...fucking You Really Hard Until You Sob Out A Little "I'm Ovulating" And Then He Gets Really Gentle

...fucking you really hard until you sob out a little "I'm ovulating" and then he gets really gentle and sweet.

"Aw, are we about to make a baby?" he coos right into your ear, "ain't that sweet?"

Hide and Seek | Demon!Kaeya x Reader

Hello hello! This is the first halloween fic with some demon Kaeya for you all :] happy spooky month!!

Word Count: 4.2k

CW: AFAB READER, NSFT, noncon, "sweetheart" as a nickname (no explicitly gendered nicknames though), yandere themes, some blood, maybe implied voyeurism(up to the imagination really), unprotected sex, slight religious themes, probably inaccurate portrayal of ghost hunting.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” 

You roll your eyes, trying to not let the bored, infuriating drawl of your partner get under your skin. “Yes, Kaeya. We’ve done this at least a dozen times now. You don’t need to ask that every time.”

Technically, you don’t know what you’re doing, but you won’t say as much to him. You’ve just read dozens of articles, and this is the sort of thing you’ve seen and read about other paranormal investigators doing, so there’s got to be a reason for it, right?

Kaeya shrugs, moving from his lazy slouch against the dusty countertop closer to you. Air washes over the back of your neck and you bristle, turning over your shoulder to glare at him. He smiles. “What, am I not allowed to watch my partner work?”

Ignoring him, you light another candle. 

“You know… I’ve got to hand it to you, I’ve never met someone as… zealous as you.” He continues after a minute of blissful silence. You try not to roll your eyes again. 

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. We’ve been searching for-” he makes an exaggerated motion with his hands, pantomiming quotation marks, “-’ghosts’ and ‘ghouls’ and-” he laughs; cynical, cracking laughter- “demons... And after all these months of nothing but boring, dusty houses, you’re still convinced there’s something out there.”

“Okay.”

He laughs again at your lackluster response, this one more mirthful than cynical, and you purse your lips to suppress the smile you feel creeping up. Bastard doesn’t deserve it. You light the last candle, blowing out the match and setting it on the floor next to the rest of your supplies. 

“No offense, but don’t demons like blood? I don’t think red chalk and soy wax candles are going to summon a demon.” Kaeya leans forward to inspect your handiwork over your shoulder, clicking his tongue. “Maybe that’s why we haven’t seen a demon yet. Not enough blood offerings.”

You smile despite yourself. “And are you willing to use your blood, then, Mr. Skeptic?”

“No can do, sweetheart. Demons don’t like my blood type.”

“And what’s your blood type?” 

“Whichever one demons dislike the most.”

That earns a laugh out of you, and you swat him away when he preens a little too much at finally wrangling a laugh out of you. “Go make yourself useful, then, and get the salt from the van.”

Kaeya rocks back onto his heels in a languid stretch, rolling his eyes– well. Eye. You never did ask him about the eyepatch– before turning to go fetch the requested item. “I don’t think demons are allergic to the most boring seasoning, but if it so pleases you…”

“If they’re allergic to you then they’re surely allergic to salt,” You fire back, cleaning up one of the chalk lines with your thumb. 

“Hurtful!” He calls back from down the hall. You hear the front door slam shut a second later.

Shaking your head, you turn back to the task at hand. Admittedly, you’re not sure this will work. It’s not an exact science, but you’re willing to try anything at least a dozen times before ruling it out, and maybe this time will be different. 

While you wait, you dig the ouija board out of your bag, balancing it on your knees, and set the planchette on the center of it. 

Never use a ouija board alone, the woman you’d bought it from had told you sternly. At the time, you’d never even considered it. Using it alone seemed like a bad idea anyways– an invitation for bad things, but… 

Whenever you’ve used it with Kaeya– on the rare occasion he wouldn’t use it as an opportunity to mess with you by purposefully dragging the planchette around the board– nothing would happen. You’re beginning to wonder if he’s bad luck– maybe the kinds of paranormal things you investigate just don’t like talking to a smartass. 

So… Just this once can’t hurt, right?

“Hello. Is anyone there?” You try, resting a few fingers on the planchette. 

No response. 

“If… If there’s someone here, please make yourself known.” You try again. The sound of your voice bouncing off the walls is unnerving– the bareness of the house you’re in is somehow more unsettling than the homes you’ve been in with plastic covered furniture, buried under thick layers of dust. 

Nothing still. 

You’re about to give up, say goodbye and put the board away before Kaeya returns from the van and starts pestering you again, but there’s a sudden tug on the planchette– firm enough it’s almost ripped out from beneath your fingers.

“YES.”

You stare, wide-eyed, down at the board. Your heart begins to pound. “...Hi.”

The planchette shifts again. “HELLO.”

“Hi,” You parrot again, a small, nervous laugh cracking from your chest. Your hand trembles, but you keep it on the planchette. “Uh, hah- Um. How… are you?”

This time, it starts to spell a word. Each letter makes your heart rate spike. “SCARED,” it says. 

“...Why?”

“THAT THING.”

“The… The candles?” 

“NO.”

You’re about to ask another question– maybe the chalk? Maybe you drew the wrong sigils– but the planchette moves again on its own accord, frantically darting from letter to letter. It’s hard to keep up; you’re so busy trying to keep ahold of the planchette with how fast it moves across the board you almost forget to pay attention to the word, processing it a few moments after it’s stopped:

“DEMON.”

“Where?” You press, glancing around to the darkened corners of the room, cold shivers prickling your spine at the thought. It’s messing with you. It has to be, right…?

“NO.” A pause, to be sure you’re paying attention, then it drags across the board hurriedly, like it’s afraid of being caught, “WHO.”

“Who…? I don’t-”

Wood scrapes harshly against wood, the sound grating on your ears, screeching. It’s spelling something new now. A name.

“K A E Y-”

“Sorry I took so long! I couldn’t find the salt.” You hear your partner call from down the hall, footsteps echoing through the empty space. 

You stare blankly at the board as the planchette slips from beneath your fingers, ending on the “GOODBYE.”

Kaeya stops at the entryway, container of salt in hand, “Damn thing rolled under the– Oh, woah, what’s with that face?”

It’s hard to force yourself to calm, balling your hand into a fist and setting it in your lap. You force a shaky smile, trying not to shudder at the look of disdain on his face when his eye flits to the board still sitting in your lap.

“Without me?” He says, striding over and plopping down a bit too quickly. He laughs when you flinch. “I’m wounded.”

You swallow harshly, smile at him with more teeth than you should, and try to choke back the anxiety bubbling in your chest. Why was it spelling his name? “Sorry,” You breathe, clearing your throat when the reply comes out reedy, “I should’ve waited.”

“Spook yourself?” Kaeya asks, leaning in. His eye glints in the candlelight. When you lean away he smiles, all teeth. “You’re shaking.”

You are. But this is your partner, right? The same skeptic that’s tormented you and been a thorn in your side for months. The same smartass that tries to scare you whenever you have to turn out your light, the same one that teases you for jumping at every little creak and noise when you explore abandoned buildings together. 

“Yeah.” Has his eye always been that bright? “Sorry. I thought it worked this time.”

You don’t quite know why you’re lying. Something in your gut tells you to. 

Kaeya pouts, pulling away from you to lean back against his palms. “Aw. Well, that’s a shame. Did it tell you anything fun?”

“Uh-” You clear your throat again, voice pitching. “Nothing. Just… Gibberish.”

“Gibberish?” He parrots back, turning his attention to the candles. You can’t see his face now, dim in the scarce light. The candlelight catches on the ends of his hair– almost beautiful. But your heart hasn’t stopped pounding, the image of the board’s last message replaying in your mind. 

“Y-yeah. I thought it was spelling something, but… nothing.” You tear your eyes away from him to the flickering candles as well, trying to suppress the tremors of adrenaline. It’s just a board. Whatever was speaking to you was probably just fucking with you. 

“Mmmhm.” 

A tense silence follows, with your partner drumming his fingers against dusty floorboards. The sound cracks against your ears, too sharp and loud in the quiet house you occupy to block out. 

“I have an idea.” He starts, not commenting on the little, frightful jump you give when he breaks the silence. “Let’s play a game.”

“A game?”

“Yeah. A game,” He reaches forward, pinching the wick of one of the candles and snuffing it out. He quickly moves on to the next, snuffing out the circle of candles you lit one by one, each sizzling loudly between his fingers. A scent like burnt flesh hits your nose and you recoil, a hand flying up to cover your mouth and nose. 

“Kaeya, what–”

“Hide and seek, to be precise,” He interrupts, unbothered. Without the guide of candlelight you can barely see him, just the vague shadow of a man you think you know. “I’ll seek.”

“Kaeya?”

That shadow turns to look at you. “You have thirty seconds to hide, and I have sixty seconds to find you. Sound fair?”

“L-Look, Kaeya, I don’t-”

“Thirty.”

“Kaeya-”

“Twenty-nine.”

Your stomach lurches. You scramble to your feet, hesitating briefly as the blood rushes to your head from the sudden movement. His eye catches in the bare moonlight that filters in from one of the broken windows, staring straight at you. 

“The previous homeowners left everything that was in their attic. Plenty of places to hide, up there.” He tells you, voice low and conspiratory. You can hear the smile in it; catch a glimpse of teeth. “...But you didn’t hear that from me. Twenty-eight.”

You run for the attic. Kaeya’s voice follows you down the hall, almost sing-song as he counts down. 

Tearing through the rooms, the drone of his voice is drowned out by the sound of your footsteps echoing through the halls. Every room you peer into is completely bare, and you come to the sinking realization that Kaeya was telling the truth– you can’t hide in any of these rooms, it’d take only a quick glance to find you. 

You try to slip up the stairs to the attic as quietly as you can manage, each groaning step making your heart sink further. 

By the time you’re at the top of the steps, you can’t hear Kaeya’s voice anymore. Is he still counting?

The attic is dark, but filled with old, dusty furniture and water-stained cardboard boxes. Sheets cover some of the furniture, moth-eaten and filthy. You stumble through the dark, further into the room. 

“Ready or not, here I come!” Kaeya calls from further in the house. 

Shit. 

There’s a large wardrobe in the corner, turned on its side and partially covered with a sheet like much of the other furniture in the space. It’s better than nothing. The handle sticks when you tug on it, but the door eventually swings awkwardly open– and blessedly quiet– and you’re able to clamber inside the cramped space. 

You shut the door quietly behind you, huddling uncomfortably against the back of it. You can hear the steps to the attic groaning under Kaeya’s weight, then silence. 

Blood rushes in your ears, and you strain to hear over the thrum of your own heart. There’s footsteps meandering around the room now, and you can hear your partner humming lackadaisically as he searches. 

He’s fucking with you. He’s got to be. He saw how spooked you were from the ouija board and he decided that now was the best time for this. Once he’s done with his game you’ll come out and tell him what actually happened with the board. 

…It’s what you want to believe, but terror still graws at your throat, suffocating as you listen to Kaeya tossing heavy objects about the room in his search. It’s been more than sixty seconds by now, hasn’t it? You don’t know. 

The rummaging stops a few feet away from the wardrobe you’re hiding in. You hold your breath, fishing out your phone and unlocking it. 

He wouldn’t hurt you. He wouldn’t. He’s just trying to scare you. 

Right?

You’re not given the time to dwell on it. The wardrobe door swings open, blue light from your phone screen illuminating Kaeya’s face. His one visible eye is wild, pupil blown wide and mouth stretched into a toothy grin. 

“There you are.”

He’s just messing with you. He’s just messing with you, he’s just messing with you–

“O-Okay. Okay, you found me,” You croak, trying to smile despite the anxiety, sharp and sour like acid on your tongue, “Let- Let’s go back to the van, okay? I don’t want to stay here any longer.”

Kaeya pulls you out of the wardrobe by your arm, his grin settling down into something calmer, something more like what you’re used to seeing from him; teasing and playful. “Of course. But, ah, don’t you think I deserve a reward for winning?”

He doesn’t seem to care for a response, already settling down against the dusty hardwood and dragging you by the arm into him, “You know… I’m surprised it took you this long. I’ve been dropping hints for months– subtle ones, of course. Didn’t want to spoil the surprise too quickly.”

For months?

Fingers drum against your spine, staccato movements that send pinpricks of dread through you. “To think such a mousy little spirit would be the one to slip through my fingers and tell you… I guess I should have figured that hag’s warning wouldn’t deter you forever. I just didn’t think you’d have the guts to try the board on your own. Had I known, I would have found some excuse to drag you out with me to the van.” 

He feigns an exasperated sigh. “I was enjoying our game, too. Oh well. It can’t be helped, I suppose.”

You think back on your time spent with him over the last few months. His oddities– he’d always vehemently refuse to touch any of the crucifixes, insisting you had to be the one to bring them into the building because the metal used in them is cheap and gives him hives. 

Or how he’d always blaze on ahead of you to scope out a new building, long legs carrying him in quick strides you struggle to match. You’d eventually given up trying to match his pace and would just let him do his thing. 

Or how, despite constantly insisting the sigils in your book were silly and wouldn’t defend against the boogeyman, he’d still correct you on the protection ones; or smudge the summoning ones with his shoe or with his thumb, smiling and swearing that he thought he saw a spider or a fly when you would catch him doing so. 

Or how, even after all these months, you’ve never once seen him eat. Whenever you’d go out with him to a diner after spending the night in some abandoned building, he’d only ever order a coffee or a glass of water, Or if you were going out to dinner, he’d order something alcoholic and nothing more. In the past, you’d assumed that he ate at home after the two of you parted ways. 

Kaeya’s always been the last one to fall asleep whenever you’d spend the night with him in sleeping bags beside each other in gutted, hollow homes. It used to comfort you, knowing that he’d stay awake for you, talk your ear off until exhaustion won out and you were no longer able to listen. But now…

“...What are you?” You whisper. 

“I think you already know,” He replies, leaning down to dig his nose against your nape. His free hand coils around your throat, something sharp and cold dragging against your skin with the tips of his fingers that was definitely not there before. 

You try to blindly fumble with your phone to dial an emergency number without looking at it– as inconspicuously as you can manage– but Kaeya shifts, unwinds his arm around you and tightens the hand around your throat, and plucks the phone out of your hand. 

He jostles you in his grasp a little with the force he uses to throw it out of sight, far behind him, and you hear it shatter against the wall. 

Ice congeals in your blood, but it doesn’t compare to the sudden frigid shock of his hand sliding underneath your shirt, pressing against your spine to push you closer to him. He feels like snow– absent of warmth and sapping all of your own from you, hungry and stealing. 

“Don’t-” You start, protests tapering off into a pained whine when those sharp-tipped fingers start to dig into your skin, drawing patterns with enough force to leave blood beading in their wake. “Kaeya, that hurts-”

Kaeya shushes you, squeezing your throat tight enough to cut off your next words, “Hush. I’m almost done.”

There’s a building pressure in your chest, pins and needles spreading through your limbs , sensations dulling. You feel the sudden disconnect– the exact moment you’re forced into the backseat in your own body. 

It’s less like the flip of a switch and more like the ice beneath your feet cracking, the sea suddenly and savagely swallowing you whole. Ice floods your veins, pervasive and engulfing– and you’re forced to watch, a prisoner in your skin, as Kaeya lays you on your back. 

The room is freezing. You can see your own breath in front of you, but not Kaeya’s. 

“You’re so soft,” He comments, hands sliding underneath your shirt. You try to bristle, to shove him off, to react in any way besides staring wide-eyed and terrified, but you can’t move. 

Questing hands explore your prone form, hiking up your shirt, tugging down your pants. Kaeya’s eye glows faintly in the darkness of the room– a trick of the light or something else, you don’t know. 

Your pants are tugged fully off you in a hasty motion, cold fingers ghosting over bare skin before Kaeya moves to kneel between your legs. 

You feel the cold on your skin, a wash of equally-cold breath against your sex. It takes a second to register the sensation of cool lips wrapping around your clit and sucking, tongue laving so hard that it registers first as pain before shifting to razor-sharp pleasure. 

Kaeya eats you like a man starved– teeth and tongue and firecracker bright. One arm hooks around your thigh, angling your hips upward. His free hand moves up your chest to tug at your nipples, pinching with enough force to pull whimpers from your mouth and send shocks down your spine. 

It’s torture– being passenger in your own body, forced to endure the sensations. Shadows dance in your vision as you’re forced to stare blankly forward at the ceiling; your mind unable to see what’s in front of you in the pitch blackness and filling the gaps with shapes you don’t want to recognize.

Worse, still, is how cold it is. How cold his hands are, how cold the room has gotten. It rests just on the precipice of freezing– cold, but not cold enough to do more than wrack your body with shivers and raise gooseflesh. Uncomfortable, but not deadly in the way his hands are. 

The hand playing with your chest slides down between your legs, and he takes advantage of the arousal that’s started to leak from your entrance, sliding two cold fingers into you. 

Thankfully, those sharp-tipped nails are blunt once more as he presses them inside you. You almost wish they weren’t, however, when they immediately curl inside of you, abusing a spot that has you shuddering and clenching unwillingly around him. The heat that builds inside of you hurts almost the same, too fast and too sudden with the sensation that Kaeya forces from you. 

Nails dig into your thigh, drawing blood, and Kaeya sucks harder than before. An orgasm is ripped so suddenly from you it hurts. It’s wrong. It hurts. Your vision whites out anyway. You cry out through closed lips, unable to properly scream. 

Kaeya doesn’t nurse you through it. Doesn’t try to gently ease you back to earth. Instead, you hear him take a sharp intake of breath– does he even need to breathe?– and then his mouth is back on you, as fervent as it was before. 

It burns– too much sensation at once. You struggle to breathe, struggle to regain control of your body to twist away from him. The most you can manage is a twitch of your fingers. 

Another orgasm rips through you like a bullet., half overstimulated pain and half pleasure. You black out. 

When you come to, Kaeya’s moved up to hover over you, hands cupping your cheeks in a way that’s so tender it makes you sick. 

There’s a smile on his face that matches the aching emptiness in your chest. You tear your eyes away, looking back towards the ceiling instead. There’s a small hole in the roof, you realize– one you didn’t notice before, but there’s light starting to filter through it now, the morning beginning to crack open its eyes for a new day. 

“Do you believe in god?” He asks, dragging your attention away from the dawnlight beginning to pour into the room with a firm grip on your chin. 

When you don’t answer, his smile widens into something sickening and self-satisfied. He leans in, whispering fervently against your mouth– “That’s alright. I can be your god.”

You close your eyes, if only to not have to see his face as he kisses you. You can taste yourself on his tongue as he forces it past your slack lips. 

He kisses you long and slow, stealing the breath from your lungs like he steals the warmth from your skin. When he pulls away, his thumb takes the place of his tongue– invasive and vile and unwelcome. You fight against the paralysis as much as you can, trying to muster the strength to do anything more than lie there. 

Kaeya grins at the weak press of teeth against his thumb, cooing patronizingly when you can’t manage to bite down any harder. He doesn’t remove his thumb, just presses further into your mouth until you gag around him and holds it there. 

He shuffles a bit, free hand pressing your thigh against the floor as something presses against your entrance. It’s the only warning you get– a sharp intake of air before he’s pressing inside of you like a knife; cold and unforgiving and so, so wrong. 

“Cute,” He says, when you try to beg around the thumb in your mouth. “Cute,” He reiterates, when you try again to bite, when you force a trembling hand up and try to pry his hand from your mouth. 

Pins and needles lance through your arm, your grip weak. You can barely curl your fingers around his wrist with how heavy your limbs feel. 

Kaeya pulls out, thrusting back in and jostling your body against the ground, and your arm falls slack against your chest. He sets a slow pace, unlike the way he did with his mouth. It's worse. It’s so, so much worse; feeling the way your body betrays you instead of the overwhelming burn of sensation like before.

He looks at your face the entire time, gauging the way you bite his thumb and stifle whimpers. One particularly harsh thrust has your eyebrows furrowing, expression betraying the sharp bolt of pleasure that lances through you, and he smiles.

The thumb is pulled from between your lips and replaced with his tongue once more as he leans back down to kiss you. You try to be impassive, to be as unresponsive as possible, but each harsh thrust of his cock cracks another whimper from your lips against his. He swallows each one, thumb moving to rub deep circles into your clit. 

You wonder what became of whoever it was that warned you– are they still here? Are they watching? But the room is quiet save for your quest gasps and whimpers– the sound of skin on skin as Kaeya presses into you– and you've never felt more alone.

“Stop,” You gasp against his mouth. It’s too much– the building heat, the coiling pleasure. You won’t, you can’t– “Stop-” 

“It’s okay,” He bites your lip, digs his nails into your thigh. You feel blood drip onto the floor but it’s drowned out by the incoming peak you try to stave off. “You’re okay. Let go.”

You sob against his mouth, clenching down on his cock as he forces another orgasm out of you. It hurts in a different way this time, cold as you come back down from it. This time, the cold takes root; sinks into your bones and into your lungs, threading between ribs and vertebrae. 

Distantly, you hear him groan– feel him shudder and release inside you. You turn your gaze to the ceiling, where morning light pours in to wash over the two of you. 

He doesn’t pull out, doesn’t move away, just pulls you close and into him, stealing the warmth from your chest. It’s like being cradled by snow. And when he brushes the hair from your face– smiles another hollow, empty smile– you wonder if, perhaps, he is.

scarover got me by the throat 🙂

Spiritually he's got this vibe. 10/10 image op

Just a lil' Mortefi taking advantage of the Wuthering Waves double-drops event.

eyes - neuvillette x reader (8.5k)

you have always known, one day, you would be married off to someone not of your choosing. but you certainly never expected it to be the iudex himself.

cw: not sfw text. explicitly chubby virgin reader, some insecurity, arranged marriage. double dick neuvillette, cunnilingus, bathing together. reader is afab but referred to with neutral pronouns.

this was a commissioned work.

There are certain standards one must follow as a child of Fontainian society; certain things that are expected of you. A certain way to speak and move and act - a set of rules that have been laid out clearly for you since the day you were born. You will know which fork to use at which mealtime. You will know the difference between what is appropriate to wear to a matinee and to an evening show. You will trust your elders to guide you, and you will be grateful for the life that they have oh-so-painstakingly laid out. 

So you are not surprised when your mother tells you that you are to be wed. 

You have even been expecting it. Since you became of a marriageable age, you have looked at all of the other children of society and wondered what kind of match your family might make. One of your own generation? Older, perhaps - more secure in their wealth and their status and position? You have even laughed about it with your friends, when you were out of earshot of all of your elders - discussing who would be the worst options, gossiping about who has had who over for tea recently. 

She’s surprisingly tight-lipped about who you’re going to wed, too. That’s not unexpected either, though it does make anxiety roil hot and sour in your gut. Plenty of children have run away from home so as not to be wed to somebody decades and decades their senior, or somebody with a reputation for cruelty - or sometimes even because the match that has been made has not taken into account a love affair unbeknownst to the elders of the family. 

You have no such love affair to romantically dash off into the sunset with; you have been a good and dutiful child your whole life. And though you do, perhaps, wish that you could know what it was like to have a love so fiery and passionate you would disobey the only life you’ve ever known . . . you have come to accept that will not be your lot in life. 

You have even worried once or twice that somebody, upon finding that they were engaged to you, might wish to run away. You have looked in the mirror and scrutinised your face, your posture, your body - a body that has fallen out of fashion recently, the beauty ideal in Fontaine being very much ‘look as much like Lady Furina as possible’. It is your body, though - and it has stood you in good stead, and the night in which you are finally to meet your betrothed your mother and your maid stand in your bedroom looking approvingly at how your gown falls over the soft peaks and curves of your hips and chest. 

All you know about this person who you are to be wedded to is that every time your family talks of them, they can barely hide the smiles on their faces and the superior lilt to their tone. Whatever match has been made for you . . . they are utterly ecstatic about it. 

“I think he’ll be more than pleased,” your mother says, tugging at a fold of fabric - she had chosen to have this dress made in pale blue, though it is not a colour that has been in your wardrobe before. A man, then; a well-placed man who makes your family giddy with excitement - a man partial to the colour blue and a spouse whose figure runs more to curves than lines. 

It is not a lot to go on. 

So you do not know what to expect, as you are brought down the stairs and into the dining room. All kinds of thoughts dance through your head; some pleasant, some . . . not so. You know that you will meekly accept what you have been given, the way you have been brought up to do - and it is not lost on you that the trajectory of tonight will perhaps influence your life for years and years to come. There is always the chance that, seeing you in person, your parent’s intended will reject you--

Your mind is churning at a hundred thoughts a minute as you step inside the dining room - but when you see who is seated at the head of the table, all of those thoughts seem to clatter to the ground at once. 

It is a wonder that your mouth does not drop open. 

In all of the time you have spent gossiping about possible matches in society, nobody has ever mentioned - even off-handedly - the possibility that the Chief Justice of Fontaine may be looking to marry. 

But there sits Monsieur Neuvillette - a little awkward, yes (he is being chattered to most insistently by your father), but straight and tall and handsome in his chair, his robes of office perfectly pressed, his face schooled carefully into a polite look of vague interest. Your mother coughs, and he looks up--

And his eyes, the colour of the evening sky or a perfect sapphire, widen just a touch. His mouth opens, the barest amount - and you swear that as his gaze sweeps over your form in your carefully chosen blue dress (a choice you are beginning to understand), he visibly swallows. 

“Ah,” he says, and he stands - walking towards you, bending and inclining his head. “It’s a pleasure to . . . finally meet you in person.” You’re still rather stunned speechless by everything that is happening - you cannot help but feel as though things are happening around you, and not to you - but as Neuvillette uses one of his gloved hands to take yours and to press a lingering kiss on your palm that makes your entire body feel as though it is on fire, you are suddenly all too aware of just what is going on. “You look radiant tonight.”

“M-Monsieur,” you say in return, and you sweep what must be the clumsiest curtsey of your life. “I . . . I have to admit that this is a surprise.” 

“Not an unwelcome one,” your mother puts in before he can respond. “Of course, we’re delighted with this match, and we’re absolutely sure you’ll be delighted with them--”

“I understand,” Neuvillette says, his eyes not leaving you. “If I may be frank with you, until recently I had never thought to marry.” 

Questions rise in your throat. If he had not thought to marry, why was he doing it now? And why you, when surely he must see the upper echelons of society every single day? What had brought him to your family’s door, asking after your hand over everyone else he must have had first pick of? But these are not polite questions for the dinner table, when your mother and your father are already ushering the two of you to your seats beside one another and beaming so brightly that it hurts to look at them. 

The dinner table is a place for light, polite conversation; the last opera you saw, the weather. Neuvillette smiles into his wine glass - a glass you notice is filled with water - when you mention that it has not seemed to rain much recently. You notice him looking at you every so often, over rims of glasses and delicate bites of foods . . . but you know that you, too, cannot help but sneak a glance at the Iudex of Fontaine seated by your side. 

Your future husband! Your betrothed! The man you will spend the rest of your life with! 

As much as you may wish for a moment alone with him, you know it is not proper; so when he stands and kisses your hand again and your father takes Neuvillette into his study to hash out some further details of your impending nuptials, you swallow your disappointment and remind yourself that you will have years with Neuvillette, to learn his secrets - to discover why he has decided to take you as a spouse. 

There is little time for getting to know one another beyond the most surface of levels when a marriage has been arranged for you - there is even littler time when the man you are going to marry is one of the most powerful and busiest men in Fontaine. Even the few times you see each other as the wedding looms closer - the period your parents optimistically refer to as ‘courting’ - there is little time to get to know his heart. 

You realise, at the final fitting for your wedding clothes, that the first time you will be truly alone with the man who is to be your husband will be the night of your wedding. 

And that particular thought . . . 

You know the ways of the world. You know what will be expected of you, in order to properly consummate a marriage - you know that you will be intimate with Neuvillette for years to come. But the idea that the first time that the two of you will be able to snatch time with one another with no parents or gossip-mongers or anybody else around will also be the time in which you and he will legally become one (and you know, from experience at the Opera Epiclese, that Neuvillette is nothing if not a stickler for the law) . . . oh, it is enough to make you reconsider one last time running away from your responsibilities. 

“Mother?” You ask, your voice quiet, the night before your wedding. You have spent the entire day overseeing flowers and being asked questions, watching the cooks and the waiters bring in fine delicacies from all over Teyvat (Neuvillette had not wanted hosting duties; you get the impression that as long as the ceremony was done legally, he would be pleased enough to call you his spouse. But your parents have been preparing for this your whole life, so they had indeed wanted the spectacle of their child marrying the most powerful man in Fontaine. With no family to speak of, he had acquiesced to their desires. Your parents are in shivers of delight that Lady Furina will, too, grace the halls of your family home). “What if . . . what if I do not please him?”

You are sitting before your dressing table, in your sleeping robe, haunted by thoughts of all of the things that could go wrong whilst your mother double checks your wedding gown and the jewellery you are to wear tomorrow. She looks over at you - her face is normally hard, but as she sees the knit of your brow and the bite of your teeth into your lip, she sighs softly. 

“You have nothing to worry about,” she says, stroking your cheek. “The Iudex asked for you specifically.” You blink at her, wide-eyed, and she laughs a soft little laugh. “Don’t let it get to your head, now; they have been badgering him to marry for some time . . . but he did ask for you, out of all of the people he could have had. So take heart in that. Do you think him a foolish man?”

“No,” you shake your head, your voice a soft whisper. You suppose that Neuvillette is many things, but ‘foolish’ would not be one that would cross your mind. 

“There. You and he are going to have a happy life together.” A sly look steals over her face. “Ah . . . are you worried about the wedding night itself?”

“Mama!”

“It’s something we all go through, my dear.” She catches your chin in her hand and smiles at you, and for a moment, despite all of the times you have disliked her for the life you have been forced into . . . you are reminded that she is your mother, and she wants this to work just as much as you do. “Do not be frightened of him. Do not be overwhelmed by him. He has chosen you to be his equal, but he will not expect too much of you. I promise . . . everything is going to be fine.” She gives you a wink. “And if I were you, and were to marry a man who looked like the Chief Justice - why, I’d be positively thrilling with excitement at the thought of my wedding night!”

“Mama!” This time, your scandalised tone brings her out in peals of laughter, and she kisses the top of your head as she leaves the bedroom. The door clicks behind her. 

Your final night in your childhood room; your final night unmarried. One last slumber amongst your own silken pillows and sheets (what kind of bed, you wonder, does the Chief Justice sleep in?). 

That night, you dream of a sea that churns with a similar anxiety to the one that you feel in your own belly. 

The morning of your wedding day, it is raining. Your family fuss over it, but as you stand at your window with people running all about you, messing with your hair and rearranging your dress and having arguments about your bouquet, you cannot help but find it comforting to watch the rain fall in droplets, stopping and starting again, mirroring your own still-nervous heart. 

You think you will falter at the last hurdle, as you stand outside of the Opera Epiclese - normally a place of theatricals, but also a place of the law, and the place that the most important part of your wedding day will occur - and take a deep breath ready to start your new life. The bouquet in your hands is full of rainbow roses and romaritime flowers, bursting with colour; you are grateful to have it to hold on to, as the doors are thrown open and you walk slowly down the aisle of the theatre. 

Your eyes desperately seek out someone who will provide you an ounce of comfort in the crowd, all peering at you curiously to see the person who has finally tamed the Chief Justice. This is a spectacle as much as a wedding, you suppose; and as you see some people whisper behind their hands, you wonder if you have been found wanting. You bite your lip hard to stop yourself crying - and then, onstage, his hands clasped over his cane, your gaze finds Neuvillette himself. 

The patter of the rain on the roof of the Opera stops all at once. For a moment, you swear everything falls silent, as you and he look at each other. 

Slowly, his mouth breaks into a small, secret smile, and the buzz of whispering intensifies - but that smile is enough to steady you. To remind you he has been nothing but kind and polite. To whisper to you that perhaps this union is a thing to look forward to, and not to be feared. 

He looks as handsome as ever; his suit perfectly-pressed, his hair streaming in a neat silver white tail behind him. There are flowers that have been braided into it; and you see, as you ascend the stairs to the stage, that there are a group of Melusines sitting in the front rows with matching little bouquets of Lumidouce bells grasped in their little hands, beaming up at the Iudex. 

Lady Furina presides over the proceedings, tossing her hair and preening and holding the audience in the palm of her hand - another reminder that theatrics are more respected than the law in a land like Fontaine. But you cannot bring yourself to mind too much - not when Neuvillette’s smile is steady, his eyes trained on you the whole time. Not when, as he repeats the words in a clear voice like a ringing bell, he whispers them again as if they are only for you. Not when he takes his bare hands - ungloved, for the exchange of the rings - and holds your own, soft and round and dimpled, as he slides the ring onto your finger as if you are the most delicate thing in the world. 

When Furina - with more glee in her voice than you would have expected - announces that he may now kiss you, you feel your shoulders draw up in anxiety. The entire audience goes quiet, waiting with baited breath for this - as if it is one of the things they have been waiting for all day. Neuvillette, though, keeps his gaze on you. He acts as though there are not a thousand Fontainian citizens watching your every move - slowly, he places his arm around your waist and draws you closer to him, so close that the crowds seem to melt away and there is nobody but the two of you. 

“You look beautiful, by the way,” he murmurs into your ear, angling his head so that the crowd cannot see that he has said something that is only for the two of you (no doubt they would be baying to be privy to the marriage bed, if they thought they could get away with it) - and then, his lips brush against yours. They are cool and soft; the lightest tang of sea-salt remains on your own after he is done. The crowd roars with their approval as he steps back and bows to you, pressing his forehead to the back of your hand - and you stand there, trembling, excited and nervous and frightened and on display all at once, as your new husband takes you by the hand and gently, gently leads you back down one of the aisles of the opera, out to the waiting carriages to spirit you away from the spectacle of the opera house and into the spectacle that your parents have designed as a celebration. 

As it turns out, it is not so bad. Your parents have understood, at the very least, that the two of you will be retiring early to Neuvillette’s residence (your trunks already packed, already loaded onto a carriage to be delivered in the next few days). They have managed to rein themselves in; only invite the most important echelons of society to this celebration, despite the luxury and the excess that has been coming into the house for weeks now. 

So you bow to Lady Furina and accept her compliments with a stutter and hot cheeks, Neuvillette by your side, his steadying hand on your waist. Neuvillette expertly manages to weave around your family’s ballroom as if he has been doing it all his life - but then, remembering how much older he is than you, you suppose that he has been doing it at least as long as you have been alive. He has a remarkable way of remaining polite, yet not brokering too much room for small talk and gossip, as if he can tell that this kind of thing is not your favourite. 

You overhear, when you have been spirited away from your husband’s side for ten minutes by some of your friends, an older couple accosting Neuvillette. 

“You had all of the choice in the world,” the man says, poking Neuvillette in the centre of his chest - from the slur in his words, you think he may have partaken in a touch too much of your parent’s imported dandelion wine. “Whyever did you make this one?”

Your heart stutters in your chest; a trickle of sweat rolls down the back of your wedding gown. This is what you have been fearful of, this whole time - you being found wanting, you being seen as not good enough for Neuvillette--

But your new husband merely smiles. 

“I have eyes,” he says, mildly, and he turns away from the couple and brings an end to the conversation that you know must leave them utterly blistering. He comes to find you, instead - apologising most profusely to your friends for having to steal you away. 

You stay for as short a time as you can manage, with the congratulations and the toasts and the speeches (a Melusine or two makes a speech for Neuvillette; you much prefer their simple honesty to some of the awful gushing things that come from the mouths of connections of your parents who have never given much care to you before), with the cake being cut--

“Here,” Neuvillette murmurs, and your cheeks go hot as he feeds you a bite of his own slice from the same fork he has been using. “I must confess that this is rather too sweet for me.” 

By the time that Neuvillette begins to make his excuses, bowing and smiling and thanking his hosts and the guests, the moon is already hanging white and plump in the black velvet of the night - and as you say goodbye to your parents, your Mama gives you a wink that makes you go hot all over. 

Neuvillette’s residence is surprisingly unassuming; it is smaller than your parents house, and he does not employ half as many maids or staff. For a moment, his gaze flitters over to you, and you sense a nervousness in the air. 

“I am sorry if it is not what you were expecting,” he says, voice clipped - but you shake your head, and try and let some of the anxiety drain from your tight shoulders. 

“It’s lovely,” you say, firmly, as he helps you out of the carriage. This time, when his gloved hand - he has chosen to put his gloves back on, his wedding ring glinting over the black satin - touches your waist, you gasp. The frisson of promise that runs through the touch makes you feel dizzy with possibility. Neuvillette looks at you with those dark sapphire eyes of his, and murmurs;

“I apologise if you’re nervous. I have no wish to . . . make you do anything you don’t want to. I am more than willing to wait-- the law does not require we consummate directly on our wedding night, and if you are frightened--”

A drop of rain lands on your cheek. 

“No,” you breathe out, all in a rush, surprised to find it falling from your lips as you say it. But then you think of his lingering kiss, of the way he shut down that couple at the wedding reception, of that private smile he had given you to soothe your fears as you walked down the aisle, and you’re even more surprised to find that you mean it. “Not at all. I-- I am nervous, but . . .”

He gives you another soft, gentle smile that makes your heart feel ready to burst out of your chest. The raindrop you had felt has no companions; simply a freak occurrence in the weather. 

“I must admit,” he murmurs, as he helps you towards his front door. “I am very pleased to hear that. I hope you won’t find it remiss of me to admit that I have been . . . rather looking forward to it.”

Your cheeks go hot again. The idea of Neuvillette, imagining you like that, even waiting for it . . . it is hard not to find it at once flattering and embarrassing. Neuvillette opens the door for you, but as you go to step inside--

“Ah, just a moment--” He leans his cane against the front door, and reaches for you. “I’m aware there’s a custom about bringing one’s new spouse over the threshold, and I would hate to break tradition--”

“You don’t have to,” you say, stuttering on the words. “I’m not light--”

But Neuvillette has already reached for you, already wrapped a surprisingly strong arm about your waist - and before you know it, as if he hasn’t needed to exert any energy at all, you have been pulled into his hold, held like a princess being rescued by a knight. 

You look up at him, and he looks down at you, his smile soft once more. 

“You feel perfectly light in my arms,” he tells you, as he steps over the threshold with you and gently places you down as softly and carefully as he had picked you up. You were not expecting the strength from him - he wears his robes of office, of course, and he certainly has the height, but there’s a kind of willowiness about him that does not exactly betray him being able to do such a thing. 

(If he can do that, a wicked little voice in your head whispers, imagine what else he could do to you - how easily he could manipulate you in a more intimate moment--)

It’s almost as if he can read your mind. He laughs a clear, silvery laugh like the rushing of a river. 

“Shall I show you to our bedchambers?” He asks you. “I’m sure you’ll want to get all of your finery off soon; it looks rather heavy. If you are not opposed . . . perhaps we may bathe together?”

Your heart, beating double time in your chest. Neuvillette’s eyes, cool and calm. The way your blood seems to sing in your veins. You smile back at him. 

“I would like that very much.”

Neuvillette’s house may not be as extravagant as expected, but the bathroom more than makes up for it - and most of all, the bathtub set into the floor, as wide as a swimming pool. He sees your look of surprise and laughs, sounding for once a little embarrassed.

“I enjoy being able to relax in water - natural water most of all,” he tells you, “but it would be rather . . . scandalous, if an ordinary citizen were to find me unexpectedly. This is my compromise. One of my vices, you may say.”

As vices go, it is a tame one, and you look at the bathtub - already full of clear water, so you can see the mosaic tiles on the bottom (the tub itself is stepped, so one can simply sit and relax at one end or perhaps even use the other end to swim a few strokes). 

“I loved to swim when I was little,” you say, wistfully. “As I got older, my parents thought the idea of me wearing my swim clothes too often was improper, but . . .”

“Well,” Neuvillette says, placing his hands upon your hips with only the lightest of pressure as if he is still too afraid to touch you too much. “You are welcome to use this bathroom for swimming whenever you wish. It is not quite the same, of course, but I want nothing more than you to be happy here. What’s mine is yours now, sweet one.”

It’s the first pet name he has used for you, and it makes your mouth go dry. Slowly, you turn towards him. You are about to be naked together, you suppose - even if you are going to bathe before anything more intimate happens - so you ought to be braver. You reach for his face, palms warm on his cheeks - and though his eyes flash in surprise, he gladly leans in to let you kiss him. 

This time, you let the kiss linger for longer; this private moment in the sanctity of a home that is to be shared between you. He sighs into your mouth and pulls you closer himself, so as you cradle his face his palms rest upon the ample curve of your hip. His teeth tug, almost shyly, at your bottom lip - and you feel your lashes flutter, your heart give an answering skip in your chest. His tongue traces the seam of your mouth and you part your lips, allowing him to take you as he wants - but even this ‘taking’ is done slowly, carefully, like a man who wishes to savour you. 

You pull back, your breath coming in soft little gasps - Neuvillette’s eyes are half-lidded, but it does not stop him smiling at you, putting you at ease. 

“We ought to disrobe,” he tells you, kindly - and he gently motions for you to turn, so that he may work at the difficult laces and hooks of your bridal outfit. You feel a little shy, as the fabric pools around your ankles, and you are left bare - but then he is turning you around, and in his eyes you see something that must be close to worship. 

“I am a man who says what I mean,” he tells you, tilting your chin upward toward him. “I have not spared your ego, little one - everything I see before me is . . .” He shakes his head, letting loose a ragged breath, more undone than you’ve seen him before. “More than I could ever have asked for.” One gloved finger trails across your lips, tracing a patch from the corner of your mouth down to your throat, your collarbone - reaching behind you to unclip your undergarments, so they fall to the ground with your gown. “You’re truly the loveliest creature.” 

“I--”

He shakes his head, smiling still. 

“Perhaps in my choice of a spouse,” he murmurs, “I let my own desires overtake me a touch . . . but ah, if you could see yourself the way I see you--”

You hesitantly hook your thumbs into your underwear and stand before him, naked completely - and you win, for your bravery, another ragged breath. 

“I must warn you,” Neuvillette murmurs, as he reaches for his own collar and begins to unbutton, to untie, to work the trappings of his own outfit off of himself. “You may be . . . surprised.”

“By what?” You feel brave enough to give him a little smile, though your heart is still beating faster than you’ve ever felt it. “Am I to discover you have been hiding extra limbs?”

Neuvillette’s gaze does not falter. 

“Something like that,” he agrees, mildly, as he slips his shirt and coat from his shoulders. His skin is milky pale in the moonlight streaming in from a window set high in the wall, his hair glimmering silver. He takes your breath away. 

Who would have thought you would ever find yourself in this position with the Chief Justice of Fontaine? 

He unbuttons his placket slowly - and as he carefully works down the fabric of his trousers, you realise exactly what it was he was warning you about. 

“I hope I do not disappoint you,” he says, as your mouth falls open at the sight of his cocks; resting one atop another, both half-swollen already. Your mouth goes dry at the thought of your wedding night, still to come. “I assure you, I know exactly what to do with them.” 

“I--I didn’t mean to--!” Your voice comes out a little panicked - but then, Neuvillette lets out a soft huff of laughter. 

“It’s quite alright,” he tells you. “But I will reiterate; I will not hurt you. You are . . . more than welcome to touch. But if we do not get in soon, I fear the water will have gone cold.” 

Neuvillette helps you into the bath, surprisingly unashamed of his own nakedness. At the press of his body against yours as he helps you down the steps inlaid into the tub, you feel his cocks jump against you, the wet smear of something against the dip of your back - but then, Neuvillette is lowering himself into the water beside you and letting loose a sigh of pure bliss that sends a coil of heat spiralling to between your thighs. 

You have never partaken in the gossip that surrounds Neuvillette, about his pointed ears or his inhumanly lovely face or his age - you would never have expected what he is hiding in his trousers. But as you sit beside your new husband, you cannot help but feel as though it makes perfect sense - a man like him could not be ordinary. And you trust him when he tells you he will not hurt you; when he says he knows what he’s doing, you think of all of the time he has on you and you have to suppress a shiver of desire for what he may have to teach you. 

He touches you, as the two of you bathe together. Lets his fingers massage the shampoo into your hair, lets his hands slide the washcloth over the contours of your body until you can barely breathe for the hot trails of fire that he leaves in his wake. You do not think he means to inflame you so - but then, he allows you to do the same thing to him, and he shudders and leans back into your touch, a soft noise almost like a purr falling from the back of his throat, and he realises exactly what bathing together is doing to you both. 

Still. The two of you linger there; touching one another. Getting to know one another’s bodies without any fear, for beneath the water all is muffled and calm. His fingers learn the shape of your nipples when he pinches them, how they pucker and harden beneath him. His palms learn the weight of your breasts, heavy and ample in his hands. His mouth learns the taste of your shoulders, as he drops hot, wet kisses across the span of them, the nape of your neck. And in return you feel the silkiness of his hair, the softness of his skin, the feel of his corded muscle beneath his deceptively slender frame. 

By the time the two of you are wrapped in fluffy towels the colour of an early morning sky, you are both hot with want. Neuvillette’s twin cocks seem to pulse with his desire; you can no longer tell if you are slick and wet from the bath or from the space between your thighs. You shyly look at one another through lowered lashes, though, as the wedding night and all it entails comes closer and closer and closer. 

“It’s a beautiful night,” you say to him, when the two of you have finally entered the bedroom. Neuvillette’s window is open a crack, enough so that the lacy curtains flutter in the light night-time breeze. “You would hardly think it’s been raining on and off all day.”

“Mmm,” Neuvillette agrees, as you feel him come up behind you. He slowly takes your hands, encouraging you to drop the towel; and then you stand before him, naked again, but with something far more than a bath in your future. He leans in and presses a kiss to the sensitive place where your neck and shoulder meet, just barely grazing it with surprisingly sharp teeth. “I should not wonder if it doesn’t rain again for some time.”

Neuvillette leads you to the bed, his hand firmly around yours. He is unerringly gentle and patient with you, as he urges you to sit upon the bedcovers - and your breath catches when you do as he asks, and instead of joining you he sinks onto his knees. You have never thought to imagine the Chief Justice kneeling before you, and the sight of it makes you buzz all over in anticipation. He smiles at your unsurety - and leans in, pressing a kiss to your knee, gently urging you to spread your thighs for him. His gloves are stripped away, but his wedding ring gleams on his finger as his fingers sink into the soft, full skin of your thigh. 

He leans in, pressing another kiss to the side of your knee. Higher, higher, higher he trails them - and his breath fans cool against your heated core, and your fingers clench into the bedsheets in surprise at what he might be about to do. 

“Don’t be afraid,” he murmurs to you, his cheek pressing silky against your skin, as he suckles a love-bite into the part where your leg meets your pelvis. “I merely want to ensure you’re adequately prepared.”

“Y-you don’t need to,” you say, breathless, hot, embarrassed and needy all at once. This is an act of such intimacy, you do not know how to parse the thought of the Iudex doing it to you - but he gives you a smile that is not without a hint of fang, the wickedest look you have seen upon his face so far, and he reaches between the two of you to use his thumb to pull apart the lips of your sex so you are revealed to him. 

“Oh,” he breathes. “But I want to, sweet one. And . . . looking at how wet you are for me, I daresay you want me to do so too.”

“M-Monsieur--”

“Neuvillette,” he murmurs, and he presses a kiss directly onto your sex, slick and wet with your own excitement, his nose brushing across the swollen nub of your clit. “Use my name.”

“Neuvillette--” It comes out rather thin and reedy, but Neuvillette does not seem to notice - instead, he seems rather preoccupied by what lies between your thighs. Your fingers tighten when you feel his tongue slide across you, gathering your slick upon the tip. There’s a strange quality to it, almost as if it is longer and firmer than a human tongue ought to be - and as he flickers his tip over your clit, again and again and again, and you shudder from the sensations he draws forth . . . you wonder if, too, his tongue is forked--

Thoughts quickly dissipate from your head when there is a man knelt between your thighs, though, and it is no different for you. The wondering is quickly chased away by the hungry way that Neuvillette laps at you, like a man who has been parched for water for months. 

Through it, he urges you to part your thighs as wide as you can, so that he can more thoroughly attack you with his tongue - and with every stroke, with every suck and lick and groan of him against you, you feel a knot tighten in your stomach in a way you have never experienced. It is like his mouth is a match, setting fire to your core - despite how you can feel wetness dripping down you, onto his bedcovers, surely soaking his chin and his lips. 

He does something with his tongue - a twirl, a flourish - and his name comes spilling out of your lips like a prayer, and the idea that he may at some point stop using his mouth on you flashes across your synapses like a tragedy. Without realising you’re doing it, you move one hand to grip his silvery hair, to keep him anchored against you - you realise, too, that it is not merely his name spilling out of you like an overturned wineglass. Pleas and whimpers and begging have joined the fray, and you would ordinarily cringe at being thought so wanting. But with Neuvillette’s mouth, with the promise of what he is trying to wring from you--

Shame seems unimportant compared to the way he shudders at your hand in his hair, the way his tongue intensifies flicking against your clit. 

He pulls back, breathing heavy, mouth glittering with your slick. 

“I’m going to put a finger inside you,” he tells you, and you are grateful that he too sounds a little breathless. You cannot imagine just how embarrassing it would be to be the only one falling apart. 

“I want . . . you,” you say, not without a touch of petulance, and Neuvillette lets out a hoarse little laugh. Still kneeling before you, he reaches up to touch your warmed face - his thumb, too, glitters with your arousal from the way he had held you open. You cannot bring yourself to care when he softly smears it across your bottom lip like an offering, and he lets out a shuddering groan at the sight of your tongue swiping it off. 

“I want you,” he says. “Oh, you have no idea how much I want you. But I will not hurt you, sweet one. Let me prepare you.”

It feels very much like him; this way of taking charge, his firm words. This time, his hand curves up your inner thigh, and your breath catches as his finger slides between the valley of your sex, wetting itself in your slick and his saliva. Your toes curl into his plush carpet as he nudges your clit with his fingertip, as a soft noise of surprise escapes your mouth and he chuckles. 

He slides one finger inside of you with no resistance at all. His earlier ministrations have seen to that. It’s a strange sensation, to have something inside that is not one of your own fingers (rather smaller, rather shorter than his) - but it is hardly unwelcome. You whisper out his name, your eyes closing, and Neuvillette makes a gentle noise of encouragement. 

“That’s right,” he murmurs to you, as he slowly begins to pump his finger in and out of you. “You’re doing so well - you’re taking it beautifully. I’m going to put a second one in--”

He does exactly as he says, and the hand still knit in his hair tugs at the silvery strands a little harder. It is not that it is painful, but simply that it is a stretch you are unused to - and one, too, that you know will continue to intensify. 

You feel a strange, cool shock at the entrance to your sex - and you chance a glance down and realise it is his wedding ring, pressing against you. The sight and the knowledge makes you shudder, and Neuvillette huffs out a noise of want in return. 

You think of the cocks, straining beneath the vee of Neuvillette’s pelvis. You cannot see them now, but from the way they had looked when the two of you were just bathing, you feel certain they must be swollen stiff and hard, waiting for their own chance (and too, from the spots of colour on Neuvillette’s cheeks, the way his words have a strange, dry edge to them when he speaks). How will he put those inside of you? One at a time? Both at once? 

“What are you thinking about?” Neuvillette asks, raising his gaze to meet your own, a smile tugging at the corners of the lips. “You suddenly tightened around me.” 

“I--!” Your cheeks go hot, embarrassment making warmth seep down your back. Neuvillette laughs. 

“No need to keep secrets,” he murmurs, slowly establishing another rhythm, a slow pump of his two fingers inside of you, scissoring slightly to open you up. “We are married now, sweet one. We can share everything. Mmm . . . let me see. Were you imagining my fingers to be my cock?”

“Neuvillette--” Your voice is a weak little protest, and you avert your gaze shyly even as you force the words out. “I was . . . will you put them both inside of me?” Your gaze slips over his face again, nervous to see his reaction - his eyes widen in surprise, but it is not at all a look of anger. 

“Not tonight,” he tells you, and he smiles again. “I fear it may be too much for you. Ah, but if that’s what you want . . . my dear, I know you’d feel exquisite.” 

His fingers, pumping in and out, curling inside of you. His words, velvet-draped and deep - the look of concentration on his face, insistent on nothing more than drawing pleasure forward from you. You feel the hot tension inside of you reach a breaking point - a pot, ready to bubble over. 

“I must confess,” he breathes, leaning in, breath hitting your sex hot and close. “I was worried you might be afraid. I’m terribly glad to know what an effect the idea has on you.”

As he finishes the sentence, he lets his tongue drag out one slow, final lap of your clit - and it is just enough to push you over the final edge. The bubbling pot within you reaches boiling point - and the most intense pleasure you’ve ever felt, like molten heat, suffuses you entirely. Your head falls back. A noise of sheer enjoyment falls wanton from your lips - your thighs and your hips and your entire body trembles and shakes in the pleasure, and you feel your sex pulsating and throbbing around the two of Neuvillette’s fingers that are inside of you. 

“Lovely,” Neuvillette murmurs, watching you in awe, his fingers slowing down as he lets you ride out the waves of your orgasm. “Oh, you’re . . . exquisite.”

“Neuvillette,” you say, collapsing back onto the bed, your breath coming in harsh pants. “I was afraid, at first. But I don’t think I could be. Not knowing what you’re like now. Not anymore.”

“Sweet thing.” Neuvillette stands. He steps forward and you see him again - his cocks are indeed straining, silvery precome dripping from the dual tips and smeared over the flat planes of his stomach. “You have no idea what you do to me. May I . . . ?” 

He does not need to ask. You think you would grant him whatever he asked for - you cannot imagine Neuvillette overstepping your boundaries, when he has been so sweet and so careful and so guiding for as long as you’ve known him, even knowing he could do whatever he wanted to you and nobody would blame him. But it warms your heart that he asks even so. 

“Please do,” you breathe, and you spread your thighs wider to accommodate him on the bed. 

His hands scoop under your hips, his palms firm on your ass as he moves you higher up the bed, ensuring that your head and shoulders are propped up with a mound of pillows. Even with his cocks practically twitching, he prioritises you before himself, and you cannot resist another show of appreciation, wrapping your hand around his neck and pulling him down into a kiss. 

He groans into your mouth, the movement clearly welcome - but when he mouths at you now, he is far messier than he has been before, his teeth just a little more present. You think he must be losing some of his control, and as his cocks nudge against your inner thighs, you are proved correct. 

“I’m sorry,” he breathes against your lips, pulling back just far enough to be able to speak. “I cannot hold myself back a moment longer--”

“Please, Neuvillette,” you whisper, fingers still in his hair. 

His lower cock nudges against your sex, the ring of muscle that will grant him entrance - and as he opens you up, his second cock rubs over the swollen over-sensitive nub of your clit and you whine. 

He covers your whine with another kiss. He eases into you, moment by moment, inch by inch - you have nothing to compare it to, but you think from the slow tempo he goes at and the way his gaze keeps flicking over you, checking you’re alright, he must be larger than average. 

But he has prepared you well. The stretch is an ache, but a pleasant one - it does not send painful shockwaves all through you. Your thighs wrap around his hips, pulling him as close as you can manage, and Neuvillette sighs. 

“Will you kiss me again?” He murmurs, so softly you almost do not hear him. The request makes your heart feel like bursting in your chest - the soft way he looks at you, his unwillingness to pull away from you, his desire to be as close to you as he can even when he is buried inside of you. 

You do. Arms wrap around his shoulders. His hands find purchase on your hips. His mouth and yours dance against one another - his tongue learning yours as if he is learning a new language. 

He fucks you like that. 

He is not rough with you, that first night; he does not, as you have heard so many new husbands do, take you and have you and ignore what you might want. Neuvillette cherishes you. 

The slow rock of his hips, indulgent in their rhythm. The way he kisses you. He is chasing his own release, but he does not feel any need to fuck into you with abandon. At least not yet. 

But time ticks on. The two of you seem to meld into one entity, and the kissing and the fucking grows sharper at the edges. You feel that Neuvillette is hovering on something, his expression almost desperate, as he rearranges the angle of his hips and the speed of his thrusts. 

“Please,” he whispers, broken-voiced. “I’m close--”

You let go of him and he lets out a noise of distress at the lack of contact, a noise that makes you shiver with the idea of how much power you may one day have over him. But instead of anything else, one of your hands darts between you, to take a firm grip on his second cock. Neuvillette hisses through his teeth at your hand, hot and firm. 

You do not know what you’re doing, not really, but that does not seem to bother Neuvillette as he increases the speed of his hips. In fact, he does most of the work - fucking his lower cock inside of you, hot and deep and wet, and fucking the cock atop it into your fist. You manage to work out a kind of twisting motion that makes him growl in the back of his throat--

It’s a fascinating noise, really. It makes you think of him as an animal, something feral and possessive - and you wonder what, later on, you may learn about him--

But then your name is falling from his lips like a prayer, and his cock is twitching inside of you and in your grip, and your back arches at the same time as he leans forward and sinks his teeth into your shoulder--

(Almost like a claiming bite. Almost like a mark to say that you are his). 

And both of you come, together, in great waves and pants and gasps of breath. His come paints your fist and the round softness of your stomach at the same time as it paints inside of you, your body once more pulsating around his cock as if it never wants to let you go. 

Like a tide on the shore; like a moon rising high over the lakes of Fontaine. Neuvillette lets himself lay atop of you, his head against your heart, his breath coming in great heaves. 

You do not need to think this time; you simply lift your unsoiled hand and begin to stroke the silver of his hair in slow, careful motions. From the back of his throat again comes that noise, something like a purr and something like a chirrup. His eyes close contentedly. 

“Neuvillette?” You whisper into the darkness, and your husband makes a soft ‘mm?’ of response. “You really . . . could have had anyone. Why did you choose me?”

“Hmm, sweet one?” He lifts his head from your chest and looks down at you like you have asked him why the sky is blue. “Didn’t you hear me earlier? I certainly did have my pick . . . I perhaps wouldn’t have chosen to marry if Lady Furina hadn’t been so insistent, but I was lucky enough to be able to choose anybody I wanted. And I had seen you.” He shakes his head, a huff of laughter falling from his mouth. “Like I said - I do have eyes.”

Your cheeks feel hot. The thought of being coveted by Monsieur Neuvillette, when you had worried about your body and your match and your future so often it felt like second nature--

“Oh dear,” he says, looking down at the two of you - at the sweat-slicked hair, at the come drying on your inner thigh. “I fear we’ll need to have another bath before bed.” 

“And you won’t mind if I join you?”

He chuckles. 

“Why,” he says. “I’d be offended if you didn’t.”

winter woes.

yandere!jade leech x (female) reader cw: yandere, nsfw, dub-con, breeding, unhealthy behaviors/relationship, implied stalking, obsession note - strangely, jade is thrown into his mating season in the middle of winter.

Jade thought it wasn’t so bad when he woke up in a feverish fog. He assumed it would dissipate once he got to moving, but it only seemed to worsen as the day wore on. He trudged through his classes with dimming focus, reasoning that if he wasn’t about to keel over and die he could survive a few hours of lecture.

It was fine. Nothing he couldn’t handle. He’s Jade Leech, Octavinelle’s talented Vice Housewarden! A masterful actor capable of brilliant efficiency, even when he’s at his lowest.

And yet he’s never experienced a day as detrimental as this one. He’s endured his fair share of sleepless nights, stagnant days, and monthly burnout. On some level, Jade suspected it was coming when the frost began to encroach on withered plants and leafless trees. He always finds himself bogged down with an annual case of winter woes. 

This pattern of behavior isn’t any different.

Except it is. Very different, actually. Unlike his previous blues, this one is markedly unique. He’s never been this delirious before, so much so that he staggers about like he’s learning to walk all over again. Winter blankets the world in white, condemning Jade to what he believes is Mother Nature’s padded cell.

Without enough stimulation or spontaneity, how can he possibly function?

Normally, he’d take to trekking in the mountains to clear his head. The biting cold is familiar, a reminder of the comforts of home, but it doesn’t soothe him like it should. He’s restless and itchy, perpetually hot all over. His clothes aren’t helping either, clinging like seaweed. He wants to shred them to pieces and dive into the sea. Or hike in the mountains. Definitely one of those. 

Alas, even if he wanted to scale a mountain, he couldn’t. Not when they’ve called for the possibility of an avalanche.

He is, unfortunately, stuck in the dreaded rubber room with his school uniform for a straitjacket. Only the room itself is made of ice, and it’s unpleasant and isolated. He’s left alone with his thoughts and they’re swirling around his skull in a flurry of snowflakes.

Clothes are truly unbearable… How can land-dwellers possibly endure such constrictive material?

Perhaps he underestimated his own mental fortitude. It’s bad. Very bad. So bad that he’s just as startled as you are when he crosses paths with you in the hall, catches the scent of your shampoo, and sprouts fins. 

“Oh, Jade, your ears!” You’re gesturing at his face with worried urgency. He follows your line of sight and reaches to brush his fingers along the pointed webbing jutting out from the area where his ears ought to be. You take a step towards him and Jade, rather foolishly, takes one back. You blink at him, bewildered. “Is…everything okay? You seem under the weather. Want me to walk you to the infirmary? I’m going that way right now, actually.”

Jade wets his lips and swallows thickly. Did you always smell this nice? No… No, he has to focus! Right. Focus on the issue at hand. His transformation potion must be wearing off. Surely that explains the sudden surprise of… Your hips—were they always shaped so nicely, or is it just an illusion from your uniform slacks?

No, he’s sure of it. Something’s different about you. His nose wrinkles.

Sweeter. That’s it.

You smell sweet like a flower or candy. And your eyes are brighter in this light as they look up at him, glittering like pearls in the deep. You’re wearing the same uniform, but you’ve never looked more appealing. And your hips—

Jade curbs that thought before it can deteriorate his sensibility far past his control. What was the topic of conversation? It’s his turn to respond, isn’t it?

“I’m quite all right. Thank you for your concern. This is merely an error on my part. I’ve neglected the time.”

“Really?” You say it like you don’t believe him. Jade forces a smile, gluing his gaze to your face to avoid looking anywhere else. “It’s not like you to be so forgetful. Geez. Is Azul giving you a break over there?”

He chuckles. “I assure you all is well in my world.”

As it happens, his world is currently tilting and spinning and blurring, messy like a shaken terrarium. Jade’s attempt to excuse himself is made in vain, for he strides past you and immediately stumbles. You hurry to steady him, your fingers wrapped tight around his arm. Your touch sends an unusual electricity bolting up his spine, and suddenly he’s overcome with a wild urge. He wants to push you against the wall, slot his knee between your legs, and bite your lips bloody.

He could do it. He knows your preferences. He knows you like he knows his hand. Intimately acquainted, even if you’re not aware of your second shadow. 

Jade yanks himself free as if the contact is scalding. His heart skips in his chest, frenzied in a way it’s never been before.

He’s had plenty of scandalous fantasies in passing, and he was content to leave them as such. But now…

Sweat beads at his brow and rolls down his back between his shoulders. He needs to shed these layers. A wildfire rages beneath his skin. It’s the middle of winter. Why is he so hot? Surely there’s a logical explanation for…you. Looking at him. You’re looking at him.

Oh, you’re so pretty.

“Jade?” You move in again, lifting your hand to his forehead. This time, before he can jerk backwards, you pull away. “You’re burning up!”

“Is that so? I must not have noticed…”

He has a quick-witted retort to tack onto that sentence, but it’s scrambled on his tongue.

“If I may, (Name), have you always looked so…”

He pauses, tasting the adjective in his mouth. He was certain humans didn’t have the same sort of broadcasters merfolk do—the shifts in behavior that allow for successful mating. Colors and sounds, a duet of language. Special scents and other bodily cues to convey secret messages. A mutual understanding between two. The need to fulfill a biological imperative beneath the sea.

Is that what this is about? He was certain his transformation snuffed that part of his biology. He’s not a mer right now. He’s human. So then why is he feeling so…not human?

Ready is the word he thinks he’s searching for, but he’s starving and so it comes out wrong. 

“Ripe. Like fruit.”

“Uh… No?” You cough out an awkward laugh. If Jade could feel shame, it would be raking its nails across his back. “Are you sure you’re okay? You know what—don’t answer that. Let’s just get you to Professor Crewel. He’ll know what to do.”

Jade spies his reflection in a nearby window. The markings under his eyes are showing through pale skin. There are flecks of scales gathered on his forehead. Mindlessly, he reaches to touch them.

You turn to look at him, and he can parse the shift in your attitude like it’s blood in the water—deliciously potent. He wants to dig his claws into you and never let go. He wants to love you until the very feeling is muddled and you’ve lost sense of what’s healthy and sane. If only you could understand, peer through his eyes for the day, and navigate the labyrinth that is his heart.

“Jade? You coming?”

He already knows what’s happening. He doesn’t need the diagnosis from Professor Crewel. He just needs you.

Before you can continue onwards in your beeline to Professor Crewel’s office, Jade seizes your hand. You don’t flinch, but you do struggle to put your confusion into words. The feeling is almost palpable, clear on your countenance like a cloudless sky. He watches you, trailing his eyes over your face and finding new things to appreciate. If he allows delusion to grip him by the throat, he can pretend the makeup is all for him—a discreet, enticing signal.

He reads it. He listens. He knows, even if it’s the furthest from what he believes it to be.

Jade clasps his hands around yours.

“Um… Okay then.” Your shoulders shudder with laughter. “Is this really you, Jade? This isn’t Floyd putting on an act again, is it?”

He shakes his head, suddenly disgruntled. Why would it be Floyd? Do you want it to be Floyd? His grip on you tightens to a possessive degree. He steps closer, not yet pressing himself against you but edging dangerously close. He doesn’t speak a word when he opens his mouth at you, revealing pearly points set in razored rows. You don’t seem to grasp the meaning behind his gaping maw, and it’s somewhat disheartening.

Logically, he’s aware of your very human ideals—ideals that fail to encapsulate the intricacies of moray courtship. Still, he hopes the sentiment comes through.

“Something wrong with your teeth?” You tilt your head and squint up at him. “They look fine to me.”

Jade shuts his mouth, considering his options. It would be much easier if this was the sea. Then he could present you with hypnotic bioluminescence, drape a chain of sea flowers around your neck, and offer you an entire month’s worth of fish. None of that is very viable on land. At the very least, he could replicate it—take you in a dark room and hope the shine in his eyes is bright enough to entice you, conjure flowers with magic, and scour the Mostro Lounge’s storage for enough food to last you through the season.

Surely the desire I feel for you transcends the great depths of the sea. He breathes out a sad sigh. I want to make you mine. I want you to look at me in the same way I look at you. Won’t you do that for me? Please…

As far as he’s aware, humans follow their own palaver when it comes to romance and attraction. What he’s learned from his time on land is that human courtship is, by his comprehension, excessively complicated. While moray courtship has clear, defined goals, each one outlined in the body language of both parties, humans baffle with the time it takes to secure a mate. Jade watches students get together and fall apart within the span of weeks. It’s fascinating. Dating is almost like a trial run—like testing a new ingredient in a recipe to see if it sweetens or sours the overall dish.

He could have gone that route; he was fully prepared to, but the human and mer sides of his brain are leaving him in a daze. It’s impossible to think like a human when his mer instincts are vibrating so intensely beneath his skin, every part of his deep-sea biology saying he ought to do it the mer way.

So he opens his mouth again.

He’s cheating when he nods at you. Somehow you work out half of his intention.

“My mouth? What about it?” It hits you then, and your eyes widen into the shape of a full moon. “Oh! You want to compare teeth size, is that it?”

Not exactly what he was aiming for, but it has you reciprocating anyway. You open your mouth to show off your teeth, and if Jade was of a more stable mindset perhaps he would have been content to simply observe. He doesn’t expect land-dwellers to know anything more than what’s taught in class.

“What do you think? Mine aren’t as cool as yours,” you say after a moment.

“I think…” He hesitates. The words are jumbled, and he almost says it in mermish. But it’s difficult to produce the syllables with his limited nasal capabilities in this form. A smile curves his lips up, and it’s so similar to Floyd’s dopey grin that it leaves you slack-jawed. “Pretty,” he says with a happy hum. “Very pretty.”

Before you can respond, his hands slide away from yours to secure tightly around your wrists. And then he’s pulling you in the opposite direction, through the main building’s many halls, until he finally arrives at his destination.

You’re tugged into the Hall of Mirrors next. Jade seems to be losing his usual gentlemanly flair, for he issues you an apologetic chuckle as an afterthought. His mer features look more defined now—even his skin tone is darkening to suit the color palette of his mer form. You weren’t in objection before, but now that you find yourself being pulled through the mirror and trapped in the bubble transport with Jade you begin to worry.

“Hey, hold on a minute! Shouldn’t we find Professor Crewel? Your transformation potion—”

The sound of shredded leather disturbs the air. Jade lifts his gloved hands for both of you to survey. His claws have ripped through the material, and he’s grown webbing beneath the tattered remains of his gloves. When he reaches for you, you flinch away.

An uncomfortable quiet falls over the bubble, only bursting once you’re inside Octavinelle Dorm.

Jade’s heart aches when he spies the unease scrawled on your face. Don’t look at me like that. Please, my pearl, don’t fear me. I would never hurt you.

Is it so wrong to want to smother you in an abundance of love? If this kind of love is forbidden on the surface, how is he meant to exist in the same world as you? It was possible for the mermaid princess and her lover. Is this not the same? It’s just love. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Right?

He curls his hands into fists and hopes the stabbing pain of his claws piercing his palms is enough to quell the urge to hold you.

“J-Jade…” Your voice is meek, a mere wobble. “Are you okay?”

He blinks, suddenly aware that blood is oozing from open wounds. “Ah… Forgive me… I’ve shown you such an ugly side.”

“No, I’m sorry! It startled me, that’s all.” You attempt a brave, albeit flat, smile. “I’m not scared. Just…surprised. Is this how all merfolk get when they’re sick?”

Jade wants to understand, but he has never known dread like that before. He’s a predator. He doesn’t need to feel fear when he instills it in others.

Still, it bothers him more than he thought it would. If you fear him… If you can’t present him with a real smile…

Is there even a point if he’s not the reason for your happiness? What is he if not the blight that destroys your flowering radiance?

Without fail, like a cruel cycle destined to burden him, the winter weather evokes morbid gloom. It darkens his consciousness like a shroud over a corpse or a cover on a mirror.

If you’re not scared, why are you keeping your distance? Am I truly so monstrous that you feel the need to cower? My love is sincere. I promise I would never hurt you.

But he would, if given the opportunity. And that’s precisely what he plans to do now.

So it catches him off guard when you surge forward to lace your hands with his. Carmine drips from his claws, pattering the floor in tiny drops. He stares at you with pupils blown wide.

“You’re my friend. Why would I find this side of you ugly? Just because you’re not at your best doesn’t mean it’s weird or bad.”

And isn’t that the worst? 

Jade’s lungs constrict when he kisses you. You try to jerk away, but he holds firm. Your lips part only briefly, and you manage a squeak of protest before he reclaims the space with ravenous intent. Your whines are swallowed whole as he all but devours your mouth like a famished animal. Sharp teeth click against your blunt ones. Jade laps at the back of your throat, savoring every gasp. You press against his chest in a weak struggle.

“S-Sto—wait. Jade—”

But even those words become appetizers for the feast that’s soon to follow.

It’s because I’m your friend that you place your trust in me. Thus, it will hurt all the more when I take that trust and crush it beneath my heel.

He’s never felt more alive, his body buzzing with exhilaration. When he pulls back, breathless and panting, you’re still reeling. He doesn’t give you any time to recuperate, for he tugs you along down the shadowed halls of Octavinelle.

You dig your heels against the tile. “Please wait! I don’t understand. What are you—”

You’re yanked forward again, and the rest of that sentence trickles into reserved silence. You hurry to keep pace with Jade as he drags you towards a door. A large indoor pool, dimly lit by the lights above, greets the both of you once it’s opened.

With furrowed brows, you glance at Jade. He’s looking right back, but it’s a strange gaze. He’s ready to pounce, just barely holding on to nonexistent restraint, every muscle riddled with tension.

“Sometimes we’re permitted to use this area for personal reasons,” Jade explains, shutting and locking the door with magic.

“Personal reasons… Like what?”

He smiles, watching the shiver roll though you. “Nothing against the rules, I assure you.”

“Right… Look, Jade, at the very least…” You wring your hands. “Um… Could you at least get in the water? I’m worried your potion’ll wear off any second now, and there’s no way I can lift you myself.”

“Your concern is much appreciated.”

He places one webbed hand on your shoulder, the other situated at your lower back. In one fluid swoop, he gathers you in his arms. You don’t have time to yell at him to put you down because he’s already striding over to the poolside.

“I do hope you’ll forgive my temperament. I confess I’m a touch impatient.” A lopsided smile strains on his flushed face. 

“Jade, don’t you dare—”

Your scream cuts through the air, echoing off the walls. He tosses you into the water without decorum. Jade sheds what’s left of his already tattered uniform and dives in just as the rest of his mer features overtake his human shell. Salt sprays around you in a resounding splash when you, coughing and spluttering, break the surface.

Jade watches your feet kick back and forth as you paddle towards the edge. The motions are hypnotic. What pretty, fragile limbs…

Gliding through the water with minimal effort, he circles you like a moon hopelessly devoted to remaining within your orbit. His hand wraps around your ankle, and he pulls you beneath the water to meet him. You struggle in his grasp, kicking and thrashing, but he doesn’t let that deter him.

Jade cradles your face in his hands. “So pretty… Like a pearl,” he clicks, his words musical and foreign to your human ears. “My treasure.”

He captures your lips in a mystifying kiss. Clumsily, his deft fingers work to peel your clothes from your person. You push back just as your bra is unclasped, gasping for air, and he allows you to surface after nearly a minute. He comes up with you, drunk off the taste of you. The world could be ending just beyond the confines of this pool and it wouldn’t even matter to him. Not right now, at least. Not when he’s at the verge of vehemence. So close. He’s so close.

“W-What’s up with you?” You cling to the pool wall, chest heaving. He follows your hand as it moves to cover your mouth. “You’re not usually like this.”

“Does it bother you?” He swims closer, effectively pinning you to the wall. He presses his nose to the dip between shoulder and neck and hums. With a boyish giggle, he smiles again. “You smell so pretty…”

“Jade…” You pat his head. “Jade.”

“Hm?”

“I… I’m flattered. Really, I am. But we can’t do this.”

He detaches himself to look at you. “We can’t?”

This time, unlike in the past, he isn’t playing dumb for the fun of it.

“I’m sorry, Jade. I think you’re a great friend, but that’s it. I tried to tell you earlier, but you wouldn’t let me.”

So that’s how you feel.

He’s cold-blooded by nature, but somehow this confession chills him more than the Northern waters ever could.

Just a friend.

“Ah. Is that so? My apologies for overstepping a boundary.”

You turn towards the wall to hide your exposed chest. “I-It’s fine…”

He admires the water droplets cascading down the slope of your shoulders. Winter woes and mating season make for a devastating combination, and Jade is the tsunami who will tear through you with reckless, remorseless abandon.

A clawed finger taps at your cheek. Defiant, you keep your gaze pinned ahead. “Are you, by chance, embarrassed?”

“O-Of course I am! Please close your eyes and don’t peek until I’m out of the pool.” With one arm held over your chest, you fish through the water in search of your waterlogged clothes.

Jade takes hold of your empty hand, marveling at how small yours is compared to his. So precious. I could hold this hand forever…

“There’s no need to be shy. Nudity is commonplace where I’m from.”

“Well, it’s not like that up here. Not always, at least.” You swallow thickly. “Please don’t look…”

“That’s tantamount to asking someone not to admire artwork in a museum.” Gently, he coaxes you away from the wall and into his chest. “You deserve to be cherished in full. Is that not why land-dwellers sculpt the human body?”

“That’s different!”

“How so?”

Please, (Name), you’re driving me wild. Please just let me love you. Please. It’s all I want.

“Most of them are representations of deities and other important symbols.”

“In that case, I am but your humble devotee.”

You roll your eyes. “Flattery doesn’t work on me.”

“No? Then how about this instead?”

Jade turns over on his back in the pool. You’re tugged along for the ride, settled on his chest like a turtle resting on driftwood. His arms wrap around you. Stubborn—an adjective known to describe Jade on occasion.

“Now I won’t see a thing.”

His smile is too cheeky for your liking, but that’s the last thing you’re thinking of. His hands creep down the expanse of your back. You yelp when he squeezes your asscheek. 

“H-Hey! Watch where you’re touching!” Your expression is meant to be threatening, but all it does is earn you a gentle laugh.

“Forgive me. My hand slipped.”

“Yeah, right. You’re not slick.”

He doesn’t dignify that with a retort. Instead, he floats aimlessly on his back. You press yourself to his toned body and silently hope he can’t feel your hardened nipples.

“Can you bring me back to the edge?”

“I can.”

Just not the edge you’re thinking of.

“Will you?”

“Eventually.”

It’s spoken like a promise, a sweet sigh. You don’t believe him for a second.

Once more, his hand dips lower than it should to rub against your bare pussy. You flinch out of your skin, sucking in a deep breath. His whimsical laughter is more grating than nails on a blackboard.

“Oops.”

You want to throw yourself into the water, but that would risk giving him an unintentional show and that’s the last thing you want. So you squeeze your eyes shut and, body taut, lie still. 

“Can you—will you tell me what’s going on?”

“I will.”

You wait for him to continue, but he chooses to bask in the silence instead. If you weren’t trapped in his embrace, you’d throttle him. Or try to, at least. He’s all muscle in this form, and it would be so easy for him to subdue you if he felt so inclined. The result of a wrestling match with a moray isn’t exactly in your favor.

Groaning in defeat, you play right into his game: “Can you tell me?”

“Allow me to show you.”

He propels himself backwards, his tail fin cutting smoothly through the water. You’re taken from the shallows to the deepest end of the pool. His hands find your waist and, with startling ease, he helps you up so that you’re sat just above his slit. It brushes against your pussy every time you shift. Minding his claws, he digs his fingers into your thighs to keep you still. You hurry to cover yourself with your arms, hoping to preserve what’s left of your decency.

“Many mers prefer spring and summer climates.”

“Because the water’s warmer?”

“That’s part of it.” His hands crawl up your waist to close around your arms. Gently, he pulls them away from your chest. His eyes stick to your breasts, but you can’t muster the courage to fight him. “The water is warm and food is plentiful. The perfect time to find a willing mate.”

“So this is—you’re in…heat, basically?”

“It’s rather unbearable if left untreated.”

“You say that like it’s an illness…” Shaking your head, you sigh and offer a sympathetic grimace. “I’m really sorry, but I don’t think I can help. I don’t know the first thing about moray mating!”

“I wouldn’t say that. You possess all the proper equipment. It’s merely a matter of body language, really. Think of it like dancing,” he assures, petting your inner thigh. You watch his fingers inch closer and closer to your pussy, and with an embarrassed gasp you place your hand over it. “Won’t you be a dear friend and help a poor moray in need? I would be very grateful to have your assistance. In fact, I would be in your debt. Isn’t that most advantageous?”

“No way! Ask someone else.”

“I would if I could, but this isn’t the type of issue one can treat so carelessly. Selecting a mate is of great importance in the sea.”

“So go to the sea and do it.”

“We’re already there.” He chuckles at the dubious glower you give him. “As it happens, Octavinelle’s surrounding territory is entirely oceanic. How fortunate for us.”

“Why does it have to be me?”

My dear pearl, I treasure you something fierce, but you’re wearing my patience painfully thin.

“Why not?”

“Didn’t you just say picking a mate is super special?”

He hums, wondering if you’re feigning ignorance for the sake of the situation or if you’re genuinely this lost. It’s likely the latter. After all, you accepted his invitation to mate without even knowing it.

“It’s a special occasion, yes. Many mers have new partners every summer. Sometimes they remain and other times the tide carries them along, bringing in new opportunities with every changing season.”

“And finding the one who sticks is the goal?”

“For some of us.”

“So what about you?” You narrow your eyes at him, suspicious. “You’re speaking for everyone but yourself, Jade.”

Jade flushes. Your perceptive words are pointed, stabbing through thick skin to reach his heart. It isn’t often someone parts all of his curtains to peer at the truth.

“I would like that,” he admits, soft and sweet, almost demure. “Someone who sticks, as you’ve put it.”

You watch his face carefully, but there’s no lie to find. With his pinched brow and shimmering coloration, so much so it’s as if he’s been set aflame, you steel your nerves. He brightens the dark pool with his light, a beacon on still waters. Jade looks right back. The eye contact is heady—more hypnotic than a swaying pendulum. He waits for you to make the first move, as is customary in his courtship, but when you don’t react he begins to suspect it’s the opposite for yours.

But then you find your voice. So words are valued in human courtship. I see…

“If I help with this… W-What exactly happens? What does it mean?”

Jade knows his pearl isn’t stupid, but sometimes he really has to wonder.

“It means—” he takes the hand that had been previously protecting your nudity and pulls it away, fingers intertwining— “we would copulate like every animal does.”

“I… I’m not sure.”

“I’ll be very gentle.”

“Still…”

“You have my word.”

“I know. I understand. But—”

“It’s my first time as well.”

You stare at him, astounded by the revelation. “Really?”

“Indeed. So I ask that you forgive my boorish insistence. I’m usually very prepared for my season, so it’s a shock it’s come so early.”

“Yeah, that’s weird. I wonder if it’s because you’re a human. Maybe something with your transformation?” Your breath catches in your throat when he presses two slender fingers against your clit. “H-Hold on… If you touch there—”

Jade’s mismatched eyes sparkle when he looks at you, wet with tears. “Please,” he murmurs, resting his head back against the water. “Please, (Name)…”

You’ve never known Jade to cry or beg outright, let alone utter that single word in such a submissive tone. He’s so vulnerable, an image curated for this very occasion. Not that this is imperative information you absolutely must know.

With slumped shoulders, you glance elsewhere. “I’m not so sure…”

Jade considers himself fortunate to have his wits about him, otherwise he would have already had you plastered to the pool tiles, his cock thrust up in your tight pussy.

“I understand my size in this form may seem rather intimidating, but I’m still myself.”

“I know. But…”

“You can lead. I’ll follow. Almost like a dance.” Taking hold of your hips, he rocks you back and forth as if you’re a doll. Your cunt brushes against his slit and, though it isn’t nearly as euphoric as the actual ordeal, it still sends a wave of carnal relief washing over him. He hums pleasantly, gills fluttering. “Mhm… Like so. It’s simple, isn’t it? Nothing to fear.”

You place your palms against his chest to brace yourself. A reedy breath shakes through you. Jade can see the gears turning. And—oh—how he wishes to be able to poke around your head to understand what it is you’re working through. He’s certain he’d be walking on air if he could hear your innermost monologues: To love or not to love Jade Leech… Or, at present, this would be a better and very humorous phrasing of your secret dialogue: To fuck or not to fuck Jade Leech… 

Even if you don’t love him now, you will later. Just as all life in his terrariums inevitably blooms, so, too, will your affection for him. Patient and persistent care will get him far. He’s sure of that.

You shiver above him, face scrunched and bottom lip bitten to muffle your musical moans. He doesn’t bother hiding his very obvious enjoyment as he guides you along until, eventually, your hips move on their own accord. You grind down against his slit, panting wetly, and he watches your lashes flutter, beautiful like butterfly wings. He admires the divine softness of your nudity, picturesque like that of the Renaissance.

No matter how delicious you are on the eyes, how electrifying it is to have your body pressed to his, it’s still not enough. Jade has half a mind not to buck up to meet your dripping pussy halfway, even if his every sense is telling him he should. Too much force and he’d throw you off into the pool; there’s no telling what he’d do if you were in the water, fully at his mercy. So he allows you to have your fun, deems it polite that you find your end first before he follows. He has to remind himself that you’re not a mer and, thus, you won’t find it very appealing if he succumbs to animalistic urges.

Humans like gentle creatures. Jade is not a gentle creature by nature, but he enjoys masquerading as one.

If it were up to Jade, he would have just taken you for himself ages ago. The minute you looked him in the eyes, he would have grabbed your face in both hands and yanked you up to smash his mouth to yours. And then you’d know there’s more beyond that curtain of placidity.

But that’s not the approach he wants to take.

What he really wants, right now and in this moment, more than anything, is to be inside you, pump you so full of himself that you’ll feel bloated like a whale carcass. Sink his teeth in your throat and taste the blood puddling beneath. Chew you out like you’re nothing more than a squeak toy and he’s your wildly disobedient dog. Dig his claws into your thighs until red ribbons slide down broken skin and cloud the water.

Your yelp brings him back to the present. For a strained second, he thinks he’s hurt you—gone too far and chased you away before the game could even begin. But the source of your startled reaction is easy to pinpoint, for it’s currently prodding at your folds.

“W-What’s that?” you ask around another gasp.

More of Jade’s prehensile cock wriggles free from the safety of his slit. He squeezes his eyes shut to collect himself, hissing through his teeth.

“Most mers are equipped with—mmh—with both sets of…anatomy…” His mind is whirling. He can’t finish that thought. Does it even matter? You’ll understand without the explanation. “It won’t hurt… You can touch it.”

You shake your head and—sevens, you’re lucky he loves you so much or else he wouldn’t have the foresight to be mindful of your inability to breathe underwater. What he’d give to take you below the surface and ignore the world passing above—to spend what little eternity he has rutting into you, tails twining, mouths meeting…

“I shouldn’t… T-That’s your…thing.”

He wasn’t sure you could get cuter, but you do. Surprises are endless with you. He could never tire of this.

“Of course it is. How else am I to copulate without it?” he replies smartly. “It’s called breeding season for a reason, my dear.”

You lift your hips slightly to avoid the tip searching for a home within your gummy depths. Panic paints itself on your face. “W-Wait! You can’t—”

“You seemed to be enjoying yourself moments ago. I promise you this will feel even better once it’s inside.”

“That was before I—b-before you…” You swallow thickly, stumbling over your tongue. “There’s no way I can—it looks…too big.”

“Any size is going to seem so if you’ve never taken it before.”

Jade presses two fingers inside your pussy and spreads it. Slick strings from the opening, coating his digits in your arousal. You stiffen and hide behind your hands.

Aah, if only I could devour you right here and now… You’re just too adorable. Are you doing this on purpose?

“You needn’t fret. If my fingers slide in like so, then I’m certain it will be the same for my—”

“I don’t know how mers do it, but if it’s anything like humans…” You shake your head again, adamant. “I don’t wanna get pregnant.”

That’s unavoidable, he wants to say, but that would serve to scare you away.

“We’re incompatible.” Even I’m not certain of that, but it must be false if the mermaid princess could start a family with her human. “Therefore, the risk is nonexistent.”

“Are you sure?”

Not in the slightest.

“Quite.”

Apprehensive, you still refuse to lower yourself onto him. He’s aching, desperate and near-deranged from waiting, and if he were still in his human form he’d be sweating out of his skin. Jade grabs your hips again and, somewhat forcefully, brings you down to meet his tip.

“Please,” he stresses, putting on his best, most convincing pout. “Please, (Name), won’t you help me? I fear I can’t endure any more of this torture.”

You open your mouth, but a trembling breath slips out in place of a protest. Jade’s cock presses against your pussy, gradually delving inside. You almost flop on top of him, the air knocked out of your lungs as he spears you open. Jade grits his teeth. His claws rake across your sides. He has to remain calm, but how can he do that when he’s finally inside you after months of fantasizing? He knows now that his hand could never act as a substitute for the real thing.

To think he was missing something as grand as this all along! No amount of warmth could ever compare to you. You’re an angel who’s just taken him to Heaven.

You gasp again when he slams you down without warning. “Ooh…”

He heaves a shaky, satisfied sigh. Tears dot his lash line. He’s never known relief so strong. It wraps tightly around his cock, squeezing like a vise. If not your mind, your body definitely agrees to this connection. You’ve taken him so well. Surely you wanted this all along. It was just convoluted courtship, a messy tangle of misunderstanding. You want him to knock you up—to stuff you over and over until you can’t fit anything else.

Oh, if only he had eggs. If only he could give you a clutch.

Next time, he thinks, and he means it.

“See?” he says, finding his voice. It comes out breathless, like he’s just been squeezed dry. Not yet. Soon, though. He’s sensitive, and it betrays whatever image he hoped to curate by seeming unbothered. You’re supposed to fall apart first, yet here he is on the verge of coming undone. “You’ve fit every inch. I surmise you could fit even more.”

“I don’t want to!” You lift your body, but it’s a silly endeavor. His cock twitches and curves up against your walls. You and Jade groan in unison, your eyes squeezed shut. “We should’ve just gone to—haa—Professor Crewel and let him handle this…”

“Magical intervention would only pause the inevitable. These cycles are easier to manage as they happen. And this—” he helps you grind down against him, to which you do with startling obedience (but then perhaps he’s just strong enough to manhandle and pretend it’s compliance)— “is the best medicine.”

His webbed hand closes around one of your breasts. It’s soft and springy in his grasp. He pinches your nipple experimentally, and you clench around him.

“Ah, do you like being touched here?”

“Mmh—no… Not there. Don’t—ooh!”

“Or perhaps here?” he asks, circling your clit.

“Stop—you can’t…”

“But I already am.”

You muster the energy to glare halfheartedly, but it soon unravels when he drags you up and down once more. The sound of skin on skin fills the room, every lewd, wet slap an addition to your cries. Jade wonders if this is what true inner peace is, for he’s never been more elated. So utterly, indescribably relieved.

You’re just what he needs to weather this cruel winter.

Jade’s mind, once so organized, is a chaotic scramble. You’ve always occupied a majority of his thoughts, but now you’re made front and center. Everything revolves around you at this moment. He even tries to sync his breathing with yours, if only to feel closer to you. As if this bodily connection isn’t already close enough.

You happen to glance at him then. There’s a glaze to your gaze that wasn’t there before. He admires the way it makes you look—the softness in your eyes and the subtle part of your lips. You appear so blissful while you rock yourself on his cock, dragging your hips in jerky motions. He doesn’t think twice about the sloppy nature of your union, for he moves with a singular goal in mind.

He reaches without meaning to, searching for your heartbeat so that it can align with his, and you squeak in surprise when you’re pulled against his chest. Jade’s reminded you’re not a mer when he tries to wrap his tail around your nonexistent one, feeling legs kick out instead. Just like that, ripples run across tranquil waters as you’re flipped over.

Ah. I was too hasty.

You break the surface, coughing and spluttering. He mourns the disconnect immediately, yearning for your warmth again. When he comes up to join you, he’s met with a splash.

“A-At least warn me before you do that!” You mumble the rest of your disappointment, but Jade’s keen ears pick it up anyway. “I didn’t even get to finish…”

Jade chuckles and wipes water from his eyes. His face is bright, burning with joy. “My apologies. I may have gotten carried away.”

“Obviously.” You huff. “Now can you bring me to the edge?”

He winds around you. “It would be my pleasure.”

You’re pressed against the pool wall, legs spread and wrapped around his waist. He braces himself on either side of you, his fingers curling around the ledge. With how strong his grip is, it’s a shock the tiles haven’t cracked under the pressure. You avoid his stare while he pushes in. He listens to your breath stutter, and that’s all it takes to shatter his self-control. He draws away, savors the confusion polluting the air, and then snaps his hips forward to fill you with every inch of his strange, inhuman cock. A strangled moan rips from your throat and you throw your head back, deflating flatly against the floor.

Jade’s brows knit together. He bows his head, gasping into your neck. His teeth are centimeters from unmarked flesh. He wants to bite you, but the sensation of your velvety walls wrapped around his cock is so distracting. He thinks he might faint. It feels too good. So warm. So wet. So tight. Is this really what humans feel like on the inside? Are they always so soft? He feels boneless as he rolls his hips, numb and dumb, mindless like an animal.

That’s really all he’s ever been: an animal enthralled, his sights forever locked on you. He’d do anything to get you to look at him.

Your arms snake around him, and you cling so sweetly, your nails scraping at his back, that he almost cums right then. Your voice is in his ears, wanton and whispery.

“J-Jade… Aah, Jade…” You hold firmly, unyielding, and chant his name like it’s something holy. “Oh, please, Jade!”

You were so averse before. Now look at you. You’re so cute. The cutest, in fact. I want to make you mine and lock you away forever. Your voice, your body, your smile, your everything… It would be mine to admire. A fascination reserved specially for me.

“It doesn’t hurt, does it?” he asks, tracing your cheek with a claw.

A fond smile graces his face. You blink up at him. Tears track down your cheeks, but he knows they aren’t woeful. You’re enjoying this just as much as he is. You want him. You like him. You have no choice.

“Feels full…”

“Does it?”

“Mhm.”

That angelic smile fades into something wicked and proud. Full. You’re full. Full of him and, very soon, full of as many loads as he cares to give.

His hand dips between your bodies to nudge at your clit. You choke around a bawdy moan. If he fools himself, he imagines your parted lips are mirroring the same invitation he voiced to you earlier. Maybe it really is. Maybe you’ve finally understood this facet of his language. 

Hypnotized, Jade watches your lips. He doesn’t even register he’s leaning in. You struggle somewhat, but he just kisses you harshly. His tongue slithers past your lips to explore the insides of your mouth, prodding at the back of your throat until you’re digging your nails into his shoulders.

I love you. I love you. I love you and need you and want you. You’re all mine. Finally mine.

Saliva dribbles from your lips when he pulls back. His eyes are blown wide.

All mine.

When he leans in for another kiss, this one more dizzying than the last, he presses his hips to yours, aiming to get as close to your womb as possible. He needs to. Needs to be deeply acquainted with your insides. Needs to flood your empty womb with enough cum to guarantee pregnancy. Needs to knock you up and watch you swell with his child so that you’ll be even softer than you are now. Oh, the beauty of it all is too tantalizing! You’d look so cute, maternity wear stretched taut around your gravid belly. And your tits would grow fat and heavy with milk. He can already picture it: You’d fluster when you leak through your shirt, even more so when he takes your teat in his mouth and drinks his fill. He wonders if you’d call him gross, a pervert, a freak… Would you do so if he asked?

Would you hate him if you knew all of the depraved fantasies that flit around in his head?

Maybe. The lack of linear clarity excites him. Endless possibilities. He wants to know all of them.

He wants to—

With a wheeze, he cums quick and hard, lashes fluttering and vision whiting out. Your body flinches beneath him, caught in the throes of pleasure as you, too, ride out an orgasmic wave.

He comes to moments later, his heart racing, and rests his forehead against yours.

“That’s…it, right?” you mumble, running your fingers through matted hair. “It’s over, isn’t it?”

Jade tries a shy smile. “On the contrary, we’re only just beginning. A mer’s season isn’t over until they’ve emptied everything, heart and soul, into their mate.”

Can he really call his dick his heart and soul? Maybe. It sickens him with a wild delight.

No matter how many rounds, he’s going to love you until you’re thoroughly worn out.

You don’t have a choice.

But then you already love him, don’t you?

You will by the end of this.

And suddenly he doesn’t feel so bad anymore. Suddenly, he’s no longer embroiled in the sticky shackles of winter woes.