#ugh!!!!

You toe off your boots. “Shut up and kiss me.” 

It startles a laugh out of Haku. When you approach the bed his hands come up to wrap around your hips. “As you wish, my goddess—“ 

Goddess. 

“Haku—“ your voice catches. You tear your gaze away from where he is already leaning into your palm, all fond and gold, a terrifying tender. “What kind of devotee actively stands in the path of a death ray?” 

Haku’s hands still on the back of your thighs. He lets out a laugh, earthquake-steady. “One that can’t bear to lose you?” 

You stare out the window at the inky blue. If you stare hard enough you can stop the tremble in your voice. “What if her gaze burnt through the shield? What if— what if you were knocked off the feather or something? We could have waited and took turns with Elias or Sho or someone to reach the end, you didn’t need to take the risk—“ 

The panic swells behind your lungs, strains itself into your voice. Your hand stutters on the smooth of his cheek. You’ve been bottling up these questions the whole night, and Haku knows it. 

“Princess,” he says, quietly. He tilts his head, presses a kiss into your palm. His hands come up to cup yours, shift them so he can kiss at the phantom red on your wrists. When you look back down at him all the sound in the room has condensed itself into the gravity of his eyes. “Seeing you with your hands bound? All that way across the chasm? What else could I do?” 

Haku smooths his thumb across the orison of your palms. “How else could I guarantee you’d be safe?” 

His words glow in the dry of your mouth, the memory of them vending-machine bright, and just like that you are dissolving like sugar into the water of his hands. You sink into his lap. Haku catches you, like always, steady, sure. 

His hands slip under your shirt, rest against the small of your back. When you tip your forehead into the curve of his neck, inhale the incense of him, his words ghost your temple, a quiet prayer. 

“Subaru was telling me about this other myth, too.” His thumb traces the shape of your spine. His voice rumbles where your chests meet. If you close your eyes it feels almost like the floor of a train running under your feet, hurtling you into a future where the only thing you know how to cling onto is the solid of Haku underneath your fingertips. “The one about Orpheus and Eurydice. His wife dies, and he goes all the way into the underworld to bring her back. The god of the underworld agrees, but on the condition that Orpheus has to walk ahead of her when they leave. He can’t look back at her. Not once.” 

Haku lets out a quiet laugh, though there is nothing amused in it. “Imagine that. In order for his wife to live, the husband had to put so much faith in the fact that the gods would uphold their end of the deal. He had to believe that the footsteps behind him were real, that she was still there. But he couldn’t.” He pauses, briefly, presses his lips to your hairline before pulling back. “When you love someone that much… who would?” 

He looks at you, then, his eyes almost glowing, tenderness a small, impossible star that lodges itself somewhere between your ribs. You read in his wry, helpless smile what he does not say aloud — he is too afraid to lose you to put your fate in another’s hands. That he cannot, will not trust anyone but himself to save you. 

(And isn’t that Haku, really? Always taking things into his own outstretched hands? Always offering, always bearing the weight and the risk and everything that comes after?) 

Perhaps it is the destiny of stars to collapse, to flatten in on themselves in the name of fate and the way of the universe. But, oh, there is something about the gold he has painted in the wreath of your ribs, in the breath you share as he kisses into you, that makes you think that maybe this time— maybe in this life he’ll be correct, and you’d love each other enough for the universe to— 

And then you are not thinking at all, with Haku’s lips sighing on your neck and his hands tugging everything off of you. With the days and nights you have spent melting into the altar of him it does not take long to turn gasping under his wandering tongue. 

Haku hums as he slips fabric off your ankles, lets you settle your knees on either side of his lap. “How cruel this castle is. Giving me the image of coming home to you,” he murmurs against your collarbone, “one regular office worker to another, just to take it away.” 

It almost makes you laugh, if his fingers weren’t already slipping between your legs. “Haku—“

His mouth trails down your chest. “Clocking out of the office just to meet you at the train station. Holding your hand and boarding the train together. I’d hold your waist in case you fall.” 

Your fingernails dig into his shoulder when he finds the right place between your folds effortlessly, makes you gasp into the cold air of the room. “Haku— ah—“ 

“Or maybe I’d let you fall, just so I can make a joke about my princess finally falling for me—“ 

It sends some sort of wild joy careening up your spine, this image that Haku paints for you. The two of you, pressed against each other under the fluorescence of the subway lights, smiles no-one else’s but your own. Haku in a crooked tie and crooked glasses, painted in the dying wash of a work day, one hand on a grab handle and the other arm around your waist. Both swaying to the rhythm of a train that, for once, brings you home. 

“Maybe you’ll fall for me, instead,” you manage, breathless, and Haku grins, wicked and gleaming in the moonlight of the room. 

A fingertip finds your entrance, a slow, teasing intrusion that leaves you whimpering against his lips. Haku steals a small kiss. “I already have.” 

You want to swat him, but he is already dipping into you, thumb circling your clit as he licks up your moan. “So perfect,” he breathes. “Feel so good around me already, princess. My goddess.” 

You huff at the title, and the corners of Haku’s eyes crinkle in response. “Should I be saying it louder? So everyone knows who I’m worshipping?” 

“Stop,” you threaten lightly, “If Elias hears us we’ll never hear the end of it.” 

(Assuming the end of it doesn’t happen, somehow, at the end of two days. Neither of you mention it.) 

“We’d meet because we work in the same building,” Haku says, instead. His thumb stills when you lean back, cup his face in your hands. 

You melt into the wet heat of his mouth, sinking the length of his finger further into you. “Haku—“ 

How beautiful he is, moon-kissed and glowing. His hair is half-mussed, lips kiss-bruised, name as incandescent on your tongue as his eyes are on you. Your myth and hero, human as the rest of you. It is not lost on you the irony of Haku calling himself a devout worshipper when you are the one turned towards him in supplication. 

“I’d work on the 27th floor,” Haku murmurs. He lets you grind helplessly onto the pad of his thumb. 

“Which— ah— Haku, ah— which floor would I be on?” 

Haku pauses where he is sucking something sweet into the corner of your jaw. “The 26th. I’d take the stairs down one floor every day in hopes that I’ll catch you waiting.” 

Your laugh turns into a gasp when a second finger prods at you, slips into you with ease. “Haku—“ 

“I’d see you for the first time in the lobby, harried and late for a meeting. You’d be the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in my life.” 

He crooks his fingers just right as you pant out a, “Ah— I’m not always late—“ 

Haku laughs. It rings gentle, delighted in the shell of your ear, leaves you flushed and blushing. “You’d be late just that day, then, just so I can wait for the lift with you and start falling in love.” 

You’re insufferable, you want to say, but Haku is parting his fingers inside of you and the stretch steals the words off your tongue, leaves sparkles of his name where they once were. 

“We’d get in the same lift,” he murmurs. His fingers don’t stop moving, don’t stop winding the coil at the core of you ever-tighter. “I’d turn to ask you what floor you were on, but you’ll hit the button faster than I can find the words.” 

You choke out a laugh, before a bend of his fingers send sparks of white across your vision. “Haku— ah—“

Haku smooths a kiss against your flushed cheek. You watch the moonlight in his hair glow, eyes half-lidded and blurred in your want. “I wouldn’t say anything, of course, but the next time I’d run into you in the lift lobby or the staff cafeteria I’d bump into you, just to say hi.” 

You blindly reach downwards for where his bulge is already weeping against his pants (how is it that he always remains fully clothed long after you’ve been laid bare before him, breaths shallow and burning in your need?), and Haku curses. His fingers stutter when you stroke over him, mumble against the sear of his lips, “Haku, need—“ 

And he reads you, like he always does, like he always has, and just like that he is flipping you over, looking down at where you’ve been sprawled under him. 

“So beautiful,” Haku breathes. His hands skate up your sides. “My goddess. Made straight from the heavens for me.” 

You bite your lip and turn away, flushing — no matter how many times you’ve found yourself under Haku’s adoring gaze it has always contained a devotion that paints your insides a hungry silver. 

“Hey,” Haku murmurs. The moonlight turns the gold of his eyes a sun; when his fingers brush your hair behind your ear they are smoke-soft in their reverence. “Not everyday I get to worship you like this. Let me have it, hmm?” 

You shift underneath him, hand catching on his forearm when you nod. You’ll let him have anything he wants. Haku can breathe all the prayers he wants into the kindling of your skin, but all you want to be is laid out for him, a sacrifice for his taking. 

Haku dips his head down, leaves a light kiss right above your heart. Your world narrows, then, in the silent half-moment, shrinks to where the heat of flute-calloused hands meet your waist, where the soft of his lips meet your chest— 

And then he is leaning back with a rustle, and ah— an electric jolt, and the weight of him, slow and heavy through your wetness, pressing against your clit and ah— 

Haku groaning— a dull stretch around the head of him, delicious and familiar and aching— 

And suddenly in the pause between your heartbeats you are living the world Haku has described, bones weary not from fighting for your lives but from office air, city lights blinking in through your open bedroom window, matching toothbrushes behind the bathroom mirror and Haku, your Haku, your Haku with his sharp eyes and kind hands and kinder words, sinking into you, sinking home. 

You whimper his name, back arching, trembling, molding yourself around the slick of him; he kisses it from your lips, breath folding into breath until it feels like you are both made of the same fragile air. 

“So good.” It comes out as a sigh. His fingers smooth into the fat of your hips. “Always feel so perfect around me.” 

Your breath stutters in your throat. He holds you, steady, until you stop clenching around him, burn melting into heat. 

“Could watch you like this forever,” Haku murmurs. His eyes are dark, half-lidded, skating down your figure to land where you are connected; his thumb catches on your hipbone, rubs soothing circles in as you get used to feeling impossibly full. “So warm— so pretty, fuck, princess—“ 

“Haku.” His name comes out in a half-whine, tinted honey with want. “M- move, please— need you—“ 

Your hips cant upwards. It buries the rest of him in you, draws a choked groan from the back of Haku’s throat. “Fuck, okay—“ 

When he moves, slow, tender— oh— 

You visited a huge shrine, once, when you were younger. You stood before the vast, red-tinted honden, watched the angles of afternoon sun melt into every corner of the hall. It washed each wooden pillar bright, flushed every nook and cranny a warm gold that even now in your memory made it look like the shrine itself was breathing, luminous and alive and radiant. 

You wondered how they’d made it glow like that, then. But the vowels of Haku’ name are spilling off your tongue, incandescent in their keen, and ah— the calligraphy of his movements draws gasps from the hollow of your chest, fills your mouth with bright and flushes your veins gold, and ah— Haku— you think you know, now— 

How lucky you are to be loved, like this. How lucky you are to be loved across lifetimes and lifelines that are not yet yours to have. How lucky you are to love him, with his diligence and dedication and green-gold laugh and the way every movement of him expands to fill the spaces between you, slow and desperate and groaning, like he’d claw you back inch by inch from the hands of the gods themselves. 

Haku buries his nose in your shoulder. “So perfect,” he rasps. His teeth scrape your shoulder with each slap of skin, bruise devotion into your chest with each bounce. “M’ goddess. ‘d do anything for you. Would— would do anything to bring you home—“ 

He sounds almost as wrecked as you feel. The heat of his voice has you arching into his touch, heels digging into the small of his back; each thrust pools something hot in the base of your spine, hits something in you that leaves tears brimming on the edge of your lashes. When he speeds up the slap of his skin on yours has you clenching around his cock like you never want to let him go. 

You think you understand Orpheus, now. The sky may be deaf and blind and indifferent to two dust motes in the fabric of time, but by god, if you won’t try to keep him— 

Haku’s hands slide up your sides, shift your palms from where they’ve been clutching onto his forearms. He interlaces your fingers. When he leans back up, bringing your hand up to his lips and hips snapping shallow against yours, you do not miss the flash behind his eyes. 

“I’ll bring you home,” he says, low. The words brush by your ring finger, settle burning behind your nose. “I’ll bring you home, and we’ll start a restaurant together, in some seaside town in Shizuoka. We’ll forget the office and the school and the— the curse—“ 

Moonlight slips, dizzying, from the halo of him. It sinks into the weight of his words, mixes into the whiskey of his eyes, dissolves like salve into the ache of you. 

“We’ll get an apartment by the train station,” Haku half-groans. He shifts your hips up, towards him with his free hand, and oh, with this change in angle— ah—

His thumb finds its way back down between your legs. It slips between your folds, sparking, circling, rubbing, and all at once the pressure of his thumb on your clit and the way his cockhead is bullying the softest part of you is all too much, all too good— 

Your head falls back, mouth falling open; you cannot help the moans that tip themselves off the altar of your tongue with each thrust of his cock, float themselves breathy and begging from the fire Haku has lit in your lungs— 

You can barely hear Haku’s voice, barely make out the words from where your vision is swimming. “Love the sounds you make for me, god, fuck— we’ll— fuck, we’ll move so far away from here— we’ll learn how to make noodles from an old man down the road, and we’ll get to close up shop every night and go home to this, I promise—“ 

A moan tears itself from your throat, curls like a ribbon around where Haku’s lips are still pressed to your ring finger, winds itself deeper into the searing coil between your legs. You cannot help the litany of words that spills between you as you throb around him, climbing higher, higher, “Haku, please, I—“ 

Haku’s hips falter, for just a second, before he is bending down, faster, forehead tipping against yours, “Let go for me, princess, I’ll catch you, I promise—“ 

His lips crash against yours, desperate, messy. His hand slips down to your waist, squeezes you, and just like that the heat between your bodies explodes, sends your vision white.

His name sparks off the kindling of you, burns its way into the room as your back arches off the bed. The pleasure tears its way through your nerves, shatters the consonants of his name across your tongue as all coherent thought dissipates, free-fall, into the moonlight, “Ha— Haku—“ 

And catch you he does, arms slipping under you and pulling you close as his tongue tangles into yours. He presses helpless groans into the fever of your mouth, the glow of your jaw, hips stuttering against yours once, twice, before he, too, comes undone, throbbing cock spilling into your warmth—  

To be full of Haku, like this, always. To feel every inch of him in you, sweet, aching. To have the heat of his skin on yours, eyes heavy and glazed over, chests straining in shared breath. To hold his heart in the crown of your throat, to have him hold your heart in his. 

Your thumb brushes his cheekbone, languid from your high. “Haku.” 

“Mm,” he says. His head tips against your shoulder, lips finding the sweet spot on your neck. He’d stay like this forever, you know, buried deep in you. You know because you would, too. 

But time stretches and shifts, and the bones of the castle sigh around you, heavy and weary and all too real. There are tests awaiting you tomorrow. There are dangers you will have no choice but to survive. 

Outside the window the moon drapes itself across the night. The gods, if they are listening, offer no assurances. But oh, here with Haku— is it all that difficult to believe that you can overturn their rules? That you can and will survive, that you will walk right out of this underworld, in spite of their fates and their curses and their trials? 

You run a hand through his hair. “Let’s learn to make udon.” 

Haku shifts, just enough to look at you. He grins, boneless and sweet, Hotarubi-rain steady. “Rest, princess. We have to survive tomorrow first, hmm?” 

He kisses you, then, fills your lungs with the green of an aching what-could-have-been, the gold of a sweet what-could-be. It makes you smile.