Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

A stone in a shoe—offensive, yes; annoying, yes; but doesn’t make walking impossible. You can shake your foot, kick it about, guide it towards your toes and trap it there for a while. Not worth removing unless your tights rip and the stone digs into your sole. You tell yourself it will work itself out. Your ankle twists, and you shift your weight pressing onto the ball of your foot—like a dancer warming up for pain.

Unbidden, it reminds you of him. Of doors slamming and exasperated sighs. Of the late hours that stretched thin as pastry—lamp light flattening his face, the blue wash of a screen where conversation ought to live. Rows that started over nothing: the wrong mug in the sink, the keys left dead in the lock, the bathroom fan whining all night because someone forgot the switch. You learned to step around these things like chairs after a party. In public you were immaculate; in the taxi, the moment the door thudded shut, the smiles peeled off in strips and curled on the rubber matting. He’d stare out of the window, count lights, and you’d feel the air go stale between you, as if someone had turned off the vent.

The divorce happened before it happened—and first, of course, came the dividing. He started sleeping on the sofa after coming home late from work. After a while you stopped waiting and braced yourself through brittle sleep. Bathroom shifts synchronised until you passed each other in the corridor without a word. Months went before lawyers carved your belongings into halves: car and flat sold, funds split down the middle and sent to two separate accounts. In the courtroom you disowned each other, claiming there was no love left, in front of a handful of witnesses—perhaps a third of those who had once watched you swear for better or worse.

Funny how nobody asks whether you love each other when marrying. There’s no double‑checking, and everyone jumps at the chance to help pick out the dress. Divorce, though—completely different. Faces freeze in mortification; apologies and compassionate glances—it starts like that. Then the lawyer who prepares you for the questions. And, oh God, you were asked so many. During the no‑fault divorce you had to embrace ignominy and brace yourself to confess when you last had sex. Rid yourself of binding possessions—shared goods, the engagement ring, the wedding band. Then the last blow: saying you didn’t love Viktor any more wasn’t the worst. Hearing him say he had no love left for you—that was different.

Everything’s offensive. Rain works its wet tendrils under your collar—atrocious. A car knifes through a puddle and sluices your shoes—the stone swims. You hold your purse over your head and curse him for not dropping the misdelivered mail at your work. Claimed he hasn’t bought a new car yet and the post office is far—played the cane card, as usual, when he wanted to talk himself out of things. You scoff. He even had the audacity to call your office and leave a message. So impersonal.

You could have let it go, let it be forgotten; but it might be important, you tell yourself—famous last words. So you brace the wet streets and hunt for his new flat. He’s moved to the outskirts—another thing worth a scoff, as if he meant to put as much ground between you as possible. Nothing remains in common: your routes to work miss each other, so no chance meetings; favourite places are treated like cordons of fire. You’ve changed the cinema you go to and he’s opted for a less well‑stocked but safer bookshop. Even friends have been cleaved into two neat groups.

At last you find it—a nineteenth‑century block with ornamented balconies and stucco flourishes, a heavy wooden door painted a deep, civic blue. You press the buzzer and wait. One ring. Two. Three. 

The speaker crackles, distorts, and a lilted voice arrives in pieces. “Yes?”

“It’s me. Here to pick up the mail,” you say through a held breath.

“Fourth floor,” is all he says, before the lock buzzes you in.

The hallway opens around a winding stair, its heart an old lift wrapped in decorative wrought‑iron. It sighs under your weight when you step in. You drag the concertina gate and throw the latch; the car shivers before it hauls itself upward. The mechanism grinds—loud, ponderous, tired with age. Floors slide past behind wired glass; your eyes glaze—stress, most likely. It thuds onto the fourth and gives a last judder. You wrench the outer metal door; it rattles in the frame. His flat faces the lift, door ajar. You take a steadying inhale and knock anyway.

“It’s open,” comes from inside. It sounds wrong—devoid of the tremor you half-expect in yourself. No feeling at all, as if Viktor had recorded the line to play the moment you announced your presence. He hits the consonants too clean—a voicemail practising to be a voice. 

You step in and turn the key; the lock gives a dry, quiet click. On the hall table sits a small stack of envelopes. Without any further greetings, you reach for them and scan through.

“I suppose this is for me?” you say, and flinch when he appears beside you out of nowhere.

“Hello,” he says, a wicked smirk cutting across his face. The smile shows itself before his eyes decide to join it. “Yes. Seems like the rain got you. Would you like some tea?”

“What? Why would I want tea?”

“For old times’ sake? Civility? Or are those concepts alien to you?” He steps back. The cane is in the wrong hand, you notice. His posture is off—straighter, taller. A pang of something ugly rushes through: the first thought plants itself—divorce has done him good.

“I have a fine understanding of civility, thank you. I’m here to pick up the mail—we didn’t split up so we could have tea dates, did we?” you say to his back, and the bastard actually chuckles; the sound seems to arrive a heartbeat after his ribs move.

“Jog my memory, will you—why did we split up, then?”

It lands like a slap. Viktor’s frame tilts, he looks at you sideways, and another odd thing happens. Seeing your face—presumably dumbfounded and incredulous—he adjusts: his shoulders round forward, back hunches, and he sets both hands on the cane. When he turns to face you fully, the cane is back on its rightful side.

He looks gentle. His eyes are vacant—dimmed—and his brows knit, as if in pleading. It takes you back to the night he proposed—careful and shy. His hands shook and he stammered more than once. The ring slipped to the floor when he tried to push it onto your finger, because every scrap of coordination went into holding back tears. It was beautiful—youthful in a way nothing else has made you feel this young since. It was the beginning. Now you stand on the far side of the finish line and take him in as he is—nearly identical, like a reflection. Everything’s in the right place, only flipped.

“We weren’t a good fit,” you say, swallowing, and Viktor nods slowly. “A stone in each other’s shoes.”

“Right,” he murmurs—flat, agreeable, unreadable. A pause opens, long and airless. Then, as if remembering a line: “So, how about that tea?”

“Are you deaf?” you spit, and his head snaps up. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m here to pick up the letters—nothing else.” You lift the envelopes like a shield, paper trembling against your fingers.

Viktor watches you, unblinking. Then, almost too softly to hear: “Have tea with me,” he says. “I would like to… converse.”

You blow out a breath and drop your hands. “God, I knew it. Say what you need to say and let me be. I am not in the mood for games.”

“Games?” He scoffs, voice rising half a step. He advances a pace; the cane comes down on the boards with an exaggerated thud. “Of course—as usual, anything I wish to discuss is a game, anything you wish to discuss is a matter of life and death.”

Your arms fold across your chest; the paper crinkles. How fucking dare he. Threads cut loose, you owe him nothing. You could both go back to being strangers and the world would keep turning—that’s what divorces are for.

“I do not want to discuss anything, and I don’t see what unfinished business we have that can’t be handled over the phone. Or—not at all,” you say, heat licking up your cheeks.

He chuckles again—low, infuriatingly calm. “Ah, there she is, my beloved wife—dismissive in a way that makes a man so small he almost disappears.”

Wife. It lodges deep—burns in your chest, fills your skull with heavy fluid. It fucking hurts; that’s what it does. You wanted the word to stay where you left it—folded, filed, inert. Because you stopped being his wife long before you stopped being a wife. It died long before the courtroom, long before the lawyers. Yes. You remind yourself—you did this together.

“Well, thank fucking God the world came up with the wonderful solution of a divorce so you could free yourself from the tyrant you deem me to be,” you say through the lock in your jaw.

“I’ll remind you it was you who filed for divorce, not me,” he says—tone even, almost pleasant.

“Are you being serious right now?” You slap the letters back onto the cupboard and close the distance, toe‑to‑toe. Furious, you drip onto his floor and scramble up all nerves to remain stern. “Now you want to discuss faults? You were perfectly fine disowning me in front of everyone just three months ago.”

“What makes you think I was fine with it?” he asks—quiet as a dropped pin. The cane taps once on the floor, neat and precise.

“Fuck off,” you whisper, bewildered. Your eyes fall to his chest; it’s heaving under the shirt.

Silence, for a while. Then: “I’m in pain,” he says, lifting his hand to your cheek.

“Then go to a doctor,” you tell him, but don’t flinch. The touch is cool. Tender. Husband‑like. Your mind swims the old currents as you try to fish up the reasons you left.

“Not that kind of pain.” He leans in until your chests brush, movement reptile‑slow.

You close your eyes and swallow. Anger surges—the audacity. The three‑month benchmark you’d almost celebrated turns to ash. Your jaw tightens. “Fuck. Off. I hate you,” you lie through your fucking teeth. Then, you pivot to leave, to run, but a hand clamps your arm and hauls you back.

He holds on—grip stronger than you remember. Fingers bite through your sleeve, and he tips the cane to lift your chin. “Tell me to my face, you coward. Tell me you hate me now,” he says—a dare.

You watch him—changed again. Older, more severe. His mouth curves in bare anger, almost childlike. His whole face screams unfair—a teenager grounded for getting caught with a cigarette. He smells different too—sweeter, almost sickly so. His eyes burn into yours and you search for Viktor there, finding a man barely holding himself together. Fury—and passion leaking through the cracks—floods him, an expression you don’t think you’ve ever seen on him.

Something vile uncoils in you. It urges you to fight. Your arm hurts; he clutches you so fiercely. Writhing, if only to spite him, you take the bait. “I hate you,” you tell him, eyes dry from gauging.

You catch the flash of a canine; a snarl follows, and then—his mouth crashes into yours—hard enough to hurt.

His cane drops, clattering across the boards; the freed hand closes around your neck, thumb tucked under your jaw. He kisses you like he means to bruise. Tongue and teeth worry your lips; you let him, right up to the second when sense snaps you back. You shove—heel braced, shoulder in—plant your palm on his face and drive him off. What follows is a slap: sharp, stinging. It lands on his cheek and blooms into a flared handprint, red on alabaster.

He breathes. Touches the mark as if to test whether it’s real, then looks at you—caught between terror and fascination, eyes blown wide, mouth parted. The scent on him is wrong: sweet edging to rot, cologne fighting it and losing.

Thoughts drain out. Instead, the pulse howling between your legs takes the wheel. Your body moves first—you catch his collar, seize the back of his neck, drag him in. “You fucking dick, I hate you,” you breathe into his mouth, and bite—hard enough to taste the metallic smear bursting from the soft flesh. He hisses, tightens a fist into your hair, pain sparking clean behind your eyes. His mouth finds your throat; teeth set, a mean little clamp that will flower later. He seals it with his tongue, a slow lick, as if kindness survives in him somewhere.

“Say stop and I stop,” he rasps against your skin.

“That’s what you are good at, aren't you?” Your answer is a gasp that turns into words. “Doing whatever I say so you don’t have to make a decision. Don’t you dare to stop.”

His hand slides from your neck to your jaw, angles your face where he wants it. The other clamps your hip and hauls you close until you feel the hard line of him through cloth. Your thigh hooks without asking; you grind down and his breath breaks. He is not only stronger than you remember—steadier too, a steadiness that feels borrowed. The cane lies between your feet; you nudge it aside, metal scraping wood.

You shove him, he shoves back; you bounce off the wall with your shoulder and give a short, surprised laugh that isn’t amusement. He chases it with his mouth, eats the sound, swallows it like a debt. Fingers map you with old accuracy, then stray where habit never dared. The kiss turns meaner—open, wet, a chew of lips and breath. You palm his chest, feel the hard drum of his heart, shove again for the sake of it; he catches your wrist and pins it above your head. Your other hand finds his hair and yanks until he grunts into your mouth.

“I hate you,” you say again, not blinking.

“I know,” he says, calm as a blade laid flat. His knuckles scrape your throat as he adjusts his grip. “Say it while you kiss me.”

Composure flying like torn wires in the wind, you say it on a breath, then on a bite, then on a moan you’d swear isn’t yours. I hate you—an honest lie.

He answers by walking you a step sideways, pressing the length of you into plaster, anchoring your hip with his thigh. The fabric burn between your legs is immediate and filthy; you chase it without shame. He noses your jaw like he’s relearning you, then takes your mouth again, slower this time, crueler for control. Your fingers slip under his collar and find the heat at the hinge of his neck; he shudders—unexpected, real—and the sound he makes is not the one you remember.

“Look at me,” he says, breath rough.

When your eyes meet his, the wrongness swims up—pupils nebular, poisonous sweetness blooming bolder, the posture fabricated. It should stop you, but doesn’t. You pull him in harder, teeth meeting teeth, and the two of you grind there, panting, hands everywhere, making a wreck of civilised speech. Hoarse breathing, heavy petting—call it asit is: you’re going to fuck your ex like you loathe him and miss him in the same breath. Like spite and want are one muscle that’s finally being used.

You catch his chin and wrench his face up; your thumb digs into the hinge. Another bite on his lip—meaner—until you taste the copper bloom. “You let it rot,” you say, grief bursting like a downpour that’s been dammed for too long. “All those years fucking wasted waiting for you to—ah—” The rest snaps off in a gasp when his hand slides down your waistband; his fingers are cold, shock‑bright, not unwelcome. He remembers the path without thinking, crawls straight to the spot and flattens his palm; a smug hum vibrates against your ear.

“Tell me more,” he murmurs. “This body misses you so much I’ll take every vile thing you have to say.”

“Fuck you,” you spit, grinding on his hand. You loop an arm round his neck and drag him close until your foreheads knock. “Fuck me,” you breathe into his mouth.

It’s ugly—dignity peels off like burnt skin. You watch the triumph in his eyes as he leans in and kisses you deep—open, consuming, tongue and all—drinking every bitter word out of you. Villain to villain, you maul each other’s mouths, trading teeth and breath, as your bodies scrape along the wall towards the bedroom. His shoulder clips a frame; the picture swings. The cane keeps clattering underfoot and gets kicked aside. He crowds you; you climb him; your fingers fumble his belt until metal clicks and sings. His hand works you, steady and ruthless, and you ride it, cursing into his mouth like it’s a language only the two of you still speak.

The bedroom is dim—curtains drawn tight, bed made neat and clinical, a mirror flanking it. In the glass, the room looks sharper than life—edges trued with a draftsman’s ruler. No clothes, no books, nothing soft. One film poster framed on the wall. The space smells of starch and something chemical under the staleness.

He yanks your coat down and snaps your shirt open—buttons skitter, one pings off the skirting—and lurches down to your chest. No respect for fine lace: he drags the cups low so the boning frames you and leaves your breasts hanging for him. Teeth mark a path; his mouth is greedy, wet. He bites your nipple—hard enough to make you wince—and you swat the back of his head on instinct.

“Did I hurt you, my dear wife?” he asks, smiling, mouth slick.

“Yes,” you manage, voice stupidly thin, one hand cupping the bite like you could press it back to unbitten.

“Good. You hurt me too.” He palms your ass and hauls you in until there’s no space left. His fingers find your hair; he twists, tilting your ear to his mouth. “Let me show you what you’ve missed.”

With that, he pushes you down into the mattress—face‑first. Your nose drags across the cool sheet; his weight settles over you. He slots himself between your cheeks and ruts along the seam, cock still caged in cloth, the rasp of nylon making your hips buck despite yourself. He follows, pins your waist, breath thick at your nape.

“Show me,” he purrs, “how much you’ve missed your terrible husband.” The scouting hand returns—goes to work on another piece of your wardrobe. Your tights ladder at a single, vicious tug, and all he needs to bare you is to hook your knickers aside. Skirt rucked up, you wait like a whore: for his touch to tease, to check, to gather the evidence and wipe it on your face. That you missed him. That you lied in court. That you’d have come under any pretence he offered.

The sneaky bastard knows at once. He hums, charmed by everything you’ve gathered for him between your legs. His lanky fingers explore you as if you were a thing that belongs to him, and when you turn your head you catch him in the mirror—awestruck, smiling all genuine and boyish. There, his blink is slow, fractionally late.

“My darling,” he coos. “Have you been waiting for me like this all this time?”

You whimper and bite the sheet. It’s infuriating. Stone or no stone, this was never the issue—Viktor is an explorer who works fast and memorizes all the data. It took him exactly a month to map your secret places, three years to perfect the technique, and then two to leave you aching and tired of his indifference. Cruel in its misery.

“Stop talking and fuck me already,” you snap, catching his reflection. He slaps your ass—hard. Then, his cock comes free and you crane your neck to see it. He laughs—low, dark. Drags himself through your slick and fleeting wish spikes—that you were both clotheless. To see him again: those narrow hips; the hollowed chest with a notch beneath the shoulder made to cradle your head; lean muscle taut under pale skin. To count the freckles and find the number unchanged. Your eyes film when the mirror gives you only a smug likeness of the man who once matched you for love and now, misaligned, matches you for hatred.

You reach back and tap his thigh; your fingers curl in his trousers. He catches your hand and bends, chest sealing to your back. Then he slides in—hard and rough in one brutal punch—his balls slap your clit.

“It’s a bit late for hand‑holding, don’t you think?”

“Fuck you,” you breathe, adjusting to the fullness. You squeeze around him—greedy, adolescently horny—press your hips to his groin.

“Your filthy mouth says fuck you,” he hums. “But your pretty cunt says fuck me. Which is it?”

You writhe, torn between begging him and screaming. “How much encouragement do you need, dear husband? Is your cock inside me not enough?”

“Ah, well,” he says, catching your chin, his eyes meeting yours in the mirror, “it wouldn’t hurt you to say please, would it?”

You blink; a tear slips free of your lashes. Surrender is imminent. If there’s anything left in the arsenal, it’s a small appeal to his humanity—just to leave you a crumb of worn-out pride.

Your chin wobbles. “I don’t want to beg you,” you say. “I wish you’d begged me to stay, so I wouldn’t have to beg for anything.”

Viktor exhales—a long, shaky breath—and something in him uncurls. His grip loosens into tenderness; his thumb strokes your mouth, careful, almost coy. He presses it past the softness, past the moue, and rests it on your tongue like an offering, braced for a cruel bite that doesn’t come. Instead you take him in; your eyes close; your face goes bare; brows knit as you hold back the rest of the stray tears. His arm snakes between your throat and the mattress to gather your shoulders into a cradle. Cheek to cheek, he begins to fuck you—measured, inexorable—while your hand on the sheet flowers open and fists shut with every thrust, opening, closing, opening again, as if the body were learning a new, blunt prayer.

“Yes, just like that,” he murmurs, sweet, and warmth seeps between two overstrung bodies.

He holds you and works you, a steady drag and push that settles into your bones. Sheet cool beneath your skin, his breath warm against your ear, the slow labour of it unspools your spine. The stretch is clean, the rub blunt and good; you catch yourself matching him—hips answering, hand clutching fabric into a rope. His arm around your shoulders, a human yoke; mouth kept close, murmuring nothing words that feel like heat.

“You fuck me like you still love me,” you say into the fabric—absent‑minded, an observation that slips out between thrusts.

He stalls half a beat. You feel the thought pass through him: a brief slackening, a catch in the breath, the tenderness gone glassy. Then he corrects. His fingers leave your shoulder, tangle in your hair, and yank your head back. Your throat lengthens; air comes sharp.

“Forgive me,” he says, voice cooling as his grip tightens. “I seem to have forgotten myself.”

The pace kicks up and you hate that the relief is real. Hips snap hard; the rhythm turns percussive, body on body, the sound of it ricocheting off the tidy walls. He uses your hair as a handle, keeps you arched while he drives in, no pauses now, no soft murmur. His chest lifts from your back; the weight changes; the saccharine scent cuts through again. You brace on your forearms and take it, every shove knocking a sound out of you you can’t name, and he chases those sounds like they’re the point.

It’s good—illicitly good—the kind that tastes of getting away with it. Like slipping out at midnight without the stair creaking, keeping your shoes in your hand, waking later with the night tucked under your tongue. It’s the same bright folly that once made sense to you: thumbing a lift on a B‑road, marrying for love, palming something worth less than a pound just to hear your pulse say yes, yes, yes.

His hand in your hair turns your face to the mirror. “Look at you—bent over for a man you swear you hate. You don’t seem to hate my cock,” he says, amused, dark. A beguiling evil whisper floods your veins: “Imagine you’re different. Imagine you’re a whore I called for. Imagine you’re my wife. Imagine”—his mouth at your ear, devil-sly—“I was a perfect husband. Attentive. Imagine I remembered birthdays. Imagine you don’t hate me.”

You moan—loud, thoughtless. The picture lodges and burns. In the glass he’s familiar and strange at once: wicked mouth, asking for gentle things; the brute pace, rubbing the meanness out of you. And then it happens—your breath throttles: in the mirror he is him. Your husband, freckles exactly where they ought to be: the pale spray on the bridge, the lone fleck under the eye, another above thin lip. You try to turn and catch the proof without silver between you. He hears the intent in your shoulder, snarls, and slides his palm over your eyes. His body sheets itself over your back—length, heat—and keeps moving.

“Shh,” he murmurs. “I’m here. I love you. I miss you.”

Impossible, you think—a lust-haze, a trick your fucked-out head is playing. You put your faith where you can: in his voice, newly tender at your ear; in the sure, claiming drive of him, the old route walked with a new, decisive stride; in the filth of it, which feels, God help you, like longing answered at last. You let the rest go to static and hang on to what’s happening now, to the hard rhythm and the soft words, to the body that knows you and the mouth that pretends it never forgot.

“Yes, fuck me like that,” you moan. “Viktor, fuck—”

His palm slides from your eyes to mouth; two fingers press your lips apart. “Finish it,” he says. “Say it like you mean it.”

“Viktor—fuck me,” you manage, breath snagging. He rewards you with a sharp drag of hips, a bruising stroke that knocks sound out of you. The rhythm turns insistent, greedy. You tilt back into it, meet him, chase the thud of him like a dare answered in the dark.

“Say please.”

You choke on a laugh that isn’t one. “Please.”

“Good girl.” The words land hot. He quickens. Each slap of body on body is downright, unapologetic; the bedframe says yes with its own small racket. He speaks into the very core of you, voice slipping into that soot‑soft purr. “Say you’re my wife.”

You swallow, pride scalding, pulse harder. “I’m your wife,” you breathe, and something low in him answers—pace kicking, grip cruel, a hiss between his teeth that tastes like victory.

In the mirror he is both: the man you knew and the devil he’s playing, familiar bones under an unfamiliar steadiness. You watch your own mouth open, your throat work, your back bow. The sight unthreads you. It’s reckless and exacting, like breaking into your old house and finding every light still set to your hand.

He drags your head back again until your gaze snags the reflection. “That’s it,” he says. “Use your voice. Use that cunt. Take what you came for.”

“Viktor,” you gasp. “Please don’t stop.”

“I wouldn't dream of it.” He shifts his stance, digs his fingers into your hips, and pounds you—feral around the edges. His breath is a rasp. You feel yourself go loose and sharp at once, the clean ache spreading, the bright, forbidden joy of it. And when he growls, close and low—“Good wife”—you hear the man you loved thread through the stranger, and it lights you from the inside.

You answer him, fast and thirsty, until the pattern catches and holds. Heat builds low, a taut wire that hums with each stroke; your mouth opens, no sound at first, then a rough little noise that keeps returning. The mirror gives you back another stranger—flushed, shameless—and you use her, watch her, ride the rhythm she sets. It comes on hard when it comes: a deep clutch, then a spill, the sort that drags your breath to pieces and leaves your thighs trembling. You bite the sheet,  hear yourself plead without words.

He follows almost at once. His head tips back; tendons stand in his throat, pulsing, furious. A rough moan tears loose—unpretty, honest—and then another, shorter, bitten off against your skin. His fingers clamp hard enough to hurt—bone‑deep, a bruise laid in advance. Warmth floods you in hot, staccato pulses: a stranger seeding you, and with it the last filament from the old life snaps clean. Something in your chest twinges, a small tendon giving up its job. He rides the aftershocks with a ragged breath, a low, amazed sound that slides into a laugh before he remembers himself.

“I see what the fuss is about,” he says at last—mild, almost clinical.

He slips free and straightens. You roll onto your back, eyes shut. Blind, you rise; hands float forward like a sleepwalker’s, mapping air and body until they find a face—cheekbone, jaw, the set of a mouth. Only then do your lids lift.

The marks are wrong. The beauty spot that should live under his right eye sits beneath the left. The dot above his lip has crossed the midline too. The whole map is mirrored, as if the glass had stepped out to wear his skin.

Impossible. The word tolls once and keeps tolling. The man in front of you is not your husband, not even your ex‑husband; he is something wearing him—near‑seamless, but a wife always knows. Terror sluices in, bright and cold: shame for what your body took, fear for what it invited, the slick proof of him still slipping out of you while everything ordinary—keys, names, years—suddenly feels miscut and useless. The room tilts, and for a beat you think of peeling yourself out of your own body to be safe.

“You are not him,” you say, voice narrowed to a breath.

He smiles. “No. But I could be.”

Pulse bangs in your ears, a struck bell that won’t quit. Vision narrows to a pinhole, widens again, the room see-sawing like a boat you never boarded. Before you stands the perfect stranger—one tailored to your measurements, wearing Viktor’s height,  the weight of his gaze, yet built from mirror shards. A brilliant rhyme recited backwards. You reach for any fault line: a nervous lick of the lips, that soft tongue-click he made while thinking—nothing. Every borrowed breath rings counterfeit.

Your body clocks the danger first: knees soft, skin buzzing as if each hair root has sprouted a wire. Your mind skitters—who would believe you, what number do you dial, how do you explain the stranger’s warmth still seeping from you? Horror wants you to bolt, but longing drags its feet, stupid and loyal. The shape of him prints on your senses like a thumb on wax. You realise you’re cataloguing all the ways he passes, even while the raw fact of him vibrates wrong.

The quiver in your chest resolves into an ache so old it feels ancestral. You taste its name: alone. It’s that ache, not courage, that folds your terror into something eerily calm. Surrender. Mouth dry, heart hammering, you frame the question you never thought you’d ask.

“What should I call you?” The words fall out, hushed, appalling.

He doesn’t hesitate. “You can call me Viktor.”

Chapter Text

He licks your neck and tastes the rot of Prague, car exhaust, tram passengers’ armpits, wet dogs, Vltava, terracotta roof tiles, institutional carpets, lacquered lift wood, mirror polish, Grand Café Orient, wool coats, wristwatches, silver earrings, hand soap, hairspray, sprained ankles, the passing of time, birthday wishes, a rigorous father, pennies, last night’s dreams, base notes of perfume under alcohol solvent, liquorice sweat, white chalk, blue chalk, prickled skin, new skin, just skin—and underneath it, life.

Tongue arrives at a secret spot under your ear: a three-day-old mosquito bite—your makeshift triage obvious, picked open instead of smeared with dimetindene and left to settle; the scab torn off again, the leak thumb-rubbed carelessly.

He noses the wound once before sealing it with a slow lick; iron bloom rises to meet him, overshadowing everything else. He tastes you to the clean, the sting settling under his tongue. Wiser as ever, he hunts the cause. He reaches for your palm, turns it, studies the claws—the pale half-moons rimmed with rust-coloured crescents—and exhales. Index and middle lifted, he brings them to his mouth and closes his lips around them—just the tips; lower incisors wedged under the nail so his tongue can reach the second-hand, coagulated zest.

“I miss you,” he whispers in your ear, eyes closed, breath gone wide. You wish his lids were open, irises on you, so you could see the longing working in the flesh. The unspeakable need: for skins not only to meet but to fuse—to be one; to share a heart; to share oxygen that feeds one set of limbs and one brain. So his thoughts are yours, so he doesn’t have to voice them.

“I’m right here,” you tell him, fingers to his temple, where ideas are born and die.

Hands full of patience, almost paternal, he gathers the swell of your cheeks and eats from your mouth next—tongue first, coaxing the seam open, then exploring, down over your teeth to the molars. He wants to taste what you’ve tasted. Be where you’ve been. Touch what you’ve touched.

It’s the animal in him that decides. He inhales you down to the layers that bear soul shards. Teeth join when he gathers your lower lip between them without closing and holds. You feel the shape of his canines and the way he’s not using them, the restraint and the promise and the threat of it.

When he bites you, it is precise and courteous, as if he’s borrowing something and will return it polished. A shock, yes, but of recognition. The pain arrives as flavour does, then heat; staccato, then flood. You make a sound, and he answers with another, smaller one. You expect the taste to be all iron and pennies—schoolyard currency—but there’s also wet warmth and a poisonous sweetness of flesh that belongs only to you. He licks the blood as if not to waste it, as if this were a table and he had good manners. Your skin jumps under his mouth, then settles, then opens further.

He draws back—his lips are stained and you think of jam; of being a child, biting into a cherry and smearing it on like it’s lipstick; of redcurrant juice; of finger-licking; of a name-day gathering where someone wipes a smudge from the corner of your mouth with a thumb. Domestic.

His eyes are darkened by focus, not romance. He kisses you and you taste yourself—reason says: alarming; body screams: liberating, as if you’ve been allowed to be both host and guest. He kisses you carefully, forcing your tongue to lift, and you open, and there is a small, bright swing inside your chest like a bell on a bicycle.

“More,” you tell him, gulping down what he’s missed.

“Always more,” Viktor chides, venom absent. “Always hungry to be hungered for,” he says, knowing damn well love is everlasting hunger.

Your hands, which have been clumsy with wanting, find employment: one in his hair, one at his jaw, guiding him where you need him—to your neck, taut and pulsing. He poises his teeth at the tendon, and once more, just holds.

Idle, Viktor feels the bright push of the carotid—hammer, stumble, catch—until his own chest corrects and falls in with it. Time thins; he listens through enamel, jawbone tuned to your systole and its little syncopes. In the dark behind his eyes, he sees the red river carrying what you’ve carried: burnt coffee; tram heat; chalk dust; the rude joke that made you snort; the man who vexed you at noon; the small mercy at four.

He wants to siphon it—be the pipe between your hours and his famine—drink the day out of you until the drum in him beats with your time. He pictures himself round with it, belly sated on borrowed minutes, the hollow in him padded with what you kept. Greedy, devout, he waits at the gate before he eats, because the pause is the door by which he might step into your skin and wear it. He is the watcher holding the leash on the feeder inside him. He holds, learning your rhythm until it fits like clothing, and only then does his mouth begin to move. 

The cut is shallow—a training cut, a rehearsal. He takes what rises. You feel him swallow: a tiny, indecent motion that sends a heat through you, utterly aside from the meat of it. It is too much for the world and exactly enough for the two of you.

“How much more?” Viktor rasps and his voice floods your veins.

You don’t know how to measure hunger in units that mean anything. You make a joke because that’s what you do when you are near the edge: “Enough to keep from fainting.” 

He huffs against your skin—affectionate, resigned. Viktor knows your dodges and does not call you on it. Instead he kisses your shoulder where the tissue is unbroken, presses a thumb to the mark he made as if to bless it, and pulls your top over your head with a care that makes you feel expensive.

The slow slide of fabric makes you think of fruit and the way juice runs down your wrist if you don’t bend and slurp it back quick. He talks to you with fingertips, punctuating with teeth only when you move towards them. You avoid being good on purpose, knowing he likes to correct you. It’s not a game of refusal. It’s a practice in being edible.

When you kneel to work him out of his trousers, you mouth the inside of his thigh and let your teeth rest there. He flinches, then steadies. There is a skin-scent on him that belongs to evenings and humidity and sleep. You breathe it until the world narrows to six inches of leg and the ache you carry between your own. He touches the back of your head, present. Your teeth scrape there, very lightly, and you feel the muscle jump.

“You can,” he says, “if you want to. I want to.”

To be allowed to mark him back, to keep him in the way birds keep paths in the air, plural and invisible and indisputable—it’s need heard and met. So you bite. You bite where the soft turns to firm and count the seconds with your breath. The skin gives; a bright dot beads up like a cherry beginning to form. He watches you, jaw tight, eyes refusing to look away, and there is a brotherhood in that refusal: we do not pretend this is tidy.

Tongue flicks out to taste something that is not yours and not unwelcome. It’s a tender tip only, testing for fidelity. “Mine,” you say, ordinary as cutlery. He shudders. 

You leave your mouth there, sealing the mark, and the intimacy grows a third leg like a stool, practical and steadying. When you take him into your mouth the small pain of his mark is still on your tongue. Your body records the double entry: taken, taking. He is careful not to thrust against you, though his fingers tighten in your hair. You guide him back with a hand to his hip, slow, yes, like that. You keep your mouth soft, generous; he starts to swear in a voice that surprises him, it’s so raw.

Later, when you are on your back and he is above you, the sheets still cool and the window still talking its thin, ordinary light, he uses his teeth at your wrist where the veins rise blue. You say “gently” and he nods against your skin as if you are giving him a task he intends to ace. 

He opens an apple with his teeth when there’s no knife to hand; you’ve seen him do it, the firm pull and the tiny crack. He uses that competency now. Your blood comes up in a shy way, a single seam. He kisses it open, then shuts it with his mouth. You watch him, and a childish part of you thinks of promises made blood-to-blood on summer kerbs, palms pressed together like sealing an oath. It is childish and it is holy because you say so.

“Look at me,” he murmurs, and once you do, you realise you’ve been looking away from the beginning, afraid of being witnessed in your peculiar delight. He is not disgusted. He is not sainted. He is very, very real. His face is flushed and his hair is pushing into rebellion and his chest lifts quick. There is a small smear at the corner of his mouth. You reach up and lick it off, and he closes his eyes at the contact as if you’ve switched a light.

“Please,” you say then, because hunger is honest when fed.

He enters you in one slow push. The first thrust is clean and difficult and makes you say a word you’d be ashamed of in public. He laughs, not at you but in victory, and kisses you lung-deep. The bite at your throat throbs as if applauding each slide. You tilt your hips to keep the rhythm; he adjusts, finds it with you. Blood smears and dries sticky where his thigh meets yours, bodies seasoned like meat needs salt.

The world goes soft at the edge of your vision. Your hands learn his back, the wing-bone knobs, the sweat mapping valleys down the spine’s column. He is not careful now; he is exact. He watches your face, waits for it to do the thing he knows, and when it does his mouth opens with it, astonished every time.

He says your name properly. Stresses the syllables like a spell. You answer with the older names that don’t belong to either of you: eat me, take me, keep me. He doesn’t, not truly; he only carries the likeness of it, and you are grateful. The likeness is enough. You are allowed to imagine the rest. 

You picture the small, neat parts of you he would prefer first: the meat along your thumb, the ribbon of muscle on your calf, the tongue (always the tongue, bright beast), the chewing until taste becomes memory. You picture him refusing the heart because it would undress him, and then taking it anyway because refusing has never cured wanting.

“Please—” he tries, then shakes his head, breath snagging on the lack. “I… I need—”

“End me,” you say—no bravado, only a creature split asking for mercy.

He seals you to him—stomach to stomach, arms looped behind your neck—and returns to the mark; teeth set, a clean, small bite, as if the letting makes room inside you for what’s about to break.

You come with your mouth against his shoulder, and he makes you show your face to do it. Your head tips back; the room spins its little silver plates—cup, window, laugh, night—and you hold him at the hips and tell him, that’s it, that’s it, like the calm voice that talks people down from a ledge. 

He follows you into it a few beats later, more noisy than he intends, hand fisting in the pillow as if he’ll otherwise become unmoored. He says something in the middle of it that sounds like a promise but could simply be breath caught on a syllable. You don’t press for meaning. Meaning ruins meals.

After, there is the warm slack that visits bodies that have confessed themselves without language. He lies half on you; you like the weight of him, the ownership of it. He kisses the bite at your throat again as if closing a box. You curl a hand at his nape and feel the beat there. A fattiest peace fills the room, the kind that doesn’t announce itself, only sits down and takes up space. You think of the first rule of hunger: anything worth eating arrives under its own steam.

You turn your wrist and bring it to your mouth. The mark there has settled to a small rose of tenderness. You lick it clean, ceremonial, then give it back to him so he can do the same. He does, eyes on you. You are a little abashed. You don’t know why. Perhaps because you are so easy to keep, when kept like this.

“Does it frighten you?” you ask. Not a challenge. An inventory.

“Not you,” he says. Which is either a lie or a larger truth. He strokes your ribs where the skin’s thin enough to show the bars under. “The wanting, sometimes.”

“The wanting is the meal,” you say, which is not wise but is accurate. He smiles with his mouth closed, as if keeping you in.

When he goes to the bathroom, you stay put, listening to taps and the small domestic noises that prove you live and do not only haunt. He comes back with a damp flannel and wipes your throat and wrist, then the kisses he’s put down on your body as if they’re prints for the police. Same cloth, same order; the small liturgy that follows appetite.

You let him, then take the cloth from him and wipe his thigh where your teeth bloomed. The water goes pinkish at the edges, nothing lurid, more a blush. He watches you do it, and you can feel the thought in him: he will not forget. Neither will you. The body is a very fine diary.

Then, Viktor licks again: from belly button, up the sternum, to the suprasternal notch. He tastes the rot of the flesh fucked and devoured, bedsheets, water, sweat, semen, a beating heart, a liver, kidneys, his breath, his thighs, his hands, his blood, your blood, one blood, one body—entered and sealed, and then—life.

He lifts his head and looks at you longingly—glances exchanged, you look at each other, butcher to butcher, starving to starving, lover to lover. You lie there with your hunger purring, entertained, and count your bones like coins in the pocket of a winter coat. Plenty left—enough to share.

You both recognise the animal housed in the other: the watcher and the feeder. You bare teeth, then sheath them; you share the plate and the rules. Together you cross the lines that heal—the places skin will close—and you refuse the lines that would unmake you: no ripping, no theft of what cannot be returned, no heart. 

This is your supper, not the first, not the last: a table laid with breath, bruise, salt; the bite and the balm; a quiet grace said in each swallow. You admit the beautiful ugly—the stain, the spit, the gasp—and love it for that tilt. Want is weighed against mercy, and that weighing is what makes it whole, and yours. Tomorrow, the marks will argue under clothing; you will agree with them.

The body must live to be eaten gracefully, for life is the best of tastes.

Chapter Text

It echoes off the gilded frames, the stained-glass windows that picture the stations of crucifixion in vivid colours spilling across the marble floor. Footsteps—heels, dry and rhythmic—suggestive in their promise of what kind of ankles wobble in them, what kind of hips sway above. He knows before your perfume pierces through wood and incense, wipes his forehead, despite it being dry, and asks for forgiveness in silence before you settle on the other side of the grille.

He straightens in the narrow booth, thumb and forefinger tugging at his collar until the white slip sits square over his throat. The little tooth of cloth, pale and dumb, covering the place where his pulse hammers—Adam’s apple, the first fruit ever bitten after temptation made a fool of the first man.

Then, the hinges whisper, and you arrive. The perfume is quicker than sight, seeping through the lattice, threading itself into the incense like a weed among flowers. Not some meek scent of lilies or soap but thick, dizzying: orange blossom drowned in musk, a trace of salt where it clings to your skin. It does to him what nothing should—burns a heat low in his body where he should be at rest, makes his fingers twitch on the wood as if he might dig through and seize you. The smoke and polish of the chapel cannot smother it; it eats straight through, like rot through varnish.

Your skirt sighs as you sit, close enough that he feels the air shift. His tongue sticks briefly to the roof of his mouth. He lowers his head, eyes shutting hard, and still the words come—clear, habitual, outright wicked in a way the phrase should be a greeting and acknowledgement—innocent and pure—yet when it rolls off your tongue, it sounds like bragging.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

And God might as well have left him, because he cannot wait to hear what sacrilege you have brought him this time. He tells himself it is holy work: to bear the rot of others, to rake it up and scatter it so souls may breathe. Yet what it does to him is no act of charity. Each confession is a small sting under the skin, a drop of something poisonous that never drains. He has listened to gluttons who choked on their own plenty, adulterers who ended on the gallows, proud men snuffed out like Nebuchadnezzar crawling the fields on all fours. Every sinner has a ruin, and he knows it by rote—Samson, blinded for his appetites; Lot’s wife, nothing but salt for a single backward glance.

Still he leans close to the grille as if to drink from it, every word you offer licked into his ear. His chest is tight, ribs clawing at his heart. Heat rides the nerves of his thighs, skittering down into the meat of him, a pulse that should be tamped out but grows sharper with each syllable. He swallows—dry, papery, useless—and clasps his hands until the knuckles rasp, as if bone could make a better cage than God ever gave him.

He shifts, trying to make more space in his lungs, and the cane at his side tips, kissing the corner of the booth with a dry wood-on-wood click. A sound too sharp in the hush, like a nail driven. He closes his eyes.

“Speak, child.”

There is the small catch of a swallow, and his mind makes ruin of it—throat that bobs, fluid that slips the gullet, tongue that flattens, cheeks hollowing as if wrapped round something vulgar. The image grips him by the roots of his spine, sends a shiver raking down. He presses harder into the seat as your voice comes.

“I have lain with a man not my husband. More than once.”

He lets the words settle, all sour and sweet at once. His answer scrapes out low: “Do you know it does not work so? That you cannot rinse yourself clean and begin again each time?”

Through the lattice, a wrinkle flowers between your brows, caught square in the grid of shadow. He hurries to add, “I do not speak to shame you.” His tongue is heavy; it tastes of iron.

You hesitate, then ask, almost in challenge: “And how do you do it? How do you hold yourself apart from all this?”

A lie waits already on his lips, cold as stone: “By prayer, and by God’s grace, which is stronger than flesh.”

The words are ash. If he were not whipped already, he would scourge himself for them—for speaking what he knows to be false while wearing His cloth.

For sacrilege, he loses the cassock—slips it from his shoulders like a skin too heavy to wear, folds it badly, leaves it on the chair. He stands penitent under the cold stream, one hand braced disgracefully on the wall handle, the other tentative where he stops being priest and becomes man. 

The first time he swore it would also be the last. Then the next week came, and your voice with it. The confessions poured like oil down his spine, slicking him, marking him. He carried them home like relics, like curses, and the body in him begged until he gave it what it wanted.

He does not touch himself with hunger—he strokes with dread, slow, as if delaying execution, though the outcome is always the same: the water running hotter though he never touched the tap, the breath hammering until it ricochets off tile. When he finishes, he shudders like the condemned dropped through the gallows. The silence afterward is worst: the hiss of pipes, the clatter of drops, the shame packed thick as fat stuffed into a pig at a wedding feast—holy vows by day, then by midnight a dionysian revel, gluttony carved and swallowed till no one can stand. He dries himself not with care but with violence, red raw, as if he might rub away the crime.

“Do you truly never stumble, Father?”

The way you say it—low, full of knowing—makes him feel caught in the act, as if the booth itself had eyes. His breath huffs out, sharp. How cunning you are, or perhaps it is kinship—sinner to sinner.

“Everyone does,” he answers, voice steadier than he feels. “God forsakes no one, as long as we atone.”

A pause; the faint shift of fabric as you settle more comfortably. “That sounds like a man who knows what it is to stumble.”

He almost smiles, almost snarls—he cannot tell which. The trap gapes wide, yet he edges closer to it, moth to candleflame. “I know what it is to rise again.”

Your laugh is soft, teasing, the kind that slips between ribs. He should turn stern, shepherd you back to remorse, but the words dry in his throat.

“Lying with a man not my husband,” you continue, “is not the worst sin I’ve to confess.”

His stomach knots. Curiosity, he tells himself. Employment hazard. He must hear the depths in order to pull you out. But the ache that blooms in him knows better—it is hunger. The crumbs of you are all he gets, and he feeds on them as if starved. He leans closer into the grate, breath stirring the dust caught there.

“What then?”

Your answer falls quiet, but he hears it as if whispered against his ear: “It is lying with a man while thinking of another. Holding a hand over his mouth so I could imagine the voice of someone else.”

Spear lances through—his heart kicks once, violent. He presses his palm hard to his thigh to stop it from climbing higher, but the rush unfurls, undammable. He wants it—wants it to be him behind your hand, him named in your head, him the phantom stitched into your flesh. Lust runs his spine like molten tin, collects hard between his legs until he shifts, grinding down against nothing, cursing the cassock for being both barrier and accomplice.

He ought to flinch, to throw a psalm at the thought, but all he does is lean nearer, nose almost to the wood, as if the lattice might widen. Your voice has lodged inside his skull, and now every syllable rubs raw where he is weakest. He can see it—your palm sealing a stranger's mouth, your body arching, swallowing sound, his name forming silent on your tongue.

God forgive him, he aches to be the sin itself.

He clears his throat, forces his tongue to shape something priestly, something neutral. The words come out rougher than he means, snagged on the vacuum of depravity hollowing him out, tempting him to succumb.

“Indecency is indecency,” he says, tone meant to be cool, unshaken. But the scrape of his voice betrays him, heat bleeding through every syllable. “No matter if you are happy with your partner of choice or not.”

Even as he says it, he hears how it lands—harsher than doctrine, softer than reprimand, like a man defending himself more than judging another. He grips the edge of the seat until the wood prints crescents in his palm, praying you do not hear the truth in it: that indecency is all he can think of, and he wants it branded with your face.

You frown, or at least he hears it in your tone. “I thought you did not aim to shame me.” Your spine thumps back against the wood, a dull report, and before he knows it he has reached—fool that he is—lured and trapped like some creature of naïve age.

His fingers lace through the grate, panic rattling his throat. “I do not. I—” he swallows the rest, the words I sympathise locked in his chest. “Confess. Freely.” A beat too short, his voice already racing to cover itself: “But accept the atonement I will give you.”

You lean forward again, palm pressed flat to the lattice. Skin glides the wood until it meets his fingers, and the touch is obscene—an intimacy disguised as accident, as ritual. It feels like fucking.

He tears himself back, drops into the seat, drags his hand through hair that doesn’t need smoothing. Eyes shut, as if darkness might save him, he braces to listen.

“I am plagued,” you say at last, “by someone out of reach. A voice I cannot shake. Kind, forgiving, with words that stay in me long after they’re spoken. I find myself… repeating them. I find myself building sins around them.”

His gut turns. He is lost between knowing he should not listen the way he does—not as confessor but as deviant—and wanting more.

You shift then: fabric rustles, knees meet the narrow step—and your fingers thread through the lattice. They grope softly, searching, patient as roots.

“When I atone I already sin again. I touch myself praying, hoping he can feel me. Hoping he knows. I fuck other men, cover their mouths so they don’t moan in a voice I don’t want, cover their ears so I can say Father instead of their names—”

“Stop,” he chokes, sucker-punched, rendered culprit by the vile enjoyment of listening. Sin drowns him, sweet and cloying; he sees it all behind his eyelids—your hips driving down, the grind of your ass, calling him through orgasm stolen from an unsuspecting mate. Succubus unwanted, clawing at the door beyond which absolution lies.

“Don’t dismiss me,” you whisper, desperate. “I know when someone whispers my name with lust.”

He grips the seat, knuckles white, and hisses through his teeth, “It does not matter what I lust after. It matters that I do not follow.”

“Why?” you challenge. “Why must we be scorned for this?”

“You will not be,” he breathes, tormented. “I would be—I vowed. I promised. I gave myself, and there is no way off the path that will allow me to return.”

“That does not sound like a benevolent God.”

A scalding, childish fit—you might as well have said unfair. Heat floods his skull, a rage that is shame and desire mingled. He unhooks the grate sharply; wood scrapes, and suddenly there is a square-shaped gap, a tiny window framing your face. He leans in, seizes your chin in his hand.

“Foolish child,” he says, eyes burning into yours. “God is not benevolent.”

Your pupils spill into blackness, mouth slackens. He runs a thumb across your lip. “God is to be feared, not toyed with. You—” he pushes the thumb inside, feels the wet heat of you close around it “—tempt me. And I—” he drags a ragged breath “—am a weak man.”

“Please,” you say around him, words muffled, desperate, hands worming through the gap to clutch his cassock. “Please.” Your tongue flattens, and he presses down on it—communion emptied of the Body of Christ, reduced to body alone.

Something crumbles. Not slowly, but all at once, like a wall giving way to flood. He forgets the priest, forgets the collar, forgets the years bled into litany. The man takes over, violent in his hunger, and he is almost only a spectator to himself—watching as his body leans forward, as his hand steadies your jaw for more, as his breath hisses through clenched teeth with the sound of ruin.

A mean, human thought clicks into place: if he is to be condemned, he will not go alone. Let the angels tally two; let the same fire take you with him—accomplice, not supplicant.

“I will not give you absolution for this, do you understand?” His voice is low, hoarse, unrecognisable. “You will carry this sin to the grave.”

You nod, frantic, hands finding what they seek—a confirmation, hard beneath cloth, that the torment is mutual. Through the cassock you palm him, and he jerks, holy figure unmade into flesh and bone, nothing but man caught under your touch.

“Are you certain you’re ready to throw your soul away for a priest’s cock?”

“For yours,” you breathe, “I am ready.”

Viktor straightens as if dragged upright by invisible rope, head tipped back, eyes crushed shut. His hands cradle your skull—gesture caught between benediction and violence, as if he might bless you or snap you clean through. You wait there, patient, faithful, hands locked where his shame throbs under layers.

He shifts nearer. Nearer still. Until even the drift of your palms up to his stomach feels like desecration, like a hymn spat on the floor. And then warmth blooms warmer—your face presses hard to his groin, greedy, mouth parted wide, your breath searing through fabric. You cling as if he were the absolution itself.

But he knows better. Knows that all you gather from him is damnation. That what you drink in now, what you worship, marks you for eternal suffering unless another man of the cloth gives you leave. And he knows—knows with a gut-deep certainty—you will not seek it.

“Lost lamb,” Viktor hears himself say, tone wicked, not his own but something in him given over to hunger. Devil guides his tongue when he lets you undo the buttons, your hands sliding beneath cassock to find his bare thighs. You pause only at the brace, fingers brushing it with care, then squeeze his hip in quiet recognition. No question, no shame.

“Take what you want,” he tells you, voice a rasp. “The communion you deserve.”

But it is not fair, nor just. He is the one meant to guide, and instead he lets you think yourself Babylon’s whore while it is he who sells himself out for the delight of flesh. He marvels at how easily you bow to it, when the truth is that he is the one bent double, a priest trading away what cannot be restored.

You draw his underwear down, slow as if unwrapping a wound to tend it, as if your hands had been sent to heal instead of befoul. And then—oh—what was warm becomes warmer still. Your mouth finds him, tongue tracing from root to crown, and it feels like sacrament defiled, baptism not of water but of fire. Each lick scorches him, as though you were marking him with flame, branding him holy and damned in the same breath.

Desecration as worship—he braces both hands on the wood, knuckles moon-pale, as if the booth itself might hold him upright while you drag him into the pit. He knows he ought to pull away, to wrench himself free, yet he watches—no, feels—himself ablaze and cannot stop it.

You linger, cruel in your devotion. Tease him with the slick tip, tongue circling, lips grazing, your nose nudging the tender underside as though you would scent him, taste him whole. He is altar, you the supplicant, begging wordlessly with mouth and breath, and every twitch of your lips is prayer profaned.

Then your mouth closes around the head, warm and tight, and Viktor—certain hell’s gates swing wide for him—cannot fathom why damnation should feel like this: pure, undistilled heaven.

Your tongue flattens along the tender underside, serpent-slick, sliding with ancient cunning as though it knew him before he was born. Heat licks him there, sharp and wet, and the sound of it—the quiet drag, the small suck of pressure—turns the booth into an echo chamber of sin. He presses his face to the wood, blind, unable to see you, and so every sensation blooms larger: your mouth sheathing him inch by inch, the tremor of breath through your nose, the guttural hum when he twitches on your tongue.

The flame catches at his loins, roars up the base of his spine, eats his chest hollow until oxygen itself deserts him. He clings to the lattice, ribs heaving, delirium stealing all reason. At last, when he yields—when he lets himself be taken—every shred of struggle falls away.

He drowns in it. And in drowning he understands all sinners at once: why they return to their ruin, why scandal never dies. Because in your mouth wickedness does not taste foul, it tastes clean—like grace itself. The wet heat of you exposes the vacancy at the heart of what he preaches, strips it bare. How can this be wrong, he thinks wildly, when it feels like the only truth left to him?

He breathes out, “Fuck,” and you flinch at the sound but keep him pillowed on your tongue, mouth open wide, eyes turned up—glass-bright, hair clinging in damp strips to your temple. He dares to look. Power smites him like thunder.

“Attempting to drag me down with you, aren’t you? Is this what you wanted?” He slides free, drags himself along your face—slow presses to cheek and brow—slick shining where he leaves you marked. You give a tiny shake of the head. He chuckles, low. “No? What is it that you want then, my temptress?”

“More,” you whisper. “End me. Suffocate me. Live in me. Abide in me.”

Scripture curdles. He thumbs your jaw until it opens wider. “Then open,” he murmurs. “Take and keep.” One palm braces the frame, the other cups the hinge of your skull; he angles you, feeds you the wet crown by degrees. “Two taps if it’s too much.”

You swallow him like you were made for it and this only. It doesn’t stop. First the wide maw—soft, careful, teeth held back—then the channel narrows; a small force, a push, and he feels the gullet take him, deeper, deeper still until your nose settles against the straining muscle at his base and you breathe through what little fissure you can find. Fully sheathed, he breathes too—thin, as if it were his throat blocked and not yours.

“Lust, greed, gluttony,” he grits. “Are you proud too?”

You nod, the motion tight, and he chokes on a moan. His palm firms on the hinge of your skull. “Hold.”

Your throat flutters; a wet, low sound folds around him. He feels the slick seal of you, the small convulsion when he pulses, the heat gathering where your lips bruise against him. A tear beads at your lash and clings; saliva tracks to his thigh. He fixes you there—no thrust, no mercy—thumb finding the soft notch beneath your jaw to feel himself inside you.

“Good,” he says, voice thinned to wire. “Keep it.”

The change in him is blunt as a gear slipping its tooth. Months you’ve been levering him open—confession by confession, notch by notch—until the hinge runs free. Mind and soul yap their cautions; the body shoulders past, takes the reins, answers to nothing but selfish, primal id. What sits in the booth now is not a shepherd but the animal that wore his coat.

He draws back a fraction and drives forward. Tightness closes over him—again the warm seal of lips, then the hard ring deeper in that grips like a fist. Your tongue flattens and sluices him on; the soft palate yields, the throat answers with that quick little clutch that spears sensation right up his spine. He feels the pull change as you swallow—pressure, vacuum, a slick squeeze that milks the length of him. Your nose nudges at the root; his breath notches. He holds you there a heartbeat, then works you in a slow, metered rhythm, using your mouth like it was made to keep him. The heat off your face dampens his belly; his thighs tremble against your palms.

If this is your mouth, what would your cunt do? The thought lands and keeps landing. He sees it when he shuts his eyes: you braced on the kneeler, dress rucked to your waist, his hand at the back of your neck to line you up. The first push in—tight, living grip, the hot clutch of you around the head; a roll of his hips to seat himself, to feel you take it. Your breath broken against the wood, your thighs opening because he asks, because you want; his palm low on your belly to feel himself through you while you clamp around him and shove back for more.

He sets his jaw and keeps your throat, but his mind is already there—inside you—falling without brakes, while you surrender and ask for nothing except that he doesn’t stop.

He eases just enough to let you breathe and speaks low—the words ring in the little wooden chamber, muffled to the nave where stone saints judge and holy water ticks into the basin. “Is that why you only confide in me? Why you wait until it gets late? Is that what you were hoping for all this time?”

You hum—answer and sin at once—and the vibration runs up his length. His mind flicks, unbidden, through every mass you’ve queued for, every time he set the wafer on your tongue: white body on pink, a sight that always felt wrong in his gut for reasons he would not name.

“Do you come to feed at the altar with your mind all dirty?” he asks, thumb at your jaw. “Do you accept the body of Christ pretending it’s mine?”

“Yes,” you breathe, shameless. “Do you not?”

It hits him—there’s no hiding one pervert from another. Kinship, filthy and exact. He drops decorum and lets the truth out on a whisper. “I do.”

The sound you make could knock a saint from a niche. It goes on as you reach for him again, greedy, mouth opening, throat flexing to take. He sinks back into you and whatever leash he kept snaps. He sets his feet, hauls your head in his palm, and drives—short, packed thrusts that seat him deep, then deeper, until your nose breathes in skin. Your swallow tightens; heat and pressure climb his body with their nails out. Spit strings to his lower abdomen; your eyes blur; the back of your throat learns him and holds. He uses you, steady and brutal, jaw to hinge, breath to breath, ignoring the sting of your tears because you don’t signal to stop—you only push closer.

If anyone’s listening, let them hear. Let the booth creak and the breath break and the wet carry. At this hour the nave is empty of witnesses; the only ear tuned to it is God’s, and Viktor moves as if to speak straight into it.

He talks as he works you—broken things, wicked things that don’t sound like him at all. “Open—yes—keep me—don’t spill.” A gasp. “Be a good little congregant.” Another, rougher: “Let me mark you. Hold. Hold.”

The rise comes on fast and ugly. Muscles jump in his legs; his hand tightens at the base of your skull. The grip of you climbs and climbs—wet seal, fierce ring, the small clench of your throat that drags him to the edge. His breath gutters; a raw sound tears loose.

“Look at me,” he manages, ragged. “Show me.”

You ease back just enough, keep him heavy on your tongue, mouth wide. He spills—hot, hard pulses—onto that pink cradle while you hold steady, unflinching. He whimpers, undone by the sight, and you close your lips over him again, gathering the last of it before swallowing with your eyes on his.

“Thank you, Father,” you say, earnest.

He falls back into the seat, cloth rumpled, collar askew, neck damp. He drags air in, broad and shaking, presses his thumbs into his eyes until sparks bloom. He waits—forces himself to—until you sit back as well.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

“Yes,” you say, quiet. “Are you?”

He is both—right and wrong. He scowls as, in the dark behind his lids, images and sounds flare: repentance, condemnation, the eternal flame licking at sinners, Satan’s laughter—sated, vicious. And opposite that: fulfilment—body well-fed, taken and kept, a clean dull glow of having been used and using. Restless panic scratches at his mind; at the centre of him sits a stillness he cannot argue with.

“I will be,” he says, solemn.

Silence stretches until breathing on both sides of wood thins back to nothing. You shift; he hears the small readiness of you leaving. “Your atonement,” he says. “Keep coming to church. See no other priest. Stray from futile delights until you see me.”

“Are you certain that’s how I truly atone?”

“No,” he says. “That’s how you abide in me.”

He stays in the booth, listening to the heels clack away until the sound thins and dies. Body heavy, slack with the after, he gathers himself, straightens the cloth, steps out. The church feels strange—like a house walked into after the furniture’s been moved. He decides to test if there is a way back, though his mind is already made. 

At the altar he kneels—pain biting the joints, a small sacrifice to placate a stern god.

“Forgive me, Father,” he whispers, crestfallen. “For I have sinned.”

On the north wall hangs a modest oil of Saint Peter after the cock has crowed—eyes swollen from weeping, beard coarse with tears, the keys glinting at his belt, a rooster skulking in the corner like a rebuke; the blue mantle gathered to his chest. 

The thin gilt frame jerks, slips its hook, and drops. A blunt thump, glass star-bursts, the mitred corner of the frame splits clean through. Candles shiver. Viktor jolts—and knows it then: he’s been left. 

God has let go.

Chapter Text

He loves summer. They bring him the most gifts then—things he can eat, things he can drink, things he can keep. Salt makes the fish taste better, tightens the flesh he eats, but splits his lips and leaves him parched. Bread makes his belly heavy and slow, so after such an offering he hauls himself onto the warm stone and lies there until the ache settles. Firewater he dislikes at first and then desires; it scorches his throat, turns his fingers soft, and his tail will not mind him after.

They bring these things to appease him, or to pay for what they take—his water for their wheels, his fish for their pans. He rules only a small pond where the river slows into weed and silt, a poor kingdom stitched to the slough by a narrow runnel. Still, it is his. In summer he counts their gifts and lets the water run clear. In winter he sleeps—keeps their names in his mouth like pebbles and waits for the sting of salt,  taste of bread, the burn that loosens a lonely night.

The others are more malicious—greedy and mean; they play tricks on humans, frighten their children, and steal their chickens for a pure jest of it. He is only curious. Malice sits ill with a creature scorned by spirits, marked by weakness and desolation.

He was born with a mangled fin and a looseness in the muscle; the smallness of his kingdom is a blessing in that sense. Foolishly, they grant him faith reserved for a deity, but there is only so much he can do. Sometimes he takes gifts that are not meant for him—chains, pendants—and threads them along the cave to catch the light. He cannot guarantee a family’s health, or see that the miller’s daughter marries well. People put too much faith in what they do not understand.

He collects the offerings anyway—a small tally for letting them bathe untroubled, or for letting them foul his shore with their noises of lust when the months are hottest. Then curiosity peaks. He lies long in the weed-shadow and watches: hands fumbling and sure by turns, skirts hoisted, trousers pushed to the thighs, the quick scrape of bark against a back, a belt’s little chime before it is lost to breath. He watches mouths open and close like fish, watches the tilt of a throat when pleasure climbs it, the set of teeth in a lower lip, the way one plants their feet for leverage, the way the other forgets to be careful. He counts the beats between gasp and cry. He listens for the words that break them open—please, oh god, yes, harder—and for the names that spill at the end, bright as coins.

The sounds move the skin of the pond and go through him. His bad fin jerks and drags; his tail stirs against stone. Heat gathers low and stubborn, a slow tide; his body answers in spite of him, thickening in the sheath, blood knocking at the roots. He presses his belly to the warm slab, lets the current work along him until it blurs thought. Shame and pride come together like silt in a turn of water. He hoards the roughened pleas and the soft thank-yous, keeps them on his tongue for later, because voices are the richest gifts of all.

The one that rings in his chest, he shares seldom. He sings because that is what his kind do when the blood is up and the air tastes sweet—a lure meant to bring a mate. He stopped entertaining this whim long ago. His kingdom might be forlorn, but it is safe; the people who wander here are the wrong shape for his appetite, or already paired—and he knows better than to cross young stags, however much tail, even misshapen, beats leg in water.

So he sings out of habit, something carved into him by weather and current, a joke the elements won’t stop telling. Alone on the flat rock with the sun flashing on the surface, eyes shut, one hand tracing lazy circles, he hums what his throat remembers better than his mind—the old five-note run with the little hinge where breath turns. The day inhales and holds: flies hang, reeds drowse, the weir mutters to itself. He is part of it until a single rustle goes through the weed on the shore. He startles, folds, and slips from the stone into the green without a sound.

On dry land he’d be prey within seconds—that much is certain—but under the surface of this verdant lagoon nothing outclasses him. And he aches to see who does not know any better than to stalk the best hunter here.

He slips into motion, silent, first a wide circle until his ripple irons flat. Then, he sinks into the bloom of yellow water-lily, threads himself through hornwort and duckweed beneath the fringe of reedmace, and waits. Time draws; all seasons pass their hands over him. Then—there—a human. A girl.

He watches without blinking. Youth sits on you like a quick light; womanhood shows in the way you hold yourself, the purpose in your hands, the sure, unafraid tilt of your attention. It catches him clean. In your hands is a garland of wildflowers, rich and meticulous. You scan the basin, brightening whenever a fish tricks you; crestfallen when it proves only fish or frog. You lay the garland on the shore, look once more, and then run the way he knows the village lies.

When the white stain of your dress is swallowed whole by the green of the trees, he swims to the shore and inspects the wreath. It is a beauty: plaited rush and willow-bark, stitched with meadow-sweet, cornflowers, wild thyme, and yarrow, the stems turned all one way, the heads faced like a small choir. He has never been given anything so carefully made. No request is bound to it, no scrap of writing, no knot to untie—only payment. For what, he cannot tell.

He carries it as if it were alive to the grotto and sets it in the place of honour among the trinkets, hoping the flowers will not wither too soon. Then he waits, and the waiting is a kind of hunger; he hopes you will come back.

They say lake spirits are mean and wicked. Some drown whatever steps into their water. Others are tricksters who talk you into throwing a fat hen to a barren harvest or blessing you with a husband who drinks and breaks things. The old warnings are tidy and hard as stones.

Only elders and young lovers with nowhere else to go come to the pond they told you to avoid. It is overgrown, green-bloomed more often than not. You’re certain the scum is just from the stale bread some fool keeps tossing in. 

Because what you’ve heard from the water is nothing like a threat. It is near-angelic, more beacon than voice: a low, clean hum with a rasp of iron to it, the soft click of thought between phrases, vowels warmed as if by sun on metal, consonants shaped with care. It rides your spine the way heat does, a hand at the back, and you find yourself turning toward it before you know you’ve moved.

When you first saw him it was from afar, mostly a band of light kicked off his tail before someone hauled you back with a finger that threatens and a voice that warns children about bogeys. This time you bring a gift—seven afternoons in the making. You want to give him something worthy before Kupala—the shortest exhale of the night when creatures come out, wishes take, and impossible flowers bloom.

He is splayed in the sun like a god. Long—bigger than any man—yet lean through the arms and chest. His hair is damp and swept back from his brow. Along his ribs fine slits open and close; smaller combs lie where a man’s neck would be smooth. At the place his waist turns to tail he narrows, taut as a drawn bow. And there, below, he’s unreal: mother-of-pearl, colours sliding as the light moves—pond-green to smoke-blue to bruised violet, a sheen like beetle wing and rain on stone. He looks strong and breakable at once. He sings, solemn as a priest with no congregation, not luring anything, only keeping himself company.

It is so spell-true your bare foot slips on the wet grass. You flinch, look up—and he is gone, the stone he lay on rocking once, widening rings taking him back into water.

You wait for moments that stretch so long you are certain you’ve grown older. When nothing but a lazy frog surfaces, discouraged, you set the garland by the shore and go back to the village.

Expecting to find a bundle of withered flowers where you left it, you return a week later—three days before the solstice. Barefoot, in linen, hands grimed by work and feet sore from carrying, you scan the bright skin of the pond for anything that could have taken your gift. Probably animals.

You dip one foot into the water—clean today, cool as well. Carefully, you pick a path, rock to rock, until you reach the stone where he rested, hoping for a pearly scale to prove your mind did not conjure the whole scene.

It wobbles under your weight, then settles as you crouch. Knees rasping on the harsh surface, you reach into the water and bring up a handful of pebbles, feeling for the flat ones to skim across the surface.

You pick the best stones, hunch over your haul, then flick the round ones back over your shoulder. A small, offended hiss answers the splash. You start; muscle jumps; you begin to turn—and an unseen hand closes on your ankle and yanks. The world tips. Belly first into the water.

He has been watching you the whole time. From the shade he caught a splodge of white against the green—footsteps so soft on the undergrowth he would have missed you if not for the dress. He lies under the pondweed, corpse-still. You make straight for his favourite rock—of course. He is near found when you lean and bring up a fistfull of mud, but you are so intent on sorting it that he is spared. He slides closer to see what you are about just as a flurry of pebbles patters onto his head. The hiss is out before he can swallow it, and then his hand acts before he can stop it.

Underwater, a human is all promise. Cloth loosens and thins; your dress bells and breathes, showing the idea of skin, the slope and hinge of limbs. Warmth leaks from you in a slow bloom. His fingers find your wrist—the give of it, the live pulse—and the shock goes through him as if he had put his hand to a struck hive.

For a creature he has long counted feeble, you are hard to hold. He pins your hands; you wrench and kick, heels drumming his tail. One lands where he is weakest. Pain lights him; he yelps, teeth bare, and lets the anger rise and simmer—who are you to kick at him in his own water?

He drives up with you clawing at his shoulders and bursts onto the shoal that makes a low island in the pond’s middle. Water drains to your neck; you cough and drag air. He slams you onto the silted crown and hisses again. “You think you can attack me where I live and walk unharmed?”

At his voice, you go still. Just stare up at him, eyes so wide it seems they might fall. Droplets break from his nose and hair and patter your face, slipping down your cheeks like tears. Or are you crying?

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, I just—”

“You meant to hunt me,” he hums, accusing. His tail flicks once; the splash makes you flinch.

“No! No, I just—”

He presses you deeper into the silt. “Came to throw pebbles at me? Or did you come from the village to ask for things, hm?” His mouth is close, the words stroking your lips. “Good fortune? A babe? A husband?” A beat. “To complain the bloom sullies your bread?”

Even barbs sound bright in his throat; the notes land clean. Heat climbs your neck. Your jaw loosens; your hands stop fighting of their own accord.

Seeing his look sharpen, you scramble for sense. “No, I—” a breath, raw with embarrassment, “I was wondering if you liked the gift.”

His eyes narrow as he considers. “What gift?” he asks and it’s clear to you he does not know how to lie.

“T—the flowers. The garland, I…” You swallow, trying for steady. “I made it to—”

“—to buy something with it,” he mutters, his fingers easing on your arms.

“No. By the gods.” You sigh, roll your eyes despite yourself. He cocks a brow, surprised—almost amused. “To thank you. For the singing. It’s beautiful.”

The gills at his neck flutter; his mouth parts. In a blink he shifts from menace to something tender—brow pinched, face softened, caught between angel and boy, between animal and man. He searches your features for any seam of deceit and, finding none, slides off you and turns coy: belly to the wet ground, chin propped in his hands, tail flicking in the sun until the colours bleed into one another. “I enjoyed your gift,” he says, lashes long and drowsy.

“I’m glad,” you say, pushing up on your elbows. His gaze drops to you—two gold rings, shameless—and drags. It takes your mouth, the hollow at your throat, the small jump of your collarbone. It lingers where the wet linen clings and turns thin: the quiet press of your nipples, the shallow of your navel, the pull of fabric over the soft lower belly. It follows the line your dress makes at the tops of your thighs, where it rides close and shows the shape beneath; the hem is dark with pond water, pasted to your skin. He watches the spread of your ribs as you breathe, the flex of your calves, the scuff on a knee, the clean run of tendon at your ankle. His pupils notch; his gills twitch for more air. The tail lifts and settles, a lazy fan, as if to taste the sight again.

You bite down on the urge to tip your hips and offer yourself when his purr startles you again. “Will you bring more?”

“Yes. Yes—” you stammer. “I was going to give you one on Kupala night.”

The shiver runs him where you can see it. His eyes lower; something moves under the skin as if a current passes through. The gills along his neck and ribs sigh open and close; his tail quivers, then curls at the tip, slow and salacious. 

Kupala night—he could have a girl on Kupala night. A mate. Lure her to the shallows, let the claws show, take a mouthful at the neck and mark her as his. Unless—she walks into the water herself.

He comes close, close enough that you could kiss his cheek if you wanted. You shut your eyes, shape your mouth, keep the breath held—about to—when:

“I smell blood,” he says, studying your arm. Fingers light as will-o’-the-wisp slip around your elbow and lift, and there it is—a thin red line carving a path. “Forgive me,” he says softly. “I did not mean to hurt you either.” His fingers follow the red, gather it, smear it; then he brings them to his mouth. His tongue—long, deft—flicks out and licks you clean.

He sighs as if pain had lived in him and you were the cure. “Do you have any wish?” he whispers.

“Sing for me again,” you say.

He gives a small, humming laugh—a lovely little thing. “Of course, sweet girl.”

With the promise of three days, he goes to find you a gift too. Something to charm, to seduce, to keep you. He cannot help the natural thoughts that follow the echo of your blood on his rough tongue—oh, to have your belly full of him; he never thought a chance like this would come.

He scouts the lake first: things people dropped that once shone and are now filmed with algae, but could be cleaned. He finds a silver bracelet and a single earring. Not enough. He works the shore next for pebbles and snail shells; the pebbles are dull and all the shells are lived in. He leaves them where they are.

At last, the grotto. All he has hoarded through his years of rule gleams and sulks there: ground glass, odd bits of jewellery, forks fretted with rust, and a particularly cruel joke—a pair of shoes. Then he sees it: a rowan-berry necklace on a red string. Someone left it hanging from a branch; he took it before the birds could, just before winter fell white and hard on his water. He threads one of his own scales onto the string for luck, or whatever humans believe.

The rest of his time he spends grooming for you: scrubs his tail clean, teases out the elflocks with a comb he found crawling the muddy bottom, rinses his mouth with crushed mint. When the sun drops on the longest day, he waits on the flat rock and watches the light die so the moon can burn. The sky spatters with stars and, where it meets the dark rim of the world, other stars appear—fireflies lifting—until it is hard to tell which is earth and which is not. He begins to sing and the woods sing with him.

Like rivers running to sea, you come to him, beguiled—a bright beacon in the dark. His song lifts when he sees you; the tail twitches without his leave. In your hands: a gift of gold. A crown woven from yellow wheat, fit for a king of the pond. He swells his hollow chest and his gills flutter with air as your feet take the water and the linen begins to darken.

You wade slow, holding the crown high. He keeps humming while you cross to him, though his body is wild with waiting. Your face is a gift by itself—open, smitten, lit from within. The hem climbs; the dress drinks; the shape of your breasts comes clear and he aches to touch, to weight them with his wanting until they’re heavy with milk.

You climb onto the rock and offer a timid smile. He answers with one of his own—teeth flashing, sharp, feral. You reach out; he bows his head for the coronation. The wheat sits heavy at his temples and smells like sun, like fresh bread, like safety. You lay your fingers on his cheeks, his neck; warm, careful touches brushing the places where he breathes. He hums low, a purr that moves through bone and into your skin.

“I have a gift for you as well,” he says, and shows you the necklace. In his pale hands the beads burn—rowan red with a thin moonflash of scale among them. You are struck dumb for a heartbeat.

You take him in and he looks unearthly in the light—skin taken up by the moon, tail sheened to milk and smoke, edges softened, hollows deepened. Only now you notice the beauty spots, one above his lip, one under his eye—so frankly human you forget he is not. You bow your head and let him anoint you. The rowan is cool at your throat, the knot neat at the nape. “Thank you,” you say, small.

His tail flops into the dark and slaps water up the rock as he moves in. His hands come to your ribs. You see his throat work; his pupils widen fast. He slides his palms upward, gathering wet linen, and sets them as a frame around your breasts. He draws you in, chest to chest; your heart beats against him, hard and bright. His tongue flicks—salt, clean—along the line of your neck, and when he finds your ear he breathes, “Will you give yourself to me?”

Suddenly coy, instead of answering, you reach out for his tail—smooth, taut, a body braced. When your fingers find one of the small fins he flinches, splashes you without meaning to.

“Are you scared of me?”

“No,” he says at once, stung. He doesn’t want you near the weak place. “You should be scared of me.”

You tilt your head. “Why? Will you eat me?”

“I could eat you. Your blood is sweet enough,” he says, running a finger over your chest. You look down in time to see the claw ease from his index, worrying the linen until it parts. He drags, lengthening the tear; night air slips to your skin. “Or I could just… take you.”

He holds your gaze and you lift your mouth to his—a silent yes. The kiss startles both of you—your lips soft, searching; his a hard line that doesn’t know what to do. For a beat he stays rigid, teeth dangerous at the edges, breath held as if the act itself were a trap. 

Then his eyes fall shut. You taste salt and clean water. Your tongue meets his—yours smooth, warm; his long, clever, shy at first and then curious. He lets you map him: the ridge behind his teeth, the newness of his palate, the little click at the hinge. When his tongue wakes it moves like current, slow and thorough, stroking along your mouth to the molars, down the arch, back again. You make a sound into him; he drinks it as if sound were something to swallow.

His hands go to your shoulders and peel the wet cloth aside. Dampness gives way to living heat; you’re bared to the night. He reaches for the curve of you and draws you onto him, fingers set deep, lifting until the two of you meet squarely. The want between you finds its join—your weight, his upward pull—and something in him answers.

At the seam where scale becomes lower belly, a hidden slit wakes and opens. Inner flesh shows—opal-pale, flushed with blood. From it rise two lengths, not quite human, not fish: twins sharing a root, slightly curved, the undersides ridged for purchase. They come up already slick, beaded with clear brine that strings when the night air takes it. Pulse finds them; they throb against your belly, one angling higher, one nosing lower, as if to bracket and fit. Heat runs his spine. His gills flare—neck, ribs—a faint shiver passing under the skin; the tail gathers and loosens, the weak fin trembling but not failing him. He breathes as if he’s been running, pupils nebular, crown of wheat rustling with each small move.

You take both of him in your hand, stacking your fingers so the lengths lie top to the underside. They’re hot and slick; your thumb finds the ridges beneath and strokes. He makes a choked sound—half click, half moan—and his eyes drop to watch. His hand slips from your hip, down the cleft of your ass. The claws draw back of their own accord when he touches you—something old in him going soft at the feel of tense flesh that promises tenderness within.

He finds your hole with a careful fingertip and circles. You’re tight; the ring resists, gripping at nothing. The resistance lights him. A clear wash beads along both cocks at once, stringing to your knuckles; he gathers it, returns to slick you, circles again, presses. You feel the first push—burn and pull—and then the pad of his finger is inside to the first joint. Your breath chokes, hand tightens on him without thinking; he jolts, pupils shining briefly, then going back to darkness, a low sound loose in his chest.

“Will you open to me—everywhere?” he asks, voice near your ear.

You nod, nervous heat climbing your throat. He sees it; his palm steadies at your belly. He draws more slick from himself and works it over you, patient, small turns and shallow entries until the muscle learns him. The sensation steals down your body—sharp, then sweet; the answer is a throb you can’t stop. He presses deeper, slow, then eases back, letting you breathe. One hand strays between your thighs, your fist moving on him; the other works at your rear, coaxing, matching the pace to your breath. When he curls his finger just so, a bright tug runs through you and your mouth opens on a sound. He takes it, shivering, and his tail gives a pleased pulse under you while he flexes and weeps fresh in your palm.

He hums, pleased, and drags you into another kiss—feral, edged—where teeth threaten and deliver. Sharpness nicks; your lip beads red to match the rowan. He licks the drops, eyes falling shut, tongue clicking soft against your palate as if tasting a note he’s been hunting. Need takes him clean. He hauls you forward, grinding your groin along himself; wetness mixes between you, yours and his, a warm glue that strings and breaks. The musk of it rises—iron-sweet, river-cool—and he sways, dizzy on the scent.

“Sing for me,” he breathes. Not a plea—an order softened by want. You give him the promise of the song he’s heard in the reeds: breathy, wrecked, the little rises and catches, and he aches for the chorus he’s imagined since spotting you on the shore.

You lift onto your knees, bracketing his tail, and set him where you want him. One hand at the root to guide, the other steady at his shoulder. Slick webs from him to you—fine as drawn sugar—stretching, snapping, reforming. The higher cock nudges your entrance and finds it open, eager; your body pulls, hungry for the push. The other slips lower, riding the entrance, brushing the finger-slick he’s left where you are tight. You feel the difference—one part of you calling, taking; the other braced and stubborn, only now learning to yield.

There, you sit on the crowns and stay, thighs quivering, breath confused between being held and sawing. He gets his hands under you to hold you up and purrs through it—low, steady—rocking you in small arcs so the burn can ease. Each shallow slide lets you down a fraction more; heat gathers, then loosens; your body learns the shape and asks again.

For him it is as if he carries two hearts. One is held inside you, cradled and squeezed with every tremor; the other waits at your gate, knocking, answered by the grip of your rim and the pulse in his own length. His gills flare—neck to ribs—in little shutters he can’t control; air feels thin, water loud. His fingers bite and soften on your hips; points threaten, then retract, his hands spreading to take your weight. The tail under your calves tightens and releases, the weak fin doing its best to hold him upright.

“Easy,” he murmurs, voice a warm thread in your ear. The second crown strokes the ring and pauses, strokes and pauses, asking. He could just take you, of course—split you open, clean and dirty, and not wait for permission. But the song he wants to hear is not the one of pain, so he’s patient as a hunter.

You ease your knees wider; he feels it. He rocks you again, kind, until the rim yields by a breath and the first inch is in—burn, then bloom. Your hands seize on him and he groans—short, ragged—everything in him braced not to drive. He keeps you steady, hums to you, and together you let the next small depth happen, then the next, until he’s seethed deep, breathing hard and fighting the urge to bite into your shoulder.

You sit there, full to the brim. Your body flickers around him and each small clutch pulls a sound from his chest. “I will make you all mine,” he says—quiet, solemn as a vow. 

Need runs your spine. “Yes,” you breathe, and start to move.

You rise a little, slow, then sink, slower—your thighs trembling on the way down. He answers with his hands sliding from your hips to your ribs, spreading wide as if to claim the cage that holds your heart. Each descent stuffs you sweet and complete; the deep one drags along the front wall and makes your belly flutter, the other strokes the tightness behind and keeps you open. The ridges work you both ways—lift and press, pull and settle—until your breath staggers into little bursts that sound like agreement. He hums back, low in his throat, and your pulse goes to meet it.

Sweat beads at your neck. He follows it with his mouth—laps the salt where it gathers, soothes and sharp in the same lick—then noses under your jaw to listen to the pace he’s set inside you. His gills tick your skin. The crown of wheat rustles when you rock, and he steadies you by the ribs, thumbs riding the swell beneath your breasts. 

“That’s it,” he grates. “Take me. Take all of me.” 

You nod, breath breaking. “More.”

He answers with his body—hands hauling you and setting you, a hard pulse up into you and a drag back that keeps you full. The slide fattens as you work him; the ridges tug and rake in all the right places until your hips learn the rhythm and indeed, take it. He sucks air through his teeth. “Do you feel that?” he pants. “You tight little thing—made to keep me.”

“Yes.” You move again—down, take, up, starved—and he groans, raw. Through the thin wall inside you he feels himself meet, the two of him rubbing like flints—glorious, maddening—each stroke striking spark along his spine. 

“I’ll flood you,” he rasps. “Fill you. Keep you warm with it till morning.”

“Do it,” you pant. “Make me keep you.”

Something old unlocks in him at that. A rightness. As if the world had been out of true until now and your body set it straight. He sees you heavy with him—kept, carrying—and the thought drags a sound out of him he has never made. “Say yes again.”

 “Yes.”

“Say mine.”

“Yours.”

He sets you to a deeper rhythm, hands sure. Drives you down to meet it, chasing the thick press, the promise of spilling and keeping, of making you his in the oldest way there is. The lengths inside seat and seat again; they ride your holes and slick them, teaching them open while you work him harder. Wet gathers where you join; heat climbs; your breath snags on every bottoming and lets go in little cries he answers with rough yeses of his own. He holds you wide for the next greedy drop.

And when it comes, you crest—the ache, the burn, blooming into light. Your body tightens and ripples, heat breaking open, the pulse dragging through you in clean waves. He holds you wide and lets it take you, shoulders set, jaw shaking as you squeeze and squeeze.

Ruined by it, instinct flaring, he turns you into the water. The world tips cold; sound goes soft. Your hair lifts and halos; your cries come out as bubbles that bump his cheek and slide away. He sets you on his length again and thrusts, feral, the pond closing over you. 

Buoyancy changes everything—your hips float, angle shifts—and the tightness yields another breath. He takes it, careful for a beat, then certain; both of him seat, deep and deeper, and you clutch around the pair with a shock that makes you keen into the green.

The pressure piles; the water bears you and he uses it, forcing you that last inch, hunting the heavy seat, the lock and seal that says you are his. Your nails rake his shoulders; his gills flare along neck and ribs in urgent shutters; the wheat crown slips free and spins on the surface above.

He breaks at your throat. Teeth set—skin gives—blood smokes into the water in two thin threads. He groans against you and floods you at once, both cocks hard as oarlocks, pulsing deep—again, again—the heat of it unmistakable even in the chill. What he pours into you, he takes in blood—iron on his tongue, your name not spoken but held. He stays there through the aftershocks, sealed to you, breath dragging like oars through silt.

When he tips you up and breaks the surface, you’re gasping, head thrown back to the moon. He floats on his back with you lain along him, still joined; the rowan beads are cool at your throat; the wheat crown drifts in a slow circle nearby. The pond moves around you in quiet rings while his hands keep you close and the night goes on glittering.

Calm comes on him like clear water—quiet, spreading, sure. Your weight settles into the hollows of him and feels right, as if the place were made for it. He softens in that safety; with your small answering hum he slips from you, both lengths ebbing, and with a last shiver they hide back into the slit.

Something unfamiliar lifts in his chest, sharp as a new tooth and tender all at once—an urge to guard what is his. He runs his knuckles down your spine, gathers a palm of cool water, and rinses the tear at your neck until the red thins and the skin lies clean. You nestle closer, boneless-warm. “Are you well?” he asks, voice low.

 “Yes,” you murmur, and the word warms him more than the sun ever could.

He floats and hums, the old five-note run turning soft against your ear, a lull made only for two. The reeds tick and answer. He thinks of the grotto, of the necklace on your skin, of the pond made quiet by your breathing, and the feeling in his chest grows until it fills him like tide.

Morning unrolls in pale strips along the trees. He watches you go, the ache in him bright and new, and though he has no word for it in the weed-speech of his kind, he has heard people name this thing. He mouths it once, just to feel its shape, and lets the sound sink. 

Love.

Chapter Text

There’s a small cinema in Prague Viktor adores—Kino Světozor, meaning ‘overlook’. It has a tram stop right outside, so there’s no long cobblestone walk. Inside, there’s a film-poster gallery and a small café; every month on your cinema date you both get a glass of wine before taking your seats.

It’s a late screening on Friday evening—professors by day, Viktor picks you up from your side of campus, his bag stuffed with students’ papers to mark and library books, tilting him to one side as he walks. You share a brioche and a takeaway coffee on the ride, both sitting on single seats, your backs pressed against the cold windows. Streetlight-coloured raindrops smear across the glass as the tram rattles through the turns.

“What are you taking me to this time?” you ask, mouth full of pastry.

He takes the brioche from your hand, now badly mangled, and exchanges it for a paper cup. “Morgiana,” he says. “By Juraj Herz.”

“A Czech film?” The tram rattles on the tracks and a splosh of your coffee lands on the next seat—thankfully empty. “You know I’m not fluent yet.”

Viktor shrugs. “It’s a good film.” He points a finger at you, playfully. “And you should be, by now.”

“You should be by now,” you parrot, trying to mimic his accent, and he snorts crumbs onto his coat. Your smirk is triumphant a touch too soon.

“I’ll tell you what—” He brushes his knees clean and braces on the cane to get up. “I will translate for you,” he says, offering an arm as you approach your stop. “And later I will check how well you listened.”

There’s an impish smugness on his face that you’ve learned to adore—it usually heralds your doom, only to offer a last-minute plot twist toward a happy ending. Depending on how defiant you choose to be, it arrives after an hour or two of merciless teasing. Innocence flooding your face, you bat your lashes at him, take the gentleman’s forearm pretending it’s for your balance, not his—and coo, “I would love that.”

“I thought as much,” Viktor mutters, leading you out of the tram, the shells of his ears pinking.

Inside, you duck past the poster gallery to the café window and order mulled wine instead of your usual glasses. Steam and cloves; his mouth quirks. Tickets torn, you slip into the auditorium to find your row. The place is almost empty—two, maybe three people scattered across distant rows. No one is keen to sit beside a couple.

With your coats bracing the seats to either side, you sink into your chair and rest your head on his shoulder—a perfect spot for your temple despite the bone, softened this season by thick wool. He sighs and absently runs his fingers through your hair, whispering, “Was your day good?”

“Hmm.” You half-nod. “Though it seems I need to specify that when I require an essay, it has to have more than three hundred words.”

Viktor snorts. “Did they at least prove their point in those three hundred words?”

“Not even close. More the ‘That’s what I think it is, and I think I’m right’ sort of thing. And how was yours?”

He huffs. “Half the seminar cited Wikipedia; the other half cited each other—and one footnote referenced my mate Tom.”

You laugh a little too loud, but before you can actually answer, the lights dim and the screen flickers. You’re high enough to catch, at the corner of your eye, the white beam knifing out from the projection booth. 

It rolls in with the first images of mourning—thankfully no language needed to recognise a funeral when a coffin descends into the earth. You presume the next scene is the will being read and the assets being divided between two women—who gets what, though, you can’t tell.

Names settle in by context—sisters, Klára and Viktoria. You edge forward in your seat, elbows on knees, hands cupped round what’s left of your mulled wine. Colours pulse—crimson, violet, a lacquered black that makes skin look like porcelain. A low angle glides behind a Siamese cat; the world tilts through its gaze, blue eyes glinting. You miss some tart asides, but not the shape: Viktoria’s jealousy coiling tight as a ribbon on a hatbox.

After twenty minutes—give or take—you’ve mapped the atmosphere enough to follow even when a phrase runs away from you. Your cup is empty before you realise. Viktor leans in, breath warm against your ear. “Are you following so far?”

“I—” you hesitate. “I’d pass, but barely.” A flash of teeth in the dark, and then that one-of-a-kind tsk.

“Barely pass won’t do, Professor,” he says, placing both palms on your shoulders and urging you to sit back. “You were supposed to tell me if you needed help, no?” His tone drops to that register of salacious mockery he uses for flirting—lips tickle your earlobe with every word.

“Oh, I’m so out of practice with exams, though,” you tease, but your hand obediently surrenders the cup into his. “What kind of help do you have in mind?”

Mouth smugly curved, movements elegant, he slides the empty cups beneath the seat in front. When the screen blooms white, his face betrays him: a quick pinking at the cheekbones; then shadow returns and composure follows. He finds the pin at the crown of your head and tugs. Your updo loosens and spills; his fingers rake gently through, spreading until the heel of his palm cradles the skull’s base. A slow curl of his hand tilts your face a fraction, aligning your ear with his mouth.

“I could lend you my hands-on experience,” he mutters in a tone that tells you his brows are all knotted into a picture of innocence.

You huff a nervous laugh. “Alright then, Professor. Tutor me.”

The hand at your head guides you towards the screen. “Eyes forward,” he breathes. “Quiet. And no fidgeting.”

The other—fingers clever and precise—finds your knee and rolls your skirt so it rests high on your thighs. On-screen, the woman is on the telephone. “She says she won’t come. She’s thirsty all the time. But she thinks it will pass,” Viktor murmurs. The touch on your skull slides to the nape—pressing, firm and gentle at once. The other inches higher, scrupulously prudent, maddeningly so: almost nothing but a ghost of impropriety over nylon.

You hold still. The projector hums. Fabric hisses as your leg shifts; a tremor jumps in your thigh. For a moment you’re sure he’s already there, and you steal a look down—only to find his hand nowhere near where you felt it. He catches the glance, of course. Another soft hiss of a scold, then his knuckles tap the inner side of your knee before a light, corrective smack.

“Good girls don’t peek,” he says. “Good girls watch and listen.”

With his voice threading into your nerves, you tilt toward one objective—behaving. Eyes on the screen, you watch, and try your best to listen. But the images—lush close-ups, shallow focus, overlays of fabrics ghosting across the frame—melt his translations into heat. He could be reciting filth or the catechism; either would needle you just the same.

Touch turns exploratory. Knuckles trace the fine arc of bone, then drift higher by a breath, then retreat—so patient it borders cruel. He finds the back of your knee and presses lightly, a secret lever; your calf slackens at once. “That’s it,” he murmurs, amused and gentle, as if coaxing an answer. The other hand keeps you facing front: a cradle at your neck, thumb stroking the hairline in a slow, absent rhythm that contradicts the precision below. 

He doesn’t hurry—part of his fun comes from the sluggishness. Each pass up your thigh stops early, skates away, returns by a different path—inside, then outside, then a line straight up the seam that never quite arrives. A loving provocation that has you breathing through your nose, shoulders square, muscles trembling despite your best discipline.

“Translation,” he whispers, mouth shamelessly pressed into your ear. “Envy requires restraint.” 

His tone is low, deliciously professorial, the consonants a quiet scrape. He tilts your chin, lips close enough to graze yours but choosing not to. “You are practising restraint, yes?” 

Your answer is a small hum. He rewards it with the lightest rake of nails over nylon, barely-there pressure that lights every nerve along the route. When you shift a millimetre, he scolds once—corrective, fond—and smooths his palm down to the kneecap as if ironing away your impatience. “Look at you—so focused,” he coos, “and so pretty.”

Mouth quirks—whether it’s an involuntary reaction to praise or composure wearing thin, you don’t know. It must be well past the midpoint of the film, but how could you tell? Your brain slips into a space so tight it can fit only Viktor’s voice—he mutters translations you don’t give a single fuck about, so long as he keeps talking. It’s reached a ridiculous point at which he might as well be writing the words into the grooves of your ear with that tongue tip of his, he’s so close. It’s enough to make you forget the no-fidgeting rule—your hips seek out his touch like the parched seek water.

But Viktor is merciful. He recognises a need when it saturates the space around you and makes you quiver helplessly. He actually recognises it sooner, but enjoys the little display of torment. The hand at your throat slips to your collarbone—steadying—while the other glides up, up, to cup you through those offensive layers of tights and knickers in one soft press. A pretty little gasp slips free between lips bitten together. No rubbing—he just holds: broad palm, tolerant weight—letting your body speak first.

The plea comes in the form of hips rolling and eyes closing, despite the directive to watch. Viktor, the diligent bastard, keeps feeding you the dialogue, in the same calm cadence with which he tells you to spread your legs wider and take him.

You find the seam and work it. Small circles at first, the sort you could pass off as a shift for comfort; then a longer, slower drag that turns cloth into grit and burn. He doesn’t move so much as allow—a fractional tilt of his wrist, the heel of his hand angling just-so, the barest counterpressure that turns your motion into a circuit. The nylon bites pleasantly; cotton blurs it; underneath, you’re ablaze. 

He keeps you framed: one palm a collarbone bracket, thumb stroking an idle rhythm at your throat while he murmurs passages that are only shape and breath. His voice has the grain of paper rubbed thin.

Public quiet becomes a flavour. The auditorium holds its breath with you: a cough two rows down, a shoe scuff, someone rustling a sweet wrapper. Your mouth is closed because it has to be; it makes the feeling brighter, like wire drawn through a die—tighter, finer. 

You count the slide and catch, the give and catch, and ride it with neat economy, because neat is all you can afford. He approves in the small ways: a faint nudge higher, a knuckle rolled a favourable angle, the ghost of a chuckle that nobody hears but you. You’re sitting properly, ankles crossed, looking like a woman watching a film; meanwhile you are grinding yourself open on his palm in micro-motions, a secret done in the light of a projector.

Near the top of the climb your vision picks up stray lights like flotsam. A body swaying. A cat on a windowsill. A couple kissing in the centre of the screen, staged and passionless. The score hushes; your pulse doesn’t. And then—oh—KONEC blooms on the screen, pale blue to white, and your loving bastard of a tutor pulls his hand away.

“You bast—” The -ard is swallowed as what was withdrawn returns to seal your mouth—knuckles firm, scented with your crotch.

“Quiet,” Viktor purrs, smiling like he’s keeping a secret. “It’s a public place, after all.”

A long pause follows in which you measure each other, pupils blown in the dark. Your eyes narrow; the corners of his mouth climb until he’s all glee. Eventually you huff through your nose and let your lids fall—sweet surrender.

He accepts it. His hand retreats; both come up to frame your face. He kisses your forehead. “My dearest darling, this is just a pause.” His lips move against your skin. “I shall check what you’ve learned tonight and grade you accordingly.”

“You’re impossible,” you murmur—light and unbearably fond. 

Outside, the air is knife-cold and clean. He hooks your arm in his and is all softness—thumb warming your knuckles in his pocket, chin tipped to listen as if the tram schedule were poetry. 

“Did you enjoy the film?” he asks, terribly mild. “The colours? The… tension?” He kisses your hairline at the stop; on the tram he nudges your knee with his, threads his fingers through yours, asks if you’re warm enough, if the mulled wine was too sweet. Every courtesy lands like a match struck. By the time you reach your street, your pulse is doing its own brisk walk.

Across the threshold he is household neatness itself: cane hung on the rack, coat slid from his shoulders, scarf coiled, shoes aligned. Nothing at all has happened, if you believe his face. You just stand there, cheeks hot, watching him. He straightens, breath drawn to speak—

But you get there first. Mouth on his, tongue in deep, fingers wrecking his hair. For a beat he melts—eyes closed, a long, low hum—then hands find your hips, ruck your skirt. One palm slides under, and under again—beneath your knickers. First a squeeze, possessive; then he prises you open, long fingers teasing both holes at once, a maddening see-saw of touch that buckles your knees. You walk him backwards blind, the flat a blur, steering for the bedroom. Your hand finds his collar, ready to drag.

He bites your lower lip—pitch-perfect, right on the thin line between playful and mean. “You don’t think you’re getting away with this, do you?”

“It was worth a try,” you hum, licking the little rise of flesh beneath his cupid’s bow.

“What’s that now?” Viktor feigns grave injury. “Don’t you want to see what an A gets you?”

“I would love to,” you say, scratching his chest lightly. “But I’m fairly sure I’m sitting at a C, at best.”

“That’s for me to decide, isn’t it?” He catches your wrists and pins them in front of you with one hand. “Now strip, my beloved. And lie on your back for me, will you?”

You obey in layers. Sweater first—lifted over your head and dropped aside—then buttons, one by one, your shirt parting to cool air and his warmed attention. The skirt unhooks; you shimmy it down your hips, tights following in a whisper. You’re not stalling so much as savouring the way his eyes eat every inch of new skin, the tiny, audible swallow when your knickers slide to your ankles and off. Denuded, you ease back onto the mattress. He stays at the foot of the bed, fondness first, then a small, wicked smirk; his belt slides out of the loops. He wraps it around your wrists and snug-ties it to the headboard.

You pout. He kisses the centre of your palm. “It’s just so I know you won’t cheat.”

Then, he strips to a halt halfway: sweater off, shirt open and shrugged, trousers unbuttoned and pushed to his thighs where they are cinched by the brace—nothing else. Your gaze slips down: his cock is shyly roused, not yet hard, rising in small, involuntary pulses. You can’t decide which you love more—him soft and inviting, all tender vulnerability, or flushed with need, the head shining with a pearly bead.

Half naked, he climbs between your legs, plucks your ankle and sets it on his shoulder. “Let’s start with easy questions.” A kiss to your calf. “Who is Klára?”

First obstacle reveals itself: hot tongue dragging up the inside of your leg. You reach for the answer, but whatever knowledge you had flees higher than his mouth. “One of the sisters,” you manage.

“Hmm. Which one?” He stops, and a gust of cool air hits the slick trail. You twitch; he chuckles. “Focus, my darling.”

Focus, the bastard says—as if he weren’t the one cleaving your mind in two. The part that remembers the first twenty minutes gets shouldered aside by the part that makes your cunt clench around nothing, begging to be touched, to be kissed.

“The prettier one,” you grit, sweat pearling at your temple.

“Mmm.” Another kiss, higher. “And the other?”

“Viktoria.” Your breath snags on the last syllable; his smile curves against your skin.

“Good. And what is the main conundrum?” His thumb strokes the hinge of your hip, absent-minded and cruel as a cat. You skitter forward, tilt your pelvis as far as the belt allows, and catch it—the glint in his eye, the lashes fanning once, a second too long to claim he’s unaffected. He comes lower—lies on his belly, arms hooking over your thighs, hands bracketing your waist. And then nothing: his mouth hangs an inch away, breath warm on skin, ruffling the curls at your mound.

An unbearable beat. You bully your synapses into firing and, in the spark, one word lands—temporary absolution. “Envy.”

He hums, pleased. “Strong start. Borderline B.”

Then his mouth lands—one precise kiss to your clit, no more than a press and a parting. It’s the pilot light catching. Your hips jump after the heat like metal to a magnet, chasing the spark he’s already pocketed.

He’s gone before you reach him. The arm looped round your thigh loosens; his hand slips between your legs with the patience of a watchmaker. A fingertip brushes your entrance as if checking the weather there, then detours to trace along each lip, gathering, redistributing—never settling. Two fingers shape a tidy V—self-portrait, the ego of him—spreading you so the air cools and your womb answers with another flood. He smiles into the work as if this were note-taking.

“Name the lodge,” he says, voice mild.

“Green… Flute.” Your ankles tense against his shoulders.

“Mm. And the cat?” His knuckles skim the seam without breaching it.

“A witness.” You pant. “Judge. Familiar.”

“Close.” He dips just inside—single syllable of touch—and withdraws with a quiet click of the tongue, pleased with the syllable you make in reply.

He traces the rim again, slow circuits that turn need into ache into temper. “What delivers the doom?”

“The glass,” you whisper. “The—bubbles.”

A soft, approving noise. His fingers draw you wider, the V tightening, and he drags the pad of his thumb through everything that isn’t the centre, careful as a man edging paint along moulding. Your belly stutters; your wrists pull reflexively against leather.

“And what colour carries her?” he asks, eyes up, lashes low.

“Red,” you breathe, then flinch when he only grazes the hood and leaves it at that. “Crimson.”

“Good girl.” He keeps you open with one hand and worries the soft edges with the other—little strokes at the periphery, a deliberate refusal of the obvious. He is infuriatingly calm about it, the tip of his tongue wetting his lower lip as if considering a footnote.

You answer what you can; when you reach for cleverness, you get it wrong. He rewards failure with more almosts: a nudge at the perineum, a drag that stops a millimetre shy, the slow circle that never closes. Heat puddles under you. You roll your hips in tiny thieves’ motions; he lifts his brows, indulgent, and continues to draw maps you cannot read.

“Why thirst?” he murmurs, stroking just beneath, where everything is helpless.

“Because—” Your voice trips. “Because jealousy dries the world.”

He smiles, the professor with a gold star he refuses to stick. “Poison, darling.” A kiss to the inside of your thigh, chaste and cruel. “Though I admire the poetry.”

By now the mattress tells on you. Wet creeps aft; you feel the trickle slip from cleft to sheet, wicked and slow. He notices—of course he does—and his expression warms with proprietary satisfaction. Still he withholds, fingers steady in their perimeter patrol, questions continuing in that unhurried register until the damp has traced a line down your ass and into the cotton below. Only then does he glance up, pleased as a man finishing a paragraph, and let the silence say what your body has already confessed.

“Eh, and whatever am I to do with you, hm? It’s starting to look more like a C,” he murmurs, pouty mouth perilously close.

“Viktor, I beg you.” You look down and catch him pink to the ears, pupils wide. Only now do you notice his trousers have slithered lower; his hips worry the mattress in small, unmeant pushes—at least you’re not the only one tormented.

“Already?” he says—and what was meant as a tease comes out hopeful.

The hope costs him. He inhales, reins himself in, eyes sharpening. “Answer me properly, then.” Two fingers slide in to skim your slick and return to your clit in a single, ruinous stroke, slow as honey. “Spell it.”

“P—please.”

“Full sentence.” His thumb flattens and lifts, never constant, like a tide he commands.

“Please, Viktor. Please touch me.”

“Better.” He rewards you with pressure, not speed—drawing a lazy figure that makes your thighs climb his shoulders. Heat climbs with it. He watches your face the whole time, greedy and soft, as if your breath were a gauge he’s learning to read. Another pass—lower, then back—enough to make you see white at the edges.

He smiles, that small, helpless kind. “B minus,” he says, and circles once more, tighter. “Keep going.”

“Please—your mouth.” The word scrapes out raw. “I want your tongue. Anything.”

His eyes flare; his smile says earned. He ghosts a breath over you, then gives you nothing, hovering until your hips reach for him on their own. “Open for me,” he murmurs, and waits until you do—thighs loose, belly soft, the pull turning inside out.

The first touch is a taste, not a stroke: the tip, a quick flick, then gone. Another—longer, flatter—drawing from bottom to crest without finishing the job. You feel the shape of him—the wet heat, the stubbornness—before he truly starts. He makes a seal and works, patient at first, slow—tongue broad, then narrow, then firm again—learning the angles by your breath. His hand slides up, two fingers finding the hood and coaxing it back, exposing you to his mouth. You jolt, swear softly, and he hums into you as if agreeing.

“More?” he asks, voice damp.

“Yes. Don’t stop.”

Viktor doesn’t have it in him to stop, at least not yet. He feeds on you: tongue pushing in, shallow, then deeper, a greedy thrust that has nothing to do with gentleness. He fucks you with his mouth, steady, jaw working; his fingers ride higher to circle your clit with small, ruthless strokes that never slip. The lap and pull turn animal. You start to shake—tiny, uncontrollable flutters in your thigh and ass—and the belt creaks against the headboard when your wrists drag for purchase. He sounds wrecked now, breathing through his nose, cheeks flushed, eyes half-lidded but fixed on the work.

“Darling,” he pants into you. “Tell me.”

“You—your tongue—oh fuck—don’t—” The rest breaks into noise. Wet spreads; the bed takes it. Your hips climb him; you’re right there, the edge under your feet, nothing left but fall—

He stops.

Not completely—his mouth stays open against you, a hot insanity—but the rhythm is gone, the pressure gone, his fingers easing off to a feather that does nothing but tease the nerves he’s just lit up. A torn sound leaves you, half sob, half snarl. A muscle jumps hard in your glute; your thigh kicks once, helpless.

“Fuck you,” you gasp, stunned and shaking.

He laughs, quiet and smug, lips slick, chin glossy. “Language,” he says, and gives you the softest lick imaginable—nothing like mercy. “I don’t think B minus earns you a finish, would you agree?” A kiss lands off-centre on your pubic mound.

“Vik.” Your chin wobbles.

The state hits you hard—open, ridiculous, sweet as bruised fruit. It’s not cruelty; it’s the place you only go with him, where wanting feels like trust turned sideways. He sees it at once—brows easing, mouth kind.

“Děvče moje,” he croons, sliding up until his chest settles on yours. “I’m only teasing. Would you like your hands back?”

“Please,” you choke.

One tug and the belt loosens. Pins and needles spark through your fingers. He kisses the hollow of your palm and guides your arm over his neck; then, his heft presses along your crease, hot and eager, the weight of him obvious through the smear he’s made of you.

“Would you like my cock now?” He noses your temple.

Yes—it’s plain and urgent. He’s the only one who can do this to you—tip you into that imperative where being fucked is not dramatic, just necessary. It’s fun, even with tears pricking, silly and young and right. “Yes.”

“My good girl,” he hums, and the promised cock finds you blindly—your bodies have known each other for years; no introductions needed.

He notches, nudges, slides. The first inch is heat and pressure; the second is the hinge giving way. You open around him, slow, the stretch running a line through you like a seam being picked. He holds until your breath steadies, then presses again—patient, full, unshowy—until he is buried and your pulse is thudding in his mouth where it rests at your throat. Your legs hook the small of his back on their own; heel to him, calf tightening, the lock set.

It starts with a grind rather than a thrust—deep millwork, hips drawing a careful ellipse that keeps him seated and works the inside edge. You feel it in the belly first, then lower, a slow wheel turning. He breathes through his nose, measured, the sound of it brushing your cheek.

“There,” he says, not for himself. You exhale, ragged and it breaks on a small sound. He does it again, same arc, letting the friction thicken without chasing speed.

Muscle to muscle: his back under your legs, the clench and ease; your thighs tightening in pulses; his stomach firming as he holds the depth; the give of you around him when he rolls up and in. No ornament, just work done right. He keeps one hand at your jaw to hold your gaze, the other under your shoulder to anchor you. “Look at me,” he murmurs, close enough that the words imprint themselves into you by shape. The look itself is a cable; you travel it back and forth with your breath.

You talk in scraps. “More.”

“Like that?” He proves it, slower, heavier.

“Yes.”

“Good.” His mouth finds the corner of yours for a quiet press that tastes of wine. He draws nearly out—threat, promise—and sinks again with a low sound that wants to be a groan. Your body clutches, making both of you swear under your breath.

He lengthens the stroke by a finger’s width each time until the rhythm settles—long in, weight down, small lift, circle, set. The bed ticks. Your shoulders inch higher on the pillow; he follows, chest to chest, and the slide between you is warm and inevitable. You catch his earlobe with your teeth, brief, and he laughs into your cheek, then goes deeper, the angle changing so that something bright sparks every time he lands. Your hands move—nape, shoulder blade, spine—touches that say keep going.

Your name falls from him once, full, as if read from a page. You breathe his back into your palms—knobs of spine under skin, the narrow ladder of muscle working like rope pulled hand over hand. Not large, but built for endurance: patience stitched into fibre, a strength that comes from showing up, again and again. He is like that—steadfast, forbearing, kind—and the proof is in the quiet labour of his body over yours.

He deepens by degrees. Long stroke, set; long stroke, set. Your heels press into the small of him; he tilts until the angle finds the bright place and holds it. The sound between you changes—less breath, more body. He slides a hand between you and finds your centre with two fingers, snug and sure, working small, exact circles that keep time with the weight of him. Your throat opens; a noise climbs out that you can’t tidy into words.

“Ready?” Low, a thread at your ear.

“Yes.” It lands like consent and confession both.

“Then take it.”

Heat stacks quick—layer on layer—until your belly flickers hard and won’t stop. Muscles seize, ride up; he groans like something’s got pulled from deep but doesn’t let the pace slip. The room thins to pulse and pressure. Your back arches; breath snaps; the shake starts in your thighs and runs the length of you. When it hits, it’s clean—hard pulses that catch and release, catch and release—his hand steady through it, his mouth on your cheek saying nothing but staying.

He follows right after, driven by the grip you’ve got on him. One last push seated all the way, a shudder, a warm flood you feel even before his breath breaks against your neck. His spine bows under your hands; you keep him close and ride the afterbeats together—small shocks, slower draws—until the noise in your ears settles and the bed stops counting.

He feels heavier after, though the true weight is mostly left inside you. He slackens and pours himself into your hollows, edges gone soft, as if the angles melted on release. It’s a sweet burden—an anchor you tie yourself to while the world reconstitutes.

“How are you?” he asks after a beat, his head tucked beneath your chin.

“So good,” you say, twirling a lock of his hair around a finger. “So, how did I do?”

“Ah, well, that depends.” His voice returns to that private, professorly lilt, the one no real student gets. “There is one final question—what’s the name of the cat?”

Blank. A ridiculous laugh pops free. Your mouth opens and closes on air; the answer has been rubbed clean out of you. He lifts onto his elbows, one brow cocked. His lips start to shape the first letter, but somehow, you are faster—

“Morgiana!”

Chapter Text

You should’ve known better.

Hottest guy on campus? Sure. And you’re the Dean. What were you thinking.

In your defence, the first hour looked like a real date: paper cups, slow lap round the quad, his jacket on your shoulders like a romcom prop. He asked about your course, pretended to care, deployed a smile so symmetrical it probably has sponsors.

Then the vibes tripped over.

Under the fairy lights stapled to the gazebo, romantic slid into oh, he’s weirdly panicked. The charm melted; the neediness didn’t. “You’re really hot, you know that?” he said, with all the conviction of a guy apologising to a traffic warden.

You said yes anyway. You wanted it—or at least wanted to want it.

It was quick. Underwhelming. Olympic-level fumbling, self-pumping, eyes clamped shut like he’d taken a vow not to witness any of this. You told yourself it was nerves, not the ick, right up until he finished in five minutes, grunted, then laughed like you’d changed his life.

“Er… we should do that again?” you said, being polite against your better judgement.

“Sure, hah—sure. Totally.” That cheerful tone men use when they’re about to disappear into a hedge.

Right. That’s when you knew.

Then the real headline walked out of the trees. Literally walked. From the dark, through the bin-bag rustle, a person-shaped problem putting one foot in front of the other like a metronome with an attitude. No expression. No hurry. Just fucking steps.

You waited for a normal cue—a phone check, a glance past you, a scratch at an itch—but nothing fired. The face held an almost-smile and then forgot to keep it. The blink ran a beat too long, like someone pressed and held a key. It didn’t look where it’s going; only adjusted—clean right-angles, a step over a root—without ever seeing them. Clothes hung fine; the body inside wore them like a coat on a stand. You said “hey,” soft, then louder. No flicker. No offence taken, either. Just the same measured tread, as if the night were a treadmill built for one, and you were the only end point it recognised.

“Can you see that?” You pointed.

Your date looked, laughed—big, relieved laugh. “No. Fuck no, I can’t see anything.” Practically giddy. “Yeah, so… you’ll get home okay? I’ve gotta scram.”

“I—”

“Thanks, that was sick,” he said, already reversing towards his car like you were a speed camera.

And it just kept coming. No pause, no blink, no boo. The world’s least imaginative Terminator.

So you ran. You kept running—past the gazebo, over the damp grass, trainers skidding, breath going glassy in your throat. You cut left, right, behind a hedge, into a service path that smelled like bins and bleach. You looked back once, twice—gone. Your pulse argued with your eyes. Maybe you’d made it up. Maybe it was a weird jogger. Maybe you were overtired and horny and stupid and hurt.

You slowed by the bike racks, hands on knees, trying not to be sick. That’s when another one turned the corner. Not the same face: a man this time, older, office shoes, campus lanyard swinging. Different skin, same steps. The steady, patient arithmetic of it. The blink that missed its mark by half a beat. The way the clothes wore the body, not the other way round. Your stomach dropped in a clean line. Some knowledge you shouldn’t have clicked into place like a bad tooth: you’d been fucked into this. Literally.

Not chlamydia. Not even something glamorous like a cursed bloodline. With mild, unsatisfactory intercourse, the hottest guy in school handed you a freakish thing that put one foot down and then another until it would reach you. And in its eyes—when they remembered to look—was only death.

Now you have to work fast. It shouldn’t be this fucking hard to get laid, but the one day you’d go with anyone there is literally no one within striking distance. You still smell like someone else, you’re in last night’s clothes, mascara doing modern art on your cheek, and the only plan you’ve got is: keep moving.

You manage to get to your car. Without thinking, you get in and drive until your town bleeds into another, then another. In a small spark of clarity you remember to text your flatmate—it’s barely dawn. Date went great, might be staying over. In the next spark you scold yourself: you could have left it. Let them report you missing. Let Mr Hottest-Guy get a fright when the police ask where you’ve gone. Too late now.

The fuel light blinks orange, then screams red. You pull into the first open petrol station, catch your face in the rear-view, and see exactly what you feel: on the run. You fill the tank, grab the refugee starter kit from the shop—deodorant, toothbrush, travel paste—and try to arrange yourself into someone who is merely exhausted, not fleeing a moral geometry problem in human skin. Coffee to go. You hit the till. Your card beeps its little accusation. Declined. You try again. Declined. And again. Nothing.

“I’m afraid your card doesn’t work, honey,” says the woman behind the till, chewing like she hates the gum. “Got any cash?”

You dig through your bag, every pocket, producing a tragic still life of coins, lint and one ancient receipt. You scrape barely half of what you owe onto the counter. “Please—can I transfer? I’ll come back. I just need to—”

“Love, that’s not how it works.” She reaches for the phone. “If you take it, that’s theft. I’ll have to call the police.”

“Please don’t.” Your voice goes thin. “Please. I just—”

A hand appears beside you, steady, holding out a card. Clean nails, a nick across the knuckle, corduroy jacket sleeve. “I’ll cover this,” a lilted voice says, calm as weather. “No need to call anyone.”

You blink twice. “T-thank you.” The card swipes through, the lady behind the cash register transforms her frown into a smirk and wishes you a good day, calls you darlin’. After sliding everything off the counter into your bag, you turn to look at your saviour and he renders you dumb right there and then.

He’s taller than you thought—long lines under a brown jacket, dark jeans clean but lived-in. His face is all angles smoothed by tiredness: sharp cheekbones, a clever mouth that rests in thought, eyes the colour of strong camomile tea catching at the light. Two beauty marks peppering above the lip and under the eye, making him more boy-like. His hair does the thing—dark, a little overgrown, parted and fallen across his brow as if he pushed it back five minutes ago and forgot. The cane you only clock now: black wood with a worn grip, braced against the floor in a practised way that says it belongs there.

He’s looking at you—properly, intently, not nosy so much as taking stock. Hands you your coffee. You realise you’ve been staring when sound drifts back in like a radio tuning. “—you alright?” Muffled, twice. The third lands.

“Are you alright?” he asks again, the same hand that saved you from the phone call touching your shoulder, light, steady.

Behind him, the cashier has put her frown back on. You nod, small, guilty. As if to shield you from a follow-up, he uses that hand to guide you a step, then another, and you let him, moving like you’re leading a blind man. The automatic doors yawn; cool air gusts your face and with it a slice of brain returns.

“I’m sorry. I’m just tired.” Your voice works now. “Could you give me your details? I’ll pay you back, I promise.”

“No need for that,” he says—honest, not grand. A beat. “Are you certain you’re all right?”

“Uh, yes,” you sigh and rub your forehead. “Please, I would really like to pay you back, I just need to—”

“I really, really insist.” He grabs your palm and rubs a thumb over it. Rough, work-hardened skin slides on yours and you shudder—it’s the first kind touch you’ve had in weeks. Then he grabs your arm again and turns you to face him, all gently. Over his shoulder you see a figure on the other side of the street—inconspicuous, staring blankly right at you. A shiver rolls down your back. A lorry drives past; when it’s gone, so is the person.

“Hey,” he says softly. “What is it?”

You shake your head, wrench yourself out of his hold, and rub your shoulders. “Nothing. I’m just really, really tired, I’m sorry.”

“Are you sure you’re all right to drive? I could drive you somewhere. Where do you need to be?” He stares at you, pensive and visibly worried. Hands splayed to make himself look harmless, one still holding his cane, he takes a step back to give you some space.

“What is your name?” he asks, and the simplicity of it cracks you open.

Suddenly you want a kind man to help you and drive you somewhere safe. You are strung tight as wire. Your eyes keep skittering round the forecourt—car wash, bins, road—like you’re waiting for a jump scare you can’t time. The skin behind your ears itches where you’ve scratched it raw; your jaw has been clenched so long it clicks when you swallow. The idea of handing over the moving part of ‘on the move’ feels like a miracle: ten minutes where your muscles can stop bracing and someone else can point the bonnet.

So, you tell him your name. “What is yours?” you ask, trying not to sound like you’re about to cry.

“Viktor.” He smiles and offers his hand. You take it and, stupidly, hope for his thumb to rub across your palm again like it did a moment ago. “Well then—do you need me to take you somewhere?”

“How will you get back home?”

He shrugs. “I’ll call a friend. So?”

“I’m moving south,” you tell him. “I don’t want to lose time so I should keep on the road, but I wouldn’t mind somewhere… less crowded?”

“I know just the place,” he says. “Shall we?”

And that’s how a stranger charms you into letting him drive your own car. You allow your eyes to close for one second, just long enough to feel your shoulders drop. The next, he opens the door for you, settles you in, drops the cane onto the back seat, and rolls the car out of the petrol station.

You let out a sigh so deep you can smell your own breath—it’s toothpaste enough to tell you’ve just brushed your teeth. From under heavy eyelids you watch him—movements certain and fluid, except for when he forgets your car is an automatic and there is no use reaching over to the stick. He’s pretty, you decide. Seems like a funny type, too. You could go on a date with him or be friends with him. In another life, maybe, where there isn’t an unexplainable stranger stalking you through the skins of normal people.

Sleep takes you without warning. You register the car easing to a stop and Viktor’s cool hand on your cheek. Your lips peel apart—stale spit making them stick—then you swallow, blink, and surface.

“Hello,” he says. “I thought perhaps some fresh air would do you good?”

You jolt and look round. It’s a secluded pull-off—midweek empty, a strip of cracked tarmac with two picnic tables and a council bin. Beyond the low rail the land falls away into a shallow valley; a town lies stitched below in small roofs and grey roads, the early light making everything look far and harmless. No other cars. No voices. Just wind worrying the hedge and the tick of your engine cooling.

You climb out, breathing too hard, check your phone: thirty minutes from the last town. You pace the edge of the lay-by, scan the verge, the path, the rail. Nobody. Or so you hope. Horror at yourself—at how you must look—flushes up; you slump onto the bonnet and hide your face in your hands.

It takes Viktor exactly as long as your little breakdown to scramble out. Uneven gait, he comes round slowly and nudges your shoe with his. “Hey,” he says. “What is it? What are you looking for?”

“I—” you hiccup. “It’s hard to explain, I just—”

“Shh.” There’s the clunk of wood braced against the car, and then his arms come around you. 

You tense at first—his chest covers your eyes and you can’t see if someone’s coming—but then you lift your palms to his shoulders, fingers hooking into corduroy, and hold on. A shuddering sob gets loose. He smells of pine soap and washing powder. His heartbeat is steady, a calm thud under your ear and at his throat where you press your nose in. He rubs your back and rocks you, slow. “You’re alright,” he says, one hand finding your cheek. “I’m here.”

You wrap yourself around him sideways, feel the hard plane of his stomach against yours. When the tired tears wear out there is silence, and for a moment you let yourself believe there is absolutely no one in the vicinity but the two of you.

“There,” Viktor says, all calm fondness. As if you are not a lunatic he found at the petrol station who is now snotting all over his jacket.

You let out a small chuckle. “You don’t even know me. Why are you so nice to me?” you say. “What are you getting out of this?”

He hums a laugh of his own. “Hopefully your number,” he murmurs, easing back. When he does your noses brush; breath meets breath. For a second you forget the rest of the world and see only his mouth—soft pink, that small beauty mark above the upper lip you want to taste. You brace, hands fisted in the collar at his nape, and push in, hopeful he’ll push back.

And oh, he does. A careful press at first, the kind used on skittish and breakable things. His lower lip gives; yours follows. He pauses just long enough to ask without words, and you answer by opening a fraction, catching his top lip between yours. Heat moves in at the edges. The wind ticks the branches; the cooling engine ticks back. His hand slides from your cheek to the hinge of your jaw, and the angle sharpens. You feel the quiet strength in his mouth—no showy force, just intention. You taste coffee gone thin, mint, something clean.

He breathes a small sound into you and you swallow it. Your tongue touches his, quick, a test; he answers in kind, not greedy, not coy, a measured give that makes your stomach drop as if the ground shifted a few inches down. You chase, he meets; your fingers pull at material and feel the warm seam of shoulder underneath. He breaks a hair’s breadth to say, “Alright?”—his mouth still against yours—then closes the gap when you nod, hungry. Teeth glance, a soft scrape; he mouths the corner of your lip like he’s learning it by shape. Your pulse climbs into your throat and stays there.

It deepens because you let it: longer pulls, less air, the sort of warmth that sweeps the spine clean. He anchors you by the waist, thumb finding the edge of your shirt, and you lean into the hold, into him, into now. The world stays quiet, and you forget the most important thing.

You don’t know what propels you forward—whether it’s the moment itself or the pathetic human need for something kind to happen to you. Whether it’s the pulse that yells yes in your veins, or his charming voice and nice-smelling neck—you pull at his collar, then down, easing the jacket off his back to feel more of him under your fingers.

As if an unspoken agreement has passed, he does the same for you—his hands find the hem of your sweatshirt and tug up, and you lift your arms obediently. You use that little shift to let him in between your legs, invite him to press further. Your feet rest on the bumper; your calves hug his thighs while he smooths the hair that stuck to your face when the top came off.

“I hope you’re not a criminal on the run?” he jokes, then kisses your neck.

“Would you stop if I was?” you ask, untucking the shirt from his trousers.

“No,” Viktor mutters. “I’m certain you’re innocent, anyway.” He smiles; you smile back. You are on a date in a car park with a boy who likes you. And he probably won’t even give you chlamydia. That’s all that matters.

His hands find your hips and then ass, attractively certain; he draws you down the bonnet a few inches until your bodies line up—groin to groin, a neat click. He’s hot exactly where you’re wet. The engine ticks beneath you. Adam’s apple bobs deliciously when he swallows and his fingers begin a shy crawl under the hem of your skirt. “Can I—?” he asks, breath close, tips ghosting the soft of your thighs.

You answer in kind: palms sliding down his chest to that sliver of stomach peeking out from where his shirt has come loose and unbuttoned. You hook a finger under his belt and tug, once. “Can I?”

His breath leaves on a laugh he tries to swallow. “Yes.” 

Like the cool girl you wish you were, you slide the leather tongue out of the buckle and pull the belt free from its loops. His trousers sag, treating you to the V-lines cut into the taut rise of an otherwise hollow abdomen, pointing exactly to what you want. The very obvious tent under his fly is about the only thing keeping him dressed from the waist down; you help with that too—button pops, zip slides, and his cock is out, warm in your hand. You stroke once, this time for the pure joy of it. It tickles your ego that there’s no grim motivational pumping needed; he’s already there, heavy and ready to be useful. Ready to fuck you.

His hands come back to your thighs, practical now. He drags your skirt up and hesitates that bare second at the edge of your knickers. “Mm?”

You answer by shifting, opening, a small grind that says get on with it. He hooks the cotton aside and finds you with two fingers first—quick check, slick proof—then he looks up, mouth a little open, like you’ve surprised him. Good.

He tests the entrance and then works them in—shallow, then deep—pads pressing up until your breath hitches, the heel of his hand snug where you need it. You give back what you take: fist around him, wrist economical, base to tip with a tight twist at the crown. He’s slick in your hand already; you smear it, thumb the slit, and he stutters against your palm. He answers by curling his fingers just so and dragging them out slow; your hips lift to keep him, a stupid, honest reach that makes him swear under his breath.

“Fuck, you’re so wet,” he murmurs, and it sounds so wondrous you moan his name.

Emboldened, he works you harder, knocks your rhythm out so all you can do for him is hold his cock and try not to squeeze too tight. The car squeaks beneath you and you spread wider. He braces one hand on the hood and gives himself fully to the task—thumb on your clit like he knows what he’s doing, fingers pushing a knuckle deeper with every slide. It feels good, and it keeps building in your lower belly into something even better. You pray he can’t tell what’s crusted on your knickers from the night before.

And then you remember—last night. You remember why you’re here in the first place. Something different kicks in—an instinct, not the horny one that wants you to let a good man who saved you from grief finger you in a scenic pull-off, but the one that wants you alive. So you sacrifice the oncoming orgasm and say, “Please, fuck me.”

It feels like it’s happening to you rather than by you—limbic system kicking the door in, pulling rank on whatever free will you pretend to have. You know exactly what this comes with, where it leads, what it sticks to. And still, when he pauses, blinks once, and nods like a man handed a job, you open your thighs wider. Guilty.

You keep his balls busy in your fist while he steps closer in, the neatest thing either of you will do this morning. When he lines up you’re already hiking your skirt, heels digging the bumper for leverage; the bare strip of your ass where your knickers have ridden into the buttcrack catches on the warm bonnet, a scrape that promises tomorrow’s burn. No matter—at least you’ll have a tomorrow.

In another dull moment of malice you tell him, “I want you,” and hate yourself for it. But as if it’s another call to be saved, Viktor does what he’s told. His first push is careful because you were tight around his fingers, second push not careful at all. Heat bites; he fills you in a clean, mean slide that makes your spine thrum against the metal. You grab his ass cheeks—they hollow when muscle tenses—and pull him down to you. He answers with short, efficient strokes, hips and breath and the soft rubber squeak of the bonnet under your body, morning light making the whole thing look stupidly honest.

“Good?” he asks, voice rough.

“Don’t talk,” you say, and rock up to meet it.

He adjusts—tiny limp closer, hand under your bum to angle you just right—and the next pass hits dead on. Your mouth opens on nothing. He watches your face like it’s instructions, jaw working, sweat at his hairline already. His thumb finds you again, learns the circle, presses when you jerk. You take him, take the scrape of it, the pace edging from tidy to necessary. This isn’t romance; it’s relief with a pulse, the necessity of violence that comes with a sweet extra step.

You see it plain in the thin strip of mind you’ve left yourself: villainy with a pretty face. The campus god only picked a girl who was already keen—lazy sin. You, though. You’re here using the nicest man you’ve met, grinding survival into him and calling it a favour. It’s worse. You know it. You keep going.

Your eyes glass; your breath hitches on a quiet sob. Viktor misreads it as bliss and takes it for a yes, driving a shade harder. His cock hits that high socket inside you where all the wires meet; the circuit closes and everything lights. You clamp around him in pulses, the taste of it bitter at the back of your tongue. “Fuck, yes—” slips out, traitor soft, and you roll to ride it, because it’s coming inevitable like weather and there’s no manual for a sex-borne curse—no rule that says stopping would save him now.

You come with your nails in his shoulders and your thighs shaking against his hips. “God, you’re so tight,” he gets out, half-laugh, half-groan, bracing for the grip of you. His hand leaves your clit; both arms band round your back, hauling you close. He’s slick with sweat; the cotton is damp under your fingers. A stray thought knives in about his leg—how it’s taking this—then you nearly laugh at your own sudden concern. Too late to be decent.

He doesn’t slow. If anything he chases it, breath rough at your ear, rhythm short and mean. “I’m going to—I can’t—” he manages, not really a question.

“Do it,” you say, and that’s mercy enough.

He sets his jaw. The limp is there in the stance, a hitch that makes his hips angle just so; it works. You take the drag and fill, the push that slides you an inch on the bonnet, the ugly little squeaks of paint and rubber. He’s close; you can feel the tremor building, the way his abdomen hardens under yours and the swallow bobs in his throat like a warning.

“Look at me,” he says, and you do—because you will give him that, at least. His eyes are blown wide and strangely gentle, as if this were tender and not two strangers getting their fix at the edge where two towns meet. His hand fists in your shirt to anchor himself; the other spreads at the small of your back. He thrusts through the last tight inches—voice breaking on a sound he bites down—and then he goes, body jolting against yours, breath held, warmth flooding you in heavy pulses while he says your name like he’s testing whether it fits in his mouth.

He stays there a moment, shuddering, forehead to yours, breath hot and fast. The bonnet ticks. The hedge hisses. Morning keeps happening, indifferent. He laughs once under his breath, shaky, and kisses you—quick, off-centre, pleased and dumb with it—before he eases out, careful, his hands still steadying you as if the world might tilt.

“I—” he starts, tumbling words while he snaps the rubber off and tucks himself in. “That’s not what I usually do on first dates, I promise.”

“Me neither,” you say, and manage a small, dismissive smile.

He comes to help you off the car. The pang hits when his limp’s a shade worse; guilt lands clean. The cane’s skittered under the car—you stoop, fetch it, pass it over. He takes it and steals a quick kiss against your cheek, neat as a stamp.

“I should probably just drive you home, hm?” you offer.

“What about your great escape?” Viktor hums.

“I just needed a change of scenery, is all. Come on,” you tell him. “It’s the least I can do.”

He nods and follows you to the car. The drive is padded with awkward small talk. You make your voice sound normal and not like you’re about to be sick. Disgusted with yourself, you repeat his turn-by-turn and will each one to fade the second you take it. He points—left, then right, third exit—and you say “Got it” like you mean it.

Outside his block he exhales, long. He gives you a look that’s almost shy. “So. How about that number of yours?”

You laugh. Right—this started with spare change and a number. “Give me your phone,” you say, and type a string that won’t ring for anyone, then hand it back.

Palm on the door handle, he leans in. The kiss is a clean farewell, soft and tidy on your mouth. “Will I see you again?” he asks.

“Totally,” you hear yourself say.

He nods, steps out. You watch him cross the pavement and pause on the doorstep to give you a small, sweet wave. Sorry, baby, you mouth, voiceless. Stomach lighter, heart heavier, you pull away and head for home. At every slip road you have to stop your hands turning the wheel, talk yourself out of the easy loop-back that would take you straight to him. You keep going. You make yourself keep going.

You inch home and the regret fattens in your mouth until it tastes like metal. A sweet boy—chivalrous, pretty—stepped into your mess and you ground him under it. You try to weigh sins: keep it on you and let it walk you into the ground, or pass it on and live with the aftertaste. Neither scales right. God knows what happens if it catches you; you’ve seen enough to guess. But living with yourself now? Also impossible. You grip the wheel and swallow hard, like that will keep anything down.

Viktor watches you go with the funniest lift in his chest. He should have asked more questions. Should have stopped you in the drive and made sense of it. But he hasn’t been this smitten in years. Despite the odd knot in his gut, he smiles, turns the keys in his palm, and is about to face the lock when—

Movement. A man, middle-aged, everything regular except the walk and the face. The walk is mechanical, single-purpose; the face is a switch turned off. Cold sinks through his ribs. He thinks, uselessly, run. He lets out a breath and almost laughs at himself. He was never much of a runner.