ZAYNE

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ🐇་༘࿐ knows exactly when your social battery is dying and gets you out of conversations; He notices when your smile starts to thin just a little too quickly in conversations, when your answers get shorter, when your eyes start drifting instead of really landing anywhere. He never interrupts you while it’s happening. He just waits until the exact second it becomes too much for you to keep pretending.

“Excuse me,” Zayne says smoothly when he finally steps in, appearing beside you as if he’s always been there. One hand settles lightly at your back, subtle enough that no one questions it, but firm enough that your shoulders immediately relax. Your coworker is still talking about some article she read, but Zayne’s presence quickly disrupts the rhythm of the conversation.

Zayne doesn't necessarily make it sudden or awkward, just gently redirects it, polite words and his calm authority wrapping around the conversation until it naturally dissolves.

And it's moments like that that make you so so grateful to be married to someone like zayne.

You barely even realized how much you’d been holding in until it’s suddenly gone, like someone finally loosened a tight knot in your chest. By the time you reach his car, the evening air feels colder than you expected. Zayne opens the passenger door for you without a word, like he already knows you’re running on empty.

You slide into the warm interior of his car, sinking back into the seat with a soft exhale, lashes fluttering shut for just a second longer than intended. “Thank you for that, zaynie,” you murmur tiredly as he settles into the driver’s seat beside you.

Zayne glances at you, the faintest curve forming at the corner of his mouth. His gaze softening as his green eyes flicker over your tired expression, brushing a few stray hairs from your face. “Of course, my love."

CALEB

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ🐇་༘࿐ automatically reaches for you when he's excited about something; Caleb has never been good at hiding his enthusiasm—though he's never had any desire to hide it from you. The second he's telling you a story, showing you something cool, or rambling about whatever has caught his attention that day, he's automatically reaching for you without even realizing it.

"Okay, okay, but listen, pips—"

One arm slips around your waist as he talks, pulling you against his side while he launches into whatever ridiculous thing he's currently invested in.

"The wing shape is designed like that for a reason. And if you look here—"

Caleb's excitement only makes him more affectionate. A hand on your shoulder. An arm around your waist. Pulling you closer every few minutes like he physically needs you involved in the conversation. Half the time, he isn't even aware he's doing it.

Too busy sharing something he loves with his favorite person.

And somehow, by the end of it, you've learned absolutely nothing about airplanes, but you've learned quite a bit about how cute your husband looks when he's excited.

XAVIER.

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ🐇་༘࿐ steals your blankets subconsciously but gives them back immediately when you whine; Xavier has this unconscious habit of stealing your blankets like it’s instinct. It starts innocently enough: movie nights, late evenings, him sitting just a little too close until somehow the entire blanket ends up draped over him instead of you.

You don’t even notice at first.

Until you’re suddenly freezing.

“Xavierrrr” you mumble, tugging at the edge of the blanket.

He stirs slowly, blinking up at you like he’s just been pulled out of a dream. There’s a long pause where he processes absolutely nothing, then—

“…hm?”

“you're hogging the blanket, xavi.”

Silence.

"...Sorry, star."

Then, without argument or complaint, he shifts immediately. Still half-asleep and grumbling under his breath, he lifts the blanket off himself and drapes it back over you, carefully tucking it around your shoulders until you're warm again.

The moment he's satisfied, he settles right back down. His arms slip around your waist, pulling you back against his chest with a sleepy sigh. His face buries itself in the crook of your neck, warm and familiar.

Within minutes, his breathing evens out again.

And by morning?

The blanket will somehow be wrapped around him once more.

RAFAYEL

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ🐇་༘࿐ always checks your reflection before his own; Every time you pass a mirror together or find yourselves standing in front of your shared bathroom mirror: Rafayel's eyes find you first.

It doesn't matter if you're dressed up for one of his gallery openings or standing in one of his oversized shirts with your hair half done. His gaze always drifts toward your face before anywhere else.

Most nights, he'll wander into the bathroom while you're doing your skincare, drawn in by your presence more than anything else. You catch his reflection in the mirror as he walks up behind you, arms slipping around your waist before resting his chin on your shoulder. The embrace is loose and familiar, his attention seemingly fixed on your reflection rather than his own.

"Don't stare at me," you mumble, patting moisturizer into your skin. "I look dehydrated right now."

Then his arms only tighten around your waist. "Then you'll be my dehydrated, beautiful muse." He says sweetly, despite the teasing lit in his voice, which makes you roll your eyes as he presses a kiss to your cheek.

"I wonder if I'll still be your muse once I start shedding like a lizard."

Rafayel hums thoughtfully, resting his chin more firmly on your shoulder as he studies your reflection.

"Of course."

"Really?"

"Mm. Then I'd simply paint the most beautiful lizard in existence."

"...you're ridiculous."

Rafayel only smiles, pressing another kiss to your cheek.

"Anything for my muse."

It’s hot, too hot, and not even Zayne’s Evol can keep up, sweat making long black strands stick to his forehead, dripping down his neck and back as you claw against every ripping muscle there, incoherent, burning up from the inside as you beg for more and more and more. 

You were a mess already, undone by an hour prior of tortuously delicate touching, Zayne’s tongue giving unwavering attention to your clit and nipples, building you up until you practically ripped his pants off and demanded that he be inside you. Not that he could ever refuse you. 

Now you think it might have been a mistake, feeding an insatiable beast. 

You’ve already cum on his fingers, and yet you feel something build again, a pressure that feels more like a complete loss of control, intense and overwhelming as you gasp into Zayne’s neck, scrambling to push him off even as his hips fuck into yours. 

“Wait,” a moan, muffling yourself into your palm as Zayne’s thumb goes to your poor abused clit again, misreading your blabbering as an indication you’re close. “Wait! No, no, it’s not. It feels different, just–” 

Finally, he freezes. Pulls out, and immediately drops to his stomach, large hands pushing your thighs to your shoulders, tongue already at your cunt. “Don’t stop me.” 

The please at the end of his sentence is swallowed by a guttural groan as he tastes you again, rich, heady, intoxicating. His eyes, half-open and lovedrunk, were locked on your face, never leaving, drinking in your unraveling expressions with terrifying devotion as you writhe and arch desperately into his mouth.

“That’s it, love,” he leaves a kiss on your shaking legs before forcing you to hold them up yourself, his fingers immediately curl inside you. The horrible pressure in your stomach coils tighter, threatening to explode. “That’s it, good girl. You’re doing so good for me. Fuck.” 

And then his tongue joins his fingers, gently circling your clit as his fingers mercilessly piston in and out of you until they hit a spot that makes you scream. Everything inside you convulses, a violent, helpless shudder that rips a delirious sob from your chest as something bursts. You feel it even as the world spins, thighs and ass slippery and filthy as the obscene sounds of skin on skin are magnified, covered only with Zayne’s low, guttural moans, swallowing everything you give him. 

He can’t stop, panting against your cunt, leaving kisses and licking the spray of your release up your abdomen before he’s hovering atop you once more.

“Again.”

Zayne flips you over, hands bruising your ass and waist in ways that make your eyes roll back, a moan ripping from you as Zayne’s hand pulls on your hair, forcing your limp head off the pillow and back, lips meeting yours in a wet, sloppy kiss that has saliva and sweat running down your throat. You think you might be losing consciousness or maybe just your sanity, but gods, you never want this to stop.

“Give it to me again.” 

You always get clumsier when he watches you. He knows this. He absolutely uses it. He’ll lounge on the couch with one knee up and his chin in his hand, just looking, and you’ll lose the ability to operate a doorknob. Today he’s been sketching you in the corner of his page—not the painting he’s supposed to be working on, the commission one, the important one—and you caught him at it earlier and went so red he had to put the pencil down because his own face was getting warm.

He crouches down with you to gather the brushes.

You’re both on the floor now, knees almost touching. He hands you one, and his fingers brush yours, and you flinch like he’s electric.

“Y’know,” he says, conversationally, lining a brush up on the tile, “for someone who’s been kissed by me a frankly impressive number of times, you still go pink like it’s our first date.”

“I— I don’t—”

“You do. It’s my favorite thing.” He grins, eyes crinkling. “Don’t ever stop.”

There’s paint on your cheek and he refuses to tell you.

You only realize it when you catch your reflection in the window—a streak of pink swept right across your cheekbone, from when you’d rubbed your face earlier. You whirl on him. He’s already laughing, that bright, unbothered laugh of his, head thrown back against the couch cushions.

“Rafayel!”

“What? It suits you, cutie. It’s my color. You’re branded now.”

“You let me walk around like this—”

“For at least forty minutes, yes.” He gets up finally, and crosses to you with that lazy, unhurried gait. His thumb comes up to brush at the paint gently, careful in a way his voice never is in moments like this. The teasing slides off his face for half a breath. “There. Almost gone. Mostly.”

He kisses the spot anyway. Light. Quick. Like he’s signing it the way he signs his canvases, which you might as well be, at this point.

“There,” he murmurs, and he’s smiling, but his ears have gone faintly pink and he won’t quite meet your eyes. “Now it’s mine.”

You hide your face in his shirt. He lets you, one hand settled at the back of your head, and pretends, for your sake, that his heart isn’t doing anything embarrassing at all.

Zayne - When You Drop the Mug Again

He hears it before he sees it hit the floor.

The clatter of ceramic against the kitchen tile carries down the hallway, followed by the small, mortified sound you always make when you’ve done something you wish nobody had witnessed. Zayne is in the doorway within seconds, still holding the medical journal he was reading, one finger tucked between the pages to mark his place. He takes in the chipped mug on the floor, the puddle of tea blooming around your slippered feet, and your wide eyes—and his expression doesn’t change at all, except for the faint lift at the corner of his mouth that you’ve learned, over time, is his version of trying not to smile.

“Don’t move,” he says.

He goes for the dustpan, not for you.

It’s a thing he does on purpose. He told you once, late at night with your face pressed into his shoulder, that he doesn’t want fussing over you to feel like a verdict. So he sweeps up the shards in that quiet, methodical way he has—same hands that handle patient charts, same hands that tie his scarf for him in the mirror every morning—and only when the floor is dry and safe does he straighten up and look at you properly.

“Feet,” he says, and crouches.

“Zayne, I’m fine, it didn’t even—”

“Feet,” he repeats, in the same tone he uses on patients who try to lie about whether they’ve been taking their medication.

He checks for tiny cuts even though there are none.

You sit on the edge of the counter because he’s lifted you there, his palm warm at the back of your knee, and you can feel your ears going hot in that traitorous way they do whenever he’s this close and this serious. He turns each of your feet over in his hand like he’s reading them. Nothing. Of course there’s nothing. He knew there’d be nothing.

“Was it hot?” he asks.

“Lukewarm. I let it sit too long again.”

“Mm.” That single syllable contains an entire diagnosis. You forgot it on the counter because you got distracted reading. You always do.

He kisses your knee before he lets you down. It’s quick. Almost businesslike. If you weren’t paying attention you’d miss the way his ears go a shade darker under his hair, the way he turns toward the cabinet for a clean mug a beat too fast.

“I’ll make you another,” he says, with his back to you. “Sit. Don’t help.”

“I can hel—”

“Sit.”

Later, you find the chipped mug glued back together on the windowsill.

He doesn’t mention it. He never does. But that night, when you apologize again into the dark of the bedroom—I’m sorry I’m such a mess, I’m sorry, I—he sighs, pulls you closer by the waist, and murmurs into your hair, “Stop apologizing for being someone I want to take care of.”

And you don’t know what to do with that, so you just hide your face in his chest, and he lets you.

Xavier - The Counter Is Too High Again

He’s half-asleep on the couch when he hears the stool wobble.

Xavier sleeps the way cats sleep—anywhere, instantly, with one ear still on the world. So even though his eyes are closed and his hair is a soft pale mess against the cushion, he’s already sitting up by the time the legs of the kitchen stool screech against the floor. You’re up on your toes, reaching for the jar of honey on the top shelf, the one he keeps meaning to move down and never does because you keep insisting you can get it yourself.

You can’t get it yourself. Both of you know this.

“Wait,” he says, voice still rough from sleep.

You don’t wait. The jar tips. You make a tiny, panicked noise.

He’s across the room before the honey hits the counter.

It’s the speed that always startles you—that quiet, easy way he moves, like distance is a suggestion he chooses not to take seriously. One of his hands closes around the jar mid-fall. The other settles, warm and steady, at your waist, anchoring you on the stool so you don’t pitch forward after it.

“Got it,” he murmurs.

“I almost—”

“I know.”

He says it without any of the I-told-you-so other people would lace into it. Xavier doesn’t scold. He just notes things, the way someone might note the weather, and then he handles them. You look down at him from your slight height advantage on the stool—a rare angle—and his hair is soft and rumpled and his eyes are the color of a sky you’ve been trying to remember.

You go pink. Of course you go pink.

He tilts his head a fraction. There’s a slow, drowsy smile spreading across his face, the kind he only ever wears for you, the kind that makes him look about seventeen years old and very far from anything dangerous.

“What?” you whisper.

“Nothing.” He hands you the honey jar like it’s a small, ceremonious gift. “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”

“Xavier.”

“That’s my name.”

He doesn’t let you climb down by yourself.

You try. He doesn’t allow it. His hands come up under your arms and he lifts you down off the stool like you weigh nothing—because to him you do—and sets you on your feet so gently your slippers barely make a sound on the tile. His thumb brushes once, absently, over your hip before he lets go.

“You could’ve just woken me up,” he says.

“You were sleeping so well.”

“I’m always sleeping well. You’re more important than sleeping well.”

He says things like that all the time. Quiet, true, unadorned. Like it’s nothing. Like he isn’t slowly dismantling you sentence by sentence. You hide your face in your hands. He laughs softly, low and very fond, and pulls your wrists gently down.

“None of that,” he says. “I want to see you.”

He makes the tea himself after that.

He moves you to the counter—not the stool, he gives the stool a small, suspicious look, like it’s personally offended him—and stands between your knees while the kettle heats. You play with the hem of his sleeve. He lets you.

“Honey?” he asks.

“Yes, please.”

“Mm.” He reaches past you without looking, gets the jar, sets it down. Kisses your forehead on the way back. “See. Easy.”

You don’t trust yourself to answer. He doesn’t seem to need you to. He finds you adorable anyway.

Caleb - The Loose Step on the Porch

He warned you about that step three times this week.

The third one from the top. The wood’s gone soft from winter and he keeps meaning to fix it on his next leave, but his next leave is this leave, and he hasn’t gotten to it yet because you keep finding more interesting things for him to do with his afternoons. So when he hears the small, surprised yelp from the porch—followed by the unmistakable thud of someone going down hard—he’s out of the kitchen before the screen door has stopped swinging.

You’re sitting on the floorboards with one hand bracing behind you and the other clutching a paper bag of groceries that, miraculously, you’ve kept upright. An orange has escaped and is rolling, with great purpose, toward the steps.

He stops in the doorway. He takes one look at the scene. His mouth does that thing where it tries very hard not to smile and fails completely.

“Honey,” he says, holding back a laugh..

“Don’t.” you hiss.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.” you huff.

“I was going to ask if you’re okay.” He crouches down in front of you, elbows on his knees, head tipped to one side. His hair falls into his eyes—that soft, sandy brown he never bothers to push back unless you do it for him. “Which step?”

“…the one you told me about.”

“Which one did I tell you about?”

“Caleb.”

He’s laughing now. Quietly. Mostly to himself.

He takes the grocery bag out of your lap and sets it aside with care. Then he takes both your hands and turns them palm-up, checking for scrapes. Methodical, unhurried, all of his focus settled on you. There’s a small graze along the heel of your left hand. He frowns at it like it has personally offended him.

“Stings?”

“A little.”

“Anywhere else?”

“My pride.”

“Well.” His thumb brushes very lightly over the graze. “That one I can’t kiss better. The hand I can do something about.”

He does. Just a press of his mouth, warm and quick, against the inside of your wrist. You feel it everywhere. You always do. He glances up at you through his lashes and catches the color rising in your cheeks, and his smile goes a little crooked, a little pleased with itself.

“There it is,” he murmurs.

“There what is.”

“That face you make every single time. The one where you pretend you’re not embarrassed and you go pink anyway.” He sits down beside you on the porch floor, knees drawn up, shoulder bumping gently against yours.

He retrieves the orange before he retrieves you.

It’s almost at the bottom of the top step by the time he ambles over and scoops it up, tossing it once in the air and catching it without looking. He’s wearing the soft grey t-shirt you stole twice last month, and he looks so much like home in the late afternoon light that you have to look away for a second just to remember how to breathe normally.

He notices that too. He notices everything. It’s a problem.

“You’re doin’ it again, pip.” he says, settling back down beside you with the orange in his hand.

“Doing what?”

“Looking at me like I just walked through the door after six months.” His voice has dropped, lost the teasing lilt. “I’ve been home a week, sweetheart.”

“I know.”

“I know you know.” He turns the orange in his palm, smiling. “I just like that you still do it.”

He helps you up like you’re made of something breakable.

His hand is broad and warm at your lower back, and he lifts you mostly with that one point of contact, the other hand finding yours and not letting go even once you’re standing. You shift your weight tentatively. Your ankle’s fine. Your knee’s fine. Everything’s fine. The only thing that’s not fine is the way your face refuses to cool down, because he’s still looking at you with that quiet, careful attention, like checking you over is something he gets to do now, like he gets to be the one who does it.

“Verdict?” he asks.

“I’ll live.”

“Great.” He bends, picks up the grocery bag, tucks it against his hip. The other hand stays in yours. “Cause I’m fixing that step tomorrow. First thing.”

“You said that last week.”

“I mean it this week.”

“You said that last week too.”

“Pips.” He pulls you in by the hand until you’re tucked under his arm, and presses a kiss into your hair, and you can feel him smiling against the top of your head. “Are you tryin’ to start a fight with the man who’s about to make you dinner?”

He does fix the step. Not tomorrow. That evening, after dinner, with the porch light on.

You watch him from the doorway in his soft grey t-shirt, sleeves shoved up, a pencil tucked behind his ear that he doesn’t appear to be using. He whistles while he works. He glances up every minute or so, just to check that you’re still there, and every time he catches you watching him he grins like he’s won something.

You think, watching him, that he’s been home a week and the house already doesn’t know how to be a house without him in it.

You don’t say it out loud for him to hear. When he comes back inside, dusty and pleased with himself, he takes one look at your face and says, very softly, “I know, baby. Me too.”

And that’s the whole conversation.

Sylus - You Spilled Wine on His Shirt

The shirt is black. The wine is red. The math is, frankly, in your favor.

You realize this approximately half a second after the glass tips, which is approximately half a second too late. The stem slipped—your fingers were nervous because he was looking at you the way he looks at you, like you’re the only interesting thing in a room full of people he’s been politely tolerating all evening—and now there’s a dark patch of wine spreading across the front of Sylus’ very expensive, very tailored shirt.

You stop breathing.

He looks down. He looks at you. He raises one brow.

“Sweetie,” he says, in that low, gravel-and-honey voice of his, “you missed.”

He is, somehow, smiling.

It’s the smallest version of his smile—the one that lives mostly in the corner of his mouth and the slight narrowing of his red eyes—but it is, undeniably, a smile. You can feel your whole face going hot.

“I’m so sorry, I’ll— let me—” You grab a napkin. You grab three napkins. You start dabbing at his chest with a bit too much panic, even for your embarrassed state. “It just slipped, I don’t know why, my hand just—”

“Mm.” He doesn’t move from his spot. He lets you fuss. His hand finds your wrist gently, and stills it. “You’re making it worse.”

“I’m sorry—"

“Stop apologizing.”

He says it the way he says most things—like an order dressed up as a suggestion.

You go still. The napkin sits crumpled in your hand. He’s still holding your wrist, his thumb tracing one slow, idle circle against your pulse point, and his eyes are doing that thing where they soften only at the edges, where you’d miss it if you didn’t know him.

“It’s a shirt,” he says.

“It’s an expensive shirt.”

“They’re all expensive shirts, kitten.” His mouth tilts. “That’s the point of having too much money. You get to be casual about ruining things.”

He plucks the wine glass out of your other hand and sets it well out of reach. A precaution. You catch the small, amused tilt of his mouth as he does it, and you go even pinker, if such a thing is physically possible.

“You did that on purpose,” you accuse, weakly.

“I did.” His voice is unrepentant. “You’re quite clumsy with stemware. I’m protecting my furniture.”

“Sylus—”

“And my floors. And my staff. And—” he leans in, voice dropping low, just for you “—my sanity, which you ruin nightly, by the way. In case you were keeping score.”

You make a small, strangled sound. He looks delighted.

He takes the shirt off right there.

Casually. Like it’s nothing. Buttons undone with that easy, practiced flick of his fingers, and then it’s draped over the back of a chair and forgotten, and he’s standing there in a plain black undershirt that does absolutely nothing to help your current condition.

He notices you checking him out. His smile sharpens.

“Eyes up here, sweetie.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Oh, but you were.”

He hooks one finger under your chin and tips your face up. His expression has gone almost gentle—the version of gentle that only exists in private, the version most of the world will never see and would never believe in if they were told.

“Breathe,” he says quietly. “It’s a shirt. You’re allowed to drop things in your own home.”

Your own home. That’s what undoes you. He always says it like that, like the question of whose home it is was settled a long time ago, and you simply haven’t caught up yet.

Later, he absolutely tells Mephisto the story.

You hear him from the next room, low and amused, and you hear Mephisto’s offended kraa, and you bury your face in a cushion and you think, with a kind of helpless, baffled warmth, that you have never, in all your life, been this loved by anyone half this dangerous.

© zaynessbeloved 2026. please don’t copy, repost or translate my works. thank you!

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