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lanottedellastrega · 3 months

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A Personal Ritual - Cardinal Copia x gn! reader

This fic was inspired by the incomparably talented @delulluart. When she dropped the initial sketch into our discord server, I lost my mind, and wrote this for her. Now she's finished the final painting, we've decided to collaborate...

GO AND LOOK AT THIS GORGEOUS PAINTING HERE

(If you don't go and check out this painting you will find me standing above your bed at 3:00am wielding something shiny and sharp.)

Summary: After a wonderfully sinful night in your lover's embrace, you catch him in a moment of domestic bliss that has you falling in love all over again...

Words: 2.2k

Warnings: Barely any, tooth rotting fluff, some worship elements, hints at previous smut, teasing and flirtation, nudity

These sheets are softer than your own. Perhaps they’re the reason you continue to spend the night here instead of in your own bed. It couldn’t have anything to do with the warm body that usually occupied it at all, could it?

Except that warm body wasn’t next to you right now. It wasn’t beside you, on top of you, or under you. Even the warmth hadn’t lingered, the emptiness cool and uninviting as you stretched your hand across the mattress in search of your lover. Sleep had only just begun to evade you, and opening your eyes to a golden morning sun was simply not yet in the cards, so instead you patted the mattress over and over, yet to no avail.

With a subtle sigh, you roused your head from the pillow, squinting as the light attacked your retinas. The sheets concealed the evidence of a night well spent; nude skin peppered with marks only a lover could make. Your muscles ached as you stretched yourself out, still reaching and hoping he may appear at your fingertips if you just wished hard enough.

As you came around, you thought maybe that was exactly what had happened, spotting movement from the corner of your eye. The bathroom door was wide open, steam still pouring out of it like an atmospheric addition, special effects that just seemed to follow this dreamy man around. That movement you’d spotted had been him, stepping out of the shower and wrapping himself with a towel around his waist. Regrettably, you’d missed the best part, but even now you could see the way the muscles in his back flexed when he moved, the freckles over his shoulders that cascaded down his spine, the dip where the towel dug into the softness of his hips, tied a little too tight...

His hair was getting longer, grey starting to speckle through the roots. He must have just towel dried it, the strands damp and wild in all manner of twists and curls but of course, they almost looked intentionally done. You shifted in the bed, laying your head on the pillow and snuggling back into the sheets at an angle that allowed you to watch him reach into the cabinet above the sink and gather products and tools to get himself ready for the day. As of yet, he hadn’t noticed you were awake let alone watching him, lost in his own little routine.

He shut the cabinet, the mirrored glass of the door now lining up perfectly with his face, projecting an image of him back to you. A shadow was forming across his jawline; the same shadow that had left its mark on you the night before, grazing the sensitive skin across your body. Stubble looked good on him, you always thought, wondering what it would look like should he decide to grow it out like the rest of his moustache. But no, you liked this look; the face you’d fallen in love with to begin with, with its signature lonely moustache and carefully sculpted sideburns.

He fiddled with something in front of him out of view, then lifted a brush to his face that he swiped in circles against his stubbled skin, painting it white with a creamy substance that from here smelled like citrus – but then, that could be any number of products he’d used in the shower too. He traced the circular pattern over his stubble, reaching it down his neck as he stretched and covering every inch of darkened skin. He lidded the product and stacked it on the edge of the sink, now reaching for a shiny little thing he’d already laid out.

With an expert flick of his wrist, it unfolded, a glinting silver blade unsheathing itself from the brilliant red of the marbled handle. When he leaned forward, he stretched his neck with a lean to one side, lining the blade up against his skin and in one quick, clean motion he’d swiped a stripe up to the sharp edge of his jawline. The blade was wiped off on a cloth draped over the sink, then brought to do the same thing again next to the already created strip of clean, smooth skin.

You'd never seen him do this before, but you were enraptured – privileged, even... It was you and you alone that had the honour bestowed upon them to watch the man you loved in his most humble and domestic of moments, to see the parts of him that nobody else in the world got to see just because they were usually saved for him, and him alone. While you’d spent many an intimate night in his bed, sharing your bodies and souls in every way a lover can, these were the moments that felt truly intimate.

There was only ever one person in the world who would see him in moments like these and however simple or mundane these little tasks were, they were humanising and so normal. The man before you was anything but normal with the life he led, the talents he possessed and the future he had ahead of him but those were things he shared with everyone. Much like his rituals, these moments were also planned and served a purpose and yet they were personal to him, and him only – until you. It was the normal moments, these ‘personal rituals’ that made him so special to you, and you alone.

The razor continued to scrape along his neck in clean swipes, glinting in the bathroom light and sounding with a familiar scrape and ring of the metal. With his neck smooth and clean, he moved onto his face, carefully guiding the razor’s swipes to give him the sharp, clean edges of his sideburns on either side if his face. You’d always wondered how he got them to such a sharp point like this, but it was clear now; especially knowing he used a straight razor to do so. He’d clearly had years of practise perfecting his signature looks, avoiding his moustache yet tidying it to two thinner, well-kept halves.

As he worked, your eyes drifted over him as they often did at any given moment. But these quiet moments of intimacy were ones you spent time burning into your memory, the details kept safe and hidden for only you. In his reflection, you watched as the muscles and tendons in his neck stretched and flexed with each lean forward and swipe of his razor. The more you watched, the more your eyes committed the details of his shoulders and chest to memory; the freckles, the dark hair that settled over his chest and barely concealed his tattoo, then tapered off into a trail to disappear beneath the low hanging towel. His stomach looked soft and warm where he kept leaning against the edge of the sink, the porcelain digging into the flesh just as his towel did his hips.

There wasn’t a single thing you didn’t adore about him. There wasn’t a single thing you would change. All of it you would sync into your memories in a collection of things you never wanted to forget the sight of.

Now clean of the shaving cream from his face, he took the washcloth he’d been using as a wipe rag and ran it under the faucets, cleaning away the excess he’d missed between swipes of his blade. Once clean, he ran the cloth over his freshly smooth face, a satisfying hum rumbling from his chest at the warm sensation of soft cotton on polished skin.

Part of his routine included a moisturiser, dabbing it onto his forehead, cheeks, chin and one on the nose with a tiny little “heh” sound that encouraged a lazy little smile on your lips. He rubbed it in gently, similar circular motions to before with the shaving cream.

He reached for a little blue glass bottle, pouring a liquid onto his fingertips and lathering them up before patting them against the freshly shaved skin of his neck. A hiss pushed itself from between his teeth, his nose wrinkling as he patted the liquid into the skin quickly, like the speed would help the sting of cologne on recently opened pores.

“Ah, shit,” he muttered to himself, endearingly silly and something else you loved so dearly about him. You didn’t hold back the small giggle that bubbled in your throat but unfortunately now, that meant you had his attention. You were no longer peacefully watching your lover from afar, your show interrupted.

His head moved only slightly, but his eyes somehow found you in the reflection of the mirrored cabinet door. They were wide at first, like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t or had forgotten in his routine that you were present at all. But they soon softened, seeing you draped in his sheets, still breathtakingly beautiful in your sleepy state. His lips curled into a fond smile, and he wiped his hands on the towel around his hips while he quickly tidied away the products and tools, every so often checking back in the reflection that you hadn’t disappeared only to find you still watching him with hooded, lazy eyes.

His own little sacred ritual complete, he wondered over to you, towel clinging to his hips for dear life until he stopped by the edge of the bed in front of you. You met him there on your knees, holding the sheets under your armpits with only the smallest and cheekiest amount of skin from your arms and collarbone displayed to him. He lifted a hand to trail his fingertips down your bare arm, lifting your hand in his and bringing it to his lips to press a kiss to the back of your palm.

“You were watching, eh?” he asked, his accent deeper and thicker as the first he’d spoken aloud this morning.

“Admiring,” you corrected him, holding the sheet against your chest with your free hand.

“I see...” he mused, another kiss being planted to your hand. His eyes scanned the parts of your body he could see, marks from your long and impassioned night together still very visible on your skin. His eyes darkened at the sight, a need rising in him to always create more. He tugged you to his chest, using the pads of his fingertips to trace the bursts of colour across your neck and collarbone while he held you there, other hand still in yours.

As if by instinct, you leaned your head to the side to accommodate him, stretching your neck like he had as he was shaving to elongate the space in which his fingers danced. He leaned in, pressing delicate kisses to each bruise and each mark he had left there. In contrast to his stubbly, rushed and feral kisses and bites from last night, you were met with the smoothest skin against yours and featherlight pecks as if trying to heal them. You weren’t sure which you preferred; both were divine.

“You tempt me to stay like un succubo diabolico (a demonic succubus),” he whispers against your skin, goosebumps raising across every inch. How badly you wanted him to stay... You would take every second you could with him.

“Is it working?” you asked with a playful lilt to your tone, yet the breathiness in your voice gave away your bubbling arousal. Lips continued to press against the marks, the tip of his nose dragging across the skin from one point to the next like he was drawing constellations from the bursts of colour he’d made last night.

“Sí, sí,” he mumbled into your neck, “cediamo alla tentazione in questa cappella... (we give in to temptation in this chapel...)”

He felt the chuckle that left your throat and broke away from you long enough to find your lips with his. The hand still holding yours squeezed against his chest and you forgot about the sheets precariously held up under your armpit when you wrapped your arm around his neck to deepen the kiss, fingers finding purchase in the damp curls on his head.

He let go of your hand, instead, whipping the towel from his hips and gripping onto your waist, kneeling on the bed with you as you scooted back to the middle, never letting him go. He felt warm against you, his body pressing so deliciously to yours.

“I don’t want to get you into trouble, Cardinal...” you teased, brushing your nose with his.

“Amore, you have been doing so since the day I let you into my bed,” he grinned devilishly, bringing his lips back to yours as he toppled the two of you over and back into his sheets. The two of you could think of your excuses later; for now, there was no denying the palpable need that the intimacy of his personal rituals had stirred. A man, with so much power to his name and weight to his shoulders, boiled down to a moment of banality reserved for only the one closest to him.

Oh, how deep you had fallen for your Cardinal...

Once again, please go and check out THIS ARTWORK that inspired this. @delulluart put an initial sketch of this into our discord server, and she triggered this brain dump. This is all on her.

#ghost fanfic #cardinal copia #Copia/reader

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