the foundation upon which dreams stand.”

The Dreammaster continued, “Thus, we shall give Penacony something stronger than baseless rumours—a symbol of eternal harmony.” Something inside your stomach tightened, you didn’t like the tone in his sentence, as if it was final and had no room for if’s or but’s; an idea that was already concrete before it came into existence.

“You two will be married.” Mr. Gopher Wood stated as if discussing something as simple as a change in décor.

Silence fell.

If the previous silence felt suffocating, this one was much, much worse. It felt heavier and pressed onto your skin tighter as though it was determined to live inside your bones. For a moment, all you could hear was the faint hum of the warm chandeliers—even its glimmering lights felt hot against your skin, a searing burn.

Was the Dreammaster serious? An arranged marriage between you and Sunday? In your eyes, marriage weighed more than a coin being tossed in a bucket, it symbolised unity between two individuals who loved and cherished one another, not a façade to combat baseless rumours, and especially not a lie.

A million emotions surged through you; the thought of eternal unity with Sunday was something you had always dreamed of ever since you were a child. The first time you laid eyes upon him was when you were both naïve and wide-eyed, and something inside your young heart stirred when he laughed at your jokes or tugged at your hands with his, running away from panicked attendants assigned to look after you.

Back then, your adoptive mother would bring you over to the old Oak Family manor for play dates with Sunday and his younger twin sister—a young trio built on mischief and pure wander. The three of you were inseparable until the day duties and career came into talk, where days filled with innocent laughter turned into monotonous lessons that prepared one for the burden of authority.

Yes, you weren’t going to deny it, you had feelings for Sunday that stemmed a long while back but being married to him under a contract that screamed nothing but business was not what younger you would’ve wanted, no, she had dreamed of a blossoming, genuine love.

There was also unease for the role entrusted upon you; how would being in a false marriage affect your naïve heart? You were well aware Sunday didn’t mirror your feelings at all but having him pretend and play the part of a husband was beyond dangerous. It was ironic to think that this marriage was akin to Penacony’s Dreamscape itself—a dream becoming a reality.

But . . was it your dream to be married off to Sunday in the name of falsehood?

With the Charmony Festival inching closer, it wasn’t a surprise the Dreammaster was becoming desperate for a solution.

You laughed. A humourless sound that conveyed the disbelief in your heart; you were raised to be a respectful, refined woman especially in the presence of esteemed Elders but not when said Elder proposed such a bizarre idea. This was marriage the Dreammaster was talking about, a life long commitment—a life long role that was anything but real.

“Pardon my brazenness, Mr. Gopher Wood but . . are you serious?”

The Dreammaster didn’t so much as blink, “Completely.”

At his affirmative reply, you slowly turned your head to the side towards Sunday; he remained expressionless, the glimmer in his citrine eyes hiding more than just pure emotions. His posture remained straight, one hand tucked behind his back just as he had been taught by the Oak Family Elders. Whether the idea affected him or not, Sunday didn’t let on, not even a twitch of his brow nor a rustle of his ivory wings.

“A union between the Oak and Iris Family presented as one of harmony—of perfection. A model pair for Penaconians to look up to, and once the people see The Family’s harmony upon supporting this marriage, rumours will fade.” Mr. Gopher Wood continued, which turned your attention back to him.

The Dreammaster had a point, with two significant figures in the five lineages getting married, Penaconians would witness The Family working together to ensure it happens flawlessly—the Oak Family would be tasked with organization, the Alfalfa Family with financing, the Bloodhound Family with security, the Iris Family with reception entertainment, and the Nightingale Family with decorations. All in perfect harmony.

“And what it needs to see,” You murmured quietly. “Is a lie?” You knew it was only a matter of time before the Dreammaster exhausted his patience and snapped. He had always been fond of you but knew to draw the line at disrespect.

His gaze remained fixated on you, it wasn’t unkind but it was firm, unwilling to back down from the challenge you had presented; he noticed the way your wings rustled imperceptibly, how it curled inwards as if to display silent retaliation.

“The Dreamscape needs stability.”

That wasn’t the answer you were looking for.

Slowly, you exhaled then fully turned toward Sunday, his golden halo glimmered brighter than ever, “Sun—Mr. Sunday.” He looked at you, really looked at you, and for a split second—just a flicker—you saw it. Something from years ago when he used to grin at you over ice cream and toys.

“Are you okay with this?” The question came out softer than you’d expected, laced with vulnerability. Sunday held your gaze for a moment longer than necessary, then, parted his lips to speak, 

“As Oak Family Head, it is my duty to ensure that everything within the Dreamscape remains in order.”

“. . That’s not what I asked.”

Were you surprised, though? You’ve always known Sunday was a selfless individual, especially when it came to Robin but you wished—more than anything—that he’d be a bit more selfish; to do something that he truly wanted and not because he was bound by duty and expectations.

“This arrangement fulfills its purpose.” As expected, Sunday spoke like this matter was nothing more than another responsibility to be managed, throwing out the fact that he was to be married off to someone he didn’t love.

You nodded, “Right.” A small, hollow sound. And once more, you were hit with the harsh reality that this Sunday wouldn’t run away the same way he did during the lessons he found boring, no, instead this Sunday would build the cage himself if it meant keeping everything intact and under his control.

Hesitantly, you looked away first, directing your attention back to the Dreammaster—any second longer looking at those citrine eyes was far too dangerous for your heart, “Apologies, Mr. Gopher Wood but I need time. This isn’t . . exactly a small decision.”

But did you even have the luxury to make a choice? Nonetheless, Mr. Gopher Wood inclined his head slightly and indulged you in your request, “You will have what time is necessary but do understand, the longer uncertainty lingers, the more damage rumours may cause.”

A gentle threat wrapped in silk.

You nodded calmly, though your thoughts were nowhere nearly as composed. Marriage. To Sunday. It was as though the stars were playing a nasty elaborate prank on you but as twisted as it was, a part of you—one buried within the depths of your being—was happy.

Could you blame yourself though? You’ve pined for Sunday for eons because maybe, just maybe, he would finally look at you the same way you’ve looked at him: under the light of romance.

“Then, I shall take my leave. Mr. Gopher Wood. Mr. Sunday.” After necessary formalities, you turned to leave, light from the chandeliers above stretching your meek shadow across the marble floor.

“Maeven Ellis’s daughter.”

You paused. It was the Dreammaster’s voice once again, “You are an actress, are you not?”

Glancing over your shoulder, you spoke up, “Yes.”

“Then think of this as your most important role.”

At his words, your lips pressed into a thin line. That was easier said than done. A performance, of course, everything in Penacony was. You didn’t bother responding, instead, you kept walking, heels echoing with each careful step, out of the Dreammaster’s office and away from Sunday.

Moment of Golden Hour

Despite the name of Golden Hour, sunlight didn’t spill like liquid gold in the Moment but the Dreamscape was as beautiful as ever. After the impromptu meeting with the Dreammaster and Sunday, you found yourself sitting on an iron bench at Aideen Park—a quiet corner devoid of commotion to collect your thoughts. In the distance, laughter echoed and soft music the band performed.

On your lap rested an important document for an upcoming film, pages and pages of a bound script to read and remember but for once, you didn’t feel like reading. Not when your mind wandered off to the encounter a few system hours back, you couldn’t help but replay Mr. Gopher Woods words—that you’d be married to Sunday.

Amidst the serenity of the Moment, your ears perked up at the sound of familiar footsteps coming closer—calculated and sharp—but you didn’t bother looking up.

“I thought you might be here.”

The owner of the calm voice was no other than Sunday, you were more than certain of it because only he had the power to make your heart stutter. You didn’t let on—didn’t show an ounce of emotion just as you’ve been doing for the past years you’ve known him. Slowly, you exhaled, gaze still fixed on the inked pages atop your lap.

“The Oak Family Head seeking an audience with me? What a lucky woman I am.” You chuckled humourlessly. Sunday didn’t reply and you almost felt bad for greeting him with such a sour state, so you spoke up again, “. . Are you surprised? You know my hiding spots better than anyone.”

Growing up, Sunday learned that whenever you had something in mind, you always seemed to seek out quiet spots to unwind and one of them happened to be in Aideen Park—a tucked little area away from everyone while still able to bask in the Moment’s luxury.

“You never changed them.” Sunday whispered in a soft tone, if you hadn’t caught it, you’d think he was merely murmuring to himself. There was something in his voice you didn’t quite recognize, one that made you curl your fingers tighter around the pages.

“Is there . . something you need, Oak Family Head?”

As much as he appreciated authority, Sunday never did like it when you addressed him with formality but he’d rather sever his halo than admit it to your face. After all, it was merely a silly thought. He let your question linger in the air for a while, letting the background noise of the park fill the space between the two of you, then, he spoke,

“I came for your answer.” Straight to it. Of course he did.

A quiet, humourless laugh slipped past your lips, you finally turned to look at him. The golden lights of Aideen Park engulfed his pale blue strands, it softened the edges of his otherwise composed expression but it didn’t make him easier to read. You couldn’t lie, Sunday looked absolutely breathtaking and it pained your heart at how effortless it was for him; his citrine gaze shone the same way his halo did, bright and blinding.

“My answer? That’s what this is to you? And here I thought you came to seek me out as a—I don’t know, maybe a friend?”

It was microscopic but you saw the way Sunday’s shoulders sagged and how the wings behind his ears lowered but you weren’t about to be moved by something minute; what the Dreammaster had asked of you—and Sunday—wasn’t something simple, it asked for your soul, to play a never ending role built on lies.

“It’s a matter that requires resolution.” He replied evenly. Your chest tightened, “Do you know what you’re asking of me, Sunday?” The question came out sharper than intended but you didn’t take it back and for the first time, something flickered across his face, maybe it was surprise, maybe it was discomfort, you didn’t bother deciphering.

“I am aware of the implications—” “No.” You cut him, shaking your head as you stood, the script on your lap swiftly falling onto the ground, long forgotten. “No, you’re aware of the politics of it—the outcome.”

Frustration rose within your body, a scowl forming on your face as you stepped forward. Sunday had never seen such a look painted on your face, he had only ever seen pleasant expressions from you, especially directed towards him.

“You’re asking me to stand beside you in front of all of Penacony and smile like it means something. To let them believe—” Your voice caught slightly but pushed through it, “—to let them believe this is real.”

“That’s the role we’ve been assigned.” He said quietly. “Assigned,” You echoed, almost incredulous. “Is that all this is to you? Another duty? Another piece of the Dreamscape you have to keep polished and intact?”

“If you think I have the luxury to treat it as anything else then you are sorely mistaken.”

“Then, let me ask you one thing, Oak Family Head. Did you have a hand at choosing your . . partner?” With Sunday willing to fulfill such a role, you were certain Mr. Gopher Wood had already told him about the proposal prior to the meeting earlier, and you were sure the latter had at least given him freedom to choose.

Sunday nodded, “Yes.”

You let out a shaky breath, your scowl turning into something much softer. Sadness. “But why? Why me, Sunday? Don’t—Don’t you know how cruel that is? To ask for something that big?” You looked away, unable to see the way regret briefly shadowed his face. His chest tightened at your pitiful form, he didn’t mean to put you in a troubled spot but he wasn’t entirely innocent either.

Marriage meant the two of you were bound to each other for eternity with divorce was absolutely out of the table, especially for prominent figures like you and Sunday; it made sense for a planet that worshipped the Aeon of Harmony.

“. . Because I assumed you wouldn’t be scared doing it with me, at least—doing it by my side.”

Oh, your foolish, foolish heart shouldn’t have skipped a beat at his reply but it did and it angered you even more that it did because despite it all, you still loved him. And maybe you were willing to comply but a greater part of you was stubborn.

“Do not try to mold me with flattery, Sunday. What about us, hm? We’re not symbols—not the ‘model pair’ the Dreammaster deems us to be. We’re people with lives of our own! I cannot dictate for you but I know marriage is something I want to be organic. To fall in love with a man who cherishes and loves me back.”

Words hung heavy in the air, fragile and bare. For a split second, you were convinced he was going to take a step closer and say something that wasn’t measured or wrapped in a silken ribbon called duty. And maybe some twisted part of you wished Sunday would have told you that he’d at least try to love you—to reassure and tell you that your heart has a home in his hands but he didn’t. 

Instead, he said: “We are what Penacony needs us to be.”

Silence settled once more, you didn’t answer this time as you were reminded that you and Sunday held very different dreams. You closed your eyes to steady yourself briefly, and when you opened them again, your expression had shifted, something more resigned, “. . Fine.”

Sunday’s ears perked, wings spreading ever so slightly as if to convey shock. You straightened slightly, smoothing the invisible wrinkles from your clothes—a habit you’ve picked up before you stepped in front of rolling cameras.

There was no use arguing with Sunday or pushing your ideals to him, he was stubborn and he’d do anything to ensure the stability of the Dreamscape, even if it meant carrying the weight of falsehood his whole life. Besides, arguing like this in public was sure to garner unwanted attention, it was only a matter of time before someone heard of the conversation.

“If this is the role entrusted to me then I’ll play it. I’ll accept the marriage.” The words felt foreign on your tongue—too final but you didn’t waver. 

Sunday carefully studied you as if to search for something beneath your composure, “Are you certain?”

You laughed humourlessly, “Do you think I have a choice? But if you want me to be honest, no. But I’ll do it anyway.” For you, you wanted to add. You bent down to swiftly pick up your script, dusting it off lightly, and when you returned his gaze, your expression had settled into something practiced.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make it believable.” The corners of your lips tugged upwards despite its heaviness.

“I . . never doubted that. You are one of Penacony’s greatest actresses.” Sunday intended to lighten the mood, to flatter your skills and forget about the tension in the air but for some reason, his words hurt more than anything else. You put too much faith in me, Sunday. You thought.

Sure, acting came easily to you but not when you had to play the eternal role of a loving wife for a man you’ve pined for. For years. It was a twisted game that tested the borders between a dream and reality, and you could only hope to build a cage around your naïve heart.

Moment of Morning Dew

Wedding preparations commenced shortly after meeting with the Dreammaster once more to confirm your stance on his idea; everything was a blur, from colleagues and close friends congratulating you on your engagement (even Robin who sent a congratulatory letter despite being aware of everything) to exclusive interview appearances—sometimes accompanied by Sunday—to talk about every detail.

Of course, since the engagement came out of the blue, it was met with a lot of speculation, and rightfully so as not a single soul had seen you and Sunday together outside Family gatherings but even in banquets, neither you nor him would really converse.

But, those speculations were easily dismissed by letting interviewers know that you hid your relationship with him for personal reasons; it wasn’t foreign for celebrities to do such things. Though, the only truth you uttered during those interviews was probably the fact that you loved Sunday.

There was no denying that, and for Penaconians, that alone was believable. Aside from planned appearances on interviews, you hadn’t seen much of your . .  fiancé but maybe it was for the best, the more he remained at a distance behind closed doors, the more your naïve heart wouldn’t mistake the relationship for something real.

Silk draped from the ceiling in soft, cascading layers, mirrors framed in gold caged you in, it reflected you in every angle, each one just slightly more flattering than the last. Assistants moved like whispers—adjusting and smoothing but never loud enough to cause unnecessary chaos.

The Dewlight Pavilion served many purposes for The Family—the main being a place where Heads discussed important matters but you didn’t expect it to host a fitting room specifically curated for wedding preparations; it only made sense with how busy your schedule was, not to mention how you just finished a table-read two system hours ago which meant the script was still swimming in your mind and so was exhaustion.

“Hold still, please.”

A quiet exhale escaped through your nose, resisting the urge to fidget as a pair of hands adjusted the fall of fabric at your waist; you just wanted to go home. “I am still.” You murmured.

“Still-er.” The head assistant replied gently.

Tired, you bit back a comment, there was no point arguing with anyone. It was evening and you wanted this over and done with, the more you cooperated, the faster this whole thing would be finished.

The gown itself was unsurprisingly perfect. White—of course—but not the stark kind, it shimmered faintly like it had been spun from light filtered through clouds. Intricate golden embroidery traced along the bodice, delicate and intentional. 

“There. All done! How does it feel, miss?”

The head assistant’s dainty voice faded into as you looked at the mirror, it was the first time you stared at your reflection since standing inside this fitting room yet strangely enough, an actress stared right back—the ‘you’ all of Penacony knew, the one in front of flashing lights and rolling cameras.

“You’re truly beautiful, miss!” Another one of the assistants gasped, her reddened face tucked between the hearts of her palms.

“. . Thank you. The dress feels . . fine, it’s not too heavy.” The staff dismissed the absentmindedness laced in your voice, mistaking it for pure awe. You didn’t know what to feel seeing yourself in a wedding dress because even with an exquisite ring wrapped around your finger, you still couldn’t believe you were getting married.

“Turn slightly, please.” The head assistant instructed and you did. The skirt fanned out like a blooming flower, its silken fabric faintly glimmering beneath the lights.

“Perfect.” She breathed out.

Perfect. The word followed you everywhere these days—about your relationship with Sunday, about the engagement ring, and now about the dress. You were about to give her a practised reply, the same one you’ve been giving everyone else—a ‘thank you’ and a smile that reached your eyes—until the atmosphere shifted.

The curtains behind you weren't drawn yet but you knew who was beyond them and you were certain the attendants knew as well from the way their backs straightened, immediately stepping away from the raised platform you stood upon.

“Pardon my intrusion, may I step inside?” 

Sunday’s voice filled the silence. As if on cue, heat blanketed your cheeks, heart racing at the thought of him seeing you in a wedding dress. Your gaze landed on the head assistant through the reflection, giving her a slight nod to which she immediately understood and swiftly drew the curtains back.

As Sunday stepped inside, both attendants silently bowed their heads and headed out, closing the curtains behind them to give privacy. Alone in a small space with him with too many mirrors; you swallowed thickly and smoothed down the skirt of the dress, “I wasn’t aware of your visit.” You murmured, tucking a loose strand behind your ear.

“I was told preparations were underway. I wanted to ensure there were no complications.” 

Of course.

“Well?” You started, head tilted slightly. “You came all this way, you should at least give your evaluation.” Your hands found its way atop your clothed hip. It was half a joke, half a challenge yet you awaited for his words.

Sunday didn’t reply immediately, instead, his gaze settled on you—steady and unreadable. You observed how his amber eyes lingered on the bodice of your dress a second or two longer before moving on to the bloomed skirt. Beneath his wandering gaze, something in your chest tightened, cheeks burning deeper, it almost felt like a thousand needles prickling your skin.

“. . It suits you.” He said at last.

You blinked, brows knitting together, “That’s it?”

“You expected more?”

“I expected something. I’m about to be married off to the Oak Family Head and become the half of Penacony’s model pair, surely that warrants something far better than ‘it suits you’.”

“You always did prefer honest reponses.” That caught you off guard. Sunday wasn’t one to reminisce about the past—at least not with you—but he has done it twice now, once back at Aideen Park and once today.

You didn’t reply nor did you acknowledge how his gaze softened slightly, “Well, if you want honesty then . . you look exquisite and the dress harmonizes with your beauty perfectly,” The end of his sentence ended awkwardly, as if he wanted to speak more but ultimately decided to hold back.

You were well aware there was no romance behind his compliment, it was merely an honest, straightforward one but you couldn’t help suck in a breath. You looked away, clearing your throat lightly, once again smoothing a none existent crease on the dress, “That’s the goal, isn’t it? To make me look presentable for the big day.”

Sunday hummed absentmindedly causing you to risk a glance at him once more, his eyes were still on you but this time he wasn’t assessing, he was admiring.

“How is it then? Convincing enough for you, Mr. Sunday?”

His gaze finally drew upwards ‘til it met your own, a strange glint flickered in his honeyed eyes, “. . Too convincing.”

Whatever that meant

Before you could respond, the head assistant spoke just beyond the drawn curtains, effectively breaking the . . moment between you and Sunday. Akin to a deer caught in headlights, you slightly stepped away from the latter; funnily enough, there was already a great distance between the two of you but somehow you just felt like distancing yourself further.

“Miss, we need to finalize the veil fitting.”

You cleared your throat, trying to burn down Sunday’s weighted stare, “Of course.”

“. . I should take my leave then.” His gaze lingered on your face but you didn’t dare meet it. With that, he let out a soft sigh, turning around to part the curtains and leave but before he could even take one step, you called out his name, tone laced with . . desperation?

“S-Sunday . . ?” You weren’t sure why you did it or what possessed you to even utter his name yet somehow, you felt it was necessary to do so; though, you didn’t know what to say because now, Sunday looked over his shoulder—citrine gaze, full of hidden curiosity, just above his ivory wing—waiting for what was to come next.

“I’ll see you later, okay?” What did that even mean? Why did you say that? You were certain Sunday was just as confused about your reply as you were but he didn’t seem to let on, in fact, without so much of a hitch, he tilted his head, gave a little smile—one that had you biting the inside of your cheek—and replied, “Of course.”

Then, without another word, he gave both attendants a nod of acknowledgement before heading for the door.

Moment of Blue Hour

After two strenuous weeks of running around the Dreamscape—whether it be for work or for wedding preparations—the big day finally came, and in all honesty, you weren’t sure what to feel. The morning felt like a huge blur, attendants rushed in and out of the bridal suite to tend to you, and several loved ones visited in between, it served as a gentle reminder that you weren’t entirely alone. At least not today.

The first to check on you was Robin, she had peeked into your suite with a warm smile on her face, though, it didn’t quite reach her eyes. You didn’t blame her, she knew of the situation and you assumed she also didn’t know how to feel for you—happiness seemed too cruel but sadness would also dampen the unsteady mood that lingered within the atmosphere.

The least she could leave you with was encouragement and a few good words about her brother: “I know you know my older brother well enough so I won’t say much but . . he will never hurt you. You and I both know he wants the best for everyone, and that includes you.”

The next two who visited were Ms. Maeven Ellis and Siobhan who stayed a little longer with you, especially the latter—out of the three, Lady Siobhan was probably the only one who understood your emotions the most as she, too, was pressured with countless expectations within the Iris Family as the second to the Head.

Being an adoptive older sister, she always looked out for you, most of them during young days where Ms. Maeven Ellis would push you to take acting classes. Though, despite the former’s efforts of letting you choose your own path, you did eventually end up in the artistic industry just like everyone else in the Iris Family.

The Eventide was as romantic as ever, docked in the Sea of Dreams where its tranquil waters lulled guests with awe. Warm lights illuminated the expansive boat, it bathed everything in a gentle gleam of gold; its cathedral-like structure effortlessly blended reverence and spectacle, a quiet yet bold message that The Family did not hold back on this grand event. 

Rows upon rows of guests filled the hall, a sea of fine silk and polished smiles—though, however warm they may be, all you could feel were the weight of their stares, a sense of anticipation that settled over your shoulders, it seemed to be heavier than the gown you wore.

The cameras also didn’t help, the subtle click of the shutter every second or so, they hovered discreetly and blended within the crowd but you knew they were there, capturing every movement and emotion etched into your face.

And as you stood at the altar facing Sunday, your hands resting atop his bigger ones, you trembled slightly—a barely noticeable crack on the surface of the glass. He must have noticed because within the next second, his hands squeezed your own, a gentle action to ground you, to serve as a reminder that only you and him mattered in this moment—not the officiant, not the guests, just you and him. A soft, shaky breath escaped your crimson-stained lips, you mirrored Sunday’s action. A small thank you.

The officiant’s voice carried smoothly through the air, unwavering as he spoke of harmony and unity, of two individuals converging into one for the sake of something greater; you heard his words but they felt far away, almost muffled and dream-like. Your focus drifted over to the feeling of Sunday’s hands in yours, to the warmth of it, to the quiet reminder that despite everything, this moment was real

Well, at least parts of it were but you wanted to believe that softness in Sunday’s gaze as he watched you walk down the aisle earlier was genuine—that it wasn’t a mask he prepared and wore for this ceremony but you’d be lying to yourself. To you, Sunday was the hardest book to decipher, the more you read in between lines and paragraphs, the more you’d doubt your thoughts.

“. . And by the authority vested in me, I now pronounce you—”

Your breath caught and the room seemed to still.

“—Husband and wife.” The officiant paused for a split second, letting the words linger in the air and manifest into existence. Then, he continued,

“You may now kiss the bride.”

As his words echoed in your mind, your gaze slowly lifted to Sunday’s and for a moment, you both hesitated. He was the first to move, his head inclined towards you—eyes fluttering shut—slowly leaning in, his hands rested on either side of your waist; the quiet hum of the Dreamscape faded into the background as the space between your faces narrowed with each long second.

This was a part of the performance, you both knew that but it wasn’t something that was rehearsed, and even though you were an actress yourself—where kissing co-actors came naturally—this felt entirely different.

You closed your eyes, heart stuttering, the traitorous beast banging against the cold bars of your chest; for a second, you wondered if Sunday could hear it but upon noticing the unreadable expression on his face, you assumed he was focused on how to approach the kiss everyone anticipated—the subtle pause in his breath was enough to tell you it wasn’t easy for him either.

And just as Sunday was about to seal the kiss, he gracefully lifted a wing to obscure the view, leaving everyone unaware of the small distance between you and him; it was deliberate yet to everyone else, the veil of feathers seemed natural given the way your faces were angled slightly. The perfect illusion of an elegant kiss.

“Forgive me, I do not wish to make you uncomfortable in front of everyone. This . . should suffice, we do not have to go all the way.” Sunday whispered dangerously close, your knees almost buckled at the feel of his hot breath ghosting over your lips.

Your hands, which rested atop his clothed chest, curled slightly, nails digging into the hearts of your palms, “Right . .” You whispered back.

You told yourself it didn’t matter, that Sunday only thought of respecting your boundaries—as a matter of fact, you should even be grateful that he didn’t force you and yet something in your chest dipped in disappointment. Albeit small and quiet, it was significant enough to feel it within your ribcage, the low murmur of your heart.

Of course. Sunday would never force something like that and you respected him for it! But . . you couldn’t help think that he simply didn’t want to kiss you. As childish as it sounded, you were convinced.

You bit the insides of your cheeks, lids tightly pressed against your eyes, you didn’t dare take a small peak. Not when his face was barely centimetres away from your own and absolutely not when his intoxicating scent invaded your senses. The wings behind your ears rustled briefly, brushing against Sunday’s.

Slowly, the moment passed; each camera click and quiet gasps from the guests enveloped the enchanting scene at the altar. A few seconds later, his wing lowered—as graceful as ever—once again revealing you both to everyone else, and it was like the entire room breathed out a long sigh.

The guests responded instantly, applause swelled throughout the Eventide, everyone wore a smile on their faces, completely convinced by what they’d witnessed.

You pulled away first, immediately turning to the crowd with the most genuine smile you could muster, trying to mirror everyone else’s joyous expression.

Among the guests, you caught Robin’s gaze who sat on the front row pew—she wore a smile like everyone else but her cerulean eyes gleamed with apology; you assumed she felt partly responsible for her brother’s decision regarding the marriage but you never blamed her, if there was anyone to blame it would be the Dreammaster but you’d never dare utter it into existence. After all, you were just pawns in his Dreamscape.

Funnily enough, as the person who decided you and Sunday to be married, he didn’t attend today, you’ve heard whispers within the Dewlight Pavilion that the Dreammaster wasn’t feeling too well these days, not that you cared about the man. You may have grew up with him around but that doesn't mean you’ve warmed up to him; he still carried the same unsettling aura he had when you were a kid.

After the long awaited ceremony, everyone settled into the reception where an abundance of congratulatory greetings and hugs were given to you and Sunday; most of them came from close co-actors who you’ve worked with on previous films, they also took the time to converse with him and didn’t hold back with such questions.

“Okay, this might be a bit silly to ask but who fell in love first?” Cassian—a co-actor you’ve grown close with—asked with pure curiosity, his hazelnut gaze darted between the two of you, he nursed a half empty glass of SoulGlad, swishing the golden liquid within as he stood before the table you and Sunday sat on.

You briefly looked over to Sunday who already had his eyes on you. “I did,” You started, setting your gaze back to Cassian and pairing it with a small smile.

“This is actually the first time I’m admitting this but . . I’ve had a crush on him ever since we were kids so I’m assuming it was me who fell in love first—I mean, who wouldn’t, right? He was kind and caring, and from then on, my young heart knew who it wanted.”

With every word that rolled from your tongue, heat that blanketed your cheeks intensified. Obviously, everything you stated was the truth but saying it aloud in front of him was rather embarrassing even if he didn’t have a clue how real it was.

A confession veiled as a lie.

You could feel Sunday’s honeyed gaze boring into the side of your face but you kept your eyes on Cassian who animatedly cooed in response, “Well, aren’t you a lucky one, Mr. Sunday!” The brunette inclined his glass towards the two of you as if making a toast.

Sunday chuckled softly in response, uttering a small ‘Indeed, I am.’ You ignored the stutter in your chest.

“Do you guys have a destination for the honeymoon? There are so many worlds to choose from!”

You let out a cough, the heat from your cheeks spreading down the column of your neck and onto your chest where it bloomed, “A-Ah, well! Sunday and I decided that we’ll have to push back our honeymoon for a while. With the Charmony Festival approaching in less than a few months, he’d be busy with preparation and as for my schedule, it’s packed with shoots—you should know.”

Cassian enthusiastically nodded, “That’s right! We’ve an upcoming film together—I can’t believe I forgot! Well, I shouldn’t take up anymore of your time, the two of you should enjoy your first few moments as husband and wife. Haha! I’ll get going then. Oh and I’ll see you on set!” With that, the brunette excused himself and headed for the open bar.

“I wasn’t aware Mr. Cassian is going to play the lead role along with you.” Sunday curiously stated. You shrugged, “I wasn’t aware you were interested in my matters but yes, we will be in a romance film together. Why? Interested in seeing it in the theatres once it comes out, Mr. Sunday?”

He let out a humourless laugh, “I liked your little story earlier. The one you told Mr. Cassian.”

Little story. Well, little did he know how true it all was.

This was supposed to be a happy day but with the amount of times Sunday had unknowingly shattered your naïve heart into more and more pieces today alone, you weren’t certain how long you’d last in this foolish charade, and you couldn’t blame him at all—not that you had anyone else to blame but your feelings.

“What can I say? I’ve been told I’m amazing when it comes to improvising.” You didn’t meet his gaze, instead, your eyes scanned around the room, pretending to skim and scan, feigning interest in the uninteresting.

Well, at least the guests looked like they were having more fun than you—they laughed over clinked glasses and exquisite Penaconian dishes, a genuine expression of joy painted on their alcohol tinted faces.

Sunday left the conversation at that and tended to his own glass, briefly swirling the liquid inside before taking a calculated sip; the golden beverage blanketed his tastebuds, its familiar sweetness putting his mind at ease. He wasn’t certain of the reason but he felt somewhat odd upon hearing your reply, the feeling irked him down to the bone.

Clearly, it was an uncharted territory and Sunday despised places he couldn’t control—the unknown and the unpredictable. He hated the thought of not knowing how to unpack his emotions.

But the real question was: Why did he feel this way? and what was the root of it? Maybe it was stress getting to him, he rarely got decent sleep and his daily schedule was always packed. Yeah, definitely stress.

Old Oak Family Manor (Reality)

A few tiring system hours later, you and Sunday were finally surrounded by pure silence—no prying eyes, no endless questions, just silence. The two of you found yourselves inside the old Oak Family manor, a separate building from the Hotel that stood in Reality but remained just as grand and expansive.

“So . . you’re the only one who lives here now? What about the Dreammaster?”

The manor stood like a quiet declaration of wealth—just as you’ve always remembered it to be—it gleamed like polished marble kissed by dawn, its towering windows framed with intricate carvings and draped with silken curtains.

Everything felt all too familiar and with every turn of your head, an old, tucked memory resurfaced like a bubble floating upwards—the curved staircase you and the twins would sit on to tell ghost stories, the expansive field outside where you’d spend afternoons running around, and . . Sunday’s room where he and Robin would ‘perform’ concerts .

The very room both of you stood in.

You had spent enough time in the old Oak Family manor to know that his room barely changed—sure, his toys were replaced with endless stacks of books and documents, and his bed no longer housed soft plushes but apart from those, everything was the same.

“Ever since I was appointed Head, this manor was entrusted to me. I am not aware of Mr. Gopher Wood’s whereabouts nor do I question it.”

“You don’t have company?” “I have attendants.”

You let out a snort which earned a raised brow from him, “That’s different, Sunday. The attendants work here.” The manor used to be so lively, now it felt completely empty and a little cold; you couldn’t help but wonder if Sunday ever felt lonely, especially with a building so vast—was he haunted by the echoes of his lone footsteps? Did he ever avoid eating in the dining room because he’d be the only one sitting at the long table?

“Nevermind, disregard my last question. Though, I do have another one, are you sure you’re comfortable with me sleeping here? I mean, there are tons of other rooms in this manor.” Naturally, since you were now married to Sunday, it only made sense to reside together in the Oak Family manor, however, you didn’t expect to actually share a room with him.

“You’re my wife, are you not? If anything, it’d only rouse suspicions from attendants about us sleeping in different rooms,”

He had a point.

 “And just because our marriage stands on falsehoods does not mean I won’t uphold my role as your husband. I’m sure you’re aware I’m not that kind of man.” Sunday continued. Again, he was right, he certainly wasn’t the type of person to slack off just because he was out of the spotlight and you didn’t know whether that was a blessing or a curse.

“I suggest you wash up first, it has been a long day, after all, and your clothes are in the closet.” Oh, that’s right, you almost forgot about your belongings, thanks to the help of the Bloodhound Family, all of them were transported to the manor safe and sound; you assumed the attendants must have unpacked it all for you.

You absentmindedly nodded, trying to process the fact that you were now bound not only to Sunday but the manor as well for the rest of your life—that you would come home every single night and sleep beside him.

A foreign feeling washed over your body, the feeling that would grow from the depths of your core in response to a drastic change in your life. It wasn’t unsettling nor uncomfortable per se but it was extremely hard to ignore.

Bathing beneath the warm water took a lot longer than you’d intended, the feel of it against your bare skin soothed you so much that it almost felt like someone had wrapped you in a cozy hug, one that you’ve been deprived of these days.

Now, sitting on your side of the bed—the left side—in your silken nightie, you carefully combed your freshly dried hair, a thousand thoughts coursing through your mind and none of them were coherent.

Sure, what you were wearing was designed entirely for sleeping but Xipe above! You felt absolutely exposed; the way its flimsy straps slid down your shoulders every other minute didn’t help at all.

Even the way Sunday’s honeyed eyes widened when you walked out of the bathroom clearly meant he was taken aback by the brazenness of your attire—or the lack of it. But could you really blame yourself? Prior to tonight, you lived alone and that meant you could wear whatever you wanted to bed with no one to judge.

Setting the comb on the night stand beside you, you quickly tucked yourself beneath the ivory duvet upon hearing the shower turn off; if you hid yourself inside the bed, it would make you feel less exposed to Sunday, you pulled on the duvet ‘til it covered all the way up to the base of your neck.

Yeah, this seemed about right.

He stepped out of the bathroom, clad in a pair of matching pyjamas, hair and wings damp, it took him only about three steps before he stopped in his tracks, gaze fixated on you.

“Is the temperature too cold for your liking . . ?” Sunday stood there dumbfounded at the silly sight before him—you, on the bed with just your head and neck sticking out from under the duvet.

“No, it’s perfectly fine. Why do you ask?” You shook your head, blinking up at him. He replied with a small sigh, “If this is about your . . attire then rest assured I do not mind but if you feel uncomfortable, I can offer you a top to wear over.” He immediately looked away, feigning a cough.

His reply may have been nonchalant but you caught how the tips of his ears flushed a deep pink hue; obviously he, too, was as embarrassed as you were, only he was better at hiding it.

Once again, you shook your head, “I don’t want to bother you with such trivial matters. Besides, I’ll be going to sleep soon.”

Sunday wordlessly nodded before turning off the lights and proceeding to walk towards the shared bed—towards you.

As darkness filled the entire room in an instant, you swallowed thickly, trying to calm your poor, poor heart as his footsteps echoed closer than the last; you closed your eyes as he lifted the duvet—a breeze of cool air momentarily enveloping your bare skin—he slipped inside and the mattress dipped beneath his weight, it made you realise just how small of a space there was between your bodies.

Not enough to have your bare arm brushing against his clothed one but enough to feel warmth that radiated from him.

“Pardon me but would you have trouble sleeping if I turned on a lamp?” Sunday whispered into the darkness.

“I don’t mind but are you not going to sleep? It’s well past midnight.” You opened your eyes and inclined your head, facing him.

“I’ll be writing for a bit as sleep has not yet caught up to me.” The bedside lamp turned on with a soft click which immediately illuminated his half of the bed, casting a warm gentle glow on his softened features. You replied with a wordless nod before turning your back to him and letting the faint sound of pen and paper sully you into endless clouds of dreams.

A couple of pages and half a system hour later, Sunday finally looked up from the inked pages of his book. Curious, he glanced over at your sleeping form which remained with your back towards him, he watched the rhythmic rise and fall with every shallow breath.

Compared to earlier, more of your torso peeked from beneath the duvet, he noticed how the flimsy strap of your nightie had fallen from your shoulder and took the initiative—after whispering an apology for his brazen behaviour—to lean over and fix it.

Sunday let out a sigh, he pulled the shared duvet upwards to cover your shoulder before returning to his side of the bed.

For some reason, he couldn’t help but feel that you held disdain for him—and honestly? Rightfully so because truthfully speaking, he had foolishly roped you into an eternal duty without your consent, without considering how you would feel about the entire idea. It wasn’t like him to involve others in such serious matters, and if given the opportunity to shoulder the problem alone, he would’ve done so in a heartbeat.

Sunday gazed down at his book once more, catching a glimpse of glimmering gold wrapped around a digit of his left hand—his wedding band, it shone quietly beneath the warm glow of the lamp. He brought his hand up to examine the piece of jewellery, honeyed gaze following each curve of the intricate pattern engraved on it. Despite its small size, it sat heavy on his finger and whether it was the weight of burden or something more, he had no idea.

Funnily enough, never in a million years did he think he’d be married before Robin; sure, he was the older twin but relationships and marriage rarely crossed his mind, and as embarrassing as it was, flirting definitely wasn’t for him either.

Moment of Morning Dew

“So what you’re suggesting is a date?”

“Indeed.”

“Wow, I didn’t know you were quite the romantic, Oak Family Head.”

“To be frank, it wasn’t my idea. It was merely suggested to me and I think it’d be appropriate to make occasional appearances in public as husband and wife.”

Well, there goes romance out of the window. So it was tied to duty after all, and here you were thinking Sunday acted out of his own will for once but if there was anyone to blame the feeling of slight disappointment, it would be none other than you and your naïve heart.

It had only been a little over a month after the marriage yet you’ve already been met with disappointments and you hated yourself for feeling that way because it wasn’t even Sunday’s fault—he was only upholding his role but you? You had mistaken his actions for reality.

The chaste forehead kisses whenever he visited you on set paired with a humble bouquet of flowers, the endearments he called you in front of your co-actors, holding your hand—all these were initiated by him and every single time, like a fool, you had mistaken it for something sincere.

How ironic that between the two of you, Sunday would be the better actor. You’ve paid him a visit countless times in Dewlight Pavilion when you weren’t needed on set—brought him food, offered him a shoulder massage whenever he seemed visibly stressed, and even tried convincing him to take a breather but you were rigid and hesitant.

Today just happened to be one of those days where you visited him. As usual, you were as stiff as a board and your words barely held any sincerity in them, as if you merely read off a script. 

And maybe that’s why he took the initiative to lead because he had sensed your hesitancy regarding everything.

“Where are we headed?” You raised a brow, shifting your weight from one foot to the other.

Sunday gathered every document on his table and stacked them neatly in a pile before placing it to the side, “Aideen Park. I heard there was a small event happening there and I thought we could pay a visit.”

Moment of Golden Hour

Aideen Park was livelier than normal, people lined up for several reasons—food trucks, photobooths, and even a mini ferris wheel ride. Naturally, the band which usually performed at the heart of the Park gained quite a crowd as well, they played an upbeat melody to fit the joyous atmosphere. Several booths and signage within the vicinity was enough to deduce that this public event was run by SoulGlad with their iconic logo plastered everywhere.

“Hm? Did SoulGlad release a new flavour?” You fell into a step beside Sunday, eyes fixated on a stall where a staff happily gave away freebies and judging by the unfamiliar packaging of SoulGlad in his hand, it had to be a new flavour.

He nodded, jutting out his right arm which you wordlessly held on to, “Indeed, SoulGlad has released a new flavour called Charmony to honour the Charmony Festival. I figured I’d acquire several bottles for Robin.”

You hummed at his reply. It was nice knowing he still thought about his sister even in her absence, at heart, Sunday was truly just an older brother taking care of his family and it warmed your heart more than anything.

You’ve always wondered how he felt when Robin left Penacony; from what you could remember, it was a crucial turning point in their lives as well as yours—her music career was taking off, Sunday was training to be Bronze Melodia, and you had just secured your first lead role.

“Have you had the chance to try the new flavour?” You asked, shaking the thoughts away.

At your question, he shook his head, “I have heard from several people that it has its own unique twist to it. Now, I know we have personal security around but it’s best to stay close to me with this many people present.”

With his free arm, he adjusted your hand on his clothed bicep, allowing you to hold him better. “It’s not like I’m going to run away.” You murmured, ignoring the blanket of heat settling on your cheeks.

There had already been a few instances where you had held Sunday by his bicep like this or his hand but you’ve never gotten used to the feeling of his body pressed closely against your own.

Even through the fabric of his blazer, merely touching him seared your skin like a thousand flames—it felt like it was forbidden to do so yet at the same time, you couldn’t quite pull away even if you wanted to.

Sunday led the two of you to a food truck lined with customers and on the way there, you were both excitedly greeted by many event goers and passerbys, with some even coming up to you for autographs and photos.

You only managed to get through three autographs and two photos before Sunday came up behind you, a chivalrous hand hovering on the small of your back as he gently ushered you away, a wing curled around the back of your head, “We should get going before people start shoving one another to get signatures and such.”

Nodding, you smiled apologetically before bidding them good bye, “It was nice seeing you all! I hope everyone enjoys this SoulGlad event!”

“Pardon my intrusion but I noticed you were getting quite flustered so I took matters into my own hands.” Sunday apologised, not realising his hand—which rested on your lower back—had protectively snaked around your waist, it pulled you closer to him, effectively turning your legs into jello. If it wasn’t for his hold, you would’ve already kissed the grounds of Aideen Park.

Oh god, you hoped he hadn’t noticed how your torso shook with a small shudder. You feigned a cough, “T-That’s quite okay, Sunday. Thank you. What did you want to ord—”

“Mr and Mrs Sunday! How lovely to see Penacony’s harmonious couple in our humble event!” One of the SoulGlad staff at the food truck rushed over to the back of the line where you and Sunday stood, effectively gaining attention from customers in the queue. They turned around and whispered amongst themselves, not-so-subtly pointing at you both.

Sunday greeted the Pepeshi staff with a smile, “Ah, hello. Thank you for having us.” 

“Are you two seeking to order? I can take it in advance so the two of you won’t have to wait!” He excitedly spoke, the fluff ball atop his head vigorously swinging back and forth.

In unison, you and Sunday both shook your heads, declining his kind offer, “We shan’t. She and I are here as humble customers, we don’t mind waiting a little while. It would be unfair for those who are before us.”

“No such thing! Mr. Sunday and Mrs are our esteemed guests! You know what? I’ll go ahead and get two servings of our best seller—Clockie Pizza!” Before the two of you could humbly decline once more, the Pepeshi had already taken off towards the food truck, excitement budding with every step he took.

Within a few minutes, he came running back with two servings of Clockie Pizza on a paper plate, steam which radiated from the slices indicated it was freshly taken from the oven.

“Here you are! Two slices for our very special customers, enjoy!” Both of you thanked the Pepeshi staff as he handed the plate over to Sunday, he gave the two of you another excited smile before skipping off towards the food truck. You and Sunday could only exchange lopsided smiles, not really knowing what to make out of the situation; as much as you felt bad, you were pretty hungry so you were absolutely more than thankful.

After eating, the two of you found yourselves in one of the photobooths (Embarrassingly, Sunday had noticed you were staring intently at them while you were eating and asked if you wanted to go). Naturally, the booth had limited space inside which meant you two had to squeeze yourselves on the bench—arms and legs flushed against one another.

You tried not to think about how your wing momentarily brushed his own, his ivory feathers tickling yours; Halovians’ wings were a sensitive area and one couldn’t just reach out and have a feel of it, many Halovians treat their wings as the most important part of their body and consider it an intimate gesture if they willingly let someone touch it.

“How does one operate this?” He drew the crimson curtain on his left side to close off the booth before turning to you with a hint of confusion on his face. At his question, you  mirrored his expression, brows drawn together, “Have you not tried one before?—Nevermind. We simply press this button on the screen to get started and once it starts, the camera takes three pictures so we have to think of different poses for each frame.”

“And oh, it’s timed so efficiency is needed.”

“Seems quite pressuring, no?” Sunday humourlessly laughed. This was his first time trying out a photobooth machine and the thought of coming up with three different poses in a span of mere seconds . . He couldn’t even think of one off the top of his head.

“Oh? Is the Oak Family Head intimidated by a photobooth? Well, if you ever feel stuck, you can go ahead and copy my poses. Ready?” You glanced over at him who only nodded in response, honeyed pupils gleaming beneath the harsh lights of the booth.

Without another word, you leaned over and  pressed the button in the middle before quickly getting into a pose—the classic smile with a peace sign.

On the other hand, Sunday blinked as he watched numbers on the screen count down. 3. Ah, what pose should he do? 2. Maybe just a smile? Would that be too formal? 1. He quickly looked over to you to imitate your pose but before he could even get his hand in position, the camera brightly flashed indicating that the first photo had been taken.

“Quick! Finish off the other half of this heart!”

As the screen began counting down once more, Sunday hesitantly mirrored your gesture with his left hand. Four fingers curl like so . . and how does the thumb go? Ah, straight down at an angle. Then, place it against her hand. While he mused over how to complete the hand heart, the camera flashed once again. Another photo taken, another frame where he wasn’t ready. Why are photobooths so hard?

“Why don’t we just do a smile?” 

Finally, something he could get behind. The two of you instinctively squeezed closer, inclining your heads towards one another with smiles on your face, then, the camera flashed. Sunday let out a soft sigh, it’s as if weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

A small laugh escaped your lips as the two of you exited the booth, “Not bad for your first photobooth experience, huh?” You didn’t notice how heated your skin had become ‘til the air outside pressed against you like an icy envelope.

“You are teasing.” Sunday stared at you with a deadpan expression which only pulled another laugh.

The small machine whirred to life, producing two copies of the strip, you took them both and handed one over to him, “This one is yours, Mr. Oak Family Head.”

You took the time to examine each frame and couldn’t help but crack a smile at how clueless he looked in the first two photos; the first one was him blankly glancing over at you while on the second one, he wore a confused expression while glancing down at his half of the hand heart.

As for the third photo, you didn’t want to look at it for too long. Not because it was hideous or any of that sort—quite the opposite—but because both of you looked like an actual happy couple, a pair who loved one another. You swallowed thickly.

“Where shall we head next? Up for a ferris wheel ride?” Tucking the photo strip inside the pocket of your jacket, you looked up at Sunday with a calculated smile on your face. His gaze lingered on you for a second longer as if to search for something but nonetheless, he nodded.

The ferris wheel carriage was quite small, meaning either you and Sunday would have to squeeze together—again—on one side of the carriage or sit on opposite sides; obviously, both of you opted for the latter, which despite facing one another, at least gave you room to breathe.

You avoided fully facing him by slightly angling yourself sideways to gaze beyond the carriage; the ride wasn’t as grand as the one in Clock Studios Theme Park  but it was able to reveal a great area of Golden Hour once at the top.

Below, Penaconians went on about their day as usual—whether it be shopping, working or simply taking a leisurely stroll in the Moment, you watched as they led their own lives, wondering what it felt like to be a normal Penaconian.

But what did normal mean for you, exactly? You wished you had the answer.

Sunday knew it was rude to stare but he simply couldn’t bring himself to stop either. Earlier, when you were examining the photo strip, he had noticed the solemn expression on your face; how the corners of your lips sunk ever so slightly and the faint gleam of sadness in your eyes.

A wave of regret hit him once more, the same way it had done for the past month—hard. And now as he watched you observe the Dreamscape below, he couldn’t help but feel responsible for your sadness. There had been many instances where he had caught you with a somber expression but he never dared address it, though now seemed like a great opportunity.

“Are you quite alright?”

Turning your head to him, you drew your brows together, “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Sunday pressed his lips in a thin line, “You . . can always talk to me. As a friend.”

You chuckled, adjusting your body so you could face him fully, “Is the Oak Family Head missing his Bronze Melodia days?”

Deflecting—that’s what you were doing, a habit he never once liked from you but as concerned as he was, he didn’t press any further. Doing so would most likely only worsen whatever you housed inside your chest, and he didn’t want to be the cause of that. Maybe some day you’d finally open up to him about all your worries and feelings but for now, he’d wait even if it meant waiting for eons.

Moment of Sol

“Ah, Mr. Sunday! Lovely to see you here once again. As you can see, we’re about to start filming so it’s best to keep quiet. Other than that, feel free to watch.” The director—who he had come to know as Thaddeus—gleefully whispered before heading to his seat. The former wasn’t old, most likely in his early forties but he did don several silvery strands on his head along with a full beard.

Sunday made his way over to a quiet corner behind all the film crew with a decent view of the scene unfolding before him. The set was a large bedroom dimmed to convey a sultry atmosphere, in the middle sat a large bed draped in crimson sheets where you and Cassian were positioned. Judging by this, he could easily deduce that the scene you were filming was rather intimate—it was a romance film after all.

During the previous times he had visited you, the scenes he witnessed were more . . family friendly. Scenes where Celestine—the character you played—merely caught up with her friends in a coffee shop and all of that sort; there was one that Sunday particularly took a liking to, where you and Cassian argued back and forth—an intense quarrel between two lovers.

It reminded him how much of an amazing actress you were, he didn’t want to admit it but that scene moved him enough to make his eyes water, he could only imagine what it would look like on the big screen. But this scene was entirely different, Sunday had never seen you act intimately before and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious.

“Quiet on set! Pictures up! Roll sound! Roll camera! Marker . . and action!”

Clap!

The slate’s sound echoed throughout the entire set and Sunday watched as you and Cassian instantly got into character. He sucked in a breath as the two of you slowly inched closer to one another, sealing each other’s lips in a heated kiss.

Soft, wet sounds filled the room, the kiss deepened and turned into something less innocent  and for a brief moment, Sunday forgot he was in a set, and that the scene before him was scripted.

He swallowed thickly, shifting his weight from one foot to another as Cassian roamed his hands all over your body, even going as far as raking his palms along your clothed chest and the area behind your wings. A dainty whimper slipped past your kiss-bitten slips in between breaths, followed by a whisper of his name. 

Something strange bubbled within Sunday’s chest, he was well aware everything was scripted but seeing another man brazenly touch you with lust and fervour, and hearing you breathe out someone else’s name did not feel right at all. Was he jealous? No. But he wasn’t entirely fine with this either. 

Nonetheless, Sunday didn’t have the right to have a say on these matters so he kept quiet and continued watching how Cassian eagerly shoved his tongue past your lips like a hungry beast. He didn’t even realise his jaw had tightened and the tips of his fingers had dug into the hearts of his palms ‘til the Thaddeus yelled ‘Cut!’ ultimately breaking immersion. The two of you pulled away from one another, breathless and hair mussed.

“Cassian, remember to angle your arm slightly or else we won’t be able to see her face—” 

As the director gave him instructions, you managed to spot a familiar face within the small crowd of film crew, his golden halo shone lightly beneath the artificial set lighting—Sunday.

Xipe above, you almost forgot he was going to pay you a visit today, not that you didn’t want him to come, it’s just that having him watch an erotic scene with yourself and Cassian felt odd. You were embarrassed, to say the least. As an actress, you took yourself out of comfort zones countless times for different roles and they were no easy feat but who knew you’d be struggling to act in an intimate scene before Sunday?

With a lopsided smile, you shyly waved at him to which he responded with an incline of his head. Whether he had a smile on his face or not, you weren’t sure, you couldn’t see clearly beyond the lighting.

Sunday, in fact, did not have a smile on his face

It was childish and idiotic to sulk over such a minor thing and if he could stop his chest from tightening weirdly, he would have done so already but he couldn’t, and now a subtle frown blanketed his face. He tried to look at the bright side—how talented you were at acting and how proud he was that you’ve come so far but god he was powerless to his own thoughts.

“Alright, from the top! Sound! Cameras! Marker and . . action!”

Clap!

Again, the entire room snapped into place, including you and Cassian. For the second time, Sunday watched in silence as the two of you passionately made out once more, this time the scene escalated to him pushing you down on the mattress below, lips still locked onto your own, and hands pinned against the pillows.

Even with your eyes closed and even with Cassian smothering you like there was no tomorrow, you could feel the heat of Sunday’s gaze from beyond the cameras and lights—the intensity of it. Getting into the zone was second nature to you yet you couldn’t shake off the nagging thought that he was watching you, it felt like you were cheating right in front of his face; Sunday probably didn’t mind at all but still.

This went on for a few more minutes until Thaddeus was satisfied with the outcome and wrapped up the scene, “Actors, we need you in a wardrobe change and can we please rearrange lighting on the set for the next scene?”

With that, you stood up from the bed and walked over to Sunday who greeted you with a small smile, “Hey, I’m glad you’re here.” You mirrored his smile before loosely wrapping your arms around his waist. A simple performance in front of everyone. He did the same and placed a chaste kiss on the crown of your head.

“You did well, my love.”

Your heart stuttered.

“Mm, really? I’m glad you think so.”

“Well, I shan’t take up any more of your time. Mr. Thaddeus did mention a wardrobe change for you, right?” Sunday slightly pulled back, a warm smile on his face as he gazed down at you. Ah, you wished he stayed for a little longer even though embarrassment ate you alive in his presence  but alas, he was a busy man, so you simply nodded,

“I’ll see you around?” The corners of your lips curled into a smile.

He hummed, he gave you another chaste kiss, this time on your forehead before completely letting go of you. Oh, god. Was it merely your imagination or was he acting extra . . touchy? You wouldn’t even dream of putting Sunday and touchy in the same sentence—they were like two magnets with the same side that repelled one another but his actions proved otherwise. Or maybe you were highly delusional.

Before he could walk away any further, you called out to him, “Sunday?” He turned around, an expectant look painted on his face.

“I . .” Love you? Was that what you were going to say? There was no harm in that, right? Right? Come to think of it, neither of you had ever uttered those words—were you about to start now? Technically, the two of you were married and expressing love to one another was normal. God, why were you even overthinking—

Whatever.

“I love you.”

Sunday’s wings momentarily rustled, a hint of shock washed over his face, albeit subtle, you caught on. His chest tightened but it wasn’t the same feeling as earlier, it didn’t hurt, instead, it felt like a dainty butterfly fluttering inside his ribcage. He stared at you momentarily, the rush of everyone else around fading into the background, his breaths turned shallow and slightly uneven. Was he sick?

“I . . love you, too.” And without another word, he left.

Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake!

You reminded yourself this marriage was fake and so was his response but your heart believed otherwise because now it pounded against the bars of your ribs, it wanted to leap out and find comfort in the warmth of his palms. Heat spread from your cheeks, along the column of your neck, and all the way down to your chest—it bloomed like a fiery flower, its blazing petals hungry for more. 

The urge to tell Sunday as soon as possible settled in your heart.

The night before the Charmony Festival, Old Oak Family Manor (Reality)

Unfortunately, with both your schedules tightly packed, you rarely saw Sunday within the past week—only some nights during ungodly hours where he carefully slipped next to you in bed but other than that, no words were exchanged, and as much as you wanted to talk to him, exhaustion weighed on your body. And as soon as you were enveloped by the softness of the bed, it immediately lulled you into a deep sweet dream.

Tonight wasn’t any different, you came home to yet another empty house—save for the attendants—without Sunday and frankly, you were worried he wasn’t getting the proper rest he needed. You did leave him a couple of messages earlier between your shoots simply asking how he was but he never replied to them, though that wasn't surprising given how close the festival was.

The shared bed felt a lot colder and bigger as you slipped beneath the covers, you turned to face Sunday’s side, stretching out an arm as if to reach for him only to be met with emptiness. A small sigh slipped past your lips, you silently prayed to Xipe that THEY would answer your wishes to see him soon. 

For now, you closed your eyes and went to sleep.

11 system hours later

Ri█—ng!

█Rin█g!

Ring!

At the sound of your phone, you stirred awake in bed, sleep still weighed heavy on your body. Was that your alarm? You didn’t remember setting one last night . . Nonetheless, you slowly opened your eyes and reached for the device atop the wooden nightstand, bringing it to your face. You blinked a few times, doing your best to adjust the blur of your vision to see better.

Mr. Oti Alfalfa

Huh? Why was the Alfalfa Family Head calling you? As if your entire body was doused in icy water, you quickly shot up, fingers raked through your mussed hair as you answered, “H-Hello?”

“Ah, it seems you’ve finally woken up, Miss.”

“Mr. Oti Alfalfa! My sincere apologies, it had been a long night . . May I ask why you’re calling?” You rubbed your temples, looking at the wall clock to check the time—11 system hours?! You’ve been asleep for 11 system hours? Just how tired were you last night? Though, with the weight of sleep on you, it did feel like you slept for quite a while, almost like a never ending dream.

“The Family has cleared your schedule for today, we require your presence at the Dewlight Pavilion right this moment. There are important matters to be discussed.”

At the mention of The Family’s residence, you looked over to your right. No Sunday, an empty space. Seeing as how they required your presence, that meant they asked for him too, right? He must’ve been at the Pavilion already but why didn’t he wake you up from your sleep?

There were a thousand questions that ran through your mind regarding the whole situation but what could they possibly need to discuss with you? They even cleared your schedule which meant it had to be something very serious, not to mention how you could sense the urgency in old Oti’s tone as he spoke of important matters. 

It made you somewhat uneasy.

“Alright. I will be there in a few minutes.”

With that, you quickly got dressed and headed for the Dreamscape.

Moment of Morning Dew

The Dewlight Pavilion housed more members of The Family than usual, its entrance had at least six Bloodhound Family security officers guarding the doors, and the inside wasn’t any better. What was going on? Today was the Charmony Festival, right? So why was almost everyone present in the Pavilion? You walked down its long halls, each step taken heavier than the last.

There was a slight tension in the air, you felt it and it made your stomach churn; you noticed how some attendants gazed at you as if you were some kind of criminal. 

Was . . something wrong? Nonetheless, you ignored them and kept walking ‘til you reached the Council Chamber.

Inside, gathered four Family Heads, they gathered at the heart of the chamber, sitting around a vast circular table. Robin was also present but where was Sunday? Shouldn’t he be present as well? 

“. . May I ask what this is all about?” Your brows furrowed, a small frown forming on your lips; you looked over at Robin who only gave you a solemn expression, even the look on your adoptive mother’s face was hard to explain.

“Are you aware of what has transpired in Penacony?” Oti Alfalfa spoke up.

Slowly, you made your way over to situate yourself next to Robin. “No . .  I have been asleep and only woke up from your call. Did something terrible happen in the Dreamscape?” You felt asking that question would do more harm than good but there had to be a clear reason as to why they needed you here.

The atmosphere was unbearable. Every Head, including Robin wore an unreadable expression, it’s as if all of them were in on some kind of secret and no one dared to inform you about it. Sunday’s absence in this meeting made you all the more nervous. All of them shared strange looks with one another before Oti Alfalfa spoke up once again,

“. . The Oak Family Head and the Dreammaster had committed the highest act of treason—not only to The Family but to the entirety of Penacony. Sunday usurped the Harmony and revived Ena The Order to use THEIR power to create an eternal dream paradise.”

You didn’t know what to say. Was there even anything appropriate to say? 

It didn’t feel real at all, you were hoping they were merely playing a sick, elaborate prank on you but the look on their faces proved otherwise. Old Oti’s words reached your ears the same way nightmares did—fragmented, disjointed, and absolutely impossible to process all at once.

Sunday. Treason. Eternal dream paradise.

No. That wasn’t the Sunday you knew, he couldn’t have possibly done something like that, not the man who had spent most of his life looking out for others—putting their needs before his. It felt contradictory to everything he was. But did it really? Your mind scrambled for reason and context, for some kind of missing piece that would make everything make sense but there was nothing. 

Among the million of questions, your mind raised another: What exactly had your marriage been for? 

You stood with him before all of Penacony yet all this time he secretly worked with the Dreammaster to dismantle the very concept you and he were assigned to uphold—Harmony. A deep, aching sorrow settled beneath your ribs.

“Rightfully, the former Oak Family Head was imprisoned but it has come to our attention that he had managed to flee from prison, he is now deemed a wanted fugitive. We asked you to join this meeting because we have a few questions regarding your husband.” Flee from prison? How? And who aided him? A part of you was relieved that Sunday managed to flee from The Family’s wrath but you were also scared of what he might face once they found him.

You knew what was coming next.

Maeven Ellis parted her crimson-stained lips, she still held onto that unreadable expression, “Oh, Triple-Faced Soul, please sear her tongue and palms with a hot iron, so that she will not be able to fabricate lies and make false vows.”

“Everyone in this room is aware regarding the status of your marriage with the former Oak Family Head, orchestrated to refute rumours within the Dreamscape. Were you an accomplice to him and the Dreammaster? Was your marriage merely a disguise to direct Penacony’s attention from their dark schemes?”

You shook your head, “No. I was only aware that our marriage was a solution against those rumours.”

Why were they asking you this? Each Family Head had already agreed to the Dreammaster’s proposal of having you and Sunday marry one another, why was Oti Alfalfa acting as if he wasn’t in favour of the proposal?

“Did you have a hand at helping the former Oak Family Head escape?”

Once again, you shook your head, “No. As I mentioned earlier, I just woke up. I came home from a long shoot last night and went to bed as soon as I could.”

“Did the former Oak Family Head tell you of his schemes?”

You were getting sick of this, twice you’ve already told them you weren’t aware of the Dreammaster and Sunday’s plans, why were they so insistent you had a hand at their schemes? Your mother—out of all people—knew you’d never get involved with something like that. Sure, you had the third highest ranking in the Iris Family but you were merely an actress and stayed out of The Family’s business.

“No.”

Oti Alfalfa nodded, briefly glancing at the golden band around your finger, “That is all but let me tell you this, once The Family finds out you have made contact without any notice or you are actively helping the former Oak Family Head hide, you will be met with punishment for aiding and abetting. This applies to you as well, Miss Robin.”

He didn’t have to verbally say it yet you knew between those words he spoke, he wanted to remind you that The Family was always watching.

After being dismissed by Old Oti, you headed straight to Golden Hour to clear your head—you still couldn’t wrap your head around the whole incident. Did he really manage to revive a dead Aeon? The one that Xipe assimilated? The severity of the entire thing was beyond you and there was no easy way to process all this.

Moment of Golden Hour

“You know, Sunny, won’t it be better to bid farewell to her instead of staring at her poster like a total creep?” 

“That implies we won’t see each other again and I do not intend to keep it that way. Even so, I simply cannot bring myself to face her like this even with a disguise. It’s far too risky, Wonweek. I am a fugitive, after all.”

Amidst the glittering luxuries, billboards, and rush of people in the Moment, Sunday—disguised as an Intellitron—stood before an expansive poster of you at Oti Mall, his honeyed gaze traced over your features once, twice, thrice as if to engrave them in his mind.

He was aware the poster was merely an advertisement for a skin care brand yet you looked extremely happy in it and he could only wish the same for you now. With the amount of Bloodhound Family security patrolling around, he assumed news had already broken out regarding his escape, and that you were also aware of it—of everything he had done.

The Pepeshi—Wonweek—who stood next to him hummed, “Oh, really? Not even when she’s right there crying?"

Sunday immediately turned to his companion, “What?” He followed the Pepeshi’s line of sight, it took a few seconds before finally spotting your familiar figure—you sat on a bench in front of Clock Diner, arms crossed over your chest, seemingly staring into nothing. Even though you wore a hat and sunglasses, Sunday could still tell it was you.

“W-Well, maybe not crying but she certainly doesn’t look okay to me.”

“Stay here . .” Sunday absentmindedly murmured, his eyes remained fixated on you, and as if his feet had a mind of its own, he started walking towards you.

“Hey! What the heck happened to ‘I simply cannot bring myself to face her like this’!” Wonweek called out to him, mocking his voice but didn’t bother interfering, he figured the two of you needed to talk, even if it was indirectly.

This wasn’t Sunday’s plan at all, he wasn’t supposed to approach you yet here he was merely three steps away; he had to remind himself not to get carried away with things and that he had a disguise which meant he was a stranger to you.

“Pardon my intrusion, Miss but are you okay?”

At the sound of an unfamiliar voice, you immediately snapped out of your thoughts and shifted your gaze to its owner who stood to your left, just beyond your line of sight—it was an Intellitron clad in a long plum coloured dress. Despite their unmoving facial features, you could sense the hint of concern in their voice.

“O-Oh, um! Yes, of course thank you for asking . . Apologies for my rudeness! Did you want to sit down?” You feigned a cough and adjusted the sunglasses atop your nosebridge before scooting to the edge of the bench to make room. The Intellitron murmured a small thank you as she sat down, smoothing the skirt of her dress.

“My apologies if you were taken aback by my brazenness.”

“Not at all! I’m grateful to have someone look out for me, Miss . . ?”

“Wonweek.” The Intellitron replied.

“Miss Wonweek! What a lovely name . . Thank you, again. It’s just that it’s been a long day and, uh, a . . dear friend of mine has gone somewhere far, far away from me, and I am not certain when I will see him next. Or if I will ever see him again.” You tried your best to stabilize your voice but as each word slipped past your lips, they trembled harder than the last, and the only way to calm yourself down was to caress the golden band wrapped around your ring finger.

“This friend . . he seems quite important to you, no?”

Letting out a shaky sigh, you nodded, “He’s someone I hold very dear to my heart and all I wish for is to talk to him. I’ve been meaning to tell him something.” Sunday swallowed thickly, what could that something possibly be? He’d rather not get his hopes up.

“Your friend may have gone off somewhere far away but I am certain once the time is right, destiny will intertwine your paths once more.”

“Of course. And should the path he chooses not include me in the future, I can only hope it’s a path where he is genuinely happy. I am willing to sacrifice that.” After all, your ties with The Family would make the situation difficult—Oti Alfalfa had already warned you earlier that they had eyes and ears everywhere.

“I may not know your friend well but I am certain he would not want a future without you in it.”

3 months and 3 weeks later, Consternation Starzone, Planarcadia

“Ugh, come on! You already picked the last movie, Stelle! Let me pick one for movie night this time!”

As Sunday walked into the hotel room, he was immediately met with a scene of his bickering companions, however, one of them remained seated in a corner with his arms folded across his chest and eyes closed.

“Great, Sunday’s here! He can back me up on this one! Can you please convince her to watch this movie?” The pink haired woman —who he had come to know as Miss March 7th—eagerly walked over to him and shoved her phone before his face, presenting an opened browser tab for an overview of a movie.

Love and Devotion (1h 49m): Estranged childhood best friends find their way back to one another which results in a trip down memory lane and a blossoming love. Faced with obstacles from their contrasting paths, they navigate through difficulties together, ultimately challenging their relationship.

Cast: Mr. Cassian Noctis, Mrs.—

She swiftly pulled away her phone before he could read any further, an expectant look in her eyes. That was your movie, March 7th wanted to watch your movie—he made a promise to himself he’d make time to watch it once it comes out but ever since he boarded the Express, it had only been missions after missions. Though, he was updated enough to know that it received a lot of love not only in Penacony but across the cosmos as well.

“Do you even know what you’re asking of him? That’s his wife in that movie!” Stelle—the other woman March argued with earlier—scratched the back of her head, whisper-yelling the other half of her sentence. She sat on the edge of the bed, a pillow tucked beneath her arms.

The latter quickly connected the dots, her eyes wide with realisation, “O-Oh! Um! You know what, I think we can go with the movie you picked!”

It wasn’t a secret among the Crew that Sunday was married but they figured the topic was sensitive to him as he barely talked about you, even the mention of Penacony had him wearing a solemn expression.

Though it was the complete opposite for him, Sunday wanted to talk about you—about his homeworld but he was afraid doing so would only get his hopes up for nothing. For the past few months he had been hoping to at least get a glimpse of you during his journey around the cosmos, you were an actress after all, you occasionally went on film press tours.

“I don’t mind at all. I had the opportunity to watch behind the scenes while they were shooting and I was more than intrigued to see the finished piece.” Sunday shook his head, he handed March their room keycard she gave him earlier before sitting next to his dark haired companion on the couch.

“Really? That’s so cool! Ugh, I wish I could get her autograph! You know, I was quite surprised when news broke out that she was engaged! I’ve also seen some of the wedding photos and you two looked absolutely stunning! Anyway, how about you Dan Heng? Do you have any movies you wanna watch?” March turned to the man next to Sunday.

Dan Heng opened his eyes and slowly shook his head, “I’m okay with any movie you guys pick.”

After a few more minutes of going back and forth, all lights were turned off and everyone eventually settled on Love and Devotion. Sunday was the most intrigued—even more than March 7th who initially convinced all to watch the movie; he knew of your acting prowess yet  he was completely speechless.

Every single time you appeared on screen, his heart seemed to skip a beat or two, he chalked it up to not having seen your face for a while which is why excitement enveloped him every now and then. 

However, half way through the movie while a particular scene played—the scene he vividly remembered watching on set—a foreign feeling enveloped his entire body, a hint of heat and something more.

Subtly, Sunday looked around to see his companions’ reactions, March 7th and Stelle who were sitting on the bed were unfazed by the escalating scene of the movie whereas Dan Heng merely scrolled on his dimmed phone, a slight blanket of pink dusting his cheeks.

With the volume turned all the way up, wet kissing sounds filled all four walls of the hotel room, it made Sunday’s stomach churn in a way that had him digging the tips of his fingers on his palms.

You and Cassian were only kissing but the intensity and lewd noises you made sent an icy shudder down his spine.

This wasn’t good.

A quiet, shaky sigh left his lips as his pants tightened with each passing second. Oh god, was he . . aroused? He didn’t remember feeling this way when he was on set—quite the opposite—so why now?

Sure, the room was dark enough to hide his growing erection but it wasn’t exactly ideal to experience one around three people. Besides, it was uncouth and he needed to leave. Now.

Sunday immediately stood up, gaining curious glances from everyone else, he tried to subtly cover pants, “Uh, I-I need to get something in Dan Heng and I’s room. Feel free to keep watching.” He didn’t bother waiting for anyone else to respond and immediately headed for the door.

As he stepped out onto the hallway, he breathed out a sigh of relief, at least there wasn’t anyone else around the corridors this late at night. Carefully, he walked towards the shared room, trying his best to avoid further friction in his pants or else it would be a very embarrassing moment for him—it was  humiliating enough to walk with a weird gait, anything more and he’d bury himself in the ground.

Thankfully, Sunday reached the room which he hastily opened with the keycard tucked inside his pocket, he swiftly slipped inside and sat on the edge of his bed with his eyes closed.

Silence settled in the air, it was accompanied by his heavy, uneven breaths as he tried to calm his racing thoughts. He felt extremely filthy—to think of you in such a lustful light without your knowledge, it was beyond unmannerly. 

“F-Forgive me . . for my vulgar thoughts and for what I am about to do.”

In the blink of an eye, Sunday found himself inside the bathroom, door locked and back pressed against it.

Dizziness washed over him and embarrassment ate away at his feverish skin as he reached for the waistband of his pants, he hastily pulled it down with his underwear, a sharp hiss leaving his lips, cock slapping against his lower abdomen. It wore a deep blush of pink and oozed with pearlescent pre-cum, he wondered how his cock would look against your face while you licked and sucked at it.

The soft fabric shamelessly pooled around his ankles which completely exposed his lower half, the cool air against his legs left an icy shudder. Sunday brought the hem of his shirt to his face, biting down at it so it didn’t get in the way.

He wrapped a trembling hand around the base and squeezed, a loud moan immediately spilling from his lips, pre-cum that decorated his sensitive cockhead trickled down.

A pearlescent sheen covered the entirety of Sunday’s cock as he eagerly spread it from tip to base—up and down, up and down, a couple of languid strokes that had him panting heavily.

A vivid imagery of you pumping his cock plagued his mind as he shut his eyes closed, both hands wrapped around the length of his shaft while your tongue gave experimental licks, “Ngh—ah! Mhm!” Sunday whimpered, free hand gripping the cool surface of the bathroom door behind him, he hadn't been doing this for long yet his knees were ready to give up from the immense weight of pleasure.

His chest vigorously rose and fell as each inhale and exhale turned more shallow than the last, he picked up the pace, stroking himself a little faster.

Pure bliss gnawed at his feverish skin, it sank its teeth into him ‘til it reached his very bones, engulfing his entire body in an intoxicating pleasured state.

“Ah—! Haah! Oh, god!”

Despite the sound of blood rushing in his ears, Sunday replayed the sinful moans you made in the movie, how your face contorted in pleasure as Cassian kissed down your neck—lips parted and brows tightly knitted together.

You sang the most exquisite melody he has ever heard and he could only hope to pull the very same ones, maybe something even better, one that would flawlessly intertwine with his own to create an immoral tune.

He bucked his hips into his curled hand at the thought of having sex with you. Embarrassingly, Sunday had never gotten intimate with anyone—his days were packed with duty on top of duty and he wasn’t given the chance to get into a relationship as it was the last thing he had in mind as (former) Oak Family Head. All he knew was to govern the Lineage he grew up in.

But he wondered . . How would you feel around his cock? Were you warm and soft?—maybe even a hint of greediness where you readily swallowed him whole.

It almost pained him that you weren’t in front of him right this moment because now, he had to settle for his inexperienced hand and just the thought of that grew a bud of frustration within his chest. Sunday wanted you—he needed you. 

Badly.

He desired to bury his shaft deep inside and have you come undone around him once, twice, as much as you wanted—‘til your legs trembled around his waist, ‘til your throat ran dry from repeatedly calling his name like a sacred prayer, and even then, he wasn’t sure if his thirst would be satiated.

This wasn’t just lust anymore. No. Sunday wasn’t merely aroused by a heated scene in your movie, he held something much deeper for you in his heart. It had always been there from the start but remained dormant and quiet enough to go unnoticed by him but now that it has bloomed into something greater, he realised that what he held for you was love.

Sunday loved you. Deeply, truly, and agonizingly.

At the sudden realisation, the coil inside him snapped instantaneously, spurts of hot cum spilled from his cock, he came with a loud wanton moan which echoed throughout the bathroom walls. His body trembled and pleasure which engulfed his entire body took him to places he’s never been before.

Sunday grunted as he milked his cock, shamelessly pumping it ‘til it emptied; he slumped against the door, filth settling over him while he tried to catch his breath.

Despite his lust-clouded mind, he only thought of one thing—to tell you how he truly felt.

As morning finally came, Sunday stepped outside the hotel to gather his thoughts after last night’s realisation, he figured getting some fresh air while walking amongst the locals and taking in the beauty of Ahatopia would quench the yearning in his heart.

Duomension City was as busy as ever with students, office workers and early risers trying to get through the morning rush, even at this hour the City remained lively—this world wasn’t entirely different from Penacony, teeming with large and colourful animated posters, it reminded Sunday of Moment of Golden Hour which also brimmed with bright billboards, music, and the surge of Penaconians out and about, it made him miss home even more.

But Planarcadia was different, it was a world that devoured silence and perhaps that’s why Sunday had grown to relax a little because silence left too much room to think. He adjusted the collar of his coat as he stepped through the crowded avenue, weaving between strangers with practised ease.

The cool air smelled faintly of freshly brewed coffee and expensive perfume, it blended seamlessly with the sounds of passing conversations and the quiet hum of cars.

A group of students rushed past him suddenly, laughing too loudly and nearly colliding with his shoulder. Sunday stepped aside instinctively, accidentally knocking into a stranger; the sound of a distinct thud reached his ears, an object falling onto the ground.

He halted his tracks to pick up the fallen object—a bottle of iced coffee—and return it to its owner. Ah, he should really watch his surroundings.

“My apologies for bumping into you, I should’ve been more aware of my—” Sunday stopped mid sentence as he faced the owner of the beverage.

The world didn’t go silent, no, if anything, Planarcadia only grew louder around him—footsteps rushing past, the distant sound of train announcements echoing, laughter from down the street but all of it blurred into meaningless noise because standing only a few inches away was you.

There was no mistaking it with your ivory wings and gleaming halo.

Was he dreaming? It had to be an elaborate prank, no? This was the world of Elation after all, maybe some Fool decided to play a sick joke on him. But the look on your face mirrored his own—shock and confusion.

For a moment, neither of you moved, the sea of people in the vicinity weaved their way around—they split and reformed like water around stone. Strangers brushed against his shoulders unaware that his world had just tilted violently off its axis.

You weren’t doing any better at all, it's as though your heart had forgotten how to beat. Sunday looked different, it wasn’t a drastic change but it was enough for you to notice.

The pristine perfection once attached to him had frayed at the edges, his attire was less . . uniform, and his eyes gleamed with more sincerity but there was undeniable exhaustion on his face, as if the last few months had carved something deeper into him.

And yet it was still him—your Sunday.

“. . You’re here . . ?” He broke the loud silence first.

“So are you.” You breathed out.

He looked down, suddenly remembering the bottle which rested on his palm. Carefully, he stepped closer and held it out, you took it with your left hand, fingers brushing against his gloved hand.

Sunday sucked in a sharp breath as he noticed the familiar band of gold around your ring finger, “You—You still wear your ring?” He asked with a hint of hope evident in his tone.

You almost laughed at the absurdity of his observation but curiosity soon followed, “We are still married, after all. People notice everything, if they don’t see a ring on me, they’d immediately assume divorce. It’s not exactly easy given your absence in Penacony. Why? Do you not wear yours anymore?”

Oh. So you only kept the ring on to avoid speculation and here he thought it meant something more to you but he didn’t have the luxury to sulk about it because every second spent in his presence faced bigger punishment for you—he knew The Family, they weren’t lenient.

He didn’t wear his ring anymore but kept it with him at all times, it was tucked safely inside the inner pocket of his coat, close to his heart. He refused to wear it for the same reason he severed his halo back in Penacony—to feel pain. Albeit not physically, he felt the emotional pain of being undeserving of loving you and being loved by you.

“I think I should go. We—We shouldn’t be talking . .” Sunday shook his head and slowly stepped backwards which earned a baffled expression from you.

That’s it?

After not seeing each other for months, he was just going to chicken out and refuse to talk? You were well aware he only cared for your safety but you believed you needed answers from him and besides, the confession in your heart sat long enough—it was finally time to set it free.

“Really, Sunday?”

The sound of your voice uttering his name had him swallowing thickly. “Because if I remember correctly, you still had the guts to talk to me back in Penacony hours after you became a fugitive.”

He stopped in his tracks, now it was his turn to be confused, “You saw through my disguise?”

“. . I had a hunch it was you. I’ve replayed that conversation a million times for the past few months—over and over ‘til it finally dawned on me. So, please, let’s talk? You told me in that very conversation you wouldn’t want a future without me in it, right?”

Sunday couldn’t refuse.

The two of you found yourselves back at your hotel room—he would’ve offered his room if he wasn’t sharing it with Dan Heng—both of you figured it wasn’t best to talk about such matters in public, especially since merely being seen together with Sunday was already a crime itself.

The hotel you stayed at was more luxurious, a suite which offered a generous view of the bustling city below and its panoramic skyline, and carefully selected artwork adorned its beige painted walls.

“Are you here for a press tour?” He asked, eyeing the expansive room. 

“I’m here on vacation.”

Silence stretched and tension grew thicker with each second, you and Sunday stood a few metres apart from one another, sticking out like sore thumbs. Neither of you dared to speak with the amount of thoughts that raced in your minds—there was simply a lot to talk about that none of you knew where to start at all.

Should you address the elephant in the room? What he did back in Penacony and the fact that he was now a wanted criminal? Or should you tell him the very words in your heart that desired to be known?

Yes, Sunday committed the highest act of treason against his homeland, its people, and The Family but what exactly could you even say to him regarding that matter? Get angry and berate him further like everyone else did in his absence? Doing so still wouldn’t change what he had done. You’ve heard every word The Family higher ups spoke of him—they were rightfully angry, of course, you wouldn’t deny them that feeling but it pained you.

“I need to tell you something.” Both of you spoke up in unison, urgency in your tones equally evident.

“You go ahead first.” Sunday cleared his throat. If he was being honest, he hasn’t been able to sit still ever since he last spoke to you in Penacony—you mentioned how you wanted to tell him something, and judging by the look on your face, he could only assume what you wanted to say was regarding that matter.

Letting out a sigh, you nodded, never in a million years did you think you’d be confessing to him in a luxury hotel room, in a foreign world, stars away from Penacony,

“I know our marriage requires us to . . act in certain ways to make it believable but I have something I’ve buried inside my chest for as long as I can remember and no matter how many times I push it down or simply ignore it, it just won’t go away . . What am I even rambling about? What I’m trying to say is . . I have feelings for you, Sunday—even before this whole marriage act, ever since we were children.”

You looked away and stared at the abstract painting near the bed, you simply couldn’t handle returning Sunday’s stare, especially not when silence grew. Maybe you should have just kept your mouth closed and let him go first because now you were starting to regret it—what if he wanted to get a divorce?

Clearly there was no point in your marriage anymore, he has been absent in public for months and there was no reason to keep up the charade.

Even though your marriage was sealed with a legitimate contract, none of The Family Heads acknowledged its authenticity; your mother and Robin were a different case—it was more so out of respect while the rest did so out of disdain but still, the Dreammaster who orchestrated this unity was already dead which meant it held no significance at all.

Just an empty legal document.

“I . . feel the same way.”

. . What?

“It was foolish of me not to realize sooner. It was easy for me to show affection for you because what I have in my heart is genuine but I merely hid it behind the reason of duty because I wasn’t entirely sure of these feelings at all.” 

Now, it was Sunday’s turn to look away in embarrassment, a hue of deep rose graced his pale cheeks and heat prickled his skin.

Your breath stopped and the city below seemed to disappear, his words weren’t grand but they were honest, probably the most honest it has been since for as long as you could remember, it was a simple truth laid bare beneath a foreign sky.

For a long moment, you couldn’t speak because part of you had wanted this—you dreamed of this for so long now that it felt entirely cruel.

Cruel because you couldn’t be with him, not by your side, not in Penacony, not elsewhere, and now that your hearts were on the table, you simply couldn’t stand the thought of separation.

But for now, you wanted to cherish this moment. To convince yourself that you and Sunday had a future together where he didn’t have to run from The Family and face consequences, that the two of you weren’t bound for interminable separation.

“This is so unfair.” With a shaky breath, you buried your face in the hearts of your palms. You were certain if Aha was aware of the situation you and Sunday were in right now, THEY would be laughing. What a cruel joke from the cosmos.

He closed the distance between the two of you, protectively wrapping his arms around your body as he rested his chin on the crown of your head. It’d be absolutely selfish of him to ask for something more but he couldn’t bear the thought of you being with someone else.

He pulled back and pried your hands away from your face, his fingers brushing lightly against your cheeks as he cupped them, tentative  in a way that almost undid you more than certainty would have.

“. . May I?” He whispered. The warmth of his hand against your skin sent something sharp and aching through your chest.

“You may.”

Sunday slowly leaned in and for a moment, you remembered the ‘kiss’ at Eventide, only this time, it was as real as it got. The kiss wasn’t dramatic nor theatrical—it was merely his lips pressed against your own, soft with a small tremble, as if almost unsure if this was the right thing to do.

One hand found your waist carefully, drawing you closer with a reverence that made your knees feel less reliable all of a sudden. The kiss deepened but not with force but with feeling, slow and tender.

It felt like grief and relief at the same time, as though the two of you mourned the past few months but also treasuring the fact that, somehow, there was still the present and the future.

His lips were warm and softer than you’d imagined in moments you had long since stopped permitting yourself to imagine. Every slight shift was careful, as though he was memorizing the map of your lips. For the first time, this moment was entirely yours and Sunday’s—no ivory wing to shield the kiss, no cameras, and definitely not out of duty.

Your hands found their way to his collar, fingers curling more firmly into him which pulled the faintest sound, something quiet and surprised that sent a shiver down your spine. When you finally parted, it was only enough to breathe; your foreheads rested together, the city below spinning while the morning seemed to hold itself still around you.

“. . So,” You whispered, still breathless, “That was significantly better than the wedding.”

Sunday’s shoulders shifted slightly, he laughed, “I would hope so.”

You smiled before you could stop yourself, and perhaps he saw something equally dangerous in your expression because his gaze softened into something so openly affectionate it nearly stole your breath all over again. You pulled him back down on you, this time the kiss was less hesitant but just as tender than the last, and maybe also a bit rougher—full of desire and hunger.

Sunday’s hand remained at your waist, steady and warm as though he feared everything might vanish if he held on too tightly but this second kiss had already undone that illusion, there was nothing uncertain left in the way you leaned into him, nothing hesitant in the way your fingers dug into the fabric of his coat.

The kiss deepened not with urgency alone but with the quiet ache of something long denied, every touch seemed to carry the weight of love restrained far too long.

“Tell me to stop.” Sunday breathed out between kisses, a shaky whisper. His words weren’t obligation, they were reverence as he would simply not take what was not freely given. 

Your answer came not in words but in the way your hands rose to cradle his face, the way you kissed him again with a certainty that made his breath hitch, and that was enough for him. His restraint broke softly akin to silk slipping loose, not reckless, never reckless but what laid beneath the silken veil was a brewing storm of desire—the feelings of yesterday suddenly coming back to him.

The hand on your waist carefully slid upward, the tips of his fingers tracing your clothed body before he gently ushers you out of your jacket, it fell onto the polished floors with a soft thud—one layer deeper, closer to what you both wanted.

But before you could go any further, Sunday completely pulled away from the kiss, cheeks bitten with pink and lips parted as he breathed heavily.

There was a hint of hesitancy in his face, “I’ve never done this before but I want you . .” He whispered, trailing off as embarrassment engulfed him.

You gave him a small smile and leaned in to kiss his lips, “That’s okay,” Then, the column of his neck, “You can simply,” And the spot beneath his wing, “Follow my lead.”

Oh, you’d be the death of him.

Soon, your hands slid down to unfasten his coat, easing him out of his outer layer ‘til it met yours on the ground.

There was something so heartbreakingly human about this moment—two individuals who had once stood at the altar of Eventide, beneath thousands of watchful eyes, now trembling more in private than both have ever had in public.

No words were spoken as each layer was shed, only the quiet rustle of fabric, shared kisses, and the growing anticipation as you bared your feelings to one another.

Sunday barely noticed you had guided him over to the bed ‘til his back kissed the soft ivory sheets, he was so caught up in the heat of the moment he almost forgot to drink you in—to bask in the sheer beauty of your naked body.

Through tinted cheeks and wet lashes, he looked up at you with pure desire and slowly raked his honeyed gaze all over your body—from your breasts, to the dip of your waist, and all the way down to the apex of your thighs. Sunday let out a shaky breath as he felt his cock hardening even further.

“You’re exquisite.” He breathed out. Paired with your glimmering halo and the wings behind your ears, you were a sight for the heavens.

“You’re not so bad yourself, Mr. Sunday.”

A small chuckle escaped your lips, it was clearly a tease to mask the fact that his naked form drove you to the brink of insanity. Beautiful was an understatement—there wasn’t a word in the thesaurus that could describe the angelic sight before you.

The shy look on his face was ironic because his cock stood prouder than ever, begging to be inside you. It flushed pink and leaked a generous amount of pre-cum, and it took all your will power not to lap it up right then and there.

“Wait,” He started. “I want to please you.”

At his request, you switched positions, only this time you sat up on the edge of the bed. Sunday slowly got on his knees before you as he placed a trail of chaste kisses down your neck, collarbones, and just above the valley of your breasts. Sensing slight hesitation from him, you wrapped your fingers around his wrist and guided his hand to your chest,

“It feels good when you massage and squeeze it—ah! Just—mhm! Just like that.” You moaned as he gave an experimental squeeze, brain short-circuiting at your immediate reaction to his touch; his palms were expansive and his fingers were long which allowed him to stimulate most of the sensitive area.

Sunday brought both hands to cup each breast, gently massaging them while his eyes darted between your chest and face, he wore an expression full of wonder and curiosity, rosy lips lightly parted as he breathed heavily.

Curious, he eagerly wrapped his lips around a mound, tongue swirling around your hardened nipple, causing your hands to fly to his hair.

“S-Sunday—!”

He responded with a hum which sent vibrations across your skin as you gently tugged at his hair. If he was being honest, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing and his actions were merely fuelled by the sounds and expressions you made.

With one hand still on your other breast, he gently fondled your sensitive nipple between his lithe fingers, you arched your back, pressing your chest further into his face. Your skin was extremely warm and soft beneath his touch it almost felt unreal; he couldn’t believe he was right in front of you, intimate and vulnerable.

Sunday then switched between your breasts, giving the other the same amount of attention and stimulation before he trailed downwards.

Gentle and hot, he placed wet open-mouthed kisses between the valley of your chest and along your stomach, taking the time to lap up the sensitive area just above your bellybutton.

Once he reached your sex, he looked up at you briefly to look for any discomfort in your face, and upon not finding any, he slowly pried your legs open, revealing your sopping entrance.

All for him?

Though, it felt rather daunting not really knowing where to start. With two fingers, Sunday gently rubbed up and down your slit a couple of times, observing your reaction—you bit the bottom of your lip and your brows slightly knitted together.

So far, so good.

“Y-You can—ngh! Wet your index and—ah—ring finger with your mouth and put them inside.” You let out a soft moan, one hand planted firmly on the mattress to support your crumbling torso while the other explored his hair. Sunday may have been inexperienced but god did he pleasure you effortlessly, he hasn’t even touched you properly yet you were already trembling.

At your words, he paused slightly. Put his fingers inside his mouth? What a bizarre thing to do. His cheeks flushed a deeper shade of red as he wrapped his lips around his digits, effectively wetting them as instructed, he could taste a hint of you.

You could only watch in awe as the sight before you unfolded, never in your lifetime did you think you’d see the revered Sunday—former Bronze Melodia and former Oak Family Head—stick his fingers inside his mouth.

“Now, with your palm facing the ceiling, slowly push them in one by one.”

A soft pop echoed in the silence as he removed his digits from his mouth and brought them down to your sopping cunt. Slowly, he pushed his index finger past your folds and immediately sought your reaction—a soft sigh.

Oh, how warm you were, it felt like he was dipping his hand in a pot of warm honey, slick and smooth, and maybe even as sweet. Sunday gave a few shallow experimental pumps before adding the second digit, eliciting a shaky whimper from you.

“Haa—ah! C-Curl your fingers upwards and—yes! Oh, god! Just like that, Sunday—mhm!” You threw your head back as he curled his fingers, face contorted in pure pleasure.

At your pornographic reaction, he swallowed thickly; he tried not to think about how much his cock ached, being untouched for so long, it’d have to wait for a little while, he wanted to please you ‘til you were satisfied.

Deep in a haze of lust, you tried your best to form a coherent sentence, “Can you—oh, that feels good. Can you feel a spongy texture? Gently apply pressure and rub it back a-and forth—hngh!”

Sunday absentmindedly nodded, he could feel the area you mentioned just above the pads of his fingers. As you instructed, he pressed on it lightly, afraid he’d hurt you if he did more. With a grind of your hips, you let out a wanton moan in the shape of his name.

“Is this okay . . ?” He breathed out.

“Y-You’re doing good. Just keep a delicate, steady pace . .” Your hand on his hair snaked down to the apex of your legs to spread open your cunt, “If you want—haah! You can also kiss at this spot here at the top and—oh, fuck! Sunday!”

Before you could finish your sentence, his lips were already flushed against your entrance, closely following every word you uttered. A slight shudder washed over your naked body as his feathered wings brushed against the insides of your thighs.

“Yes! Lightly suck on it like tha—aah! Ngh! Haah, I’m so close. Don’t—mhm! Don’t stop, please”

With the combined stimulation of his fingers inside you and his lips around your clit, a string of colourful moans left your lips as you slowly sank deeper into the depths of bliss. The sounds you made were music to his ears which only fuelled his actions further.

With a forceful grunt, you threw your head back as you came on Sunday’s fingers—toes curling and thighs shaking at the immense wave of pleasure that hit you.

He slowed down his movements and resorted to languid strokes which allowed you to grind your hips and ride out your orgasm. He let out a shaky moan at the sensation of your walls tightening around his fingers, oddly enough, it felt satisfying for him.

Coming down from your high, you slumped down on the bed, face extremely heated and lips parted to catch your breath.

Wide eyed and in slight awe, Sunday slowly pulled out his slick coated fingers which earned a low whine from you, he curiously examined his soaked digits, they were faintly trembling from the repeated motion.

Without a second thought, he wrapped his lips around them with the sweetness of your taste settling on his tongue. Oh, how dangerously addicting you were. Wet sounds slipped from his mouth as he sucked his digits clean from your saccharine slick, earning a curious glance from you as you lifted your head off the mattress.

He was trying to kill you.

The two of you found yourselves situated further up the bed with Sunday slotted between your parted legs, he hovered over you with one palm firmly planted beside your head while the other languidly pumped his hard cock just before your wet cunt.

He let out soft pants above you, flushed face contorting with pleasure, “A-Are you sure?” Even with his mind entirely clouded by lust he prioritised your comfort.

“As long as it's you, I can never be more sure.”

He smiled in response and placed a chaste kiss on your lips before slowly guiding the tip to your folds. Snaking a hand between your bodies, you helped Sunday position his cock correctly—a few centimetres down—then, you loosely circled your arms around his neck, allowing him to go at his own pace. 

The morning glow surrounded him like a serene aura, it bounced off his pale skin which gave him a heavenly glow. With a shaky exhale, he pushed his cockhead inch by inch which immediately earned a sharp gasp from both of you.

The feeling of you around him was foreign yet oddly comforting, your walls were warm—extremely warm—it almost felt like he was soaking inside a hot tub of water and it made his head spin in a good way.

Sunday met your gaze with his starry ones, a light sheen of tears coating his eyes at how amazing you felt around him.

He couldn’t believe he was inside you, buried deep inside the woman he truly loved; he prayed in the back of his lust-fogged mind hoping that this wasn’t a dream.

You bit your lip as he bottomed out, watching the way Sunday’s body reacted to everything—how his wings curled inwards, how his abdomen tightened and untightened, and how his breathing grew uneven with every passing second. He genuinely looked like he was on cloud nine.

Unwrapping an arm from his neck, you slotted your hand against his jaw—just at the spot below his ear and wing—to caress his cheek, “You okay . . ?”

A small nod, then, his eyes fluttered shut, the tips of his lashes brushing against his rosy stained cheeks. Sunday leaned into your touch with a faint whimper, one that had your brain short-circuiting.

For a minute or two, he stilled inside, allowing you both to adjust to the feeling; this wasn’t your first time but the sheer length of his cock reached spots you didn’t know even existed to the point where you had to count to ten just to steer yourself away from spiraling and cumming right then and there.

“S-So tight—ngh. You feel good.” Sunday slowly pulled back about halfway before thrusting back inside, drawing wanton moans from both of you.

He resorted to languid, deep thrusts which allowed you to feel every inch of him—for your sopping cunt to remember the exact shape of his cock—and each time he bottomed out, his cockhead deliciously kissed your sweet spot.

With the slow rhythm set, the bed creaked and groaned in time with the movements of his hips, sounds of light skin slapping and lewd squelching filled all four walls of the entire room.

Everything felt sinful—from the pornographic moans you let out to the slick that covered his cock and your inner thighs but god was it completely addicting. 

Sunday’s face remained a mere breath away from yours, keeping eye contact, his honeyed gaze pulled you into the depths of warm bliss, akin to a gentle hug that enveloped one’s body.

Every intentional push and pull of his hips knocked out oxygen from your lungs which had you incoherently gasping for his name.

A light sheen of sweat coated your bodies as the morning air grew impossibly thick, the ivory sheets beneath your back clung onto you like second skin, and Sunday’s hair stuck to his forehead but neither of you cared about the filthiness of it, not when your bodies pleasured one another like there was no tomorrow.

Not when he firmly pressed his cock with every thrust inside you.

You wrapped your legs around his waist, effectively pulling him closer and allowing him to reach you a little deeper than before; your hands spread across his shoulder blades, curling inwards to decorate his back with rubied streaks.

The sharp sting of your nails sent Sunday forward, his head fell onto the pillows beneath your own, shamelessly moaning dangerously close to your ear.

“Haah—ah! Ah! I’m s-so close, Sunday! God! Please don’t sto—ngh! Don’t stop!”

At the sound of your moans, he picked up his pace, his cock hitting your g-spot a little harder. He also neared his climax and with the way your greedy cunt tightened around him and he knew he wasn’t going to last any longer.

Using all the strength he had left, Sunday lifted himself with trembling arms and gave you an open-mouthed kiss, it was messier than he had intended but the mere feeling of your mouths slotting against one another with your saliva mixing only fuelled the drive of his hips further.

He pulled away slightly, a thin string of spit connecting his lips to yours, “Please cum for me! Ngh—ah! Haah! C-Cum with me!”

With a few more sloppy thrusts, Sunday sheathed the entire length of his cock, firmly pressing into your sensitive spot as he came with a loud, shameless moan, ear feathers shaking from pleasure. You followed shortly after, nails digging into his skin which left red crescent shaped marks all across his back.

Ribbons of thick, warm cum generously coated your walls, you’ve never been this full before but you weren’t complaining, the feeling of Sunday filling you to the brim had you whimpering beneath him.

His cock several times twitched inside you as it emptied itself; he came so much to the point where his cum had started spilling out of you and dripped onto the sheets below, effectively soiling them but he couldn’t just simply stop himself even if he wanted to—it kept coming out in waves ‘til there was nothing left.

Embarrassed, Sunday buried his face at the junction of your neck, prickly heat creeping up his cheeks. A breathless chuckle left your lips, hands soothing over the reddened trails you left on his back, who knew he could actually get embarrassed over something as little as cumming too much?

How adorable.

He rolled over with a grunt and plopped onto the empty spot next to you, you curled next to him, the uneven rise and fall of his chest beneath your cheeks somewhat pulling you back into reality.

One of his arms rested loosely around you, absentmindedly tracing slow, soothing patterns against your back as if he reassured himself that you weren’t just a dream, that you were real and remained right next to him.

For a while, neither of you spoke—the quiet wasn’t uncomfortable, just your breaths slowly steadying itself with each second.

A saddened expression washed over your face as reality settled on your shoulders akin to cold seeping through glass—slowly yet adamant—and you were immediately reminded of the predicament you both faced. Your fingers tightened slightly where they rested against him and Sunday noticed immediately,

“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” He whispered, confusion painted on his face; his voice was much softer—achingly gentle.

You shook your head, gaze lifting towards the expansive windows and the horizon beyond it, “I just . . I was just reminded of what you and I have to face and I’m scared, Sunday. What—What if The Family finds out you’re here in Planarcadia and—I don’t even want to think about what they’ll do. I’m scared for us because . . I finally have you and I don’t know if that means we’ll be separated again . .”

Really, there was nothing you could do but you wanted to be with Sunday, you wanted to spend your days with him out in the open, not a single care in the cosmos about The Family being after him—you wanted him back home and beside you.

Beside you, he shifted closer, he carefully tilted your chin upward ‘til you had no choice but to look at him. Funnily enough, for all the uncertainty ahead, his gaze remained steady, “We won’t lose one another.”

“Sunday—” “Listen to me.” He softly interrupted, thumb brushing lightly beneath your eye before tears could fully gather.

“I do not know what the next month will look like—or the next year, and I cannot promise you our union either but I can promise you this: when the time comes, I will face it all and I will do everything in my power to rightfully earn the spot beside you.”

Your lips trembled, not only from sadness but from the fragile, terrifying hope that began to bloom beneath your chest.

“The Family won’t stop.” You whispered.

“I know.”

“They won’t forgive easily.”

“I know.”

“There’s a real chance we could be eternally separated.”

Sunday smiled, not because it was funny but because somehow—despite everything—he felt almost fond of your catastrophizing, “Then we shall simply find our way back to one another the same way we did today, no?”

Your laugh came unexpectedly—it was humourless and full of disbelief but purely light hearted, “You make that sound very simple.”

“It won’t be but difficult has never meant impossible.” He murmured, brushing a strand of stray hair from your face with unbearable tenderness. 

Mirroring his smile, you shifted closer to bury yourself against his bare skin as though you were anchoring your heart to him. Sunday’s arm tightened around you immediately, protective without thought before pressing a quiet kiss to your forehead.

And as though all worries dissipated into the skies of Planarcadia, the once lonely suite had transformed into something far more lived-in—the bed remained half unmade, blankets tangled and abandoned, heated remnants of earlier faded into something more wholesome. Room service trays sat on the wooden coffee table, silver lids pushed aside in favour of half-finished lunch.

Sunday was seated on the floor—pants and top messily thrown over his body—eating a fruit. He looked up from where he sat, brows lifting slightly as you eagerly rummaged through your luggage near the entryway. You returned to him with your arms full, a couple of somewhat familiar-looking objects tucked inside.

“What is that?” He blinked

You grinned with entirely too much satisfaction, “Emergency provisions.” 

His confusion turned to suspicion but nonetheless, you carefully set your haul onto the polished floor one by one like priceless contraband:

Sweet dream cloud candies in iridescent wrappers. Golden lullaby honey crisps. Starfall sugar biscuits dusted in edible shimmer. Moondew fruit chews. SoulGlad. And finally, 

“Chocolate pudding tarts.” Sunday breathed out. He stared at the familiar dessert packaging as though it had appeared through divine intervention. 

“I brought these snacks with me so I wouldn’t get homesick while on vacation. I often do the same during press tours—”

Before you could speak any further, the lighthearted atmosphere shifted subtly but you noticed it—the way an expression of sadness crept up his face.

Sunday was homesick.

You hadn’t thought he’d be—no, that wasn’t true, you had thought about it, you just didn’t expect something so minor to make it visible.

Slowly, you opened the packaging and offered the pudding tart. For a second, he simply stared at it but carefully took it nonetheless. He grabbed a silver spoon from one of the trays and scooped a small amount, as if indulging any further was forbidden.

Its familiar sweetness melted on his tongue and you watched as his expression changed into something more nostalgic.

You knew where he had immediately gone—to childhood, to the happier memories where he only worried about how to sneak in more pudding tarts in between music lessons, and what to write in the letter he’d regularly send to Robin (There was just too much to talk about!)

“It tastes the same as I remember . . I—thank you.”

You shook your head, “You don’t have to thank me. I just thought you’d miss some snacks from home.”

You and Sunday spent the entire morning and afternoon holed up in the suite reminiscing about the colourful past, revealing how one deciphered their feelings for the other; he also took the time to give you a proper apology for involving your name and reputation in his affairs to which you accepted.

Maybe it was fate playing a hand.

Once full of worry and fear for the uncertainty that the future held, you learned to slow down and appreciate the present—the fact that Sunday was right beside you, safe and healthy.

For now, you’d cherish this moment in a foreign world, and whatever the future may bring, you knew nothing could pry you and Sunday apart, that was something you were certain of. And this time without any hesitation, you spoke up,

“I love you, Sunday.”

The second time, it was not a note but a presence. Subtle, deliberate, and unmistakably skilled. He was walking through the atelier grounds with Coco at his side, explaining the structure of a spell circle, when a soft flicker of light danced just at the edge of his vision. It was not bright enough to alarm, nor strong enough to disrupt, but it bent the air in a way that only careful, controlled magic could achieve. Qifrey paused mid-sentence. Coco blinked up at him. “Master Qifrey?” He tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing just a fraction as he tracked the source, but by the time he turned fully, it was gone. In its place, resting on a nearby stone wall, was another folded note.

He picked it up without a word. “You saw that, didn’t you? I was hoping you would.”

“Is something wrong?” Coco asked.

“No,” Qifrey replied calmly, though there was something thoughtful beneath his tone now, something quieter. “Nothing at all.”

From that point on, it became a pattern. Notes appeared in impossible places, tucked into the seams of his coat, slipped beneath teacups, resting on windowsills that had been empty moments before. Each one was different, but they shared the same careful handwriting and the same unmistakable presence behind them. “You corrected the third line in your lecture today. I liked that.” “Your students trust you more than you realize.” “If I were less kind, I would have unraveled your barrier just to see how quickly you could fix it.”

They were teasing, observant, and never once cruel.

Qifrey should have reported it. He knew that. A brimhat leaving notes, using magic within reach of his atelier, observing him so closely. It was not something to ignore. And yet, he did not report it. Instead, he began to look for them.

One evening, as the sky dimmed into soft blue, he lingered in the garden longer than necessary, pretending to examine the growth of a particular plant while his attention stretched outward, quiet and patient. He felt it then, faint but distinct, the brush of magic that did not belong to him or his students. He did not turn immediately. Instead, he spoke, his voice calm and even. “You are careful,” he said. “More careful than most I’ve encountered.”

There was a pause. Then, a voice answered from somewhere just beyond sight. “And yet you still noticed.”

He turned then, slowly, and this time you did not disappear. You stood partially obscured by the trees, your cloak marking you unmistakably as a brimhat, though your posture was relaxed, almost casual, as if you were not standing in direct defiance of everything he represented. Your gaze met his without hesitation, and there was something bright in it, something curious rather than hostile.

“You’ve been leaving the notes,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And using magic within my grounds.”

“Yes.” There was no denial, no attempt to soften it.

“That is not something I should allow.”

You tilted your head slightly, studying him. “And yet you haven’t stopped me.”

Qifrey did not answer immediately. He simply watched you, measuring, observing, the way he always did. There was no malice in your magic. No harm had come to anyone. If anything, your spells were… elegant. Controlled. Almost playful in their precision. “You’ve been testing my attention,” he said finally.

“And your reactions,” you added lightly. “You’re very interesting to observe.”

“That is a dangerous reason to approach someone like me.”

You smiled, small and unafraid. “I don’t think so. I think you’re kinder than you let on.”

That, more than anything, caught him off guard. Not because it was entirely untrue, but because of the certainty with which you said it, as if it were something obvious. He exhaled softly, almost amused despite himself. “You’ve formed quite the impression.”

“I pay attention,” you replied. “Just like you do.”

There was a quiet stretch of silence between you then, not tense, not hostile, but thoughtful. Qifrey knew what this was. He knew what you were. A brimhat who approached not with violence, but with curiosity. With admiration, even, if your notes were anything to go by. It did not make it safer. It did not make it acceptable. And yet, he did not move to stop you.

“You should be more careful,” he said instead, his voice softer now.

You stepped back slightly, as if preparing to leave, but your gaze lingered on him. “I could say the same to you.”

And then you were gone again, your presence dissolving into the air as neatly as it had appeared, leaving behind only the faintest trace of magic and, as always, a single folded note resting where you had stood.

Qifrey approached it slowly and picked it up.

“You didn’t turn me in. Thank you.”

He closed his eyes briefly, just for a moment, before slipping the note into his sleeve alongside the others, his expression unreadable but his thoughts far from settled, because he knew this was only the beginning, and despite every rule he upheld, every line he was meant to draw, there was a part of him that was already waiting for the next time you would appear.

----

After that night, things did not stop. If anything, they became softer, more intentional, like an unspoken understanding had settled between you. You no longer hid quite as completely, though you never appeared where others could see you clearly, and Qifrey, for all his awareness, never led anyone else to you. It became a quiet secret that lived between the edges of his days. Notes still appeared, but now they felt less like tests and more like conversations. “You looked tired today.” “Agott listens more closely than she pretends.” “I tried a variation of your ward. It holds better this way.”

Sometimes, you demonstrated instead of writing. Small, harmless spells that altered the air just enough for him to notice. A flicker of light shaped into something delicate, a ward adjusted by a fraction that made it more stable, a barrier that hummed more quietly than before. You never broke anything. You never crossed into harm. If anything, you improved what you touched, always subtly, always leaving room for him to discover it.

Qifrey told himself he should put a stop to it. Each time he found another note, each time he felt your magic brush against his, he reminded himself of what you were. A brimhat. Someone who had chosen a path he could not condone. And yet, each time, he folded the note carefully and kept it. Each time, he looked for the traces you left behind.

“You’re smiling,” Coco pointed out one afternoon as they walked together.

“Am I?” he replied, a little too smoothly.

“A little,” she said, tilting her head. “It’s nice.”

He didn’t answer that.

It changed slowly, almost imperceptibly, from observation to something warmer. The first time you stayed long enough to speak more than a few sentences, it felt less like a confrontation and more like a meeting. You appeared beside him at the edge of the forest while the others slept, your presence quiet but no longer distant.

“You’ve been keeping them,” you said, glancing at his sleeve where the notes always disappeared.

“I have,” he admitted.

“Why?”

Qifrey considered that for a moment. He could have given you a careful answer, something neutral and controlled, but instead he said, “Because I find them difficult to discard.”

You watched him with that same steady gaze, something softer flickering beneath your curiosity. “You’re not what I expected.”

“And what did you expect?”

“Someone colder,” you replied honestly. “Someone who would have driven me away the moment you realized what I was.”

“I should have,” he said quietly.

“But you didn’t.”

“No,” he agreed, his voice just as soft.

The distance between you felt smaller then, not physically, but in a way that mattered more. You stepped a little closer, just enough that he could see the details he had only glimpsed before. “Does that trouble you?” you asked.

“It should,” he answered. Then, after a pause, “But it doesn’t, not in the way it ought to.”

You smiled at that, not triumphantly, but gently, like you understood something he was still trying to put into words. “I don’t want to cause harm,” you said. “Not to you. Not to them.”

“I know,” he replied, and the certainty in his voice surprised even him.

Silence settled again, but it was not uncomfortable. It felt like something being built, slowly, carefully, the same way both of you approached magic.

From then on, your meetings became less accidental. You still left notes, still teased him with small displays of skill, but you also stayed. You talked. About magic, mostly, at first. About techniques and theories, about the ways your approaches differed and the ways they overlapped. You challenged him, and he challenged you in return, not with hostility, but with a quiet kind of respect.

“You could do more,” he told you once, watching as you shaped a delicate spell between your fingers. “You hold yourself back.”

“Of course I do,” you said lightly. “If I didn’t, you might finally decide to stop me.”

He almost smiled. “Perhaps.”

But neither of you truly believed that anymore.

The line between what was allowed and what wasn’t never disappeared, but it blurred in ways that felt impossible to untangle. Qifrey made no formal exception. He never spoke your name to anyone else. But he also never turned you away. And you, in turn, never pushed further than he could accept. It became something balanced, something careful, something strangely gentle.

One evening, the air cooler and quieter than usual, you found him sitting alone in his room. This time, you did not hide your arrival. You stepped inside as if you had always been allowed to, your presence soft but certain. He looked up, unsurprised.

“You’ve stopped leaving notes,” he said.

“I thought I might try speaking instead,” you replied.

“That is a bold change.”

“Only a small one.” You moved closer, your gaze steady. “You don’t seem to mind.”

“I don’t,” he admitted.

There was a pause, one that felt heavier than the others, filled with something unspoken but undeniable. You reached out first, your hand brushing lightly against his sleeve, a simple gesture, but one that made his breath catch just slightly.

“Qifrey,” you said softly, his name quieter than anything you had spoken before, “if things were different…”

He didn’t let you finish. Not because he didn’t understand, but because he did. His hand came up to rest over yours, warm and steady. “They aren’t,” he said gently.

“I know,” you whispered.

But neither of you pulled away.

Instead, he shifted closer, just enough to close the space between you. It was a quiet decision, one made without words, and when he leaned in, it was slow, giving you time to move, to stop him, to disappear the way you always could.

You didn’t.

The kiss was soft, careful, like everything else between you. There was no urgency in it, no demand, only warmth and something deeply, quietly affectionate. It felt like trust. It felt like something neither of you had expected to find in the other.

When you pulled back, your forehead rested lightly against his. “You’re making an exception,” you murmured.

“I am,” he said.

“For me?”

His answer came without hesitation. “For you.”

You smiled then, softer than he had ever seen, and for once there were no notes left behind, no magic lingering in the air as you eventually stepped away. You stayed a little longer, just sitting beside him in the quiet, sharing something simple and unguarded.

And when you finally left, it wasn’t with distance, but with the quiet understanding that you would return.

The next morning, Qifrey found no note waiting for him. Instead, there was only the faintest trace of your magic woven gently into the edge of his wards, not altering them, not testing them, but resting there like something that belonged.

He didn’t remove it.

being a high-ranking cog in the fatui's machine had its pros and cons. the pros being that you get a lot of money and authority; the con was that, once in a while, you get bullshit missions like this.

seriously, who thought it was a good idea to send a fatui captain to mondstadt where she personally helped il dottore of the harbingers conduct his experiments on the townspeople, resulting in casualties, and became the target of ire from the whole nation?

the tsaritsa, apparently.

it's even worse now that mondstadt's grandmaster is back and still kicking.

you honestly never thought you'd see the man again after parting ways all those years ago.

you had prayed to every deity there is that you'd be out of here by the time he came back, but it seems the gods hated you enough to decide that – yes, let's bring back your ex-lover who you were madly in love with but ran away from because of persistent guilt and insecurity. great.

you had genuinely considered leaving mondstadt.

like reaaally thought about it the moment you heard the news.

but that would just put a target on your back, and given that you had three months left before the mission finished and you'd be transferred back to snezhnaya, you didn't think it was worth the hassle.

so you decided to swallow your worries and do your best to fake a facade of nonchalance.

and hell, you were doing a pretty amazing job.

until varka himself walked up to you, with a lopsided grin and your favorite beverage in hand. your gut was telling you to run and hole yourself up in your office at that moment.

"hey! lookin' gorgeous as ever,"

the grandmaster of mondstadt, being buddy-buddy with a high-ranking fatui executive?

preposterous.

but at the same time. . . not really. some already knew of your history with him. they were there when you two laughed with your arms linked together, strolling through the streets with obvious hearts in both of your eyes.

luckily, most have already forgotten about you.

you shiver just remembering those old memories of your shameful youth.

"how've you been?"

he acts as if everything is perfectly normal, as though your parting words hadn’t broken something in him when you walked away.

varka doesn't even glance at the drink he places in front of you, behaving as if this is just another ordinary day from back when you were together – when he'd buy you a drink after knightly duties and ramble on about his day while the two of you shared a warm meal.

you look at the drink in front of you, "fine. mostly."

'he remembered, of course he would.'

you ignore the heat creeping up your chest.

varka lingers beside you, smile twitching, like he wants to say something else, but he decides against it and sits across from you instead.

the wood creaks when he plops down, adjusting himself until he finds some semblance of comfort. varka has always been too big for things; too broad, too tall, limbs hanging awkwardly past the edges like the chair was never meant to hold someone like him.

no matter how uncomfortable, he doesn't give it much thought. varka lifts his mug to his lips, taking a few small gulps, clearly trying to savor his time with you.

usually, he'd just guzzle it down in one go.

you stare at the people and stalls beside you, trying your best not to look at him. initiating eye-contact with him would mean an automatic loss, you knew this from experience.

"not gonna drink?" varka asks, taking another long sip of his own beverage. likely beer or dandelion wine again.

you hum, not even bothering to look at him properly when you answer.

"no, i'm alright."

he laughs, though it comes out stiff and forced. it doesn’t sound like him, and that bothers you more than you’d admit.

is he forcing himself to talk to you out of politeness? maybe. he’s always been that sort of man — the kind who can’t just walk away from people. that’s how rosaria ended up in his orbit. it’s how you did too, whether you wanted to or not.

"you sure? it's your favorite. you really gonna waste a good drink on a nice evening like this?

your reply is icier than dragonspine's mountain peak, "my tastes have changed over the years. it's not something i'd enjoy drinking now."

it's a jab at him. an obvious 'go away, you don't know me anymore. we aren't close like that'— just said in a more roundabout way.

varka is a gentleman, a knight through and through. he wouldn't bother a lady who clearly doesn't want his company.

but this isn't just any lady.

it's his lady.

— or at least, you used to be.

he knows you better than the back of his hand. knows that if he leaves just like that then it's truly over. you'd find some way to leave mondstadt as soon as possible, throw yourself into danger outside the city gates just to never look at his face again.

for as long as he'd known you, you've always had this bad habit of running away from problems. deep emotions never came easy to you, so you never knew how to handle it like how people nornally do.

varka would be a fool to not notice. and, really, he'd always been a fool for you, willing to stay ignorant so long as you'd be there to wrap him around your finger.

but you left him in that cold winter all alone without a jacket, didn't even bother to look back while you continued with live your life.

as if varka was nothing but a passing memory in your life, something you can easily walk away from.

his unfair, traitorous, and peppery beloved.

there he was in nod-krai, tracing your eyes among the stars, sighing like a mournful widow while he downed another cheap imitation of his homeland's liquor — and you never even bothered to write back.

he'd send you letters, anytime he could, talking about the mundane and not-so-mundane. there was probably a few very private information in there that he shouldn't have told to a fatui, lucky (or unlucky) for him, you didn't read any of them.

three long years.

not a single letter back.

three long years, of letters consistently sent to your home address in mondstadt.

three long years, where he hasn't seen or even heard from you.

three long years, without closure or explanation as to why you abruptly ended the relationship.

now that he can finally see you in the flesh, he feels relieved, it's as if the crushing weight on his shoulders had finally dissipated.

you're alive. safe and sound.

he was so worried back then, thinking you got yourself into trouble because you wouldn't write back. logically, he should have known you wouldn't answer because of, well, the break-up but those sort of things were irrelevant.

you two were close friends after all, even before the romance and late-night escapades. if you found him bothersome, you would have sent even a small piece of paper saying: "fuck off, varka." because you have done that before, and he kept that note on him ever since.

through the lonely hours of his expedition, he’d find himself staring at that scrap of paper again and again. it told him to fuck off. nothing more. nothing kinder. but it was written in your hand and somehow, that was enough for him to keep it.

maybe varka really did have a few loose screws. or maybe it's just when you're involved.

rather than write reports about the expedition, varka found himself asking jean if she'd seen you recently, asking how you were doing, and if you said anything about him. he found out late that you've completely left mondstadt, sold your old home, and went somewhere without anyone knowing.

typical you, running away again.

he can tell from the way your lips purse a bit before you smooth out your expression, the way you fake indifference by biting on the inside of your cheek. and he sees how your fingers twitch whenever he even slightly moves in his seat.

you're alert. very alert, and very much ready to run.

varka can't have that, not after so long. you'd dumped him right before his expedition, made him nearly lose his mind right after.

but for the sake of his people, he steeled his resolve and pushed through the heartbreak. he threw himself into the battlefield with a heavy heart and crawled out with it.

under the moonlight, varka dreamed of many things:

his home,

his family,

his fallen comrades,

and most of all – you.

he's dreamed of you so many times that varka never forgot how you looked despite the years. he calls it photographic memory, but it's really just delusions and grief.

coming home to mondstadt felt like a dream back then too. he'd spent hours mulling over his life and decisions, staring at the campfire with a look of melancholy which he'd promptly replace with a carefree grin once his soldiers came to check up on him.

but he'd done it. he came back safely, into the arms of his family and his people.

when he first spotted you in the crowd — that same eternal frown carved into your face, that same couldn’t-care-less attitude wrapped around you like armor — his body started moving before he even realized it.

like something inside him had already decided where he belonged.

he wanted to reach for you. to run his fingers through your hair, to pull you close and kiss you until you were breathless and angry and real again.

his chest had ached sharply, ribs pressing tight around a heart that suddenly beat too fast, too hard.

but you weren’t looking at him.

you were busy talking to someone else, scowling like everyone had personally offended you.

he could already imagine the sound of your voice — sharp, impatient — and the quiet click of your tongue that always followed.

you were just as beautiful as the day he lost you.

time seemed to treat you better than him. in fact, he'd say you aged finer than the best dandelion wine dawn winery could ever produce.

which, coming from him, was a big compliment.

suddenly varka felt a little insecure about his growing stubble and unkempt hair. he'd turned around to hide his face, a little shameful of his rugged appearance but kept his posture straight for the others who surrounded him, congratulating his return.

back then, you used to take care of that for him. tidying him up before he went to work. your gentle hands would brush against his cheek while you carefully slid the razor downward.

swipe.

and the stubble would come off, leaving a foamy residue on the razor.

you'd wipe the foam off his face with a softness reserved for him only, fingers lingering for a few more seconds necessary.

it had become his favorite time of the month – whenever you decided his beard had become too much of an obstacle to your kisses and promptly respond in kind with a pout and a threat to shave it off by noon.

but his veins turned ice-cold when he saw you in that uniform, the familiar fatui symbol on your jacket and the other fatui soldiers beside you.

varka thought you'd left it for good. you promised him that, for as long as you loved him, you'd never go back to the fatui. dottore had taken so much from mondstadt that it made you feel disgusted whenever you talked about your old occupation.

he had to confirm it for himself – that you didn't love him anymore, that what you two had was truly gone forever. maybe then he'd sleep a little easier instead of tossing and turning, thinking about what he did wrong and the things he could've done to salvage it.

"never thought you'd go back to your old job though. kinda weird seein' you in that coat after so long,"

he chuckles, gaze scanning you from head to toe.

"'doesn't suit someone as sweet as you."

your head automatically translates his words: so is it really over? no take backs?

it goes without saying that varka missed you —dearly, if he may add. if you didn't seem so annoyed, he would've already jumped across the table to embrace you in his arms.

"it's. . . " you trail off, unsure of how to answer. you wanted to say 'yeah, so what', but the words died in your throat once you finally took a proper look at the man in front of you.

since when had varka looked so. . . worn down?

it's pretty obvious he tried to clean himself up to the best of his abilities. he's (kind of) cleanly shaven, and his hair no longer resembled the bird's nest it did during his arrival. his coat is freshly cleaned too, leather polished to perfection, and the wolf fur sewn into it was brushed and unmatted.

the icy blue irises that resembled snezhnaya's famed ice lakes — an enchanting gradient that darkened whenever he's focused.

now they've turned into a dull and murky ocean; you could hardly see his pupils.

varka looked as handsome as ever, even when consumed by exhaustion. muscles more toned, new scars lining up beside old ones, wrinkles now a tad more noticeable than all those years ago.

this is why you didn't want to look at him.

you're already losing, feeling your resolve crumble to pieces. although you managed to salvage your expression, it felt like your heart was going to leap from your chest.

you decided that staying was too dangerous.

"sorry, i have to go." you stand up abruptly, almost tipping your chair over in the process.

varka panics, fumbling towards you, he manages to catch your hands by lunging on top of the table like an idiot, "stop running, please."

you flinch at his accusation, "i'm not, i simply have work to do. something a slacker like you would never understand."

varka chuckles, but the way his grip tightens says a lot, "i know, i know. . . 'm sorry for being allergic to paperwork,"

he finally stands properly, dusting his front while still holding onto your wrist, "but jean's given me a week or two to 'acclimate' back into mondstadt. so how 'bout we make use of it to finally have an actual conversation?"

varka knows if you wanted to rip his hand off yours, you definitely could. and he'd let you, of course, he'll try again tomorrow if that's what it takes.

but you dont. you stand rooted on the spot, glancing at varka with a look of shame. people are starting to stare, wondering what's going on with their troublesome grandmaster again but quickly avert their eyes when they realize the scary fatui captain was also there.

"varka, i. . ." your head lowers in embarassment, face burning hot.

the knight of boreas, patient as ever, leans closer while he waits for you to continue. he wants to personally hear it, every small whisper you could muster.

he doesn't need apologies, varka knows he's not entitled to such things. he can already feel himself bristle at the mention of 'varka' on your lips, missing the way you'd call out his name.

"can we do this another time?"

it shatters whatever expectation he had a few seconds ago.

varka sighs, low and trembling. his shoulders sag a little when he lets go.

for a moment you think that’s it.

that he'll step aside like the gentleman he is and let you disappear into the crowd like you always do. he knows how much you hate conforntations, he practically had to wrangle every small 'i love you's' from you back then, and he'd done them easily.

you’re already halfway turned when he speaks again.

"another time," he repeats slowly.

you pause.

". . . yeah."

he scratches the back of his neck, eyes drifting somewhere over your shoulder like he's carefully choosing his words – a rare thing for him to do.

"alright, yeah, got it. . ."

that simple agreement makes your stomach twist.

varka has never been the type to push you into corners. even back then, when you two fought, he would give you space to breathe. space to think. space to come back on your own terms.

because for him, loving things means setting them free. truly a man of his home, to bring mondstadt's teachings even in his love life.

you hated him for it sometimes.

because it meant he trusted you to return and this time. . . you weren't sure you would.

"i'll wait," he says, lightly as if it might harm you if he spoke even an octave higher.

your brow furrows. "for what?"

he flashes you a grin that feels far too familiar, warm and radiant as the morning sun.

"for that 'another time.'"

you stare at him, incredulous. the audacity of this man never fails to leave you shocked, no matter how many times you've seen it for yourself.

". . . are you serious?"

"totally serious, swore it on barbatos just now," he admits easily.

a small gust of wind passes the two of you, as if the wind itself was answering to his oath. it carries along the smell of wine, pastry, and home – mondstadt, whether you liked it or not, has always been home.

varka had been here, in this windy city, after all.

the smile softens, turning into something more intimate, "i'm always willing to wait for you, i think you know that already."

of course he is.

varka has always been annoyingly patient when it comes to you.

you click your tongue and pull your hand away fully, forcing a disgusted expression on your face, hoping it would hurt him enough to back off.

"well, don't wait too long. you might die of old age, grandmaster."

"worth the risk." he laughs, the sound rumbling from his chest and echoing into yours. it makes your stomach twist, heart aching from nostalgia.

you shoot him a glare before turning away again, this time actually leaving.

you don't look back, you didn't have to.

you can feel his eyes on your back the entire way down the street.

the rumors start the same day.

mondstadt is terrible at keeping quiet about anything, especially when it involves their beloved grandmaster.

you've known these people for years, back when you were still naively in-love and looked at the world through rose-tinted glasses. you made an effort before; you wanted to be more sociable like varka but people found it obvious how much you hated being bothered. so in the end, you gave up.

they say you two were an opposites attract sort of couple, and you had to agree. many told you it felt like an overexcited large dog was walking with a stoic black cat whenever the two of you strolled the streets together.

on your way to the market, you notice the stares first, then the whispers.

a pair of knights stop talking when you walk past, trying to sneakily glance at you.

one of the merchants near the plaza practically leans over his stall trying to listen whenever you pass by.

by the third day, someone had finally gained the audacity to ask you directly.

"so is it true?"

you pause mid-step, slowly turning towards a brown-haired bard leaning against the fountain. he had a face that screamed troublesome and nosy, lips that curled like it's ready to spread the next big scandal at some tavern.

a typical gossipmonger.

". . . what is?"

the bard grins even wider.

"that the grandmaster's been sniffin' around you again."

your eye twitches, "he's not a dog."

"debatable," the bard shrugs.

with the way varka acts, it definitely is.

you consider stabbing him, instead you settle for a deadpan stare, "mind your business, can't you see i'm a fatui diplomat?"

"hey, i'm just curious!" he raises his hands defensively. "whole city's talking about it."

of course they are.

mondstadt thrives on gossip like plants thrive on sunlight. also the people here genuinely have nothing better to do.

unlike in liyue where they talk about market values and recent price changes first before gossip or sumerians who'd rather debate and discuss academic papers – mondstadt had been too quiet and peaceful.

which means, even something as trivial like the grandmaster of mondstadt chasing after someone is suddenly important news.

"people say you broke his heart," the bard continues, strumming his lyre.

you freeze, lips twitching down to an even deeper frown. great, your day was ruined by some nobody and now you've become the talk of town.

". . . people assume a lot of things."

"yeah," he hums thoughtfully.

"but they also say the poor grandmaster's been lookin' like a kicked puppy every time you walk away."

you scoff and turn on your heel, "then he should stop following me."

the bard laughs behind you, lazily waving at you.

"oh, he definitely won't."

unfortunately, the bard is was correct. maybe he was also secretly prophet of some sort.

as expected, varka does not stop.

he doesn't corner you again, he doesn't grab your arm, nor does he demand answers. instead, he simply. . . appears.

sometimes he's leaning against a wall when you're fresh out of a meeting, that same scowl prominent on your face.

sometimes he's chatting with the tavern owner when you step inside, and he'd immediately brighten the moment he sees you.

once you nearly ran straight into him outside the city gates and he just blinks down at you like it's the most natural thing in the world.

just like everyone else in mondstadt, of course he'd have nothing better to do too. what were you expecting? for him to leave you alone? yeah right.

it's wishful thinking at best.

people here would latch onto anything interesting, trying to alleviate the boredom of the nation's quiet evenings.

and mondstadt had always been a city that thrives on three things: wind, wine, and gossip.

lately, however, the wine industry has been facing stiff competition.

because nothing – absolutely nothing – has been more entertaining than watching their beloved grandmaster try to court this terrifying fatui captain who was clearly ready to punch him in the face.

the rumors had started small as they always do, from the quiet corners of mondstadt's walls where knights had nothing better to do but talk.

and talk they did.

someone from the tavern swears they saw varka buying two drinks at the bar.

which would be normal, no one would be surprised by his large appetite when it came to alcohol. he is considered mondstadt's biggest alcoholic, next to a certain green bard.

except he doesn't usually sit across from a fatui captain who looks like she'd rather jump off stormterror's lair than share a table with him.

the bartender watches the whole thing unfold, completely absorbed to the point he forgot he had customers he should be serving.

varka's smiling.

you looking like you’re planning his funeral.

he leans over to charles and whispers, "five thousand mora says they used to date."

charles snorts.

"five thousand says they're still dating."

by the next day, the story has evolved.

a fruit vendor insists she saw the grandmaster chase you halfway across the plaza after you tried to leave, it made for quite a dramatic scene. straight out of fontaine's famous plays.

a knight swears varka vaulted over a merchant stall to catch up. he was laughing during it too, all while you tried to stop him from becoming the knight's embarassment.

"that man is pushing forty and still jumping over tables for romance," someone more sensible comments with a shake of their head.

"how inspiring."

"you mean concerning?"

inside the tavern, the knights are very invested. it is their grandmaster after all, why wouldn't they be a little nosy about it? in fact, it was the only thing they've been chatting about as of lately.

a small crowd has gathered around one of the tables.

rosaria sits nearby, pretending not to listen while absolutely listening. she remembers you well, and reckons that others might soon.

jean pinches the bridge of her nose, already looking more exhausted than usual. although she never planned on going out, diluc and the others had insisted.

meanwhile kaeya looks like he's having the time of his life.

"i'm telling you," one knight says, slamming his mug down, "the grandmaster is down catastrophic."

"define catastrophic." one asks, clearly drunk off their knockers.

the man gulps down his ale before sporting a serious expression, "he smiled at her while she insulted him."

another knight gasps, eyes blown wide.

"not the smile."

"the soft one."

"oh my barbatos. . ."

someone whistles.

kaeya leans back in his chair, nursing a cup of wine in his hands, "ah, young love."

jean looks baffled. "they're both over thirty."

"exactly, vice-grandmaster."

it gets worse when people realize something else.

the fatui captain?

she's the same woman who used to walk around mondstadt with varka years ago. back when he was still a young hot-headed knight who chased after battle and glory.

arms linked like you two would never part ways, laughing as if there's no tomorrow, the one who suddenly disappeared without a word.

suddenly, the entire city remembers.

"wait."

a florist nearly drops her bouquet.

"they're exes?!"

instantaneously, scenes of varka's annoying giggling everytime you two were together, and the way you'd smile shyly whenever he kissed you on the cheek or held you close by the waist had all came back in the citizen's memories.

now the gossip becomes unstoppable.

people began to quietly placing bets: how long until they reconcile?

three days.

a week.

someone claims they'll be married by windblume.

someone else says the fatui captain will stab him first.

mondstadt had become a mess, watching over the developing romance with a hawk's eye. some even tried to secretly help by mentioning your location to varka every now and then.

meanwhile, you are completely unaware of this massive development in mondstadt's social network.

your soldiers are too scared to say anything to you in fear of your anger and other people sure as hell won't say it to your face.

rosaria, on the other hand, finds the whole thing too interesting so she keeps quiet about it too, even if you two talk regularly.

so you've been completely left in the dark.

mostly because you're too busy trying to avoid the giant knight who keeps appearing everywhere.

the market.

the plaza.

the tavern, all of them.

once even outside your lodging.

completely coincidental, or so he says.

"'didn't think i'd find you here," varka says cheerfully when you walk out the door and nearly run into him.

you stare at him, "are you stalking me."

"nope."

he gestures vaguely, "i live here."

you narrow your eyes, ". . . this is the fatui's personal lodging."

"yeah well,"

he shrugs, grinning, "i got lost on the way."

'you have lived in mondstadt all your life, you got to be kidding me.' is what you shout in your head, but all that comes out of your mouth is: "oh, okay."

and unfortunately, everyone sees this interaction.

everyone.

a group of merchants nearby lean toward each other immediately, while the knights snicker in amusement.

"that's them."

"oh archons. . .

"look at how awkward they are."

none of these bother varka. if anything, he fuels their gossips with stories of his own. nothing too personal, just short anecdotes of his time with you.

like that time you two fought a dozen ruin guards together,

or that one evening where he caught you asleep on the couch with razor safely tucked in your arms,

ah, there was also a time when you would take rosaria out for shopping, spending his mora like it's dirt.

he's written so many letters about it, reminiscing the past like the lovesick fool that he is.

you hate to admit but you've always kept those pesky things – varka's letters, that is. though you never had the heart to open a single one.

it's mainly due cowardice.

on nights where you felt especially vulnerable, you'd take one out just to feel it on your palm, like it could solve all your problems. like it could alleviate your guilt. like it could bring crepus back.

you hated yourself ever since that incident with il dottore.

guilt had eaten you from inside out, turned you into someone unrecognizable. you avoided diluc religiously during your time in mondstadt, slipping away whenever he saw you. if you didn't, you might’ve just broken down in front of him.

kaeya was much harder to avoid, the cavalry captain was practically everywhere. so you just ignored him everytime he tried talking to you, or answered with quipped sentences.

indirectly, you contributed to crepus' death. killed the father of two wonderful sons. killed a man who was loved by many.

you helped raise those boys. crepus trusted you with them, even after he knew your occupation. acted likr you wouldn't hurt a fly.

a young fatui stationed in mondstadt, awaiting orders from a harbinger. that's who you were.

you joined for the money, the authority, glory, power. to be larger than what you really were.

the ragnivindrs welcomed you into their home, served you food, and gave you a room.

and yet you. . .

in the end, your conscience caught up to you. the blood on your hands were too red, reminiscint of his hair.

the others never blamed you for it, especially varka.

so you did it for them. you had loathed yourself to the point of near-death. not that you ever told varka about that specific incident, it would break him.

the cliff was especially windy that night.

you only backed out because of that weird bard who was taking a stroll at that time. venti, he was just varka's drinking companion to you back then, before you learned of his true identity as the anemo archon.

to think barbatos themselves would stop you, at least he didn't say anything to anyone. the bard respectfully kept his mouth shut, and you can appreciate that.

during his three year expedition, varka had sent a total of seventy-two letters, some with several pages based on how thick the envelope was, others that probably barely had three sentences.

you knew that because you counted every single one, like a fool.

they were kept neatly inside a small wooden box tucked beneath the false bottom of your luggage – a stupid hiding place, really, considering you checked it far too often for it to mean anything.

the envelopes had long since lost their crispness. the edges softened from being handled too much, the ink on some of the older ones slightly faded.

snezhnayan winters were unforgiving to paper.

sometimes you wondered if he wrote them while drunk.

sometimes you wondered if he stopped writing when he realized you weren’t answering but the dates on the envelopes told you otherwise.

two weeks. they always arrived every two weeks, sometimes more when he's in a particularly tough spot.

even when you moved away from mondstadt, even when you changed addresses, even when you made it very clear that whatever you had with him was dead and buried.

varka still wrote, persistenntly like the lack of response didn't bother him.

you never opened a single one.

not the first. not the seventy-second.

stared at it, sure but never more than that.

because opening even one meant acknowledging that he still existed in your life somehow, and that was too risky and dangerous.

dangerous for him.

dangerous for you.

dangerous for the fragile excuse you called moving on.

so the letters would stay sealed.

like nasty wounds you refused to clean because you were convinced you deserved to hurt for it.

the cathedral bell rings somewhere behind you.

you blink and mondstadt rushes back into focus around you — merchants shouting prices, the scent of apples and bread drifting through the air, the steady murmur of civilians who have no idea their city once nearly destroyed you.

your hand is still resting against a crate of fruit.

you don’t remember walking here.

“— hearin' me?"

varka’s voice again, closer this time.

you glance sideways.

he’s standing beside you, arms loosely crossed, watching you with an expression that’s softer than usual. not teasing. not amused.

just observing, taking you in with a reverent look on his face. it's as if he's making up for the times he couldn't see you, and this time he's burning your image in his memory.

you hate that look a lot, makes you remember the past too clearly.

“you zoned out,” he says casually, in that usual raspy tone of his. “been doing that a lot lately.”

you scoff lightly, turning away from the stall, “i always did that.”

“yeah,” he agrees easily.

then, after a moment, “not this bad though.”

you don’t respond.

instead, you pick up an granny smith apple, inspecting it like it’s the most fascinating object in the world.

anything to avoid looking at him.

anything to avoid the weight of that quiet attention.

varka doesn’t push, he never really did.

instead he glances at the apple in your hand, then back at you, "you used to hate green apples."

your eyebrow twitches. ". . . tastes change.”

“hm,” he doesn’t argue, just hums thoughtfully like he’s filing that information somewhere in his head.

the silence stretches between you two again – comfortable for him, agonizing for you.

then —

“you really never read them?”

the question lands gently this time. no accusations or bitterness.

just quiet curiosity, as if he’s asking about something trivial — the weather, perhaps — and not about the years he spent writing to someone who never answered, let alone read those writings.

you feel something tighten in your chest.

". . . no.”

you don’t look at him when you say it and for a moment, varka doesn’t respond.

he just takes it in.

the way a man might take a punch – steady, breathing through it, deciding what to do with the feeling afterward. doesn't mean the sting isn't there though.

“ah,” he says after a second.

no disappointment dripping from his voice, just quiet understanding.

you finally glance at him.

he's leaning against the empty stall with that sheepish smile you remember too well, arms crossed and shoulders light.

“well,” he continues, shrugging lightly, “that explains why none of my jokes landed.” he's laughing lightly, eyes crinkled like crescents.

you stare at him.

". . . you wrote jokes in those letters?”

“course i did,” he replies offhandedly. “can’t send seventy-two letters without at least trying to be entertaining,"

seventy-two.

"wouldn't want you to get bored and drop them halfway through. . . though i suppose that didn't really matter since you never read them."

he says it so casually.

like he didn’t just confirm that he kept count too.

you look away again, focusing back on the apple in your hand.

“. . . i really can't with you."

“yeah,” he agrees without hesitation.

then he grins, a little crooked.

“i was pretty desperate.” he admits, looking directly at you.

you almost drop the apple, a small but traitorous churning in your stomach – something dangerously close to elation.

varka laughs quietly when he notices.

not loud enough to draw attention, but warm enough that it sends a strange ache through your chest.

"don’t look so shocked,” he adds. “i’ve never been subtle.”

that part, unfortunately, is true.

subtlety was never varka’s strength.

back then he was the type to sling an arm over your shoulders in public, laugh too loud at your dry remarks, and proudly tell anyone who would listen that the scariest woman in mondstadt was his.

and somehow. . .

that hasn’t changed.

he leans slightly against the stall now, giving you space instead of crowding you, as if he's scared you'll retreat off somewhere again.

“but hey,” he says after a moment, voice lighter, “good to know they didn’t end up in a fireplace somewhere.”

you hesitate, "i kept them.”

the words leave your mouth before you can stop them.

varka pauses, eyes widening for just a fraction.

he smiles. a soft damning smile – relieved in a way that’s almost embarrassing to witness.

“yeah?” he says, chuckling like he can't believe it.

you nod once, stiffly, ". . . don’t read too much into it.”

“wouldn’t dream of it,” he replies immediately.

and you know he means that.

varka was always like this, he never forced meaning into your actions, never demanded explanations you weren’t ready to give.

he just. . . accepted what you offered.

even when it was very little.

the wind passes through the market again, rustling the banners overhead

you place the apple back into the crate.

"you’re not curious?” you ask

“about what?”

“why i didn’t read them.”

varka hums, thinking about it.

then he shrugs, “i figured you had your reasons.”

simple as ever.

he pushes himself upright from the stall, stretching his shoulders like a man who just finished a long shift instead of someone reopening old wounds.

“besides,” he adds casually, glancing down at you with a grin that’s just a little too familiar, “you’re here now.”

you blink.

he gestures vaguely between the two of you.

“means we can talk instead."

your stomach twists, because that’s the problem, isn’t it?

talking.

talking meant explaining, explaining means admitting and admitting means facing the thing you’ve spent years running from.

varka watches your expression shift, and whatever he noticed, he doesn’t comment on it.

instead he picks up one of the apples, tossing it lightly in his hand. bright green, similar to the glazed pottery in his office. the one noelle got for him.

“y’know,” he says thoughtfully, “i always wondered which letter would’ve convinced you to punch me first.”

you shoot him a flat look.

"punch you. . . ?”

“yeah,” he says easily, “figured if you were mad enough to hit me, at least i’d know you read one.”

you stare at him, long and silent.

stoic as ever.

then you mutter, " you're an idiot.”

and for some reason, varka looks ridiculously pleased about that.

"you should really read them, i think it'd help in sorting out your thoughts."

you didn’t mean to open it.

that’s what you told yourself, anyway.

the box sat on the small desk of your rented lodge room, exactly where you had thrown it earlier that evening. the wood creaked softly under the weight of the letters — three years’ worth of them.

three years.

thirty-six months.

seventy-two envelopes.

every single one addressed in the same familiar handwriting – messy, large, and impossibly hard to ignore.

they say a person's handwriting shows who they are as a person. you think it's pretty accurate.

you stared at the parchment like they might bite.

the confrontation from earlier replayed in your head for the hundredth time.

"you should really read them."

you clicked your tongue irritably, an expression of storm crossing your face at the memory. you nearly clenched the paper in your hands.

"easy for you to say,” you muttered under your breath.

the room was quiet, comfortable. mondstadt’s night air drifted in through the open window, carrying distant laughter and music from the taverns below.

your fingers drummed against the table.

then stopped.

your gaze drifted back to the box, already feeling like you were gonna do something you'd regret.

one letter wouldn’t hurt.

just one.

totally not because you care, just to prove to yourself that whatever he wrote back then didn’t matter anymore.

that was all. . . nothing more, nothing less.

your hand moved before you could reconsider.

you grabbed the oldest envelope, letting out a low exhale.

the paper was slightly yellowed now, edges softened from time and travel. the wax seal had the knights’ insignia pressed into it, it travelled through the official system, addressed specifically for you.

roasaria had kept them while you were gone then gave them to you when you came back. you had been confused then, wondering why the box was so heavy.

"i think you should read these," she had told you, with that monotone voice of hers.

like father, like daughter. she had grown to resemble him ever more as the years passed.

your stomach twisted.

for three years, that seal had remained untouched.

you stared at it for a long moment. then broke it, the sound of cracking wax felt far louder than it should have.

you slid the folded paper out slowly, biting your lip while tried to calm your beating heart.

the ink hadn’t faded, despite the yellowed margins.

varka’s handwriting was rough and messy — letters slanted and uneven, like he had written it quickly.

you unfolded the page our eyes scanned the first line.

to the love of my life,

hey!

i’m writing this while the horses are dozing and the campfires are still warm. we left mondstadt a few days back. the wind here doesn’t just bite, it feels like it's whipping me through my coat.

the men are in good spirits, all of them big talk and brash laughter. seems like they can’t wait to prove themselves out there in the battlefield. the world’s harsh out here though, you’d tell them that.

you always did enjoy pointing out when i was being dramatic.

HAHAHAHAHAHA! i can imagine it already!

also i know you're gonna complain about how informal this letter is but i'm more used to this with you. remember when you once sent me that "report" with just two sentences? heh, i'm chuckling a bit just remembering it.

i'm not gonna act like strangers with you and do the whole poetic letters thing, i think we're well past that.

anyway, i miss the sound of mondstadt at night. that odd little lull between the last laugh in the tavern and the faint music from the cathedral door. it felt safe. homey. you made it feel lighter.

i’m fine. truly. i miss you, but i’m fine. don’t let that worry you. i just wanted you to know this much, i’m always thinking of you and i love you.

forever yours, varka.

without realizing it, you have slowly started to smile.

you pick up another without realizing, tearing into it with a certain hunger – as if you've held back for far to long.

to [name],

today was hard loud. too loud. a confusing sort of problem you can’t talk your way out of with jokes. or alcohol.

i don’t mention it to worry you, you’re more capable than you give yourself credit for. you’d handle whatever this world threw at you with that indifferent expression and sharp wit of yours.

when it was quiet again, i found myself thinking about the time we hid from a storm under that half‑collapsed stone wall in windvale. you were so annoyed about the mud on your boots, but you laughed anyway. i think that was the first time i heard you laugh back then, i knew from then on that you've doomed me and my heart to be forever yours. did you cringe just now? hahaha...

i’m okay. the other soldiers are okay, some are lightly injured. i tried my best, i really did

i miss you a lot, i think i've started to hallucinate your voice when i was out cold earlier. the injuries aren't that bad i think.

write back when you can, okay? only if you aren't busy.

with love, varka

it must have been something serious for him to be this shaken up. maybe it was the reason he changed course.

not like you can ask the past.

you pick out a more enlarged envelope, it must've contained so many pages.

to the one i hold dear,

not sure why i’m writing this. probably because i can’t stop thinking about you. maybe because i miss mondstadt, maybe because the weather here is actually driving me insane and makes me feel like shouting your name into the wind (don’t worry, i didn’t, the men would call me crazy HAHA).

so, crepus. i know you blame yourself. don’t. don’t even start rolling your eyes at me, i can see it. you didn’t intend any of it. none of it. i know you feel responsible, i can feel it from here, and i’m not even psychic....or maybe i am? for you.

i know you carry more guilt than anyone should, and i’m not here to tell you to shrug it off. i know you didn’t intend what happened, and i know you tried to make it right however you could. but i want you to hear it anyway — you didn’t kill him. you weren’t supposed to be the one to save him, and if anyone deserved blame, it wasn’t you.

but really. you tried. you always try. hell, you’ve probably tried more than anyone else. and yeah i know, it still hurts. it's messy as hell. life’s messy. we all know that.

okay, let's start somewhere lighter.

today, some locals tried to teach me to cook this really amazing chicken stew. let me tell you, it was really bad. i mean, truly BAD. fire everywhere, soup that looked like mud, and me, i had stood there like a fumbling idiot and for a minute,i thought about you. about how you’d probably sigh, mutter something sarcastic, and then hit me lightly with your book for somehow fucking up soup of all things and i laughed. yeah, instead of helping wirh dealing with the fire, i couldn't help but laugh.

don’t tell fred, he was the most pissed about the broken pot.

i miss the stupid, trivial things with you. the way you ignore me half the time but i still feel like i matter. the way you chew your lip when you’re annoyed. the way you… well, you.

i can’t promise you that the expedition will end soon. can’t promise you anything really. except this though: you will always live rent free in my thoughts. i’m worried about you. i’m rooting for you. and if you ever want to... not talk, not answer, not forgive, not anything...i’ll still be here. maybe writing more ridiculous letters. maybe climbing more ridiculous mountains. maybe trying to cook more ridiculous meals and failing.

. . .

you stare at the page, the words repeating in your head. slowly, the tension in your chest eases. your shoulders slump, almost imperceptibly, as if you’d been holding a mountain there for years and it’s finally letting go.

the ache of guilt, that gnawing voice you’d carried through every mission, every night alone in your quarters, every time you saw kaeya or diluc and felt the shadow of what happened – softens and melts. and for the first time in years, you allow yourself to breathe without pain.

“…i miss you,” the letter rambles on, and yes, he’s laughing somewhere between the lines, trying to lighten the weight of his own words. “…i miss you like an idiot who forgot how to breathe properly. and yeah, probably like a fool who thinks you’ll read these letters and understand me better than anyone else ever could. probably correct. you always have been better at understanding than i am. smart girl, aren't 'ya?"

among the pages were badly drawn doodles of landscapes and other knights. a few notes here and there of the fauna and some pressed flowers.

passionate as he was with them, they've always looked more like something children would scrawl on the walls.

the expedition’s been long. longer than i thought it would be. there’s a lot of snow out here and not much else to look at, which leaves a man with too much time to think. unfortunately for me, most of those thoughts end up being about you. before you get mad. . . i’m not saying that to make you feel bad. i just figured i should be honest. you always said i talked too much anyway. i keep that scrap of paper you gave me tucked in my coat pocket. it's the letter you didnt even bother to put in an envelope, just shoved it at me during the small expedition to the port.

the one where you told me to fuck off. real classy message, by the way. the knights laughed pretty hard when they saw it. i told them it was the nicest thing you’d ever written to me. …that part might actually be true. still, it’s in your handwriting. so i kept it.

a ridiculous man, varka was. and yet you couldn't help but fall for him ever further.

i’ve written to you. . . i don’t know. . . fourthy? thirty-six? maybe more. i’ve tried jokes, i’ve tried being serious, i’ve tried being clever, and all i end up with is a mess of ink and tears. not that i cry. not in front of anyone. but,you make me feel like i could.

and he'll continue until the seventieth, would probably reach over a hundred if the expedition went on for longer.

i keep thinking of the old days. walking through mondstadt, you complaining about the the loud noises, me pretending to know what i’m doing whenever i'm with you, and you. . . just you. laughing, making sure i don’t make a complete fool of myself.

i miss that. i miss you. sometimes i dream about grabbing you, threading my fingers through your hair, shaking you gently, and saying, “don’t ever leave me like that again.” sometimes i imagine you laughing, sometimes screaming, sometimes just glaring at me like you always did and i can’t stop thinking about it.

how much have you tortured this man during his expedition? to think he'd be this lovesick.

he seemed completely fine whenever the two of you bickered earlier in the market. and he'd been almost carefree with the way he treated you in the past week.

you never thought he'd be yearning this much for you throughout the years.

by the way, i heard from jean that you've left mondstadt.

without even telling rosaria or razor? do you know how worried they were for you?

listen, if you’re mad at me, fine. if you hate me, also fine. if you never want to see me or our kids again, i’ll survive. maybe. barely. but they won't.

at least let us know. at least don’t leave them in this limbo of imagining you somewhere out there, alive, safe, and completely unreachable. come back home

come back to mondstadt.

you're cruel and yes, i’m whining.

sue me, i guess. so. yeah. if you ever decide to show up again, or write me back, or even yell at me through letters for being an dumbass (this one's likely), i’ll be here.

rosaria thinks you're being an idiot and complicating things in your head again, don't tell her i told you though. razor thought you had died or something, he looked for you in the forest everyday. don’t make me climb dragonspine's peak for you. seriously. the climb is ridiculous. and the wind? don’t even ask. …miss you. don’t open this if it makes you mad. do open it if it makes you smile. do whatever you want, just know that you’re not alone.

sorry for rambling so much. not really though.

still infatuated with you, varka.

"our kids," you huffed, "did just fine without me."

you're not that cruel, you sent birthday presents and letters during special holidays to the two of them. never late. never forgetting.

also what's this about rosaria complaining to varka instead of talking with you? the favoritism is appalling.

she never even mentioned it when you came back!

razor too! why didn't he tell you about this?

they'd sided with varka all along in your kind-of divorce.

you laugh quietly at that. it comes out more as a choked sound than anything else, and you feel some of the years of silence, of self-loathing, slip away.

not fully, it's never that easy. but it doesn't feel as suffocating anymore.

your hand trembles over the letter. your eyes sting with unshed tears. and for the first time in a long, long time, the guilt doesn’t grip you. the blame isn’t yours. it was never yours.

and somewhere in the back of your mind, a thought slips in: varka. . . he never stopped caring. he never stopped watching over you. even across continents, across frost and snow and war, he never stopped.

you curl the letter to your chest, closing your eyes, letting the wind from the open window carry away the heaviness you’ve been carrying for years.

and maybe, just maybe, you allow yourself to hope.

hope that you’re not alone. hope that varka was right. hope that it’s not too late.

the city is quiet tonight, as it should be.

it's nearly midnight, barely anyone walked the streets by then. those who did were either drunks on their wobbly way home or people who had a lot on their mind.

like you.

you’re sitting on the cathedral steps when he finds you. it seems even the grandmaster took midnight strolls every now and then.

it's something you already knew and accounted for. after all, the two of you used to do it all the time. you'd drag him out for some fresh air when things got to stuffy, and he'd feel better right after.

varka doesn’t say anything at first. he just sits beside you, shoulder brushing yours, like he used to.

"did you? y'know – read them?" he says eventually.

you stare at the moon, "i read your letters."

he exhales slowly, "yeah. figured."

then you say the thing you've avoided for three years – ". . . i didn't leave because i stopped loving you or anything stupid like that."

varka’s head turns, eyes focused. he's leaning a bit lower now, wanting to hear everything. the things you've withheld for years.

you keep looking straight ahead, afraid to look at the man beside you.

"i left because i didn't deserve to stay."

another long pause, you feel your shoulders tense at the way he stays quiet.

then varka laughs, softly. like it's being whispered to the wind and not to you.

it's not mocking you, just. . . tired.

"you idiot."

you finally look at him.

he’s smiling, sad and warm all at once.

"you decided that on your own?"

"yeah," you murmured, feeling your face heat up. for all the times you called him immature, you had ended up doing something more stupid.

he leans back against the steps, thinking.

"well."

". . . well?"

he glances at you, blue eyes steady.

"next time you ruin my life, at least talk to me about it first."

you blink, ". . . that's it?"

"what were you expecting?"

"definitely not something like this. i had, at least, expected something more emotional for our official reunion."

you're scowling now, clearly displeased at his lukewarm response.

he nudges your shoulder lightly,

"i already did the dramatic suffering thing for three years, in foreign lands too."

he really did.

aside from usual dreams of past memories, he'd also get small flashes of what-if's and could-be's, one where you had completely moved on with another man. where you built a home without him in it.

he hated those the most, varka would wake up in an irritated mood, take it out on training, and pretend the woman he loved wasn't several hundred miles away and actively ignoring him.

the injuries he sustained didn't feel quite as real compared to the hollowness of his heart when you'd left him. even as the distance between you two got larger, he only grew more impatient to be reunited with you.

and out of every absurd ambitions he had over the years, from slaying a dragon to becoming mondstadt's hero, there was one that he could never hope to throw away – a wedding, with you as his bride.

it's childish. you called it stupid back then, saying that a marriage wasn't necessary as long as the two of you bad each other.

but varka had truly desired it from the moment he'd seen your eyes twinkle at the mention of a wedding. nothing grand. just something for you, him, and family.

you've always thought loving someone as capricious and bland as you would be a chore. that varka would find you tiring to deal with, and leave you alone one day. because of that, distance had become your shield and ruin, building walls so high it could rival starsnatch cliff.

but the knight of boreas wouldn't have gotten this far without being persistent.

a devoted man through and through. for him, loving you was easy. too easy. he was almost concerned how effortless it was. no distance, lack of communication, or dramatic break-up could ever stop him from adoring you.

varka had never loved you because it was just that – easy, effortless, and undemanding. in between the cracks of your heart, he found something worth fighting for, worth taking care of, someone worth all the pesky troubles and headaches.

he'd found you.

his love was simple but enduring. more than casual attraction, akin to pure adoration and endless devotion, just as he'd do anything for his beloved nation. people can call you heartless all they want, but even the sting of your glare could warm up his clumsy, beating heart.

you could carve it out and he'd thank you.

you already did, actually.

mondstadt’s wind was warm now, sunlight peeking through the walls. it carried the smell of dandelions, wine, the faint sweetness of cider drifting out of the tavern when the doors opened. sometimes music too.

"you staying?"

your chest tightens, ". . . maybe."

'yes.'

varka smiles. not big or triumphant.

just relieved.

"good enough for me."

the cathedral bells chime behind you once again, this time signalling a future you've dreamed about for far too long.

#conductor's-afterthoughts ☆ dont @ me, ive been hacking away at this for a week now and ive nearly given up halfway through. . . this actually hurt my head so bad. . . can you tell i completely threw away my original plot at the end and just started to ball it out.

theres something awfully romantic about being so infatuated by a person who cant help but run away from everything when it gets too much, you'd chase after them and think, 'why am i not getting tired of this?' and realize it's something you won't mind doing for the rest of your life.

i think i like those romances the most. i am a flawed person after all, so for someone to accept and cherish these flaws without it affecting them mentally would be a dream.

ANYWAYS. was this good? i was genuinely losing my shit guys. i took 30 minutes to proofread it this time, thats right! i actually read through the whole thing! proud of me? u oughta be. i had like several hundred searches just being "synonym for [word]"

Your cheeks are flushed and breath coming out in warm little pants as you rub your clit in desperate little humps against his foot. When his gloved hand comes down to cup your cheek, making you look up at him with those glassy doe eyes of yours, satisfaction blooms hotly in his chest, pouring down to his cock that's already tenting his white pants.

"Just look at you~" He croons as his thumb traces your bottom lip before pushing past your teeth, the soft fabric quickly soiled by the drool pooling on your tongue, "No different to a bitch in heat for me, hm?" His wings fan out as he leans back against the chaise, like a peacock showing off, though he's really just looming his silhouette over you.

He has to bite back the way his lips turn up at just how debauched you look, humping his leg in need. You agreed timidly to letting him use tuning on you, and it hardly took any effort at all on his behalf to get you like this with how desperately you already wanted it. The only thing he had to do was remove your sense of inhibition.

You mouth at his gloved hand, tongue swirling around the fabric and further wetting it in a manner that makes him click his tongue in distaste. He hates when his clothing isn't orderly, but he'll make a temporary exception if it means watching you debase yourself like this, rubbing your clit against the toe of his shoe like a dog.

"Disgusting..." He sneers when he withdraws his hand from your face to look at the darkened white of his glove's fingertip. "If you're so desperate to have something in your mouth, why don't we find you something more suitable?"

When he begins to unzip his pants, you can't help but salivate, moving from sitting back on your calves to propping yourself up on your knees to better reach him. He stops your overeager self from getting a little too close by setting a hand atop your head - a crude parallel of one figure such as himself bestowing a divine blessing to another.

He takes himself out of his pants, his cock flushed a pretty pink at the tip where he's already leaking pre as his fist glides up his shaft before squeezing just below the tip. His length protrudes from a thatch of downy silver feathers at his pubis and you can't help but think that even this part of him is handsome. Sunday scoffs as if he's heard your thoughts — and he very likely has, given the way his tuning is tampering with your mind.

"Tongue out." He commands and you follow without a moment of hesitation, tongue poking past your teeth as you look up at him through your lashes. He taps his swollen tip against your wet muscle and draws in a hiss through his teeth, “Just like that, darling, nice and wide for me.” He groans as he pushes on the back of your head to bring you closer. You keep your eyes fixed on his face, aching for his praise and approval, and delight in seeing the wings behind his ears curl inward to cover his cheeks. You know what he’s doing, know he’s trying to hide the way you make him blush as you give him pleasure so freely. 

His swollen head glides along the roof of your mouth before pushing towards your throat. He groans at the noise it provokes from you and can’t help the way his hips twitch upwards towards your lips. 

“Fuuuck, that’s it- take it all.” He grunts out as he feels the way your tight throat flexes around him, prompting him to tangle his gloved fingers in your hair. It’s lewd, really, how the only skin of his you’ve been permitted to touch since this began is that of his pulsing cock, even parts as chaste as his palms kept from you. “Sweet little throat…” He pants out a breath once, his words more for himself than you. The part of Sunday that’s been raised to impose Order, to be domineering over all others beneath him, delights in your submission. He may be the one commanding you to hump his shoe and suck his cock, but this is all you. He suggested tuning when you expressed your frustration at the shyness that rises in you between the sheets, and his solution is working excellently. 

Even as you make such lewd ‘gluck, gluck, gluck’ noises on his cock, spit bubbling past the corner of your mouth, you’re looking up at him with the prettiest doe eyes and he can even feel the warmth radiating from your cheeks. Your hands rove up his thighs and it becomes achingly clear just how much you want this. All he’s had to do is tune your confidence a bit, to make it so that you feel free to chase your desire without constraint. 

He lets out a moan and allows his head to tip against the backrest of the chaise, feeling his hand move with the bob of your head as you gladly suck and lap at his cock, tasting the salt of his pre each time he withdraws just to push his way back into your flexing throat. But he doesn’t tear his line of sight from you for too long before he’s pushing on your head again until your nose is nuzzled into the soft feathers at his base. 

You feel the veins of his cock throb against your tongue as he releases a drawn-out groan, savouring the wet warmth of your throat as he bites his lip in focus. He’s right on the edge, so close to spilling his hot cum right down into you, but he’s holding back, balancing on that precarious edge. 

His other hand joins his first at the back of your head, your hair gathered into his fists as he holds you tightly in place, all of his attention going into not pumping is thick load down your throat. You’re doing your best to breathe through your nose, but the strain of holding him in your throat for so long is starting to make your jaw ache, prompting tears to bubble in your eyes. The sight is as debased as it is beautiful and Sunday has to quickly pull you away before he can ejaculate before he intends to. 

“Fuck, look at you… just look at you.” He murmurs as his already dampened thumb comes up to try and wipe away the spit trailing down your chin. He quickly leans down and plucks you up into his arms, standing upright as he supports you with one hand cupping your ass and the other squeezing the underside of your thigh. On instinct, you wrap your legs around his waist and intentionally tilt your hips so that your weeping cunt presses against the soft cotton of his shirt. 

“Want you so bad~” You whine with need, arching into him. You’re like a cat in heat yowling for a mate, but every sound from your lips, every rock of your hips and dip of your spine is a siren’s song Sunday just can’t resist. To think you’ve been holding out on him for so long, that you’ve really been so needy for him… 

Despite the fact you’re utterly naked and Sunday has only unzipped his pants and tucked his boxers down just enough to set his cock and balls free, the room feels stickily hot to your senses – or perhaps that’s just the apex of your thighs. Either way, he’s crowding your body against the mattress as he pins your wrists up on either side of your head. 

His spit-slicked tip nudges through your puffy slit, deliberately catching against your clit with each pass, and he sucks in a hiss at the heat emanating from your cunt. 

“Put it in, Sunday!~” You whimper in a tone that’s almost brattish, demanding you be given your prize after working so hard for it. 

“Oh? Is this what you want?” He croons as he presses gently against your slick entrance, just enough to make you feel the pressure, but not enough to actually penetrate.

You nod your head eagerly, “Please. Please? Need it, need you-” 

“Well, since you’ve been so sweet as to show me what a desperate little slut you are-” He lets out a moan as you mewl when he finally pushes the head in, “-let’s take care of you the way you deserve, hm?”

He pushes in slowly and steadily, inch by inch to make sure you have no way of escaping the way he’s stretching you out, gliding against your snug walls so easily with how wet you are. He keeps your wrists pinned, but your thighs are free to lift up and squeeze encouragingly against his sides. The dark purple wings protruding from his lower back blanket those limbs as he bottoms out, groaning at the way his tip kisses right up against your yielding cervix. 

“Ready?” Is all the warning you get before he pulls out to the very head and then slams back home. He looks beautiful with his wings partially covering his flushed cheeks, lips parted to let his moans flow as freely as yours each time his hips slap against your thighs in a wet and lewd symphony. 

His clothed chest rises and falls with each panted breath from his lips – pinkened from biting – and he releases one of your wrists on a condition: “Touch yourself for me, darling.” He commands. You don’t waste a second and immediately begin to circle your swollen clit with two fingertips. His now free hand goes to your hip, squeezing and keeping you pinned in place as his hips piston against you with thrusts as authoritative as the rest of him. “Taking it all so well.” He moans out words of praise, relishing in the glaze of arousal over your eyes. “You’ll take all this cum too, won’t you?” He hisses as he snaps against you with particular force, mean and savage. He was already close to the edge before he carried you over to the bed, and now he can feel himself approaching it once more. 

“Want you to breed me-” You babble out, locking your legs around his waist just above the base of his wings. He whines at your enthusiasm, so different to the usual you he’s familiar with who’s far too shy to say such things. You’re a nymph with your shyness cast aside like this, one Sunday feels long overdue an introduction to now that he’s got you exactly where he wants. 

“Yeah? Then squeeze on it. Squeeze on it, babygirl.” He grunts and his hand on your hip pushes on your inner thigh to spread you more, getting deeper and making sure he bullies against your cervix with each stroke. When you do exactly as he says, his head dips down with a moan until his forehead is pressed to your collarbone- “Just like that, just like that.” 

You rub your little pearl with more fervour as you feel your climax impending, heat knotting in your belly and building with each smack of his hips against your soft flesh. It peaks suddenly and you keen as your orgasm tears through you. Sunday whimpers at the way your legs lock around him and your walls milk his cock. He was already so close, but you bring him crashing down with you, hot ribbons of cum spurting deep into you. 

He leans over you but is mindful to not put his entire weight on your body, wanting only to ground you as his fingers untighten from around your wrist to instead weave your hands together. As you steadily come down from that peak, cunt clenching around him in aftershocks, he lets the tuning wean off as he presses kisses across your flushed cheeks. 

“How are you feeling?” He asks softly, heart fluttering still as he pants. The way you whine shyly and tuck your face against his neck tells him all he needs to know, pulling an endeared and breathless chuckle from his chest. 

⊹₊ liked it? why not: ∘ buy me a coffee? ∘ comms. ∘ taglist ∘ follow/reblog

Rule number three: the front room is for everyone,

the scent of incense always set a reminder to you each time you stepped foot into this place. All it takes is a moment of your time to observe the neatly arranged books atop wooden shelves, the assortment of potions displayed behind the front desk- bleak and vibrant colours all a blur each time you pass by.

Apparently, working for an alchemist meant you had to be on your feet a lot. You, however, anticipated otherwise.

As you recall your shenanigans for the past few months of being here...

You know not to touch the vials that your superior had just swirled and set down to rest- lest you risk soot dusting your cheeks (again).

No matter how many times you begged to have a chimera as a mere assistance to the apothecary's front desk, your superior insists that a dromas have far better advantages, though you definitely overheard the one-eyed scholar murmuring as he turned away:

"They may not be intelligent. However, they're calm, quiet, have a good temperament… and eat lots…"

You got used to delivering strange substances to strange clients alike. Naturally, this meant you had a tendency to engage with them on a plethora of topics, and may even return with 'gifts'...

"A 'healing crystal'?" despite having one visible eye, it did not lessen the blow of his deadpan.

"For my bruises earlier, they said!"

"..." Your superior uttered your name once, before halving the so-called crystal with his hands (to your horror). Indeed, it was merely a shiny, polished pebble, coated with clear resin.

"Accept gifts with caution in the near future. I am not responsible for any adversaries you may experience."

With the new addition of a half-automaton half-feline creature you picked up the other day, needless to say, you failed to listen to his advice. Each warm drink you prepared always seemed to catch the interest of said creature- its paw mischievously pushing your ceramic cup from the reception table and onto the apothecary's floor.

On the bright side, the creature is a wonderful addition to the apothecary, even if maintaining it came did not come with instructions in managing both its mechanical parts concurrently with its natural limbs.

After a successful delivery to one of your regular clients, you skipped all the way back to the apothecary, clutching another glowing accessory in your right palm.

Today's front room was seemingly empty. Perhaps it was due to the setting sun. Your immediate instinct is to head to your superior's office, just past the back room.

"Anaxa!" you called out, still so full of energy, evident by the way your forearm swiped the lowly draped burgundy curtain that acted as a divider between the front half of the apothecary and the back. "I found this humming crystal near the Murmuring Woods. Spooky, mysterious, but-"

"Are you forgetting something?" a voice that did not belong to Anaxagoras interjected your announcement.

Rule number four: the back room is for the clients,

Common courtesy had completely slipped your mind before entering the back room. Looking up, your feet remained rooted to your current position, eyes adjusting to the dim lighting compared to the bright lights just beyond the curtain behind you. One hooded figure was seated across your superior by the mahogany desk.

Your immediate reaction, despite still feeling frozen, is to reach back and paw until you felt the familiar linen texture.

Before you could even muster a pull to draw the curtain, so much as squeak an apology--

In less than a few fleeting moments, you find yourself seated, staring at the dark, fine grains before you. The aesthetic visual of the back room's table being easier to pay attention to than the voices you're muffling in real time; one speaks with the familiar intonation you've came to be attached to, while the other negotiates in an estranged way, though you chalked it up to your own inexperience of dealing with the apothecary's clients in negotiations.

Either way, you barely registered the quiet shift of fabric beside you.

There was no longer a hooded figure across the desk. The retreating steps of soles against the wooden floors must have ignored your ear drums today.

Next came the soft, wispy feeling of mint strands against your cheek which prompted you to snap your gaze away from the dark grains of the desk to a sight of crimson that bled into ocean foams.

Mesmerising.

"..overtime. Three days."

Perhaps it was the heat of the proximity between you and Anaxagoras, for you almost mouthed something along the lines of staying late any day...

..while not noticing the heat of his arm lounging on the cushion behind you.

a/n: This AU may or may not continue to have more content. I personally enjoyed exploring both Reader's personality trait as well as Anaxagoras'. I have not progressed Amphoreus at all (I'm at the part where professor is scheming against the Council of Elders) but I want to devote some time in exploring my own 'what if's. If you've read this far, could you guess what's rule number one and two?~ you are also invited to spam my inbox if you'd like.

The Asdana region’s capital was a city that never slept.

Beneath vaulted ceilings strung with gold and glass, Penacony existed on hymns and indulgence alike—incense from sanctuaries curling into neon haze, prayer bells swallowed by laughter spilling from open doors. Devotion and desire lived shoulder to shoulder here, and the locals had long since stopped pretending otherwise. They called it a dreamscape with a straight face, as though dreams were not things that devoured you when you lingered too long.

Sunday haunted the same corners as always.

The bar was a low-lit sprawl tucked beneath a transit bridge, frequented by people who preferred to stay unremembered. Demon hunters gathered here between jobs, their presence marked not by armor or insignia but by the way they occupied space. Their backs were often to walls, and their eyes would scan reflections instead of faces. Sunday blended in easily. Or at least, he tried to.

Tonight, though, he hadn’t felt like hunting. There was no holier-than-thou need to rid the world of the bottom-dwellers lurking in the shadows. No sense of urgency to fulfill a calling that had already shunned him. If he were anyone else, Sunday might have taken it as permission to go home. But he was a man of routine, and routine was a harder god to defy than Xipe ever was.

So he stayed.

A glass sweated beneath his fingers, an order he made out of courtesy than actual thirst. The din of the place started to fade around him like it always did when he was mulling things over. But like always, silence had a habit of shattering when he got too comfortable.

“Wow,” a voice chimed in. “You look like someone sang your favorite church song off-key.”

He didn’t turn immediately, not wanting to dignify Sparkle with a reaction. But the bartender was quick to lean against the counter from her side. She had a way of gracing him with her presence like a punchline he didn’t remember setting up—chin in her palm, eyes bright with amusement that never quite reached sincerity.

“I wasn’t aware I had favorites,” Sunday said flatly.

“That’s because you’re boring,” she replied cheerfully. “But reliable. Which is why I’m here.”

She set a slim dossier on the table and nudged it toward him with one finger. The paper bore no seal or official script. That alone told him enough.

“Golden Hour District,” Sparkle continued. “Reports of a succubus making herself very comfortable. A few patrons drained, a few more shaken. You know the type.”

He glanced down, already knowing what he’d find. Sex demons were common in Penacony—drawn to contradiction like moths to flame. Some hid in dreams, feeding delicately where no blade could follow. Others preened in plain sight, intoxicated by the audacity of it all.

“Solo?” he asked.

“Unless you’ve suddenly developed a fondness for company.” Sparkle’s eyes flicked over him, lingering just long enough to be deliberate. “Xipe didn’t teach you that, did They?”

His jaw ticked. “That chapter is closed.”

“Oh, I know.” She grinned. “Still fun to read between the lines though.”

Exhaling, Sunday got up from his seat before tucking away the sheet. “I’ll handle it.”

Sparkle hummed. “Try not to make it messy. The Church gets testy when things look… personal.”

Sunday paused, just briefly.

“I don’t answer to the Church. Not anymore.”

“No,” she said lightly. “You don’t.”

He left before she could say anything else.

When he arrived at Golden Hour, lights spilled from every doorway—warm and inviting yet false in every way. Pleasure here was a performance, and demons who thrived on it rarely bothered to hide. Sunday moved through the district like a fish barreling upstream, senses attuned for excess that rang hollow. Glamour always cracked eventually. Desire always left fingerprints.

A soft ping came from the smartphone tucked into his back pocket. He wasn’t one for material things but his sister had insisted he keep it. The same sister who remained its only saved contact.

Robin: I hope you’re eating properly. The evening service went smoothly today. If you’re nearby, you should come home sometime. Just to visit.

He stared at the words longer than necessary.

Then he dismissed them with a flick of his thumb.

Casinos in Golden Hour were designed to keep you awake. It was a place where hands constantly moved, where betting chips clacked like gnashing teeth, and the slot machines flashed fast enough to keep your pulse slightly elevated. Time didn’t dissolve here so much as it stalled, caught between one bet and the next. Laughter rang too loud, music pulsed too slow, and the air tasted of ambition left to rot. Desire here was currency. No one bothered to hide it.

You leaned into that truth like a practiced lie.

A smile here, a brush of fingers there. Close enough to be felt, distant enough to be wanted. You’d learned the rhythm quickly—how to hover at the edge of someone’s attention until they filled in the rest themselves.

The man beside you was already unraveling. Late thirties, maybe older. The sleeves of his work clothes were rolled up, collar loosened, eyes glued to the table as though the numbers owed him something. His chips dwindled with every breath. You pressed closer, just enough for your perfume to reach him, just enough for your smile to feel like salvation.

“Just one more,” he muttered.

You waited until the moment the table went quiet.

The dealer swept the last of his chips away with practiced indifference, and whatever hope the man had been clinging to went with them. His shoulders slumped. His stare lingered on the felt as though the numbers might rearrange themselves if he looked hard enough.

You laughed softly and leaned closer, letting your fingers brush his wrist as if by accident. An invitation that promised everything and nothing at once.

“Bad luck,” you murmured, voice warm with sympathy you didn’t entirely feel. “Happens to everyone.”

He looked up at you like you’d pulled him back from the edge of something. Relief loosened his posture. Gratitude did the rest.

He leaned in first, clumsy with it, all eagerness and need. When he kissed you, it was desperate—too much pressure, not enough awareness. You returned it because you had to, and your body knew the rules even if your mind resented them. His hands found your waist, your back, overeager and uncertain. You let them linger. You always did.

But then the taste hit.

That god-awful taste.

It flooded your senses all at once—thick and sour and rancid in a way that had nothing to do with hygiene. Like spoiled wine. Like sweat soaked into old paper. It burned the back of your throat, clinging no matter how shallow you tried to keep the contact.

You nearly recoiled but instead, you smiled.

You always smiled.

He took it as encouragement. They always did. His voice dropped into a whisper as he spoke of whisking you away, of luck finally turning if you stayed by his side. Promises spilled easily from men who mistook attention for absolution. But no matter how sweet the words sounded, they meant nothing once your palate was fouled beyond saving.

You pulled back first, murmuring an excuse you wouldn’t remember five steps from the table. You stepped away before the nausea could crest into something visible. Behind you, the man blinked at you, confused, hands still half-raised as though you’d simply vanished mid-performance.

You weaved quickly through bodies and tables, swallowing the bitter aftertaste like penance. The energy you’d siphoned barely steadied you—enough to keep the hunger you’ve been sitting with at bay, but not enough to feel normal. You’ve forgotten what that word even means for you.

That was the cruel joke of it.

Sexual energy was the only thing that could sustain your kind, but the act of retrieving it repulsed you. Too much sensation. Too many hands. Too much intimacy that wasn’t yours. Kisses were tolerable. Any sort of brief contact, you could stomach. It was enough to sip without drowning. But anything more and your senses overloaded—flavors too vivid, emotions too loud. You’d learned early that restraint was survival.

The hunters in your last city had been thorough. You hadn’t stayed long enough to confirm the rumors of their pursuit—just packed what little you owned and left before the walls started closing in. Penacony was meant to be a reset. A place indulgent enough that someone like you could disappear into the crowd without being hunted for sport.

So far, it had only proven louder, not safer.

You slipped off the casino floor and into the adjoining streets with purpose, letting the neon thin into something more navigable. You asked questions that sounded idle but weren’t. About clubs that stayed open too late. Patrons who never seemed to age. Performers who left people glassy-eyed and giggling to themselves. You framed it as curiosity. As if you were someone looking to indulge.

But the truth was, you were looking for your own.

Succubi and incubi didn’t announce themselves outright, but they left patterns behind—familiar hauntings, familiar rumors, and the same names whispered twice by different mouths. You followed every thread you could find, but nothing came back. Just confused looks. Smirks that went nowhere. Shrugged shoulders from people who didn’t know, or pretended not to.

Your frustration coiled tighter with every dead end, made worse by the aftertaste still clinging to your senses. Bad feedings lingered longer than good ones, souring everything that followed. You swallowed it down and kept moving anyway.

Your hunger wasn’t sharp or desperate, but there was a dull ache that lingered beneath your ribs, an irritation that followed you as you wandered deeper into Golden Hour. The city was new enough to distract you, unfamiliar streets folding into one another beneath neon signs and hanging lights, but your body kept score. That last feeding was mere scraps compared to your usual fill, and the foul taste clung stubbornly to the back of your senses.

That was when you saw him.

He stood near the edge of a crosswalk, apart from the flow of people. Tall, straight-backed, and clad in dark layers that caught the light without reflecting it. Long, silver hair fell just past his shoulders, too pale to belong to the glow around him, untouched by the chaos pressing in from every side.

Above it all, a halo hovered just behind his head, thin and dim. It didn’t shine so much as exist, a quiet ring of light that refused to be swallowed by the neon around it, as if Golden Hour itself had learned to make room for that too.

It takes you only a moment to notice his wings. A delicate, feathered pair sprouting from the nape of his neck, their down catching the glow of his halo when he shifted. They moved almost imperceptibly, a subtle flex that made them undeniably real. You blinked, then frowned faintly as recognition surfaced.

A Halovian.

You’d heard of them in passing. A dwindling people, they said. Blessed directly by the goddess of Harmony, marked by Xipe Themself. Rare enough that most only ever saw them in museum sculptures or half-remembered murals. You hadn’t expected to see one standing in the street like this, unguarded and alone.

But it wasn’t the wings or the halo that held you.

They rose to meet yours with quiet inevitability, as though he’d already known where to look. Gold, but not the kind that blazed—this was a deeper warmth, steady and contained, like honey held just shy of boiling. There was no curiosity in them. Yet, when your gazes locked, your breath faltered all the same. Something coiled low in your chest, tight and sudden, a tension you hadn’t asked for and couldn’t dismiss. And then—

The taste.

It bloomed across your senses without warning, rich and startlingly clean. Warm sweetness layered over something cool and unyielding beneath—like hot honey poured over steel. It lingered on your tongue, vivid without overwhelming you, sharp enough to make your breath hitch.

Oh.

You stilled, pulse ticking beneath your skin.

Sexual energy always had flavor. It was the only thing that truly sustained your kind. You could eat and drink human food, pretend at normalcy—but without sexual energy, you would wither away. Most people gave it freely through touch, and kisses, and the other obvious routes. But tension worked too. Proximity. Eye contact held just a second too long.

For one reckless moment, you considered it. Just a step closer. Just a glance held longer than polite. Maybe strike up a conversation, and touch him up close. It would be enough to cleanse your palate and push the last of that foulness away. He didn’t look like someone who would chase. He didn’t look like someone who would even understand what you were taking.

You approached him before you could think better of it.

A half step forward, then another—close enough that he could probably hear you breathe. You let your expression soften, lips parting just slightly as you tilted your head, letting the light catch where it would do the most work. It came back to you easily, the mask you wore when you needed to survive. The warmth in your smile, and the promise that you were exactly what someone like him didn’t know he wanted.

“Hey,” you said lightly, as though you’d simply wandered into him by chance. “Wanna go somewhere fun?”

He didn’t answer. That didn’t stop you.

You reached for his wrist, fingers curling around it with practiced ease, and tugged—gentle and coaxing, as if inviting him into a secret rather than dragging him anywhere at all. He came with you without resistance, steps unhurried as you guided him off the main street and deeper into Golden Hour’s quieter veins.

The farther you led him, the thicker the taste of his honeyed energy became. It saturated the air around him, warm and cloying, so rich it made you lightheaded. You hadn’t even fed yet, and already your heartbeat skidded, hunger flaring sharp and dizzying beneath your skin.

You laughed softly, pulling him into a secluded alley when you finally stopped. The noise of the city faded into something distant and irrelevant. “You’re very calm,” you murmured, eyes flicking up to his. “Most people would at least ask where they’re being taken.”

Still nothing.

He simply stared at you with those hypnotizing eyes. Gold rimmed with something deeper at the center, a cool royal blue that anchored the warmth instead of tempering it. It made the taste sharper. More dangerous.

You swallowed. Boldness crept in where caution should have been. You stepped closer, close enough now that you could feel the heat of him, could sense the way tension simmered in the narrow space between your bodies. So taken with your next catch, your glamour began to fall away—afterimages of a smooth, pointed tail and a small pair of bat’s wings flickering in and out of existence.

“Is this a Halovian thing?” you teased, fingers brushing up his sleeve. “Or are you always this quiet?”

The man was steadfast in his refusal to dignify you with a response.

Moments later, your tail betrayed you. It slid free of its concealment completely and curled around his waist in a loose coil that tightened reflexively when the taste of him surged your senses again—so strong it made your vision blur at the edges. You sucked in a sharp breath, instinctively chewing on your bottom lip as you met his stone-cold gaze.

“Sorry.” You giggled, letting your tail climb higher up his forearm. “Force of habit.”

He didn’t move to remove it. He didn’t move at all.

The silence stretched, taut as wire. You tilted your head, searching his face for something—anything—that would tell you this wasn’t a mistake. His gaze never left yours. It pinned you there, warm and unyielding all at once, and for a reckless second you leaned in, drawn by instinct more than intent. Your breath fanned his face in a way that would fluster lesser men, but by now you could already tell this man was anything but.

You were close enough that you could taste him.

His lips parted, and for a heartbeat you thought that you’d finally coaxed a response out of him. But the words that followed weren’t an answer. They were a chant.

It wasn’t speech so much as structure, Harmony shaped into cadence, doctrine braided into breath. You recognized it instantly, even without ever hearing it spoken before—the voice of Xipe invoked not as comfort, but as command.

Its effect on you was immediate.

The pressure slammed into your ribs, sudden and suffocating, driving the breath from your lungs as the sudden taste of his energy began to curdle on your tongue. Your tail snapped loose as you stumbled onto the ground, teeth clenched against the force pressing down on your chest.

“Wait—” you croaked, but his chanting only grew louder.

You realized it then, clear as day. You hadn’t found prey. You’d found a hunter.

Light flared in his hands. It bled into existence from nothing, a sudden, concentrated shimmer that condensed into the shape of a book. A tome bound in pale material that drank in the glow around it, its surface etched with lines that pulsed faintly in time with his voice. The moment it solidified, the pressure doubled.

You screamed.

His incantations tightened around you like a vice, Harmony turned merciless, forcing your essence inward as though trying to peel you out of your own skin. Your limbs locked. Your breath came shallow and panicked. Every part of you that wasn’t human burned.

The rest of your glamour collapsed completely. Your wings tore free into full existence, aching and wrong in the narrow space. Your tail lashed violently as the holy resonance tore through you. The taste of flowers flooded your mouth—white, sharp, and suffocating—so pure it made you gag. The edges of your vision blurred and whitened as the world tried to shrink you down to something smaller. Something manageable.

You clenched your teeth.

No.

You had not run this far to die in an alley.

With what little strength you could muster, your tail whipped out on pure instinct, sweeping low and hard. Metal clattered violently as trash cans overturned, lids skidding across the ground, and glass shattering as something heavy slammed into the wall. The noise broke the man’s rhythmic chanting for half a second.

Taking advantage of the opening, you twisted free of the pressure with a snarl, pain screaming through every nerve as you forced your body to move. You didn’t look back. You ran—barely upright, wings folding tight as you burst back into the main street, swallowed immediately by light and bodies and sound.

But the Halovian followed.

Frantic footsteps pounded behind you. He didn’t shout or curse. His voice cut cleanly through the din, Xipe’s Harmony threading between screams of laughter and music and traffic, trying to pin you down without tearing the city apart in the process.

You weaved through pedestrians, shoved past a group spilling out of a club, nearly collided with a vendor cart. The pressure grazed you again, enough to stumble and make your knees buckle.

But for the first time that night, something shifted.

A car tore through the intersection at the wrong angle, tires shrieking as it clipped the curb and slammed into a street fixture barely a foot from you. The impact split the night open—glass bursting outward, alarms blaring, pedestrians scattering in reflexive panic.

The chant shattered. Harmony unraveled into discord.

You didn’t question it. You took the gift and bolted, white hot agony burning through your limbs as you vanished into the surge of bodies and light. Sirens rose behind you, and your heartbeat roared in your ears as luck, at long last, tipped in your favor.

By the time the chaos settled into stunned voices and flashing lights, Golden Hour’s endless arteries had swallowed you whole.

Sunday’s earliest memories were filled with light.

It always held a steady, sanctified glow that softened the edges of the world. He remembered sunlight through stained glass, candle flames trembling beneath the high ceilings of a cathedral. Choruses rising and falling like an exhaled breath. He also remembered small hands folded neatly in his lap, Robin’s fingers warm where they brushed his own, and the quiet pride that came with being watched by hundreds upon hundreds of onlookers.

They were special. Everyone said so.

High Reverend Gopher Wood told them often with quiet certainty that they were gifts—divine messengers placed gently into the Church’s care. Halovians were precious, blessed directly by the Xipe Themself, marked so he and his sister might guide others toward Harmony whenever the world threatened to fracture.

Sunday had no reason not to believe him.

He was taught that to serve was the highest calling. Discipline was devotion, and to be chosen meant responsibility, not privilege. When he knelt beside Robin during hours of prayer, back when their halos were still faint and their wings were still too small to draw comment, he felt nothing but gratitude.

Being chosen felt like purpose settling neatly into place. There was comfort in knowing what he was meant to be, in having the shape of his life decided before he was old enough to question it. The Church needed him. The people needed him. Their gazes followed his figure with awe and hope and reverence that made his chest swell even as it weighed him down.

Robin needed him too. He learned early how to stand just a little straighter for her, how to speak with certainty even when doubt stirred beneath his calm. If he was steady, she would be too. That was his role. That was what older brothers were for.

The High Reverend watched Sunday grow into his role with an approval that felt earned. He lived for it in quiet ways. A nod after a sermon. A hand on his shoulder after a long service. Praise given sparingly, as though to teach him its value.

When the congregation bowed their heads and listened to his words, when their faith settled into him like an offering, Sunday felt anchored to the role he was given. Necessary. Whole. The idea of being anything less was unthinkable.

So he prayed more often, carried the confidence of a leader in his gait, and learned to be exactly what the Harmony asked of him. But in doing so, he never noticed how small the world became around him—how every path narrowed until there was only one direction left to walk.

He never noticed how the light had dimmed until it was all he had left.

Sunday’s apartment was always quiet at the crack of dawn—no music from neighboring units, no traffic bleeding through the walls. The space was modest but clean, everything arranged only with an eye as meticulous as his.

Its only resident rose and moved through his routine without pause. He stretched, worked his body just enough to keep it sharp, then prepared a simple breakfast and ate it without distraction. His thoughts already aligned with the day ahead. Somewhere between rinsing his cup and wiping the counter clean, he knelt and bowed his head in prayer.

The words came easily, unchanged from years of repetition. Sunday did not ask for forgiveness, nor did he seek guidance. Clarity for what the day has in store was all he required.

But when he stood, the weight in his chest had not lifted.

It had settled there the night before, stubborn and unresolved, rooted in a failure that should not have occurred. The succubus had escaped him. Sex demons were weak by nature. He had never needed assistance to deal with them, never felt compelled to involve other hunters. Yet this one had slipped through his grasp. He intended to see it corrected.

However, as he reached for his coat by the rack, he paused.

Mounted beside the door was a portrait he rarely acknowledged, yet never though to move. He and Robin stood side by side, dressed in ceremonial white, younger and untouched by consequence. Her smile was bright and unguarded. His own expression was calm, composed. The symbol of the Church framed them both like a promise made long ago.

His intuition was an infallible thing. It settled deep in his chest with a pressure he did not bother to question, and by the time his hand fell away from his coat he already knew he would not be going anywhere else before seeing his sister.

Visiting the estate was not something Sunday did often.

Robin invited him frequently, always with the same careful phrasing that made it clear he was welcome but never expected. She spoke of it as though nothing had changed, and his absence were merely a matter of distance rather than consequence. He hated the pity threaded through her words, however unintentional it was, and hated even more that it mirrored the tone she used with the less fortunate citizens of the Asdana region—gentle, patient, unwaveringly kind.

So he stayed away.

It was easier to maintain distance than to confront the dissonance of being received warmly in a place that no longer belonged to him, easier than enduring the looks that pretended not to measure how far he had fallen. Yet the certainty pressing against his ribs did not ease, and by the time he left his apartment, the decision had already been made.

The estate’s denizens recognized him immediately.

Servants greeted him by name, their bows as practiced and respectful as they had ever been, and the familiarity unsettled him more than outright rejection would have. He wondered briefly whether Robin had instructed them to behave this way for his sake, and the thought irritated him even as it soothed something raw beneath the surface.

When he asked for her, a pause followed.

“Miss Robin is occupied at the moment,” one of them said. “She will join you shortly.”

Sunday nodded and allowed himself to be shown to the reception hall, where tea was poured and pleasantries were exchanged. He waited with his posture rigid, the unease in his chest sharpening with every passing minute.

Conversation drifted in and out of the hall as servants passed by with careful steps and quieter voices than usual. He noted the way their glances lingered, how they avoided meeting his eyes for more than a moment, as though aware of something he was not.

That, more than anything else, decided it.

Sunday rose and moved toward the staircase without another word. A servant hurried after him, voice strained with polite urgency, insisting that he need not trouble himself, but he acknowledged none of it. He knew the layout of the estate like the back of his hand, and he did not slow his pace. By the time they realized he had no intention of stopping, he was already halfway up the stairs, the unease in his chest having sharpened into certainty.

Whatever was delaying his sister, it was not something he was meant to be kept from seeing.

Sunday reached the upper floor and turned down the familiar corridor without slowing. The servants’ protests followed him in hushed voices, but he ignored them still, stopping only when he reached the door to Robin’s study.

It was ajar.

Robin’s voice spilled from the crack in a low, steady melody that unknowingly soothed the tension in his shoulders. It was not a song meant for congregation, nor a performance meant to inspire. This was Harmony shaped into the sound of her voice, each note placed with care to soothe and heal rather than preach. That was her gift.

Sunday pushed the door open.

His sister stood near the window with her hands folded loosely at her chest as she sang in earnest. The morning light caught in her hair and the warm glow of her halo. For a moment the scene looked almost peaceful.

Until he saw the obvious intruder in his old home.

You sat where a guest should not have been, your posture relaxed despite the strain evident in the way your wings folded unevenly at your back. You looked worn, pale, still bearing the marks of the exorcism he had attempted the night before, but your eyes lifted when he entered—and you smiled.

Something smug flickered there the moment you saw him, but it was gone the instant Robin glanced your way. When her gaze returned to you, your expression softened, eyes lowering obediently as though you were nothing more than a patient grateful for care.

Sunday’s jaw tightened.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

Robin’s song tapered off gently before she turned to face him. “Brother,” she greeted him with a tone as even as ever. “You weren’t meant to come up here.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, eyes alight with rage. He was not speaking to his sister.

Your smile sharpened briefly at the address, then vanished again as Robin stepped closer to your side.

“She was barely conscious when I found her,” she explained. “I ran into her on my way back from last night’s service. My intuition told me to bring her here.”

“Your intuition,” Sunday echoed flatly. “Or hers?”

Robin frowned. “Don’t do that, brother.”

“She’s a succubus,” he deadpanned. “One I was contracted to eliminate. I saw her feed and attempted to do the same with me as well.”

“And I saw someone suffering.”

Sunday sighed before he took a step forward. His hand moved instinctively toward his focus.

“Step aside, Robin.”

But she moved with him, placing herself squarely between the two of you. “No. Brother, you know the price of hasty decisions. Don’t make the same mistake.”

A humorless laugh escaped him. “Mistake?” He gestured toward you without looking away from his sister. “Did you not hear me clearly the first time? That woman is a succubus. Just another demon that spreads evil and discord wherever they go.”

“And maybe,” Robin said quietly, “we should stop naming things evil so arbitrarily.”

Sunday stared at her for a long, hard moment. “Are you hearing yourself?”

“I am,” she said. “Do you not tire of this ceaseless killing, brother? As emissaries of the Harmony, we must be more discerning of those who need it.”

He scoffed before he could stop himself. “You sound like you’ve been charmed.”

Robin met his gaze steadily. “You know that’s impossible.”

He did. Halovians were resistant to psychological tampering by nature, which made Sunday an excellent demon hunter. The thought, however, offered no comfort in these current circumstances.

When Robin spoke again, her voice softened, but her stance did not. “I’ll see that she leaves Penacony once she’s recovered. There’s no need to kill her.”

“Showing mercy to demons isn’t what the Church taught us,” Sunday said coldly.

“And neither was killing innocent people,” Robin replied.

The word innocent stuck in his throat like something unclean.

No demon was innocent. He had lived by that truth his entire life. He wanted to say so. Wanted to remind her of everything Harmony demanded, everything they had been taught.

But this was Robin.

Slowly, Sunday lowered his hand.

“Fine,” he relented at last. “Do as you wish.”

His gaze returned to you, sharp and unyielding. “But when she leaves,” he added, voice tight, “this ends. Sheltering demons would only brand you a heretic when the High Reverend catches wind.”

Robin exhaled, shoulders loosening. “Thank you, brother.”

His attention then settled on you with a scrutiny that had nothing to do with curiosity. You remained where you were, wings folded tight and tail tucked away as if the effort of sitting upright cost you dearly. But he was not fooled.

He remembered how easily you had moved the night before, how eager you had been when you thought you had him cornered. Demons survived on deception as much as hunger, and succubi most of all. Weakness was a language they spoke fluently.

Still, Robin’s presence complicated things.

Her hand rested lightly at your shoulder almost protectively. The sight unsettled him more than your smugness ever could have. Whatever you were, whatever game you were playing, she believed you worth saving, and that belief was not something he could dismantle without turning a blade on his own blood.

His gaze hardened, lingering just long enough for the warning to stick. This was not absolution. It was delay. For Robin’s sake alone, he would let it stand.

For now.

Objectively, you didn’t think you’re a bad person.

You’ve done what you had to do to survive. You’ve taken what you needed, never more than necessary, and never from the same person twice. You’ve learned restraint where your kind is expected to indulge, practiced caution where others mistake excess for nature. If anything, you’ve spent most of your life trying not to become the thing people fear when they hear the word succubus.

And yet…

It felt difficult to argue that point while you were staying in the estate of a deaconess, recovering under her care like a misplaced charity case.

When Robin found you, you had been slumped against a side street not far from the cathedral, the world tilting unpleasantly as the remnants of the exorcism gnawed at your body. Your glamour barely held. Your wings ached. Every breath felt like it scraped on the way in. You hadn’t even noticed her at first—only the warmth that settled around you.

The deaconess had knelt beside you without hesitation, her expression creasing with concern rather than revulsion. She’d only asked if you could stand with a voice that made refusal feel pointless. When you didn’t answer, she’d helped you anyway.

Later, you asked why she helped someone who was clearly a demon. She simply told you it just felt wrong leaving you there.

You didn’t have the heart to argue.

Robin insisted the arrangement is temporary. You’re here, officially, because you’re still healing from the damage her brother’s failed exorcism left behind—a tidbit of news that made her sigh with something like disappointment. Unofficially, you’re here because she wants to understand you—your kind, your nature, the space between demon and monster that the Church refuses to acknowledge.

You suspected she believed there’s a middle ground. It’s optimistic. Admirable. A little naïve.

And you were absolutely taking advantage of it.

Because another thing you discovered was that Robin’s voice does something to you that feeding never quite manages. When she sings, the ache beneath your ribs would dull into something bearable, the hunger loosening its grip without demanding anything in return. You told her it helps and let yourself look small and tired when she asks how you’re feeling. What you purposely avoid telling her is that you could heal yourself faster through feeding.

But you didn’t want to do that.

Feeding has always been a transaction you resented, and there was none of that when it came to Robin’s soothing singing. So you stayed.

Protected by her position. Shielded by her faith. Conveniently placed beyond the reach of a demon hunter who took a contract to end you and now has to live with the fact that you’re sleeping under the same roof as his sister.

Sunday was… less than thrilled.

You could feel it every time he visited, even before he says a word. The tension rolled off him in sharp waves, a coil pulled too tight beneath his calm. He watched you like you’re some weapon left unattended, like the slightest movement might turn you dangerous. The irony would be funny if it weren’t so exhausting.

He was convinced you’re a threat waiting to happen.

Perhaps he even believed you would siphon sexual energy from Robin the moment she turned her back. The thought had crossed your mind only once when you’d unintentionally tasted a trace of sweetness from her, something light and delicate like fondant lingering at the edges of her presence. That alone had been enough to make you recoil.

But your discretion meant nothing to Sunday. Nothing would sway him away from the idea that you’ll corrupt his sister, charm her, poison her faith simply by existing too close to it. The Church had done a thorough job teaching him what demons must be, and it showed.

Robin, meanwhile, continued her duties as though nothing has changed. She left for services, meetings, charity visits, trusting you to remain exactly where she left you. Sometimes you’re alone with the servants, who treated you with careful politeness and pointed avoidance. Other times—

Sunday dropped by.

You learned quickly that this man never entered a room without taking inventory. His gaze often flicked to the windows, the corners, the space between you and the furniture, as if expecting something to lunge. Only after that did he look at you.

“Where is my sister?”

“At the church,” you replied, bored. “Where she goes when she’s not babysitting demons.”

His eyes narrowed. “You are not to be left behind in the estate unattended.”

“I didn’t decide that. Robin did.”

“And you stayed anyway like the parasite you are.”

“Like she asked me to,” you corrected. “You should try it sometime.”

That earned you a cold, appraising look. “You enjoy provoking me.”

“You enjoy assuming the worst of me. Seems fair.”

Sunday’s jaw flexed. “Must I remind you that you are not here by right? You don’t get to act as if you are invincible, little demon, because you are anything but.”

“No,” you agreed easily. “I’m here by mercy. Yours, technically. I’d say thank you, but you look like you’d hate that.”

“…If you so much as inconvenience her—”

“You’ll do what?” you interrupted, still smiling. “Exorcise me? Break your sister’s heart in the process?”

The air shifted again, sharp and uneasy, and if Sunday had not respected Robin’s wishes so deeply, you suspected he would have had you cast back into the streets—or exorcised you outright—without a second thought. For all his posturing as a demon hunter bound by some rigid, self-imposed code, he was surprisingly lenient when it came to her.

“She is not part of this,” he grumbled.

“I know,” you chuckled softly. “That’s why I’m still here.”

You haven’t decided yet whether you’re glad for the interruption in the newfound monotone of your life or furious at the scrutiny he always subjected you to. Conversations with him are rarely pleasant. He’s sharp, curt, unimpressed by every answer you give him, and you returned the favor out of spite if nothing else.

The problem was that none of it was neutral.

Even arguments carried some sort of charge. Every exchange crackled with tension you had no choice but to taste, that maddening warmth bleeding into your senses whether you want it or not. That same honeyed flavor saturated the air between you whenever his gaze lingered too long or your words struck a nerve.

You hated it.

Hated that you noticed. Hated that your hunger stirred at the edges when you weren’t even trying to feed. Even the slightest bit of irritation became a conduit, making your mere proximity from him alone enough to flavor the moment.

You didn’t act on it. You wouldn’t dare.

But every time Sunday visited, every time he stood just a little too close or looked at you like he was measuring the distance between restraint and violence, the taste returns—persistent, unmistakable, and entirely unwelcome.

Remembering the nature of your arrangement with Robin, you reminded yourself that this was temporary. Just until you’re strong enough to leave Penacony without collapsing in the street. Until Robin stops looking at you like a question she’s determined to answer.

And until her brother stopped treating you like a sin he needs to absolve.

The nights in the estate were quiet in a way that felt almost accusatory.

You lay on your back in the guest room they’d given you and stared at the ceiling until the ornate molding blurred into meaningless shapes. It was too large, too pristine, and the sheets smelled faintly of cedar and incense. Robin had come home earlier that evening. She’d paid you a visit before retiring to her own room, her halo soft and warm, her voice gentler than the lamplight.

“May I?” she asked, already stepping inside.

You nodded without sitting up.

She sang for maybe twenty minutes—something slow and wordless, notes laid like cool hands against fevered skin. The hunger that always stirred your ribs had eased to a dull throb, then a whisper, then almost nothing. You closed your eyes and let it wash through you, grateful in a way that felt uncomfortably close to devotion. When Robin finished, she smiled and left without asking for anything in return.

That should have been enough.

But the taste of her brother lingered in the back of your throat like smoke you couldn’t cough out. Not the sour rot of the desperate men in Golden Hour, nor the thin syrup of casual touches. This was heavier, something you couldn't just sleep off.

Every time Sunday would come to the estate these past weeks, he’d left traces of his energy behind like fingerprints on glass. And tonight, with Robin’s song still echoing faintly in your bones, the absence of him felt louder than the relief.

You rolled onto your side, tail flicking irritably beneath the covers.

Dream-walking was expensive. It burned energy you didn’t have to spare and pulled threads of your essence across the veil until your body felt like paper left too long in the rain. You’d only done it twice before—once out of necessity, once out of spite—and both times you’d slept for nearly three days afterward. But your hunger wasn’t logical tonight. It was personal.

So, you closed your eyes and let your consciousness slip away.

The transition was brutal—less like falling asleep and more like being pulled through a keyhole made of broken glass. When the world reformed around you, you were already standing in the nave of a cathedral so vast the vaulted ceiling disappeared into soft golden mist.

You’d never stepped inside the Church of Xipe before, though you’d passed it often enough since arriving in Penacony. You hadn’t expected much. Places of worship dedicated to gods who despised your kind rarely inspired curiosity. But standing there now, even in a dream, it was difficult to deny the quiet awe the interior demanded.

Stained glass windows loomed on either side as they depicted scenes of radiant figures reaching toward one another, hands touching in perfect symmetry. Candles burned in endless rows, their flames steady and unnaturally bright. Incense hung thick in the air, sweet and dizzying.

And there, before the altar of Xipe, stood Sunday.

He wore vestments you’d never seen him in—flowing white layered with gold embroidery, garments that belonged to someone who spoke for gods rather than hunted their enemies. His halo burned brighter here, a perfect ring of light that made the rest of the cathedral feel dim by comparison. At the nape of his neck, his feathered wings were tucked close and still, their pale down catching the candle-glow like polished silver

You almost turned back, wondering if you’d wandered into the wrong Halovian’s dream.

But your limbs brought you forward, bare feet silent against marble. Your own glamour bled away until you were nothing but the shape the Church despised most: small black wings and tail that swayed slow and predatory. The classic image.

You stopped a few feet behind him.

“Hello, Reverend,” you purred, voice pitched soft and sinful. “Thought I’d come confess.”

It took a moment for Sunday to turn to you. But when he finally did, those honey-gold eyes met yours without surprise or fear—only calm, cold assessment.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

The timbre of his voice was strange to you. This Sunday did not sound like a hunter—there was no edge to his words, no impatience beneath the syllables. Only an eerie sort of calm shaped by pulpits and listening crowds. Even his gaze was unsettling, measuring you not as prey but as a trespasser whose presence had already been accounted for.

You flashed him a sickly sweet smile as you let your tail slide along the marble toward him. “You shouldn’t be here either,” you laughed. “If you’re still hunting strays like me in back alleys. Seems beneath a man of your… station.”

Sunday did not rise to the bait.

You moved closer, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from him, close enough that the taste of that maddening honey bloomed across your tongue once more. It was richer here, in the sanctity of his dream as though it flowed straight from the source rather than a distant echo.

Your fingers brushed the edge of his vestments as you sank to your knees before the altar. You looked up at him through your lashes, reverent in a way you knew could only be read as blasphemy.

“Let me take communion,” you murmured. “One taste. Then I’ll leave you in peace.”

Silence stretched across the empty the cathedral. His attention remained fixated on your prostrating form, not sharp with anger nor softened by temptation, but focused in a way that made your skin prickle. It was the look of someone weighing a transgression rather than reacting to it.

Sunday stepped closer. The shift was subtle yet it collapsed the space between you all the same. You felt it before you saw it—the heat of him, the weight of his presence pressing down on all fronts. His shadow fell over you, haloed light eclipsing your own small defiance.

Gloved fingers threaded into your hair before tilting your head back until your gaze met his. The gesture was impersonal in its certainty, as if it were simply the correct placement of things long decided.

“You misunderstand,” he said calmly. “Communion is not taken.”

His grip tightened just enough to make a cold thrill skid along your spine.

“It is given.”

You let out a low, mocking laugh, the sound curling through the incense-heavy air like smoke.

“Funny,” you murmured, eyes lifting to his, “how you spend your waking life pretending you’re above this and then dream about it anyway.”

Sunday’s expression didn’t flicker. The gold of his eyes stayed steady, almost serene, like your words were nothing more than background noise to the greater rhythm of the cathedral.

“You think you’re in control here,” he said quietly.

“I’m very good at this part, actually.”

He didn’t smile. He simply guided your head forward until your lips brushed the hardening length beneath the layers of white fabric.

“Then prove it.”

You didn’t rush. You worked him free with practiced ease, letting your tongue trace the thick vein along the underside of his length, mapping the very thing the Church had forbidden you to touch. The heavy white silk of his vestments pooled around his hips, gold embroidery catching the candlelight in soft, sacred flashes. His lips were pressed into a thin line, wings folded in perfect repose. But the sight of him like this—untouchable and exalted, yet hard and leaking for a demon on her knees—sent a dark, liquid heat curling through your belly.

You took him deeper, inch by inch, letting your lips stretch around him, letting the weight of him settle heavy on your tongue. The taste bloomed slow and devastating: warm honey lathered onto your tongue, threaded with the slow burn of something you already know you’ll crave again tomorrow. It coated the back of your throat, slid down like ceremonial wine you were never meant to drink.

Above you, Sunday did not make a sound.

But his golden eyes were half-lidded, pupils blown wide and dark in the candle-glow. One gloved hand rested at the nape of your neck. The other remained at his side, fingers curled loosely like he were still holding an invisible crosier and presiding over a congregation that had long since vanished.

You pulled back until only the head of him remained between your lips, swirled your tongue around it once, twice, tasting salt and sanctity, then sank down again until your nose brushed the silvery curls at his navel. A barely there shudder moved through his thighs but you felt it. You felt everything.

Only then did his composure fracture, just enough to cut.

Sunday’s fingers tightened in your hair, not quite cruel, but inexorable all the same. He drew you off him slowly, letting you feel every slick inch sliding free, staring up at him with wet eyes and a mouth that already ached to be filled again.

“Look at you,” he murmured patronizingly. “On your knees before the altar of the goddess you despise… throat open for the man who was sent to end you.”

The words should have stung. Instead they licked down your body like molten gold.

Sunday guided you forward again, and you felt the drag of his cock over your tongue, the pulse of him against the roof of your mouth. When he hit the back of your throat and you gagged softly, he stilled not out of mercy, but to savor the sensation. To let you feel how perfectly your lips were stretched around him, and how thoroughly you had surrendered the illusion of control.

Only then did he begin to move.

Each thrust carried the same cadence he might use to intone a litany: deep, rolling, and inevitable. The hand in your hair dictated the rhythm; the other finally rose to cup your jaw, thumb stroking over your cheekbone like he was blessing you even while he ruined you. The slick sounds of your own saliva filled the cathedral’s hush every time he guided your head back down—wet, filthy glucks that echoed softly off marble, betraying just how well you were taking him.

Tears slipped free from your waterline, warm against your skin. Your tail curled tight around one of his calves as your wings trembled half-spread. Each drag of his length pulled more of that blinding honeyed energy from him, thick and intoxicating, until your head swam with it, until your cunt throbbed in perfect, aching sympathy. He stifled your quiet moans with his cock, subjugating you into silence.

You were drowning in the taste of him: ambrosia and altar wine and something fiercer underneath, like the heart of a star caged in flesh. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped to a whisper meant only for you and whatever god might still be listening.

“Swallow your salvation, little demon.”

He pushed deep, held you there, and came.

The first pulse hit the back of your throat like liquid sunlight. You choked on him, on the sheer amount of it flooding every starved corner of your body. Wave after wave poured into you, thick and endless, until your vision whited out and your spine bowed and your cunt clenched hard around nothing, coming untouched in a long, shuddering rush that left you sobbing around his cock.

Sunday held you through it, fingers iron-tight in your hair, letting you milk him dry while your body drank him in like parched earth finally given rain.

When he finally slipped free, a thin strand of saliva and spend still connected your lips to him. He brushed it away with his thumb, then pressed the same thumb to your bottom lip, parting them, studying the wreckage he’d made of you with little remorse.

You stared up at him, wrecked and trembling and so full you could barely breathe, haloed in the glow of his vestments and the aftershock of his release. For one suspended heartbeat, the cathedral was plunged into silence except for the soft sound of your ragged breathing and the slow, intermittent beat of wings that weren’t yours.

Then the world shattered.

You came awake gasping, clutching fistfuls of silk sheets, thighs slick and shaking while the ghost of him still laid thick on your tongue. Your body felt luminous, overflowing, every cell singing with a warmth that felt disturbingly like absolution.

Even in your dark room in the estate, you knew that Sunday had opened his eyes at the exact same moment somewhere else in the city, lips parted on a breath that tasted faintly of ash and sin.

Demons that did not bother with humanoid forms were merciful in their simplicity.

They did not smile or speak or crawl into your dreams and make you question the boundaries between temptation and consent. Instead, they were simply hunger given shape. When confronted, they fought. When bound, they screamed. When exorcised, they vanished. There was no pretense or ambiguity in it. No lingering echoes afterward to haunt the mind. While exterminations were far messier than exorcisms, Sunday had found that he preferred this.

It was why he had taken the job without hesitation when he came to visit Sparkle at the bar again, and why he had agreed to work alongside others rather than handle it alone. Not because it required additional hands, but because stillness had become dangerous lately. Silence invited recollection. Sleep invited… intrusion.

The nest lay beneath a collapsed building on the outskirts of the city, where Penacony’s glow thinned into something colder and less forgiving. The walls were slick with residue, chitinous bodies clinging to the concrete like tumors where they pulsed faintly with corrupted resonance. The air reeked of rot and stagnant ether, thick enough to taste.

Good, Sunday mused. Something uncomplicated.

March was the first to move, fearless and loud as her laughter rang through the corridor. She loosed an arrow in one smooth motion. A quiet glow flared along the enchanted shaft before sinking cleanly through the first creature’s thorax, pinning it to the wall in a burst of ichor and flesh.

Caelus charged in right after with a baseball bat that Sunday had found ridiculous at first. But its owner swung it with a brutal, unrefined force. Bones and shells and exoskeletons cracked under the impact as he drove the demons back, each strike messy but effective. There was no finesse to it—just momentum and refusal to slow down.

Dan Heng slipped between his partners like a serpent in the shadows. His spear moved with precision, the tip finding joints and weak points with clinical efficiency. Limbs severed, bodies collapsed, and what little coordination the nest had dissolved almost immediately. They were young and green. But not ignorant.

Sunday remained behind them, tome open in his hands, voice steady as he began the exorcism proper. Where their weapons tore through physical form, his incantations unraveled the demons’ essence itself. Sigils flared into existence, binding the remaining creatures in place as Harmony asserted its claim. When he’d uttered the final lines, a wave of bright, holy light washed through the entire corridor.

The nest collapsed into inert matter, ichor dissolving into nothing as the last echo of corrupted resonance was extinguished.

Sunday exhaled only once it was over.

The breath slipped out of him more habit than relief. He closed the tome with a soft, final sound and looked down at himself. Dark flecks of demon ichor clung to the hem of his coat and one sleeve, already evaporating but leaving behind a faint, sour residue that tugged unpleasantly at his senses.

Annoying.

He brushed at it with a gloved hand, muttering a brief cleansing phrase under his breath. The residue dulled, lost cohesion, and flaked away like ash, but the irritation lingered. It always did. Demon ichor had a way of reminding you it had touched you at all.

Behind him, the others had already devolved into noise.

“That last one was definitely mine,” March insisted, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder. “You saw that shot right, Dan Heng? It was the perfect angle!”

Caelus scoffed. “Yeah, after I softened it up. You’re welcome.”

Dan Heng didn’t look up as he wiped his spear clean. “Arguing about it won’t change the count.”

March gasped. “You two are no fun.”

Sunday did his best to tune them out.

The corridor was quieter now—emptied and scrubbed clean by Harmony’s blessing. This was how it was supposed to feel: contained, resolved, and finished.

Unlike the dream that's been haunting him for days.

White marble beneath his feet. Gold light spilling across an altar. The sway of a dark tail tracing the floor as you knelt before him. He remembered the heat of your mouth—a sensation that felt disturbingly real for something born in a dream. The way your lips had parted around him as if his sanctity were nothing more than another indulgence to be tasted.

Sunday straightened abruptly, forcing the memory down before it could take root. It was a dream. Nothing more. A byproduct of proximity, of unfinished business, of a demon left alive when she should not have been.

“Hey,” March called out, peering at him with open curiosity. “You barely broke a sweat back there.”

“That’s because he lets us do all the stabbing,” Caelus supplied.

Sunday cast them a flat look. “That is the arrangement we agreed to, was it not?”

“That may be true but...” Dan Heng glanced at him then. “Your exorcisms are surprisingly thorough.”

“It merely comes from experience,” Sunday replied curtly.

March tilted her head, clearly undeterred. “So—can I ask something?”

“You’re going to aks anyway regardless of my answer.”

“And you're right!” The young woman giggled. “So… Will you spill the tea for us? What happened? Why aren’t you with the Church anymore? I used to sit in your sermons you know!”

For a heartbeat, no one spoke. Sunday’s hand paused at his sleeve. Then he straightened fully, posture locking back into something formal and distant.

“That is not relevant,” he said coldly.

March opened her mouth—then closed it when Dan Heng shot her a sharp look.

“March,” he warned.

She huffed, crossing her arms. “What? I was just asking.”

Caelus shifted awkwardly, eyes flicking between them. “Uh. We should probably report the nest and collect the reward. We're kinda burning daylight here.”

“Yes,” Sunday agreed immediately. “That would be best.”

The conversation ended there.

As they headed back toward the city, the young hunters' voices rose again—bickering over kill counts, exaggerated retellings of past exterminations, and March loudly declaring a victory that no one else acknowledged. Sunday walked a half-step behind them in silence, letting the noise wash past without touching him.

Once, he would have been walking at the front. Once, he would have been the one setting the pace, speaking words meant to guide rather than conclude.

He did not miss it.

Still, as Penacony’s lights began to glow brighter ahead, an image surfaced unbidden. A child laid out before the altar. Chalk-white lines marred their skin where symbols had been drawn with hands that did not know better. The awful moment when stillness set in and never lifted again.

That was the last time he'd been inside Xipe's cathedral.

Sunday’s fingers curled briefly at his side before he forced them to relax. He turned his attention back to the noise he’d been deliberately ignoring, letting his companions’ voices crowd the edges of his thoughts. The city took the rest because Penacony was good at that—swallowing ghosts before they learned how to linger.

Your days at the estate often looked like this. Robin’s lap was a steady, grounding presence beneath your head. The soft fabric of her dress, the gentle pressure of her caress, and the faint scent of lilies that clung to her sleeves no matter how many times the servants washed them. These things were at the forefront of your mind as you stared at the ceiling while she sang. You tried not to think about how easily you had come to rely on this. Her voice unfurled into the room with unassuming clarity. She needed no grand crescendos or titillating high notes. Robin knew how to weave the Harmony into her song as if it had always been part of her. The tension lying just beneath your ribcage loosened a fraction as it always did, like a knot being coaxed open by patient fingers rather than force. You breathed out a long sigh. “There,” Robin murmured, smiling down at you. “Your breathing’s steadier today.” “So you kept saying,” you replied lightly, even as your body refused to fully agree. You shifted your cheek against her thigh, careful not to disturb her. “If this was a clinical trial, I would start to think I was skewing your data.” Robin laughed softly, the sound blending seamlessly into the melody. “Healing isn’t linear. Besides, this isn’t just about fixing you. It’s about proving something.” “Mm. That demons don’t immediately combust when exposed to kindness?” “That Harmony doesn’t have to hurt to work.”

Her hand moved absently through your hair, fingers gentle and unafraid. The gesture still caught you off guard sometimes—how natural she was about touch, and how she would extend it to any soul that needed it without a second thought. You’d met preachers who wielded compassion like a weapon, and hunters who used mercy as bait. Robin did neither. She simply offered her goodwill without expecting anything in return.

But despite all the convincing you've done for yourself, your hunger refused to ebb.

The song always settled into you like a balm, and for a few blessed minutes, your baser desires quieted. They were distant enough that you could pretend to be comfortable. In these times, you would let your eyes close as the notes wrapped around the sharp edges of your thoughts.

Yet this unbidden memory was a frequent intruder.

Honey-warm liquid poured down your throat. Clean and devastatingly vivid.

You hadn’t meant to think of Sunday. You’d been very careful not to think of him, actually. But your body remembered better than your mind ever could—the weight of his presence, the impossible richness of his energy, and the way it had filled you until you’d felt almost… whole.

Your fingers curled against the hem of Robin’s dress before you realized it. She noticed anyway.

“Still hurting?” the deaconess asked quietly, her voice tapering into something gentler.

“A little,” you lied.

She hummed, clearly not buying it and began again. The melody was a press of warm hands to your ribs, urging the ache to ease. And it did, marginally. But it didn’t do much about the hunger anymore.

The realization was a glass shard beneath your sternum.

You swallowed and opened your eyes, staring past the ceiling and back to the truth. You’d been running on borrowed grace and dwindling reserves for days. Robin’s singing soothed, steadied, and patched the cracks, but it didn’t really feed you. Not after you’d tasted something as potent as her brother.

You hated that it all circled back to him.

Your pride flared hot at the idea of slipping into his dreams uninvited again, of taking something you knew you shouldn’t. You hated that a part of you ached with the knowledge that you could, that it would be easy, and that Sunday had been suspiciously absent from the estate ever since that night.

Coward, you thought.

Though you weren’t sure who the word was meant for.

Robin shifted beneath you, adjusting her posture so you were more comfortable. “We’ll go out again tomorrow,” she said lightly, as though discussing the weather. “The orphanage near the cathedral asked if I’d bring extra hands. You did well yesterday.”

You snorted. “I handed out bread and smiled at children. Truly heroic.”

“You seemed to enjoy it though,” she countered. “That matters, even if you had to use some glamour.”

Right. Glamour.

Normally, it would’ve been effortless—an instinct, a simple rearranging of reality around your bones. But now, with your body gnawing after Sunday’s honey-sweet energy and getting nothing in return, even that small spell had become expensive. Keeping your true form hidden took constant attention, a low, relentless burn beneath your skin, like you were holding your breath for hours without ever being allowed to exhale.

“And we’re still in agreement,” Robin added gently, “no visits to the cathedral itself.”

“Good,” you mumbled immediately.

The thought alone made your skin prickle. Places like that were built with Harmony sharpened into something exclusionary, something that pressed in and rejected. It was one thing to visit that place in some holy man’s dream, it was another to step inside when you’re wide awake.

You weren’t keen on testing how much of yourself would survive prolonged exposure.

Robin’s song resumed, and you let yourself rest there, head heavy in her lap. You focused on the kindness in it. The intent. The proof she was trying to build, piece by careful piece—that the world didn’t have to be as cruel as it insisted on being.

You wanted to believe her.

But as the session drew on and your hunger continued to gnaw, you came to a conclusion you didn’t voice: Harmony could soothe demons.

It just couldn’t replace what you’d already tasted.

The orphanage didn’t really surprise you anymore.

Not the overcrowding or the peeling paint. Not the way the same patch of courtyard had to serve as playground, dining hall, and classroom depending on the hour. Laughter always sounded a little too loud here, as if the children had learned that silence invited thoughts no one wanted.

When you and Robin arrived, the gates were already open. Someone had wedged a piece of wood beneath the latch to keep it from sticking. The garden beds along the side were still intact, though you recognized at least three familiar seedlings that seemed to have been replanted because the smaller kids kept uprooting them like it was a game.

Golden Hour glittered only a district away, buzzing with indulgence and profit and people who spent in one night what this orphanage would need to breathe for a month. Yet this place remained cramped and neglected. A city that thrived off excess, you’d learned, often left behind lives no one wanted to keep.

Thus the orphanage stayed full.

Some of the children would get adopted eventually. You’d seen it happen the last time you were here and Robin had cried quietly afterward. The rest simply… stayed. They learned the corners, the rules, and how to make peace with the fact that this was where the world had decided to place them.

You understood that kind of belonging all too well.

Robin greeted the caretakers first, like she always did. Her halo was muted in the daylight, but her presence still pulled people toward her like moths to a flame. In turn, the staff greeted her with the same smiles that looked exhausted around the edges, while you stood half a step behind.

Your glamour remained firmly in place, as it always did on these trips. Human skin. Human silhouette. Keeping up the disguise still burned, but you’d gotten better at hiding that too.

Robin had made a habit of bringing you out more often on these charity visits lately. “Exposure,” she called it, as if repeated proximity to suffering could somehow turn you into something less haunted.

You didn’t mind the children. Sometimes you even liked them. They were honest in a way adults weren’t. Cruel sometimes, yes—but not calculated. There was something merciful about that. What bothered you in particular was how easily the Church could preach sanctity into existence and then abandon the aftermath to places like this.

The head of the entire place, a Halovian woman named Siobhan began explaining shortages and Robin listened attentively. She promised what she could: donations, supplies, another round of applications for funding. But you already knew how those would go.

You had heard Robin mention it during one of the quieter afternoons back at the estate—how certain measures were forbidden. How the Church refused to recognize any kind of prevention that might have spared people from bringing children into the world unwanted and unequipped to care for them. Because they insisted on one absolute truth: all life was sacred.

No one had the right to decide which lives were allowed to be lost.

So women gave birth whether they were ready or not. And when they couldn’t keep the child… they left them at the gates of the orphanage like offerings no one asked for.

It was almost funny, in a sick way. The Church deemed it a sin to prevent a life from being born, yet they had no issue condemning that same life to a crowded building and the constant knowledge that they had been unwanted.

Of course, you didn’t say any of that out loud.

You followed Robin into the courtyard where she immediately drew children like a tide. A few clung to her skirts. Others grabbed her hands. Some simply watched from afar as if afraid to hope too hard. Robin knelt, brushing hair from faces, and murmuring gentle praise like each child was something holy. All while you kept yourself still.

Your presence unsettled the caretakers less than it used to. Not because they trusted you. But because Robin trusted you, and in places like this, her trust was treated like currency.

While your own caretaker was occupied, you looked around.

There was a boy with a bruised cheek sat in the shade of a tree. A pair of girls braided each other’s hair with all the seriousness of an entrance exam. A toddler dragged a wooden toy across the dirt, humming tunelessly as if sound alone was enough to fill the cracks. Dozens of other children creating a cacophony of juvenile noise.

Too many kids. Too little space. This wasn’t an orphanage anymore.

It was a dam, straining under the weight of quiet consequences.

Robin eventually came to stand beside you.

“We’ll need to bring more rice next time,” she murmured. “And fresh linens. They’re running short.”

“‘Next time,’” you echoed blandly.

The deaconess glanced at you, eyes soft but tired. “I know. It’s quite frustrating isn’t it?”

Frustrating.

That was such a gentle word for something this cruel.

You knew Robin was fighting battles she couldn’t win. She was already trying to fix a system that kept batting her away like an irritant. Proposals to expand the orphanage were always dismissed. Requests for better family planning education for citizens turned down. Anything that addressed the problem at its root was deemed inappropriate, and too controversial.

So she did this instead.

She brought food and clothes, medicine and songs. Submerged herself into the grit of it. Threw herself into the symptoms because the Church wouldn’t let her touch the disease.

“It’s not enough,” you muttered before you could stop yourself.

Robin’s gaze lowered. “I know.”

The admission didn’t carry self-pity. Only resignation.

It made you angrier than denial ever would’ve.

“So the Church gets to keep their hands clean,” you began irritably. “They make the rules and say it was Xipe’s will or whatever. Then when children start showing up at these gates, they hand you a broom and tell you to sweep up after their righteousness.”

Robin closed her eyes briefly, as if the words pained her in a familiar place.

“Please,” she murmured. “Not here.”

You exhaled hard through your nose, biting back the rest.

Complex things made you uncomfortable, not because you didn’t understand complexity. But because complexity meant there was no one clear throat to sink your teeth into. No villain to claw. No hunter to outrun. Just systems, beliefs, and power. All sprawling and faceless and unbeatable.

You didn’t say anything more after that.

For the rest of the day, you stayed half in Robin’s orbit and half outside of it. Your mind kept circling back to your earlier conversation, teeth worrying at it like a sore spot. But you forced it down and turned your attention to the children instead. Robin always said they were far more perceptive than people gave them credit for.

But unexpectedly, someone stepped up to you.

A little girl stood with her hands folded behind her back. She was holding a peony she’d clearly plucked from the garden: something small and stubbornly bright against the grime on her fingers.

She hovered for a moment, cheeks pink with nerves, then held it out.

“For you.”

You blinked.

The kids usually gravitated toward Robin. They called her by name, tugged on her sleeves, begged for another song. You were just… the deaconess’s shadow. The quiet stranger who always kept a little distance. The one who smiled politely but never fully belonged.

You accepted the flower carefully, like you didn’t quite trust it.

“…Thank you,” you replied, unable to mask your frown. “Why did you give it to me?”

The girl tilted her head, studying you with a seriousness that didn’t belong on someone so small. Then she leaned in and whispered, as if sharing a secret meant only for you.

“Because I think your tail is cute, miss,” she giggled.

Your lips parted with mild surprise. Beside you, Robin went still.

The girl continued, sweet as daylight, “And your wings too.”

Before either of you could respond, she darted away, swallowed by the other children like nothing had happened at all. For a moment, you just stood there.

“…What?” you murmured under your breath.

Instinct made your gaze drop anyway. You checked yourself in the only way you could—smoothing down your clothes, glancing behind your back. You didn’t feel anything out of place.

Your glamour was still intact.

You turned sharply toward Robin. “Did she—did I—?”

Robin stared for a beat, equally stunned before letting out a soft, disbelieving chuckle.

“There are children who are gifted,” she murmured. “Not all. But some of them can see through spiritual illusions. No matter well you disguise yourself.”

You stared at her, then down at the peony still clutched in your hand.

Then you found yourself laughing with her, too.

“Great,” you muttered. “So I’m not only a charity case. I’m also spiritually clockable.”

Robin’s smile softened. “She wasn’t afraid of you. She even thought you were beautiful.”

“She said cute. Not beautiful.”

“They’re the same thing to me.”

You didn’t know what to do with that.

Instead, you tucked the flower somewhere safe in your clothes, close to your heart where it wouldn’t be crushed, and let your expression settle before anyone could look too closely at you.

But as you watched the children again, you felt something stir in your chest.

Penacony had decided none of them were convenient enough to keep. Yet here they were anyway. Alive, stubborn, unwanted but still reaching for light.

Just like you.

Robin glanced over once again, her eyes briefly flicking to the flower tucked close to your chest.

“You’re doing well,” she said quietly.

“At what? Standing here?”

“At staying,” Robin corrected gently, as if she wasn’t teasing. “At letting them see you.”

You scoffed under your breath. “They see what they want to see.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

You didn’t answer. Your gaze stayed on the children—running in loose circles, shrieking over some game you didn’t bother learning the rules of. Their joy was loud and messy and momentary. Like it was meant to be.

“I know this doesn’t serve you,” Robin admitted, and for once she sounded… almost self-conscious. “I know you don’t gain anything from coming with me. You’re not obligated.”

You turned your head slightly, finally looking at her. “You brought me anyway.”

“Yes.” She smiled, small and apologetic. “Maybe that was selfish.”

“Maybe,” you echoed dryly.

Robin laughed before adding, “But I’m glad you played along.”

“Played along?”

“With my… little journey,” she said, the words faintly embarrassed. “Trying to understand you. Trying to understand demons better.” Her gaze drifted toward the children again, thoughtful. “I don’t want to keep believing the Church is right simply because it’s all we were taught.”

Something in you went quiet.

It was a strange feeling, being spoken about like you were a concept someone was studying. A faith someone was testing. But when you looked at Robin, she wasn’t looking at you like an experiment. She was looking at you like someone she wanted to protect.

That was worse. Because that kind of sincerity always threatened to become expensive.

You would’ve made some dismissive comment, something sharp enough to keep the moment from settling between you—when a crack snapped through the air.

It took a beat for the sound to register as a gunshot.

Robin jerked beside you suddenly. Her eyes went wide and unfocused. Her fingers rose to her throat as if she’d been stung. You were still watching her face with a petrified look on your own when you saw the red spill between her fingers.

You inhaled sharply. “Robin—”

She tried to breathe in, failed, and made a wet sound that did not belong to her. The warmth drained from her expression as her knees buckled beneath her, and when she collapsed you moved on instinct, lunging forward just in time to catch her before her body hit the ground.

The moment her weight landed in your arms, reality dawned on you.

Blood soaked your hands immediately. It was bright and impossibly warm, slick against your skin, and it kept coming in a steady rush that made your stomach turn. Robin’s halo flickered, dimming erratically like a lantern fighting wind, and her lips parted as if she was trying to speak. No sound emerged. Her gaze lifted to yours, strained and swimming.

Then the rest of the courtyard caught up.

Screams tore through the space. Children scattered in every direction, some bursting into tears instantly, others frozen in place as if their minds could not decide whether to run. A caretaker shouted for everyone to get inside, voice splintering with panic. Another grabbed a child that had started to run toward Robin and yanked them back so hard the child stumbled.

“Inside! Inside, now!”

The staff surged forward, trying to herd a crowd that had already begun to dissolve into chaos. You heard the scrape of chairs, the slam of a door being thrown open, chaos plunging into a merry space.

But you barely registered any of it.

All you could see was Robin crumpled in your arms, bleeding out in the middle of a courtyard like the world had decided her kindness was something it could punish.

Your vision snapped upward, scanning the surrounding buildings. The orphanage was boxed in by high-rises, old and new stacked like monuments to Penacony’s prosperity, windows crowding every floor. There were too many angles. Too many possible vantage points. You could not see the shooter, could not even tell where the shot had come from.

Your instincts screamed a warning a fraction of a second before the next bullet arrived.

You reacted without thinking, dragging yourself and Robin sideways in one harsh motion. The impact struck the stone behind you with a sharp burst of debris, fragments skittering across the ground. Your heart lurched violently, your breath catching hard in your chest.

It was deliberate, then. Someone was taking aim at the orphanage. At Robin.

Cold clarity cut through your shock. You could not stay in the open.

You hauled the deaconess with you as fast as you could manage, half-carrying and half-dragging her toward the nearest wall where the angle of fire would narrow. Your body protested at the effort, but adrenaline shoved you forward anyway.

Pressing your back to the solid surface, you lowered her into your lap with shaking care. Her blood streaked your arms. Her throat was mangled by the entry wound, and the sight of it made your stomach twist again with helpless anger.

Robin was still conscious.

Barely.

Her lashes fluttered as her gaze tried to fix on you. Her mouth moved as though she was attempting to form words, but nothing coherent came out—only a strained, wet whisper of breath that bubbled against the wound.

“No,” you breathed, voice cracking harshly. “No, no. Don’t—don’t talk.”

You pulled her hand away from her throat, then replaced it with your own, pressing down firmly to stem the bleeding. The blood slicked between your fingers anyway, hot and relentless. Panic rose in your chest like bile. You had seen people injured before; you had left cities on the run often enough to witness violence. But this was Robin, and that fact made everything else meaningless.

You did not have time to think about what you were doing, you simply did it.

You pushed healing magic into her wound.

It was not the refined kind of restoration priests performed in the Church nor was it like Robin’s soothing songs. It was demonic in nature—raw and threaded through with your own essence, the sort of magic you had only ever trusted yourself with. Succubi were self-preserving by nature; you healed yourself because you had to, because no one else ever would. Using it on another person felt wrong in your body, like reaching into your own chest and ripping something out.

But the bleeding slowed beneath your palm.

It did not stop, but it was stemmed. Just to buy you time.

Robin’s eyes fluttered shut and then opened again, unfocused but stubbornly present. She made another sound as her fingers twitched against your wrist. Still trying to reassure you even now.

Your jaw clenched so hard it hurt.

You needed help. Not prayers, or comfort, or charity. A healer. A medical team. Someone with authority to clear the streets and trace the shooter and drag him out by the throat.

Your gaze snapped to the bag strapped across Robin’s shoulder. You fumbled for it with your free hand, fingers clumsy with blood and urgency. Her phone nearly slipped from your grasp the first time. You caught it against your thigh, hands shaking as you unlocked it.

Your mind went blank for a brief, horrible second.

Then you realized there was only one person you could call.

Someone who would come running even if he hated you, even if he thought you deserved to be put down, even if the sound of your voice made his skin crawl.

You found the contact and pressed call.

The ringing stretched too long, each second grinding into you like a dull blade. You kept pressure on Robin’s throat and fed your magic into the wound in short, trembling pulses, afraid that if you stopped even for a moment she would slip away.

Robin’s eyes drifted again. Her wings fluttered weakly, her halo flickered.

“Stay with me,” you muttered desperately. “Robin—stay with me.”

The line clicked.

A voice answered, sharp with immediate attention. “Hello?”

Your throat tightened until your next breath scraped.

“Sunday,” you whispered shakily.

“You…? Why do you—?”

“It’s Robin.”

You looked down at the deaconess’s throat, at the blood soaking your hands, and the way her fingers trembled faintly against your wrist as if she could still feel you there.

“She’s…” you croaked. “She’s been shot.”

Sunday had loved his sister before he had ever learned the word for love.

They had shared the same womb, the same first cries, the same hands grasping blindly at the world. As children, they had shared everything without thinking to call it sacrifice. When one of them smiled, the other did the same. When one of them faltered, the other steadied.

In his earliest memories, Robin was always there.

And then, one day, their parents were not.

Sunday could not recall the exact moment their world split open—only the aftermath of it. The way grief rearranged the manor’s air into something hollow. How the adults began speaking in gentler voices, as though softness could make tragedy less real.

It was High Reverend Gopher Wood who gathered the pieces.

He did not do it with dramatics. He simply stepped into the vacancy left behind by their parents and became something stable. A pillar. A shepherd. Sunday remembered him as an unwavering presence in those first years—calm hands, reassuring words, eyes that seemed to hold nothing but certainty.

He had been grateful.

They both had.

Halovians were precious. That was what they were told, again and again, until it became bone-deep truth. They were not merely children. They were destined to become the Church’s bright faces—Harmony’s living proof that faith could take flesh.

It never occurred to Sunday to question any of it.

He simply grew into the role like it was second skin.

Robin did too, though her kindness had always been something she carried naturally, not something cultivated. Where Sunday learned discipline, she learned tenderness. Where he learned structure, she learned mercy. Yet somewhere along the way their lives stopped belonging to them at all.

It might have broken lesser bonds, but it only strengthened theirs.

Sunday learned early that if he had one duty that mattered above all else, it was Robin. The Church could demand his devotion, and he would give it. The world could kneel before him, and he would accept it. But Robin was not an obligation.

She was his twin. His mirror. His reason.

He would have done anything to protect her.

So when the Church finally turned its gaze upon him with disapproval, when the stain of excommunication fell onto his name like an unholy brand, Sunday took it lying down, not because he believed he deserved it.

But because he would not allow his ruin to touch her.

If he fought, it would become a spectacle. If he begged, it would become proof that the Church had been right to strip him of his titles. Any struggle would give them reason to speak Robin’s name in the same breath as his disgrace.

So he stepped away.

He abandoned the life they had shared. He left the cathedral, the sermons, the halls of the estate that had once been their home. He did it cleanly. Like an amputation performed without anesthesia. Robin had wept when he told her. Sunday did not.

This was what his love looked like: swallowing pain so she would not have to.

But then, one week ago, you called him.

Sunday could still hear your voice if he thought hard enough.

The way it had sounded strangled—not from seduction or mockery, nor from the usual insolence that curled around your tongue whenever you spoke to him, but from something stripped raw. Something terrified and urgent enough to make his blood run cold before you even said her name.

Sunday… It’s Robin. She’s been shot.

There were some sentences a person was never meant to hear.

That one had felt like the sky splitting open.

But that had been a week ago.

Now, Sunday sat at his sister’s bedside in the soft hush of evening, the room’s thick curtains pulled halfway to keep the light from glaring against her eyes. A tray sat nearby—half-finished broth, a glass of water she couldn’t properly drink without help. The trusted family physician had come and gone with instructions that the servants followed like religiously since the incident.

Robin had been stabilized. That was the word everyone used. Stabilized, as if it meant the danger had passed. Sunday had not left her side since.

Even after his excommunication, even after he had sworn to keep distance so her reputation could remain unsullied, he stayed. He slept in the manor again. He oversaw matters in the estate when Robin could not. He spoke to staff and guards and medical personnel with the same cold authority he used on demons in back alleys.

As usual, the servants welcomed him like he had never left.

They addressed him with the same respectful cadence as always. Some of them even smiled as if his presence meant the manor had returned to its proper shape.

But not everyone had been pleased.

When word of the attempt on Robin’s life reached High Reverend Gopher Wood, the man paid a due visit as expected. He had checked on Robin personally. Stood at the foot of her bed and looked down at her with something like paternal concern.

Then his gaze had shifted to Sunday.

It had been a quiet moment, but Sunday had felt the blade in it.

It was not simply displeasure. It was disgust sharpened by disappointment. Excommunication had already declared Sunday a stain, and demon hunting had only made him worse in the High Reverend’s eyes—a faction Gopher Wood had always been inexplicably biased against, despite how dutifully they eradicated creatures the Church called abominations.

Gopher Wood had said little out loud. He rarely needed to. Robin—still unable to speak—had reached out with trembling fingers and touched Sunday’s hand once, wordlessly insisting it was fine.

So the High Reverend had allowed it.

But he made sure Sunday understood: his permission was not welcome. It was concession.

Since then, Gopher Wood visited periodically, each time with the same suffocating air of ownership over the space, the same spiritual pressure that seemed to settle into the manor like incense.

And each time, Sunday made sure you were nowhere in sight.

It had become a ritual of its own—one with higher stakes than any extermination job.

You were a demon. A creature the Church would have condemned without hesitation, and worse still, you were a secret sheltered beneath the Oak estate’s roof. It was tricky enough to hide your existence and Robin’s quiet little scheme of mercy.

But hiding you from Gopher Wood was a different matter entirely.

The High Reverend was Halovian too. Which meant he was spiritually attuned in ways others were not. He noticed too much. Felt too much. He could sense discord like rot beneath perfume.

So Sunday erased you.

Not literally, though there were days he wished it were that simple. He cleansed traces of your presence, of the faint residue you left when you existed too fully in a space. He made the servants escort you elsewhere before Gopher Wood arrived, moving you through back corridors and guest rooms like contraband.

It was humiliating, dangerous, and strangely exhausting.

Sunday did not know why he did it.

Robin was in no state to argue your case now. She could not speak, could barely swallow without pain, or raise her voice in her usual unshakable defense. If Sunday wanted you gone, he could have ordered to have you thrown out. Banished from the manor, and sent back into Penacony’s outskirts where demons belonged.

Yet when the High Reverend’s visits ended altogether, you remained.

It was in the evenings, after Sunday helped Robin with her dinner, that you would show up.

You never announced yourself. You simply slipped into the room with that strange restraint you had cultivated here—no theatrical seduction, no smug grin meant to needle him. Instead, you sat beside Robin for a few minutes and talked to her as if nothing had changed.

Mostly about mundane things: what the weather was like, which servants had bickered over deliveries, what the children at the orphanage had done that day. Sometimes you complained. Sometimes you made dry little jokes that Robin could only respond to with her eyes and the faintest curve of her mouth. Each time you visited, you took Robin’s hands in yours.

He did not think about it much at first. That was what he told himself, anyway.

But the manor was quiet at night. Robin’s injury had temporarily taken her voice from her, and silence had a way of making certain truths louder than they deserved to be.

And lately, Sunday had begun to notice patterns.

The way you always sat on the same side of the bed, as if you were subconsciously placing yourself between Robin and the window. The fact that your glamour remained flawlessly intact even when you looked tired, as if you refused to give the household even a sliver of your true shape. How your fingers would tighten around Robin’s for just a moment whenever she winced, like you were trying to will pain out of her through sheer stubbornness.

Every time you left the room, his sister always seemed to feel better.

It was subtle at first, easy to dismiss as coincidence, as the natural rhythm of recovery. Robin would blink slower, the tightness in her brow easing. Her hands would stop trembling so much beneath the blankets. She would sleep longer and deeper, like something inside her had finally been soothed enough to loosen its grip.

But he did not pore much on these details.

Time passed in strange pockets at the manor. Daylight drifted in and out behind curtains. Visitors came and left. The High Reverend’s presence had receded, though not entirely; the estate still felt as if one wrong move could invite the Church’s displeasure back in.

Sunday remained at Robin’s bedside anyway.

He watched her swallow her food with difficulty. Watched her rest. Watched the slight rise and fall of her chest like it was a rhythm he was afraid would stop.

Then, one evening, the impossible happened.

Robin stirred as he adjusted her pillows, her lashes fluttering open with unusual lucidity. Her throat was still wrapped in bandages, her voice still meant to be absent for weeks—at least a month, the physician had insisted. The injury had been severe. The healing would be slow. Her body needed time to relearn its own functions.

Yet her gaze fixed on Sunday’s face with rare steadiness.

When she spoke, the sound was thin and hoarse, as if each syllable scraped its way into existence—

“Bro…ther.”

He froze.

For a moment, his mind refused to accept it. It felt too miraculous and abrupt, too much like the world trying to tempt him with relief. His hand stilled on the blanket. His breath caught.

“Robin?” he said quietly. “Don’t strain yourself.”

Her lips curved, faint and stubborn.

“You… stayed.”

Something warm cut through Sunday’s chest.

“Yes,” he answered, because there was no point lying to her. “Of course I did.”

Robin blinked with heavy eyelids. She lifted her hand with effort, fingers finding his wrist beneath the sleeve of his coat. The touch was weak, but steady.

Then she whispered again, each word taking visible work.

“She… helped.”

Sunday’s mouth pressed into a thin line.

He knew who she meant. There was no one else Robin would speak of this way, not with this particular glint of quiet insistence.

He sighed. “You should rest some more.”

But Robin held his wrist a second longer, as if anchoring the truth to him.

“She… helped,” she repeated.

Sunday stayed motionless as her hand slipped away again. He watched her eyes drift shut, watched sleep claim her with a gentleness that felt undeserved.

Then he sat back in the chair at her bedside, staring at nothing.

Miracles did not happen without cost, and demons never gave without taking. So why, then, did Robin’s voice return too soon? Why did her recovery move with unnatural speed? Sunday did not want to know the answer.

But time had taught him that ignorance was a luxury only others could afford.

That day, he’d waited until nightfall.

It was always the same routine. You would slip in like a shadow that had learned manners. You would sit by Robin’s bed like you belonged there. You would offer aimless commentary about the day as if normalcy could be restored through repetition alone.

Sunday usually watched without interrupting.

But tonight, Robin was already fast asleep, and he stood the moment you entered.

You paused at the doorway, taking in his posture and the quiet steel in the air. Something flickered through your eyes—wariness, then annoyance.

“Until when will you keep up this stupid ‘haunt the bedside like a gargoyle’ routine?” you murmured. “Or are you actually here to talk to me for once?”

He did not indulge the jab.

“Robin managed to speak today.”

Your eyes widened.

“…She did?” you asked, and something unguarded slipped into your voice. Relief, genuine and bright. It did not suit you. It made you look too human for his liking.

Sunday watched your face carefully.

Then he said, “She said you helped.”

The relief in you faltered into stillness, and the silence that followed was not empty. It was weighted with confession. Slowly, you exhaled a shuddering breath.

“Ah,” you chuckled. “So she could tell all along...”

Sunday stepped closer. “How?”

You held his gaze, and for a moment you looked ready to lie. It would’ve been easy. Even expected. Succubi thrived on manipulation the way other creatures thrived on air.

But you didn’t.

Your shoulders sagged slightly—an admission before words.

“I’ve been healing her,” you said simply. “Here and there. A little at a time.”

“That is not your role.”

You scoffed. “Trust me. I’m aware.”

He took another step, forcing the space between you to shrink into something confrontational.

“How long?”

You hesitated.

Sunday’s voice sharpened. “How long?”

You rolled your eyes like you were bored, like you weren’t about to hand him the blade to use against you. “A week,” you muttered. “More or less.”

Sunday’s mind churned, cold calculation laced with disbelief. “And the physician said she would not speak for a month.”

Your silence was answer enough.

His hands curled at his sides and he looked at you properly then—not as a nuisance, not as a demon tolerated for Robin’s sake, but as a creature who had done something impossible and reckless and—

His golden-eyed gaze narrowed.

“You’ve been draining yourself.”

You shrugged with false ease. “That’s what healing others costs.”

“Don’t play stupid,” Sunday snapped. The edge in his voice startled even him. “You don’t have the reserves for that. Not without feeding.”

Something almost sheepish crossed your face, then vanished under bravado.

“…I’ve managed.”

Sunday’s eyes raked over you with sudden, sharper perception. You looked fine at first glance. Your glamour was intact. Your posture was steady. Your expression carried its usual flair.

But there were cracks.

Your skin looked a shade paler than it had any right to be. Your eyes were too bright in a way that suggested sleeplessness rather than vitality. Even your movements were slightly too controlled, like you were rationing energy down to the smallest gesture. The realization hit him with cold clarity.

Sunday’s jaw clenched. “When was the last time you fed?”

Your lips parted, then closed again, unable to utter a response.

His voice dropped, dangerously quiet. “You haven’t. Since you trespassed my dreams.”

“I can’t exactly go hunting in Robin’s backyard like a stray cat.”

“There are other ways.”

You barked out a laugh. “Sure. Let me just flirt with the servants. Drain them quietly. I’m sure that’ll go over well.”

Sunday stared at you, disgust warring with something he refused to name. “Then why are you still doing it?”

Your gaze flickered toward Robin’s sleeping form.

“Because it’s Robin.”

Sunday’s patience thinned. “That’s not an answer.”

“Yes it is,” you argued, and suddenly the softness snapped into something bright and furious. “You know it is. It’s the only answer that matters.”

You stepped forward too, no longer retreating from him.

“You think I don’t know what I’m doing?” you demanded, voice trembling at the edges. “You think I don’t know what happens to a demon when they burn too long without replenishing? I know. I’ve lived my entire life knowing exactly what it takes to survive.”

Sunday didn’t speak. You did not stop.

“I’m a succubus,” you spat, like the word tasted rotten. “A selfish parasite. A walking sin.”

Your breath hitched.

Then you said, quieter, like the truth hurt more when it wasn’t shouted—

“But I went against all of it anyway.”

Sunday’s mouth trembled, unsure of what to say.

“Why?”

“Because your sister saw me,” you told him with little hesitation. “Robin looked at me and didn’t see a monster. To her, I wasn’t some mistake that needed to be corrected. She still wanted to understand me even when it was a fool’s errand. Even when it made her brother hate her for it.”

He flinched at the implication.

“She was the only one who made me feel like I was worth more than what I was born to be,” you continued. “So yes—when she was bleeding out, I helped. And yes—I kept helping. Even when it hurt. Even when it drained me. Because she would’ve done the same for me without thinking twice.”

Your throat bobbed as you swallowed, gaze burning.

“So don’t stand there and talk to me like I’m reckless and stupid,” you snapped. “I made a choice.”

Sunday’s voice came low and sharp. “You’re going to kill yourself.”

You stared at him like he’d insulted you.

“Maybe,” you hissed. “But at least she’ll live.”

The words landed like a slap.

He had exorcised demons before—dozens, if not hundreds. He had faced succubi who smiled as they fed, who moaned prayers to no god as they drowned men in lust and called it nature. He had seen incubi tear lives apart with indulgent cruelty. He had never once hesitated to name them evil.

But you…

You stood in his sister’s room with fire in your eyes, having chosen to starve yourself for a human who had offered you kindness. You looked nothing like the demons he had been taught to hate. It made something in his chest twist unpleasantly, like old doctrines grinding against reality.

Sunday stared at you for a long moment.

“You’ve been burning yourself to ash all this time… to speed up Robin’s healing.”

Your expression flickered—caught between pride and shame.

“…Yes,” you admitted.

He exhaled, long and controlled, as if forcing himself not to say what he wanted to say.

When he stepped closer, you braced for it, as if expecting him to pull out his tome and exorcise you right there, where his sister lay asleep a few feet away.

But Sunday did not. He simply looked at you before saying:

“You’re a fool.”

You glared at him. “Thank you.”

Then, after a beat, he followed up something you clearly hadn’t expected.

“I can give you energy.”

He might as well have told you he no longer believed in Xipe.

“What?” you demanded. “What are you talking about?”

Sunday’s expression hardened. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“You—” You blinked, then laughed in disbelief. “You’re offering yourself like a snack now? That’s rich.”

Sunday did not laugh. His gaze stayed fixed on you with that same merciless calm he used when cornering a demon. Only now it was aimed at you in a different way—like he was trying to pin you down so you wouldn’t collapse.

“I’m offering you enough to keep you functional,” he said flatly. “So you can continue healing her without dying in the process.”

Your eyes narrowed. “Why?”

He didn’t answer immediately.

Because the truth was humiliating, and had nothing to do with demons and everything to do with Robin. And because another smaller truth existed beneath even that—a truth he would rather take with him to the grave.

Sunday had seen what you looked like when you cared about someone.

You were dangerous, yes. But right now you were also… trying. And he didn’t know what to do with that. So he gave you the only answer he could stand behind.

“Because you’re not allowed to die in her room,” he remarked coldly. “Not after everything.”

Your mouth parted, then closed.

A beat passed.

Then you muttered, “You’re insane.”

“Perhaps,” Sunday replied. “But I’m not wrong.”

You stared at him like you were seeing him for the first time.

Then your gaze flicked toward Robin.

When you spoke again, your voice was strained, honest in a way you rarely allowed.

“…If you do this, you can’t regret it later,” you mumbled. “You can’t hold it over her head. Or over mine.”

“I don’t do anything frivolously. Least of all this.”

You swallowed. The room felt smaller now. Too intimate and full of things neither of you knew how to name. Still, Sunday held your gaze, unwavering.

“If you’re going to keep doing this,” he began, “then you’ll do it properly. With enough strength to survive the cost.”

Your hesitation proved strong—pride still twitching, stubbornness still refusing to bow. But the tremor in your hands betrayed you. Your exhaustion was real, and Robin needed you functional more than you needed your dignity intact.

So, finally, you nodded your head.

“…Fine,” you murmured.

Sunday’s gaze sharpened. “Fine?”

You rolled your eyes, but your voice cracked anyway. “Yes. Fine. Whatever. I accept your ridiculous holy donation.”

He didn’t dignify it with a response. He just stepped closer, as if bracing himself for a blasphemy he’d chosen willingly. And for the first time since his excommunication, he realized something with grim clarity:

He would do anything to protect Robin.

Even if it meant feeding a demon with his own light.

Ever since he had carved out this new life from the ashes of his old one, Sunday had never once let anyone cross the threshold of his apartment.

It was not paranoia so much as preservation. His solitude was one of the only things he could still claim as fully his. The Church no longer watched him. He could remove his gloves, unfasten his coat, and become no one in particular. It had been healing, in its own austere way.

He had planned to keep it that way indefinitely.

But then you arrived in Penacony and uprooted everything he had been taught to call true.

Now, as he walked you through the business district, far enough from Golden Hour’s indulgent chaos, and the Church of Xipe’s oppressive radiance, Sunday found himself escorting a demon into the only place he still considered neutral ground.

He refused to look at you as he unlocked the door.

You stood behind him with your posture oddly stiff—probably because you could feel the wards humming faintly through the walls. Sunday stepped in first as he murmured a quick chant to dispel the protective spells. Then beckoned you inside when he noticed your shoulders relaxing.

The door clicked shut.

For a moment, neither of you moved from the entryway.

His apartment was a studio—modest but immaculate. A small kitchenette. A narrow bed he always made every morning he woke up in it. A writing desk near the window with papers stacked into neat piles. There were no decorations that served no purpose.

There was only ever order, just as he liked it.

But now you were standing in the middle of it like a stain he had invited.

Your gaze skimmed the room with restrained interest before landing on him.

“Well,” you remarked. “This is… bleak.”

Sunday’s jaw flexed. “Sit down.”

You made a face at him before moving toward the couch with a wary grace, like a cat deciding whether a new surface was safe. You didn’t sit immediately. You hovered around, eyes tracking the edges of the room again.

Though he had deactivated them for your sake, the warding sigils were still very much present—woven into the walls, into the window frames, into the very air. Sunday had not needed to strengthen them in months. No one came here. No one tried.

Until now.

You exhaled softly, then lowered yourself onto the couch. Sunday remained standing.

He felt suddenly too aware of how his space had shrunk—not in size, but in privacy. His home had never contained another person’s scent or presence. What’s worse was the fact that you were not merely another person.

You were a succubus.

A succubus that looked small on his couch. Not in stature, but in the way you held your shoulders tight, as if exhaustion had become an uncomfortable garment you could not take off. Even with your true form slowly unspooling into reality, you were clearly not at ease.

He forced himself to speak before his thoughts could slip further.

“This is for Robin’s sake,” he reminded. “Nothing else.”

You scoffed. “Trust me. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t be here either.”

Sunday stared at you for a long beat before moving toward the desk. He removed his gloves one at a time before setting them down. Another sacrilege. Another piece of himself exposed.

He turned back to you. “Explain how you do it.”

You blinked. “Explain what?”

“How you replenish your energy,” Sunday shot back, irritation sharpening his tone.

Your eyes narrowed.

But after a short while, you mumbled, “I absorb sexual energy.”

The words sat in his apartment like a profanity.

You went on anyway, your expression tight with annoyance he was not sure was aimed at him or yourself. “It doesn’t matter if I’m giving or receiving,” you said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s… tender or ugly. It doesn’t even have to be physical, technically. But it has to be that kind of energy.”

Sunday’s throat worked. “…So you replenish yourself through sexual acts.”

“Wasn’t that the first thing they taught you about sex demons at Church?” you scoffed, though your gaze slid away as if the words tasted bitter. “That’s clearly what I did in your dream, remember?”

A faint grimace crossed his face. He did not appreciate being reminded of the cathedral, the altar, and your mouth.

“…Then we should simply do it in a dream again,” he said after a beat.

You stared at him incredulously.

“Now you think of that?” you snapped. “Right, because dreamwalking is free, and not the most exhausting thing I can do when I’m already bleeding myself dry for your sister.”

Sunday narrowed his eyes.

“And besides,” you added, tone edged with irritation, “you already dragged me out of my comfortable little bird cage at the estate. If we’re here, if you’re committed to this—then don’t make me start over from nothing.”

“I do not appreciate how difficult you’re being about this arrangement.” The Halovian closed his eyes and sighed. “I am simply trying to understand the functions of a succubus so you don’t die.”

“Congratulations,” you muttered. “That’s the least romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“I’m not trying to be romantic.”

“Good.” Your smile turned sharp. Defensive. “Because you’re terrible at it.”

He ignored the challenge and took a slow breath, forcing his mind to stay in put.

“You said it doesn’t have to be physical,” he said. “Then why—”

“Because it’s not enough,” you cut in immediately, eyes flashing. “Not when I’ve been spending everything I have patching her back together.”

Sunday’s gaze narrowed. “So you want it to be physical.”

Your lips parted.

A very particular silence fell between you then.

Because you didn’t look triumphant. You didn’t look like you were about to purr and coil your tail around his wrist and make a game of it. You looked irritated, embarrassed, almost… shy. As if having to admit what your body needed felt worse than the hunger itself.

“Don’t say it like that,” you muttered. “Like I’m… I’m asking for it.”

Sunday stared at you. You glared back.

When neither of you spoke for a beat too long, Sunday exhaled through his nose, sharp with restraint. “Don’t waste any more time. Just tell me what you need so we can get started.”

You shifted on the couch, shoulders tight.

“Just…,” you started, then stopped, as if the words refused to cooperate. “It’s just… hard, okay?”

Hard.

The word hit him strangely in its honesty. A trait he never would have associated with demons. But you did have a knack for subverting his expectations.

“I don’t… do this,” you admitted through clenched teeth. “Not like this.”

His honeyed gaze stayed fixed on your face. “Not like what?”

“I’ve never fed on the same person twice. Ever.” You looked away, the words coming out clipped as they spilled out. “I hate feeding. I hate what it turns me into. If I could help it, I’d never put my hands on a human like that again.”

Your fingers curled at your side.

“But I’m starving, Sunday,” you admitted without flourish. “And if we want Robin to heal quickly, then I need enough strength to keep doing it.”

For a brief moment, Sunday’s mind went dangerously blank.

He understood enough to know what line he was approaching, and how easily it could become a violation of something he still believed in. He also understood now that you too were bending rules you’ve previously set for yourself—another odd display of restraint.

“Then we’ll just have to manage.”

Your head snapped toward him. “What?”

“We’ll manage,” Sunday repeated, “with you guiding it. You’re the expert in this. I’m not.”

The admission tasted foul in his mouth. Not because it was untrue, but because it stripped him of authority in his own domain. On the other hand, you stared at him like you couldn’t decide whether to scoff or blush.

“…Gods, you’re so going to regret this.”

“I don’t regret what I choose to do willingly,” Sunday argued. “Neither should you.”

Not rising up to the bait, you rose slowly from the couch, as if your body had suddenly remembered it was capable of action. You moved toward him with careful steps, stopping just short of the space where intimacy began. Up close, Sunday could see how exhausted you were.

You lifted your weary gaze to his. “Are you sure?”

The hesitation in your voice irked him more than it should have.

“…You don’t get to do this.”

“Do what exactly?”

“Pretend you care about consent,” he scoffed. “Not after that dream.”

You grimaced. “Might I remind you that this was your idea?”

“I am well aware.”

“And I’m asking again: are you sure?”

Sunday didn’t answer right away. His gaze dropped as he willed himself to think this through properly now that you were giving him some grace. For a moment he really felt like walking you right back out the door and pretend none of this had happened.

But… the answer came to him easily anyway.

“Yes.”

You exhaled, as if that single word steadied something in you.

“Okay,” you affirmed. “Follow my lead. And don’t… don’t make it weird.”

You reached for him—not his neck, not his wings, not anywhere provocative. You took his hand first, fingers curling around his like an anchor rather than an invitation.

Sunday let himself be led, every step feeling like blasphemy incarnate and yet, he went.

The bed sat against the far wall like a boundary he’d never intended to share with anyone else. He lowered himself onto its edge. You climbed onto the mattress after him, not bold enough to perform, not fragile enough to flee—just caught in the middle, like this was a job you hated but refused to fail.

Up close, he felt it: your warmth, your breath, and the faint tremor in your hands when you reached for him. His wings twitched at the nape of his neck in response, feathers lifting involuntarily at the change in air. The sensation crawled sharp over his skin, too sensitive, too revealing.

If you had noticed, you said nothing of the fact.

“Have you…” you asked, voice rougher than you meant it to be, “…ever done something like this before? In real life.”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” he grumbled. “Did you ever ask your past targets if they’re virgins before feeding on them?”

“I’m trying to be considerate here, asshole.”

The word hit like an insult. Sunday saw it then: how easily you read the hesitation he hadn’t meant to show. His jaw tightened in reflexive disgust. You didn’t get to pity him, and you certainly didn’t get to pretend you meant it; succubi didn’t feel bad, they played at it.

Sunday’s mouth tightened, but he couldn’t answer—not without admitting too much. Instead he lifted his hands as if to place them somewhere, then stopped halfway, arrested by his own hesitation.

You exhaled, clearly annoyed by the ridiculousness of it all before softening with reluctant patience. Your hands came over his—guiding his palms against the curve of your clothed breasts in a quiet request for him to stop thinking and start moving.

Sunday looked at the ceiling, as if praying for deliverance.

“Don’t make it weird,” you repeated, as if you weren’t the one who initiated the contact.

His voice came out hoarse with restraint. “I’m not.”

You rolled your eyes before squeezing with enough pressure that he could feel the plush give of your tits beneath his fingers. Sunday’s wings trembled at the nape of his neck, betraying him even as his expression stayed carved from stone.

As you leaned in, he realized with awful clarity that this was not like the dream at all.

In his dreams, Sunday was a god before an altar.

But in waking life, he was simply a man in his own apartment, hands trembling just slightly as he tried to offer something sacred without turning it into sin.

At that moment, you were sure you were damned for all eternity.

You had expected many things from Sunday, but not the way his hands hovered an inch above your body like he was afraid the mere act of touching you would brand him forever. Not the faint, almost imperceptible tremor in his fingers when you had guided them to your breasts and made him squeeze. Or even the way his breath caught when you pressed down so he could feel the weight of you in his palms.

You had expected cold disdain, maybe even clinical detachment. Instead you got a man who looked like he was translating every sensation into a language he’d never been allowed to learn.

“Like that,” you murmured, trying not to let the heat of his fingers on your chest get to your head. “That’s how you…start off, so to speak.”

Sunday’s ears were burning. You could see the flush climbing the side of his neck, disappearing beneath the high collar of his shirt. His wings—those delicate, stupidly beautiful little feathers at the nape—kept fluttering in tiny, mortified spasms every time you spoke.

You almost felt bad for him.

Almost.

“How long is this supposed to take?” he grumbled. “You’re dragging this too much. It would benefit us both if we pick up the pace. I can’t possibly be fondling your… breasts all evening.”

You stared at him, incredulous.

The nerve of this man.

“Dragging it?” you repeated. “You’re the one who brought me here because you couldn’t stand the thought of me ‘dying in Robin’s room.’ And now you’re complaining about the pace?”

His mouth opened—probably to deliver another clipped, superior retort—but you didn’t give him the chance. You snatched his right hand off your breast, ignoring the way his fingers twitched in protest, and guided it firmly downward. Without hesitation, you pressed his palm between your thighs, cupping it directly over the heat of your clothed cunt. 

Sunday went rigid.

“This,” you said, voice sharp enough to cut, “is the end goal if you want a thorough replenishing. We can’t get there properly if you don’t get me wet enough first. My tits are just one of many ways to get the job done—so if you’d stop complaining for a moment and let me show you more, we can actually get a move on.”

Sunday’s golden eyes widened fractionally as understanding finally crashed over him like cold water. His fingers flexed once against you before he yanked his hand back as though burned. He cleared his throat. Then, with all the dignity of a man trying to salvage the last shred of his composure, he let out a strangled huff.

“Do whatever you have to,” he muttered, looking anywhere but at you. “Just… get on with it.”

You nearly snorted in his face but the heat starting to throb between your legs and the thick, golden promise of his energy already leaking into your palm made it impossible to be smug.

You leaned in, slow enough that Sunday could have stopped you if he really wanted to. 

But he didn’t.

Your lips brushed the column of his throat, just beneath the sharp line of his jaw. A barely-there kiss at first, then the flat of your tongue, tasting salt and the faint trace of incense that always clung to him. The reaction was instantaneous: a full-body jerk, like you’d shocked him with a live wire. His hands flew to your waist on pure reflex, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise—caught between shoving you off and dragging you closer.

You didn’t stop. You kissed down the side of his neck, letting your teeth graze just enough to make him shudder. Each press of your mouth drew more of that gorgeous, golden energy into you—warm honey, thick and sweet and so rich it made your head spin. It slid down your throat like liquid sunlight, pooling low in your belly, easing the ache that had lived under your ribs for weeks.

When you finally pulled back, your voice came out breathy, almost drunk.

“Did you get that?” you murmured, lips still tingling. “Now you do it to me.”

Sunday stared at you like you’d asked him to recite heresy in the middle of mass.

For a long, agonizing second you thought he might actually bolt. Then he closed his eyes, exhaled through his nose like a man stepping off a cliff, and surged forward.

His mouth found the curve where your neck met your shoulder with startling accuracy. The first kiss was tentative. The second was firmer. By the third, he was sucking at your skin with the same single-minded focus he applied to everything else, and you bit down hard on the inside of your cheek, swallowing the soft, needy sound that tried to claw its way out of your throat.

His hands moved without permission now—one sliding up to palm your breast again, thumb brushing over your nipple through fabric, the other gripping your waist like he was anchoring himself to the earth. His hips rolled once, slow and involuntary, grinding against the mattress as if his body had finally decided to betray him completely.

You were drowning in it.

Warm honey poured over fresh-baked brioche—golden, buttery, so sweet it felt like sin and salvation all at once. It flooded every empty place inside you, thick and addictive, making your thighs clench and your tail curl tight around his calf without thinking.

You hadn’t even taken your clothes off yet.

And already you were soaked, trembling, utterly ruined by the mouth of a man who had probably never kissed anyone before tonight. Sunday pulled back just enough to breathe, lips swollen, eyes glassy. His voice came out rough—almost broken.

“…Will that suffice?”

To his credit, that earned him a shaky laugh.

“No,” you whispered, fingers already curling under the hem of your top. You tugged it over your head in one smooth motion, letting the fabric fall forgotten to the floor.

“You should give me some more.”

The moment your bra came into view, Sunday’s flush deepened to something almost violent. The black lace pushed your breasts together, creating a soft, inviting valley of cleavage that seemed to mock his composure.

You couldn’t resist the jab.

“If you want more,” you murmured, voice husky despite your best efforts to keep it mocking, “you’ll have to take it off yourself.”

You had expected him to fumble. You half-hoped for it, even: some small, human imperfection you could hold over his head later, a quiet reminder that even Sunday, with all his poise and precision, can be undone by something as mundane as a bra clasp.

What you got instead was this blasted demon hunter leaning forward with the same calm he donned the night you met him in Golden Hour. His hands moved behind your back without hesitation, and the clasp gave way on the first try. The bra loosened, straps slipping down your shoulders, and before you could process the betrayal of his competence, he slid off the garment completely. 

Your breasts spilled free into the cool air of the apartment. Nipples tightened instantly under his molten-gold stare—hard, aching peaks that felt far too exposed.

Heat flooded your face. You opened your mouth to say something to reclaim control—

But Sunday was already moving.

One arm wrapped firmly around your waist, pulling you flush against him. 

He latched onto one breast with devastating focus—lips closing around the nipple, tongue swirling once, twice, before he sucked. Hard. The wet heat of his mouth sent a bolt of pleasure straight to your core. Your back arched involuntarily, a choked gasp escaping before you could swallow it down.

You hated him for it.

He switched to the other breast without warning, giving it the same meticulous attention. His teeth grazed just enough to sting, then soothed with slow kitten licks. His free hand cupped the neglected one, thumb rolling over the nipple in maddening circles. 

Every pull of his mouth dragged more of that golden energy into you, turning your limbs heavy and your thoughts molten. Pride be damned, your body didn’t care. Your thighs clenched together uselessly, slick heat soaking through your underwear. A tremor ran through you as shame and arousal twisted together until they were indistinguishable.

Sunday pulled back just far enough to speak, breath hot against your wet skin.

“From how you’re writhing, I take it we can move on?”

Mortification burned through you when his hand drifted downward again, fingers finding the soaked crotch of your shorts. You throbbed beneath the thin fabric and there was no way he didn’t feel it.

His eyes lifted to meet yours, hypnotic and unblinking.

“This is the end goal, is it not?” he murmured, the words edged with something that could almost pass for satisfaction. “To prepare you sufficiently.”

You wanted to die.

Before you could think better of it, you shifted your gaze, lashes fluttering down as though staring at something else might make this less real.

“...Take it off then.”

Sunday’s brows lifted fractionally. The barest hint of a smile ghosted the corner of his mouth—gone before you could be sure it was ever there.

“I believe that you are laboring under a slight misapprehension,” he said slowly, each word measured and maddeningly eloquent, “You do not give the orders here.”

And yet his fingers were already moving.

Sunday undid the button holding your shorts together before the rasp of your zipper followed. His fingers hooked beneath the waistband, the fabric peeling away easily. Sliding down your thighs, over your knees, until he drew them off completely and let them fall to the floor. Cool air kissed your soaked underwear as the black lace clung to your folds and outlined every swollen inch.

His gaze dropped, lingering on the ruined garment in a way that made your skin crawl and your cunt clench at the same time. Then, without warning, he traced the seam with two fingers, following the wet line from your entrance to your clit. 

Your hips bucked hard. A sharp, involuntary jolt that made his mouth twitch again. You glared at him through the haze of humiliation and want, but he only inclined his head with a serene look.

To your surprise, however, Sunday suddenly shifted, propping himself up with his palms flat against the mattress. He was close enough that you could still feel the heat of his body, but far enough that he could see everything. 

You realized then that the position you were in was obscene. Nearly naked on his pristine sheets, breasts still flushed and swollen from his earlier attention, legs parted just enough that the soaked lace between them was on full display. Your black wings folded tight against your back in a reflexive, almost childlike attempt at modesty.

“I believe it would be best for you to give me an example,” Sunday murmured. “I’ll learn better that way.”

Your eyes narrowed. This guy couldn’t possibly—

“Show me,” he continued. “Show me how to pleasure you.”

For one long, suspended second, you couldn’t breathe.

You wanted to scream at him, to crawl under the sheets, to do anything but give him this final piece of vulnerability. The thought of touching yourself while those golden eyes cataloged everything made your stomach twist with fresh mortification. You’d already let him see too much. This was crossing a line you hadn’t even known existed until now.

Even so, your body was already moving.

Trembling fingers sliding down your own stomach, slipping beneath the edge of your underwear. The first brush against your folds made you shudder. Gods, you were drenched. Slick coated your fingers immediately. Your clit throbbed under the lightest graze, every nerve lit up and screaming for more even as your pride tried to strangle the reaction back down.

You hated how much he’d done this to you with so little. Hated that your body was this honest when your mouth still wanted to spit venom.

With a sharp, frustrated tug, you yanked the soaked lace aside, baring yourself completely. Your puffy cunt glistened obscenely in the low light—lips flushed dark, entrance fluttering around nothing. 

Sunday didn’t speak a word.

Those golden eyes stayed locked on you with dizzying intensity as your middle finger dipped between your folds and circled your entrance. He drank it in like the sight of you touching yourself was something sacred and profane all at once. His wings were perfectly still at the nape of his neck, but you could see how his fingers flexed like he was physically restraining himself from reaching out.

Shakily, you slid one finger inside—slow at first, then deeper, curling just enough to make your hips jerk. A second joined it soon after, stretching you open with a wet, filthy sound that echoed in the quiet room. You pumped them steadily, thumb finding your clit in tight, relentless circles as your hips rolled up to meet every thrust. 

Your tail whipped again before wrapping tight around your own thigh like it needed something to hold onto. You bit your lip until it hurt, swallowing every moan that tried to escape, but the soft, broken whimpers still leaked out anyway.

Sunday’s gaze never wavered. His breathing had grown shallower, the front of his trousers visibly strained, but he didn’t move. Didn’t touch. Didn’t interrupt.

He simply observed.

Somehow that made the slow burn in your core flare brighter, made every stroke of your fingers feel like it was for him, like you were performing for the one person who should never have been allowed to see you like this.

You were trembling on the edge already, thighs shaking, cunt fluttering around your fingers—and still you refused to come until you were sure he’d seen everything. Because if he wanted an example, you’d give him one he’d never forget.

At least, that was the plan.

Sunday watched you for another long, suspended moment. Long enough that the wet sounds of your fingers moving inside yourself became the only rhythm in the room, obscene and unrelenting.

He closed the distance in one fluid motion, settling between your spread thighs like he belonged there. His hand caught your wrist mid-thrust—gentle but firm as he stopped you cold.

“Enough,” he murmured. “You’ve demonstrated sufficiently.”

Your breath hitched, half in outrage, half in anticipation. For the millionth time tonight, you wanted to snap at him but the words died when his fingers replaced yours.

He started slow and experimental. One finger first, sliding in with careful, deliberate pressure, as though testing the give of your body the way he might test the tension of a string on a lyre. The stretch was modest, but the angle was perfect. He curled it immediately, brushing that spot inside you that made your vision white out for a second.

You glared up at him through the haze. “How the hell are you this calm?” you hissed, voice cracking despite your best effort. “You’re supposed to be a virgin, not some… some self-taught expert.”

His mouth curved—just the barest suggestion of a smile. “I observe. I learn.” His finger dragged out, then pushed back in deeper. “And I do enjoy being thorough in everything I do.”

Bastard. Smug, sanctimonious, control-obsessed bastard.

You hated how right you’d been about that last part. The way he held you pinned with his gaze alone, the way his movements were measured and purposeful, like every stroke was calculated to unravel you piece by piece. It was infuriating. It was perfect.

He added a second finger without warning.

Your eyes slammed shut on instinct, a full-body shudder ripping through you as he stretched you further, scissoring gently, then curling both digits against that devastating spot again.

“Look at me.”

Sunday’s command was quiet, but it carried the same weight as his exorcisms. You forced your eyes open, lashes wet, and met that molten-gold stare.

The surge hit you like a tide.

His energy flooded in through the connection—drowning you like an insect encased in amber. It was so achingly sweet it made your tongue ache, your veins hum, your whole body feel caught and held in something timeless and devouring.

Sunday’s fingers pumped steadily now, each slow thrust and curl tracing the sensitive walls of your cunt with quiet, unerring focus. His thumb paused for a heartbeat above your clit, hovering uncertainly, then pressed down with flawless, devastating accuracy the instant you arched your hips to guide him, circling your clit with an unrelenting rhythm that tore a gasp from your throat.

“There,” you choked out, the word raw and helpless before you could cage it. “Right, right there—”

He didn’t gloat. He simply adjusted, tracing tight, merciless loops over your swollen nub while his fingers sank deeper, faster, curling against that spot inside you with the single-minded intensity. Every drag built the pressure until your whole body felt strung taut and trembling on the edge of breaking.

Your hips rolled up greedily to chase every fresh wave of that golden, amber-trapped heat flooding through you. Your thighs quaked. Your breath came in short, ragged bursts. Desperate whimpers slipped past your lips like prayers you never meant to offer, but they kept coming anyway.

Your tail thrashed wildly then unspooled from your own thigh in a sudden, desperate motion. It curled across Sunday’s waist, the tip pressing against the small of his back as though trying to drag him closer while the world narrowed to the golden flood pouring through your veins.

“Don’t—don’t stop,” you managed, voice wrecked and reverent all at once. “Don’t you dare stop, you arrogant—”

“I have no intention of stopping,” he murmured. “Not until you come apart for me.”

The words were your undoing.

Your back bowed off the mattress, wings flaring wide in a final, trembling span as the orgasm crashed through you like divine judgment. Your cunt clenched hard around his fingers, fluttering wildly, slick gushing over his knuckles in a fresh, obscene wave. You cried out before burying your face against his neck, clinging to him like he was the only thing anchoring you to the earth while ecstasy tore you open and remade you in the same breath.

For a suspended second, you felt yourself slip—mind blank, body weightless, as though you’d been lifted out of time and suspended in the golden amber of his gaze forever.

Then reality returned in fragments.

Sunday’s fingers slowed but never stopped, easing you through the aftershocks with gentle, lingering curls. The hand not buried inside you traced idle, soothing circles just below the base of your wings as though he were anointing the place where your divinity and damnation touched.

When the tremors finally ebbed, you collapsed against him, utterly spent.

You lifted your head just enough to meet his eyes.

The two of you stared at each other in the aftermath. Sweat clung to your skin, to his, the air between you thick with the scent of sex. Sunday’s golden eyes were blown wide, but his expression remained composed—almost eerily so.

“Surely,” he murmured at last, voice slightly hoarse, “that should be enough.”

You felt the words like a challenge.

Your body still hummed with aftershocks, cunt still fluttering faintly around the memory of his fingers, and yet the stubborn, prideful thing inside you refused to let him walk away thinking he’d won. That you owed him anything less than everything he’d promised.

You lifted your chin, forcing your voice to steady even as your thighs trembled.

“We talked about going all the way,” you reminded him, words edged with deliberate nonchalance. “A thorough, foolproof energy-harvesting session. You made a commitment, Sunday. Or are you planning to back out now?”

“You are being remarkably greedy,” he observed with a huff. “One might even say covetous. I have already given you more than most would consider prudent.”

You didn’t argue with him.

Instead, you hooked your fingers over your soiled underwear and tugged them off slowly. Sunday observed with mild apprehension, especially when you turned over slowly on the mattress. You sank forward until your cheek rested against your folded arms with your hips lifted high.

The position presented you shamelessly—ass raised, slick cunt still flushed and glistening from the orgasm he’d just wrung out of you, wings half-spread like an offering laid at an altar.

“Didn’t you say you enjoy being thorough?” you asked, tail flicking lazily behind you. “Prove it.”

Sunday exhaled—a long, shuddering sound that finally betrayed the iron grip he’d kept on himself all night. You heard the rustle of fabric shortly after. The quiet metallic rasp of a zipper. The mattress dipped behind you as he settled into place.

You couldn’t bring yourself to turn your head and see him: hard, flushed, and finally stripped of that last layer of composure. The anticipation alone made your wings tremble.

Then you felt him.

The blunt head of his cock slid along your seam—hot and slick with your own release. He dragged himself through the mess he’d made between your thighs, coating himself in you again and again. Each pass nudged at your entrance without pushing inside, teasing the fluttering rim, then sliding up to bump against your oversensitive clit.

You forced yourself to stay still, pride locking your hips in place even as every nerve screamed to push back and just end the torment. You wouldn’t be the one to break first.

(In truth, you wanted him to lose that last thread of restraint, to thrust forward and fill you until the teasing stopped being a game and became something neither of you could walk away from.)

Sunday kept moving in long, lazy glides that painted your folds with fresh heat, the head catching briefly at your entrance each time before retreating to tease your clit again. The friction was maddening. Perfect. Every upward stroke sent sparks racing through you, every downward drag made your cunt clench around nothing, aching to be filled.

“Are you messing with me?” you growled, voice cracking with frustration.

A soft, airy laugh escaped him.

His hands found your ass then, fingers sinking into the soft flesh, kneading once before he squeezed your thighs tightly together, trapping his cock in the warm, slick channel between them. The pressure forced your folds to close around him like a second skin, every upward thrust now gliding through the seam of your pussy at the same time he fucked the tight space of your thighs.

The truth of his intentions settled over you like slow-burning heat.

Sunday leaned over you, chest brushing your back, voice velvet-smooth against your ear.

“Perhaps,” he murmured. “You have not quite earned that inside you just yet.”

Your mind fractured—rage, humiliation, desire, all crashing together in a dizzying spiral.

He was taunting you. The bastard was actually taunting you, holding back the one thing you’d wanted, making you feel every inch of his restraint while he took his pleasure from your body anyway. It was too much and not enough all at once.

You could only lie there and take it. But even so, you clung to your own stubbornness like a lifeline. Even when your body rocked with every roll of his hips. Even as his hands dug harder into your ass, holding you exactly where he wanted you. You would not give him the gratification of hearing you beg for it.

During the onslaught, you realized dimly that Sunday might never have come before—not like this, not ever. The thought sent a dark, vicious satisfaction curling through you even as your own pleasure climbed higher, teetering on the edge of another crest you hadn’t asked for.

But then you felt him shudder.

A quiet, broken moan slipped out, and his hips jerked before he spilled.

Hot pulses of come painted your inner thighs in thick white, thick ropes streaking across your skin, some landing in messy splatters on the pristine sheets beneath you. He kept moving through it—shallow, erratic thrusts that dragged his release over your folds, marking you, claiming you in the most filthy way possible.

With that final, shuddering release, the last of his energy flooded in, like molten gold poured straight into your marrow. It wasn’t just satiation, it was abundance overflowing. A reservoir so rich that the hunger that had gnawed at you for months finally went quiet.

When the last tremor finally ebbed from his body, Sunday collapsed beside you.

His face was flushed a deep, feverish crimson. Strands of silver hair clung damply to his forehead, giving him the look of someone who had just stepped out of a storm he never expected to survive. The halo above his head flickered erratically, soft pulses of light dimming and flaring in time with the remnants of pleasure still rolling through his veins. 

For the first time since you’d met him, Sunday looked utterly undone. Not the hunter, not the reverend, not the brother who carried the weight of Harmony on his shoulders. Just a man breathing like he’d finally tasted something forbidden and found it sweeter than salvation.

Despite everything—the humiliation and the stubborn refusal to admit how you’d been thoroughly ruined by him—you felt a wicked smile tug at the corner of your mouth.

You’d managed to wipe the composure off his face.

Somehow, it felt like victory all the same.

✦ afterword. YAY!! YOU MADE IT TO THE END <3 okay i said there would be more notes at the end but i'm not sure if i have a lot to add onto this HAHA sunday and succubus reader's story is a straightforward one. a story that i crafted for three weeks with niku as my crutch bc without her, i never would have been able to write ANYTHING for sunday at all! he is one of the more challenging characters to write for me, but i'm glad i was given the chance to fuck off out of my comfort zone to pen this monster LOL! that said, one thing i do like doing in my alternate universe stories is making callbacks to canon even in the most subtle sense. so while this isbn't a complete 1:1 with the penacony stories, events like robin getting her throat injury was one of the things i wanted to explore in a fic! there are a couple more themes i wish to explore with these two when i get around to writing part two (which you will have to forgive me for the delay bc . my semester is keeping me very busy WAHH) BUT OK yapfest over. thank you for giving my writing a chance <3 do let me know your thoughts if you are able ! :3c

PART ONE ┊ PART TWO

I. The Study of Desire

For Anaxa, desire is data. At least, that’s what he tells himself at first.

The way his pulse jumps when you lean closer. The heat that lingers long after you’ve left the room. The distraction that seeps into his precision—each symptom meticulously catalogued, rationalized, denied.

Until denial becomes impossible.

He’s not used to wanting. Not like this. It unnerves him. How thoughts of you invade his research, how his mind conjures not just your voice but the warmth of your laugh, the way you lean into conversation, the exact angle of your smile when you’re proving a point. How his body reacts to memory alone.

He tries to repress it. He fails spectacularly.

The first time he gives in—alone, late, your name caught somewhere between a whisper and a confession—his hand moves with precision at first. Then faster. Then desperate. He tells himself it’s for study. A controlled experiment. A test of reaction.

It never is. And he does it again the next night. And the night after that.

⋆ ✦ ⋆

II. The Breaking Point

Sex doesn’t happen immediately. He needs connection first. Nights spent holding you, learning the feel of you against him, building trust through proximity. That foundation matters more than rushing forward.

But when it finally happens, it’s not planned.

Something snaps—a moment too close, a look held too long, breath catching between laughter and longing—and suddenly logic is useless.

Anaxa kisses like a man who’s been thinking about it for months. Because he has. It’s careful at first—analytical, exploratory, his mind still trying to catalog every response—but quickly turns hungry. Desperate. His hands shake when they find bare skin.

He memorizes the sound you make when his hands find your skin, the way you gasp when he presses harder. He makes a sound—half curse, half prayer—when you pull him closer. All that careful control fraying with every breath.

And once he realizes how good you feel beneath him, all that restraint burns away.

His glove is in the way. He takes it off impatiently, tossing it aside. A rare moment of carelessness that tells you exactly how far gone he is.

⋆ ✦ ⋆

III. How He Learns You

Anaxa learns your body like it’s an ancient text. Slow, thorough, reverent. His fingers map every reaction, every place that makes you gasp or arch into his touch. He’s methodical about pleasure, taking notes in the way your breath catches, the sounds you make when he does that again.

“Here?” he murmurs, voice rough. “Or here?” He watches you like you’re the most fascinating equation he’s ever tried to solve.

At first, he’s exact. Every touch intentional, every movement calculated. But once you push him past reason, once you say his name in that tone or pull him deeper or meet his eye and challenge him—he forgets to measure. The precision shatters. He just feels.

His breathing goes ragged. His rhythm breaks. His carefully constructed composure crumbles, and what’s left is raw want.

You sigh, he follows. You moan, he answers. Learning the language of your pleasure faster than any theorem. He’s a quick study, but pleasure turns him devout. He’ll spend hours between your thighs just to hear the sounds you make, to feel you come apart under his tongue, to prove he can make you forget your own name while he’s barely holding onto his.

There’s a moment—you can see it happen—where all that careful restraint just snaps. His jaw clenches. His eye darkens. His grip tightens. And then he’s moving with single-minded intensity, all that brilliant focus narrowed to one goal: making you fall apart.

⋆ ✦ ⋆

IV. How He Loves You

Anaxa won’t say it aloud at first, but once he’s had you, he can’t think straight when you’re gone. He’ll catch himself mid-lecture, fingers tightening around chalk, remembering the taste of your skin. His students notice him staring at nothing, a slight flush on his cheeks. He blames it on the stuffy room.

It’s not the room.

His voice drops an octave when he’s aroused, becomes rougher, loses that careful articulation. Words start to slur together. Sentences fragment. Eventually, he stops talking altogether. Just breathes your name like a mantra.

Anaxa doesn’t mean to leave marks. But when he’s lost in it, when his mouth is on your neck and you’re saying his name like that, he forgets to be careful. You’ll find evidence later. Faint bruises, the imprint of teeth. He’ll trace them apologetically the next day, but his eye will darken with something that’s not quite sorry.

⋆ ✦ ⋆

V. Preferences and Weaknesses

Talk:

Anaxa’s voice is low, articulate, sin threaded through syllables. He’ll tell you exactly what he intends to do. Every single detail and filthy promise woven together until you can’t tell where analysis ends and desire begins.

“I’m going to make you come,” Anaxa says, matter-of-fact, “at least three times tonight. Maybe four, if you can handle it.” His fingers trace idle patterns on your thigh. “I want to test your limits. Thoroughly.”

Your voice:

Anaxa wants to hear it. Needs it, actually. The sounds, the words, the way you break when he tells you to say his name. When you tell him what you want, what feels good, how much you need him—it does something to him. His pupil dilates. His breathing hitches. His control slips another notch.

“Again,” he’ll say, voice strained. “Tell me again.”

His name:

Anaxagoras. When you say it in that tone—reverent, desperate, trembling, stretched across the syllables like a plea—it unravels him completely. He loses focus, rhythm, sanity. His hips stutter. His breath catches. Whatever careful control he’d been maintaining shatters.

“Say it again,” he demands, and there’s nothing analytical in his voice now. Just need.

Control:

A switch by instinct and inclination. He enjoys guiding you. Steady hands and quiet authority, telling you exactly how he wants you, watching you obey and then break beautifully under his attention.

But when you take over, when you push him back and make him feel, when you pin his wrists or sink onto him slowly or whisper what you’re going to do to him—he surrenders easily. Completely. His eye goes dark and his lips part and he lets go, trusting you to take him apart.

Curiosity:

He’ll want to try everything once. Different rhythms, sensations, positions. Missionary so he can watch your face. You on top so he can touch everywhere, map your body with his hands while you move above him. Against walls because sometimes waiting isn’t an option. In his laboratory because the idea of you bent over his desk while he…

He has a lot of ideas. He’s very thorough about testing them.

Patience:

Long nights. Slow discoveries. He takes pride in endurance. In knowing exactly how to make you come apart again and again until you can’t remember what you were arguing about earlier, until your legs shake and your voice goes hoarse.

“One more,” he’ll murmur, even as you’re still trembling from the last. “I know you can.” His fingers move with renewed purpose. “For me.” He hums afterward. “There you go. I told you you could.” The kiss that follows is feverish, uncontrolled, telling you he’s still not satiated.

⋆ ✦ ⋆

VI. Aftercare and Always

Afterward, he’s quiet, but not detached. He’ll keep touching you, tracing idle lines over your skin like he’s writing new equations, connecting invisible dots. You’ll feel his mind still turning, his body still thrumming from the aftershocks of everything he felt. The way he looks at you now is different. Softer, more vulnerable than you’ve ever seen him.

“Did you know,” Anaxa murmurs once, voice rough, “that the body releases endorphins strong enough to alter perception for hours?”

You laugh against his chest. “And what’s your conclusion?”

“That I’ll need to conduct further testing.”

Anaxa kisses you before you can respond. Slow, deep, nothing scientific about it.

Later, he’ll pretend it’s still about curiosity, about understanding. He’ll try to return to clinical distance, to analysis and observation.

But when you whisper his full name again and feel him shudder, when his arms tighten around you and his breath catches, you know the truth.

The scholar has been undone.

And he doesn’t want to be put back together.

(Not when being undone feels like this. Not when you’re the one doing it.)

___

A/N: Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. Likes, comments and reblogs are always appreciated. :)

Week One:

You walk into his lab with a question, forget it the moment he looks up, and leave without saying a word.

He watches you go, eye narrowed slightly, but says nothing.

Week Two:

You bring him tea he didn’t ask for. Set it down. Stare at him for approximately seven seconds. Leave.

“…Peculiar,” Anaxa mutters to the empty room.

Week Three:

You hover in his doorway for a full minute, open your mouth three separate times as if to speak, then flee like the Titans themselves are chasing you.

Anaxa sets down his pen very carefully.

Tilts his head.

“Interesting,” he says to no one.

Week Four:

You’re standing beside him as he works, and your behavior has reached what he can only classify as “statistically anomalous levels of agitation.”

You’ve handed him notes he didn’t request. Explained things he already knows. Rearranged the objects on his desk twice—no, three times now—with the nervous energy of someone preparing for something they haven’t decided to do yet.

Your hands are shaking slightly. Your breathing is elevated. You keep starting sentences and abandoning them mid-word.

Anaxa has been observing this pattern for twenty-three minutes.

He’s been observing you for significantly longer than that, but he’s trying not to examine why too closely.

“You’re agitated,” he says finally, not looking up from his work.

“I’m not,” you lie.

Badly.

“You are,” he replies, tone flat. “In fact, I would estimate your current agitation at approximately 73% higher than your established baseline.”

You go very still. “You… have a baseline for me?”

He glances up, and the look he gives you can only be described as obviously, don’t be ridiculous.

Your heart does something deeply unhelpful in your chest.

You turn away quickly. “I’m not agitated.”

“You’re perspiring.”

“It’s warm in here.”

“The ambient temperature is adequate,” he says. “A regulated environment I calibrated myself. Your perspiration is not environmental in origin.”

Your brain short-circuits.

Your stomach flips.

Your mouth opens and—

“I— I— I—”

Nothing comes out.

Anaxa closes the ledger he was annotating. Calmly. Deliberately. The sound of parchment meeting wood is unnaturally loud in the quiet.

Then he turns in his chair to face you fully.

“Tell me what is wrong.”

“Nothing!”

His eye narrows in that particular way it does when someone is lying and doing it poorly. “Your vocal pitch increased by approximately half an octave. Your pupils are dilated despite adequate lighting. Your hands—” he gestures, “—have been fidgeting with that pen for the past four minutes without writing a single word.”

“I’m just—”

“You’ve visited my lab numerous times in the past month,” he continues, voice taking on that analytical quality that means he’s been thinking about this. “Each visit following a similar pattern: approach, hesitation, retreat. Your behavior suggests intent without execution. A decision unmade. Or rather—” his gaze sharpens, “—multiple decisions, all contradicting each other.”

You can’t breathe.

“Furthermore,” he continues, seemingly oblivious to your internal collapse, “you’ve been avoiding direct eye contact for approximately two weeks, which is notable given your previous patterns of—”

You can’t take it.

You can’t take him.

You can’t take that sharp gaze dissecting you while your heart tries to escape through your ribs and your brain screams at you to do something—

You grab the front of his robes and kiss him.

It’s not elegant.

It’s not coordinated.

It’s not even remotely planned.

It’s pure instinct. Panic. Desperation. A confession in motion because your words keep failing you and your body has apparently decided to take over.

For one endless, terrifying moment, Anaxa goes absolutely, spectacularly still.

You can feel his sharp intake of breath against your mouth. Feel the way his entire body has frozen, tense with surprise. Feel the moment his brain catches up to what’s happening—

Then, slowly—incredulously—his hands rise to rest at your waist.

Tentative.

Uncertain.

So utterly unlike him that it makes the world tilt sideways.

His fingers curl slightly in the fabric of your clothes, not pulling you closer but not pushing away either. Just holding, like he’s afraid you might disappear if he moves wrong.

You pull back only when you remember you need to breathe.

His eye is wide. Wider than you’ve ever seen it. His lips are parted, still slightly wet from the kiss. His hair—his stupidly pretty seafoam hair—is mussed where your fingers tangled in it without permission.

He looks… undone.

By you.

By this.

By the realization that the hypothesis he’s been trying not to confirm has just kissed him senseless in his own study.

For several long seconds, neither of you moves.

Then he exhales. Long and quiet and almost wondering.

“…What,” he says softly, voice gone rough at the edges, “am I going to do with you?”

Your knees stop working entirely.

“I— I didn’t mean— I mean I meant— I mean—”

“Clearly,” Anaxa murmurs, and one hand rises to brush his thumb across your cheek with gentleness, “verbal articulation is not your strong suit at the moment.”

“I was trying to tell you,” you manage. “Differently. But I kept— I don’t know— panicking every time I tried.”

“Yes,” he says with the weary fondness of someone who has gotten used to your particular brand of chaos. “I noticed.”

You want to sink into the floor and never emerge.

Instead, Anaxa looks at you thoughtfully. Almost tenderly, which is somehow worse for your composure than his usual analytical stare.

“If you cannot tell me with words,” Anaxa says slowly, fingers lifting toward your temple, “then perhaps I should simply extract the information directly.”

“What are you—”

“Attempting telepathy.” He says it so seriously you almost believe him. “If I can theorize complex alchemy, surely I can succeed at reading thoughts.”

“You can’t do that,” you say breathlessly. “It’s impossible.”

“I’ve achieved several things that were deemed impossible.” His fingertips brush your temple, feather-light, and you shiver. “Hearing your thoughts should be…comparatively simple.”

A smile tugs at his lips. Small and teasing.

You can barely think. His touch makes you nervous. His closeness makes your head dizzy. It feels so good to be near him like this, to see him looking at you with something other than analytical detachment. You still remember the taste of his lips. The way he’d gone so still and then so careful. You want more of it. You can’t hide anymore.

“I’m in love with you,” you blurt before you can change your mind for the eighteen hundredth time.

Anaxa inhales sharply.

His hand freezes at your temple. His eye widens again, and you watch several emotions flicker across his face too quickly to name—surprise, confusion, something that looks almost like relief—

“Ah,” he breathes finally. “So it was that.”

You want to hide. To flee. To sink into the ground and never face him again.

But then he cups your face with both hands, and the gesture is so tender it steals whatever protest you were forming.

“For future reference,” he says, voice warm and maddening and far too composed for someone whose cheeks are visibly red, “simply telling me would have been more efficient.”

“I tried—”