Love Me Love Me

Maya: 🥺🥺🥺

Maya: and now I don't know where you are

Maya: and still no crisps 🥺

Cass: alas do not fret, love

Cass: im out with some potential influencers

Cass: but this lack of crisps

Maya: I've been shouting for 20 minutes

-3 minute gap-

Maya: baby please I'm so hi I can barely move

Maya: *high heheheheh

Cass: my dearest darlingest wife

Cass: I cannot bring you any crisps

Cass: as I am not home

“Oh don’t be stupid, I’m never nice.” 

She puts her drinks down on the bar and crosses around, draping her arms around his neck.

“I was tired of sharing, is that a fucking crime? I know our vows mean nothing to you, but they mean something to me-I’ll deny it if you bring it up after this, dalring, but I like being your wife.”

She pulls her left hand back to pick up his right and she kisses it, leaving a perfect lipstick print on the back of his hand.

“And sometimes I want to be the only person you’re looking at-and I want to be around Cassiel, the person, not Cassiel the false prophet.” 

She releases him and retrieves her drink, downing it fully before she speaks again. She crosses back behind the bar and makes another as she speaks. 

“I’m not nearly childish enough to pretend I don’t get immensely jealous-not only of others around you but of you yourself. I just-” She sighs in a way that would seem terrible dramatic to someone who wasn’t as drunk as she is.

“I wish you were as devoted to me as others are to you. Does that make me evil?”

Cass studies her across the bar as he finally takes a sip from his drink.  For the first time in...Merlin, he’s not sure how long anymore, he is seeing her. Not the woman who screams and pitches a fit in the middle of a sensual gathering, but the woman he fell in love with at school and created plans for a future with on top of the Astronomy Tower. They were going to be rich and powerful together, but most importantly, they were going to be together.

“No,” he says, reaching for her hand and interlacing their fingers. “It does not.”

Maya looks up at him and Cass feels his heart shoot up to his throat, much like it had when he first met her on their first day of Hogwarts.

Bottle Service || Cass & Maya

“Cassiel!” Maya calls out, her voice a little giddy even as it echos through their large drawing room. Their house was empty for once on a Saturday night-she’d thrown a fit and kicked everyone out a few hours ago and it had greatly lifted her mood. Though the vodka she had unearthed had helped too.

“Come in hereeee” She thrills, mixing her third Moscow Mule-the trick was light on the ginger ale and heavy on the liquor. Her face lights up-her cheeks hot as she smiles-when her husband enters the room.

“I made you a drink, my love.”

She slides it across the bar pointedly, running her hands through her braids and smiling at him again. 

“Consider it an apology for…what did you call it? My Cuntess Supreme behavior?”

She takes a sip of the drink exaggeratedly.

“And it’s not poisoned, so you know I mean it.”

@philosophyofcass​

“How thoughtful.” Cass gives her a thin smile as he accepts the drink but chooses not to take a sip just yet. With the glass clutched in his hand, he crosses his arms over his chest very exposed in the short black silk robe he had managed to throw on somewhere in the midst of exchanging obscenities and projectiles with his wife not forty-five minutes ago. Now, they were allegedly making nice, but Cass has known his wife for far too long to just give in.

“Okay, okay- I won’t touch anything.” Xeno assured baking away from the cabinet. “How long have you had this place anyway?”

“Ehhhh...eight months or so? Maybe closer to a year? Who’s to say? All the houses kinda run together after awhile.”

He chuckles to himself but when Xeno doesn’t join in, he quickly cuts himself off  with a gruff clearing of his throat.

He raises an amused eyebrow. “Sure am,” he responds, gesturing to the room in general, “Right here. In my house. Which I own.” 

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your unexpected company? Is it about the party? Because I’m pretty sure I went over everything with Maya.” 

“Oh, you own this?” Cass lets his gaze roam over the high ceilings. “Good for you, mate.”

April visits | Open

“Well, I wasn’t expecting you to show up here.” 

“Wha-?!”

“The only thing you won’t do, hmm?” Maya says, her core buzzing with adrenaline at finally pushing Cass to the edge. 

“What happens if I don’t respect that, hmm?” She says, smirking at him again. She’d poked the bear and gotten him to shout -but this was no where near satisfying enough-she wants Cass pushed to the person he used to be, she wants to see just how far he’ll let her go.

“You going to shout at me again? Grab me again? Push me around?” 

Maya clicks her tongue.

“So powerful, so in control, and yet the Great Cassiel Avery can’t control his own wife? What does that say about you, darling?” 

Maya spits the last word out, jealousy flaring again-not over anyone particularly, but over the act that largely, people seemed to like Cass far more than they liked her. He was the one they all but worshiped-it was hard not to feel like collateral, no matter how nonsensical it is. That’s really what all this is about-she feels ignored, and when she’s ignored, cruelty builds up inside of her until she has no choice but to let it out.

“I think it means you’re as weak as your parents thought you were, do you agree?”

Cass stares at her, letting his anger silently fill in the space between them before speaking again, low and dangerous.

“That’s what you think, is it?”

He’s knows when he’s being manipulated; his dear wife is one of the best. The only asset in his defense is choosing whether he allows it to work and how it can work for him. Which is why Maya and him work. They work for each other.

Even with his blood boiling and his fists clenching around her wrists as he backs her against the table.

“You think I’m weak?”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever looked a frog directly in the eye.” Mary said her hip popping to the side a bit, clearly this was going to be a longer conversation then she had wanted. Whatever anything for a good tip. “So I’d defer to your expertise, I guess.” 

Mary shrugged her shoulders, “Well that brings up some bigger philosophical questions like do any animals have souls?” Mary continued. “I’m inclined to believe that they do. I’m also basis based on my on sentimentality.” Her words were more sure as she spoke. “One could even take it further and ask if we humans have souls? Life is just something we’ve invited to explain this condition we’re all experiencing. Perhaps the idea souls are just us hopeless sacs of cells grasping for some kind of meaning in a mean less random world?” 

She shrugged. “Anyway here the bill.” 

Cass blinks at her and stares for an unsettling amount of time before taking another drag from the joint.

“Bigger philosophical question...yes...of course!”

He grabs a generous handful of coin out of his pocket and fumbles through them in an attempt to count them but gives up.

“So you don’t want a baby with me?”

Maya isn’t being fair and she knows it, but she’s mad. Mad at Cass for their drunken, wild sexcapades, mad at him for being calm, mad at him for calling her princess, the list goes on.

“Am I that awful? Just get a vasectomy then, if the concept of conception with me  is so fucking awful.”

Jesus, maybe she was pregnant, it’d explain the mood swings. Well-actually she was like this all time, this was just giving her grounds to act on it. The infuriating thing about Cass is it took him a long time, now that he was enlightened or whatever, to stoop to her level.

“Aren’t prophets supposed to have heirs or whatever-oh!” She gaps dramatically, turning on him suddenly as the idea hits her, getting close enough that when she points her finger at him, it hits Cass in the chest. 

“There’s someone else, isn’t there? Some other woman you’d rather have babies with, isn’t there?” She raises her eyebrows at him. “Is it Sybil? She practically comes when you talk to her, finally taking that bait, love?”

They both slept with other people-Maya far more than him, but her hypocrisy hadn’t stopped her yet.

“I hope the two of you are very happy together.”

She told herself she was doing this just to fight with him, but a part of her, deep down that she largely ignored, was jealous of anyone and everyone who liked Cass.

Rage flaring through him, Cass grabs her wrist, squeezing just this side of too tight that he gets a sick sense of satisfaction when she winces at his grip.

“Would you care to try that again?” he asks, his voice deadly quiet. 

“If you’re so intent on playing games, Maya,” he presses on without pause, pulling her closer by the wrist so her whole hand splays over his chest, “and if my opinion suddenly matters, then you will be the one to bear my children but I also will not be the one to force you to do so for merely our image. That is the one thing I will not do and I ask you to respect that!”

Just as suddenly as he grabbed her, he releases her with enough force that she steps back from him.

“Okay,” Mary said keeping her patients in check and she always did. The tips were better if she heard people out.

He raised a hand into her face and Mary took a slight step back. 

“Aren’t everyone’s eyes opaque? I think it would stranger if their eyes were translucent.” Mary gave a light shrug as she spoke. 

“Nah, no, no.” Cass shakes his head vehemently, shaking a bit of ash onto the table. “Not like this.”

He takes a heavy drag from the joint, keeping his gaze steady on the waitress. 

“The eyes are the window to the soul, yes? So, for instance, when I look into yours, Mary...I can see right through them, right to innermost--well,” he chuckles wryly. “I’m sure you can fill in the rest.”

He sets the joint on the edge of the glass ashtray in front of them and sets his chin on his fist.

“Generous of you. Fuck!” She starts pacing, throwing her braids around her shoudler and making sure her heels click menacingly on the tile of the kitchen.

“Obviously if I am I mean…we’re not keeping it. Unless-would a baby be good for our brand?”

She starts to chew on her thumbnail and then stops herself. 

“I don’t-” She laughs, it sounds more like a cackle

“Can you picture me as a fucking mum? There’s no way. We’d have to have it raised by nanneis or some shit and at that point we can just pretend like someone else’s baby is ours for pictures or something-” She stops, both of her palms pressed to her temples.

“Can you say something? Something productive? Something useful? For once?”

“Seems like you’ve got it worked out,” he says blandly, pulling his wand out of his top-knot and, completely ignoring the stove in front of him, heats the water instantly.

“But uh--no.”

“No what?” Maya barks back and Cass stares placidly at her, his hands braced behind him on the counter.

“In the event that you’re pregnant, princess,” he says with a little extra bite around the nickname he gave her when they were sixteen and she hates more than most things, “I don’t think we should keep it.”

Maya’s eyebrows shoot up. “And why’s that?”

He bites his bottom lip, thinking over his words carefully what with this not exactly being the best time to bring up that the one thing he didn’t want to do was use a child--their child--as a marketing scheme due to Maya’s rising temper. 

“Great are you ready for the check?” 

Cass tosses his head back with an exasperated sigh. “Sure, but that’s not the point.

He leans forward across the table, gazing directly into the waitress’ eyes with his joint held aloft in his fingers.