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another Yandere!Alastor imagine

(~500 words of him Making Things Worse)

I need to go to bed

———————

Alastor always seems to be there at your worst moments. It’s always a coincidence, never contrived enough to make you think that he wanted to see this. No. It was merely a stroke of fate that led him to wander into the lobby the one time you cried in public, to pass by your room just at the moment you threw something against the door…

The first time, it’s a shock, an embarrassing realization that someone has witnessed a part of you that you’d very much like to keep to yourself. But he doesn’t do anything to make you feel judged. Only asks you if everything’s quite alright, as if the answer to that isn’t blatantly obvious. Listens as you swallow the remnants of your tears, and spill a little bit more of the truth than you’d planned to when you opened your mouth, relieved to have someone, anyone to talk to. He draws you out of the shell you’ve built around yourself, lets you go on speaking - insists upon it - no matter how hesitant your voice becomes. Actually smiles wider when you do. Bids you goodnight, walks away.

It’s only long after this that you realize how much you really said. But it’s okay, you tell yourself. You’re supposed to talk about your feelings. You were lucky, if anything, to have such a willing, patient audience.

When it happens again, and again, you begin to wonder why - why he keeps finding you in these situations, and why he keeps putting up with your barely-coherant attempts to explain what, exactly, has you in such a state. Of course, it crosses your mind that it’s intentional. That he knows when you’re feeling this way, that he’s drawn to it for reasons you can only guess at.

It’s not like it’s malicious. It can’t be. If it was, he would do something other than sit there and hear you out. He certainly wouldn’t encourage you to keep talking, wouldn’t wring out every little drop of awfulness before deciding that you were ready to be left alone.

And if he says something not-so-comforting, now and again? If the tears come back after he’s spent a few minutes by your side? That’s just another coincidence. You’re set off by little things, sometimes. Benign words in the wrong tone, or little phrases that remind you too much of ugly things in your past. How is he supposed to know? He can’t possibly be expected to understand you that well.

Then again - by now, with all the things you’ve said to him, he might understand you better than anyone. And as time passes, you begin to believe that this is your fault, as well. You should have found a different confidant. Now that he’s found you, it’s a bit too late for that. It’s not like you can run to anyone else when he’s always there.

Your relief at merely having someone is gone now. You’re not sure, anymore, if it would be better to have only him, or no one at all. But it doesn’t matter - regardless of what you decide, you’re not going to be alone any time soon.

Pairing: Yandere!Alastor x Reader

SFW

Word Count: 2'627

Warnings: Yandere behaviour, Implied forced relationship, Implied captivity, Toxic relationship, Possessiveness, Invasion of personal space, Non-consensual touching.

Additional Notes: Do be kind, I have not written for this man before and find him exceedingly difficult.

Every week at the Hotel, there was something new Charlie had planned.

Trust exercises. Ice breakers. Activities meant to bring everybody closer together as a group. To try and get people to open up and show a side of vulnerability that - she believed - would help sinners take one step closer to salvation.

Most of them were awkward, and a lot of them never went as planned. A fact she realized and, after a near mental breakdown, had her promptly take advice from Vaggie and agree to try something different.

The task was very simple compared to the previous activities. She requested everybody to think about redemption and what it meant to them.

Thinking about the definition itself took little to no effort.

Redemption (noun): The action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil.

But it was clear that Charlie wanted more than just a quote from the dictionary. She wanted residents of the Hotel to mull over it while looking deep down into themselves so they could share their stance on the matter later on.

That was the tricky part.

From how you saw it, “saving yourself” from sin was easy enough to accomplish. ‘Just don’t be a dick and avoid the bad shit.’ was the first thought that came to mind, but where you hit a snag was based on what Charlie had shared about Heaven. According to her, even so much as breathing in Hell was enough to solidify your place in the inferno, yet she made it clear that actively resisting sin wasn’t something to go unrecognized.

It took a lot of effort, energy, and courage to do so, and it was hard to disagree even if Heaven didn’t see it that way.

Error was a bit harder. In your opinion, nobody could be saved from that, at least not entirely. Eventually, inevitably, you or someone else would do something wrong, it was just a matter of degree. It could be something as minor as bumping into somebody by accident or as major as Angel relapsing for what felt like the hundredth time, but it would happen and it was only a matter of time.

Charlie did bring up a rather good point, though. Apologizing when you realized you had done something wrong was the best thing someone could do, and it was the first step in the right direction.

You had to give her credit where it was due for that.

But evil was a different matter entirely.

Evil lurked everywhere in Hell. Across every street, around every corner, evil was out in the open for everyone to bear witness and see. None of it was hidden. None of it was meant to be hidden.

What would be the point? You and every other sinner were already in Hell - and many would argue that hiding it would be counterintuitive to being there in the first place.

Charlie tried to plead the case that everyone had good in them. A good that could be tweezed out if given the right chance, and the right environment, which the Hotel was perfect for.

You wish you could agree.

Evil was in the hotel itself, not that Charlie was fully willing to see it.

You believed she was careless there. Little Miss Bleeding Heart wanted to see the best in people, and by god did you ever want to know what it was like to see through such rose-tinted glasses, but you knew you never could. Not in this place.

Stepping a foot into the building was the worst thing you’d ever done because it showed you just how wrong you were about evil being so out in the open. It still had the ability to lurk, something you learned the moment you shook hands with Alastor.

You could see it on his face upon meeting him for the first time - the way Alastor’s perpetual grin widened upon seeing the goosebumps that lined your arms when he clasped your hand in his. No comment was ever made on the matter, but the way his lips peeled back to reveal the black of his gums before he pressed a brief kiss to your knuckles said enough.

Something utterly sinister reeked from him in a manner you couldn’t describe, so you took your own advice and applied the same thing you did when it came to sin.

Avoidance. As much as you could, at least.

Some moments were easier than others. The distinct metallic clack of Alastor’s microphone against the floor combined with a surge of radio static usually bought enough time for you to make whatever excuse you needed in order to leave before he arrived.

Other times you weren’t so lucky, and Charlie’s group meetings were usually to blame in that regard.

At first, you made a great deal of effort to put as much distance between yourself and the Radio Demon as you could, which worked for a time. Unfortunately, Alastor caught onto what you were doing much faster than you would’ve liked.

He reveled in it. You knew he did. After a while you had the gnawing suspicion he was purposefully going out of his way to make you as uncomfortable as possible for his own entertainment. You saw no other reason as to why he’d consistently move so close to you that you could literally feel him breathing down your neck.

Lately, he had adopted the skin-crawling habit of locking eyes with you the moment you stepped foot in the room and patting the seat beside him - reserved specifically for you. Accepting the gesture felt like swallowing nails, but being openly rude to Alastor was something that you knew better than to do.

Instead, you began to find excuses for skipping the meetings entirely and have Angel or Husker fill you in later, which was exactly what you were doing now.

“To be honest I wasn’t payin’ much attention,” Angel said while he scrolled through his phone, resting his chin in his upper left hand while his lower right swirled alcohol around in a glass. “Was the kind of thing that could’ve been sent in an email.”

You traced your finger around the rim of your own glass, its contents untouched. “Still, I want to know what I missed.”

“He’s right, it wasn’t anything special,” Husker replied, slinging a cloth over his shoulder from behind the bar. “Same old bullshit about salvation with a new coat of paint on top.”

A pang went through your chest, but you pushed it down. “So nothing new?”

Angel scoffed and looked up from his phone. “Trust me, dollface, you did yourself a favor.” He downed the rest of his drink in one go. “What were you doing anyways?”

“You know…” You replied with a shrug, glancing down. “I went out.”

Angel smirked, raising an eyebrow. “Out?”

“Yeah.” You tapped your nails against the edge of the glass. “Things were feeling a little claustrophobic, so I went out for some air.”

Husker made a noise in the back of his throat. “Yeah, I know how you feel, kid. This place is a mess.”

Angel tilted his head, placing his phone down on the bar and leaning forward a bit. “So where’d you go? Anywhere fun?”

“Where indeed~.”

All your movements went rigid. After a few seconds, you slowly turned your head to look over your shoulder to see Alastor standing barely a foot away from you, staring down at you with a tight, closed-lipped smile. You hadn’t heard him coming in the slightest, which you immediately could tell was intentional.

Whether he’d used his shadow or had actually stalked up behind you wasn’t something you wanted to think about, and if Angel or Husker picked up on the immediate tension, neither of them said anything about it.

“Hey, Smiles.” Angel greeted with his usual flirtation, placing the elbows of his upper arms on the bartop as he turned to face Alastor. “Fancy a drink? You look a little stiff” He gave Alastor a very long once over, “and I’ll have you know I know a few ways I can help relieve some… tension.” 

Alastor’s lips curled back to reveal his teeth, the muscle in his cheek spasming for a moment.

Mentally you were kissing Angel on the cheek for the save as you slowly picked your coat up off the bar and slipped it on, concealing the goosebumps already present on your skin. Husker gave you a glance from the side and gave a very slight shake of his head, silently advising you against your unspoken desire to leave.

“I assure you, such a thing is never going to happen.~”

“You sure?” Angel rested his lower right arm on his hip. “I have a few tricks that can loosen you up.”

The leather in Alastor’s gloves audibly squeaked as his grip tightened around the staff of his microphone and his attention immediately shifted back to you, ignoring Angel entirely.

“My dear,” His voice dripped with such a saccharine sweetness it made you feel sick, “Could I speak with you for a moment?”

Fewer combinations of words could instill such a unique feeling of encroaching dread all at once, but you refused to let it show as you nodded and turned your body on the bar stool to face him fully; waiting for him to say the first word.

His eye twitched ever so slightly.

“Privately.”

That made you swallow.

“Sure.” You slid off the bar stool, doing your best not to appear as reluctant as you felt.

“Lovely.~” He said, promptly turning on his heel and walking towards the staircase - expecting you to follow.

You glanced back towards Husker and Angel, each giving you looks of grim sympathy and confusion respectively before you took a deep breath and forced one foot in front of the other, following Alastor up the steps.

You thought he would talk along the way. Engage in some form of idle chit-chat where he’d be pulling the strings, or even hum along to the countless jazz tunes that he played in the halls over the Hotel’s sound system.

But no such music played and he remained silent. A few minutes into the walk you gathered enough courage to glance up at him and found his eyes locked straight forward, not even sparing you so much as a glance.

You averted your gaze, the hem of your sleeves suddenly the most fascinating thing you’d ever seen.

Eventually, he came to a stop, and he held out the end of his microphone to prevent you from going any further down the hallway.

“Here we are!” Rather than producing a key from his coat, a green flash emanated from the lock when he placed his hand on the handle and opened the door.

He all but leered at you as he gave a small bow that didn’t feel genuine in the slightest.

“After you.~”

Like the alleged gentleman he was, Alastor held the door open for you, eyes never leaving your form as you walked inside his suite.

The smell of dampness and soil hit you immediately.

Alastor’s suite wasn’t the worst thing you’d seen in Hell by a mile, however, it was still eerie beyond words. The skeletons that hung along the walls and mantlepiece of his fireplace became less complete and increasingly disorganized as they led further into the room - which itself gave way to a swamp-like environment halfway through. Undoubtedly a result of whatever hoodoo, voodoo bullshit he was capable of, and while it still wasn’t the worst you’d seen, it served its purpose thoroughly.

It creeped the shit out of you.

“Now, then.” Alastor clicked the door shut, his body half-facing yours as his hand still lingered on the doorknob. “I'm sure you have a good explanation for what you’ve been doing.~”

The immediate dryness in your throat was hard to ignore. You knew what he was talking about, and you knew that he knew, but you still attempted to buy some time as you tried to figure out what to do.

You cleared your throat. “I was just catching up with Angel and Husk-”

He chuckled, the sound like that of a radio shifting stations. “Don’t be coy.” His head turned towards you with a sickening, ossified crackle that bent his neck in a manner that made your stomach lurch. “You’ve been avoiding me, and I’d like to know why.”

Fuck.

“I haven’t.” Lying to Alastor was a mistake, but you still decided to risk it since it wasn’t entirely false. “There’s just been a lot on my mind recently.”

“Hmm.” Interest and something much worse flickered behind his eyes as he faced you fully with another crack of his vertebrae. “Such as~?”

You shook your head, looking away from him. “That’s private.”

There was a quick flash of red, and the tip of his microphone turned your face back towards him - the cool metal of the edge digging into the skin of your cheek. You had to bite back a grimace.

“Not when it concerns me.” His tone was sharp, a stark contrast to the faux politeness he was putting on before. He kept the tip of his microphone where it was to prevent your eyes from looking anywhere but him. “And trust me darling, when it comes to you, everything concerns me.”

His words twisted in your gut. “...I’m not sure what you mean.”

Alastor tutted, his smile widening once more. “Don’t be stupid, darling, it’s unbecoming of you.” The way he said it was patronizing, like he was scolding a child. “You know precisely what I mean, so I’m going to ask again, as much as I hate repeating myself.~”

Cool metal was replaced with the warmth of his hand as he tilted your head up and brought his face frighteningly close to yours.

“Why are you keeping yourself from me?”

It was an odd sensation. Being backed into a corner, both metaphorically and physically. A frightening one that all but yanked on your instincts to do whatever it meant to get the fuck out of there, but you knew that was the worst thing you could do.

Alastor was a predator, a creature designed to prey on those he deemed weaker, and turning your back on a predator would almost certainly trigger a series of events that would not bode well for you.

So you did the next worst thing.

You told him the truth.

“Because I can see you.” The words felt wrong to say out loud. “I can see you for what you are, I can feel the absolute malevolence that radiates off you in waves, and it’s suffocating.”

Saying any more was a horrendous idea, but you couldn’t help but add one last thing.

“And if I want any chance at leaving this god-forsaken place, I can’t be around you.”

The silence that stretched on afterward was deafening.

Mentally, you were bracing yourself. Alastor had killed people for far less, and you expected nothing different for saying something so daring to his face.

You could see it too, the anger that simmered underneath his gaze. You expected the red of his sclera to flash black and his antlers to extend with his body in a grotesque display before you were ripped to pieces while he laughed.

What you didn’t expect was for his eyes to narrow into slits and his expression shift into one that was far more genuine than you wanted it to be, and it was then you knew that being saved from this kind of evil was never going to happen.

“Oh, my dear, you don’t need to worry about something silly like that.” Alastor all but cooed.

“After all, what makes you think I’d ever let you leave?~”

© absolute-flaming-trash 2024. Do not repost, modify, copy, or claim.

Spring Cleaning

Alastor x Reader // word count 3.2k

In which Alastor goes through your closet, and offers a tasteful replacement for the unsavory things he’s destroyed

Tags/warnings: yandere, invasion of privacy, Alastor’s outfit-changing magic fuckery, mention of lingerie, slight suggestiveness

A/N: I’d like to thank Goodwill for providing the clothing item that inspired this fic

There’s someone in your room, and you know exactly who it is, because - well, it’s not like it’s a rare occurrence. It doesn’t happen every time, but often enough that you’ve gotten used to seeing Alastor when you open the door, pacing along your bedroom floor, casually perusing your belongings, or sitting at your desk chair like he’s been waiting for you all day. It’s been happening for so long, now, that you don’t remember exactly when it started. And you certainly don’t know why. You tried asking, once or twice, but you learned quickly that he has a shocking ability to dance around questions that he doesn’t want to answer. All you really know is that he’s taken an interest in you, and that it’s not likely to disappear anytime soon.

Some specific visits do stick out in your memory. On one particularly horrendous occasion, he’d stood directly beside the door when you’d swung it open, hiding himself from view, only for his presence to be revealed when you’d turned to shut it behind you. His head had been tilted to a truly bizarre angle, but he’d straightened himself out while you were still reeling from the shock.

No need to be frightened, my dear. Just a bit of fun…

You got the feeling that the look on your face was exactly the entertainment he was looking for. 

Today isn’t like that, thankfully. It’s usually not. You get the impression that he doesn’t want to scare you away (as if you could run away, even if you wanted to), and that that particular visit was a rare sort of indulgence. Your door is already cracked open, and you hear him long before you see him. He’s humming something, but like most of the songs he treasures, it’s far too old for you to recognize.

Not as if he accepts that as an excuse. You’ve started learning some of the titles, just to appease him. And the lyrics. And reading the books that he’s given you, and listening to his odd bits of old-fashioned advice, and accepting his various other gifts. The whiskey was nice, although of course he insisted upon drinking with you, and cut you off at one glass. Apparently, it would have been improper to indulge any further in mixed company. The coffee was better - at least he let you drink that by yourself.

When you swing the door open, he’s half-turned away from you, and doesn’t so much as look in your direction. But what you can see of his broadening smile makes it clear that he’s heard you enter. “Hello, my dear,” he murmurs. “I was wondering when you’d arrive.”

This is another thing you’ve gotten used to: being made to feel like you’re the guest, in your own bedroom. It drives you insane, but of course, you’ve never addressed it. And you’ve certainly never tried to drive him out before he was ready to leave. This little arrangement you have - truly, you’re not sure what to call it - can be unpleasant, at times, but it’s not unbearable. He never comes late at night, and never shows up when you have company (although how he always seems to know whether you have company, you’re not sure). He doesn’t seem to want anything more than your attention. 

It’s acceptable. Tolerable. And if you ever push back, you’re not sure what will happen, so you think it’s better to just leave things as they are. To let him come and go through your life as he pleases.

You’re coming closer than ever to saying something now, though, because this time he’s not just sitting at your desk, or standing idly somewhere in your room. He’s got your closet door open - and he’s rifling through the contents. Clearly, he’s been doing this for some time, because a large portion of your clothes are already lying in a heap on the floor behind him. As you watch, he tears another shirt off its hanger. A black camisole that you’d bought because it reminded you of something you’d worn often in life. A “going out top,” as your old friends had called it. He looks down with something like disgust, and drops it over his shoulder, where it flutters to the top of the pile.

“ Alastor…” You try to keep your tone even. Merely curious, instead of indignant. “What are you doing?” A bit of your anger slips through. It would be stupid to even hope that he didn’t notice.

“No need to be so hostile.” He slips another shirt from your closet and holds it up with both hands. “I’m doing you a favor.” He tugs on the sloped neckline of the delicate blouse in his hands, and a rip appears down the middle. “My mistake, dear.” 

Arguing, you think, would be a bad idea. But you really do need him to stop. “I liked that one.”

“ Hmm…well! I didn’t. I’m afraid it was a bit modern for my tastes.” He shakes his head, and turns around, dropping the shirt into the mess of other garments on the floor. He’s made it through a good chunk of your wardrobe - several pairs of pants and jeans, as well as a few accessories you’d grown fond of, are visible within the heap. “I mean no offense, of course. I only wish to help.”

You certainly do take offense, but there’s no point in addressing that directly. “They’re my clothes,” you say instead, very aware that you sound like an idiot. 

“Not anymore.” With a flourish of his hand, the pile disappears, leaving the floor bare. As well as your closet…as you carefully approach, you see that there’s almost nothing left inside. “You’ll thank me before long.”

It’s getting very hard to contain yourself now. “I bought those.”

“And I will be happy to provide some more… suitable replacements.” His image flickers in front of you - a moment later, he reappears by your side. It’s not the first time this has happened, either, but it makes you shudder every time. “To be entirely honest…” An odd twist of his neck brings his face directly in front of yours, nose nearly brushing your own. “I should have done this long ago.” He takes you by the shoulder, and guides you across the room to your dresser. “I’m nearly done already. Only a few drawers left to go.”

You stare up at him, hardening your gaze. Doing your best to sound confident, and not terrified of speaking up. “I want them back.”

“I’m afraid that’s not an option. What’s done is done.” He turns, and reaches for the handle of a drawer. The small one, in the top corner.

Oh. Your stomach knots as you realize which drawer, exactly, he’s about to open. You can’t, under any circumstances, let him see what’s in there. But your protest is so frantic that it’s barely comprehensible. “That one - don’t… ”

He laughs shortly, as if you’ve said something only mildly amusing. “You’re getting hostile again, my dear. You know I don’t appreciate that.”

In a panic, you blurt out the question that rises to the top of your head. It will distract him for a moment, if nothing else. “Why are you doing this?”

You realize immediately that this was a mistake. Questioning him is always a mistake.

But then again - you would like to know.

He pauses, the corner of his grin twitching upward. Eyes narrowing as his head swivels in your direction. “I’ve taken a liking to you, my dear.” He certainly doesn’t sound as if he likes you at the moment. His voice drips with condescension. “So when you do things, or have things, that I don’t like, I find it rather jarring.” He takes a deep breath. After he exhales, his eyes flash, and he continues in his usual lighthearted tone. “Taking those things away is quite a comfort to me.” 

His smile seems a touch more genuine now. Somehow, that makes it more unsettling. So much so that you freeze up for just a second too long. 

“Back to business, then.” He lashes out a hand, and yanks the drawer open. 

As soon as he peers inside, he goes rigid. You stiffen, as well, but certainly not for the same reason. You take a deep breath, trying to ignore the sharp static suddenly buzzing in your ears. “I told you…”

“No, you didn’t .” He dips a single finger into the drawer, and pulls out the garment on top by its strap, dangling it in midair and examining it. It’s black, like the shirt you’d walked in on him tossing earlier - but it’s certainly not designed for going out. Or for anywhere besides your bedroom. He stares at it for some time, until his silence becomes too much to bear. 

“You shouldn’t have”-

“My dear.” He laughs softly, more to himself than to you. “I’d really prefer you not tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.” His voice is sickeningly sweet, so fake that it’s painful to your ears, its conceit betrayed by the telltale twitch in his eye. “Now. Do tell me. What could have possessed you, to spend your hard-earned money on something like this ?” He tilts his head, and stares, clearly waiting for a response.

This question has no good answer, but some are worse than others, so you choose your words carefully. “It…I like how it looks?”

“Hm.” If he wasn’t grinning, as always, you’re sure he’d be grimacing instead. “I can’t say I understand.” He sets it down in the drawer for a moment, and carefully tugs off his glove. “Nor do I wish to.”

You watch in a mixture of mortification and horror as he takes hold of your lingerie once again, and snags his nails across the fabric, easily rending it to pieces. He drops the torn fabric carelessly to the floor, kicks it under your dresser, and pointedly wipes his hand on his sleeve before replacing his glove.

“Ah, well. No need to say anything more about it now.” His eyes trail to the remaining contents of the drawer. “I do hope that you’re not quite as fond of the rest.” He drops his hand over the pile, and a moment later, a soft green flame envelops it. For a moment, you panic, sure that your entire dresser is about to burn, but the flame disappears with the last of your lingerie, leaving not so much as a pile of ashes behind. 

You peer into the empty drawer, mouth ajar. “I really wish you hadn’t done that.” You’re probably getting into risky territory, but this mixture of embarrassment and irritation is becoming too much to bear. 

“Hm?” His eyes are gleaming. There’s something dangerous there, you think, something that you have to tread carefully around. “You didn’t get so worked up over the rest of your closet. Is this different to you?”

“You said you’d replace the rest,” you mutter, judging it to be the safest possible answer. The least likely to cause further embarrassment. “I doubt you’re going to make the same offer with…those.”

“Oh? Who says?” His eyes gleam, in that way they do when he gets an idea that no one around him is going to enjoy. “I’ll admit that I wasn’t planning on it…but those things clearly meant a lot to you. And I enjoy your company far too much to let something so small come between us.”

You think that you’d certainly like something to come between you and him. A wall, perhaps. Or a large metal gate. 

“So! If it’s a replacement you want, a replacement you shall have.” He sharply closes the drawer, and kicks at a strip of shredded black fabric that still protrudes from beneath your dresser. “It should be something that can be worn in bed, I suppose. But I prefer to interpret that in a more traditional sense. Something to be worn to sleep.” His head tilts dramatically, and somewhere far above your head, you think you hear a few notes of a slow, lilting song, piped in from many decades ago. “And I believe I have just the thing.” That intractable smile pulls back, just a fraction. “Let’s see what it looks like on you, shall we?”

You open your mouth to protest. But of course, you don’t manage to get a word out before he flicks his hand in your direction. 

When you look down, your previous outfit is gone. And in its place…well. Like Alastor said, there’s nothing lurid about it. It’s a slip of sorts, made of thin, silky off-white fabric that falls almost to your knees. Delicate enough that you wouldn’t wear it outside, but modest enough that you don’t feel entirely exposed. It’s something to be worn to bed, indeed. But not by you. There’s nothing you about it. The fabric itself appears brand new, but like all the things Alastor seems to appreciate most, the design clearly comes from long before your time.

You find, suddenly, that you don’t know how to hold yourself. How to act. Your arms hang awkwardly at your sides, feeling heavy as your fingertips skim the silk that surround your thighs.

You realize, after the moment of disorientation had passed, that Alastor is not acting like himself, either. He’s quiet. You were expecting mockery, some ridiculous comment that would make you melt into the ground - but it appears that the results of your transformation have caught him off guard.

There’s a creak on the floorboards to your right. A faint sigh. “I must say, my dear…” Alastor’s voice is softer than you expected, and almost devoid of the static filter that usually coats his words. “It suits you better than I could have imagined.”

You think that you’d prefer taunting to whatever this is. 

“I’d go so far as to say you look quite lovely.”

You keep your eyes downcast, not wanting to see his face just yet, and examine the finer details of the garment he’s cast upon you. It has narrow straps, and lace at the neckline, which is high enough to give nothing away. The hem is also lacy, and the cut is straight, not so much defining your curves as endeavoring to erase them as much as possible. Objectively speaking, it is quite pretty. But you’re left with the impression that you’ve strode into someone else’s closet, and departed wearing their clothes. 

“Don’t you agree?”

Slowly, hesitantly, you look up. Alastor’s eyes are fixed on you, shining a brighter red than you’ve ever seen. There’s nothing vulgar about the way he’s staring - but he’s not merely amused, either. Instead, he’s looking at you with rapt fascination, in much the way that one would contemplate a particularly exquisite piece of art in a gallery. 

“I’m…not sure.” You instinctively cross your arms, almost wishing that you saw a more crude impulse behind his eyes. That, at least, would be easier to understand. Instead, it’s something like appreciation - or pride. More of the latter. If you were merely a piece of art, you’d imagine that this would be how your creator would look at you, upon seeing you on display for the first time. 

“No need to hide.” He reaches forward, and touches you lightly on the wrist. It’s enough to send both of your arms falling to your sides. “You couldn’t even if you tried.” 

His smile, again, seems entirely too real. There’s nothing threatening about his tone. It’s even, charming. And yet…

He slips behind you, and his hand moves to your waist - a test, you think, to see if you’ll slap it away. “But I don’t think you’re planning on trying, are you?”

“No.” You’re surprised by how quickly the word comes out of your mouth, how breathless. It was an odd question, one that hinted at more than the subject in front of it, and seemed to demand an answer. 

His other hand joins the first on your waist, and he turns you around, so quickly that you almost stumble, his palms dancing lightly over your barely covered skin. When you’re facing him, one hand slides up, curling around your jaw and holding tight, keeping your gaze turned up towards his face. And it is a long way up - it’s almost embarrassing how small you are compared to him. He stares down, staying silent for much longer than you’re used to, his breathing just a touch heavier than usual. 

His fingers tighten over the silk at your waist, pressing into your skin, a small twitch of his hand pulling the fabric very slightly upwards. It barely moves the hem at all - less than an inch - but somehow leaves you feeling infinitely more exposed. You almost flinch away, but after just a moment, he lets go, all at once. In fact, he practically jerks his hands back, as if he’s only just become aware of what he’s doing, and doesn’t approve. His smile, all of a sudden, appears incredibly fragile. 

“Oh…” He laughs softly - it feels forced. “Forgive me, darling. I truly don’t know what came over me.”

You’re not quite sure, either. And as usual, you neither expect nor want an answer.

He steps to your side, leans slightly over you, both hands clasped behind his back. With what seems like some effort, he forces the usual lighthearted tone back into his voice. “You do want to keep it, don’t you?”

“Yes.” You’d prefer not to, you think, if this is the sort of reaction it draws out of him. But you can’t very well get rid of it, if he doesn’t want you to. And, you reassure yourself, just because you have it doesn’t mean you have to wear it.

“Good.” Again, overhead - but not so far overhead as last time - that lilting old melody falls into your ears. You have the odd impulse to cover them, but you force yourself to keep your hands at your sides. “It is getting late…I think you might as well keep it on, and get yourself all ready for bed.”

You’d like to push back. But all you can manage is a mute nod.

“Lovely.” He starts to raise his hand, as if to reach out and touch you again, but seems to think better of it. The hand falls, and disappears behind his back once more. “Sleep well, my dear.” Quickly, he turns on his heel, only calling out one final line before slipping out through your door. “You’ll see me again soon.”

You have no doubt that you will.

Alone in your room, you slowly approach the mirror that stands in the corner. Your reflection does not change your initial impression. You don’t look like yourself. You don’t like it. And it’s not like he’ll know if you take it off, change into something more comfortable…

Your eyes fall upon your nearly empty closet, and you remember that you don’t have anything more comfortable. Not anymore.

This is alright, you try to tell yourself. It’s just a piece of clothing.

Just a piece of clothing that you can’t imagine wearing for any other reason, or for anyone else. 

Your eyes fall upon the empty drawer in the top corner of your dresser, and trail over to your bed. Quickly, you drop your gaze to the floor. You realize, with a sigh, that it will be a long time before you have any company besides him in this room. In fact, it’s possible that you’ll never open your door for anyone again.

At the moment, doing so would feel far too much like allowing a guest into someone else’s home. 

Escape - Part 2 to Per This Agreement

Alastor x Reader // word count 3.2k

In which your worst fear returns, and nothing about it (about him) is as you remembered

Tags/Warnings: noncon, blowjob, come swallowing, mention of substance use, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms™️, Alastor poorly suppressing a mental breakdown, not a good ending for either party, angst with a side of smut

A/N: I see this happening before/during whatever the fuck happened seven years ago. Is it canon compliant? Only time will tell.

As always - 18+, read the tags, if you don’t like the tags then don’t go below the cut (or into my inbox). Thank you and enjoy.

It’s been almost a year. That all-consuming paranoia that haunted you in the aftermath still lingers. But it’s not as sharp as it once was. It even disappears sometimes, when you keep yourself busy, when you give yourself other things to think about (there are other ways to tune it out as well, but they don’t last, and leave you more of a wreck than you started). So you stay moving. Stay distracted. And the results? You have a job, a dingy apartment, a scattered collection of hobbies, and people who you might consider friends if you weren’t scared of bringing them in close. It’s enough to keep the worst of your thoughts at bay. Enough to keep you sane.

And yet, you know that he is coming back. He made it clear, on that horrible day, that your existence is not your own. That you will see him again. You’ve pictured this reunion many times - it pops into your head, unwanted, at the worst possible moments. When you’re alone, when it’s dark, when you’re trying to sleep. Even after you fall asleep. Some of your nightmares are so vivid that you swear you can feel that chain around your neck, even once you wake up gasping for air. Sometimes, after a string of bad nights, staying busy isn’t enough, and you look for other ways out. If you drink enough, you don’t dream. And of course, you don’t dream if you don’t sleep and all.

You slept well last night, though. It’s been weeks since the last broadcast, and for once, your sleeping mind has given you a reprieve from its horrors. The day was good, too. Full of the pleasant boringness of everyday existence, the empty chatter that almost makes you feel at peace. You went to work, and did not jump at any unexplained noises. You ate your lunch, and did not feel the urge to vomit at any point after. You walked home, and did not stop to buy the sort of poison that would help you forget. You turned corners, and did not fear what you might see when you did. You ascended the stairs of your apartment building, and unlocked your door, and thought of nothing but mundane things the entire time. It was an uneventful day.

It was too good to last. 

You step into your apartment, and immediately, something feels wrong. You can’t place it. There are no flickering lights, no ominous shadows on the wall, no faint, distorted voices echoing from places you can’t see. And yet, the feeling remains. You proceed cautiously through your home, and slowly open the door of your bedroom. Step inside.

And freeze. 

Alastor is standing motionless in the middle of the room, like he’s been staring at your door for hours, waiting for you to emerge. 

Running would be so pointless that it doesn’t even occur to you. In fact, absolutely nothing occurs to you for some time. For you to have any thoughts, you’d first have to admit that this was real.

His eyes register your appearance, but he doesn’t move or speak. Not yet. Your mind slows down - or perhaps time slows down, to give you a chance to see, to understand anything beyond your initial horror. And you realize, after your thoughts finally catch up with your eyes, that nothing is as you remembered. 

He looks different. He is different, in every conceivable way.

You remember him standing straight. Even when he bent down, his spine was rigid. Now, he is folded in on himself, like a marionette with half its strings cut. His chest visibly rises and falls. His ears are pressed back against his head. His hair is frayed at the ends, individual strands escaping his control, pressing out in every direction. He is still grinning, but it’s not cruel, or confident. In fact, it looks like it might slip off at any moment. And his eyes…

They’re wide. Expressive, a far cry from the sadistic calculation that had burned in them a year ago. In all the times you imagined this moment, you never imagined him like this. You don’t think you could have conjured such a desperate expression in your imagination, even if you’d tried. Something is wrong, and not in the way you expected.

Even the place where he’s standing is wrong. In your nightmares, he always appeared over your bed when you were sleeping, or materialized in your desk chair, his boots kicked up at the corner, a menacing grin pasted to his face. And he always had something to say. But here, in what is unfortunately your real, waking life, his silence stretches on, until it’s too much for you to bear.

“What do you want?” You hate the way these words curdle in your mouth, fall thickly from your tongue. You shouldn’t have to ask. In your dreams, he was always very clear about what he wanted. Revenge for your insolence, in one way or another. On the good nights, your soul is ripped at its seams, and you scream for all of hell to hear. On the bad nights, you’re torn apart in a different way, and no one hears you except for him.

He doesn’t answer you. Not immediately. Just inhales deeply, presses his clenched fists to his side. For no reason that you can think of, you take a step forward - the door slams shut behind you, and you hear the click of a key in the lock. You don’t bother turning around, or checking your pockets for your own key. Somehow, you already know that they’ll be empty. 

One of his hands rises into the space between you. His fist falls open, palm raised to the ceiling. It curls shut. 

This is exactly as you remember.

It plays out like your nightmares, in perfect detail. The golden chain unfurls, you take one last free breath before the collar snaps tight around your neck, and you lock eyes with him as your face falls. But you don’t struggle, this time. And he doesn’t move more than he has to. He drops his gaze, stares down the length of the chain, holds its end limply in his loose fist. 

It shakes and bends, capturing the small spasms of his hand. “I didn’t think”-

Your breath catches in your throat, at the same moment he cuts himself off. He sounds different. There is no filter over his voice, nothing for it to hide behind. 

“I didn’t think I’d ever”- Again, he stops. He seems to become aware that he’s speaking only once the words have left his mouth. “A year ago…I didn’t intend on following through”-

You wait. He’s not drawing this out on purpose. You almost wish that he was. That would make sense. Taunts would make sense. Arrogance, deceit - those would make sense. This does not make sense. This is not real.

He starts again, and this time, it sticks. “I’m suffering in ways that you couldn’t even fathom.” His eyes, dull, burned-out red craters, leave you no room to question him, although at this moment, you don’t think any kind of suffering is out of reach for you. “There’s a reason the airwaves have been so quiet for the past few weeks. This… thing that’s hanging over me…” His eyes narrow, fingertips scratch against his covered palm. “It’s stripping the pleasure out of everything.” Finally, he looks at you. Seeing your face seems to strengthen his resolve - he grips the slack of the chain, slowly wraps it around his hand. “And I’m sure you know…despair makes us resort to strange things, just to feel alive.”

You do know. And you want to scream that you know because of him. But for many reasons, your mouth stays shut. He already knows everything that you’re thinking. Everything you fear. He’s thinking about it, too.

“I can’t escape. But I can forget, if only for a moment. And I suppose that’s a form of escape in itself.” He tilts his head. “Isn’t it?” His gaze is fixed on the chain link protruding from his fist. Some battle rages in his head, with no sign of abating. 

The doorknob is close to your hand. So close that you’re beginning to think that fleeing is an option for you, after all. The Alastor you saw in your nightmares would never have permitted it - but he has little in common with the man standing before you. You eye the golden links flowing out from his hand. If you pull hard enough to make him let go, will the whole thing disappear? You don’t think it would take much to catch him off guard. Not in his current state.

Your stomach drops as his eyes flick upwards, catch you in the act.

“Oh…” To your horror, his ears perk up, eyes narrow in an all-too-familiar way. “No. I’m not that far gone.”

You stop, and wish you could force yourself to keep moving, just enough to cover your ears. The static is back in his voice, biting into you. You think he’s angry, like he was the time before. Or at the very least, he wants to be angry. 

Your mind escapes of its own accord. You see yourself, almost a year ago, in the wake of your terrible mistake. Wiping your tears away, dressing in the finest clothes you owned, marching into the street. Buying two things at a nearby secondhand shop: a radio, abandoned and cheap because it refused to turn off, and a baseball bat. It was a stupid idea, one that sucked up your money and left you sitting on your kitchen floor in a sea of broken metal parts, feeling even more hopeless than you did before.

But it felt good, while it lasted. Better than you’d felt in a long time. It gave you something to do with your misery, other than let it tear you apart. And for a few seconds of blissful destruction, your mind went entirely quiet. 

His voice drags you back to the present. “Even if you did manage to get as far as that doorknob,” he spits, “it would still be locked. I’m afraid that you’re trapped.” His grin stretches at the corners, and he bitterly laughs at some joke that you truly don’t understand. “We have that in common. But at least I still have a few places left to run.”

You don’t say a thing. Only let your hand fall from its upwards climb, back to the outside of your thigh. Limp.

“So few that I ran to you.” His lip twitches in something like disgust - whether at you, or at himself, you’re not sure. It stills quickly, and the mask of his smile hardens on his face. “Pitiful. But I can’t say that I regret it just yet. And perhaps I never will.” He clenches his fist tight around the ethereal chain, and for the first time since you set foot in your room, his eyes are alight, glowing exactly how you remember. “I certainly can’t turn back.”

Maybe this, the return of what you knew, is the only part that is real. Or maybe it’s the only part that isn’t. It goes on, either way.

A sudden tension on the chain pulls you forward, until you’re sprawled on the floor with only a vague understanding of how you got there. You look up, and see a gloved hand tugging sharply upwards. You scramble to your knees, because fighting with the metal band around your neck will result in you hideously gasping for breath until you surrender. You try to look away. To your surprise, he lets you, but you find your gaze returning to him before long. There’s no escape. He made that clear a long time ago. He can quell any struggle that you attempt, so it’s better not to struggle at all.

No way out…and yet, there is a hesitance in the way his hand leaves your face, a clumsiness in the way it falls at his waist. One last spark of uncertainty. It’s gone, after a moment - he clutches your chain harder, and quickly undoes his trousers, pulls everything down just enough to let his cock spring free. He looks at you in the moment that your stomach knots in anticipation, in the moment your face betrays your rage at being dragged down to this place. He sighs in delight, at that. But he closes his eyes as he urges you forward, as you let your tongue fall from your mouth, as you drag it up his length and close your mouth over the tip of his cock. He inhales sharply, but makes no other sound. His mouth has fallen open, revealing the sharp ends of his teeth. You wrap your hand around his shaft, meet it with your lips, stroke in time with the movement of your mouth, try to ignore the sound of his breath. You don’t know what he wants, what he likes - you’re not sure if he knows, either. All you can do is keep going, and pray that it will be over soon. Your eyes are closed. His breathing is louder than it was a moment before.

You’re not sure what, exactly, shifts. All you know is that suddenly, his hand is on the back of your head, nails sharp even through his gloves, curling through your hair and pressing into your scalp. His eyes have snapped open. They bore into you as he forces himself into your throat, as he makes you gag and sputter until you’re fighting against his hand, against the chain that pulls you tight to the base of his cock. You can’t breathe. Drool trails from the sides of your mouth, drips to the floor - and he holds you there, exhales raggedly as your struggles become increasingly desperate, until give out entirely.

There’s the clink of chain unwinding from his hand, and then the relief of being yanked back, of taking a deep breath - only for your stomach to drop again as he raises your face. You’re not sure when you started crying, but the tears are there, and he sees every one of them. Lifts a finger to wipe the freshest one away. 

His eyes are wide and shining and dark. Edging on black, the same color as the ill-fitting shadow that pulses out from behind him. He tugs at your chain, and his voice hisses out from the gap between his teeth, a low, ravenous command. “Smile.”

His finger pulls at the corner of your mouth, but you’re already obeying, pulling your lips back to show your teeth, arranging the drool-stained lower half of your face into exactly what he wants to see. His hand twitches. The shadow on the wall lets its mouth fall open. Then, his grip clamps down on your jaw, erasing your grin and forcing your lips open. He shoves into your mouth, thrusts relentlessly until all you have room for in your head is the clink of the chain by your ear, the pressure of his hand on the back of your head, and the taste of his cock on your tongue. The chain tightens, he holds you tight as you choke, his hand stiffens on your scalp - 

He gasps out an oath under his breath. His body shudders, convulses. His cock pulses into you, and his come releases into your throat, so deep that you don’t taste it. You don’t think about it. You prepare to fight for breath, once again, to be held cruelly and tightly until saliva pools in your mouth and spills from your lips. 

But you don’t have to. The moment after it happens, he’s already stepping away. Pulling in on himself, in a perfect mirror of the way you crumple to the floor beneath him. Another oath falls softly on your ears, this one the opposite of pleasure, panicked and accompanied by a different sort of shudder.

The chain disappears. You swallow hard. And with your spine curled in, with your forearms pressed to your thighs, you watch him. He dresses himself quickly, erratically, fumbling over the fasteners before stumbling back to fall onto your bed. To ruin it with the weight of his body, the curl of his fingers on your blanket. 

His breathing, unlike yours, doesn’t even out as the seconds tick by. It catches, releases, sputters. And finally, it becomes so perfectly slow and measured that you know, beyond a doubt, each inhale and exhale is a conscious act. He’s dazed, eyes lidded, his grin faint compared to moments ago. You get the odd impression that you shouldn’t be seeing him like this - that no one should.

“My mind went quiet, for a moment…” Again, he’s not really speaking to you. The static in his voice is gone. And that look on his face, the deadened eyes, the panic only betrayed in the jittering of his hands, has sprung back into place. “It wasn’t worth it.”

“No.” You’re not sure if you say it out loud, and you don’t care. Your mind detaches from your body, floats to the highest shelf in your cramped kitchen, the half-empty bottle of liquor that stands bitter and alone against the peeling paint of your wall. It’s never worth it. And yet, you know that it will be empty, before long.

He looks away from you. “There was a time…a time when I had rules...control…” 

There was a time when you had control, too. It ended when you met him, and it won’t come back. 

“Your soul…” His chest rises. Falls. Heavy. And slowly, shaking, he pulls his hands up from your bed. In one, he rests his face, the attached arm pulled close to his body, elbow pressed down into his thigh. The other hand unfurls in the empty air beside his head. From it emits a soft green light. “Have it.” The light streams towards you, connecting your body with the tips of his fingers, enveloping you with such intensity that you have to close your eyes. You gasp as it seems to pierce your heart, sending a jolt vibrating through your ribcage as it’s sucked into you, until the green glow on the other side of your eyelids has disappeared, and a strange warmth radiates inside you.

He’s let you go. You feel it, know it - but the relief does not come.

You open your eyes. He stands, turns away. Ears pushed back, fists clenched, spine rounded, moments from giving out entirely. And this is the last you see of him. He does not leave by the door. Instead, his image melts away, melds with the remnants of his shadow and retreats into some dark corner, out through whatever crevice he manages to find. 

Away from you. Away from the unswept bedroom floor that you’re curled upon, away from your eyes, which have become every bit as hollow as his own. You hate yourself for wondering what happened to him. But you hate yourself more for wondering if he’ll ever come back. Wondering what version of him you’ll see, if he does. ***

The broadcasts do not return. Not in weeks, not in months, not in years to come. But you never really stop wondering. Only pause. Only live, and escape the best you can for as long as you can manage. After enough time has gone by, you can barely make out his face in your dreams - but you always know it’s him. And they never go away.

crush (mahito x reader, 1.5k)

cw: self-ship coded, reader is implied to be chubby, mahito is himself warning!!!. non-consensual voyeurism. reader is afab, wears a dress and makeup and lingerie, is in a relationship with nanami. not sfw

“What does it mean,” the curse asks Geto, his mismatched eyes far more serious than the man has ever seen them, “to want to touch somebody? Not just to change them; not just to feel the shape of their soul underneath the skin. But . . . just because you want to know what they feel like?”

Geto doesn’t respond for a moment. Mahito’s curiosity is certainly boundless; but there is usually a faint crook to the corner of his mouth, a laugh in his voice. He usually finds all of this - the little foibles of what it is to be human - amusing more than anything else. Geto - at least, the man wearing Geto’s face - thinks back on his own long life, and feels a smile tugging at his own not-really-his mouth. 

“Mahito,” he says. “I think you have a crush.”

“A crush.” Mahito repeats the word; savours the syllable against his tongue and lips and teeth. It feels good there; at once vicious and fascinating. He knows the verb ‘to crush’ - imagines holding you against him until you squeak, until you go weak and your body turns to a boneless, helpless thing in his embrace. 

“And if I want to know what they taste like?” He presses on. “Without biting into their flesh?” He pauses. “No. I just want to know what they taste like. I’d bite as hard as I could.”

Geto laughs again, a laugh too old for the man he’s pretending to be. Mahito is the most human-like curse he has ever met; he wonders, sometimes, how much easier it would have been to experiment if he had Mahito on side hundreds of years ago. Why, the curse even seems to have figured out ‘desire’ all on his own--

“Definitely a crush,” Geto hums. “Touching and tasting? Would you want to kiss them, too? Hold them? Fuck them?”

The question leaves Mahito silent for just a moment. 

“Crush,” Mahito repeats to himself, instead of responding to Geto. It seems the conversation is over; Mahito turns away without answering any further, still murmuring that syllable under his breath. But he is smiling, now - the stitches on his face pulled taut, his eyes sparkling with what somebody optimistic might call ‘mischief’ and what somebody who understood Mahito would call ‘intent’. 

He thinks about you again, later that night. In the privacy of his hammock, with a stack of aged, foxed books by his side as he flips through them. He’d taken them from a library - simply wandered in and picked a collection from the ‘romance’ shelves, intent on understanding what it is he feels stirring in his gut when he looks at you. 

It had been an accident, the first time he had seen you. It had not been you he was following - but that 7:3 sorcerer, the one who had almost beaten him. A fascinating opponent, and a fascinating man - and Mahito was always interested in learning. He had stuck to the shadows, let his body change and ripple in order to camouflage himself, as he had followed Nanami Kento around the city. 

And in a restaurant, Nanami sitting and checking his watch, he had seen you for the first time. You’d been babbling apologies about being late, a flurry and swirl of colour and motion in a dress the colour of melted butter, and Nanami had stood up to greet you and laid a hand on your shoulder and you had gone quiet, looking up at him with a smile on glossy lips until he had kissed you. 

(Mahito had found a drugstore the next night; picked up lip glosses and swiped them over his own mouth, wondering what yours had felt like against Nanami’s. Intense, sticky flavour? Strawberries or pineapples or vanilla? He’d taken one that had shone like yours). 

He had just wanted to know what fascinated the sorcerer about you at first; dissect him, work out his weaknesses. You had seemed so different from the stolid, stoic man that Mahito had encountered - and he had read so many books, of course, about human relationships and psyche and how like calls to like but also how opposites attract . . . He had thought of it as research. 

Research to watch you go about your day to day life; grocery shopping and humming under your breath. You’d seen him, once - Mahito had felt himself tense, had grinned at you something sharp and inane and waited for you to pounce on him (a pity, he’d felt at the time, to shape you into something hideous when you were such a pretty thing to observe, like a bird in a glass cage)--

But you had smiled at him and tilted your head to the side and gone back to what you were doing. If Nanami had ever said anything to you about a curse with a patchwork face . . . clearly you had not remembered it. So you could see curses, at least (would see him, then, when he dug his fingers into the chub of your cheeks and they sunk into the soft flesh - when he harshly grabbed your chin and jolted it upwards so you could see how the light played over his stitches). 

Research, then, to fade into the background and watch you with Nanami. The way he placed a hand around your waist and you seemed to go all soft and complacent. The way he placed his mouth against yours with perfect surety. 

Research, to take the form of a crawling creature and perch himself on the branch outside the apartment you and Nanami shared. To watch you shower and wonder what it would feel like to press against you in it, hot and damp and wet, humid in a different way from the sewer. To watch you pick up piece after piece of flimsy lingerie and hold it against your body, brow furrowing in distaste at the way you looked in the mirror. 

Mahito likes the way your body looks against the frills and the flounces; likes the idea of ripping them to pieces as he bares you again. Nanami, it seems, prefers something tighter - lace, stockings, complicated straps that he traces his fingers across and smiles. 

Research, to watch how you kneel for the blond sorcerer and look up at him with devotion writ clear in your eyes. Research, to watch Nanami knot his tie around your wrists - to scuttle closer until he is on the windowsill, insect creature of too many legs and eyes, something that wouldn’t attract attention on a hot summer night - and to hear the way that Nanami speaks to you. The harsh orders that you fall over yourself to fulfil. The way your voice pitches and whines when you call him ‘Sir’. 

What would Mahito make you call him, he wonders? 

He leaves when the two of you are sweat-slicked, naked, wrapped around one another in the big bed. Frustration gnaws at a part of Mahito he didn’t know he had. He has read the romance books. He knows, without a doubt, this is what they would call ‘jealousy’, and it does not abate even when he reaches his sewers and pouts, climbing into the hammock and making it swing gently from side to side. 

He thinks about yours and Nanami’s anatomy; the part of him that had fitted into you as if it was meant to be there, that had made you arch your back and beg the man for more, please, you could take it. He touches his own stitched body; makes it swell underneath his touch, makes the thing between his thighs bigger and thicker than Nanami’s so that you wouldn’t know for sure if you could take it. Would you cry? Say it was too big? Mahito thinks perhaps he’d like that. 

The jealousy does not abate, roiling in his stomach sour and irritable. Sulking, Geto had called this. Had told Mahito to go and play with some of his toys to make it go away.

But as Mahito’s hands press into fleshy quivering masses that may once have been human, that beg him to die . . . it is only you he can think about. As he makes a human soul smaller and smaller, shriveling it to the size of a kidney bean, wondering if he could ball it up in his fist so tight that he could turn it to dust. 

A crush, Geto had said. 

He thinks about you. Thinks about how Nanami had cradled you so tightly against him, about how his hips had pressed so deeply into you that Mahito couldn’t see from his vantage point on the windowsill where one of you started and the other ended. Thinks about Nanami’s mouth pressing hungrily against yours. 

Crush. The word in his mouth, murmured in a puff of stale air - like a candy, like something to be grabbed between his teeth and shaken until he had conquered it. 

He smiles to himself; thinks about the indent of his hammock pressing into your skin until it marked you for hours, a beautiful pattern on your soft, sweet, achingly mortal body.

Crush. 

How appropriate. 

Yandere!Alastor imagine

Alastor doesn’t indulge that bad habit you’ve picked up (or resumed) in the wake of your death. Quite the opposite - he plucks your vice right out of your hand, before you can do so much as utter a word of protest. Slides your drink away before you can take a sip, or offers you a light and then, once he’s close enough, knocks the cigarette in your hand to the ground. Smiles as he does it, of course, as always. Ignores your requests for space, for solitude. My dear…anyone looking at you could see that you shouldn’t be left unsupervised. Not tonight.

And he’s right. You know he’s right. You’ve been in a bad place for a while, figuratively and literally. It’s surprising that he even noticed the pit you were in, confusing that he cares enough to pull you out, but it feels good. Good enough that you can’t be upset about the invasiveness of his methods, good enough that you actually thank him for doing what you should have been able to do yourself.

His smile certainly broadens at this, but he makes a gracious attempt to wave it aside, says that it’s what any respectable person would do in his situation. You mutter, half-joking, that if that’s the case, you’ve never met anyone respectable in your life - but it’s not a joke to him. Not for a moment. His eyes narrow, lips pull back just a fraction, and you know that he wholly agrees with what you’ve said.

Perhaps he’s right about this as well. You’ve certainly never met anyone like him - and you do trust him, after this. Enough for you to listen to his advice, to step aside and let him snatch away the other things in your life that might lead you astray. Bits of personal expression that are a little too tied to the mess you used to be, before him. Friends who would never look out for you in the way he does.

You listen, because you know he’s looking out for you. Why he’s got his eye on you, you couldn’t say - but kindness is rare here. Better to accept it than to question it. It might disappear if you look too carefully.

Do you roleplay at all? If you do what are your rules/ requirements for role play/ writing with others?

You write beautifully by the way!! ❤️❤️❤️

Hi hi, thank you very much <3 I don’t RP, but if you’re looking for that I hope that you find a lovely partner whose brain is on the same wavelength as your own

also sorry I took forever to respond to this

I made resumes for hazbin characters because that’s the kind of thing that amuses me, results are below

(I did angel dust, niffty, husk, pentious, and cherri bomb this round but the odds of me not making more are slim)

This place reeks of death.

Alastor would 100% force you to listen to the entirety of Everywhere At The End Of Time

I could make a yandere Alastor with a reader like vox... (a guy who is passionate about technology and is from the modern world while alastor is from the ancient era).

Imagine Alastor falling in love with this reader.

So here’s the thing. I don’t think Alastor really falls in love, ever. Not in the traditional sense. He just gets deeply, horribly obsessed. And if the object of his “affection” has some major differences of opinion, he is certainly not going to meet them halfway. Quite the opposite, especially when it comes to the recent technology he despises so much. He’s going to crush those oh-so-misguided impulses right out of you. Always on your cell phone, even in his presence? Whoops! It’s gone now. Trying to buy another one would be like throwing money down the toilet.

He’s going to slowly cut you off from that world, one mysterious disappearance at a time, and pull you into his instead. You can still listen to music, but none of that tacky, modern garbage you seem to adore so much, and certainly not on any device from your millennium. He’ll get you a nice phonograph for your room, though, and a set of records that he actually approves of. Might even pop by unexpectedly to listen along - or just to watch, hidden away in the shadows, and see if you’re learning to enjoy his taste.

You will learn, eventually. He’ll make sure of it.

Written in Blood

Alastor x Reader // Word Count 2.2k

In which you’re given a lasting reminder of who should be on your mind.

tags/warnings: dark content, yandere, violence, branding, scratching, blood, alastor definitely wanting to taste said blood (but holding himself back), implied sexual content, power imbalance, abuse, absolutely fucked relationship dynamic, reader clearly has no control over what happens to her (therefore dubcon/noncon implications)

A/N: this exists because the wonderful @absolute-flaming-trash planted this idea in my head. Let us all take a moment to bow down to our queen <3

As always - 18+, read the tags, if you don’t like the tags then don’t go below the cut (or into my inbox). Thank you and enjoy.

Alastor’s hand slides gently up your back, the soft touch contrasting ominously with the brutal way he’d slapped you just moments before. Your clothes are strewn haphazardly across the floor (while his all remain on, and intact), but the shiver that runs down your spine has nothing to do with your lack of cover. His gloves, which he’s never removed before, now lay discarded along with the rest of the scraps, two fingers slick with the residue you’ve left behind.

“What’s my name, darling?” 

The pet name feels underhanded, cruel as the sting of his palm that still burns on your cheek, but you don’t take the time to ponder it. This is not the time for resistance - the way his hand pressed against your bare skin, trapping you between his palm and your bedroom floor, is enough to remind you of that. “Alastor…”

“That’s correct! Very well done.” The charm lingers in his voice, barely betraying a hint of the malice underneath. “And why, pray tell, did I feel the need to ask you such a simple question?”

“Because…” Because you’d been stupid, and let your mind wander, as it often does, to the life you’d led before. The people you’d loved. The time when being… intimate felt real, when it wasn’t just another piece in some twisted game whose rules you’ve never been told. “Because you want to make sure that I remember it.”

It was in one of those warped, vulnerable moments, when you’d felt everything and he’d seemed to feel nothing at all, besides a sick sense of amusement at seeing you lose yourself. That was when you made your mistake. Let go a little too much, and sighed a name that wasn’t his. One that you missed, one that you often closed your eyes and pictured above you - you’d been too deep in your reverie to realize how deeply you’d betrayed yourself, and by the time you’d come back to your senses, it had been far too late to do anything but beg for forgiveness.

“I do want you to remember.” He sighs. “Such a shame that you would rather forget…”

You don’t protest. He’s not wrong, at all. How desperately you wish you could go back to the life you had before. At the very least, you could have chosen to go somewhere else - anywhere else - in the wake of your death. You’d give anything to rewind the clock, now, to forget him entirely and start anew, go down some other path that didn’t end with him. With this.

You’re surprised when his hand pauses on your upper back, beside your shoulder. Truly, you’d believed that he was going for your neck, that he was going to clamp his fist around your throat and cut the air off from your lungs until your vision went black. Instead, his free hand finds your own, and clasps over it, locking his fingers with yours. He gently squeezes into your palm, a gesture that would be comforting if it didn’t come from him.

“Let’s make sure you don’t forget again, shall we?” He sounds calm, almost soothing, a sudden shift from the rage you’d been subjected to just a minute before. He turns on a dime like this often, and you’re never sure which side of him to trust. Never sure what’s an act, or what’s real.

“I won’t.” You mean it, more than anything you’ve ever said to him. There’s a knot in your stomach, pulling tighter with this sudden change in demeanor, and you want desperately to unravel it. To have peace, if only for a little while. “It was just a mistake. I won’t ever do it again.”

“Of course you won’t.” His head drops, distorted static pressing into your ear. From out of the corner of your eye, you can see that familiar red glow pulsing out behind him - always a sign of worse things to come. “Not after this. ”

The hand on your back tenses, and you tense along with it. Unnaturally sharp nails dig slowly into your flesh until, with an agonizing jolt, your skin breaks beneath them. At this, three of his fingers lift, but the fourth - his index finger - burrows deeper into your flesh, and yanks down, ripping a diagonal gash inches long.

You scream. Truly scream, your mind ripping from pain and shock, just as awfully and tangibly as your skin. He’s hurt you before…but he’s never drawn blood, and certainly never sent it dripping in rivulets down your back. 

He sighs, and brings his finger back up to the opening point of the fresh cut. “Oh… this is going to be a long few minutes for you, isn’t it?” Without any more preamble, he tears into you all over again, yanking out another cry of pain as he pulls away at the opposite angle, drawing out a deep scratch the same length as the first.

There are tears in your eyes. Normally, you’d try to hold them back, but this time you can’t pull yourself together, as hard as you try. You let them fall, let yourself cry out loud. Somewhere in the haze that your mind has become, it occurs to you that there’s something very deliberate about the placement of these scratches. Something methodical.

“Do you even know what I’m doing?” He cackles over you, a luminescent red glow fading into the corners of your vision. “Perhaps after this one, if you still haven’t figured it out, I’ll give you a hint…” 

He delves into you once more. This slash stings most harshly at the ends, where it connects the two lines already drawn, halfway down, digging again into already-broken skin. Slowly, your mind forms an image, connecting the strokes…when the pieces fall together, a sob, loud and raw and hopeless, plummets out of your mouth.

“You understand.” He presses his thumb into the blood pouring from your back, and gently runs it over the A he’s carved into your skin. “No need to despair…that’s one letter done already.”

“I…” You squirm, shaking violently beneath him. “I can’t…”

“ Don’t be ridiculous.” He slides his hand down, already preparing for another stroke. “I’m not going to leave my art unfinished…it would be such a waste. And very confusing to anyone who happened to get a glimpse - not as if I intend to allow such a thing to happen.” 

His name - it’s going to be written diagonally across your entire back. He’s left just enough room for the remaining letters, while taking up as much space as possible with each cut. 

“Stop shaking, my dear. You’re going to mess this up…and I’m sure you don’t want me to have to do it over again.”

You try to figure out how many more times you’re going to have to take this, how many more scratches before you’re done. Two for the L, another three for the next A…

He slices into your back, straight down, and the numbers disappear from your head. It’s hopeless. You bite your lip, hard, but you can’t keep yourself silent.

“ Poor thing.” The condescension is palpable, dripping cruelly from his lips. “If only you’d controlled yourself to begin with. It takes just a moment to ruin everything…I do hope that you won’t do it again.”

Oh, you know that that’s a lie. He loves having a reason.

Another slash, and a hum of satisfaction from behind you when you go still, recovering just a bit quicker than the time before. “Two down.”

He says it like it’s a good thing, and not a reason for you to sob harder. Two down means five to go….means you’ve barely started.

His mouth is close enough to a fresh tear that you can feel his hot, hungry breath against your torn skin, his macabre smile burning into your spine. 

And - oh god. Something wet and warm hits your back, slides down and mixes with the rivulets of blood trailing over your skin.

“So tempting …” He sighs raggedly, and slowly, oh-so-reluctantly pulls himself back. “But I know myself well enough not to go down that path with you …it would be far too hard to stop once I started.”

Even the pain of the scratch that follows isn’t enough to push away the pure horror that curls in your gut.

Neither is the next.

Or the next.

He’s dragging it out, each time insisting that you still your shaking limbs before he continues, giving your hand an awful, gentle squeeze before moving on. Your eyes are screwed shut almost the entire time - but with each stroke, there’s a moment when they flicker open, and take in a bit of that terrible red light before you manage to wrestle them close.

It doesn’t get better. If anything, you think it’s getting crueler as it goes on, but you pull yourself together enough to start apologizing again, whimpered “ I’m sorry ”s gasping almost inaudibly from your mouth.

“I’m not convinced.” The pad of his finger traces up, readies his next stroke. “You’d say anything to get out of this, my dear. It’s only when I’m done that I’ll be satisfied.”

You bite down on your lip until it breaks, scratch at the palm of your free hand, the floorboards beneath. It’s only been a few minutes, but this is beginning to feel like your entire existence - you can’t conjure memories of a time before it, and you certainly can’t imagine a time after. Least of all looking in the mirror when this all over…

He pauses for an extra moment before this next letter, as if he’s giving time to let the dread sink in. You’ve lost track of where you are - but the O is unmistakable. One long, unbroken stroke that requires him to twist his nail against your skin. 

He laughs indulgently, almost sweetly, as you gasp and writhe helplessly beneath him. “Almost finished, darling…try to be patient.”

Oh, if his affection felt twisted before, it’s a  thousand times worse now. And yet, he somehow manages to make it sound genuine. Like he feels bad that he has to do this to you. It would almost be easier, you think, to let yourself believe it.

His voice is soft, the static almost entirely fallen away. “Now, tell me again - what is my name?”

You choke back your tears, force what little air you can into your lungs. You’re almost done, but everything hurts so much that it barely matters. His voice sounds so far away, hovering above you, reverberating strangely in your head.

He presses his lips to your ear. “ Answer me.”

“A”-

As soon as you attempt to speak, he slashes down once more, and your voice dissolves into something between a sob and a scream.

He laughs, and doesn’t bother pausing before finishing off the R of his name,grinding his talon deep into your back, grin spreading wide in the corner of your eye as you shriek. “Not quite.”

You’re sure that there’s a pool of your tears on the floor, but you’re too out of it to see with certainty, even if you did manage to open your eyes.

“Hm.” He sighs, gently tracing the pad of his finger over the final scratch. “And…what about your name? Surely, you can at least remember that.”

His nails suddenly dig into your torn skin, sending a fresh shudder of pain curdling down your spine, leaving you gasping - not to speak, but to quell the churning in your stomach.

“Shame.” He gives your hand another squeeze. “But I’m sure it will come back to you, before long. You’re very resilient…I think that’s why I always have so much fun when we’re together.”

Your head spins. It’s been spinning for what feels like an eternity, numbed and stretched out by his torture. You want him gone. Now, and forever. But once he leaves, you’ll be just as miserable. Playing what just happened in a sickening loop in your head until the pain finally goes away. Until you wash every stain from your skin. And even then…

Oh, even long after that. Just like he said - you’re never going to forget. 

He rises to his feet, collects his gloves from where they lie on the floor, and slides them into his pocket. For some time, he stands silent and still above you. Even with your face pressed to the ground, you know that he’s staring, eyes flashing bright and red as he surveys the results of his work. 

“I’m sure you’ll do better next time,” he sighs. “Until then…”

His hand slides under your jaw, forcing you to look up. He bends down at an angle that truly doesn’t make sense, uses his bloodied fingers to swipe away the tears rolling down your cheeks, pushes back your hair - and kisses you oh-so-softly on the forehead. 

You don’t move. Don’t speak. The tears are still coming, and you’re not even sure if they’re still from the pain. 

“ Take care, my dear.”

You wait until he’s turned away before you allow yourself to react, nails digging into your palms as your face falls back to the floor. Shaking. You stay there until long after the door has shut behind you.

Y’know, sometimes you just want to fuck a TV. And you know who doesn’t ask questions? Tumblr. Tumblr fucks that TV with you.

Hisoka 🃏

I would like everyone to know that the ungodly thing I’m gonna post later today was partially written on the property of a Christian University™️

“Oh my god, he’s so scary,” I say as I kick my feet up in the air and giggle like an idiot.

is THIS your man? [shows an image of a malnourished injured exhausted man with big sad eyes looking up at the camera with blood smeared all over his face and mouth. and he is visibly trembling]

Rhinestone Eyes

Alastor twirling his microphone appreciation post

Vox was absolutely off the rails in this episode and I am still cackling about it. Man sprung a rage boner, did a silly little dance, dropped a tongue reveal, and dipped

Alastor being desperate and unhinged is as delightful as it is fucking terrifying because now that it's fully confirmed that he's in a deal of his own (one he very much wants out of) it doesn't take much to think about what he's going to use Charlie's "favor" for when he finally collects.

Friendly reminder that I’m a feral creature

I had no doubt that I would amass more questionable fictional obsessions this year but man, I sure was not expecting any of them to have a fucking flatscreen for a head

rewatching episode 2 was a massive mistake, there is no getting out of this now

Per This Agreement…

Alastor x Reader Oneshot

In which you attempt a desperate bargain to recover your soul, and immediately regret it.

tags/warnings: dark content, non-con themes but no actual non-con, massive power imbalance, mentions of death (reader is in hell, after all), That Chain from That Episode

Word Count: 2.6k

A/N: I tagged this as nsfw because there are some obvious Adult Themes, but you will not find any smut below the cut.

Alastor’s ever-present grin broadens as he peers down at you. “Oh…why would I ever do something like that?” He doesn’t sound malicious – more curious than anything – but you know better than to trust your initial impression. You’ve made that mistake with him once already.

Still, you resist the urge to look away, scared that the slightest wrong move might ruin your chances. Your freedom, and all that comes with it, hangs by a thread. You have to tread carefully, and watch your words, or you might end up digging yourself into an even deeper ditch than the one you’re already in. 

His fingers drum impatiently on his desk.

“My soul isn’t worth much to you,” you begin, sinking lower into your chair. “Or to anyone. I’m not strong, I don’t have any particular skill - I don’t have much to offer at all.”

“Oh, don’t underestimate yourself.” He tilts his head, false sympathy practically oozing from his every word. “I will find a use for you, before long.” His eyes flash. “Whether you’ll enjoy it is another story entirely.”

You proceed cautiously, sensing the danger in contradicting him. “Maybe you will. But…I’m not anything special.” You feel a fresh wave of despair at your situation. So much taken away from you, for so little gain. “You don’t need me. You’re just… holding onto me. And it would be such a relief to be let go.”

“Would it, now?” His mouth parts slightly, revealing the deadly sharp ends of his teeth.

“Yes.” It’s an understatement. A massive one. Less than a day after your arrival in hell, Alastor had come to remind you of your deal - since then, you’ve felt like a pet clawing rabidly at the bars of its cage, possessed by a desperate, all-consuming need to get out.

He tilts his head, lips pulling back to reveal even more of his oversized smile.“Do go on.”

When you look up at him now, you can picture every detail of that horrifying scene. He’d materialized behind you, catching you by your shoulder and spinning you around to face him before you’d even been aware of his presence. You remember the shudder that vibrated down your spine as you’d gazed up at him, the odd highlights and shadows that cast his face in a luminescent glow, the way his spine seemed to stretch and contort until he was practically wrapped around you. 

Even his voice was terrifying. It was pitched down, its usually smooth static fraying at the ends. “I have no use for you at the moment,” he’d informed you, before disappearing into the shadows from whence he’d came. When I do – and I expect it will be soon - I’ll call on you again.”

You’d felt a rush of sheer panic as understanding of your situation had finally taken hold. The reality that had seemed so abstract in life (at least, the short span of life you’d managed to live out after signing), made as concrete as prison walls on the day after your death.

An extra twist of the knife: he hadn’t struck the same sense of terror in you when you’d signed your soul away. Not even close. Then, he’d been downright charming. But you know now what a terrible, gut-wrenching mistake you’ve made. You’ve heard his broadcasts. You know that he’s ruthless. Sadistic. The day he does call on you will be the day you lose your soul all over again. And the time after that, and the time after that, on and on, spiraling down until your sorry existence is extinguished for good.

You don’t want things to end like that. By any means necessary, you need to cut yourself loose.

He’s deathly silent, now, face frozen at a crooked angle, waiting for you to go on. Still shuddering internally at your recollection, you oblige. “Youremember the day I…the day I agreed to this. It wasn’t that long ago. It must have been obvious that I didn’t know what I was doing. That I did it without thinking it through”-

“Yes…well. That is how it tends to happen!” There’s a twitch at the corner of his lip, and his eyes roll upwards before sliding back to your face, freezing on the nervous anticipation they find there. “I do try my best to be clear about my terms, but some people just don’t quite understand.”

“Well…I understand now. And now that I do - I want out.” You force yourself to keep facing forward, to keep looking directly at him, despite the uncanny red glow burning in his eyes. He hasn’t taken them off of you for more than a moment. “No one wants to be in hell, but I think I can do alright in the time I have left. I just want to lay low, eke out the best existence I can. Find some peace. But”- You swallow, hard. “I won’t have any peace until my soul is back in my own hands.”

You had had an inane sort of hope that words alone might be enough to untangle you, but one look at his face is enough to rob you of that delusion.

“What a compelling appeal.” His voice is dry. Mocking. He leans over the desk, and drops his head so that he’s staring up at you. The sudden shift it perspective sets you off balance. “I do appreciate you sharing – really, I do – but your little sob story doesn’t answer my question. Why should I release you?” He straightens up, looking down on you once more. A gloved hand unfurls in your direction, gesturing towards you with an open palm. “You’ve given me no reason! And I’ll admit that I don’t appreciate having my time wasted, especially after it’s been begged for, so” -

You recoil, just a fraction of an inch, as his spine seems to extend, bringing his face far too close to your own for comfort.

“So. If you do have anything to back up your request, I suggest that you speak quickly.”

A knot pulls tight in your stomach. All of your more favorable options are off the table, now. You couldn’t imagine it going any other way, but oh, how painfully fast this moment has arrived. You only realize now how treacherous your path to freedom really is, and how woefully ill-prepared you are to lay your cards down on the table.

After a few seconds of your silence, his lips pull back, revealing even more of that terrible, ever-present smile. “You know…if it hadn’t been for this little meeting, you might have been able to find some semblance of that peace you’ve been looking for.” His hands crawl in your direction, gloved fingers tapping far too heavily upon the desk between you. “But now, you’ve managed to irritate me.” 

There’s a shadow flickering above him - it doesn’t match his shape at all, and it’s wearing a hideous, hungry smile.

You have no choice but to speak. “I…” 

“Yes?” He lets his voice crackle to life, no longer bothering to suppress the malice underneath. 

“I’ll…”

In the past weeks, you’ve pored endlessly over the details of your situation, trying frantically to tease out a path to escape. And of course, you’ve replayed his visit countless times in your head. That night, once his hand had made contact with your shoulder, it hadn’t fallen away from you for the remainder of your conversation. He was touching you the entire time, palm sliding indiscriminately from your shoulder to your back to your waist. And yet, somehow, it seemed like he was holding something back.

It hadn’t been pleasant. But when you churned through everything in your head, trying to find a way out – any way out - that was always where your mind ended up. Every single time, it was the only path out that you saw. If you don’t take it, you’ll be trapped forever. Nothing – nothing – could be worse than that. Better to suffer now, temporarily, than to be bound to him forever.

You force the rest of the words from your mouth before you can choke on them all over. “I don’t have much to offer. But…I need to get out of this.” Already, you feel disgusted with yourself, but it’s too late to stop now. “I’d give everything I do have if it meant being free at the end.” 

As subtle as you’ve made your suggestion, you’re sickened upon hearing it out loud, in your own voice. And yet, you can’t bring yourself to regret it. If this does work…

If it does work, your soul will be yours. No one, not even him, will be able to dangle anything over your head. You’ll never have to worry again. You’ll be able to live - or at least, do whatever the equivalent of living is in hell.

He abruptly retracts into his seat, and clasps his hands on the desk. “You’re going to have to be a bit more specific, my dear. I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.” His eyes are flashing with cruel amusement - he knows exactly what you’re saying, and he’s going to make you elaborate anyways, purely for his own entertainment. 

You breathe shallowly through your nose, doing your best to keep your expression even. This will be worth it. Every pathetic moment brings you closer to relief. 

And yet, you find your gaze dropping to the floor. “Anything,” you say, cringing at the way your voice gasps from your mouth, barely audible. You screw up your resolve, and raise your face, looking him dead in the eye. If you have to be sordid - so be it. “You can…use me however you please. I’ll crawl under this desk right now, if that’s what you want. All I want is a promise that I’ll be let go at the end. That I’ll do your bidding once, and then be done.”

His eyes darken. His hands curl into claws upon the desk beneath him. 

And then, he laughs. Cruelly, his voice deepening and distorting to the point of being nearly unrecognizable. It echoes forth from his mouth, a torrent of static that seems to bounce off of every wall in the room, flooding your ears. “I think you’ve misunderstood your situation.” 

He flicks out his hand. In it appears the end of a golden chain. You sit frozen in terror as you watch the rest of it materialize, link by link, crawling over the edge of the desk and up your thighs, your stomach, your chest - it ends in a thick collar that quickly fastens around your neck. The entire thing radiates a faint green light, giving it an ethereal appearance, but it’s solid to the touch. You can feel its weight, and the harsh metal against your throat. It’s tight enough that you feel claustrophobic, millimeters away from truly choking you, biting into your skin. You’re gasping for breath - whether from the collar, or sheer panic, you’re not entirely sure. You desperately pull at it, then attempt to slide your fingers underneath, but it doesn’t budge.

Alastor rises from his chair, and takes his time pacing around the side of the desk. When he’s standing over you, he hooks his boot on the leg of your chair, effortlessly dragging you around to face him. He takes his time gathering the loose chain in his hands, wrapping it around itself until only a short, taught length remains free. 

He takes the end of this in one hand, and yanks. You tumble to the floor, falling directly at his feet.

“I own your soul, my dear. I own you.” He tugs the chain up towards the ceiling, and you follow, scrambling up onto your knees. You’re panting for breath, staring wide-eyed at the floor, too scared of what you might see to look up. There’s a green light emanating above your head, casting monstrous shadows upon the hardwood beneath you.

“You have nothing to bargain with” - the chain jerks sharply, dragging you forward - “because everything you have is already mine. To do with as I wish.”

Your hands are curled into fists at your sides. Stomach sinking with dread.

“So,” he continues, “If I were interested in what you have to offer…” He hinges over you, holding your chain tightly as he lowers his face to your ear. “It would already be mine.”

A whimper escapes your mouth. Immediately, you wish you could have swallowed it in time. The chain whips down, losing its slack as it approaches the floor, pulling you down with it. You fall flat on your stomach, fingernails uselessly scrabbling for purchase on the smooth wood beneath them. You make the mistake of looking up, and immediately, your entire field of view is taken up by his manic expression, shoved violently into your face. For a moment, red bars of light – the same hue as his eyes - flash across your vision, blinding you entirely.

“For as long as I own you – which will be for the remainder of your wretched existence – you are at my disposal.” His voice rips into your ears, as harshly as the luminescent glow surrounding him pierces your eyes. “I’m not interested in anything from you at the moment. But if I ever am – no matter what it is - I’ll have no need to wait for any sort of bargain on your end.” He rises to his full height, loosing just enough of the chain to allow you to remain on the floor beneath him. “Understood?”

You nod silently.

His fist clenches and pulls upwards, impossibly quick. You gasp for breath as your neck is jerked up from the floor.

“Understood?”

“Yes.”

“Splendid.” The chain disappears, and you collapse to the ground, too quickly to catch yourself on your hands. The last gasp of air is ripped from your lungs.

You let your eyes settle on the very bottom of the wall across from you, all too aware of the grin that awaits you if you dare raise your head. Your head is spinning, not from the impact, but from the realization that you have absolutely nothing left. You’ve gained nothing – and you’ve lost more than you thought was possible. Maybe, if you hadn’t come crawling to him today, you could have found a way to bear your situation, dire as it was. But now, you know that you’ll never feel at ease again. Every odd shadow in your bedroom, every unexplained noise you hear in the middle of the night, is going to haunt you for as long as you…

As long as you exist, you suppose. Even the hellish equivalent of a proper life is out of reach for you now.

A polished boot taps the floor, directly beside your head. “I think we’re done for today, my dear.”

You continue to lie motionless, your trembling limbs refusing to move from where they’re splayed upon the floor.

Alastor sighs, and bends down over you, thrusting his widened eyes directly in front of your own. A shadow flickers over the patch of wall before you, and his voice rumbles out from between his parted teeth, hideously distorted. “Leave.”

You scramble to your feet, and practically sprint to the exit. Your hand fumbles over the doorknob, missing once before catching it, your own breath loud and erratic in your ears as you shove the door open.

Just before you can swing it closed behind you, you hear his voice one final time.

“Farewell…for now.”

Before you can even consider responding, the door slams shut, without any help from you.