#Niamh Valendil | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

magistriofficiorum · 3 years

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Veneration of the Ruinous

Fandom,Pairing: Shepherds of Haven ( @shepherds-of-haven) ,Niamh/Chase 3.5 k, smut..like… a lot (minors DNI pls) A/N: SOO the first sinful thing I publish is an absolute behemoth. Go figure. We aren’t here yet in the demo, therefore liberties were certainly taken, I just have MANY feelings and we love a Notable Shift in a relationship. I would like to thank Boyce Avenue’s cover of Crash Into Me and the valley by Miguel. And the Niamh x Chase playlist

“Sunshine?”

Rain began earlier in the night. She had closed the window ("There's a chill," she had said, gesturing in her anachronistic elvish way, as he removed her chemise) and the air now smells of candlesmoke and sex.

“Yeah?” Niamh replies, voice soft and brittle at the end, crackling like hearthflame.

Sitting up, but still unprepared to part from the afterglow, she remains caged between Chase’s legs with her bare back to him. When she cranes her neck back, she sees his gaze is far away, and he begins mindlessly rubbing circles on her shoulderblade with his thumb.

She was getting better at it- seeing when the facade cracked- or maybe, she thought, he was allowing her these glimpses behind the ever-grinning mask. Slipping on the expression of casual interest took him a beat or two longer today than yesterday. Perhaps tomorrow, it will take longer, still.

“How many?”

She lets her head drop to one side, closing her eyes briefly when he finds a knot and begins working on it, willing herself not to make any more embarrassing noises when his fingers dig and knead with just enough pressure to feel good.

“How many what?”

“How many people have you been with?”

Before Niamh can answer, he quickly adds “And no, this is in no way a critique of your skill- just for curiosity’s sake.”

She is silent.

After time stretches too far to expect a response, Chase begins to maneuver her out of his arms. “No, really, no pressure. Silly question. None of my business, anyway! Are you hungry, because I-“

“Red.”

It gives him pause, and he sinks into the pillows once more, pulling her back to his chest carefully, carefully. The way you move when trying not to scare off an animal. She’s not sure if he does it for her benefit or for his.

“And?”

Niamh’s shoulder lifts in a noncommittal half-shrug.

“Red. And-“ She sighs and shifts and gathers her thoughts in the same methodical way healers tear strips of clean gauze.

Chase waits for her-

A moment longer, this time.

“There was this other mercenary. It was my second or third job on my own after leaving the Circle. It was a fairly short ‘van detail, but merc work…I never was fond of it. He had a small crew, all of them from some tiny Norm town; they took over the heavy lifting mostly, I was there as insurance. He was kind to me. Looked me in the eyes when we spoke. Invited me to eat with them. It had been... a while since anyone had bothered to be decent to me… much less touched me. I was lonely. I missed Solhadur, and it was nearly the anniversary of...that day.”

She tries, perhaps too hard, to keep her tone matter-of-fact, like this isn't her story. Just the way he does when he shares his truths, as if she has told it a hundred times before.

“So when he asked if I was interested, the company sounded nice. And I knew it was a one-off. We’d go our separate ways after the job.” Niamh goes to reach for her neck but stops, holding her hand to her chest instead.

She wonders if he can see her fingers twitching from this angle.

“It was...fine, I suppose. The next day, I overheard a conversation between him and his people. I guess they bet him...wanted to know what...” Niamh drums her fingers to her sternum, taking a breath.

“Seven deucalions. Seven he made for bedding a Diminished.”

She lets it hang in the air, and for once, Chase is silent.

“There’s been no one else since then. Besides you.”

Niamh realizes how it sounds as it leaves her but makes no attempt at a better explanation. There’s a weight to it, the unspoken burden. She swears she can feel Chase tense briefly and thinks he will deflect, change the subject, distract with a quip, maybe even try to make himself scarce- before he sweeps her messy waves back and presses his mouth to the juncture between her neck and shoulder. It's gentle, his lips still ghosting over her skin, and she feels his mouth moving like he’s trying to find words. He doesn’t realize it- that this small, silent gesture is enough, as he rests on the edge of the ugly, jagged marks that mar the side of her throat.

“I-“ whatever he plans to say is swiftly cut off as Niamh turns, twisting her torso to face his way.

She’s pushing her luck, the logical part of her brain says. It says her eyes are too honest, it says they will look for something in emerald green that isn’t there, but she looks anyway with what courage she can muster.

There’s a steely glint in his gaze for a moment, one that’s not meant for her, and she is no longer peeking behind the curtain but being led backstage.

Chase pulls her in close - close- and kisses her. Niamh sighs into it, and yes, she’s trembling, but she’s alight again. A little scared he will take it back, she clings to him in return and makes sure to send up prayers to whatever or whoever made it so she and Chase Trinaeste existed in the same time and place.

She recites venerations in her head while he pulls away the tangled sheets from where they bunch at her hips, then kisses and licks every mark he left from before- down from her neck to her collarbone to the peaks and undersides of her breasts to her stomach, until she interrupts her own litany.

She inhales sharply when he dips his tongue into her folds, still slick and swollen from their earlier lovemaking, her fingers moving to thread through his hair. When he spreads her with his thumbs and licks slow, gentle circles around her clit and down, she butterflies her knees open and into the bed and groans out his name, low and holy in her throat. His forearms press down on her thighs hard to keep her in place, quickly bringing her to a shattering orgasm that leaves her flooded as his mouth rides her through it. It’s all at once too much and not enough. Perhaps a theme in this…relationship. Or whatever it was.

Feast or Famine. Everything and nothing.

Chase climbs back over her, wiping the shine from his chin, and she shivers and arches involuntarily where she feels him searing hot and hard, sliding against her dripping slit. He ducks his head down for a kiss,and Niamh tastes both of them on his tongue, and it’s so decadent and debauched her toes curl as he licks into her mouth.

He eases his way into her with a slow, powerful roll of his hips, and burying himself to the hilt he moves at a pace that is devastatingly unhurried. His eyes are dark but so warm and it hasn’t been that long-not even an hour-but she missed it, the feel of him fitting into her perfectly, immediately finding the spot that makes her eyes roll into the back of her head, breaking her open with every drawn-out thrust. The way he says her name should be a sin, or illegal, at the very least, and he says little else.

Chase fucks her in earnest- slowly, deeply. The way he pulls her apart, one thread at a time, is different. Instead of well-timed words or touches, teasing and calculated in their sweet torture and designed to bring her to the precipice multiple times only to tilt it over as an act of mercy, this is something else. There is such intensity to his gaze that he rips it away from her every few moments, as if shaking himself from a trance, and a severe discipline she never thought him capable of. With each tilt of his hips and devastating drag of his cock, each motion that pushes her further up the mattress and leaves her breathless, Niamh realizes what he’s doing, whether it be subconsciously or otherwise.

The playful hedonistic zeal, a back-and-forth push and pull, is gone and replaced by something heavier, needier. Chase was never like this-restraint a spider’s thread, both thin and steel-strong. It has never been so intentional, shifting to give give give.

(Niamh is not a greedy creature by nature, but how long until the Famine? How long until there is nothing but an empty room and the gaping hole in her heart, still mending, ripped open anew? By another monster or the man who promised nothing but touches her like she is everything)

Writhing and hiccuping, Niamh breaks again, desperately fluttering around him. Her already-brittle voice shatters over his name; he grinds deeper and maintains the same brutally slow pace- kissing her, tasting her, breathing adoration into her lungs, his murmurings impassioned and nearly graceless as he urges her to take. Chase lets her hands freely scramble to his chest, his back, his ass, his thighs tucked beneath the backs of hers.

“Fuck, Niamh, yes, just like that, sweet girl. Stay with me, sunshine. God- let go, baby, it's okay.”

And she swears each time she is pulled over the edge, his pace gets even slower, but with him like that- arms braced on either side of her head, balled into the sheets and fuck when he drops to his elbows and amber and his voice and everything is him she cannot finish the thought, can’t even see straight-

And gods above and all the demons in Hael, he’s going to fucking kill her.

It’s the only lucid thing that passes through her head before-

“Oh shit, you’re close again? Yeah, you are. Come for me, good girl, come around my cock-just-just like that.”

Niamh throws her head back, just barely missing the headboard,as another wave of spasms rip through her. She smacks him, hard, on his sternum-an involuntary reaction, her body overwhelmed with pleasure and unable and unwilling to relent. He doesn’t even flinch, continuing his agonizing pace and talking her through it. Her thighs shake violently, “I got you, I got you”s murmured into her temple, and she believes it.

So she keeps letting go.

Chase continues the languid rhythm until her cheeks are wet with tears, everything is fervent and raw, and it feels like it has been hours or days. She’s flooded between her legs; the positively filthy sounds of their coupling combine with the little helpless noises she makes and his whispered encouragement. Niamh can only watch him, captivated as her gaze rakes over his neck, chest, shoulders, chin- all the way to his mussed hair, committing what was not hers to memory, as she often did. A painter could set out a hundred shades of green, and she could find the one that perfectly matched his eyes in a heartbeat. Not hers, never hers, but parts she knew- like how he would notice her watching him, smirk, and lean in to claim her mouth- better than she knew herself.

An eternity passes, and Chase is beginning to falter. Niamh can feel him, pulsing and achingly hard, and gods, she can tell he wants to-needs to fuck her into the mattress, needs to come. Still, he carries on slow and deep, the only outward signs that his control is near its breaking point is how he has nearly gone completely silent, how the tense line of his jaw muscle jumps right before burying his face in her neck.

She finds her voice, fingers curling around his bicep in a bid for attention and leaving little crescents in his skin. “Chase, fas-faster, please, please.” She gasps, the words punctuated by the snap of his hips that force the air out of her lungs.

With no response, Niamh locks her ankles around his waist, heels digging into his back and canting her hips up desperately. “Oh please please f-fuck me, please, I need-”

Chase slows even more, pushing her down and grinding up into a spot that makes her vision go dark around the edges, and in a low, nearly dangerous voice, he responds.

“What do you need?”

“Ineedyoutocome!”

His eyes squeeze shut, and he sucks in a breath, completely stilling his movements. It’s not until one of her hands hastily tries to slide between them to provide herself some friction that his eyes snap back open, the green in them nearly eclipsed by the pupil.

With frightening reflexes, Chase snatches her hand back and pins each of her wrists to the bed. His other hand throws her legs over his shoulders and in a flash he’s slamming back into her, hard, and begins thrusting at a vicious, relentless speed. Niamh screams his name, collapsed in on herself and with every nerve ending on fire.

She wills the words not to leave her, for her uninhibited, delirious brain not to betray her and say what threatens to spill forth as the pressure builds and builds and runs through her head, a chant: IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou- she bites her lower lip, hard enough to draw blood and screws her eyes shut. Chase, continuing to ram into her with strength and precision that borders on inhuman, misses nothing, crowds closer and grips her jaw.

“No no no, come back to me, Sunshine girl, you stay right here with me,” He lands a sloppy, open mouthed kiss on her cheek, and rasps into her ear: “Give me everything.”

She sucks in a shuddering breath and her eyes fly open to meet his, and fresh tears fall freely (a visceral reaction easily blamed on pleasure), but she does exactly as he says.

‘You have it, you already have it’ Niamh thinks, before her body goes absolutely rigid.

She sobs brokenly, both hands still pinned by one of his, and flexing, desperate for connection-and he loosens his hold to slide up and entwine his fingers with hers. Gentle, at odds with the ferocity of his movements,as white hot euphoria rips her to shreds from the inside. He doesn’t stop fucking her through it, mercilessly deep, and she comes- painfully, madly, and with every last part of her, with-

Chase’s eyes search for something, on her face- in her expression- what she’s not sure, and it's clear when he finds it- he follows close behind, gritting out a string of profanities peppered in with her name- her name- on his lips, his thrusts bruising and erratic and halting, still able to catch one of her legs as it begins to drop from his shoulder as his hips still.

Chase hums low in his throat, staying put until the very last pulse of her clamping around him subsides- even after, he only rises to his haunches and ducks his head to kiss the inside of her knee. When his eyes drag from where they remain joined up to meet hers, she almost says it, again, swallowing the words before they escape, biting them down, and with a wince slides both legs back to the bed. Niamh looks away, only glancing back when his warmth pulls away from her- briefly- to curl by her side.

In spite of her second close call, she smiles-fucked out and blissful, breathing evening out, and she allows herself this moment. To feel the burning of her thighs, the achy emptiness between them she is left with, the sheets rustling as Chase props up on one elbow to brush unruly strands out of her face and admire his work.

When their eyes meet, she smiles even wider, something simmering inside her- something that feels like unfettered joy- and she does something neither of them are expecting.

She laughs.

Like those words on the tip of her tongue, she tries to swallow it down, at first, but when it becomes too much and Chase arches a brow in question, she can only respond by giggling helplessly,trying to suppress the sound with a hand over her mouth. She can’t quell the shaking of her shoulders and she can’t gather her thoughts enough to get out more than one syllable before she’s breaking into another fit of giddy, bubbling laughter.

It's too warm, and she’s so sore and sticky and that is all absolutely secondary to how her heart feels like someone’s stuck a handful of sparklers in it.

“Guess we found the meaning of the phrase ‘fucked silly’.”

Her loopy brain determines this is by far the funniest thing she’s ever heard, and she devolves once more, gasping for air periodically. To her surprise, Chase joins in -first an amused chuckle, and then with just the exchange of looks, he too is cackling madly, and in the reverie he pulls her back to him, scooping her in his arms. She now is blinking away tears, pliant but altogether unhelpful with her head tucked beneath his chin as he slides one arm under her knees, meaning to carry her from the bed.

“C’mon you giggly little miting, let’s get cleaned up.”

Niamh makes a sound of protest that may have been a whine if her voice weren’t used raw, and kisses a spot on the underside of his jaw. “Just...one more minute. Please?”

With no small amount of drama, he sighs. “I suppose best not to try and haul a nude and hysterical Hero of Haven off to the baths. Might not be quite the shining example of leadership you’d care to portray.”

She lets out a soft chuckle, and tries to school her expression into something serious.

“Might not,” Niamh affirms, pushing a wayward lock of his hair from his eyes. “For now.” She adds with an impish smile, and he grins back conspiratorially.

She briefly tries to recall the last time she laughed like that. Full-bodied and loud and from a place she didn’t know was still there. Gratitude once again seeps into her, and she gives thanks by sealing her lips to his. Maybe soon this too will be snatched back, the feel of his smile on her mouth and his heart beating beneath her palm, but that hope- terrible, tricky hope makes her consider that the day may not come. If it does- maybe ruin is just what she is built for, and the ruin he brings her is the sweetest destruction she’s ever known.

When they break for air, Niamh pulls away, only to be guided back to him with his fingers gently curling around her chin. He kisses her again, with such unexpected tenderness it makes her heart ache.

As they part, their gazes meet once more. A beat passes, and Chase arches his brow, a wicked smile spreading across his face.

“So...again?”

___

Chase wakes with a start, for a moment not knowing where he is. Last night, he was with Niamh, they had a very long, very intense night, and after she fell asleep he went back to his room, and-

Cream colored linen sheets, not silky and wine red. The bookshelf on the wall is simple and unadorned, with a few treasured possessions from past travels. There are no baubles or jewels glimmering from every corner. Over a small writing desk his latest assignment hangs, prominently displayed alongside a map stained with khav and ink.

Light just begins to peek in through gauzy curtains, and he swears violently in his head.

He slides out of bed, carefully avoiding looking at the little lump of blankets that was just curled around him and quickly gathers his scattered clothes and throws them on. Shit-

A slip up, that’s all it was. He was tired, he can admit that. He shut his eyes for just a moment, he couldn’t have been out for more than an hour, maybe two. Three, tops.

He moves to the window while pulling on his boots, belt held between his teeth, deftly flicking open the latch and jumping onto the ledge. Chase grips the frame, preparing to leap, but does something monumentally stupid instead.

He looks.

Morning light illuminates her, and he is obliterated.

Her tangle of rose gold hair halos her face-

That's not fucking fair.

Niamh is on her belly, her arms encircling a pillow, flushed cheek squished against it. Kiss-bruised lips parted just slightly, and the sun dapples her bare shoulders in pure gold. She drools; there's a little crust of sleep in those pretty lashes-he smiles like a goddamn halfwit and he wants to crawl back and touch her, and kiss every bump of her spine, and listen to her read aloud from one of those old dog-eared folktale books or even from one of the massive boring ones and wants to say more things to make her laugh like that again and make lazy, messy, unhurried love to her and watch how the light makes her glow and he has to get the Hael out of there-

It's a sin not to stay, but he is fucking terrified of the consequences if he does, so he launches himself out and nearly snaps an ankle as he lands on the parapet below. Almost as jarring: he hasn’t stumbled like that in years. Never a misstep, a trip, a fall he didn’t intend.

It was stupid, and it was dangerous.

He shouldn’t want it.

He’s not allowed to want it.

It's nothing.

#the alternate title was “Chase asks a seemingly innocuous question and then Immediately Regrets It”#I tried to string a cohesivelinear narration together this largely unedited monstrosity got away from me #shepherds of haven #chase x niamh #niamh valendil #chase trinaeste #i drop this and then SKEDADDLE #the spacing isnt working on the dashboard UGH but I simply must stop fretting and publish it #Happy Monday Here's some nasty #honestly its to the point im like 'this is garbage but not in the sexy way' because ive looked at it SO MUCH

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