Solace-inu - Yes That's My Chonky Dog

whats your type?

Fictional men written by women.

You Are a Monster, as Am I

pairings: f!reader x naoya

word count: 8.1k

contains: sorcerer!reader, strong-willed f!reader, unfulfilled arranged marriage, childhood enemies to present enemies, angst, events spanning from childhood to present day, proper characterizations, physical brawls (between naoya and reader), conflicted romance, unrequited love (for naoya), parental issues (naoya and reader), eventual love confessions, a single bittersweet kiss, flowery writing

warnings: contains spoilers and canon events, implied/referenced physical abuse (inflicted on naoya and reader), misogyny, violence

a/n: a lot of love and labor went into this fic, so reblogs, comments, likes, etc. are more than appreciated! also a kind thank you to @suguruwrx who reblogged the unfinished version of this and gave me the motivation to continue :) I hope you enjoy

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The Moon shed Her tears for you, glinting among the stars. It is only She who witnessed your crimes.

Two men had lain in the snow at your feet; one still, the other pressing his hands together in prayer. Blood, warm and wet, soiled your clothing and clumped your hair. It was not yours.

Get away, the man croaked, red dribbling from the corner of his lips like a feral hound. His eyes brimmed with salted tears.

At your back, the city was quiet, waiting with bated breath for your final hand. You fetched a coin from the muddied ice and the metal bit against your palm; it was one of many scattered around their bodies.

Devil, he said. Demon, he wailed.

You were but a child, and the Moon may forgive you. 

The man was left for the snow as you ran and the wind nipped at your heels. Your mother had choked for breath when you stepped into the threshold of your home, a broken lip and a dirtied coat.

What did you do? she had rasped. You had mistaken it for a mother’s worry.

You held the coin out for her, a droplet of silver against your skin. It fell to the wooden floors and your trembling hand bore itself empty, but it remained reaching out for her. You might have looked as if you were begging, pleading with this woman and her severe face. Forgiveness, mercy, you should have asked.

Stupid girl, she said, what did you do?

I had to, you cried.

Your father had interceded then; fatigued eyes, skin not yet worn with age but battle. You remember little.

He left that night and did not return until the dawn.

It’s been taken care of, he told you, and your mother made a sound of distaste in her throat.

You will not be the burden of this family, she said, and did not speak again.

-----

A year flitted through your grasp like a writhing serpent, it bit your arm and curled the pulse of your wrist. All was forgotten, if not nothing but a dreadful reverie. Your father had done well to wash his hands of the blood you spilt, though it continued to stain your own skin.

“You will behave,” your mother tugged firmly at the tresses of your hair, “and you will be proper.” A lovely comb of pearl adorned your head, placed by an unkind hand.

We are leaving to meet a very important family, she had said as she ushered you to bathe when you awoke. Do not make a fool of your father and I.

A driver had arrived, the sleek vehicle churning the stones of the road as a prized stallion might.

Seated in its leather interior, your mother propped her knees toward you and inclined her head, “You must remember these names; do not forget them.” Her voice was low, spoken on a whisper. The car jostled, and she took your hand in her own. “Naobito Zen’in—” she said and traced the name into the supple of your palm.

Her brows raised expectantly. 

“Naobito Zen’in,” you repeated.

“—is the Head of the Zen’in Clan,” she continued.

And it went on until each name had been placed in your hand and repeated from your tongue. She told you of their positions in the clan, their accomplishments as Zen’in-blooded men.

“Jinichi will have two scars along his forehead,” she said, eyes flitting to your father, quiet where he sat, “and Ogi will be the man with long and dark hair.”

“Must you continue that?” your father asked, displeasure in his words.

“She needs to be prepared.”

“Certainly,” he scathed, “for your own betterment.”

Ten years of age, and you had not understood. Your stiffened clothing and painted face, your father’s reluctant anger and your mother’s desperation.

The vehicle had slowed before a courtyard. Women milled about, attending to the gardens as their children squealed and caught their mothers’ skirts; their pruning shears poised to nip the stem of a bud before they stilled.

“Come along,” your mother spoke as she stepped out of the vehicle. You trailed obediently, clutching her hand; your father walked ahead, his haori billowing, an angered sail on a ship’s mast.

A single man stood at the doors of the household, polite greetings exchanged before he offered his guidance through the foyer and down a left hall. Your mother’s hand, clasped within your own, lifted to tap beneath your chin.

“Up,” she mouthed.

The man gestured to an open threshold and your father inclined his head before stepping into the room. A table had been set, its bare wood offering rich tea and delicate foods. At its head sat a tall man, the greyed whiskers of his face inciting your mother’s words, Naobito Zen’in. To his right was the scarred man, Jinichi; opposite him was Ogi, tapping the stem of his spoon on the cup’s lip. 

A boy with dark hair that laid across his brow had been seated at Jinichi’s side. He was young, his features plump with youth, though his eyes—a burnished bronze—betrayed that juvenility.

“Please,” Naobito said, motioning a calloused hand, “sit and join us.” The other men did not offer their niceties; they did not believe it necessary.

Your mother bowed at her waist, as did your father and you, before settling on the feather-down pillions; you did not meet the boy’s strange eyes when your mother’s hand guided you to the seat beside his.

Naobito sighed greatly, “Speak, and be quick about it.”

“Are we not here to discuss the arrangement?” your father asked, carefully spoken.

“Ah, yes, that’s correct.” A furrow carved itself in the middle of his mottled forehead. He had not truly forgotten. “You claimed the girl is strong in her cursed energy?”

“She is.”

“And what of it?”

“It is a form of transfiguration, somewhere along a similar vein.”

“How vague.” Naobito rapped the pad of his finger against the table.

“I apologize. We’re uncertain of what she possesses specifically, and have been unable to seek answers from those we had hoped would have them.”

A ribbon of steam ebbed from the tea placed in front of you. Clothing rustled from the boy as he reached for a small platter of confections and brought a flaked pastry to his mouth. Your hands, interlaced within one another, rested atop your lap. You should not fiddle, it proved bad manners, but a hem of worry draped your throat.

The men had continued on. Dowries, they spoke of; you did not know this word. Spearheads and blades, your father said. Coin, Jinichi asked. Your mother remained unspeaking. Porcelain rasped along the table as the boy nudged the plate away, and toward you. He did not look to you, to see if you may take his offer.

Sugared fruits and honeyed cakes had been placed delicately on the etched platter, garnishes of petals and leaves tucked between cream and custards; though, where the boy had taken his confectionery, the arrangement had collapsed. You plucked a tartlet into your hand, soft as a lamb’s ear, and returned the dish to the center of the table.

“It is decided, then?” 

“Yes,” your father said, “it is decided.”

Naobito hummed, “Come here, girl.” A hand beckoned for you. 

And when you rose, settling at the man’s side with legs tucked beneath you, he took your chin in his hold. 

“Her abilities matter little—her features will be more than enough to suffice,” Naobito said. He pressed a thumb to the fat of your cheek, you remembered it hurt when he did so. “You will make a fine wife for Naoya.”

-----

A betrothal of prospect; a vow of heavy coffers and prestige. In exchange for your hand to bear their ring.

“That is all you must do,” your mother said, catching the tears that wet your lashes, “and make the boy happy.”

You had cried terribly, trembling like the fletch of a loosed arrow.

“You will live here, and you will be grateful.” Her harrowing words cloaked in a soft voice.

The poverty that afflicted your family, your mother’s need for a lick of notability; you did not know of these things as a child, and it would reap foul consequences.

“Your father and I will come to visit on the third of every month,” she said. You crumpled her gown in fistfuls, holding her sleeve as if to keep her there with you. It was not your mother who tore your hands from her bodice, but a servant woman; her name was Yuhara, and you would soon learn this when she clutched you tightly, lovingly, pitifully, as your mother and father left in that forsaken vehicle.

Yuhara, beautiful and kind, had led you to your rooms as she smoothed your hair.

“All of this is yours,” she said, and she smiled.

No, you thought, it can’t be. You did not speak.

For days upon days you kept to those strange rooms. Yuhara visited to offer meals that you did not eat; you did not bathe, you did not move unless to relieve yourself. A different servant woman tried her hand each morn to dress you, to coo their commiserations, but you did not care.

One month had slipped between your outstretched fingers, then two. Twice, your parents had returned, and twice did you cry. The women did not come to your rooms anymore, they had stopped long ago. 

Your surprise was palpable when a curt knock came from your door.

“May I come in?” A boy’s voice, broken with adolescence.

You rose from a chaise by the windows to receive him. Naoya, his name was.

“My father wanted me to see to you,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

His mouth thinned, this annoyed him. “You’re lying.” He stood with a straightened back, a stance that demanded subservience. For a child, he held himself as a man might.

And he was right, you did not want to tell him the truth. “No,” you shook your head, and your hand twisted the brass knob idly, “I’m not lying.”

“The women are saying that you’re sad and won’t eat,” divulged Naoya. He paused then, a gauging expression on his round face, before rifling through his pockets. “And my father isn’t happy, he says you’re becoming a burden.”

You averted your eyes from Naoya in shame, a frown on your lips.

“Here,” he said, “it’s from the gardens.” He had tugged a ripened apple into his palm, holding it out for you. 

Naoya had been kinder then, you remembered, even in its brevity.

-----

You were kept separate as children, only seeing one another when you ate your meals. However, Yuhara and the other mothers had a tendency to usher you around the grounds. They taught you to mend stitchings, to wash the linens; they placed your hands on soil and showed you how to garden; they encouraged your studies of language and art and sorcery.

The women did as they were told, and you did as they told you.

At the age of eleven did your docility waver. The mothers began to chastise when you scurried away from your duties, or mouthed rudely. Once did one of the women, Hatake, raise her hand at you; the puckered mark remained for two days.

Your parents continued to visit, though it grew to be less often. You did not cry when they sat opposite you at a table, as if strangers, to ask of your well-being. They would smooth your hair and kiss your forehead, and you would let them.

The following year is when the women began to fret; you had yet to have your first bleed.

“If she cannot bear children,” said Naobito from within the separated room, “she’s no better for use than a servant.”

There was a pause, then, “She’s still young, she’s still growing. I beg of you to give her time,” implored Yuhara. 

“There is no time to give. The girl will either have it or she won’t.”

“And what then?” Yuhara asked, a tone of bother to her inquiry.

Naobito sniffed. “Do you care for this child?”

You pressed your small ear to the wall, listening diligently, shoulder aching.

“Of course, I care for her.”

“Then she’ll become your obligation if she cannot produce an heir.”

And Yuhara stumbled. She could not formulate an appropriate response at the shift in blame.

Naobito said, “Speak out of turn again and the consequences will be far greater than a damned child.”

You bled at thirteen.

-----

Naoya did not know you. It was evident in his false expectations and strange conversation. On the day you wore a blue dress, sitting for a meal, Naoya lifted his chin toward you, a youthful gesture.

“Do you like the color blue?” he asked.

You peered at the sleeves extending to your wrists, “Not this one. It’s too bright.”

He paused, regarding you. Naoya did not speak for the remainder of that supper.

Naoya did not know you, and no one would tell a word.

“She avoids me,” he complained to his father many days. “She’s boring. She doesn’t talk. I’m sure she’d rather be in the courtyards with the other women.”

“And she’s to be your wife,” Naobito would say with little pity. “Whatever will you do, my son?”

Naoya was brash and rude. He criticized where a compliment was due, he remarked disdainfully on others when he should have remained quiet. He was a boy grown into his tenured throne.

Though, it was a bloodied right to hold.

He was often hit when he was younger: a benign slap to his wrist, or a merciful grabbing of his arm. With age came the yellowed bruising and flitting eyes. He lied for ridiculous things, and became angry when he was not right. He trained until the mud lapped at his heels, until he simply could not breathe; and then he would laugh, a breathless and hoarse sound.

And Naoya grew to be a monster.

-----

You were running in the forest when Naoya found you, just shy of seventeen years of age then. You were running from him.

And your chest hurt, your legs constricted, tightened. You were dampened with sweat, panting as you picked your way quickly along the root-ridden ground. You knew that he was not far behind. But you were tired and scared; you could not marry this boy, you could not live at his side for much longer.

A rough hand pulled you from your desperate path and kept you against a tree. You gasped in pain at the impact of bone against bark. And Naoya was upon you, his shoulders rising and falling in an uneven rhythm. 

It was you who laughed now, soft and harrowing.

“Hello, Naoya,” you murmured, your head bowing back to rest on the tree. “Ever the dutiful son.”

His expression twitched and spasmed in restrained ire. For all he prided himself on his composure, it could be so easily broken.

“You’re running from here.” It was a statement, not a question.

“From here,” you said. “From you.”

His mouth thinned. Distantly, you remembered the habit from his childhood; you wondered how you wound up here.

Naoya shook his head. “You’re a fool. You’re a fucking fool.” 

“I don’t think I am.” His fingers pressed into either of your shoulders, keeping you still when you began to writhe.

He dipped his chin, tilted his head—he was following your sporadic jerking, wanting you to look him in the eyes when he spoke. “You have everything here. You are given more than the other women simply for being betrothed to me. Is that not enough for you? Could you really need more?” 

You remembered this moment well. The beginnings of an end.

“Let me go, Naoya. Let me go and your father will just replace me.” His nostrils flared gently, he was very close. “I’m sure he’ll find you a prettier wife, and she’ll learn to love you.”

“Is that what you’ve done?” The forest was dark, and the Moon bore witness once more. “Learned to love me?”

You sighed, smiling. “I could never love you.”

And you learned to be a monster, just as him.

That night in the forest had been the cusp to an edge. You fought brutally with him, a scuffle of choking palms and thin cuts; Naoya won eventually, sitting atop your abdomen to pin you.

“Stop,” he had hissed, holding your wrists somewhere above your head. “Just stop it.”

Neither of you had utilized jujutsu techniques. You considered it a mercy.

-----

At your behest, you changed rooms, picking larger living quarters near Naoya’s. Yuhara had been surprised to hear such a request, but divvied the necessary orders.

These rooms were broader, emptier, with an expanse of windows along one wall. Word reached Naoya quickly and soon he was standing at your new threshold.

“What are you doing?” he asked, long arms folded across his chest. An angry red line remained at his cheek from where you had scratched him the week prior. There was a matching graze on your collarbone from him as well.

“I was tired of my old rooms, and no one’s using these.”

He hummed, keeping at the doorway instead of slating inward. “This is permanent, then?”

“For now.”

Naoya nodded once, a curt thing, before he left. And you thought of what one of the mothers had told you long ago: Learn thy enemy, child, and do not look away.

You scarcely spoke with one another, despite your living in the Zen’in estates for seven years, and kept mainly to menial dinner conversations, even the occasional passing remark. The plighted man and woman, already estranged.

At eighteen did Naoya change. He completed his studies at the jujutsu academy; he became ranked as a special-grade sorcerer. He grew in mindset and strength. Oddly enough, however, you often saw him more.

And Naoya would sometimes accompany you around the estate; silently, he would walk by your side.

“Do you need something?” you asked him one morning, lifting your heavy garments as you stepped over stones.

He motioned toward the book tucked beneath your arm. “You were reading?”

“I was, yes.”

Naoya hummed. “A bit boring, isn’t it?”

You stopped, turned on a heel, “Do you need something?” you asked again. “You make terrible company.”

His hair was blond then, the color beginning from the roots and peddling into his natural hue. “You’re quite rude today. Have I angered you?”

“No. Would you like to?” You smiled thinly. The narrowing of your eyes could be mistaken for genuine creasing simply enough, but Naoya knew otherwise.

“I have nothing better to do.”

“Wonderful.”

He continued on the old path, and you trailed behind, irritated.

It is strange, this memory. When you grew older is when Naoya would tell you many things: he would tell you about this moment, and he would recite it from his own perspective. It would be so very different from yours.

There had been a river, flowing and beautiful, on the edge of the estate acreage. Naoya walked there without thought, clasping a hand over his wrist behind his back. “Have you been this way before?”

You gave pause, peering around the forest. “Yes,” you said, “when I tried to run. And then you stopped me.”

Naoya stilled, looking at you from his peripheral. You did not see his eyes flicker away. 

“I’ve been here many times before that, too. The mothers would bring me here, along with their own children. We would play in the river when it got hot.” You faced him slightly, “I asked you once to join us when we were younger, and you made a face at me.”

He frowned in thought, bending down to pick up a river stone. “I don’t remember that.”

You watched as he skid the flat stone on the water’s surface. It deflected twelve times. “Of course you don’t. At that age, nothing matters all too much for you to want to remember.”

“But you did.” He threw another stone. This one only lasted eleven ricochets. 

Your brows lifted plaintively. “I remember because I was upset afterwards.” The river trickled on, a wary wind swept at your hair. “You can’t begin to imagine what it was like for me here, Naoya. I was a child when my parents offered me to your family; the mothers were kind enough, but their children ostracized me when the women turned their backs to us.” Your tone held a biting stance, nipping at his ears.

Naoya did not speak, so you continued.

“I had thought that you, of all the people in this damned estate, might have had a bit of sympathy to spare back then.” You made your steps toward him, coming to stand at his right. “I had thought that we were going to share the burden of this fucking marriage. I see now that I was wrong.”

He bristled, smoothing a thumb along another stone in his hand. “Do you really want to have this conversation?” You could not place the manner of his words.

“It’s been eight years. Should we wait another?”

“I think you should learn to hold your tongue for longer.”

You whirled on him, clutching the fabric at his throat in your fist and bringing him down toward you; Naoya held tightly to your arm, squeezing until you thought he might break the bone.

“What will you do?” he breathed, indolent and amused. “You can’t kill me.”

When you twisted the white cloth, pressing into his trachea, Naoya only grasped harder to you. He was allowing you to do this, you knew. He wanted to entertain whatever you may do.

“You’re beginning to look like your father, Naoya.”

-----

At night is when you walked the estate halls. It was quiet, and the sun was not so blinding when it tucked beneath the horizon. You moved a wooden door and sidled outside; autumn would soon come, the cold wind said.

A mottle-colored cat grazed its thick fur at your ankles in greeting. The cat was Naoya’s favored animal of the estate, who often curled at his feet and slept. You smoothed the animal’s fur with a kind touch and continued onward. 

There was a small niche between a copse of trees somewhere east of the estate lands; you had found the hidden courtyard at a young age, abandoned and forgotten, before silently claiming it as your own.

When you would return to the estates many years from now, fevered with rage, the courtyard will have been the only area of the lands left untouched from the wreckage.

It was in that courtyard that you practiced, alone. You had watched the men and their sons train enough that you memorized their incessant patterns. They were fond of continuity and repetition. You learned to be the opposite.

Your father had been partially correct in assuming your jujutsu technique: transfiguration. But it was a technique specified solely to curses. You could not replicate another person; you could not transcribe the color of their hair or the bend of their nose to your body. Though, you could sharpen your teeth like the curse beneath the stone bridge, lengthen claw-tips like the creature that loitered in the eye’s peripheral.

And you practiced such in that courtyard. Until your scleras were blackened, horns peering from beneath your hair, leathered wings retracting at your shoulder blades. It was hideous, how your body shivered and roiled. You often vomited when you ingested the blood of the curses to take their attributes; it was an acrid taste, rotting, festering on your tongue. 

You kept the vials of collected blood beneath a flagstone in the courtyard, in a pocket of soil you had dug. And when you lifted the moss-infested stone, you went painfully still. The vials were not there. Frantically, you tore at the soil.

“No,” you hissed. “No, no, no.”

A scrape of a shoe against rock had you reeling around suddenly. Naoya stood at the outskirts of the courtyard, and held up the glass fixtures between his fingers.

“You have very odd night habits,” he said, looking curiously at the collected blood. “I’ve been paying attention.”

Your heart beat heavily in your chest, pressing against your lungs. You primed indifference onto your features. “You only pay attention to what suits you at the moment.”

He hummed, then sniffed in ire. “Yes, I do.”

Truly, you did not have much to say.

Naoya was silent a moment, then, “Why do you have these?”

“Blood is best for the roses,” you said sensibly. “And better to be stored away somewhere safe.”

“It’s almost autumn. The roses are dying.”

“They can be saved.”

“Can they?” He swirled the blood idly, coming closer to you as he did so. “You cannot cheat what death deals. It’s unnatural.”

“It’s only hen’s blood. Yuhara brings it back when she goes into town for the butcher.”

Naoya tugged the cork stopper from the vial. “I suppose this is quite useless then.” He lifted the glass, tipping it above a cropping of grass. He paused.

You had been watching the blood dribble to the edge, and he had been watching you. 

“You’re just going to let me do this? I thought you were more dignified than that.” He clicked his tongue.

A furrow etched itself between your brows, a twitch rose beneath your eye. “It’s hen’s blood—it matters little to me.”

“Oh, don’t play stupid. Did you think I wouldn’t figure out what you’ve been doing? Do you think I don’t know what this is?”

You paled, your lips parting in unease. You wondered, briefly, how this conversation might end. You wondered, distantly, what Naoya might do.

“Show me.”

You swallowed, a stiff sound. “What?”

“Show me your technique, I want to see it.” He offered you the vials now. “I’ve always wanted to know how a transfiguration one worked.”

You did not yield a step when Naoya neared. “It’s not transfiguration.” A lie.

“No?”

“No.”

He sucked on his teeth. “I remember when you first came here, your father said it was something similar to transfiguration, but no one knew exactly what.” Naoya pocketed all but one vial, “So, let’s not be quick to lie.”

You had seen Naoya use his technique many times, but this had been different somehow. He was standing before you, then abruptly behind you as he curled a hand beneath your jaw. He scarcely moved when you plunged an elbow into his abdomen, only groaning lowly, tightening his hold on you, anticipating your attempt to shatter his nose against the crown of your head.

“Easy,” he cooed as one might a spooked horse, breathless and with a smile to his voice. Naoya forced your mouth open, his fingers digging into the junction of your jaw. He poured the blood down your throat as you coughed and thrashed violently; Naoya closed your mouth when the vile was empty, clasping a palm over your lips. And you gagged, your body tensing and wanting to curl in on itself, but Naoya kept you against him until he felt you swallow.

He let you go, let you stumble to the flagstones. Naoya was waiting.

“You bitch,” you heaved, and red dribbled from your lips to smatter below you. “You stupid fucking bitch.”

You could sense Naoya watching you as he said: “You have an absolutely foul mouth.”

When you turned, peering over a shoulder to him, you laughed. And you laughed. And you laughed as you crawled to your feet and faced him. You were twitching grotesquely, moving perversely. Long points of teeth pricked at your lips, your pupils constricted and dilated, your flesh turned ashen, and dark blood dripped from your eyes. You were a monster.

Naoya believed this was the effect of a full vial, but you had not taken it in its entirety; the majority of the cursed blood was left on the stones, on your clothing, smeared on Naoya’s hands. A complete vial would be enough to kill, though he could not have known.

His expression was that of delight and utter horror.

You surged forward. Naoya did not maneuver quickly enough.

Your talon caught the meat of his arm, sliced it, and Naoya stifled his cry of pain.

You wanted to feel his blood again, you thought, you wanted to cut his throat. You did not care if the mothers heard, if Naobito listened to the sounds of a dying son. You were angry, raging, roiling with madness.

This estate that took your hand, kissed your palm, and asked of you to stay where it would always be safe. These people who clothed you, fed you, and claimed that you should be a grateful woman. And Naoya…oh, Naoya. 

The boy who had been promised excellence and did not understand that promise held such little weight. The child who grew to be a terrible boy, a worse man. You were still so young then, only nineteen, as was he. You wondered if it might have happened differently, if you would want it to.

And then he was upon you once more, raising his hands to fists, bracing his lower body. “Father would never tell me about your technique,” he said fervently, reaching for your shoulder. “I always wondered why.”

You avoided his touch, moving to splice the skin at his face; he did not let you get close enough. It was an unusual parry, whereas you fought to kill, Naoya fought to irritate. He enjoyed watching your features transform, mutilate themselves into something entirely new.

At one point did he stumble on a deep groove of a rock. The front of his clothing tore beneath your blackened nails, wanting to pierce his heart. It was a lucky fall, you supposed, until you were atop him, a hand to his neck and talon-ends causing the flesh to give way.

You were reminded of when you had tried to run from this place, and Naoya had debilitated you in a similar manner.

“You won’t do it,” he whispered, as if he knew all. His bronze eyes were alight beneath you.

Pricks of blood wept from his throat. Naoya winced.

“I hate you,” you rasped, “I hate you, Naoya. And I will make you want to slit your own throat by the end of it.”

He shifted, and you felt his chest rise and fall heavily. “We’re set to marry in a week. Don’t be rash.”

You shook your head, a sudden scoff. And when you made to speak, another voice filled in your stead.

“That is quite enough.”

Naobito Zen’in stepped into the courtyard, the moonlight spilling on him. Your body remained taut, poised over his son; you did not let go.

“If you wish to kill him,” Naobito began, “by all means, do so. No son of mine would be bested by a woman—his betrothed, nonetheless.” There was disgust, disappointment, to his words.

You smiled, and vomited the cursed blood onto the flagstones.

-----

You were not left unattended for the remainder of the week. 

Naobito kept one of the men with you, a large and brute thing, he had a thin scar at the corner of his mouth. He had been introduced as ‘Toji,’ before Naobito made his leave and gave little explanation.

Toji did not speak often; he held a palm to the pommel of his sword and let his eyes wander about. And on one early morning, when you had been pruning a dead hydrangea bush, you leaned close to Yuhara and asked, “Is he always like this?”

Yuhara paused, nipping a root thoughtfully. “He’s strange,” she settled on. “Every family needs their pariah.”

Your expression pinched in question. She sighed gently from her nose.

“He’s not your enemy, if that’s what you’re wanting to know. He’s far from it.”

You gathered fallen leaves at leisure, a collection of reds and golds. “Naobito’s making him keep watch over me.” Toji was sitting by a veranda, twirling a blade in his hands.

Yuhara turned, the etchings of her skin deepening, “What happened?”

After you returned to the household the previous night, unrestrained, with Naoya and Naobito, the latter had struck you across the face, wholly apathetic. “If you can’t discipline your own wife, allow me to do so,” Naobito had seethed to his son. Then he looked to you, “Do not speak of this to anyone, lest you want to be truly punished.”

A thorn nicked the pad of your finger and you startled. “Nothing happened. Just precautions for the wedding, I guess.”

The following night, Toji walked you silently to your rooms after supper. You were watching your slippered feet step in front of you when Toji cleared his throat.

“You’re set to be Naoya’s wife?”

You lifted your head then, swallowing unsurely. “Yes.” For now, you wanted to tell him.

Toji hummed, “I’m very sorry.”

It was all he said.

-----

Naoya was staring at you.

You glanced up from the tea you held, now watching him as well.

You let yourself think, for a brief moment, what it might have been like if he were a different man, and you, a different woman. Another man would surely be eager to touch his wife, kiss her gently; another woman would be smiling, holding her lover’s hand.

Tomorrow would be the wedding.

And you would not be there.

Naoya raised a brow, a question, as if to ask: ‘What?’

You sniffed indolently. ‘Nothing.’

“Are you listening?” Yuhara chided you.

When you blinked, now facing Yuhara, Naoya remained surveying you. “Yes,” you said. “Yes, I’m listening.”

At the large table sat Naobito, Jinichi, Ogi, your mother and father, and a few other decently regarded women—Yuhara among them. They spoke of how the wedding would proceed, the tie officiated between the Zen’in clan and your family.

You stopped listening once they reached conversation of the ceremony.

-----

Again, in the beginnings of dawn, did Toji speak once more on the path to your rooms.

“You’re going to run tonight, aren’t you?” He stood at the threshold of your rooms, tilting his head at your retreating back. Toji heeded how you stiffened before you turned.

“No.” Resolute; a lie.

He scoffed, and then he smiled amusedly. “I know how this goes. You run for it when everyone’s too busy to bother with you.”

“You’re very observant, but I don’t intend on doing such.”

Toji frowned in thought. “And you’re a good liar. Did you learn that from Naoya?”

“No.” Yes.

“Well,” Toji said, “you seem intent on being well-behaved.” He sounded to be mocking you.

Your features were guarded as he continued, leaning his heavy shoulder to the door jamb.

Toji gestured a hand lazily to the columns of windows behind you, “Shame those don’t open, the weather’s real nice tonight. But I’m sure someone will keep a side entrance unlocked to let the breeze through the house.”

“Yes,” you said carefully, “what a shame.”

-----

Toji was not in the hallway when you opened your door late in the night. You tugged at the satchel on your shoulder, becoming another terrible little creature to roam under the light of the moon. All was quiet and still in the Zen’in estates.

For the past hours, you had deliberated between two evils; you found that you would prefer the risk of a betrayal from Toji than wed Naoya. So, you ran.

You were nothing but an old ghost in that dreadful house. Your feet did not make a sound, you scarcely breathed; you were not alive that night, a dead man slating from the noose already tied about his neck.

There was a side door, unlatched and ajar. You waited in the alcove down the hall, watching the door to see if someone would emerge. No one did so. And it was easy to slip through the threshold.

Then there were the bodies of many men—propped on the stone wall, left on the ground—who had been stationed to guard just outside the entrance. Their throats had been cut, eyes pressed out of sockets, limbs only tethered by bits of sinew and muscle.

You kept running.

-----

In the Zen’in estates, Toji Zen’in walked idly through the halls for your bedroom. You would surely be gone. He held a hand to his side, staunching a wound from one of the men’s blades. Soon, Naoya and the others would begin to search for you once the sun rose.

And he waited in that bedroom, his blood staining your sheets, wondering what he might do.

-----

Naoya Zen’in woke suddenly. His eyes shifted, hands clambering for the linens. Quickly, he dressed and made for your rooms; he felt something was wrong.

He found the blood first, stippled along the wooden floorboards, growing in frequency toward your rooms. Naoya ran for your door then, his feet slipping along the blood, pushing it into the deep crevices and nicks of the floors. 

His hair laid at his brow, boyish and tousled from sleep; his skin was pallid in the moonlight. Naoya plunged into your rooms, frenzied, wild-eyed.

“Oh. You’re early.”

Toji sat lazily on your bed, a dry pride to his stature.

“Where is she?” Naoya breathed. “Where is she?” He was moving toward Toji, unadulterated rage ushering his body forward.

As Naoya lifted his hands, Toji lifted himself from the bed. 

“What did you do?” His hands had begun twitching, curling as he hedged around Toji. It was then that he saw the light stain of red on your sheets. The first assault he delivered to Toji was with little warning, the other man stumbling, touching the broken skin of his cheek. “Did you fuck her?” Naoya seethed.

Toji frowned, looking to the sheets and to Naoya. He seemed to ponder this before he said, “Yes.”

Naoya attacked once more, though Toji moved quickly, using Naoya’s momentum to dispel him to the side. It was a vicious, short fight; fists raising and fast parries until Naoya caught Toji’s side. He pulled his hand away, watching the other man crumple in pain. Naoya peered down to his bloodied knuckles, giving pause.

The blood on your sheets was Toji’s. It was not yours.

“You liar.”

-----

Wings beat heavily at your back, a grotesque making of sharp bones and stretched cartilage. You had taken the blood of a curse with such features, slipping it into your throat. But your body was a cumbrous weight to carry, and you were beginning to tire.

The sky was cloud-ridden this night, no moon to guide by light. You felt your wings loosen their muscles, near blundering from the sky, before you righted yourself. An odd feeling encompassed you, a dreary haze of sorts that stuck its fingers into your ears and closed your eyes. It was not fatigue.

A terrible pain came next. It ripped through your wing and was left suspended in the cartilage: a hunter’s arrow. You cried out, gasping for breath as you fell; the brambles and boughs wound around your body when you plummeted, the hardened dirt catching you unkindly.

You clawed at the ground in your stupor, wanting to get up, needing to get away. There was a foot being pushed to your back, keeping you in place. They tore the arrow from your wing and you screamed; it was a weak sound, hoarse and broken. You could not stop them when they sliced the arrow’s blade through your other wing, pinning you to the forest floor. 

Tears dripped from your cheeks to the moss beneath you, mud pilled beneath your nails. You were the rain of this forest, a creature of this forest. 

You had been so close.

A hand, unfamiliar, tore your head upward as someone knelt down. Naobito Zen’in hummed in thought, wanting you to look at him.

“You are a very stupid girl,” he said, smiling wryly. “And you thought me the fool.” He let your tears run over his hands. “You would have been given everything.”

Naoya had told you something similar once. That was so long ago.

Your unpinned wing flailed violently, hooking the curved bone at the apex into the roots and stones.

“You should learn,” Naobito pressed his fingers into your face, and it hurt when he did so, “when to stop fighting.”

You were screaming again, thrashing wildly for Naobito to step back. The wings would not retract for some time.

“I trust you can take care of this, Naoya.”

A maddened stillness took hold of your body when you heard his name. Naoya drew up beside you, walking carefully. He was staring again, you could not see those burnished eyes, but you understood where they moved. From your spasming wing, to the wound created by the arrowhead, to the other wing pierced through.

You were panting shallowly, trembling from the pain, the cold. Naoya stood in front of you. And when you looked up, he found you. There was a bow slung over his chest. You collapsed once more, your temple pressed against the dirt.

You hated this memory, as you did most.

“Leave us,” said Naoya. Many sets of feet shuffled with purpose. There had been more men, then. 

They soon left, and Naoya and you were alone in that forest. He removed the bow.

He leaned down, bringing a hand to touch your face. “Why?” he asked. “Why must you be so persistent?”

You let him stroke beneath your eye, let him smooth your hair as you laid there. There was a brief silence, then, “You should’ve killed me.”

“Is that what you want?” His fingers moved thoughtlessly to the junction where wing met human flesh.

“No,” you said, strained. Your eyes kept to a tree trunk across the way. Naoya grazed your open wound; assessing or caring, you did not know, but the action left you tensed. Another tear wet your lashes.

A quiet enveloped him and you again. Even the forest did not dare make a sound.

Naoya splayed his hand over the tear. “Can you feel this?” he asked, genuine, wondering. When you groaned, he removed his hand. “I…Father said this wouldn’t hurt you,” he spoke softly to himself.

You were shaking your head weakly, arms coming beneath your body in an attempt to lift upward.

He pushed down gently on your shoulder, moving you back to the ground. “Don’t, you’ll only bring yourself more pain.”

Draped on the forest floor, the haze returned, your hearing and vision dipped and wavered.

Depressants, Naoya murmured angrily. You scarcely caught the mention of tea, as well. In your liminal thoughts, you threaded the words together into coherency: Naobito had placed opiates into your drink earlier in the evening, anticipating this very outcome. However, he had grossly underestimated your body’s strange perseverance.

“Don’t fall asleep,” he was telling you, patting your cheek, jostling your shoulder. “Do not fall asleep.”

You, distantly, felt him leave. When he returned, the slick cold of glass pressed your lips open.

“Drink it,” he demanded, almost frantically. He must have found a blood phial somewhere amongst the grasses, unshattered despite your fall.

That horrible taste of cursed blood fell to your tongue, spreading through your mouth as Naoya kept your chin righted. You did not understand what he was doing. He let you go, rising somewhere else. There came the sound of a quick snap, the arrow; Naoya pulled your wing from the broken arrow and your fingers clawed gouges into the ground, ripped skin being tugged at by the wood of the shaft.

Don’t touch me, you wished to say. Don’t return me to those rooms, to you.

“The estates are in disarray right now,” he said unconcernedly. 

You breathed out, sharp, through your nose like a cornered beast, a simple sign of acknowledgment.

Naoya continued, sitting himself before you, “I found Toji in your rooms, as if he’d been waiting for someone. He said you had escaped—that you injured him and killed the other men for it. He also warned us against following you, that you were far too dangerous.”

Your body began to tremble, the cursed blood chilling your own. Toji had lied to dissuade them from attempting to capture you; it had not been enough.

Naoya pushed closer. The wounds in your wings ached as they slowly closed.

“Why can’t you let me go?” you asked, and it was a weak inquiry, spoken with lips that scarcely opened. You shifted in panic when he reached for you, your nostrils flaring, breath quickening. Naoya pulled you, gingerly, to rest in his lap; he pressed your head to his shoulder, let your wings drag behind you and lay with little strength.

“Have you not realized it yet?” he asked against the crown of your head. 

And you remained silent, mouth thinning tightly. You were afraid of his next words.

“For all you hate me, you have always been mine to have.” Naoya spoke methodically, gauging each of your movements. “You have fought me for so long, and here we find ourselves: together, unchanged.”

Your fingers twisted in his clothing, a wing twitching.

He held you like a lover might, close and tight. “I said to you once that you cannot cheat death, so let me offer you one more thing.” Naoya paused.

Beneath your hands, you could feel his chest lift and fall, his breath fluttering your hair. You were weak in his arms, susceptive to his hand that brought your face to his. 

Naoya had always been beautiful, a beauty that brought you to the edge of a cliff and asked of you to fall with it. Though, you had never fallen, too caught on the hatred that guided you away. 

If only Naoya was a different man, and you, a different woman.

He said, “You cannot fight Fate with a blade, darling.”

Then, Naoya kissed you beneath the trees, and what a strange thing it was. He was warm, uncertain, and slow; he kept you against him, his lips brushing yours when he pulled away only enough to see your eyes.

He was watching you curiously, touching his palm to your cheek, running his thumb along your lips pinkened by him. His nose brushed yours, as if in affection.

“I know,” you said, low and hushed.

Your talons bore into Naoya’s shoulder, reaching bone, blood pulsing as he shouted in agony. And then you were running, dashing carelessly through that forest, tripping and stumbling. Your wings beat in waiting, pacing your rhythm until they filled with the autumn wind.

Naoya bellowed through the forest, his angered words lost to the air that scurried around you. His blood had begun to sticky your hand, warm as his body had been.

And you flew desperately that night, tears wetting your eyes before being plucked away by the wind. 

It hurt, it was a wound like no other: the freedom that you fought for, finally regained.

-----

Present Day, Seven Years Later

The Moon peered from beyond the horizon; she did not want to watch this.

Naoya laid bleeding on the wooden floors of the Zen’in estates. He feared he would continue to spill his blood on those panels. Beside him laid his succumbed aunt, her mouth was slackened, features wholly blank.

He watched her blood pour, and pour, and pour around them. He watched his blood spill, and spill, and spill into hers. Red unto red; blood unto blood.

In all the moments Naoya believed he might die, they had never been in the midst of a battle, or from a grave wound. They had always been with you.

Tucked within that old forest, catching you when you were younger; by that cold river, when you pulled him closer; in that desolate courtyard, when you cut him; and that egregious night, when you got away.

You were the only thing capable of death, and Naoya believed it so. As it be, you cannot dance with skeletons and expect them to have hearts.

He was dying when he heard the footsteps. Naoya could only wait and play witness to whomever stumbled upon him.

And then came your voice. Your terrible, beautiful, cold voice. 

“Oh, Naoya,” you breathed.

He wanted to move, needed to see if you had truly returned. Though, his limbs remained weakened, his thoughts reeling rampantly.

“Naoya,” you whispered gently, smoothing his blood-matted hair, “I’m not done with you yet."

ROOT ROT

possessed!scholar husband x reader |18+| 3.4k

following your husband's return from his deceased uncle's estate, he has not been the same man. you confide in your husband's best friend and colleague on the matter of these eccentricities, only for him to resurface a depraved recent past.

story warnings; dead dove do not eat, explicit sexual content, major dubcon, sort of coercion, implied double penetration, mentioned voyeurism, cumshot on stomach, cum eating, graphic + horrific details, unrequited love (ox to reader), smoking, drinking, heavy prose + detail, roughly proofread.

reposted from my old blog: theoxenfree

this is a concept piece and follow up to imposter. you don't have to read it, but it definitely helps for understanding!!

please leave feedback + reblog, it would mean a lot!!

“He is simply not himself!”

Bartolomé Medina knew his best friend better than you knew your husband, so you believed him when he said that your husband’s newly acquired, increasing eccentricities were not some fictitious imagining of yours.

Although, Medina himself could not explain the unexplainable and all of the oddness without growing visibly flustered. A bit flushed in the face, singeing the roundness of his ears. He'd stamp out your justifications for strangeness in the same way he did the fine cigars he'd been accustomed to sharing with his friend, yet had not for quite sometime now.

“And you say his garden is dead?” Medina looked stricken with dread, suddenly ill by repeating something so blasphemous. “Now, my dear, please don't mistake my shock as disbelief. I very much believe in what you're saying. I've seen Solomon and his weirdness! Why, just this morning over breakfast, at a time where you were still tucked away in deep sleep, he wouldn't drink his coffee. So bizarre! That man knows the thousands of tastes and varieties of coffee beans, and he spat the very stuff out on the floor like it'd never once touched his tongue!

“But his garden? A botanist without his garden is like a bird without wings. A dog without a tail to wag. A newborn without his mother’s teat! Vulgar, I understand, but you see my point.” He drank from a heavy glass in his hand. The inside had nearly spilled over at one point with light brown which glittered gold under the overhead light, smelling slightly sour and earthy. “To think that Solomon would let it all die. Something is wrong. Something has happened to my only true friend and to your husband.”

You did not drink with any enthusiasm or anguish from your own cup, rather you used those seconds of delicate sipping to gap the conversation, separate yourself from it all for just a moment. You'd had your time to grieve and contend with knowing the man you had married and come to love was not the same one who kept you awake at night.

Solomon had once been a reclusive and reticent man, the only son of David Agrippa and sole heir of the Agrippa Diamond Mines and Jewelry Galleria. He'd never been able to replicate his father's ardor for business and entrepreneurship, choosing towards academic ventures of entomology and botany and most of everything belonging to the natural world instead.

Among his most prized things was a sprawling, domed greenhouse made of large sheets of pale blue-green glass soldered with metal which shifted rose-gold in bright daylight.

“I loved his garden, but I didn't much like to be in there with him,” you confessed, forgetting your manners as you kept your cup still against your lips, mumbling your words. “He liked to tell me about the plants and flowers he grew. Most of it I could never hope to understand, but… I loved seeing him come alive. He seemed to glow when he could tell me things, so I got into the habit of listening to him when he wanted to speak.”

Medina, not yet drunk or driven to any untoward behavior, set aside his empty vessel with jittering ice cubes and looked at you admiringly. “You said that you didn't like being in there with him? Why?”

“The bees. The bugs. The humidity. The fertilizer he liked to use because of the nitrogen content. He told me that it mattered what he used and couldn't just break up soil from the yard.” You said, tilting your cup.

After taking another sip, you determined you hated the taste of the liquor and how it slid down along your throat like fire trailing an oil spill, yet clung there with residual, syrupy stickiness that nearly made you gag.

“Why did you keep going inside?” Medina asked tranquilly, much of his previous frustration softened, body and soul warmed by the alcohol and how fondly he regarded your sweetness towards his friend.

You thought very little before answering, “I wanted to be where he was. It didn't matter to me if that meant his greenhouse or the coldest part of the arctic.”

That was the truth of it. Once you'd received the first crumbs of understanding who Solomon truly was beneath his stolid exterior built brick-by-brick from tragedy and grief and a lifetime of emotional ineptitude, you would've gone to any length to see more of him. To see his pale eyes gain a wild, flickering candlelight of passion, and the faintest of trembling smiles disguising how deeply your questions had aroused his soul.

In those moments, he revealed to you the things he loved the most and what you envied the most: the natural world.

The flittering, fat-bodied pollinators whose entire world were yellow and red flowers with succulent centers and lush, girthy leaves where they'd rest their weary, iridescent wings and could never understand your husband's appreciation of them.

The thousands of specimens he'd collected from every corner of the world and articulated thoughtfully against wood and felt. Their dead little limbs were pinned in place; perfect mimicry of how they would've been if still alive and crawling. He’d had them all meticulously framed and arranged across the walls in his office; trophies of his success, of his studies and hard work.

The innumerable plants and flowers he trimmed and watered in his greenhouse and the ones not contained within it. Some species he had planted in the yard, others in the cool shade of the nearby woods where they smothered native varieties with tendrils-like vines and climbed upside trees. More aquatic species were placed by the edge of the lake, growing into the water; buoyant; a woman's deep dark hair reaching forever for the surface.

He had turned the lonely, sprawling estate into a monument of life, of love that did not belong to you. And for that, sometimes you hated living there. Hated the things that he loved.

Choking the plants, poisoning their roots with any number of things from your father’s pharmacy crossed your mind more than once.

Feeding the bees something enticingly sweet and deadly; filling the greenhouse with noxious gas at night while they slept on their big leaves and your husband in his bed. It would've been such an easy thing for you to do—own your husband's grief as you held his face in your hands and comforted him in the morning when all had atrophied and rotted.

But, those feelings had become a reality you truly never wished to have seen after Solomon returned from his deceased uncle's estate months ago.

He was not the same man.

“Tell me what happened.” Medina’s voice buzzed in your ear from nearby, closer than it had been before. Your hand was caressed by tight warmth—his holding yours, his handsome face looking up at you from where he had crouched in front of your chair. “Tell me everything you've seen. It's of grave importance that you remember it all, as curing Solomon from his affliction relies solely upon you.”

You could not deny his earnestness, the squeeze of his fingers. A promise that he would not be easily shattered by what you had to say, and would think no less of his friend for it. Within his sincere stare, you saw the gleam of another, secret promise. The likes of which you pretended not to see, that he'd never speak of out loud.

“I…” you distracted yourself with the embroidery on your clothes, pinching loose threads and beads. “It was subtle, at first. I noticed some of the bees were dead on the ground. And then some plants had started developing spots. Leaves turned brown and yellow and fell off. A lot of them withered, even though their soil was still damp when I checked…”

And then, the morning came where you witnessed Solomon among a carnage of broken stalks weeping foul-smelling sap, leaves he'd ripped apart with his own hands, and some of his larger flowering plants with fiery manes completely severed. Their bountiful heads lay at his feet, flattened by the heel of his boot as he walked aimlessly, snipping and tearing indiscriminately.

“My god, Solomon! Stop!” you stepped around the countless tiny, contracted bodies of bees and other pollinators to reach him. He let go of the gardening shears as you grabbed them. “What are you doing?! What have you done?! Decades of work! Gone! Are you mad?!”

“Well, you've gone and ruined my surprise for you. I've been working on it for hours. I didn't expect you would be awake so soon.” Solomon said, sounding much like himself despite the savagery he stood surrounded by. He smiled at you in an unfamiliar way, as if trying to navigate his facial muscles around a mask. “Isn't it simply wonderful?”

The sweltering humidity trapped within this greenhouse of death had turned the air stagnant and foul, heavily pungent of detritus and mildew. Across all zones of the greenhouse, once painstakingly organized and labeled for the purpose of easier cataloging, no slithers of greenery or color remained. Each step you took in any direction seemed to sink you deeper into the decay, wet gurgling underfoot as you crossed stumpy mounds of plants and flowers he'd destroyed and thrown into piles.

“How could you? My husband spent almost twenty years building this garden and studying it. This was his life’s work!” You wished you could force life back into the severed plants; pray that the ground of yellow-brown waste would suddenly freckle with tiny, green sprouts and grow with thick stalks and thorns to keep his hands away.

“I am your husband.” Solomon took the gardening shears from your hand and tossed them aside. He leaned into your body, nose and lips pressed into the fabric covering your neck. “I've only done what you wanted. What you wished you could've done yourself, but never did.”

You flinched against the movement of his hands smoothing down your waist to the notches in your hips. Sliding inward, he unfastened the hook-and-loops and buttons holding your trousers up to push them down your thighs along with your undergarments.

“I know your thoughts and what you really think. I've been listening the entire time. I've always been listening.” Solomon let his hips roll along the back of his hand while he used his fingers to lay long, languid strokes on you. “It was tiring, wasn't it? Always competing for love and affection in a place like this. You were never going to have what you wanted. Not with this place still standing. Not with his ineptitudes and selfishness.”

His touch weakened you indescribably; like the caress of heat from the fireplace against your bare skin once the opium had taken effect. Swapping tiny pills on wet tongues with your maid until they'd dissolved into saliva and into your cheeks. You explored one another's bodies thoroughly on those cold nights, silky with sweat from the fire and exertion.

Yet, this was not the same as back then when the sexual appetite of two teenagers transcended societal morals.

Solomon encompassed you in a feeling; consumed you without ever digging into you with his teeth or nails. He could whisper hideous secrets and depravities to you to tip you over into searing euphoria. He had once penetrated you with a hot metal phallus resting on top of his own, thrusting with both until the metal cooled, and you still came anyway.

He'd put worse inside your body and done far worse than that in only a few short months since returning home, yet he never tired of the torture and you remained malleable and enthralled by it all.

“God, you are so beautiful. And you are mine.” Solomon had maneuvered both your bodies to the ground, atop of the soggy detritus. Your back was exposed to the mush, leaves, and crushed flower petals, weight pushing an indentation in the loose soil. “This is the fruition of your desires, darling. Don't you love it? Destroying what he loved so you could have it all?”

The one who came back to you was not Solomon; the one fucking you into waste and dirt was not Solomon, either. You told yourself you needed to love imposter as well, because he looked like your husband; wore his signet ring, too.

At night, you imagined only his softest expressions behind clenched eyelids when he wanted to have his way with you, as something else entirely took his place. A creature so diabolical and unsightly that the servants now awaited your screams to rouse them awake in the murky midnight hours.

Every time they arrived with their candlesticks and oil lanterns, the thrusting spectre receded into the dark as a black mass hardly distinguishable from shadow.

Only Solomon would remain, and he was swift to send the servants away before they could see your improper, disheveled state sprawled across the bed sheets.

In the daytime light, his face stayed familiar and comforting to you and you could bear to see him, form some coherent words.

“Someone might—might see us out here, Solomon. Mr. Medina is supposed to—oh, oh, mmm—he’s due to arrive at any time.” You were given several long kisses, which turned into severe caresses of hot breath when his thrusts turned savage, cock reaching so deep you were starting to feel numb below the waist. A feverous response. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

He adjusted himself to lay on your chest, the sweat on your bodies offering an effortless glide and new angle for his cock that made your moans deeper and dire. Such sounds, whether in agony or pleasure, were melodious to him. Addicting drags from a pipe in an opium den; an alcoholic's first sip at breakfast; a cheating man's night with a new lover.

“Wouldn't you like for them to see that? For someone to witness you being fucked into the ground? Surrounded by everything their master loved?” Solomon tucked his face into the curve of your neck and groaned, hips slow and stuttering. “Bartolomé would be the one to find it most tantalizing. His only friend in the world ruining the only person he's ever loved. Wouldn't that be a sight? We could invite him to watch.”

At the time, it had been quite jarring to learn Bartolomé harbored those silent, ardent feelings for you. It had sufficiently pulled you from whatever trance Solomon had lulled you into, reacquainting you with all the sounds of sex and the filth clinging to your skin. It was as though your mind had been locked into a mostly airless, noiseless void that he controlled and released at will.

You held tight to his shoulders as he molded you deeper into the muck and plant litter. The squat, friable walls of soil holding your shape like the cushions in a tomb, whereas Solomon was the man lowering you into the dark earth; the last to see your face before covering it in clay and dirt.

He was in your ear with loud moans that resonated through you, simultaneously as carnal as a beast amidst its seasonal rut, and velvety as the feathery smooth glide of fingers down your spine. His throat rumbled against you, resembling the intensity of a purring housecat nestled near your head in contentment.

At his tipping point, he removed his cock from your body and used the slippery stuff glistening off it to stroke himself; weepy, deep red tip to the base. You received the aftermath of his release in thick ropes across your abdomen and chest, the warmth of it already cooling on your skin while he continuously kneaded the head to force out what remained as if they were dewdrops made from pearls.

“How do you think Bartolomé would fare seeing you like this?” Solomon swept two fingers through the cum in an elegant curl to smear it around his cock. The viscous white thinned into pale gloss on his girth and a sticky residue inside his hand.

Your lips parted to give an answer, but his fingers and taste were faster than your words.

“And… that is all? Truly?” Bartolomé asked, shattering your visions of the recent past as he revealed a compact silver case from inside his vest, pulling a cigarette from within it. “You simply walked into the garden one morning and saw that he had destroyed everything? He gave you no explanation whatsoever?”

The imposter had stolen much of your dignity over the months, but enough of it remained for you to omit every significant detail from your story. You'd only told him that Solomon had cut the heads off of rare flowers, mumbled in a disorienting way, and gave you no difficulty with the gardening shears.

Bartolomé went away from your side for an open window across the spacious sitting room, matching his cigarette and blowing gray plumes out into the dense summer air.

“This is concerning.” He spoke loud enough for you to hear, even with his thumbnail tracing the underside of his lower lip, muffling him somewhat. “Solomon is considerably worse off than I first thought. We need to investigate this, retrace his every step since the moment he left you that night for his uncle's estate.”

“Oh, Bartolomé, that will be very unnecessary.” Solomon announced himself as he walked in through the open doors, offering you a tepid smile, which came nowhere close to reaching his eyes. Your chair jostled slightly as he stood behind it, a weighty hand landing on the tall back above your head. “Why trouble yourself with employing some ludicrous scheme when you could, ah, inquire as to what haunts you instead?”

Bartolomé tamped out his cigarette on the windowsill and pocketed it. “You are ill, Solomon. You may be suffering from some form of hysteria. It's time you visited a doctor, my old friend.”

“Well, that just isn't true.” Solomon kept the neutrality in his tone, but you tracked a rumble of agitation; a warning not far off. His hand followed the curvature of the chair down to the arm that you leaned against, fingers touching your shoulder, lightly kneading you through your clothes.

He was sure to be in Bartolomé’s eyesight as he did this, further aggravating the heavy disquiet. You didn't dare to move out of reach of his touch.

“But, it is true, Solomon!” Bartolomé insisted, gesturing toward the window. “What of your garden? All of your life's work now means nothing, you damned fool! You've snapped, old boy. See a doctor before you do something you regret.”

“That garden was more a source of misery than it was a boon. At any rate, I'm quite finished listening to you harp at me for one night, my dear friend.” Solomon lightly stroked down your cheek with bent fingers, coaxing you to look up at him. “It's time for bed, darling. Us impropertious brutes have kept you up for too long.”

You hesitated, and then stood when Solomon took your arm. “Alright.”

“As usual, your accommodations should exceed expectations. I'll have a servant wake you for breakfast again tomorrow.” It was too soon to call those Solomon's departing words to Bartolomé, as he stopped with you in the doorway, your hand caressing the meat of his forearm. “You know, Bartolomé, I would recommend marrying soon. There is no greater feeling than having the one you love so close to you, don't you think?”

Bartolomé became unreadable as he fished a hand into his vest pocket for the cigarette case again. You were led away for the bedroom before anything else could be said, but you knew that Solomon had struck a nerve.

“That was cruel.” you said.

Once in the bedroom, your back was pressed flush to the door while he unfastened the buttons to your outerwear and the blouse underneath it. Solomon kissed your lips slowly, first, before moving underside your jaw after shucking you down to your undergarments.

“And you are mine. You made your vows to me. Remember that, my sweet.”

You watched him strip out of his clothes and then stroke the length of his cock until it was hard.

“I married someone else. Not you.”

As he dimmed the lights within the space, sweeping the bedroom under a shroud of near pitch black, your annoyance shifted into a swell of anxiety both freezing cold and burning hot. Your body pulsed in rhythm with your wild heartbeat, throat clenched as tightly as infantile flower buds.

You waited for Solomon to touch you, startling once he finally did. His fingers had elongated and sharpened, his touch now far more delicate and methodical.

“Don't worry, he’s still in here with me.”

mappa’s fanservice is crazy!!!!

(Reference: Ye Hao in "heatstroke" for GQ china)

Alcide the Vampire

Vampires in space is basically the theme of this story. Well, not really, but that seems eye catching. A young, mortal, woman is the charge of a vampire royal whose ship is on the way back to the vampire planet. She is unsure if she is kept for love or duty, and her vampire master seems extremely dependent on her presence.

(TW: blood, dark romance)

Female Reader x Male Monster

I wish I was like the others. This thought comes to me as I stare out towards the foot of my bed. I would like to dream forever as the others do, to sleep perchance to wake. I remove myself from bed, setting my feet down upon the cold floor. There are no windows to speak of here, but they place curtains upon the wall as if to mimic one.

I am not alone long, I am never alone long. My attendants are many, but they are more like guards. They assure I look my best, that I stay in place, that I am never too far from my family. Not that Alicde would let me stray anyways. He needs me, and I need him as well.

To dream forever, I think as they dress me. To lie in one place, resting, unconscious, unaware. They do not know what goes on around them. The others. Nowhere and yet everywhere. Meanwhile, I am everywhere but nowhere.

“There we are, princess.” Lady Renata whispers to me as she finishes putting on the cuffs around my wrists. She smoothes down my shirt then reaches up and does the same to my long hair. She gives me a look, her nearly hollow eyes stare just a bit too long for my taste.

Then a smile crosses her lips and she nods to me. “You are ready.”

Lady Renata has coal black eyes that make her head appear empty. Her orange red hair can be seen from a great distance, which I suppose could be for my benefit if I needed her. She is small and petite as well, perhaps her hair serves as a warning. Because there is no sense to be fooled by her dainty appearance, Lady Renata is the most vicious of my family’s members.

“Thank you,” I say to her. I look at my hand, noticing a chip in the nail polish.

“Did you rest well, princess?” Lady Renata caught me staring at my hands and I tucked them away behind the folds of my dress.

I nodded, turning away from her. “I did.” The other attendants scurried from the room, filing away where they will not be seen until they are needed to be seen.

Renata reached out, touching my hair then slipped her fingers along the nape of my neck. I brushed her away, giving her a scolding look. I went over to my vanity, the mirror was covered by a curtain. I reached into the drawers, taking out my jewelry, my choker, my lipstick.

Her hand recoiled and she sniffed the blade of her fingers. “Master is waiting on you, princess.”

“I know who waits,” I mumbled. I put the choker around my neck then touched the dark jewel that rested upon my throat. “Your master does not mind waiting for me.”

Renata sighed, tilting her head to the side. “You are beautiful as it is.”

“Thank you, Renata.” I put on the lipstick, dabbing and wiping at the bow, then smoothing out under the bottom lip with my thumb.

“Look at me.” Renata came to my side and held my chin in her hand. Her finger delicately cleaned up the edges of my lips, and her dour pout turned into a soft smile. “There. Perfect.”

I fidgeted in my seat. “If I could just use the mirror, you wouldn’t have to bother.”

Renata’s eyes flashed towards the covered mirror. “You know we cannot do that. The head of the family would have my head if they knew we allowed this with us.”

“But it’s mine,” I insisted.

She nodded, taking my hand to make me stand. “Come now, Master is waiting. You know he cannot start his day without you.”

To Renata, he is master, but to me he is simply Alci. Very few people come above me here, not until we reach the familial home and then the head and their parts stand above all of us here. Alcide is one of those parts, but a lower one. He takes care of the livestock, the farm, and he travels far and wide because of it. The vast emptiness of space has known his presence in several far corners.

His chambers are closed as we approach, but the doors crack open slightly. As always, he is inspecting me. Renata pushed me ahead, making me walk through the open door which closed behind me.

“There’s my girl.” His voice caused the hairs on the back of my neck to prickle. It is a strange sensation, both alluring and frightening. I walk further into his cold room and lights flicker on to show him sitting bent over his desk.

“Have you not rested?” I asked.

“I do not remember what that is,” he sighs dramatically. “Everything bleeds together into one giant, cacophonous void that lack meaning and-”

“Alci,” I said, cutting off his trail. I approached him, coming to stand by his desk. “Enough of that.”

He released a breath and lifted his head from the desk. His hair is disheveled and messy, dyed dark in color, but the pure white near the scalp is showing through.

I ran my fingers through his hair, a touch he instinctively pushed towards. “You had an appointment with Mewsette yesterday. What happened?”

“What is the point? We dye our hair all these colors, and for what? To be reminded that we are pale! We are devoid of blood and pigment!”

I rolled my eyes, but I knew too well how these moods affected Alcide. “You are as you are. Same as us all.” I took hold of his hand, touching the ring that matched the gem on my choker.

“Not like you,” he breathed. “You are capable of what I am not. You are everything I wish that I was.” His large hand escaped my grasp and touched the top of my head, sliding down to cup my cheek. “You may be as pale as I am. You may have the same white hair. But you have everything I want.”

“No,” I said simply.

Alcide pulled away and slumped over his desk again with a mournful sigh.

“You lied to me yesterday when you said you had rested. I do not like what you turn into when you do not rest.” I motioned towards his bed with one hand while grabbing his broad shoulder with the other. “Get up and go to bed.”

“Out here there is no reason to rest. No sign. No moon. No tell tale sign of when we begin and end. Endless. Meaningless,” he bemoaned.

“Alci,” I cooed to him. “You still must rest. You may be eternal, but you are still made of flesh and bone.”

“Am I?” he looked up at me with those dark red eyes. “Who am I, Nessa?”

It is rare when I am called by name, so I relish it when it is said. “You are Alcide Von Helena. Part of the Core, a member of the family. You take care of feeding the family. Of growing the farm.” I smoothed my hand up the back of his neck. “You are dramatic and brooding. You read too much tragic literature, which adds to your somewhat grim personality.” I gave him a rare smile. “You are the master of this tomb ship. You are my caregiver.”

He looked at me with watery eyes. “Surface level. But you know what I want to hear, Nessa.” He turned to me in his seat, taking hold of my hands, comparing how large his were to mine. My hands fit in the center of his palm, and his overly long, spidery fingers could easily envelop them twice if the joints allowed it.

“Do not get me wrong. I hear your words. I see what you are trying to do.” He clasped my hands between his and pressed them against his forehead. “But I simply cannot feel much more.”

I brushed aside my hair and gave him an indigent sniff. “That is because you need to sleep. You’ll change if you do not.” I tried to urge him to the bed. I wanted to join him, to lay there and pretend I was like the others. I wanted to dream, for hours, for days unend. I could do that if Alcide would just rest. But the door opened a crack and Renata’s bright hair could be seen from it.

“I will try for your sake,” Alcide murmured. “But I have too much work to do now as it is. Duty calls, as it were.”

I was stunned. I touched the cuff around my wrist but Renata got to me before I could say anything else to him. She took me out of the room, keeping her hand upon my back until we reached the end of the hall.

“Where would you like to go today, princess?” Renata asked.

I shook my head, grimacing as my usual meeting with Alcide did not go well. I scoffed, trying to walk away but she kept pace with me, slinking up beside me and then in front of me to stop me in my tracks.

I halted, glaring up at her as I thrust my arms down by my sides.

“Where would you like to go today, princess?” Renata repeated with venom upon her tongue.

“I want to see the animals,” I stated.

Renata shook her head. “You know I can’t let you go there, princess. The master would have my head.” She leaned in closer to me, placing her hands upon my waist. “Unless-” she sniffed my hair then slowly leaned in closer until her lips fluttered against my cheek.

I pushed against her shoulders. “No,” I commanded.

She stepped away immediately, her lips flushed and mouth cracking at the corners, revealing the fine line leading towards her ears. “Then no animals today.”

I scowled up at her as the tingling in my cheeks subsided. “Then take me to Mewsette,” I scoffed. “I want a change.”

Renata smirked. “Bold. You’ve not touched your hair since you were given to the master.” She nodded and flourished her arm out down the other hall. “Mewsette is this way.”

The long dark corridors of the ship were these endless tunnels lined with doors and antique artwork. Sometimes the attendants popped out and stood still as we passed by, their eyes following us until we could no longer be seen.

“What prompted this?” Renata asked, her dark eyes peering up at me. “I figured you’d let your hair grow forever.”

I remained quiet.

“Not going to say anything to me since I won’t let you see the animals?” She quipped. “That’s fine. I’m sure Mewsette will get an answer from you.”

I exhaled through my nose and kept my neck stiff.

Mewsette was at the farthest end of the ship from where I usually was. A journey to be had, for certain, but a worthwhile one for those who needed her services.

There was a chemical whiff to the air as we approached her quarters, one that I occasionally got from Renata, sometimes Alci. Inside her chambers was a dark pink motif, the floors were pink marble, and the chairs were shiny pink. Mewsette herself looked like a decorated cake, beautiful and sweet.

“Renata, you aren’t due,” Mewsette’s voice was surprisingly deep for her appearance. Her red eyes then looked at me and her painted lips spread into a smile. “Princess! This is a surprise.”

“She wants to see you,” Renata said.

Mewsette clicked her tongue and approached us. “You’ve never come to my salon before.” She reached out, longer fingers tipped in sharp, pink nails ran through my hair and tickled my scalp. “What brought about this decision?”

“That’s what I am hoping you can get out of her,” Renata said with a smirk.

Mewsette trailed her fingers through my long hair until she came to the ends. “I am glad you are here. These split ends certainly aren’t doing you any favors.” She smiled at me; her nose was slightly too big, but I liked that about her features. She was beautiful regardless.

“This way now, this way.” She tapped her foot upon the floor in a certain code and before us the floor opened up where a chair rose from underneath.

“I’ll wait outside,” Renata said as Mewsette made me sit.

Mewsette was quiet until Renata left and then she sighed. “She is beautiful, but she frightens me. How do you stand her all day?”

“One word and Alcide would send her away,” I replied. “That’s how I tolerate Renata on a daily basis.”

Mewsette’s smirk was an entertained one. “That’s too much power for a lady like you.” She eased me back in the chair, pulling out my hair until it draped down the back. She stood behind me, fanning out my long hair and studying the ends. She tapped her foot again and a marble basin rose from the floor behind me. I heard water flowing and Mewsette adjusted me more until my head rested in that warm water.

“A wash to start us off.” Mewsette’s sharp nails felt good against my skin. “Alcide didn’t come yesterday.”

“He’s in his mood,” I replied, closing my eyes to relax, to pretend to dream.

Mewsette hesitated. “Oh-”

“I know,” I murmured. “I will make him sleep though.”

She sighed, shaking her head as she lathered shampoo between her palms. “Ever since he was young, this mood has cursed him.”

I opened my eyes. “You knew Alcide that long ago?”

Mewsette just smiled. “I used to be a part, you know?”

“No,” I gasped.

She winked at me. “Just shows you that you should come back and see me more often.” She then reached down, wiping a smudge of my lipstick away. Her eyes lingered upon my throat. “That jewel-”

I tapped it with my fingertips. “Alcide gave it to me.”

She nodded. “No. I know that. He has one on a ring. They used to be his mother’s earrings.”

I held in my breath, keeping it so everything felt tight and stretched. I looked back towards her, grateful she wasn’t looking directly at me, but instead still at my throat. “I didn’t know that.”

Her eyes cut away, giving me a look before focusing her attention back upon my hair. “Your hair really is lovely. That pure white. I see it all the time, but yours is so much fuller.”

“Is it?” I was grateful she changed the conversation away from jewelry.

Mewsette added something else to my hair, something that smelled like fragrant perfume and made her fingers slick through much easier than the shampoo. “What did you have in mind for today?”

My eyes focused up towards the ceiling, where the tiles glittered in between from all the computer pieces and wires. The fogged glass hid layers upon layers of technology that kept the ship running and operating the way it was supposed to. Each wire connected to each other, to something else, to keep the occupants alive, the others dreaming.

I blinked and snapped myself from my thoughts. “Alcide mentioned I could change. So I thought that I might.”

Mewsette was rubbing the creamy conditioner into my hair. “Do you want it dyed or cut then?”

“I think Alcide would burst if I dyed it. Just a cut.” I closed my eyes again. “As long as my hair still covers my neck you can do as you wish.”

Mesette hummed to herself. “Alright then.” She stepped away from me. “Sit there for a moment. I’ll be right back.” Her heels clicked, clicked, clicked upon the floor until the sound vanished deep into her chambers.

All I could hear was faint music and my own breathing. I kept my eyes shut, pretending that I was dreaming.

I took in a deep breath and let it fill my chest as slowly as possible. I let it out just as slowly until there was nothing left inside me. When I opened my eyes again to the ceiling, the lights and wires looked like dozens of little eyes staring at me. Amongst them I saw eyes, big and red, glaring down at me from above. Dread swept through my limbs, a sickening, nauseating pit.

“Alright, princess.” Mewsette returned, coming close to me and carrying a pink case in her hand. “Let's get your hair rinsed and dried and we’ll see what happens.”

I tore my eyes away from the ceiling, leaning back again as Mewsette rinsed my hair clean. It was soft and fragrant as she dried it.

“Will you stay with the family once we arrive back at the port?” Mewsette gently ran a comb through my hair, leveling it against my back. She then wrapped a ribbon around it, tying it off near the bottom of my shoulders.

I wanted to shake my head, but I needed to keep it still. “I’m not sure. I’m his gift, so I suppose it is up to the head.”

“Do you stay with the head when you are home?” There was a defined snip and Mewsette placed my bundled hair onto the table beside us.

The long white hair beside me was my own, I made it, but it looked so strange laying there and not upon my head. It was like a removed tail, but there was no blood to be seen. I turned away from it, instead looking at my hand. I picked at the chip in the nail polish.

“It depends who they have when we return.” More polish chipped away.

The snipping of Mewsette's scissors was growing louder and faster. “It must be tiring being a princess sometimes.”

The nail I was using to chip suddenly broke. “I suppose.”

I couldn’t see what Mewsette had done to my hair. I could only tell that there was a weight missing, a breeze at my skin, and when I moved my head I felt the blunt edge of the back brush against me. Mewsette had placed my cut hair into a box so I could present it as a gift to Alcide. I thought I could use it to bribe him to rest.

Lady Renata was not outside when I left the salon. Instead, one of the attendants was waiting for me and was given strict instructions to take me back to my chambers.

“I would like to see the animals,” I told the attendant.

“Lady Renata said you were to go to your room,” their raspy voice hissed back at me.

I looked down at the box in my arms, the cuff on my wrist. There was a sharp pin that held the cuffs together, if I could take it off I could distract the attendant.

“Princess!” A figure lurched out of a room, slamming the door wide open and sending the attendant crawling into the wall.

Alcide’s sudden appearance caused my insides to lurch, my skin to prickle and turn cold, I even stumbled backwards, nearly dropping the box.

His eyes were wild, slightly darker than when I last saw him. His jaw had split and his mouth was opened towards his ears.

I clutched the box tight to me, eyeing him and ready to yell for more attendants to come to my side.

Alcide’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. “Your hair!”

“I cut it,” I said with a terse tone. I backed away, turning my body so my shoulder protected me. “You scared me.”

He took a step back as well. “I’m sorry. I realized you were close and I-” his voice choked in his throat. “You cut off so much.”

I couldn’t possibly convey the nerves coursing through my body. His eyes, they weren’t right. I know he’s lying to me, he hasn’t rested longer than he claimed. The wildness of him, the primal paint his veins give him. I do not like this. He’ll go mad soon. Just like she did if he is not careful.

I shook my head at Alcide, keeping my shoulder perched up.  “You haven’t rested. You know what will happen.”

“I can’t. I simply can’t!” Alcide fussed, running his fingers through his messy hair, tousling it from side to side until it fell into its part. “Why did you cut your hair?”

I reached out towards the attendant, intending to walk around Alcide. “I don’t want to speak to you until you’ve rested!” I yelled at him. I turned away, walking towards the door and the attendant nearby.

I had barely touched the attendant’s hand when Alcide grabbed me, pulling me up towards him. I dropped the box and the lid opened to pink tissue paper.

“Let me go!” I screamed at him. “How dare you touch me! Release me at once!” My hand struck his jaw, and his mouth parted, revealing the slits that pointed towards his ears.

Alcide snarled near my ear, placing his hand around my throat and twisting the choker back and forth. He placed his nose behind my ear, breathing in my scent and moaning deeply.

“Nessa, oh, Nessa,” he moaned.

“You stupid fool,” I grumbled, letting my body go limp. “What am I going to do with you?” I placed my hand over his and his body pressed close to mine.

The attendant was staring up at us, mouth opening and closing in an odd way. They were unsure of how to move or what to do.

“Leave,” I snapped at them, causing them to scurry away through a door. I struggled in Alcide’s grip. There was only one thing that could calm Alcide when he had entered this sort of mood. I had to relax, to calm myself in order to take care of him.

“You’re being rough with me,” I breathed. I then scoffed, tilting my head to the side. “I cut my hair because I wanted change. While I can still obtain it, I want it.” I glanced down at the box with my hair carefully braided inside. “What was cut is in there. Mewsette packaged it for you.”

Alcide whimpered. “Change frightens me. I didn’t know what to do when I saw you.”

“You could have kept your emotions in check for five seconds,” I growled.

He buried his face into my hair. His finger slid under the choker, snapping it off. I lost my breath as it slid away, falling to the ground with a tiny clatter. My flesh split open against his mouth, my throat bled thickly onto his tongue and down his throat, staining my dress, his shirt and blazer, even dribbling down his skin to give him the color he wanted.

My eyes fluttered and my eyes rolled back into my head. “Not here,” my voice strained. My body felt hot, my veins were tight. I moaned out loud the more his lips pressed to my pale skin. He bit again and again so more blood would flow. He ate messily, like a child would. As a princess, it was my job, my role. Sometimes I took great pleasure in it, even now I cannot distinguish between it and the fear. My toes curled and my body was putty in his hands. I was warm between my thighs and growing wet like my neck.

His mouth pulled back and he breathed in my ear. “I couldn’t stand it much longer. I need you so badly.”

“You’ve forgotten your manners today,” I whimpered. “Hurry now. Before someone sees me in this state.”

Alcide carried me away, leaving droplets of blood upon the ground that the attendants would fight over and lap up directly from the marble. They did not get much fresh food within the tomb ship.

I have only ever known Alcide in a certain way. No one else has partaken of me the way he has. His mother, I think, wanted to, but aside from that, I was only drunk. I let Alcide inside me because I wanted him. He said my warmth made him melt, and he liked to see it spill from inside me. It and being fed upon were my greatest carnal pleasures.

Once Alcide was full and had exerted all his remaining energy, hopefully he would rest. He would lay still and not budge until recovery took hold. My blood assured he kept his strength on these long journeys. Only I was good for that. Not many princes and princesses were left these days, even fewer were born.

My blood stained his sheets, but it did not matter. He rested, content but troubled. I kissed his lips before leaving the bed, removing my stained and ripped dress. I walked naked to his controls, opening the large tome that contained his commands, sliding my fingers over the glowing words to open the screen and the monitors outside the ship.

Space as far as one could see. I changed the angles and there was more of it. Stars beyond my comprehension. Debris which floated and grabbed towards the ship. Wreckage upon wreckage of centuries gone by. Only the tomb ships survive. Somewhere there must be something else, there must be more, so much more.

I touched my neck and Alcide’s bites were already healing. Scars would remain fresh and pink for a long time. I took the cuffs off my wrists where other scars glimmered in the dim light.

Fresh, I thought, always fresh.

I looked back at Alcide in bed, his long, naked form uncovered and exposed. He was beautiful, of course, but I would have time to linger with that beauty later. I touched words within the tome and a door opened upon the wall beside me. White light shone from the crack. The light hurt my eyes as I opened the door, walking down a hall lit up with monitors and readings.

I stood naked amongst the animals and their pods. Shining domes fogged over to keep them hidden. These were the others, the ones I envied. They were mortal, same as me. But different from me as well.

I stood before one pod, seeing inside the young woman whose skin was fleshy pink, her nipples a sort of ruddy brown, her hair dark brown, even on her limbs and above her sex. Beautiful, she was so beautiful. I wanted to sleep like her, to be like the rest of the farm that Alcide was taking back to the family.  But I was special. I was like the family even with my warm blood and beating heart. I was more of a vampire than the others. These mortals, taken from their worlds to be delivered to the head of the family and their farm, the one Alcide kept running and flourishing.

I want to dream like them. To sleep for ages. Perchance to wake and see their lives upon the farm. I wonder if this woman would be chosen, to be kept amongst the house and pampered by the family. I would like to see her awake as much as I adore to watch her sleep.

“What do you dream about?” I asked her, leaning upon her pod to look upon her. “Do you see your home? Do you remember your childhood?” I watched her intently, never expecting an answer, only imagining what she could be thinking.

“I don’t remember where I am from,” I told her. “I don’t remember my family at all. I was raised in the nursery. I smoothed my fingers over the keys and dials upon her pod. “I’ve always belonged to the family. But don’t worry! They’re good to their livestock. They keep them alive as best they can.” I gazed upon her sleeping face. “Don’t worry at all. You'll be fine there.”

I was found in Alcide’s chamber, no one knew I went to see the others again. Renata came and fetched me, taking me away from the resting Alcide and back to my own room. She took care of the chipped polish, removing the old and putting on a fresh new layer lacquer.

“Look at this.” She took out a nail file and worked on my nails, filing them down to match the broken one. “What did you do to make this happen?”

“Probably happened when Alcide found me yesterday,” I muttered.

Only the sound of filing followed. She blew the dust away, patting my hand with a cloth to make sure all the nail dust was gone. She picked a bottle of polish from my vanity, opened it, then took hold of my hand.

“The new hair does suit you, princess.” She said this in an offhanded way.

I didn’t do it for her, so it didn’t bother me what she had to say about it. The bright red polish seemed a bit much to me, compared to the muted orange I had before.

“I don’t like this color,” I mumbled.

Renata finished a stroke then squeezed my finger between her thumb and pointer very hard. “I thought the master might enjoy it.”

I looked towards her face, seeing her eyes were focused upon my hand. Her bright orange hair was more turned to me. “Alcide is resting.”

Renata lifted her head, giving me a look with those coal black eyes. “How did the master take to the change in your hair? Was he amused?”

I didn’t look away from her unblinking eyes. “I couldn’t tell. He had gone into one of his moods again.”

“The head of the family says Alcide is mad. Crazy,” she quipped. “Just like his mother.” She stuck the brush back into the bottle of polish. My stomach churned and I looked away.

“But not so mad that he cannot complete his job as part of the family.” She took hold of my hand, laying a fresh stroke upon a clean nail.

“The mind is the only thing that the will of a vampire cannot fix.” She looked up at me again, not smiling, blinking slowly. “It’s what connects us to what we could have been.”

I lifted my eyes up towards her again. “Mortal?”

Renata scoffed. “You’ll understand when your time comes, princess. When the head gives the word and makes you part of the family.” She finished off the pinkie nail and smiled at her work. “I think this color suits you.”

“What if I don’t want to become part of the family?”

Renata sighed in frustration. “Then you are crazier than the master is.” She twisted the lid of the polish shut and set it back upon my vanity. “If you don’t like the color, then Mewsette has others.” She went to stand but I grabbed hold of her uniform. She turned and looked at me with a sharp expression that slowly softened with my gaze.

“What is it, princess? Lonely because the master rests?” Renata took on a smug expression that made me want to strike her.

I shook my head and released her. “Mewsette said she used to be part of the family.”

Renata looked me up and down, taking on a strange expression that I couldn’t read. “Oh, so it’s curiosity that has the cat this morning. Why not ask Mewsette? What do you think I could possibly know.”

I looked into the corner where the attendants were standing waiting for us to leave. “You know everything since you're the leader of the attendants. I know they whisper to you when you ask.”

Renata clicked her tongue and took her seat again. “It’s true, she was a part like Alcide many years ago. Back before she became Mewsette she held another name. She also fell in love with part of another family. It was, to put it lightly, an explosive mess that almost resulted in a family war.” She shrugged and took on that smirk again. “For years after she was disowned, no family would have her. Until Alcide stepped in.”

I cut my eyes at her, noticing she was heavily focused upon my nails again, but I could tell her mind was elsewhere. “What did he do?”

Renata stood, walking over to my vanity and staring at the curtain covering the mirror. Her hand brushed against the curtain then instantly pulled away and looked back at me. “That you’ll have to ask him and Mewsette. Her reentry to the family is one mystery I have no answers for.” She crossed her arms against her chest. “But like me, she cannot become part of the family. Simply belong to the family.” She scowled at me. “So do not talk to me about not wanting to become part of it. Let’s go, you have things to do while the master is resting.”

I turned away from her. “Alcide took much from me. I’m weak, I should spending the day resting and restoring my blood.” I ran my hand up my arm. “Oh, by the way, he dropped my choker, the one with the matching jewel. Could you find it for me?”

Renata sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine. But that is all you will do.” She called forth an attendant and whispered to them. “Stay in bed. No wandering. No sneaking to parts of the tomb you are not allowed,” she snarled. “And I’ll find your choker,” she snipped as she walked out the door.

I got into my bed, watching Renata leave then turning to the attendant. They stepped back, hiding between my dresser and the wall.

I sighed and laid back into the bed. I was feeling quite dizzy and weak, hopefully someone would be by with my meal soon. I looked up into the ceiling, seeing the glittering, flashing lights of the circuitry. They’re many glowing eyes gazing back at me. They turned into those eyes I saw yesterday, ones I saw often. At first I couldn’t look away, pulled into a fear from long ago. Vicious, hateful eyes gazed at me, beckoning to me.

I was young and small again, standing in the family home looking for the head. Instead, I found her. I found her chambers, her keep. I hadn’t been with the family long. The Head had just taken me in and I didn’t even have shoes. I ran around the mansion in bare feet, cold toes. I always had cold toes back then. I was told to be careful, but I was also not told where to go. The mansion, a large space station made to house the family and small roots of it, was far bigger than anything I had ever seen.

I got lost, and I found her. Alcide’s mother. I hadn’t yet been configured into the security, so all doors opened to me. She was sitting in her room alone, right before a vanity like mine. Her long white hair was down, falling onto the floor where it curled. She turned and gave me that smile. She called me to her, begging me to come closer. The smile she gave me as she stood haunts my nightmares to this day. And it is why I prefer the tomb ship over the mansion.

I went to Mewsette to repaint my nails after I slept. She carefully removed the too bright color, making sure it didn’t stain my skin.

“You have such tiny hands,” she remarked.

“I know.”

Mewsette gave me a smile. “You do not like the work Renata did?”

“I do not like Renata.”

She bit her lip, holding back her laugh as best she could. After all, Renata was listening from the door. “Well then. I’ll just select a few of the darker colors then and I will let you choose.”

“Thank you.” If I looked close enough, Mewsette almost looked like Aclide. I didn’t notice that yesterday.”

Mewsette stepped aside and a cabinet rose up out of the floor, opening to reveal many glass bottles, not just of polish. “Is Alcide resting?”

I nodded, looking down at my bare nails. “Finally.”

“Good job.” Mewsette said cheerfully. My heart lept, I’d never been told that before. I held my breath as she returned to the side of my chair. She showed me several bottles and I picked a metallic black.

“Why did Alcide bring you back to the family?” I asked.

Mewsette was quiet and her eyes were distant. “He didn’t. He made me his own.” She cut her eyes to me. “Why do you ask?”

“Curiosity.”

She shook her head and looked back down at my hand. “Shouldn't have said anything about it.”

“He didn’t. Renata told me.”

Mewsette closed the bottle of polish then looked me in the eye. “What did Renata tell you?”

There was an edge to her voice that made me flinch. “She said you fell for someone in another family and it caused a big mess.”

Mewsette leaned in very close to me, cupping her hand around my ear. She whispered so faintly I almost didn’t hear her. “Renata knows nothing.”

I looked back into her eyes as she stepped back. “Then why were you removed from the family?”

Mewsette just smiled sadly. “It doesn’t matter to me anymore.” She opened the bottle of polish again. “It was too long ago. Besides, you wouldn’t remember anyways.”

I opened my mouth to question her when an alarm blared. Red lights turned on around the room and out in the hallway as the screeching, deafening sound filled the entire tomb ship.

Mewsette stood up casually from her seat. “Stay here, Nessa.”

“What is that?” I shouted over the siren.

“A small problem. But more than likely, I’ll need to help out with it.” She strode towards the door. “You’ll be fine here. Promise.”

The door closed, but the alarm was sounding everywhere. I huffed and leaned back in the seat, raising my hand to inspect the nails Mewsette had completed. The lights kept flashing so it was hard to make out.

I got up and walked to the door, peering outside to the hallway. It was quiet now, aside from the alarm I mean. There were no voices, no footsteps. There was no Renata either so I left Mewsette’s chambers.

The lights and siren were eerie, but it was the fact that no one was around that really bothered me. No attendants, no Renata, I never knew a tomb ship like that. I came upon Alcide’s chambers where the doors were flung wide open. I went inside, seeing Alcide was no longer in his bed. I lost my breath for a moment, going towards the tomb to pull up a map of the ship.

My fingers had barely brushed the pages when I heard breathing near me.

Maybe it would not have been a noticeable thing to others, but on a ship with no heartbeats, it was clear as day. I looked back at Alcide’s bed, every hair on my body standing on end. I stepped towards the bed, hearing the breathing pitch a touch higher. I knew there was something under there.

I crept closer, but as I did someone else came into the room. Renata looked at me, her jaw slack and hand holding some sort of metal contraption. “What are you doing here?” She barked at me.

I didn’t move or respond to her. The breathing went silent.

Renata moved fast into the room, storming towards me with a frightening look upon her face. “One of the animals escaped! Was it you?”

My eyes widened as she came towards me, stretching out her hand to grab me by the neck. It was tender from Alcide’s affections, so I cried out in pain as she took hold of me.

“Some princess! Always wanting to see those animals. But you’re all the same. It doesn’t matter if you look like us, you’re still a bleeder just like them.” She yanked me, pulling me towards the door.

I swung at her, slapping her face and knocking off her glasses. Her pitch black eyes stared at me. They looked like glass, endless depthless glass.

She slammed me down to the ground, pinning me there. She smirked, grinning wildly as she saw my neck was bare. The choker still hadn’t been returned.

“He won’t notice one bite.”

I struggled, fighting against Renata as she bore down upon me. Her lips split, opening towards her ears as her full jaw widened. She had missing teeth, ones probably removed by the head for similar actions.

I screamed out loud, praying someone would fine me.

Renata was knocked aside and I began crying. I wept loudly as there was a sickening wet, squelching sound near me. Alcide’s mother had done the same. She had ripped my clothes to shreds and kept me in her chambers sealed away for days. She bore down upon me like Renata did too.

I turned my head to look beside me, eyes blurry and wet with tears. A naked figure sat upon Renata, both were covered by thick, dark brown blood. No red. Almost black.

They turned to me, eyes wild and breathing erratic. She stood upand I saw the spike sticking from Renata’s chest.

There she was before me, awake and with eyes as bright as the sky. The sky?

I held my breath as we looked at one another. I’m sure both of us were terrified of each other in that moment.

“You killed her,” I whispered.

The mortal woman placed her bloodied finger over her lips. “Be quiet,” she breathed. She looked to the door, moving towards it and quickly shutting it.

I must have hit a key when I saw her the other day. That’s the only explanation. I sat up from the ground, trembling and shaking. I wanted Alcide near me, to hold me and kiss me.

The mortal woman wiped her hand on Alcide’s sheets then tossed them over Renata’s corpse. “You look just like one. But you’re not,” she whispered.

I looked up at her with watery eyes.

She shook her head and knelt down before me. “No. They don’t cry.”

My whole body shuddered and I closed my eyes.

“Where are we?” She asked.

“A tomb ship,” I sniffled.

She was quiet for a long spell, standing up to look around the room. “Fuck.” She paced back and forth, the smacking of her bare feet on the ground were all all too familiar to me.

Renata’s hand was sticking out from under the sheet. I watched it carefully as I rose from the ground.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

Her blue eyes stared at me as if I had asked her something ridiculous. “What’s yours?” She snapped back.

I smiled at her, so happy to see her moving, breathing, being alive as I was. “Nessa!”

She looked me up and down, placing her arms against her chest. “I’ve heard about people like you. Mortals who are treated like one of them.” Her eyes narrowed upon me, and despite my joy to see her, I suddenly felt very uneasy. “But I thought it was just stories. But look at you. As white as them. Eyes as red. All you’re missing is the smile.” She dragged her fingers from the corner of her mouth to her ear.

I wasn’t sure what to say. “I can take you back to your pod.”

She glared at me. “No! I would rather die!”

It felt like a shot through my chest. “Wha-what do you mean?”

“Don’t you know what they do to us?” She hissed then pointed down at Renata’s corpse. “She just tried to kill you!”

“Not kill,” I urged. “Just drink.”

“Just!” The mortal woman laughed. She quickly covered her mouth from her outburst and glared at me over her hand. “They call us livestock. Animals!”

“Yes but-”

She stared hard at me. “What do they do to you here?”

“Please, just let me put you back into your pod. I’ll say I killed Renata, and then you can be safe!” I begged of her, reaching out for her but she yanked away from me.

“Nessa, you have no idea what is going on,” she hissed at me.

“But all I ever wanted was to be like you. To know someone like you.” My breath choked in my throat as I looked at her. “I’ve never gotten to meet, let alone speak, to someone like me.”

“No wonder,” she scoffed. “Maybe it’s the best you don’t.” She walked away from me, heading towards the tome which she leaned over. She turned pages and screens popped up around her.

I looked down at Renata, seeing the pool of black growing around her. Her hand was grey and skeletal, her rings were slowly falling off.

“What do you dream about?” I asked.

The mortal woman didn’t respond so I walked over towards her.

“In the pod, when you’re asleep. What do you dream about?” I repeated myself.

She barely looked up at me as she poured over the tome. “I don’t.”

My chest seized and everything felt tight. “Surely you do.”

Her eyes focus on screens and she grows a frustrated expression. “No. Not in the pods. Under the conditions we are put in, we don’t dream at all.”

I lowered my eyes and let out a mournful breath. “Oh.”

The door opened and Alcide stepped in with Mewsette behind him. They stared at Renata’s body and Mewsette even made a sound of alarm.

I looked up at them, my shoulder sunk and the mortal woman grabbed me. I let her. She placed me before her and Alcide was ready to charge before Mewsette held him back.

I wanted to dream forever, to be like them, to understand them. I wanted to fade into sleep and never come back. But it suddenly was like I was always asleep. I had just woken up, and everything was loud, unending noise. I want to be asleep again. I want to be asleep.

Alcide’s mom had been brushing my hair when the black blood spilled down my face and onto my shoulder. My neck was so sore I could barely look up. But in the mirror, I saw the faint shadow and ghostly visage of another one beside me. Alcide’s mother was suddenly by my feet, her eyes wide and empty.

Someone picked me up and carried me out of the room, rushing me to the head of the family who took me into their arms. I woke in my own bed sometime later.

“There you are.”

I looked up at Mewsette sitting across from me. She smiled. “Sleep well?”

I blinked for a moment, rubbing sleep from my eyes as I tried to piece together what had happened. I saw Alcide’s mother dead, murdered by some strong force. I saw Renata’s sickly hand as it faded away, her rings falling upon the floor and chiming.

Mewsette stood up and walked to me. She picked up my choker, the missing one, from my bedside table and gently placed it around my throat. “I’m helping you get ready this morning. Take your time waking up, I’ll go fetch your breakfast.”

I watched her go across the room, elegant and tall. Her hand brushed away the curtain covering the mirror, and her ghostly image inside glared back at her. “What a lovely mirror,” she replied.

“Mewsette?” My voice choked in my throat.

She looked at me with a knowing smile and she nodded her head so her long curls in her hair bounced. “Did you have a bad dream? Would you like me to call Alcide?”

I nodded.

“I’ll be right back.” Mewsette passed by me, and I could remember a moment when her footsteps were painted black by the blood of Alcide’s mother.

I touched the stone around my neck, closing my eyes as I pushed the thoughts from my head.

I would like to dream forever as I always do, to sleep and find myself at home. I remove myself from bed, setting my feet down upon the cold floor. I walk over to the vanity, pulling back at the curtain to look at myself.

I look like them, and I smile because I do.

this ask is for rhaenyra ~ would you be down to hook up with your hot uncle? if not, can i hook up with him?

I should’ve never picked up JJK I should’ve watched those volleyball twinks instead nothing bad happens there

MARRY THE TRAITOR ; gojo satoru

"as much as i would like to end your suffering, princess, i won't give you the satisfaction... you are going to suffer for a long, long time, just like i have."

⟡ the day you met your demise is the same day you met gojo satoru, your betrothed from a world so different from yours—a cruel prince who is undoubtedly in love with someone else. as the stakes rise and you race against the clock to beat your brutal fate, can you make the ultimate choice between your heart or your happily ever after?

⟡ fem!reader, royal au!, arranged marriage, reader is a florist in our world, mentions of terminal illnesses, mentions of blood, mentions of wounds, mentions of death, unrequited love, slow burn, enemies to lovers, mean!gojo, yandere!gojo, reader is called 'princess cerena', princess cerena is described as having pink hair and feminine features, reader is reincarnated as princess cerena, body swapping, isekai, isekai-d reader, talks of classism, misogyny, ideations of suicide, talks about self-harm, attempts of suicide, mentions of violence, mentions of alcohol, suggestive mentions, mentions of pregnancy, mentions of conceiving, language, tension, more tba...

⟡ crowned prince!gojo satoru x princess!reader

ACT 1, SCENE 1: MIRI'S REPRIEVE

ACT 1, SCENE 2 — THE TUNNELS

ACT 1, SCENE 3 — THE VILLAGE

ACT 1, SCENE 4 — THE THRONE ROOM

ACT 2, SCENE 1 — THE INFIRMARY

ACT 2, SCENE 2 — THE SICK BED

ACT 2, SCENE 3 — THE WINDOW LEDGE

ACT 2, SCENE 4 — THE GALA

ACT 3, SCENE 1 — THE HEDGES

ACT 3, SCENE 2 — THE BREAKFAST ROOM

ACT 3, SCENE 3 — THE GLASSHOUSE

ACT 4, SCENE 1 — THE LIBRARY

ACT 4, SCENE 2 — THE CHURCH

ACT 4, SCENE 4 — THE HIDDEN COTTAGE IN THE FOREST

ACT 5, SCENE 1 — THE WEDDING

ACT 5, SCENE 2 — THE MARKET SQUARE

ACT 5, SCENE 3 — HOME

ACT 5, SCENE 4 — SPRING RETURNS

©️ all rights reserve to lalunanymph. do not copy elements of my story, repost or claim as your own.