#xavier lnds

sylus loves when you bite him. the first time you did it, he hadn't even batted an eye. simply smiled and moved his bicep closer for you to chomp down to your heart's content.

you tend to use your teeth when you're forced to sit quietly beside him, likely when he's doing something related to onichynus or a business deal he needs to finish up before he gives you his undivided attention for the night. you'll sit either in his lap, curled up in his shoulder, or just next to him under his arm. he doesn't mind if you ramble, but you know better than to expect him to answer all of your hypotheticals while he's focusing.

instead, when you've had your fill of talking to mostly yourself, you'll lower your head against his shoulder and bite down. you don't latch on very hard, but it's enough for sylus to know you're using your teeth.

"am i boring you, kitten?" he asks, setting his pen down in favor of cradling the back of your head. you dislodge yourself at the sensation, allowing him to pull your face up to look at him. he's got that knowing smirk on his face, his other hand tightly wrapped around your hips to keep you from falling as he shifts you to straddle his thighs.

“no,” you hum, tilting your head to nip at his wrist. he laughs, the sound vibrating through your body.

“no? just being… frisky?” a hand slides up under the bottom hem of your shirt to rest on the small of your back. you nod, biting a bit harder when you reach the base of his palm. he hisses.

“are you almost done with your work, sy?” you whisper. you gently kiss the indents your teeth had left.

“i’m all yours, sweetie.”

zayne doesn't really comment on it. after the first few incidents, and the round of questions that had followed, he knows you don't mean any harm by it. rather, he knows it's a way for you to express yourself to him when words seem to elude you.

it always seems to happen when zayne’s already settled down for the evening. unlike when you’re trying to lure him away from his work—when you use lingering touches and gentle kisses to pull his attention toward you—zayne always seems to find you biting him when he’s already got his sights set on you.

the two of you will be spread out on the couch, you sat between his thighs with your back to his chest and his arms around your shoulders, when your teeth latch into his forearm. he doesn’t move, doesn’t shift, just smiles softly with a kiss to your temple as he continues to watch the move you’d put on.

“react,” you huff, biting a bit harder near the junction of his elbow.

“what would you like for me to say, darling?” he says, the ghost of a laugh seeping out of him. you shrug, snuggling back further into him with your lips pressed against his bicep.

“i’m bored,” you huff.

“i can tell,” he says softly. his hand slides down your arm to intertwine your fingers together, bringing the pair up to his mouth to kiss the back of your hand. “would you like to do something else?”

“no,” you say, shaking your head. your tongue peeks out to swipe across a recently bitten patch of skin. you always tended to bite him more when there was more skin at your disposal, he’d noticed, leading him to wear short sleeves around the house.

“alright, then,” he says. he settles back down into the cushions and tightens his hold on you. when you latch down on his arm again, all he says is, “i love you, too, darling.”

rafayel pretends to hate it. he'll get all whiny and pouty each time you do it, threatening to kick you out of his studio for abusing him, but he secretly revels in it. he gets this pretty pink flush on his cheeks whenever your teeth make contact with his skin, despite whatever nonsense spews from his lips.

“hey! meanie,” he huffs, yanking his arm out of reach from your mouth. he cradles it to his chest, running his thumb gently over the barely-there indent your teeth had made in his skin. it’s the most offended you’d seen him. almost.

you continue to do it, though, a lot gentler, until one day his protestations actually manage to break through to you.

he fully rolled away from you, turning so that his back was facing you. when you attempted to warm up to him again, placing your face into the crook of his neck and sliding your hands around his waist, he swatted at your fingers until you pulled away. you could hear him pouting, the dramatic sighs and whines.

after that, and after you’d made it up to him the following morning with plenty of kisses, you stopped biting him. rafayel had assumed it was only for the day, making only a comment or two about how he was “bite mark free” for the first time, but when you withheld your teeth from him for a week and a half, he started to get whiny again.

at first, it’d been silent gestures. holding his arm close to your face when you cuddled, making sure you were angled toward his shoulder when you watched something.

then, “why don’t you bite me anymore?”

“you don’t like it,” you say, turning your head slightly to look at him. he’s sitting on the couch beside you, a sketch pad laid open over his lap. it’d stayed blank for the last thirty minutes.

“i never said that,” he says.

“yes, you did,” you laugh. “you called me a meanie and didn’t talk to me for a day.”

“are you sure about that? i probably just called you cutie like i always do and then got… laryngitis or something,” he huffs, his bottom lip protruding out. he drops the sketch pad onto the coffee table before he scoots closer to you. “will you just bite me again, cutie?”

“you want me to?”

if he had any reservations before—which he didn’t— the way your face lit up at the idea was enough to erase them completely. he nods, holding his hand up to your lips, allowing you to nibble as you pleased.

xavier is confused by it, but lets you do as you please. his brows will knit together and he’ll stare at you with those big eyes he always gives you, but he never protests or gives you any indication that he wants you to stop.

the first time you did it, he thought it was an accident. he flinched slightly, but didn’t make a comment besides that. once it started becoming a regular thing, he began to have more and more questions about your motivations.

“starlight?” he asks softly, not moving save for the slightest tilt of his head. your teeth are still latched into his shoulder. you hum in reply, nipping your way across his shoulder and down to his arm. “did i do something?”

“no? why do you ask?”

“you’re biting me,” he replies.

“yeah? i always do that,” you hum, mixing in a couple kisses with your bites before you pull back. you shift so that you’re facing him more. “do you want me to stop?”

he grabs your wrist when you start to pull further away. “no. you can keep doing it.”

“yeah?” you ask, immediately leaning in to bite down on his cheek. his face scrunches, a soft pink hue dusting over the skin beneath your lips.

he's not entirely sure of why you bite, but you never bite down enough to hurt him, and you always seem so happy after you've done it, so who is he to prevent you from latching down every once in a while?

caleb bites you back. he takes it as a challenge. you always bit him when you were kids when you were angry, or, god forbid, he was holding you down for any reason. if he was tickling you, or tackling you, your first instinct was to sink your teeth into the closest body part you could find. he went to school one day with a huge mark on his ankle once, and you never heard the end of it.

now, when you do it, he's prepared. it's almost as if he goads you into it, knowing he'll be able to do it back.

he'll wander around your apartment with a sleeveless shirt on, practically lording his arms in your face, and you have no choice but to chomp down on his bicep.

the moment you sneak behind him, your arms linking around his hips, he's on guard. he knows all your tactics. despite the otherwise gentle touches, he knows the minute your lips wander anywhere close to his arms, he's going to be feeling more than your lips.

he says your name in warning moments before it occurs. within a second of you latching down, he's spinning you in his grasp and attacking your skin with nips and bites of his own. he starts at your neck before traveling down to your shoulder and biting down with the same intensity you'd used on him.

"caleb!" you squeal, pushing his face away despite the stream of giggles leaving your lips.

"what?" he asks, softening his movments. "i'm just giving you a taste of your own medicine."

"only i'm allowed to bite," you counter.

your routine for the next couple of weeks is hell. wake up, go to work, fight wanderers, go back home, cry your heart out, and then pass out. worse, it's hard to avoid xavier because you literally live in the same complex, on the same floor, and even work in the same company, and he looks unperturbed—it breaks your heart even more, and at the same time, it pisses you the fuck off. those 3 years of your life, wasted and down the drain. you wanna sue him and simultaneously ask him through choked cries why he doesn't love you like he loves her.

unknown to you, he feels like he's living in a haze. he's stuck in a similar hellish routine as you, except he feels like he's never awake. he sleeps more than usual, and he still goes out on missions, but he slips—something that he doesn't do—and even gets mc injured when they're partnering. he apologizes to her, but he doesn't feel it from the heart. how can he, when the only thing he feels these days is this odd persisting dull ache in his chest?

he's just grateful that he sees glimpses of you throughout the day—even though his heart wrenches at the sight of your swollen, red-rimmed eyes and exhausted expression. he's grateful he's technically still in your orbit... until that changes too.

you just... suddenly disappear. he doesn't see you when you enter or exit your apartment, even though he hears you move around. he doesn't even see you at work, and the rare chance of him partnering with you on a mission becomes ZERO. he personally asks for it and gets denied.

he doesn't know that it's your doing; you roped tara, nero, simone, hell even jenna to make sure that you'll never bump into xavier, telling them that you want to get your life together now and don't want his presence to disturb your career. they understand and try to help you in any way—telling you if he's around, changing your shifts, and doing small stuff to make you feel better like training with you.

months pass, and it's like xavier wakes up. he's no longer in a haze because there's deep panic welling up in him. he gets less sleep, he becomes more reckless, there's restless energy in him. you want to be out of his orbit? okay. he'll try forcing himself into your world again then. you don't know how he always knows where you are, but then he's suddenly everywhere. at the library, at the arcade, in the training rooms, even at the secret café that you used to freaking gatekeep for yourself.

he never oversteps. he doesn't approach you. he's just there—watching you, basking in the sight of you, even though he knows he doesn't deserve it.

you break one day. you're at your secret café—a place that suddenly feels less like yours and more like his too. you demand him to tell you why he's following you like a creep, and he visibly winces, but you refuse to feel guilty about it.

it takes a second, but then he tells you everything—the life he used to have with mc. not the one he used to have with her in linkon, but back in philos. he tells you that he's not who you think he is—that he travelled back in time for her. that's exactly why he couldn't get himself to think of a future with you, because he feels immense guilt over it. he's here to save mc yet here he is, indulging himself in you. he tells you that he feels like thinking of marrying you and building a future with you is dishonoring what's supposed to be his priorities.

you're quiet after that. he's clearly nervous, his hands clasped together on the table and looking at you as if he's a child ready for his scolding. then you speak.

you ask him if he loves you. he answers, "i do."

you ask him if he loves her. he answers, "i did."

you're quiet again, and you see his face go pale, as if he's just realizing things about himself that he has been avoiding for so long, but here you are, easily dismantling him like you always do. you see him, and it terrifies him. exhilarates him. he never wants you to stop doing it. he's realizing that he doesn't want to hold onto the past anymore. his life is here now—in linkon city, with you. he thought he's destined to save mc, but maybe this was his fate all along—to build a better life with you. a better present, a better future.

you ask, "don't you want to be happy?"

and all he can do is choke out a teary "yes".

that's all you need to hear. you tell him that you don't forgive him at all yet, that he broke you heart and it needs time to heal. xavier doesn't expect any less. he tells you he'll work for it, he'll do anything to earn your trust again and work hard to deserve your love.