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morvantmortuary · 8 months

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morvant mortuary x the boy au -

the House

(prologue)

Even as you walked in to an empty house, alone, it still somehow felt like you were intruding.

If you felt a prickle down the back of your neck, or a sudden chill, you only attributed it to the stillness of the House compared to the summer breeze outside.

It was almost too still. Like the House had breath to hold.

Like - in an insane way - it was hoping you liked it as much as you were secretly wishing to.

You didn’t hear the front door close behind you — the damning click of the lock was oddly soft, given how heavy the dark wood looked.

As ominous as the House looked on the outside, it was huge on the inside. If it hadn’t been for the vaguely dusty (but miraculously not moth-eaten), thick, woven floor rugs, you felt like your footsteps would have echoed through the room.

For reasons you couldn’t quite explain, you were thankful they couldn’t.

You walked towards one of the floor to ceiling windows, hidden behind rich outer curtains — a deep wine-colored satin, of all things — with a once-cream cotton underneath, there to muffle the light (and afternoon heat) but not douse it entirely.

Curiously, they weren’t as dusty as you expected, especially not near the edges. You could imagine the people who lived here once, pulling them aside to sneak looks at the drive, at the clients coming up the path. It wouldn’t be to spy on any neighbors; the nearest residents were the ones buried in the cemetery at the edge of the property. The nearest living ones were back towards the edge of town, as if people were terrified of building their houses any closer to this one.

Well. At least it meant the services you held here would be uninterrupted by outside noise. You’d hoped the more cheerful Cajun wakes would add some lightness to the place, but even that seemed like a tall order in such a huge room.

You pulled the curtains wide apart at last, letting what little dwindling afternoon sun there was into the House for the first time in how many years.

What you assumed was the clientele parlor was a somber kind of beautiful, all antique furniture in dark wood clustered comfortingly around a massive fireplace - which surprised you, given how far south you were. But if the House was really as old as the listing said, it could’ve been built at a time where winters were still cold enough to be bitter down here. You imagined you wouldn’t need it, especially nowadays, with every summer the warmest on record. But maybe you could do something kind of Pinterest-y with it. Arrange a spray of flowers in place of flames, or a collection of glass orbs. Maybe even candles, just to be tongue-in-cheek.

Your gaze wandered higher towards the shadowy ceiling, up the once tasteful, now chipped off-white paint on the chimney - someone’s attempt to brighten architecture that couldn’t help but loom - and felt like it tripped over the dark wood frame hung over the dusty, similarly mute-painted mantle.

Instinctively, you stepped backwards when you realized that what was in the frame was looking right back at you.

It was a moderately sized portrait, a carefully arranged photograph in place of the oils of the old days. Not huge, but still dominating the space. You were kind of surprised it hadn’t caught your eye as soon as you’d walked in. You turned, looking over your shoulder at the front door and back again to chart the distance — and sure enough, yes, it was a straight line from the front door’s line of sight to this. Maybe it was the lighting? You searched the room, locating two subtle floor lamps next to the couch and the loveseat, but that wouldn’t have put the light in the right place for that.

You looked back to the portrait again, and this time noticed the two cobweb-covered, small-ish candelabras at either end of the mantle, the candles in them melted so low they might as well have not been there at all. Ah. Okay, so they weren’t going for anything subtle, here. You supposed, with the rest of the curtains open and the power actually on, it wouldn’t seem as recessed into shadow as it did now. With the candelabras lit, it would’ve commanded the room.

Four figures looked down on you from their honored place — you realized someone likely hung the portrait that high just so visitors could feel looked down on by the homeowners, and know instinctually where they stood.

Comforting, you thought derisively, given how many people would’ve come in here on the worst day of their lives. It spoke volumes towards the sensibilities of its subjects, that’s for damn sure.

And yet, if you squinted, you could still see the faintest outline around the frame where a larger one had hung there before, with another faint outline around that, like rings on a tree — and another faded blank spot just down and to the right, as if a matching portrait had been removed entirely. Clearly, this was a family used to having portraits of themselves front and center over the generations, even if they couldn’t or wouldn’t admit they maybe weren’t as grand as they used to be.

The people staring back at you were eerily lovely, in a distant, haughty way. There were two adults; the most commanding was a man in what looked like a very well-tailored suit, seated in the center of the frame in a chair of dark, glossy wood — clearly considering himself a patriarch. His hair was a deep casket-wood brown, carefully slicked back and styled meticulously, with the ghost of a smile around his thin lips. His eyes were piercing, brown almost to the point of looking weirdly burgundy, in the low light. The way he seemed to be leaning slightly forward in the ornate chair, as if peering at the viewer, made something churn in your stomach. You couldn’t explain it, but he just… unsettled you. You would’ve hated to meet him in person, even the curve of his mouth seemed subtly cruel.

The woman standing to his right was beautiful, but coldly perfect in a way that reminded you of marble. Her eyes were an intense shade of green, but dark, reminiscent of the floor of a sunless forest. Her hair, long and shining and black, hung around her pale shoulders, almost a premature widow’s veil. Her mouth, with lips like a doll’s, was set into a careful neutral line… but it still made you think that with the slightest twitch of a muscle, it could twist with raw emotion. Her white dress was immaculate and gorgeously wrapped around her slender frame, too sterile and perfect to seem… maternal.

Because there were children, here. Teenagers, really. They couldn’t have been older than fifteen (you weren’t sure, kids under college age but above elementary all kind of blended together for you nowadays). They stood together to the left of their father, for these were very much their parents, you realized. A boy and a girl, spookily similar to one another from their faces to their posture (perfect, practiced), but still an amalgam of the two adults: he had the shape of the woman’s eyes and a likeness in his mouth, but she had inherited their father’s stare to balance out the green eyes and distinctive nose of their mother.

The girl, a younger mirror of her mother in matching white, was giving the camera a venomous look that spoke inescapably of familiarity. You could almost hear the photographer saying something she didn’t like right as they took the photo. If her father unsettled you, she unsettled you still more: there was a rage you recognized in her even in this singular, still moment, something familiar about the indignity endured while growing up thinking you were a teenage girl. You could only imagine encountering her in person, and were silently thankful you never would — not as she was captured in this instant, at least.

The boy, in a similarly expensive suit that echoed the older man’s, simply stood on her other side, keeping her between himself and their father’s chair. His eyes - or what you could see of them, almost hiding behind a long-ish flop of sleek brown bangs (definitely a reflection of the time) and round glasses — were the same deep color as his father’s, bordering almost on red. But there was something… softer, to them. A sadness, rather than anger or malice. He kept his face as placid as his mother’s, and you almost wondered if it was something he practiced, with just how still he seemed compared to his sister.

Where her hands were clasped in front of her skirt, you saw his at his sides. The longer you looked, the more you could see that the skin of both their knuckles was bone white. Even standing there must have been a struggle for them, somehow.

Your gaze lingered on the four of them longer than you could quite explain. The photograph was so vivid, it felt like they were standing in the room with you, and looking away would almost be… rude.

Well, rude to the wife and husband, maybe. In the case of the girl, it was like averting your eyes from a big cat tensed to pounce.

And from the boy, like you were looking away from someone… trapped, almost. Unable to meet their eyes because you were just as unable to help.

A feeling - a feathery light something, just on the edge of substance - crept down the back of your neck.

Like there were eyes on you, as well.

Shivering, you whipped around to scan the vast room, but saw only older photographs on the walls staring back at you, or important-looking busts of stone (or well-crafted plaster imitation) gazing back from shelves full of large leather(-looking?) bound books and other living room conversation pieces.

There was no one looking back at you now.

Or at least, no one you could see.

You looked down at the blueprint scan again before pulling your well-creased print copy of the listing out of your pocket, scanning it quickly even though you must’ve read the damn thing a thousand times by now. You didn’t know why; it wasn’t like you didn’t have it saved in triplicate on your phone and your laptop. But it had become a weird sort of talisman for you: a reminder that serendipity was real. That opportunity could land right in your lap, if you were brave enough to seize it and keep it.

Your eyes combed the print, and sure enough, you’d been right. Nowhere in the ad copy did it mention the house came furnished. Yet as you looked around, everything was perfectly staged.

Some of that could be the real estate agency, sure. But these were… nice things. Like, really nice. “Antique” in the good way, worth something substantial. Way outside of the budget you had been planning after you’d finished the cost of renovations, that was for damn sure.

What had happened that these people just… left everything here, untouched?

Had they chosen to not take anything, unwilling to bring any memories of this place wherever they went?

Or had they been chased out?

And if so… by what?

“…Bright side,” you muttered, trying not to spook yourself. “Keep looking on the bright side.”

You finally turned your back on the portrait to take in the rest of the room. Whoever cared for the House before must have done so with great attention to detail — you knelt next to the couch, examining the way that the carved wooden legs had seemed to resist the dust and rot that had crept into the edges of the room, despite the work of hired cleaners. The whole set looked salvageable; it would be a huge Get if you were able to keep them for your own clientele. It looked much more professional than having to dumpster dive and source semi-matching pieces from flea markets and internet ads.

As you stood up and looked around the parlor, you tried to picture yourself having consultations grouped around the little coffee table. Maybe with a vase of lilies in the center? Unless lilies were too expected. But at least some kind of flower, something so maybe the House didn’t feel quite as gloomy as the occasion that it was built for. Perhaps changing the curtains to something lighter still…

Your planning was interrupted by scratching from a room over.

Turning to follow the sound, you found yourself squinting at the border of the afternoon sunlight, where the room fell back into shadow.

There was a set of dark double doors discretely set into the carved wood paneling on the other side of the room, just far enough back that you’d missed them coming in the front door. Your first thought, upon seeing them, was relief that they already seemed to be ADA-compliant for wheelchair users. One more thing off your To-Do list.

Your second thought was wondering just what could be behind them.

Standing there, you stalled briefly, wondering if you should call in Bev from the porch for backup. But she’d been hard enough to get to the House itself, and getting her inside seemed to be an impossible errand.

Whatever stray critter had made a nest in there, you’d have to face alone.

You swallowed, reaching into your bag for your maglite - the big-ass, heavy flashlight that had been a gift from your well-meaning but slightly paranoid folks upon moving out on your own. Along with being bright enough to be seen from space (or so it felt to you) with a strobe mode for getting attention during emergencies, it was also hefty, made of cold metal where it wasn’t thick, slip-proof ergonomic rubber.

Meaning if your uninvited visitor had some troubling foam around their mouth, it was a decent way to… forcibly re-negotiate your personal bubble, if need be.

Your free hand rested on the curved doorknob, and for a panicked second, you wondered if there was any chance a gator had found a way up through rotten floorboards. The swamp was a stone’s throw from here, after all, and those suckers could get goddamn huge. You could just see the news story now, the local color piece that would get passed around the Internet as a quaint oddity in the right circles: ‘Abandoned Louisiana Funeral Home Infested by 20-Foot Gator, One Person Chomped at Scene.’

“It’s a possum,” you said firmly to yourself. “It’s just going to be a little old possum with a cute little face, that can’t get rabies because they’re the only marsupial in North America. You’ll just be an adult and call animal control. It’ll be fine.”

Talking sense to yourself would have worked if whatever was on the other side didn’t start scrabbling even faster, as if frantic at the mere sound of your voice.

You let go of the doorknob immediately, backing away even though it sounded like it was coming from the far side of the room. Briefly, you debated just calling animal control now and letting them open the door for you. Just in case.

But that wouldn’t be a very good way to ingratiate yourself with a town as small as this — you couldn’t see yourself being considered a reliable funeral director if you were also the person who called emergency services for, like, some baby raccoons. Or rats. Or baby rats.

(…To your credit, this sounded bigger than either of those things, but still.)

No, you were just going to have to be brave about this.

“Okay,” you called softly, talking to god knew what. You weren’t expecting them to talk back, but it still seemed only fair to give them some sort of warning. “I’m coming in now.”

You turned the knob slowly, giving the both of you some precious extra seconds to brace yourselves…

Before finally flinging open the righthand door.

The room was pitch black, and you swiped your flashlight quickly around, looking for the source of the noise before it could lunge or shriek or skitter away —

But only silence and stillness awaited you.

You frowned and stepped cautiously further inside, your footfall clicking slightly on the hardwood floor. You’d heard something. You knew you had.

But the only thing you could see were rows and rows of chairs, their backs standing straight together like neat little tombstones. Your light bounced off each of them in turn as you scanned the room, trying to figure out exactly how big it was and what on earth it could be for.

The bier at the front and center of the room was the last thing illuminated, as if revealing itself to you, and you rolled your eyes at yourself. Of course there was a viewing room in the House. (Well, there was room to quibble on terminology. There’d been a push to call it a ‘slumber room’ for a while, but you felt more comfortable just calling it what it was. No one ever slept in one, unless they were real tired or real weird.)

But still, how could there not be one whatever it was called, if this home had been hosting wakes and services almost since it was built? The sheer number of people who must have had their last day above ground in this room, laid right there in serene repose in their casket —

Well, hmm. Maybe not the best mental path to meander down right now, even for you.

You turned your light around the room more casually now, trying to picture it with working electricity and full of people. It was pretty decently sized, with the same dark paneling as the wall outside, and two tall windows muffled by heavy curtains on either side of the dais. The light in here would be decent, even actually pretty, if it was facing the direction you thought it was—

A bulky shape in the corner made you jump again, and you squeaked even as it reflected back to you from a lacquered black surface.

“…Piano,” you managed, choking a little both from fear and from the dust stirring around you. “Just a goddamn piano.”

Not a small one by any means, also old and apparently well-cared for in its day - like everything else you’d seen in the House so far. You treaded carefully towards that side of the room, checking the floor and between chair legs as you passed each row to make sure there were no hidden visitors after all. The last thing you needed was to end up in the hospital the next town over for a rabies shot series before you’d even bought the place. You couldn’t imagine that would contribute much to your image as a professional, either.

Then again, you thought as you inspected the piano up close, maybe you were being a little hard on these Greymoon folks. Maybe they weren’t as judgmental as you had already secretly decided they were. It would take you a little while to get to know them, just as they would need to get to know you. And besides, you really were going to be new at this. Surely they would be reasonably cut you some slack, especially if the place you were buying already seemed to have… kind of a reputation, if various faces and Bev’s behavior were anything to go by?

You mulled this over, checking the wood for any signs of wear or age, then examined the seat to make sure no critters had burrowed into the cushion for a nest. Weirdly, not only did the piano look almost polished, the seat itself seemed relatively free of dust or wear.

“Gonna have to ask Bev for that cleaning crew’s number,” you muttered, impressed. If parts of this place still looked this good after nineteen years unused, you wondered what miracles they could manage with weekly cleanings of a functioning home. Not to mention, now you’d be able to hire someone for live music at your services, instead of having to pipe everything in over speakers —

The way your light reflected off the piano keys gave you pause.

You couldn’t put your finger on why, at first, staring at the way they seemed to glow at you from the dark. The wooden fallboard being up wouldn’t have surprised you if it didn’t also seem to be… weirdly shiny, almost. Definitely moreso than the rest of the furniture in the room. But how, when this place had been empty for so long?

Your brain processed it before you did, and noted it almost passively: There’s no dust on any of it.

You ignored this voice, leaning forward to look again. There had to be dust. Even if there was a cleaning crew in here every couple of weeks, there should still be some traces of dust simply from sitting in a House this fucking old. Things didn’t just sit and not gather dust, especially when there was no one in here on a daily basis.

When no one had lived here for decades.

But the keys continued to glint back at you, looking as though they’d been touched that very morning. As though you’d even interrupted someone playing when you’d arrived.

You rolled your eyes at how determined you seemed to be to scare yourself, turning to head to the next room that needed examined, until the face made you stop dead in your tracks.

It was a little face, sitting on the music shelf. It was attached to a man made of cloth - a doll, almost.

You stepped closer, both vaguely unnerved and intrigued.

The little guy made of cloth had a cheerful expression, a roughly embroidered smile with wide eyes behind thick black glasses. Brown hair slightly obscured the glasses and the eyes, and the body seemed to be clothed in scrap fabrics from a tailor’s floor - it looked like actual material from a suit had been filched to make the pants, vest, dress shirt, and tie.

He looked so strange in the context of things, it was almost tragi-comical: a blithely smiling little face left in a room that had borne witness to so much sadness. Was he an abandoned toy, left here by some grieving child? A homemade grave offering that had somehow fallen out of the casket during transport? How many goodbyes had the little eyes made of thread seen play out in front of him?

As much as the logical part of you was alarmed by the sight of it here so unexpectedly, your sentimental side couldn’t help but feel a little bad for him, all alone in this big dark room by himself.

You reached out a hand without realizing it, set to pick him up, until you forced yourself to stop.

What were you doing? This wasn’t yours. You hadn’t bought this place, you had no right to any of the things in it.

But he just looked so lonely, you countered to yourself. What was he going to do anyway, just sit here forever, being politely ignored by the cleaning crew? What about if someone else bought it? Would he be thrown away, left to smile forever in some trash heap?

But you didn’t know where he’d been all this time. What if he had little gnats or fleas living inside him by now?

Nothing a little cleaning and a TLC couldn’t fix, though; you’d rescued a fair amount of grody thrift store finds in your mortuary school days. With some scrubbing and some new stitches, he’d be adorable. Like a little funerary mascot, in a way.

“Fuck, can I please stop being weird for once,” you whispered to yourself, your hand falling limply to your side. You had a job to do, goddamn it. This place could be your one chance at establishing a real future for yourself without going into more debt; you didn’t have time to be making a pro/con list about some abandoned scrap doll.

But your fingers flexed as you stared at him, still hesitating.

“…Look,” you said at last, talking to a thing that definitely could not consciously process speech. “If I think this place will work out, I’ll come get you after I sign the paperwork, okay? I’ll give you a good wash and put you somewhere less depressing.”

You started to walk away, then paused again, feeling like you had in the parlor with the family portrait.

Like something was watching you intently.

“…If I don’t buy the place,” you added, under your breath and over your shoulder. “You can always just, like, fall into my bag or something.” You shrugged. “My shitty apartment has sunlight, at least.”

For a moment, you lingered like you actually expected the little thing to answer you.

When you realized this, you hid your face in your palm, embarrassed on your own behalf. “Oh, fuck me, I’m losing my shit and I haven’t even started work yet,” you mumbled.

Rolling your shoulders, you hastily stalked back towards the doorway, wondering if there was a small gas leak in a nearby room somewhere that was making you imagine these things. You’d have to make sure you the whole place inspected top to bottom before you opened, that was for damn sure.

You were so caught up in your own thoughts, you forgot you hadn’t actually identified the source of the scratching sounds.

—

Later, when forced to consider the exact circumstances that would lead you to your fate, you would be forced to admit to yourself that you had kind of skimmed this first inspection of the rest of the House.

In your defense, you were mostly concerned with the parts that could prevent your future funeral home from functioning if they weren’t restorable. There was no point sinking so much of your savings into something that would just end up being a bottomless, money-hungry pit due to repair costs.

So yeah, when you went up the stairs to check things out, your mind was already on the embalming room in the basement. But you weren’t super worried about what was up there, anyway. There was no way you were going to use all of these rooms for just yourself.

They were mostly bedrooms, but none really seemed to speak to any sort of unifying aesthetic. One room with a balcony that overlooked the back property was furnished all in white, from the plush rug, to the vanity chair, to the bedspread, to the heavy old-fashioned canopy curtains that shaded the bed in its own pool of darkness. For reasons inexplicable to you - maybe it was the hush of the footsteps, or the natural chill of no sunlight - it reminded you of a sick person’s room. Like someone would only be in here if they were never coming out. It smelled, oddly, like dried roses — it was so strong, you caught yourself looking around, wondering if a vase had been left in here to putrefy in years of summer heat.

What you found instead was a surprising gash in the wall to the left of the bed, perilously close to the full-length window doors. It was horizontally long, and oddly thin, like whatever had been flung wasn’t actually that large. Still. You ran your fingers curiously over the violent notch, finding the plaster had given way almost entirely.

Whatever had caused this, for being as dimensionally small as it was, would have to have been thrown into the wall with immense force.

In a rage, for instance, or out of soul-crushing frustration.

“…I can patch that,” you muttered, trying to ignore the return of the creeping feeling down your neck. You nodded, rubbing the hole with your thumb thoughtfully as though it could possibly buff out. “Cover over that no problem. Hell, maybe I’ll make it a, um…” You frowned, trying to figure out what else a funeral home could possibly need. “A grieving room.” Some people down in these parts were twitchy about crying in front of others. You had plenty of family members who were a great example of the phenomenon.

But it also just felt like a room that was fit for crying in, for reasons yet again inexplicable.

You tried not to leave the room too quickly, the feeling of intruding in someone’s space once again matting itself like moss over your skin.

You missed the figure in the mirror watching you go.

Another bedroom was an odd, contrasting companion to the first: this one was painted a soft, rosy pink, but you could barely tell under all the papers taped hastily onto the walls, as if someone was desperately trying to cover it up. The room was a mess, but there was too much dust everywhere for it to feel like someone had only recently stepped out.

There was so much dust, actually, it felt like it clung to the soles of your shoes, causing you to pick your feet up with a shudder. Hadn’t Bev sworn they paid a cleaning crew to come through here regularly? Were they only obligated to clean up the first floor? You had sworn the white room hadn’t been this bad…

You blazed a trail through the dust, trying to figure out what set this room apart. There were clothes strewn over every surface, it seemed like, at least a few decades old. Though they were oddly mostly white, with some smatterings of green and black, a part of you felt like you were looking at a wardrobe spread from one of those high school dramas that came on when you were little. You remembered watching them with older girls in your family who were supposed to be babysitting you after school or on weekends, learning a bit too much too quick about how badly sex ed was failing teenagers from the soapy plots and love triangles. You remembered thinking the girls always looked pretty, but by the time you were old enough to wear any of the clothes you saw onscreen, they were out of date — plus, you had your own presentation issues to work out at the time.

Again, you wondered what had happened to make the previous occupants leave everything behind. It was like whatever girl had lived here had walked out of the room and never walked back in again.

You also wondered if you were an awful person for speculating how well some of it would sell on Depop. Vintage was in again, after all.

Walking closer to the walls, your eyes scanned the strange pages carefully, trying to figure out just what the wide sheets of yellowed paper were…

And realized you were looking at an anatomical drawing of the parts of a cat, as laid out during a dissection.

Backing up a step, and not for the first time in this House, your eyes combed the rest of the drawings. To your fascination and mild nausea, all of them seemed to be the same painstakingly detailed diagrams of local fauna - chipmunks, squirrels, doves, lizards - all in the same careful hand with precise linework. You couldn’t help but admire them a little; your own such diagrams in mortuary school had always looked far more clumsy, even when you’d been oh-so-careful with your scalpel.

These must have all taken hours, based on how skillfully they were done. Multiplying them by just how many were on the walls, you wondered if the girl who lived here had been dissecting little animals endlessly, from dawn until well after dusk.

Her bedspread was also pink and frilly, delicate, though you noticed rough edges where she’d been trying to pull the frills off with a seam-ripper. On the shelves surrounding her bed in its little nook, there were tons of large, ominous looking books, ranging from ones you recognized like Gray’s Anatomy to and classic novels to embalming texts that were considered antique and niche even in your school’s library.

And yet, on the shelf above the bed itself, you still saw some well-loved plushies, and a doll with mussed hair that spoke of countless adventures.

…And also, one taxidermy mouse that appeared to be wearing sequins and nipple pasties like a burlesque performer.

Whoever she had been, the contrast between her and her bedroom spoke volumes, even now.

Your mind returned to the angry-looking girl in the portrait downstairs, and you couldn’t help but nod to yourself. “Makes sense,” you whispered.

It also explained why the cleaning crew didn’t seem to frequent here as much. If the diagrams had been a surprise to you, who worked with dead people, you imagined they were deeply uncomfortable to people who stayed solely within the realm of the living.

There was a bathroom that adjoined this room, small and simple in its white porcelain tile. It was immaculate, too, as if the aforementioned crew paid extra attention to this room to make up for avoiding the girl’s room next door. You were a little relieved to see there weren’t as many traces of the previous residents here — any grooming products seemed to have been carefully cleared away, as if in anticipation of a visitor. Maybe some things were a little too intimate to leave staged, you guessed. Especially if the House is already a source of gossip.

As you turned to go, you paused, noting what appeared to be a thin white ring of something grainy around the edges of the room. You’d only just missed disturbing it with your foot as you’d walked in. Maybe it was pest poison? Something to keep curious critters away? You’d lived places where people fended off scorpions with lavender, after all. You handwaved it — it wasn’t your problem yet.

When you tried to open the door to the next bedroom, though, you found it locked from the inside.

You blinked, puzzled. That was… weird, even for here. You couldn’t imagine what would need to be locked in here that hadn’t required a lock on the girl’s room. Even though the cleaners didn’t go in there, they still obviously could.

So what was different here?

You walked back into the bathroom again - careful to avoid stepping in the coarse border, whatever it was - and tried the door that connected there as well. Again, it was also locked from the inside.

Letting go of the doorknob abruptly, an irrational part of you wondered if you were disturbing whoever was in there.

For a moment, you actually listened for impatient footsteps marching towards you.

…And then you remembered where you were, and how long it had been since anyone lived here, and shook your head.

“Bev has keys,” you said dismissively, leaving the bathroom once again. This also wasn’t your problem yet, after all.

But you still stepped over the ring of whatever the white stuff was.

The last bedroom on the floor was unlocked, and still had stickers on the door. You counted bands you recognized from the mid-eighties to early nineties, including a vintage Selena one placed with apparent love at an eye level slightly higher than yours.

Walking in, you didn’t think anything about the paint, because every available inch of the walls was covered in photographs.

It gave you pause for a minute, overwhelming you slightly just as the anatomical diagrams had in the last room. They were in every format available back then, some of them obviously altered, some of them clearly fading with time in their untouched state.

You walked closer, picking out a few of the faces instantly - you recognized the boy and girl from the family portrait downstairs, looking much more lively here than they did there. Their mother, whenever she appeared, seemed to command a stiffness in the room - everyone was clearly posing when she was around, locked in place rather than living a genuine moment.Their father was also in a few of the photos, always sitting or leaning off to the side, as if he was above most of what was happening in the room.

When you first saw his double in a photo, you wondered if maybe it was some kind of weird exposure trick… until you realized there was indeed another man almost identical to him. It wasn’t hard to tell them apart after a few photos: his hair long and soft around his face rather than slicked back, and only ever seemed to go back in a ponytail on a rare occasion. His face was similarly softer, with deeper laugh lines. Where Vincent’s face seemed to perpetually scowl or sneer, the other man’s seemed like it was impossible for him to do so.

Especially when he was looking at a beautiful woman with long, warm brown hair, seemingly always dressed in dark blouses and dresses that gave you serious Stevie Nicks vibes, with eyes that were so deep and galaxy-holding black that you thought you’d fall into them. She could’ve been a model, or someone’s muse, but she held herself so much less stiffly than the first woman. Like she actually liked being alive.

The photographer seemed to have almost as many photos of these two as he did of the twins from downstairs, and they were almost always gazing at one another, or in the midst of laughter, or caught in a dance. When they were actually looking at the camera, you couldn’t help but notice the way latent pride set at the corners of their mouths, or in the way their eyes crinkled in a smile.

You were so busy following the photos along the wall, you about tripped over something draped in a sheet leaned up against an empty desk.

You caught yourself before you crashed down onto the rug (still less dusty than the one in the girl’s room), and looked around for a moment before you remembered you were supposed to be up here alone.

With a tired sigh, you grabbed the sheet, pulling it carefully off what turned out to be a matching frame to the one downstairs —

Where a second family stood around the same chair as the people in the parlor.

The beautiful woman with the dark eyes was the one seated, her chin coyly leaning in her palm as she smiled knowingly at the camera. Behind her, the man with long hair was wearing a mirror of the first brother’s suit, although it seemed less harshly tailored in the way it hung on him. One of his hands rested adoringly on her shoulder, while the other clapped the shoulder of a teenage boy you hadn’t seen yet.

He was slightly older than the twins downstairs, with his mother’s dark hair and eyes, and a softness to his features you recognized as his father’s. Rather than being dressed in a matching suit, he was in a dark purple dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up around his elbows. Around his neck was a medallion of some sort that you couldn’t quite make out, but was seemingly simple in its metalwork.

His hand was lovingly placed on his mother’s other shoulder, completing the connection between the three.

You stared, tilting your head slightly to the side as if that would help you understand better.

It was understandable why this portrait wasn’t hung next to the other one downstairs: compared to this family, the first family looked like they were all on strings pulled taut to the point of snapping.

Despite having never met them, you were willing to bet the first man wasn’t about to be shown up by his brother’s family looking like they actually loved each other. He seemed like the type.

But something else caught your eye, too — a fourth figure, looming just beyond the family in a background doorway.

You leaned closer, frowning. Why was this one so hard to make out, if the lighting was the same in both pictures? It looked almost… opaque, somehow. Like it had been entirely engulfed in its own shadow. Like the features had been blurred away in the exposure.

If it had any features to begin with, something in you pointed out.

You stepped back, not super sure where this thought had come from and not thrilled by it, either.

Looking away (for some lighter distraction), your eyes roamed over the other photos again. It was easier to pick people out, now, and you could even spot some photos where the photographer had let himself be captured—

Until you also spotted shadowy figures in photos you hadn’t noticed before.

Some were looming behind the teens, usually whenever the photographer was also in the photo.

Some were in photos that you had originally thought were still-life, revealing themselves usually in a space where you wouldn’t expect them.

When you started seeing photos of the viewing room, set up for different services, you turned back towards the door. Whatever else was in here, you’d seen enough.

You shut the door behind you as if to keep something contained there.

A final room seemed to take up most of the space of the floor, big and airy, with high windows for catching the light outside. It was huge, behind two sliding wood doors, but when you looked inside, you didn’t bother cataloguing everything you saw on different work benches and tables and such.

If anything, you were almost trying to convince yourself it was empty.

A quick run up the second set of stairs led you to some linen closets, another bathroom that seemed… fine, mostly, save for some weird feeling you couldn’t put your finger on, and an attic hatch at the end of the hallway you couldn’t be fucking bothered with right now.

When you found the master bedroom, you opened it long enough to look around and make sure it actually had been cleaned.

“Cool,” you said to no one, thankful for a seemingly ordinary staged bedroom with no defining oddities. “I’ll sleep here, I guess.”

And with that, you nearly slammed the door, running all the way back down to the safety of the first floor.

—

After a quick peek through the screen door to make sure Bev hadn’t drove off and left you (she hadn’t), you walked to the family room back off the parlor, separated by another set of doors.

This had also clearly been cleaned and staged, throw blankets neatly folded over the couch and loveseat, pillows puffed probably just this morning in the arm chair.

Peeking into the kitchen, you got a similarly pleasant, ordinary vibe. While you could see there was more counter space here than most - probably to hold any food the families had catered for their wakes and such - it still seemed almost entirely separate from the rest of the House, the sun pleasant in the windows that looked out over the—

Cemetery. The next door cemetery.

Okay, so it wasn’t completely separate from the House. But at least it was like, comfortable. Chill. You could imagine yourself unwinding in here after a long day with some food, reading a book in the fading sunlight with a glass of wine. The porch just outside looked pleasant too, provided it didn’t have any looming hornets’ nests you couldn’t see yet.

Turning to the back of the kitchen, you saw one door that led outside to the enlarged pavement for transport — handy, you figured, especially when you came home with groceries.

Aside from all the bodies that needed to come and go, of course.

Immediately adjacent to that was another door. The door you’d likely been thinking about this whole time, behind which was the room that would make or break your entire trek to this tiny town near the bayou.

Just wanting to get it over with at this point - if it wasn’t for you, you were ready to get out of here - you near-marched over to it, twisting the knob and opening it to pure darkness all in one fluid movement.

The downstairs chill was palpable. More than palpable — it set your skin off in goosebumps instantly, as if to spite another growing crescendo of cicadas outside.

You were an adult. You were an adult about to make a serious financial decision. You could brave a basement in a decidedly spooky House.

You had to do this, for the good of yourself, and future you, and any kind of good life you ever hoped to have.

Taking a deep breath and flicking your maglite back on, you descended before you could think too much more about it.

—

In an inversion that would have been unexpected for anyone who wasn’t you, the prep room felt the most familiar to you of anywhere in the House. Even in the dark.

But as your light moved over the gleaming surfaces, a weird peace settled over you. This was what you knew. This was what you were here for.

You fought to suppress the thrill that passed through you as the stainless steel flashed back from the depths of the room, refusing to believe it wasn’t a trick of the gloom until you were right next to the equipment yourself.

It was perfect. It was all perfect.

For being unused for nineteen years, it looked like someone could have walked in yesterday and had everything in the room singing. There was a miraculous lack of rust or grime anywhere your light brushed, and while the room was a tad musty, there was none of the disastrous miasma of rot and ruin that you’d anticipated. Hell, even the tile floor gleamed back at you from the dark, and your footsteps echoed without the muffling of dust. Even the embalming machine, admittedly a bit old-fashioned now, looked perfectly clear where it sat like it was ready for a fresh batch of fluid.

You really, really needed to get the number for the real estate agency’s cleaning crew, you thought to yourself, sweeping your light around further and finding nary a cobweb in any of the corners. This was unreal. It was like someone had scrubbed it down sparkling just the other day, mop and all.

For the first time in your self-guided tour, you felt yourself grinning from ear to ear.

You could afford and own your own funeral home. You wouldn’t go into crazy debt trying to rehabilitate the place, and you could move out on your own to start your own business. Hell, at the asking price, you could afford more than just the Frigid embalming machine you’d been wanting. You might even be able to redo the whole viewing room just for the sake of aesthetics.

For the first time in what must have been ages - if ever - laughter bounced off the cold steel as your joy bubbled over, allowing yourself a giddy hop in place at your sheer goddamn good luck. When had anything ever worked out this well for you?

You didn’t see or feel the eyes watching you from behind the crack of the office door.

If you had, you might have noticed how they seemed to gaze without blinking for ages, wide with a perplexed sort of shock.

Or that they seemed to glow red, even in the perfect pitch black of the room.

(It's a little later than I would have liked to have posted, and originally I was planning on having the Realtor's reaction as part of the chapter, but you know what? I'm trying to convince myself that not everything I post has to be over 10k, for whatever weird made-up rule I've set for myself, so this is an exercise in that.

If you've read this far, I hope you have someone who looks at you like a stranger in a basement looks at the Reader!!)

#maxi morvant #maximilian vincent morvant #morvant mortuary #southern slasher oc #slasher oc #necromancer oc #slasher oc x reader #maxi morvant x reader #maxi morvant x you #non-binary reader #genderqueer reader #mortician reader #the boy au #monsterkisser fics #rora isn't in this yet but it's part of the twins' birthday celebration <3 #animal death mention tw #cat death mention tw #ask to tag

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morvantmortuary · 10 months

Text

if I die young —

(Maxi Morvant x genderqueer!non-binary!Reader)

summary: what’s supposed to be a fun little in-joke between you and your boyfriend turns out to be a whole lot of something else.

warnings: brief discussion of past suicidal ideation on both your parts, some mild angst, semi-songfic to cheesy pop music.

general: ‘rae isn’t it like 3 am your time’ I know I know but listen. like!!! I didn’t even mean for this to occur, I just happened to see this on spotify and thought “oh lol I remember I gave Maxi like an irrational hatred of the original song, this is gonna be hilarious”

and then suddenly I’m hormonal and sobbing on my cat and thinking about how happy I am my high school self didn’t go through with it and how I wish I could tell them everything wonderful about right now, bc I love my life more than I ever have and all of the people here I’m lucky enough to have in it, but I can’t, so I wrote this instead okay?

okay! one full serving of schmaltz, here we go

You were moving so fast through the living room and the kitchen that you almost didn’t feel the familiar little bids for your attention all around you - the whispered pleas, the feeling of a cold bony finger tracing the back of your bare leg. You shrugged them off, getting halfway down the first set of basement stairs before you stopped just in time.

You scrambled back up a few, hitting the button wired into the wall that would ring the little silver bell in the prep room. This was meant, after too many close calls, to let Maxi (or any other Morvants lurking below) that you needed attention in some fashion. He in turn would let you know if it was safe for you to come down without you accidentally walking in on some poor late guest in a state of mid-embalming -

Or… something worse, as was wont occasionally happen here.

Your feet shuffled on the step as you listened, impatient even as you held your breath to try to hear any low chanting or ominous hissing.

“That you, baby?” Maxi called, his voice very much singular and regular. He sounded further back, possibly in the supply room, possibly in the office.

“Yeah!” you called back. You paused, taking stock of exactly why you were waiting with your phone in your hand. “It’s not urgent, really, if you’re busy, I just wanted to bug you with a… curiosity, I guess.”

“Well, how mysterious.” You watched him lean in at the bottom of the stairs from the embalming room door, sleeves rolled up as he wiped his hands on a dark cloth. “Consider mine piqued.”

“I’m not interrupting?” You nodded at the rag.

He shook his head, his crooked smile appearing. “No one needs attendin’ to yet, this was just cleanin’. I’m all yours.”

“Perfect. Okay, so.” You took the rest of the steps in a flurry while you looked down at your phone, pulling up your music app. “You won’t believe it.”

“You scare me when you do that, you know,” Maxi said idly, gesturing for you to enter the prep room ahead of him. “I don’t mean to sound old, but you could always get down the stairs first and then type—“

“You’re so sexy when you worry about the statistics of household accidents,” you joked, glancing up at him with a wry smile. “Anyway, just hear me out on this one. Are your speakers down here bluetooth?”

He had told you early on about his penchant for listening to music while he embalmed, if he was working with a Guest of Honor that wasn’t feeling too chatty. Apparently, when the two of you had started dating (and he was learning everything about you he could find by scouring your socials), he’d first heard a great deal of your favorites down here in the company of multiple decedents.

“Always a promisin’ start to a conversation,” Maxi said dryly, leaning his lower back against the right embalming table. “And yeah. They should be labeled.”

You scanned the menu that popped up when you tried to sync. “Are they ‘Music for dead people’?”

“Naturally.” His crooked smile grew into a grin.

“…And do they ever get to pick?” You looked up, unable to help a grin of your own creeping across your face at the thought. “Or is it always just you making them listen to your stuff?”

“Hey, sometimes it’s your stuff,” he joked. “And no, for the record, I’ve had some make requests. It’s not uncommon.”

You paused, suddenly immensely curious as to the music taste of the newly dead. “…Okay, so that’s a whole conversation I want to have later,” you said, trying to stay focused. “But the thing I came down here for, also very important: what’s your least favorite song in the world, bar none?”

Maxi’s grin thinned. “You know that. I know you know that.” He looked at you over the rims of his glasses, briefly somewhat owlish. “Dare I ask why you led with such a question?”

“I said you’re going to have to hear me out, didn’t I?” You wiggled your eyebrows to invoke an air of mystery.

“You know, Darlin’, you’re makin’ this a very hard sell, whatever it is,” he said, looking amused nonetheless.

“Get this.” You held up a hand for a dramatic pause. “She wrote a part two.”

Maxi immediately scoffed. “How the hell do you write a part two to ‘If I Die Young’? She was already dead in the first one!” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “I swear t’ god, if this means I have to listen a whole new wave of maudlin bullshit every time we get some poor young lady in here—“

“There’s only one way to find out.” You held up your phone, your finger hovering over the play button. “Shall we?”

Maxi paused, then looked you over slowly as he folded his arms across his chest. “Are you tellin’ me you ran all the way down here to make me listen to the continuation of my least favorite song ever with you, for your own sick and twisted amusement?”

“Of course.” You couldn’t help laugh as he fixed you with a playfully judgmental stare. “Who else would I share this masterpiece with for the first time?”

Maxi put a hand to his heart. “Lord, it must be true love.”

“I’m not hearing a ‘no’?” you teased.

He sighed theatrically. “Fine.” He pulled you over so you were leaning next to him against the embalming table, looking over your shoulder at your phone. “Let’s see what new terror the lady hath unleashed upon my poor funeral home.”

“She’s already put it out just under her name, not the whole band,” you said, pointing to the artist info. “I wonder if that means they didn’t like it?”

“There’s some story there, I’m sure,” he said idly. “Anyway. Get it over with.”

“You love me,” you reminded him, grinning as you hit the button.

“I do,” he muttered, over the opening strings.

The two of you held eye contact through the first bars, as if daring each other to be the first person to laugh —

And then as it picked up, something imperceptibly began to shift.

“And Lord I’m glad you didn’t

Pay me no attention

When I sent up a prayer of a child’s premonition —“

You were the first to look away, your face suddenly hot.

This wasn’t… what you expected it to be. At all.

“‘Cause I’ve had time to bloom

Plantin’ them roses instead

and I’m changin’ my tune —“

Your face was hot for reasons you couldn’t quite explain.

After a moment, processing what you were hearing, you caught yourself doing some mental math.

You had been young yourself, when the original song first came out. In what felt like another life, you’d sung along when it was on the radio: sometimes at a party with your friends in the ironic feeling of youthful invincibility, or in your car with a sour cast to the chorus as you headed to a job you thought you’d chosen poorly. Hell, on the really bad nights, you’d let yourself cry along to the sappy little tune when it really did feel like it would be better if you didn’t stick around.

Like the best use of your potential was to die young enough to still pass for pretty, with your whole life still in front of you, so you could be remembered for your everything you could have been -

Rather than everything you would eventually fail to be.

“Now I know that there’s no

Such thing as enough time —“

You were aware of the heat spreading over your eyes in a watery film. You held your breath, doing your best not to show that what you’d thought would be a weird funny thing to jokingly bug your partner with was… actually getting to you?

But suddenly you were too conscious of just how you’d changed between the last song and this one. How you couldn’t remember the last time you’d felt totally, inescapably lost, when you spent so long thinking that was all you’d ever feel.

How you’d fallen in love with someone who wanted to share a life and a death with you after so long alone, and built a home with them you were proud of.

“I’ll pass my name on before it’s on my headstone —“

Cold fingers abruptly intertwined with yours, clutching your hand tightly.

Oh. So it wasn’t just you, then.

You heard the soft tap of Maxi’s finger on your touchscreen before he stood up fully, pulling you with him towards a more open part of the floor.

You hid your face in his waistcoat, trying not to let on just what you were going through on your end, but what you’d thought was a hug turned into more of… something with rocking.

Eventually, when you realized what he was doing, you couldn’t help a watery chuckle.

“I thought we agreed we weren’t the kind to dance,” you mumbled, not quite able to meet his eyes yet. You wanted a bit more of a handle on your composure, first. Or any handle on it at all. “Especially after the Masquerade.”

“Hell, this ain’t dancin’,” Maxi mumbled back, and from the way he kept his lips against your hair, you could tell he was maybe trying to get a grip too. “This is more… swayin’. To a beat. Anyone can do that. We can do that, right?”

You smiled despite yourself. “Sure.”

Stretching up, you wrapped your arms around his neck as he hugged your back, resting your foreheads against one another’s.

For a minute, it was just the cheesy little song on the speakers, and your hearts beating through your chests.

“And I’m so glad I’m here now

Instead of somewhere underground

I think I’ll always wanna stay

I guess it’s too late anyway

to die young —“

You were aware, in the periphery, of the song starting over - meaning Maxi must’ve set it to loop when he reached over to your phone. A soft smirk curled your lips before you realized it, and you instinctively searched for his eyes.

Your chest ached when you found them just as watery as yours, still somehow surprised by this. He managed a wavering fraction of his own smile, rolling his eyes at his tears. “Fine, you got me. You happy?” he joked. “Is this what you wanted? Makin’ me cry in the middle of a work day?”

You laughed, feeling your own tears break the waterline as you did so. “I didn’t mean to, I swear! I thought it was…” You trailed off, your throat trapping your words in the swell of your own feelings.

Maxi pressed his forehead back to yours. “I know.” He reached up with a fingertip, chasing away the tracks down your cheeks. “I know, Darlin’.”

You hugged his neck as hard as you could without hurting him, trying to get the words out.

“…I’m so glad I stayed.” Your voice cracked on the last word, reducing you to a whisper. “I didn’t want to for a long time, when I was younger.” You shook your head without being totally aware of it. “I didn’t think I would make it anywhere close to right now. But I’m so glad I stayed long enough for… all of this.” You gestured around at the prep room, feeling not even a little strange as you did so. “For you. For us.”

“Well, aren’t we a pair?” Maxi’s mouth couldn’t stay steady when he looked at you, so he rested his cheek on top of your head instead. For a long moment, you were lost in his scent, in the warmth of him and the solidity of his embrace before he spoke again.

“I hated who I was for… so long, sugar. What I had to be. I didn’t care if I stuck around. Hell, half the time, I think I was just lookin’ for somethin’ meaner to put me down so hard that it wouldn’t be worth tryin’ to bring me back. Tryin’ to be somethin’, someone… anyone else — it was the hardest thing I ever did. Whatever good I managed, I never thought it was enough. I kept waitin’ for it to all fall apart in front of me.” You felt the faintest trickle of something warm and wet into your hair. “But you make me so glad I tried anyway,” he whispered. “I thank whatever’s listenin’ every day that I didn’t get what I thought I wanted.”

You pushed down hard on the little sob trying to kick its way out of your chest. “I don’t care what you were,” you said, never tiring of repeating this to him. “So long as I get what you are, and what you will be.”

Maxi kissed the top of your head. “You got me,” he said softly. “And you will, always. I can promise you that.”

You leaned up, pressing a kiss to his cheek and coming away with the taste of salt on your lips. “…Well,” you said, managing to get your voice back to mostly normal. “Sorry I kind of came in and, uh, tanked your productive streak.”

Maxi chuckled low in his throat as he kissed your cheek in turn - where you swear you felt the smallest touch of his tongue, the weirdo. “Don’t worry about it, pretty,” he said, smiling as you laughed. “I got all the time in the world for you.”

So for a little more of that time, the two of you just danced.

Neither of you would admit just how much you liked this stupid song. Not for a good long while, anyway.

if you read this far, as always, thank you for humoring me 🖤 everything feels kind of impossible rn and I have family staying over which triples that feeling, so I just needed something soft :’D

if you want to have a listen for yourself, it probably won’t hit as hard as it did for me while I was PMSing in the wee hours, but feel free!

#maxi morvant #maximilian vincent morvant #maxi morvant x reader #maxi morvant x you #slasher oc #slasher oc x you #slasher oc x reader #southern slasher oc #necromancer oc #mortician oc #morvant mortuary #genderqueer reader #non-binary reader #plus size reader #fat reader #daniel brühl fc #monsterkisser fics #scheduling this for sane people hours instead of posting it right tf now #forgive the spacing if it’s weird; I’m working in mobile rn

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morvantmortuary · 1 year

Note

Heyy, I just wanted to ask you this question because it’s been bothering me for a long time. Do you think the Morvants would love still love their reader if they were ugly? I know that ugly is a word that is thrown around a lot but I mean it. Someone who is not conventionally attractive at all, who is not the desired version of plus size. Someone who has a big tummy, big thighs but not a round ass. Someone who is fat not thick. Someone who is not wanted by anyone. Would the Morvants still love them? Someone like me? I’m sorry if this is depressing I just can’t get out of my head and I hate the thought of my comfort people not loving me. Either way thank you for bringing them to life and letting us read about them ❤️❤️

I'm sorry this took me so long, sweetheart -- I've been caught between coordinating ongoing events at work with a whole learning curve, dissertation prep, and then a migraine swept my feet out from under me this morning, so I've just been trying to get my shit back together lmao. but I've been thinking about it since you sent it in. <3 I almost wanted to save this to be part of something I'm going to try to do coming up, (*knocking loudly on wood*), but I didn't want to leave you hanging.

short answer first to alleviate any anxiety: yes, absolutely, 100% without a doubt. once you're their person, you are their person, and nothing will change that -- not aging, or weight shifting, or any of the things that come with having a body and being mortal, okay?

I'll put the rest under a cut, because you got me talking a little on something I'm kind of sensitive about too <3

allow me a quick digression: from a doylist perspective, I'm writing the Morvants as someone who's definitely also on the curved stomach/big thighs/plush upper arms/saggy boobs side of things, along with some really frustrating skin that's prone to breakouts at the drop of a hat and other things about myself that lowkey stress me out on the daily. and we are just as worthy of love and desire and affection as anyone else, I promise you. <3 you do not have to be society's idea of beautiful to be worthy of love, or to be a good person. I'm sure you already know this, but I'm repeating it specifically just so you hear it, okay?

"ugly" is entirely subjective -- I'm also someone who isn't conventionally attractive, shall we say -- but I know we are our own meanest critics. I won't fight you on the word if it's one you've embraced, as I know everyone has a different relationship with it, but I will say I bet you're not giving yourself enough credit, honey. people do not have to be conventionally pretty to be worthy of love or a good life, I cannot emphasize that enough. we both deserve that, and we’re gonna get it, goddammit.

and you know something else? conventionally pretty changes every couple decades, and imho usually kind of sucks anyway. I think of being "ugly" as being memorable, distinct. we will never be duplicated, or in danger of looking like everyone else in our time. we're both a manifestation of history's crooked smiles and crows' feet and noses in interesting shapes. that's the kind of shit artists would want to sketch, baby, that's the fun part of being alive.

and circling back to that shifting standards bit -- I promise you there's a lot more classical statues that look like you and me than a lot of what you see on the image/video-dependent apps nowadays, okay? don't forget that. we've been the models for divinity for centuries now, as hard as it is to remember when the waistband of your jeans leaves a mark behind when you take them off like a regular mortal.

plus, there's the old saying about how your features are actually proof that people have loved people who looked like you for generations now. or the myth that your face was actually the face of the person you loved the most in your last life. on the days I'm feeling exceptionally self-critical, I find that one helps: that I've been left with the stewardship of the face of the person I adored more than anything, who meant so much to me in another lifetime that I might not still remember their name, or the sound of their laugh, but they imprinted onto me still, and I owe it to them to take care of it even if I can't bring myself to do it for me.

('rae you're delusional.' I might be. but here we are at the romantic necromancer blog, so it had to come from somewhere!!)

but anyway, you're not here for all that, you're here for the necromancers, so I'll get to those. thanks for humoring me, though ;3 and I hope it helped at least a little, maybe!

If you remember from the October Arc, a lot of Maxi and his Reader falling in love are them finding someone who feels just as out-of-place in the world as they do. When he meets you, he relishes the idea that he finally has someone he can be completely open with — not having to hide his dark sense of humor for the sake of propriety, someone who won’t think he’s weird or gross for being as fascinated by death and the horrible, beautiful parts of it as he is in his position. (A lot of morticians he knows will quickly say they’re not a morbid weirdo obsessed with death, just a normal person who does a job — he is definitely the aforementioned weirdo they’d like to distance themselves from. Who wouldn’t be, with his upbringing?) When he first falls for you, it’s because he’s realizing that after a lifetime of thinking he could only ever be alone (both due to his powers and his particular grimly sunny disposition), there was finally, really, someone who understood. Someone who doesn’t shy away from him in his more vicious turns, who isn’t going to pull back at the last minute when they see beneath the suit and the calmly professional exterior he shows to the rest of the town. It’s exhilarating. He never wants to lose that, and he’d do anything to keep you — to keep you his, and to keep you whole, healthy, and happy. He’s in love first and foremost with the person he knows to be his literal soulmate, the person he trusts with his heart after so long, and your body is precious to him because it keeps you both on the mortal plane. However you choose to adorn it, ornament it, or whatever designs are written into your genetics, it’s something he’s going to adore. But even outside of that — he would love you in any form you took, any change you decided to make, because it’s you. It’s always going to be you, and you’re his. And if he’s being totally honest, he hand to god has a thing for bigger people. It’s partly due to his specialization with flesh, compared to Rora’s bone and Hex’s ectoplasm, but also because he just finds it really, really attractive when someone has some extra pounds. He’s spent a lifetime around bodies that offered no comfort - be it very little warmth or affection from his living family, the cooling bodies of the mortuary in various states of decay, or the warped, broken horrors of the things still half-alive in the basement. His own body has been a source of stress (being lanky and soft in places at the same time all his life), of pain (growing up is hard enough, growing into a body that shapes itself to the needs of a demon doesn’t help), or of bitterness on his part (we’re going to learn more about why he re-opened the scar on his chest at some point). Your body, for whatever flaws you find with it, is something he associates completely with sweetness. He finds comfort in its shape, the way it moves, the way it feels under his hands. You’re entirely alive; your body works to keep you so. It’s a creature dedicated to keeping you here with him, so how could he not be devoted to it? He’s fascinated by all the parts of yourself you’re most concerned about, because it not only makes you something one of a kind (something he thinks of as his and his alone, in his darker, more possessive moments), but he’s also terribly taken with the softer parts of you. In your more intimate moments, he relishes the contrast between the pair of you - you’re unmistakably there, you take up space and ground him with the reality of your presence. (He gets a little carried away being clingy sometimes: whether it’s his hands over every inch of skin he can touch, squeezing the flesh he so adores, biting a little too eagerly at the softest parts of you where you’ll feel the marks later and remember him. Especially your thighs. He’s a thigh man at heart, always.) You’re always his darling, and he looks forward to watching you grow into your old age with him, however you change. Change means life, and he wants to linger on this side of the Veil with you as long as both of you possibly can stay. Watching you gain wrinkles, go gray, your weight shift around — it’s a privilege, and he treats it as such. You’ll have forever on the other side, he knows that. He’s not worried about that. It’s that the two of you can only do this part once, and he wants to make sure you enjoy it as much as possible. Until both your bones are in the family crypt, or ashes are mingled in the same secret place, he’ll love you and whatever your body looks like.

Hex doesn’t love in half-measures. When he’s into you, he’s all in. As we’ll see in his arc, he can’t always put his finger on what initially draws him to someone. But usually, he saw something in the most interior parts of yourself, your very soul’s essence, first. A glimmer of it caught his eye somehow — its color, its light, some facet of you that’s sewn through the entire fabric of your being. Whatever the sign was, he would follow it until he found you… And when he found you, saw you for the first time, your looks would be a matter of interest, certainly. But he wouldn’t be searching you for any kind of lack. He has no mental version of you to compare the real you with, no expectations. Your body is you, through and through, but what you are only complements what he’s already seen. He’s only looking at you to see the things he already knows he’s going to fall in love with. He sees your body as the backdrop onto which your Self is projected. (He would love Judith Butler if he read them ever lmao.) He’s fascinated with the little ways you manifest in your physicality: your geometry of your teeth, and how they’re arranged in your smile; how light plays on the fullness of your face; the precise way your belly moves when you laugh. The way you dress, walk, what you do with your hands when you talk. The way you move through the world is pageantry to him when it’s instinct to you. It’s something to be savored, because it only happens once. Hex knows what it’s like to be shy about certain things; he’s never been very confident in words alone, because people can say anything, only their actions will speak true. But looks, to him, are part of the factual, real world he can see. (Ironically, he’s one of those guys who very much believes in what he sees in front of him — he can just see way, way more than most people can.) You can make changes, or stay exactly as you are, and he will automatically accept that as part of the truth that is You. He also knows what it’s like to not be the blueprint that everyone else wants to look like, but he feels like there’s no point in stressing about that. Does your body bring you comfort when you sleep next to him, or when you eat the food he makes for you? Do you feel happy and free when you dance together? Do you like it when he touches you (there, and there, and…)? If the answer to all of these is yes, he figures, then why worry when you don’t have to? That’s easier said than done, though, he knows. But he will remind you, in a thousand ways, how he loves you for exactly how you look now. Your shape is the shape you were always going to come into his life with, he sees no reason to think about you in another. Your hair was always going to look that way in the light, your eyes were always going to be that color. Why would he ask one of the ancient oak trees outside to change the arrangement of its branches? Why would he ask the sun to be a different color when it sets? You are just as constant as that, to him. You don’t have to be beautiful by everyone else’s standards to be a force of nature that shapes his days. Whenever you cut your hair or switch your clothes or anything else, it’s just like the golden or blue hours to him — something he counts himself lucky to witness. Of the trio, he’s the ass guy, sure, but that means he’s smitten with what’s there. You are most attractive to him when you’re happy, and he only wants to make you happier when he holds you, and shows you exactly how you make him feel, with his hands or his lips or his tongue or— even, yes, the inconstancy of words. He doesn’t want you to think about how you look when the two of you are together, he only wants you to think about how you feel, and how good he feels with you. But he will do his best, always, to make you understand how much he loves your mortal self and everything it encompasses, until the pair of you cross through the Veil and shed your corporeal forms. (He can kind of do that now, tbh, and he’s more than happy to put it to use in some… very interesting ways if you’d be down with it.)

Rora makes it no secret that she loves that you’re not just another doll in a world that demands them. She has a hard, angry relationship with the idea of beauty standards in that she wishes she could set all phone cameras on fire at the same time. She thinks the modern world is mad for what it did to itself, how people have just made it that much harder for everyone to just exist, and it was already hard enough before she accidentally opened her own throat. She is indeed lovely in a nightshade kind of way, and she will acknowledge this when you both are sharing hard feelings, but the idea of beauty and desirability caused her nothing but pain when she was young. She’s a lot like you in the sense that she only sees what she’s missing: she was never the blonde, buxom type. She was never the southern belle that her parents had hoped for, or the perfectly feminine little mini-me that Mathilde had dreamed of for decades (and made no effort to hide her disappointment when Rora didn’t turn into that girl overnight). She wasn’t pretty in the right way her father needed to see her as an effective bargaining chip. She spent her entire first life feeling like she was made all wrong for what was expected of her. She has a loose relationship at times with her own gender, both because she’s doing things again in a borrowed mortal shell, and because she feels at times more like a creature than anything else. But she loves you. She loved you from the minute she first saw you — she loved your skin with any marks that might be there, the particular set of your mouth under your nose, the parts of you that move whenever you aren’t thinking about them. From your hair follicles to your fingernail beds, you were something she found wholly lovely in just how singular you are. You are the only version of you she’s ever seen. You are a rarity. Even in the most common parts of yourself, they’re a combination she hasn’t seen on anyone else her entire life. You look real to her. You look whole, and alive, and like a person who is allowed to just be. You move through the world as yourself, one of a kind, and there’s a part of her that, even now that she’s gained her independence, desperately envies that. Rora’s love is the kind of obsessive where she almost wants to set you on a stool like an artist’s model and study you up close. She wants to make notes about the places where your skin changes color, she wants to look at how your flesh settles into itself. You got folds, or rolls? She wants to get as close to them as she can, look at them like how soft-serve ice cream swirls into itself or a nautilus shell curls around. She wants to look at every bruise or old scar or stretch mark and take in the patterns of your life that has written yourself there. She wants to look at you naked like you would count the rings of a tree to see what the weather was like each year of its life, or like a big cat lounging in the sun. You are just as wild to her, and natural, and beautiful. …And then she wants to throw aside her notebook where she’s cataloguing every piece of you and eat you alive, but just in the fun way. Rora is the boob person of the three, and she is obsessed with yours if you have them/like people touching them. It doesn’t matter what size they are, if they sag, where your nipples point, she’s going to spend an absurd amount of time with her face in them whenever you’re shirtless. She’s just as bad about getting overexcited as her twin, and might bite or suck a little too hard at times, but she’s just enchanted by you. You are the earth itself made manifest to enjoy the sunshine and the breeze in the garden, and you have given her the supreme gift of deciding you like her too. She couldn’t not be in love with you if she tried. She understands our relationships with our bodies are complicated, but she is always on your side. She’d blind the entire town with a butter knife if it meant you felt more comfortable just sitting in the cafe with her. But she understands that the prison time for that is pretty hefty, so she’ll settle for refusing to let you talk bad about yourself.

I know this took a minute, and I’m sorry again love, but I hope it gives you what you needed. <3 Just know that I’m right there with you, but I would still rather us look like you and me than anyone else. Fuck the people trying to sell us something, we’re marvels as we are.

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morvantmortuary · 1 year

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12, 56, or 67 for the ask prompts - whichever of these you find most inspired by for our Maxi 🖤

12: "I'll love you til my breathing stops"

56: "I am not myself anymore, I'm yours"

67: "You're so perfect, why do you want me?"

hi bee! :’D sorry I’m an idiot! 🖤

I’ll be honest, this one is definitely more… personal than I intended. I started writing it when I was really Going Through It w/r/t some depression stuff, a minor existential crisis where I wondered if it was worth staying in my program, dealing with the fact that my closest friends were also going through it and nothing I said seemed to help, just a whole slew of stuff that left me feeling rock bottom.

another part of it, I think, is that I have this weird thing where even though these were yandere prompts, I just… had this thing where I couldn’t just write the Reader hearing them? like, I thought for even someone like Maxi, who worships the ground his reader walks on, to out and say some of these things, I had to like - justify them somehow. Like I couldn’t hear them unless I was emotionally bleeding out, almost. maybe it’s because I’m a sucker for hurt/comfort, or something else I need to go to therapy about idk

and then once I got so far in, I was like “rae wtf this is such a fucking bummer, no one is gonna want to read this,” and so for a while I thought about starting over again just for something more fun

but, eventually, I reread this piece again, and decided that even if it’s kind of a sad start, maybe someone else could use something for the worst kind of days. I meant to post this on Yule, bc “longest night of the year” and all, but we all know how I am with doing anything remotely on time :’D

so, if anyone else is maybe having a hard time on this xmas eve, I hope maybe this is a small something to help

warnings for some really vicious self-talk on the part of the Reader, v v v brief discussion of su!cidal thoughts (like I said, I was going through it), descriptions of an anxiety attack, Maxi being a little too happy to murder anyone who hurt you, Maxi and his Reader swearing their deaths to each other, descriptions of necromancy, patricide, etc.

merry xmas, and rora and hector both have pieces coming too - this was just the one that got finished first 🖤 thanks for being kind enough to request, and I’m sorry again it took so long! I hope it’s okay 🖤

it hurts because you’re alive

(maxi morvant x gn!reader)

It wasn’t often you still had to contend with the voice from the darkest part of your brain. The one that had stalked you through the left-hand mirrors from the Masquerade, the one that some demonic presence - essence? Whatever - imitated in Maxi’s own mouth when it was trying to convince you to let yourself lay down and be prey. Since you’d been building yourself a pleasant life in Greymoon, one that you were more than happy to share with the man who’d stolen your heart, it had retreated back to whatever noxious neural fold it called home.

That didn’t mean there weren’t hard nights. Ones where it found you left vulnerable by an insomnia that refused to abate.

This was one of them.

You weren’t sure what had set it off, really: maybe it was the fact that Murphy’s Law had been in full effect at work, and nothing you tried had been enough to turn the day around. Maybe it was the phone call with your mom after, where more than one she’d suggested (albeit gently) that despite all the progress towards feeling like yourself again you’d made since moving here, there was still more you could be doing. Maybe it was the texts you’d swapped with Pavi that afternoon, where she rehashed the latest fight she’d had with a girlfriend she would’ve readily called awful if she’d been yours, Em’s, or Laurie’s. As carefully as you’d tried to point out that Pavi seemed to accept things for herself that she would’ve found intolerable for any of her friends, the two of you had just gone in circles, with Pavi insisting that she was probably just being biased in her recounting of the argument and you nearly pleading with her to consider how she’d feel if anyone else she loved was being treated the same way. When this proved fruitless, you’d eventually stopped and just let your friend vent until she felt better. It was the least you could do.

But long after you’d said goodnight, you were still sitting cross-legged on the end of your bed, lost in thought as you worried the skin on your lower lip with your teeth. After years of living with your specific brain curses, your usual self-soothing method was straightening up your house while listening to music as loud as you could stand it on your headphones; the idea being that bouncing between tasks with something drowning out the Voice would eventually convince it to give up and let you focus on anything else. But tonight, that had only left you more restless than usual. Your brief attempt to sleep had just ended in you plugging your string of fairy lights back in and returning to your playlist, trying to ward off your internal darkness with external stimuli.

How did you think you would be enough?

You trapped a piece of skin between your teeth, and bit down.

No, really. How did you possibly think anything you had to offer, to any of them, would be enough?

“It’s not about me,” you muttered aloud. “It was just a bad day. Shit happens. I’ll live, it’s fine.”

Your teeth, however, bit down once again on the spot. You could just taste the faintest trace of blood.

And now you’re talking to yourself. Just like old times.

Fuck off, you thought instead, but the Voice just seemed to crow in the fact that it’d made you change.

Oh, you little idiot. Just as spineless as you’ve always been. Your job knows that, you know - you weren’t smart enough or quick enough to improvise today. They all saw you fail. You let everyone down. Again.

This is unhelpful. You knew this was unhelpful. This was just wallowing. Everyone had bad days. This would pass. You would be fine.

…Right?

Your progress is not enough for your mother. She knows you can do more, do better. Be more. You can dress up laziness as contentment all you like, it’s still obvious to her. She must be so disappointed in what you turned out to be.

Your teeth kept sawing at the skin, and you winced at the sting of its separation from raw flesh, even as the taste of blood spread across your tongue.

Your love is not enough for your friend. It doesn’t matter how ferociously you care for her - it isn’t ever going to outweigh the hurt she’s willing to endure for even a taste of someone else’s. Someone real.

Stop, you begged yourself. You knew what came next.

How long until that ‘soulmate’ of yours sees all this and realizes his mistake?

You didn’t hear yourself whimper at this over the bass in your ears, the volume hurting now more than helping. You made no move to turn it down.

I’m curious. You suck at math, but make me laugh with an attempt: how long, exactly, do you think it will take for him to realize you weren’t worth the pain he went through? That he’s scarred, now, for nothing that could actually matter?

Your teeth picked a new spot and bit, but the tears were already there.

How long do you think you have until he resents you for your weaknesses? For everything you couldn’t be?

How long until even a creature of the utmost darkness finds you, and your broken little brain and heart, intolerable?

No, you pushed back. He’s not that. He isn’t, even with what he did. Does. He could never be. He’s good, his heart is good, despite everything that tried to force him to be otherwise.

Fine, the voice amended. Then how long until he gets restless because he’s stuck with a burden like you? Because you could never amount to more than everything you are that no one should ever have to deal with, much less love?

You blinked, feeling your breath begin to shake as something warm slid down your face.

There we go, the voice purred. You aren’t completely stupid after all. Gold star for effort.

You tried to force yourself to pick up your hands and wipe your face. Try to stem the flow of tears that turned your eyeliner into so much grime under your eyes, something else that added to the pathetic ineptness of your mien.

But they sat, listless and useless, on your thighs that took up too much room.

You can still exit gracefully, you know. …Well. As gracefully as possible for you. You owe everyone that much.

This was a lie. You knew, on some level, this was a lie. But it felt like the conscious You was locked at the back of your brain, kicking uselessly as this creature that seemed to slither and circle around the rest of your skull - and squeeze.

Your boyfriend’s a mortician, for crying out loud. He’ll at least make you look decent so you’re not a total embarrassment to anyone. Your mom won’t even have to clean up the mess when they find it.

…You had to admit. This made a certain, pragmatic amount of sense. It was tidy. Convenient.

Easier, perhaps, than the mortifying alternative of staying. Of letting anyone look too close.

He might even think one of your friends at the service is cute. Two birds, one stone. Provided any show up, of course.

That’s fair, you figured, this would be fairly short notice. People might still have to work, or have other plans, and you couldn’t expect people to drop everything for—

You let out a small shriek as you felt a chilled hand settle on your shoulder, nearly falling off your bed as you pushed hard away from the direction of your door.

When you just caught yourself on the edge of your mattress, you whipped around to see Maxi standing there, flattening himself as best he could against the doorframe and showing you his palms with an equally startled expression.

He mouthed something at you, and you could only blink, still not quite firing on all cylinders. He pointed to his own ear, looking concerned, and you jumped, quickly pulling your earbuds out.

“Sorry,” you managed. “Didn’t hear you come in.” You winced as you could hear your own voice crack, and before you could clear your throat, Maxi’s face changed.

“Hey now.” In one fluid motion, he crossed the space between you and fell to a knee where you perched at the end of your bed, peering up into your face with a familiar, scalpel-sharp scrutiny. “You okay, gorgeous?”

You looked away, trying to avoid his searching gaze, but he caught your jaw gently, guiding you by his fingertips at your chin to look at him again.

He made a small noise of alarm in his throat when you faced him, and when you finally met his eyes, he looked stricken. “Darlin’, talk to me, what’s wrong?” he murmured. His fingers traced over the tracks of your tears, wiping them away. He turned his hand slightly to examine his own fingertips, looking increasingly worried, before he moved closer to your knees to look up into your eyes. “Did someone upset you?”

For the most part, he still sounded like your partner - sweet, thoughtful, a habitual worrier - but you could hear the edge of something else creeping into his question. Something darker, lurking at the back of his own skull.

But how could you explain? If you told him what was going on - what was really happening - wouldn’t that just prove your inner darkness right? That you were a burden, demanding of care?

You kicked yourself internally, feeling guiltier now. Maxi already had to deal with a lot at his job, people grieving real losses. Why should he have to come home to even more crying from you, who was just wallowing in their own despair?

“Hey,” he urged again, softer, snapping you back to reality. He reached up, gently intertwining his fingers with yours where your hands still sat on your lap. “Angel, c’mon. You’re scarin’ me a little here. Tell me what’s goin’ on, okay? Let me help. Do I need to have words with someone?” He traced his thumbs across the back of your hands, trying to soothe you - but you fixated on the way he subconsciously rolled his shoulder, the one you had marked on that dark Halloween in the cemetery.

For some reason, it was that gesture - so innocuous, yet obvious in how you seemed to inflict yourself on him, on everyone - that finally broke the dam between your sinking heart and the world outside. The spiral had you fully in its grasp, and there was no getting out.

Your eyes blurred over as you looked resolutely down, feeling tears escaping their bounds faster than you could hold them back. A few of them made splattered constellations on the skin of your legs, just adjacent to where Maxi’s hands where intertwined with yours. You bit down on your lip, trying to muffle the sob that had been building for what felt like the entire evening, but the smallest of sounds still managed to wriggle its way out around your teeth.

Maxi let go of your hands abruptly, and you couldn’t blame him for his withdrawal - until the cold clutch of them encircled your face, guiding your head gently upwards to meet his eyes.

What you found waiting for you was the color of blood from deep in the body, seeming to burn of their own accord in the dim of your room. He was practically nose to nose with you, staring at you over the tops of his glasses with a look like a knife’s edge. “Give me a name,” he said, so soft it was barely more than a whisper. His fingers stroked your skin, but his grip was firm. “And they won’t see sunrise. I promise.” He leaned forward to close the distance between you, kissing gently at one of the tracks of your tears - but you still felt the brief, hot touch of the tip of his tongue to the spot. “Let me take care of it for you, please.”

You sniffled, trying to rescue some shred of composure. “It’s n-nobody. Really.”

“Oh, angel,” Maxi cooed, pulling just slightly back. He traced a new trail down your cheek with his thumb, hovering close to you. “You don’t have to defend anyone who doesn’t deserve it. Whatever it was, whatever they said to cause - this,” his hand flipped to stroke your skin with a knuckle. “It’s justified for me.” He kissed your forehead before meeting your eyes again.

You shook your head as the last of your composure slipped through your grip. “It’s not even a-anybody’s fault,” you managed around the lump in your throat. “I s-swear, it’s just…” You swallowed hard, but the ache just caused you to stop. “It’s just my fucking broken-ass brain.”

“…It’s what now?” You could practically hear the record scratch in Maxi’s brain as the murder dropped out of his expression entirely, leaving him blinking as the glimmering red seemed to cool like the last embers of a campfire.

You hurriedly wiped your eyes with the sleeve of your hoodie. “It’s nothing, I told you,” you mumbled. “I’m just fucking sad again over some stupid shit that doesn’t m-matter, like always,” you tried to inhale, but your breath shook too hard for you to get any relief. “And I c-can’t change it—“

Your heart was thundering in your ears, washing out all other sound. You were drowning.

“B-because I’m not g-good at making anything better, for anyone—“

Your skin was too hot. You felt seasick. This was really it, wasn’t it. The moment that you finally tipped your hand and showed how much of a wreck you really were inside, and he would make the only logical decision. One you could never blame him for, really, because it was inevitable.

It fell out of your mouth in a rush, insensate almost to your own ears: “And I’m just going to be like this forever, and you’re going to get sick of me and leave, and why shouldn’t you, when I can’t even keep my shit together and just be a n-normal fucking functional—“

You were aware of the words dying on your lips, the sudden movement causing the ache to leave your lungs in an exhale, but you weren’t sure of the cause.

You also weren’t quite sure why the room shifted, or why you were suddenly staring up at your ceiling rather than down at your feet, but you were conscious of being cocooned in the essence of your partner: the faintest hint of embalming fluid, something like wood polish, the cologne he put on this morning, and the touch of laundry detergent that had started to smell like home to you.

You realized he’d taken you both to your mattress in a near-tackle, cradling you before you could realize what was happening. You were caged in his arms now, laying sideways next to him with your hands pressed against his chest between the pair of you. The pressure you felt around your torso was him squeezing like he was trying to keep you from coming apart at your ribs.

Like you were something fragile.

It took you a moment to realize further that his lips were against your hair, and the hiss you heard was him shushing the tiny, cracking sobs that were finding their way piecemeal out of your chest.

“No, baby, I’m always gonna be yours,” Maxi murmured into your hair. “It’s okay, baby. You’re my life, I’m not goin’ anywhere.” He kissed your head like he was trying to kiss your skull itself. “Mine’s broke too. It’s okay.”

You half-sobbed, half-hiccuped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t— you shouldn’t have to—“

“Nothin’ to apologize for,” Maxi insisted, somehow managing to hug you tighter without bruising your sides. “You’re mine. I won’t ever go somewhere without you.”

“But I’m a mess,” you blurted wetly against his vest, your chest kicking like a horse from the inside. “I’m such a mess, Maxi, I’m gonna wear you out. I wear everyone out, you don’t understand.”

Maxi shifted so instead of keeping you against his chest, he was eye-level with you, squeezing your shoulders in his hands as his glasses were somewhat crooked against your pillow. “Darlin’, I know everything feels wrong right now, and your brain’s not fightin’ fair,” he said softly, his eyes wide as he searched yours. “But I think your sense of scale is a little bit… skewed, here.” He smiled weakly. “I’m not tryin’ to make light of anything, but I think I have a little more reason to be worried about somethin’ like that.”

Your heart was racing in your chest like you were trying to drive with no way to steer. “I don’t wanna make you tired of me,” you managed, not entirely sure if you were making sense anymore. “I don’t want to make your mark hurt anymore, I don’t want you to come home from a long day to me being a drain, I don’t want you to realize you got a bad deal.”

“Angel,” Maxi soothed, running a hand over your hair. “You’re not thinkin’ straight. That’s not somethin’ I would think about you, ever. You’re talkin’ to the serial killer here, remember?” he added, with a laugh that sounded more nervous than anything. “You’re the one who got more than you signed up for.”

“You had to go through that whole thing with your dad, and They Who Decide,” you went on, as if he’d proved your point. “You wouldn’t have had to if I wasn’t here. You wouldn’t have had to get hurt, or get possessed, or—“

“For you, I’d do it all again tomorrow,” Maxi said, his voice soft. “In a heartbeat. I don’t care.”

You shook your head, not sure how you couldn’t make him see what was right in front of his eyes. “I’m not worth that, Maxi, that’s what I’m trying to tell you now rather than you waste more time.”

“And I’m tryin’ to tell you,” Maxi argued, his eyes plaintive. “That I don’t care what that demon in your head says, baby. I got one too,” he insisted, loosening an arm so he could gesture at his temple. “The real one and the one that comes from growin’ up thinkin’ I’m dead already, and nothin’ would ever change that. You have no idea how many times a day I wish to god,” he smiled, and it was strained. “I wish I could go back, somehow, and tell me when I was livin’ through the worst parts — every dark basement, every broken body, every night feelin’ absolutely fuckin’ inhuman — that we were gonna find you. That all this bullshit was gonna turn out to be worth it. All the years of feelin’ like I couldn’t tell anyone the truth, and we survived.”

Your shoulders bucked slightly as you fought your sobs. “I don’t want to let you down. I’m so scared of disappointing you, you don’t understand—“

Maxi took your face in his hands again, his gaze pleading. “No, you don’t understand,” he said, and you could hear him fighting to keep his voice steady. “You don’t have to be the one that’s afraid of that. You could never disappoint me in a way that matters. I’d swear it to you on our future tomb. I need you to listen to me, baby, I will love you ’til my breathin’ stops and long, long after. There’s nothin’ you could do, no part of you that you hate that would ever make me think otherwise. You could put a bullet through the dead center of my chest, and not only would I think you were in the right, I’d still love you when I hit the ground.”

The idea of causing him harm of any sort squeezed your throat harder than the lump that was already there. “I don’t know how you can say that,” you whispered, shaking your head. “I keep waiting for you to realize that I’m not enough to justify that kind of pain. I’m so scared of hurting you. Of being the reason you get hurt.” Your hands found his shoulders and your fingers curled tightly into the fabric of his shirt, desperate for something to hold on to. “You’ve already been through so much, you don’t deserve to suffer when you can avoid it. I couldn’t stand myself if I brought that on you, on top of all my shit you already have to put up with.”

The red returned to Maxi’s eyes, and oddly, you were more soothed than alarmed. You almost wanted his darker self there as a form of assurance, to know that it could protect the man you loved from the fathomless chasm that felt like it was splitting your chest.

“Listen to me,” he demanded, that shadow from his eyes creeping into his words. “I never… I never got to belong to myself, you understand? I was always my family’s next chess piece on the board, or They Who’s next prize monster, or the reaper’s host. I knew that. I spent my life knowin’ that, and I didn’t see another option.”

You recognized the way his fingers of his left hand moved against your back, his tell for weighing his options. The way his eyes went briefly distant, you realized he was making a decision.

His free hand moved to his chest, tracing the scar there through the fabric of his clothes. “…This wasn’t…” He trailed off, his lips a frustrated line as he chose his words. His eyes met yours again, the red still there, brighter now. “…This wasn’t just my dad,” he said at last. “I mean, he put the first one there. The original.” He hesitated a moment longer, the tip of his tongue briefly tracing his lip. “…When I thought my family’s legacy was all I had — all I’d ever have — I reopened it.”

You flinched in horror at the very idea, knowing just how deep that scar tissue went, how thick it was over the muscle. “Oh, Maxi… why, baby?”

A corner of his mouth twitched into a grimace “There’s all sorts of things you can do with a heart when you know how, babydoll. Unnatural things that no one can undo… that no good person would ever dream of.” His eyes moved to a point in the distance over your shoulder, something in them dimming. “And for a long time, I studied it. I read everythin’ I could find about it. It was all I could dream about anymore.” His eyes flicked back to yours. “I was ready to give up blood, skin, and bone for just the chance that it would work.”

Your tears were sticky on your face where they were drying, and you fought a shiver from somewhere deep in your gut, like it recognized something in Maxi’s words you didn’t. “…So what happened?” You couldn’t help but whisper, despite the fact that it was just the two of you in your room.

Like you were afraid something else would hear you.

An exceptionally grim smile bloomed on Maxi’s face. “Not my proudest moment, is what.” He looked away from you again, as if he couldn’t bear to hold your gaze. “Or maybe it was, I don’t know. It was the night I buried my mother. I wasn’t sober by any means, but my father was dead drunk. He interrupted me, we got to arguin’, then screamin’, and before I quite realized what I’d done… he was just dead.”

Silence settled over the pair of you as he met your eyes again, watching you like he was waiting for you to recoil from him. To suddenly realize in that moment what kind of monster had been sharing your bed for all this time.

“…Yeah, well,” you murmured. You reached up, gently brushing a lock of his hair away from his eyes as you held his gaze. “Good riddance.”

Maxi’s smile softened into the one you knew best, his eyes relieved despite the shade lingering in them. “I didn’t realize just how lucky I was that night. Not by half.” He reached up, moving some of your hair on your pillow away from your face. “Because later, after so long of never belongin’ to myself, you let me be yours. And you gave me back what was left of me, you hear?” He swallowed hard, and you could finally see the glow that had swept in with the familiar red gleam was at least partially tears of his own. He traced the line of your cheek. “You reminded me I was still a person, somewhere under all of this. That I was allowed to want more than just grittin’ my teeth and gettin’ through what brief mortal life I was meant to have.” He shifted on his pillow again, closing the distance between the two of you. “I spent ages askin’ myself, ‘they’re the closest thing to perfect I’ve ever had, the hell do they want with me?’ And—“ He stopped, forcing himself to take a breath that wasn’t quite steady anymore. “And you took such… care of me,” he went on. “You loved me so much, I started to believe I could just… be human, after all this time. Could deserve to be loved, even.”

He moved his hands so his arms encircled your waist again, hugging you tightly while giving him enough space to keep eye contact. “You have no idea how many times in my life I went out in the dark and didn’t care if I saw daylight,” he said softly. “But that night we walked into the Masquerade together, I knew I’d fight Hell itself just to stay alive with you for one more hour. I’d never been more certain of anything in my entire life.”

The heat that seemed to fill your own eyes, lingering at your lash line, was from something entirely different now.

“Your brain chemistry can run its miserable little mouth all it wants, darlin’.” Maxi rested his forehead gently against yours. “And I’ll be here to hold you until it quiets down, whenever you need me to. But it’s dead wrong. I know that for a fact.” One of his hands, still cool to the touch, cupped your cheek like you were something wondrous. “There is nothin’ about my life you haven’t made better just by bein’ in it. And we’re gonna live a longer one still. A happy one, despite everythin’, together,” he took one of your hands in his, bringing it gently to his lips. “I love you exactly as you are. I always will.”

Fresh rivulets formed on your face, but these felt… different. Like rain after a drought.

You wound your arms around his neck, trapping his chest — scar and all — against your own. “I love you the same,” you whispered. “Exactly as you are. All of you.” You pressed a single kiss to the corner of his mouth. “And there’s nothing that can ever change that.”

Maxi’s grin was unmistakable. “Y’know, it’s the damnedest thing,” he said quietly. “For the first time, I’m lookin’ forward to livin’ through whatever’s next.”

You smiled for what felt like the first time in days. “I’m glad I get to be here for it.”

Maxi leaned forward to kiss you properly, long and slow as though to make it last the rest of your lives.

#nice people #bee!! 🖤🥰#maxi morvant #maximilian vincent morvant #morvant mortuary #maxi morvant x reader #maxi morvant x you #maxi and his reader #maxi's final them #slasher oc #necromancer oc #slasher oc x reader #gn!reader #genderqueer reader #non-binary reader #plus size reader #reader's in a dark place #not quite hurt/comfort but close

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morvantmortuary · 2 years

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Blood Fest Week 1: our strange duet

Blood Fest prompts: Rope. Teeth. Size. Blood. keywords: Wicked. Rain.

summary: Maxi has a hard time focusing at work after your date the night before, and resorts to some... unusual tactics to find relief.

warnings: smut, 18+ only, minors dni. descriptions of embalming and body restoration, of grievous mortal injury, grief, mourning. discussion of body dysphoria, chest anxiety. brief talking about being queer and hiding it in the deep south. brief discussion of male body image issues. mutual oral sex (m and afab receiving), brief facefucking, first time as a couple sex, period sex. discussions of the demon living in maxi’s body, for funsies. stalking, breaking and entering, sort of spying on someone in the shower, use of sex toys, size kink, voyeurism, masturbation, slight breeding kink if you squint, minor humiliation kink, maxi is the definition of a service switch, definitely creepy behavior from the serial killer, dead dove do not eat, don’t open the bag if you’re not a slasherfucker ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

general: Reader is non-binary/genderqueer, uses they/she pronouns; Reader is plus size, Reader is queer, Maxi is bi and talks about it. Everything else has been left up to the reader, please let me know if I need to tweak any language.

y’all wanna get a little weird with me this spooky season?

(I’ve been writing this one for funsies for a while, but I’m super grateful to the lovely Bree at @the-slasher-files for this delightful opportunity to share this for an event. Sorry mine’s so late, and they definitely won’t all be this long!! :’D Week 2 will hopefully be up later tonight or tomorrow, and I’ll hopefully not be too late with the rest of them lol

okay! here goes!!

Maxi was pretty sure he shouldn’t be thinking of you on top of him last night while he was preparing to embalm the forty-something woman on his table. No, in fact he was certain he shouldn’t. Despite the multiple layers of PPE he was wearing - his usual scrubs, gloves, and mask, and then a plastic splashguard over that - he still caught himself feeling oddly vulnerable in front of the decedent. He was used to empty, staring eyes, he’d been used to them for more than half his life. But something about Mrs. Berthelot-Yang’s glazed gaze today made him feel like he was the one with just a sheet for modesty’s sake, rather than the other way around. He kept dropping things, leaving them in his office or on the wrong counters, forgetting what he was doing in the middle of filling out paperwork - he couldn’t help but feel like he was fumbling in an entirely different sense, whereas last night couldn’t have felt easier.

But damn, if you didn’t seem to have him utterly bewitched, and you’d only been going out for a month.

Well, okay, three weeks, six days, thirteen hours, give or take fifteen minutes. …But who was counting, anyway. Certainly not him, nope.

There was something about you he was having a hard time putting his finger on, but since that kismet day in the cemetery, he’d found his mind wandering back to you at the most inexplicable moments. He couldn’t hear the afternoon rain pelting his windows without remembering your smile in the passenger seat of the hearse, giggling even when you were soaked. He couldn’t just lay on his couch in the grip of insomnia and watch a shitty horror movie without remembering your soft, clean scent when you were sitting next to him at the movie theater, and how he’d wondered if the cherry slush would’ve been any sweeter if he’d tasted it on your tongue.

And now, despite the purposeful chill of the prep room, he swore he could still felt the heat of your mostly-bare form pressed against his while it had taken everything in him not to devour you on the spot.

He’d been careful with you. He’d been so goddamn achingly careful with you, wanting to take this slow. He wanted to make sure he took his time with you, didn’t scare you off, didn’t lose your interest before he got the chance to...

He blinked out of his trance when he realized he was still standing over Mrs. Berthelot-Yang with the trocar still in his hands, staring at her still violently bruised and scraped bare abdomen. Motorcycle crash on the highway. Even with a helmet, she hadn’t been any match for the concrete barrier she’d swerved into in her attempt to move around a semi that had thrown on its brakes. The devastated wife was delivering her clothes tomorrow for her viewing this weekend.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” he sighed, shaking his head in exasperation and feeling himself blush. “I don’t know where my head’s at today, I swear.” That was a lie. He knew exactly where his head was at.

He heard a ghostly chuckle from the very edge of the salt that bordered the edges of the room — not the sharp, cruel ones of some of the House’s permanent residents, but something soft. Almost knowing. He glanced up to see the faintest flicker of movement near the door, as though a figure had just poked their head in the room and pulled it quickly back out again.

There was sudden wafting of a warm, light scent of jasmine and vanilla… a perfume. Her favorite, her wife had told him through tears in the client parlor upstairs - and Maxi couldn’t help but smile a little to himself as he relaxed. It was always a relief to have an understanding guest of honor.

Or, well, as much as they could be, under the circumstances.

“Thank you for bein’ patient with me,” he said, carefully lining up the sharp tip of the instrument with a spot just beside her navel. “Now, this is gonna look nasty, but I promise it’ll be better in just a sec—“

The tip slid through the soft flesh like butter, and he let the trocar do its work before carefully angling it again to perforate the other end of the cavity. With a couple more easy jabs, he set it aside, watching the new wounds attentively before he set to preparing to close what needed closing.

But even as his hands went through the same motions as they had for a little less than two decades, his mind wandered immediately back to you, and the curiously strong effect you’d had on him already. He couldn’t explain it to himself, but he felt like if he slept with you and you ghosted, it would drive him insane for ages afterwards. He’d had friends with benefits before, sure, but they were usually more of an obstacle to work around with his… other nocturnal activities, than something he ended up entertaining for long.

And he wanted more with you, he already knew that. He wanted so much more, so soon, and he was trying his damnedest to be cool about it, but god if you didn’t make it difficult in the best way. How you liked his morbid jokes, and he genuinely laughed at yours, how you didn’t mind his odd hours or his tendency to ramble about various histories of death and decay at the drop of the hat. How curious you seemed about his work, and your compassion for the families he dealt with. How he loved the way you talked about your own day, even if it was something as simple as your side gig, and the care you took with it even when it was frustrating you. He just liked you. All of you.

And he’d been so close to finally getting all of you last night, when the two of you had stumbled into your bedroom after you’d invited him over —

He maybe should’ve guessed something new was afoot when you’d wanted to change plans from actually going out to just staying in for a quiet evening at your place, but he’d been happy just to get to spend time with you, so he hadn’t thought about it too much. It had genuinely started as the two of you goofing around with some multiplayer horror title over pizza, but when you’d teasingly tried to distract him by kissing his neck like you usually did, you lingered there just a touch longer than normal. There was a bit of teeth to it, heat that the two of you had skirted but hadn’t quite explored yet.

Needless to say, he’d immediately dropped his controller to pull you into his lap. You hadn’t protested - to the contrary, you’d straddled his thighs with yours, your hand pulling his shirt collar like a leash to close any distance left.

— Even through the rubber gloves he was wearing now, he swore he could still feel the silk of your skin like fire against his palms. He shook his head again, the trocar wounds closed and now trying to thread the needle so he could sew the dear lady’s mouth closed through the frenulum and up through the septum. But he felt his face burn under his mask as he remembered just how you’d sighed when he’d run his hands up your sides under your top.

Like you were relieved. Like you’d been waiting for him to touch you, almost as much as he’d wanted to.

If you had any idea how hard it had been for him to let you go, especially once he heard that sound, you would’ve called the cops—

“Son of a bitch,” he growled, putting the musculature needle down just a little too hard on the steel table top when he couldn’t get his hands to stop shaking.

He was instinctively reaching to pinch the bridge of his nose under his glasses when his hand ran smack into the plastic face shield instead. Frustrated, his swore under his breath, about to fling the offending garment across the room when he heard another gentle laugh from the doorway. He hesitated, then carefully exhaled his frustration in a practiced sigh through his nose, before turning to look over his shoulder. “Well,” he mumbled, the tension leaving his shoulders. “I’m glad one of us is havin’ fun with this.”

He could see a gentle swirl of white floating in the doorway, like steam out of a shower. For a moment, the swirl changed direction, as though something like a waving hand had interrupted its floating through space.

With this small encouragement, he turned back to the waiting guest, taking another cleansing deep breath. “Get it together, Morvant, christ,” he muttered, tilting his head to both sides to crack his neck before trying again. You had him acting like an amateur in his own house.

This time, he hooked the needle through the needed places as easily as writing his own name.

He still frowned even as he neatly stitched the lips closed, hearing the faintest echo of his father in his head. Not the torso half-corpse chained to the wall downstairs, thank Everything Below. But the version that still loomed large in the crevices of his brain, that still snidely muttered about his every move if he performed his duties less than perfectly.

Mooning over a mortal. Jesus, his father would’ve taken the belt to him for that. Again.

Once he was satisfied with how her mouth lay, he picked up the wax he’d be using to fill some of the rougher contusions on Mrs. Berthelot-Yang’s face. With a careful angling of a flat blade to get it out of the jar, he rolled it across the side of his latex-gloved hand, letting it warm itself into something malleable.

You would’ve been worth his father’s wrath, he caught himself thinking. He didn’t know quite how he was so confident yet — the unbearable soon-ness of it haunted him again as he sized up the empty hole the glass shards had left in her cheek — but as he did so, he felt you again, flush against him like you were there in the room.

He’d gotten greedy last night, he knew that, but you’d been right there and so soft, he couldn’t resist. He clenched his free hand through his glove as he remembered the scent of your neck, the lightest hint of some delicious fragrance as he’d taken small, covetous bites of your flesh just to feel you writhe in his grip.

He’d paused his tasting at the neckline of your shirt, sitting back to watch you open your eyes he stopped. “…Can I take this off you?” His hands were still up at your back, holding you close, but he indicated what he meant in the way he passed them over the fabric. The two of you had a tendency to be all over each other in stolen private moments during the brief time you’d been going out: at the House, in the hearse, on his favorite bench in the cemetery. But these had been careful explorations despite your shared enthusiasm, mostly over clothes due to him never being quite sure who - or what - might be lurking nearby. Now, there was no threat of a paranormal pest, or his spectral sister’s looming eyes from the shadows.

It was just you and him, alone at last.

He was too close to you not to see the tiniest hesitation on your part - your teeth briefly grazing your lower lip - before you nodded, your coy smile back in place. “…I’d like to keep what’s under it on, though,” you admitted, your voice soft in how close you were to him. “Is that… Okay?”

“Anythin’s fine by me,” he murmured somewhat hazily, nodding as his hands slid down your sides to your thin top. “Whatever makes you feel comfortable, gorgeous.” He savored the feeling of his fingers sliding under the fabric and finding the warmth of your bare skin, curling around its hem, before he glanced up at you one more time to double check.

You nodded again, your eyes bright with anticipation, and that was all it took for him to yank the flimsy fabric over your head.

Maxi sat back slightly, taking in your mostly-bare torso — your soft stomach was adorably sweet, just as he’d imagined. He admired your clavicle, the way it was set into your shoulders, the way your skin looked with all the small marks collected over a life. You were a miracle, a work of art, just like he’d dreamed. He took you in almost ravenously, wanting to memorize every freckle, mole, spot. The small galaxy that was you.

You shifted in his lap, your arms drawing in slightly over the dark garment covering your breasts. He couldn’t help but move his attention there as well, pausing in his awe-struck inspection. That… wasn’t a bra. At least, not one he was familiar with. He was flustered internally for a moment; he knew he hadn’t dated around in a while, but did they really start making them a whole different way when he wasn’t paying attention? He swore he’d just put a regular one on a nice little octogenarian at work the other day; was that considered outmoded now? An antique?

“…It’s a half-binder,” you said softly, snapping his attention abruptly back to your face. His heart jumped into his throat when he saw you looking shyly down at your thighs, anticipation replaced with more hesitancy. “It’s. Um— It’s for when—“

“Oh, no, that’s not—“ Maxi stumbled and nearly bit his own tongue, cursing himself for interrupting you. But he was desperate for you to understand how much he was only looking at you with wonder, not with second thoughts. He wanted to curl into himself in agony at the mere thought of you having such a notion.

But the way you looked immediately back to him made him think you were almost more nervous than he was, rather than annoyed, and he felt a flash of protective fondness at the expression on your face.

“I— It’s okay,” he soothed, nodding. He reached up to your face, his thumb stroking your cheek as he kissed your jaw line. “It’s fine,” he reassured you again, smiling at you. “That’s all okay, baby. I only looked concerned because… well,” he paused, feeling his own face warm slightly. “I thought they’d gone and changed how they made bras on me, s’all.”

Your uncertainty was punctured by your surprised laugh, and he immediately felt relieved at the return of your smile, even as he rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t want to do anything that would make you think he was less than… capable, of taking care of you. But he was only being honest.

“No,” you said, kissing the corner of his mouth. “You’re sweet. No, this is a different thing.” You shook your head. “It’s… um.” The shyness crept back into your face, and as much as he wanted to reassure you again, he made himself wait for what you wanted to say. “…Okay, so,” you said slowly, letting out a breath that shook a little around the edges. “Sometimes, um. I have some presentation issues around my…” You paused like there was something stuck in your throat, instead gesturing to your chest under your binder. “And I don’t… really want to have them there. Or out. Or, like…” Your hand clawed for a moment in frustration as you tried to explain. “I just don’t want them to be a focus?” you managed at last, a sigh on the heel of your words. “I don’t know, sometimes I’m fine with them! I mean— Obviously,” you gestured shyly to Maxi, who immediately recalled every time he’d pulled down your neckline to nip at the top of your breasts greedily, on his couch during a bad movie, or against the wall of a crypt during a cemetery walk.

“I’m… very familiar, yes,” he agreed, smiling even as he felt the heat in his cheeks.

Your smile in return reassured him, and he watched the tension in you ease. You reached up, running your fingers through his hair, and he had to fight not to shiver pleasurably at the contact. “I just… today was a bad chest day, is all.” You bit your lip again, clearly still somewhat nervous about this. “And I was just, um. I thought we might… and if I- I flinched, or something, I didn’t want you to think… it was you, or anything. Because it’s not. It never would be.“ You looked down at your thighs again as you trailed off, your hands sliding to his shoulders. “It’s just - this thing my brain does sometimes, and I don’t always know when.”

Maxi was trying too hard not to get stuck on the fact that you had implied you’d never flinch from him, from his touch, his heart fluttering like a trapped bird in his chest with muffled excitement. He had been trying to slow down just how hard he’d been falling for you lately, but you weren’t making it easy. You didn’t know, you didn’t know, he reminded himself sternly. He couldn’t take it entirely at face value if he knew what he was hiding from you, and you didn’t.

And ideally, he thought to himself, you never… would. Not completely, anyway.

Because there’s no way you’d stay if you knew what he was, was there?

Realizing he’d been still too long, been too quiet, his hands went to your hips and squeezed affectionately. “Hey.” He waited until you met his eyes to roll his shoulders in a slow, lazy shrug, smiling up at you. “I’m just happy to be here with you like this, darlin’,” he said, his tone hushed again as he ran his hands up your bare sides. “Really. That’s all. Whatever you don’t wanna do, or— don’t want me to touch,” His hands stopped a respectful couple of finger widths away from your binder. “We don’t have to, at all. Okay?” He shifted a little, going to loosen his tie out of habit before realizing he’d already taken it off and left it in the hearse before he walked in. He flattened his lips instinctively into a line for a moment, his eyes wandering off to the side as he realized what he wanted to tell you right now.

It wasn’t The Thing, but it something he didn’t discuss often, that was for damn sure.

“You’re sure?”

He looked immediately back to you, and realized you’d been watching his face. Your eyes were careful, searching - veiled, he noticed with a hint of panic. You must’ve thought his hesitation was about you, when nothing could be further from the truth.

“Yes,” he said immediately, nodding vigorously. “Yes, angel, absolutely.” He tapped his fingers where they rested on your skin. “Your boundaries are yours. I’m not about to want anythin’ you tell me you don’t, I swear.” He smiled at you again, feeling a little nervous now. “I was just… you got me thinkin’, is all.”

You blinked, your eyes lightening a little bit as you tilted your head. “Oh yeah?”

Maxi nodded, wetting his lips out of nervous habit. “I…” He hummed quietly, trying to figure out how to word this, exactly. He cleared his throat a little, before looking back to you. “…You, um.” He swallowed. “…On our first date,” he finally said, forcing himself to meet your eyes. “I saw your, um. Your pride pins. On your bag, and all. And then, of course, you told me ‘they’ worked for you, obviously,” he added quickly, realizing he was just talking in circles. “So I just… god,” he sighed in frustration, his head falling backwards against the couch to stare at your ceiling. “Why is this hard.”

“…I could state the obvious,” you deadpanned, still straddling his lap.

There was a pause, and Maxi half-shrugged. “You’d have a point.”

He met your eyes again, and the both of you dissolved into muffled laughter, the tension at last broken.

“What are you trying to say, Maxi?” you asked when you’d both got it out of your system, tilting your head the other way to catch his eyes again.

Maxi sighed, looking up at where you were perched on his lap. “What I’m tryin’ to say,” he said quietly, forcing it out now. “Is that… me too?”

You blinked, your brow crinkling. “…You ‘too’?”

Maxi groaned, running one hand under his glasses over his face. “You’re gonna have to forgive me, Darlin’, old habits die hard.” He gave you an apologetic smile. “I mean… I have to be a little more careful about, y’know… who knows, and all,” he said, gesturing vaguely around the room to indicate Greymoon as a whole. He swallowed again, not sure why his heart was racing, why his palms felt like they were going to sweat. You of all people were someone he knew he could tell this to and be safe. So why did this still scare him? “I, um.” He felt himself flushing furiously, looking at you and mentally begging you to understand. “…If I could wear ‘em, y’know, and not get shit for it with my… my job, and all,” he said quietly. “I know we’d have at least one of ‘em in common.” He let out a quick, slightly unsteady breath. “I don’t say this to make things about me,” he said quickly again, his words tripping over themselves. “…But because I really want you to know, there’s nothin’ you could do, or change about yourself, or how you present, or anythin’, that would make me… not attracted to you,” he explained quietly. “Does that make sense?”

Your eyes visibly brightened when you beamed at him, clearly relieved - and, if he dared let himself believe it, even elated. “Yes,” you said, nodding excitedly. “Yes, it totally makes sense.” You leaned in, cupping his face in your hands. “I fucking knew it,” you added in a triumphant whisper, your smile delighted, before you closed the distance and kissed him intensely.

In that moment, Maxi was suddenly intensely aware of the feeling of something… else, looking out through his eyes at you.

Something that wanted you - to drink the light from your eyes until there was nothing left - with such a desperate ferocity, he could swear the scream was audible inside his own skull.

Startled by this unbidden urge, he broke this shared kiss abruptly, pressing a messy kiss to your pulse in your throat. External sensation tended to help shut the Reaper up or drown it out, and you gave him plenty of that: the softness of your skin, the scent you wore in your hair, the surprised noise from low in your chest that turned into a barely-muffled mewl. He lingered there, drawing it out, feeling you squirm on his lap as your hands found his hair again and tried to tug him upward. He winced only slightly, seemingly determined to leave his unmistakable mark on the precious column of your neck, but internally he was running a panicked inventory. After decades of being aware of the Reaper, the demon that had made him its home, he thought he’d gotten a good handle on just what could set it off. Sure, it had made noises about liking you, especially the more you hung around. It had done that with everyone he’d dated, as inescapable as it was. It was a jealous, territorial sumbitch, but so was he, deep down, so he couldn’t really blame it.

But that fascination, that need… what the fuck was that? Demanding as his darker self was, it had never been that… specific. Blood, flesh, souls, the usual maudlin bullshit, sure, he was used to it railing and howling and carrying on as it called for what it believed was its Due. Sometimes for sleepless nights on end, when he was younger and trying to fight his true nature.

But wanting you? Specifically, to watch the life drain from your face? To feel your flesh grow cold under his palms?

He had the unavoidable mental image of something else wearing his face, running a tongue over too-sharp teeth in his mouth, and he couldn’t fight a shudder.

Before he could really figure out what had triggered the spike of aggression, however, you’d turned the tables, yanking slightly on his hair so you could capture his lips when he reluctantly let go of your throat. Your hands moved to unbutton the dress shirt he’d worn having come straight from closing up, and he felt you pause when you got so far down, then the twist of your smile against his mouth as your hand found his shirt stays still on once you unbuttoned his slacks.

“Aw, Maxi - for me?” As much as you were trying to tease, he could hear how you sounded slightly breathless, your fingers shy as they skimmed over the elastic.

His face positively burned, and he wondered if you could feel its warmth, as close as you were. “Well,” he mumbled, suddenly unable to quite meet your gaze. “You mentioned that you, um. Didn’t mind, last time—“

“No,’ you corrected softly, and he looked up immediately. You were fighting a grin as you toyed with the one on his left thigh, before your eyes flicked back to his. “I said I thought they were hot, remember?” You gave him a coy smirk. “That’s different.”

He had to remember to swallow just then, the Reaper well and truly quiet as his brain was too overloaded to process much else besides your expression and your fingers tracing along the inside of his thighs. With some maneuvering, you had his shirt open a moment later, your hands roving over the coarse hair on his torso.

Something else he couldn’t help but adore about you, besides the enchantingly warm squish of your figure against him, was the way you seemed just as taken with him as he did with you in that aspect. Lord knew why — he knew he was that slightly confusing mix of lean with a soft stomach, and he still didn’t know how to feel about that even now — but it was also the way you didn’t seem to flinch at any of his scars. Namely and especially the thick line of tissue over his heart, where his father had beat him to the punch and drawn first blood all those years ago, and where he’d painstakingly re-opened it not long after, trying a particularly dark bit of magic in attempt to dull his own pain.

As he’d held you last night in his arms, feeling your warm palm ghost over it with all the sweetness in the world, he was so bitterly glad that it had backfired - and not as badly as it had for his late sister.

“I want you.” You’d said it so softly, your lips brushing his, that it nearly broke him. “Please?”

“I’m yours.” He’d answered as automatically as breathing, and for a moment he’d felt at least a fraction of the blood rush back to his face, realizing just how… eager, he must have sounded. But you’d only laughed in that way that left him weak every time, and when he’d shifted underneath you to kiss you harder, it had hitched into the sweetest breathy moan when his cock pressed against the core of you through the cotton shorts you’d worn.

“Goddamn, Maxi,” you’d whispered, pulling away to glance down between the two of you, and it was everything he could do not to let himself smirk. You’d turned it right back on him though when your eyes met his again with what was unmistakably hunger. “You gonna wreck me with that, babe, or just make me suck on it?”

He’d heard the soft hissing inhale through his teeth before he even realized it was him, his hand gently settling over your throat. Even as he held it like it was made of glass, he still felt himself freeze, realizing he hadn’t asked you first. He watched your eyes, nervously retracting his hand just slightly to hover above your skin — only to relax when he saw the entertained glint there, and the way you tilted your chin back to grant him access.

He replaced his hand delicately, his thumb lovingly tracing the vein he knew lay just underneath your skin from years of filling others with formaldehyde. “You’ve got a hell of a mouth on you, sugar,” he’d murmured darkly, unable to help himself. “If you’re not careful, you’re gonna give me ideas.”

This was apparently the right thing to say, because you’d shoved your neck further into his palm as you’d kissed him furiously, grinding your cunt against his length as you did so.

He’d had to will himself to keep at least a modicum of self-control, both hands falling to your hips and pulling you harder against him to hear you gasp. As he felt the faintest trace of heat and slick through the thin garment of your underwear, his grip turned to steel, fighting the urge to yank away the meaningless little fabric between the pair of you and push into you to give you what you wanted — what he wanted, if he was being honest, just to feel you clench around him in any capacity. When he heard your gasp change to a soft, tremulous moan as you moved again, it took everything in him to force himself to let go of your waist.

“Your room.” He’d blurted it before he realized quite what he was doing, and you’d blinked at him, your eyes already sweetly hazy. “…Please,” he added, swallowing slightly. “I want to-- I need to do this right.” He pressed a soft kiss to your jawline, hoping he hadn’t just made a fool of himself. “I wanna do this like you deserve.” If this was going to go how he thought, he wanted to make sure it mattered. That even if it was all he ever got, he could say he’d gotten to really savor all of you while he’d had it ever so briefly in his grasp.

Your laugh was shaky but real, and you tilted your head to kiss him again (and, unbeknownst to you, muffle his sigh of relief). “You fucking angel, you’re so sweet,” you’d murmured, kissing his mouth and his cheek and the tip of his nose in quick succession. “C’mon.” You’d stepped backwards onto your floor, grabbing his hands to pull him up with you, and the two of you had only run into a chair and one wall when you couldn’t be bothered to look up from refusing to let go of the other person.

Maxi had been over to your house enough times that it wasn’t too odd how well he could pick his way through your living room, and then your hallway. Luckily, by the time he was walking you backwards to your bed, you were too busy nipping his lower lip and gripping the back of his neck to notice just how well he could navigate across your somewhat messy floor, sidestepping you carefully around things he logically shouldn’t have already known were there.

But he’d gotten very well acquainted with your floor in the last couple of weeks. And the space under your bed, which if he was being honest, was more comfortable than most, if only for the rug underneath and the lack of perilous storage boxes he’d have to contort himself to fit around. It would’ve been downright homey, comparatively, if he wasn’t constantly in danger of knocking his head on your bed frame if he sat up too quickly.

In that moment, he’d been beyond thrilled to be with you on top of your mattress as the two of you fell towards it. He was more than happy to be pinned beneath your full hips, his hands caressing your sides, and feeling you push yourself against his cock already leaking into his clothes as you sought any sort of friction between the two of you. This was more than agreeable. If you wanted to ride him until he couldn’t remember his own name, that would be divine. There would be plenty of time after to fuck you into your mattress until you ruined your sheets, he had all night.

Your fingers had finally hooked into the open waistband of his slacks when suddenly you hissed a curse under your breath, withdrawing so abruptly he was left bewilderedly blinking at your ceiling for a moment.

“Gorgeous?” He sat up to see where you’d pulled back, your expression at once stricken and frustrated. “What’s wrong- you okay?” He felt himself snap out of his own blissful trance, looking you over for any immediate obvious cause of distress. “…Is it somethin’ I did?” He swore he’d just been laying here savoring the taste of your tongue - did he miss something obvious? Had he been careless, distracted? The latter had made him panic even more, wondering if the dark presence inside him had somehow made itself known when he had his guard down.

“No,” you shook your head quickly, pressing your lips together in a slightly aggravated line. “No, baby, it’s not you.” You sighed heavily, sitting back and crossing your legs as you looked… embarrassed? You bit your own lower lip hard for a moment, clearly annoyed with something, before you glanced at him from under your lashes. “…My uterus has the worst fucking timing, is all.” You have him a rueful grimace, wincing slightly as you did so.

Maxi felt himself exhale a laugh in relief, his fear immediately abating. “Oh, babydoll - is that all? Hell, I don’t care.” He shrugged, his shoulders suddenly immeasurably light compared to a second ago. “Or — wait, shit, hold on.” He caught himself a second too late, blushing slightly at his own phrasing and quickly running his palm over his face under his glasses. Smooth, dumbass. “I mean,” he said, showing you his palms apologetically. “That I don’t mind. But obviously,” he gestured to you. “I don’t wanna do anything that would make you… uncomfortable.” He gave you a smile meant to be genuinely soothing, but only relaxed when he saw you let out a breath you’d seemed to be holding.

“Ugh, I’m so sorry.” You rolled your eyes, falling on your back next to him with an exaggerated sigh. He immediately stretched out next to you, determined to be as close to you as possible while he had the chance. You were always a vision, to him, but stripped down like this, you were something he wanted to treasure. “I tend to be really… sore, later, after my first day. Like, ‘hurts to sit down’ sore, sometimes.” You rolled onto your side, and your fingertip traced a soft line down his chest and stomach that stopped just above the exposed fabric of his boxers. He suppressed a visible shiver as best he could, but it was a struggle. “And based on what you’re packing, babe,” you said, your eyes flicking downward before meeting his and causing him to forget to breathe for a moment. “I don’t think I’m going to be quite able to handle it all tonight. Which sucks,” you added, with an embarrassed giggle. “Because if I’m being totally honest with you, I was really looking forward to it.” You have him a small, shy smile that still felt somehow conspiratorial.

Jesus, you were going to kill him. He was going to die right there in your bed from the sheer thought that you’d wanted him as much as he’d pined after you.

He took a breath as subtly as he could, trying not to give away that you’d about knocked it all out of him. “Don’t worry about it.” He reached over, lightly moving some of your hair away from your eyes. “Again, I don’t want to do anythin’ you don’t want to do. Right now, later, whenever.” He smiled, admiring your bare stomach and thighs in the soft light of your bedroom window, how the beginnings of the blue hour reflected just a certain way off your skin. You were already lovely from his place in the dark, but out here with you? Where you’d wanted him to see you? “You’ve got me as long as you want me.” His eyes had met yours again, taking in how those shone as well, how he wished he could see them in this light more often.

“But I really do want you, though,” you said with just a hint of a whine, and when you leaned in to kiss him again, it was everything he could do not to roll and pin you down so he could kiss you everywhere, slowly and deliberately. You moved closer to him on your mattress, your hand skimming lower over clothes that now felt far too tight. “Can I… help with this, at all?” —

Maxi swore softly to himself as he mis-aligned the apple of the decedent’s cheek again, impatiently picking up the clay and re-rolling it into what it would’ve looked like if half of it hadn’t been ground off onto the hot concrete of the highway once the visor of the helmet had been smashed out.

“I swear I can do this,” he said over his shoulder, still smelling the hint of perfume. “I’m just… havin’ a day, is all. You know how it is.”

He paused, looking back down at the face he was working on restoring and feeling slightly mortified with himself. “I mean, of course you do. Of course. I’m so sorry, that was thoughtless of me. I’m - I’m just gonna shut up now,” he muttered, furiously re-rolling the clay in his hands to try to change the texture.

When he felt the tiniest ‘thump’ against his shoulder blade, like a heavy palm lightly clapping him on the back, he about jumped out of his skin.

— As cool as you were trying to be about it, he could hear just the slightest hesitancy in your voice still, and he could’ve died at the idea you thought he would still say no to you. “I…” His face felt almost drunkenly warm as he tried desperately to get his brain to work with him here, overwhelmed with just how long he’d ached for you to touch him at all, the warmth of your flesh threatening to scorch his normally cool skin. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to? I—“ He forgot what words were for a second as he felt your hand move again, your fingertips skimming the skin above the waistband between the pair of you. “I’d wanna be able to reciprocate, somehow,” he managed, forcing himself to meet your eyes again. “However, um—“ Oh, you’d been positively teasing him then, sliding his trousers down as slowly as possible while you watched his face. Your expression was sweet, your lips parted just slightly as if in innocent curiosity, but he could still see that light in your eyes that told him you knew exactly what you were doing. “However you feel comfortable,” he said, buying himself time by gently taking your hand in his. “I don’t want this to just be about me.” He couldn’t have imagined anything more agonizing than you touching him and him not being able to touch you. It just wasn’t how he was built. He kissed the back of your hand, and the wickedness in your eyes liquified into something soft. “Please?”

You bit your lip thoughtfully, considering. He knew what it was to be vulnerable with someone new - to be even more vulnerable than you’d maybe expected, in your case. He gazed at you earnestly, hoping you would see that he was already devoted, there was nothing about your body that could scare him, because it was yours, and at this rate, he was as good as.

“…Okay,” you said at last, and he couldn’t help but beam when you smiled a little at his enthusiasm. “But only whatever you’re cool with. Don’t feel like you have to reciprocate in exactly the same way, if you don’t want to.”

“Try me.” Maxi said, quirking a brow in a playful challenge.

“Oh, I intend to,” you murmured, kissing the corner of his mouth before dipping lower to trace the scar over his heart with the white-hot tip of your tongue.

Maxi fought to keep his surprised inhale from being too obvious as you did so, feeling his already present blush turn into a full flush down his neck and shoulders. He’d been with other people, sure, but he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had seemed to… savor that part of him, quite like you were.

But of course you’d caught that. You looked up quickly, meeting his eyes with a furrow of concern. “Sorry,” you said softly, your eyes flicking between his and his scar. “I- should I not—?”

“It’s fine,” he reassured you, kissing your cheek hastily. “You’re fine, sugar, I’m just… not used to that, s’all.” His fingertips ghosted down the line of your jaw, watching your brows ease apart. “…People tend to avoid it,” he explained quietly, the corner of his mouth lifting in a half-smile and a shrug of his shoulder.

You blinked. “Oh.” You glanced sheepishly down again. “I should’ve asked first, I know, I just—“ You lifted a hand, your fingers ghosting over the ridge of tissue you’d just claimed with your tongue, and Maxi found himself not only enjoying the feeling, but leaning into it as much as he dared. “…I just figured, it’s you,” you murmured, your eyes finding his again. “And I-“ You broke off, teeth grazing your lip self-consciously like you were fighting a laugh at yourself. “I want that too.”

Maxi sat up with an abruptness that drew a small squeak from you, lifting you so you were straddling his lap now. One hand tangled in your hair as he kissed you hard, the other hand squeezing your hip with a need he was sure gave away just how desperate he was for you—

He slammed down the clay knife a little harder than he meant to on the steel table surface, cussing up a storm under his breath as he failed for a third time to get it shaped exactly how he needed it over the partially exposed gums. “Come on,” he growled, not sure if he was more annoyed with his lack of focus or embarrassed at just how completely you’d invaded his every sense, leaving him stumbling like an apprentice on their first day.

Probably even moreso, given just how long he’d been helping shape flesh back into faces before it was entirely legal for him to do so.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again, straightening up and folding his gloved hands behind his head. He turned away, unable to quite face the woman he was making a fool of himself in front of on his on table. “I swear, this has never happened before, really. I’m absolutely gonna have you lookin’ right as rain for your viewin’, I promise, I’m just… feelin’ a bit off, today.” He gave a long, slow exhale, one that shook just a little bit around the edges. He had to focus. He had to try. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done this hundreds of times.

But you — you were something new. He’d never had to work with someone like you in his head, before.

And it seemed to be having the worst time trying to hold his infatuation and his professionalism in the same amount of space.

— His brain immediately returned to how you’d kissed him back with just as much eagerness, your teeth nipping his lower lip, and when his tongue had filled your mouth, you sucked on it in a way that went straight to the base of his spine.

“PleasecanItaketheseoffyou?” he’d asked in a single breath as he broke away, his fingers hooking impatiently into the cotton lounge shorts you were still wearing.

You looked shy again. “Um. I’m not—“ You sat there for a second, choosing your words. “I’m not wearing a lot underneath,” you mumbled. “I thought I still had a day or so, and I wouldn’t want to—“ You gestured loosely at the white dress shirt he still had hanging loosely about his shoulders, more off than on at this point.

Maxi pressed another messy kiss to the side of your neck, emboldened and secretly thrilled by the idea that you’d been planning ahead for this. That you’d wanted to, been hoping for it maybe as much as he had. “I don’t mind,” he said against your skin, and he felt your head fall back slightly as he kissed down to the crook of your shoulder. “I swear to god I don’t mind, there’s no part of this I don’t mind, I promise you—“

“Okay,” you half-breathed, half-giggled in his ear, and you got your knees under you to hover over his waist just as he pulled down, finding the black mesh waiting for him underneath.

“Baby,” he nearly whined at the sight, his hands moving covetously over the curve of your ass as he admired you. “Fuck, you’re pretty. You always are, of course,” he added quickly, looking up at you where you were still perched up over him on your knees. “Of course I knew that, but— fuck,” he repeated, his hands moving up your plush hips and your soft sides adoringly. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

You giggled in a way that went right to his chest. “Calm down, Monsieur, you’ve already got me naked,” you teased, still looking a bit shy.

He hooked his arms around your waist, pulling your stomach flush to his chest where he was somewhat pinned under you. “I mean it,” he whispered, and he watched your face change - the self-conscious half-smile falling away at what must be the sheer dark intensity of his gaze. “You have no idea how much I want you. Just like this.”

He was sure his eyes would have changed, the way he was looking at you. He couldn’t always feel it when they did, but the yowling ache of Want inside him as he looked at you like this, for him — you had to have to seen it. There’s no way you could have seen him and missed it, the way he wanted you all to himself, folded into his arms against the dark that threatened to swallow him up when he thought of being parted from you.

He knew it was scary, especially so soon. It scared him too, in a way. He wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d unwound yourself from his grasp right then and thrown him out.

…But, miracle of miracles, you hadn’t.

You’d watched his eyes with a tilt of your head, transfixed by what, he wasn’t totally sure, but your stare was curious - and, eventually, oddly familiar. He saw it then, that flicker of pure Want, not quite as sharp or dark as his own. But it had been there as you looked down at him, your hands lightly carding through his hair… before one set of fingers tangled in it, scraping ever so lightly at his scalp.

That dark presence in him - something that had no business being so close to you, especially not this quickly - crowed in triumph in a way it hadn’t in a long, long time.

You leaned down, catching his lips in yours, and he met you with a kiss that bordered on ravenous. He couldn’t help the sound that escaped him when you gave another careful, experimental tug at his hair — which blossomed into a full moan when you’d pulled harder, eliminating what space there’d been still between you.

“Tell me what you want,” he demanded as you broke away, the pair of you panting slightly as though you were starved for air. “What can I do for you?”

“…Those all the way off,” you said softly, nodding down at his open slacks as your tongue traced your lips - which, he’d noticed, had begun to look just the tiniest bit swollen with his attentions.

He let go of you only long enough to fumble with them and the accompanying underwear, unable to help the slightest of smirks when your own hands had dropped to help him when you decided he wasn’t quite moving fast enough for you. He’d been appreciative of every display of your enthusiasm so far, but the need he’d felt crackling between the pair of you at that moment had been undeniable.

Maxi slid them off with your help, immediately pulling you back against him as soon as they rustled to your bedroom floor. He was trying to keep his breathing level as he felt you finally skim your palm lightly over his cock, and he couldn’t help but glance down to see you sizing it up.

“Damn, Maxi,” you murmured, glancing back to watch his face as you took it fully in hand. He bit down hard on his lip as you spread the drops that were already waiting there over the head, trying not to be so obvious in how much he’d been wanting you to touch him. “Were you planning on making sure I couldn’t walk tomorrow?”

He opened his mouth to answer, only to have the words tangle into something somewhat incoherent when he watched you move down his abdomen to lick a long, hot stripe towards his hips.

The pressure at the base of his spine was taking over the rest of his brain, and all he wanted was the heat of you around him, wishing he could do exactly as you said.

“Depends on what you wanted, pretty,” he managed through his teeth, feeling his fingers dig into his own palms.

“Oh yeah?” You glanced up at him, moving so your torso was perched gently on his thighs. You ran a fingertip lightly up the inside of one, smirking a little as he obviously squirmed.

Maxi forced himself to nod. “I swear I could— be careful,” he said, trying to keep his voice from shaking as he watched you lick your own palm lasciviously. “I wouldn’t hurt you, I promise—“

“Unless I wanted you to?”

He knew you felt him flex in your palm in response. It was too obvious. He said nothing, looking from where his cock was aching, leaking in your hand to your eyes, where you were watching his face with such a dark glitter to them that he had to fight to keep his hips still in response.

“…Okay,” you said slowly, your smile enigmatic. “Good to know.”

Oh, shit. He was a goner now.

You didn’t say much else, your hand twisting up his shaft and gripping just enough to make him inhale raggedly. You gave him a couple of experimental strokes, watching still before your mouth was around him, and he had to fight to keep his shit together.

“Fuck.” His hands tangled hard into your bedspread, trying to keep himself grounded through this onslaught. He’d kissed you a million times by now - he couldn’t help himself when you were around - and just like then, you were slow, deliberate. Taking your time with him because you seemed to like keeping him right on the line of agony and bliss. He felt the softest puff of air, like a suppressed laugh, and when he looked down he felt everything inside him seize at the way you were watching him, your eyes mischievous as he saw a thread of saliva trace its way from your lower lip down his shaft.

He fell back against your pillow with a moan, forcing himself to look away for a moment so he could keep from totally embarrassing himself with you. You had no right to look that perfect with your mouth on him like that. His fist knitted tighter into your comforter, until he felt the soft touch of your hand on his - looking down, he let you gently pull his hand away from your bed and set it in your hair, holding it there for a second as if to reassure him before your hand returned to pinning his hips to your mattress.

Tentatively, he curled his hand in your hair, not wanting to pull hard enough to hurt. He relished the feeling of its familiar texture, something he’d come to love in the time the two of you had spent on the couch with your head on his shoulder. He was just willing himself to be gentle when he heard the quietest noise, and it was only when he felt a shift in your mouth that he realized you’d taken him deeper.

He pulled hard on your hair reflexively, gasping at the change, at the soft sound of you fighting to take him into your throat. “Fuck, angel, you don’t have to...” He looked down at you, and the slight glaze of tears at the corner of your eyes made him forget himself so entirely, he felt his hips thrust forward before he could stop himself.

If you hadn’t been ready for him, he would’ve hated himself for being so careless with you. But you met his worried eyes with something of a challenge, your tongue tracing the underside of his shaft invitingly, and something dark in him delighted at the mirror it seemed to find in you.

Experimentally, Maxi thrust up again, and when he could feel you fighting to control your breath, he wound his fingers tighter in your hair and pulled.

Your moan couldn’t have been more exquisite, and Maxi at last let himself give in.

He wasn’t a monster - his thrusts were tempered, short, but he lost himself in the feeling of you around him: the warmth of your mouth, the soft ragged puffs of your breath, the spit that dripped from your lips. With the lovely wreck you made, and the way he felt you carefully take the rest of him in your hand to make sure no part was neglected, he found himself falling apart fairly soon.

“Darlin’,” he whined, glancing down at you through the now lightly fogged lenses of his glasses. “I can’t take this, I’m— I’m close, I have to—“

It was the way your eyes locked on his and the subtle shake of your head that finally sent him over. The sharp, clear gaze you gave him, the way you made it clear he was doing this your way. That this was something of his that you wanted for yourself.

He came with a shaky groan of your name, feeling the tiniest bit guilty he did so alone, but unwilling to deny how much he loved watching you as he did.

When you finally sat back, gasping, he sat up and immediately crushed his lips to yours like a man possessed, his hands gently cupping your face. He could taste just a trace of himself still on your tongue, and everything that just happened crashed over him at once, turning his kiss nearly feral.

Even through catching your breath, you giggled again at his eagerness, and he knew immediately he would fight a pissed-off alligator for you if it ever came to that. Two alligators. Possessed ones. There was nothing in the world he wouldn’t face for that sound.

“So you enjoyed yourself then,” you teased, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. “I’d hoped so.”

“You were divine,” he mumbled, leaning down to kiss your bare neck like a man called to worship. “I mean - I already thought so,” he added. “But that was…” He felt his brain go pleasantly blank again, distracted by whatever scent you were wearing on your skin.

You smiled under his praise, but there was the tiniest hint of relief in your eyes. “I’ve been wanting to do that for ages, to be honest.” You leaned forward, kissing the end of his nose as he blinked at you in surprise. “I knew you’d be hot when you weren’t totally together. Not that you’re not hot when you’re put together,” you continued, seeing his eyebrows begin to knit together. “I mean, I’ve been wanting you to rail me in those suits of yours for ages, obviously.” You waved a hand as if this were, in fact, obvious, despite Maxi having a very distinct hiccup of brain activity at the mere thought. “But you’re always so… poised, Maxi,” you said, your hands lovingly coming to rest on his now-bare chest. “I know you have to be, with everything that can go wrong with what you do,” you went on, and he had to keep his face neutral at just how close to the truth that came. “But I’ve been… curious,” you leaned forward, your lips an inch from his as you searched his eyes. “About what I’d see when you finally let go for me.”

Maxi watched you apprehensively as you reached up and ruffled the hair that sweat had undone. You fixated on it slowly sliding over one of his lenses, where it was naturally inclined to lay when he didn’t attack it with hair gel and a comb every day, and after a moment, you sat back with a smirk. “I have to say, baby, I really like it.”

You weren’t totally prepared for when he moved forward suddenly, capturing you in a kiss while flipping you beneath him. He delighted at the soft moan around his tongue in your mouth, only pulling back to hover over you when you were both absolutely out of breath. “If I wanted to make you come so hard you can’t think straight,” he whispered, dark eyes boring into yours. “What’s the best way I could do that right now?”

He watched the coquettish set of your face dissolve into a mixture of surprise from his phrasing and - what he was far more excited by - open, undeniable need. Your teeth grazed your lower lip hard, but he got the feeling that you weren’t having to think about it. No, this seemed more like you were hesitating.

“Try me,” he repeated, more insistant now. He kissed the corner of your mouth, then kissed you properly, coaxing you into something more heated. He lingered until he felt you relax a bit, opening up to him, before he pulled back just enough to speak. “I mean it, anythin’.”

Your guard was down, because he saw your eyes move briefly towards where his hips were resting against yours, your back arching very slightly to rock gently against his hipbone in search of any sort of contact. But they snapped back to his immediately, widening when you must’ve realized you’d given yourself away.

“You a hundred percent do not have to reciprocate,” you blurted, your words tripping off your tongue in your hurry. “Especially not, like, today,” you added with an apologetic wince. “Obviously. I’m not about to ask you to— well.“ You looked askance, embarrassed. “Not our, um. Our first… time, and all.”

Maxi snorted, smiling wryly. “Babydoll. C’mon, now.” He propped himself up on an elbow, cocking his head to look at you. “What, did you think I was gonna try to dodge that every month? Twiddle my thumbs ’til it was over?”

You met his eyes again, yours wide - and Maxi realized he’d tilted his hand, hinting at anything remotely close to a future together this soon. He opened his mouth to backtrack, kicking himself for being so presumptuous - when you looked off to the side again, giving a tiny shrug. “I didn’t want to assume or anything,” you said, smiling shyly. “Some people just aren’t into it.”

He managed to disguise a sigh of relief as a chuckle, realizing you weren’t automatically discouraging the idea of a… repeat engagement. Hell, that you didn’t even seem to be that put off by the thought of him sticking around. “Well. I appreciate your lookin’ out,” he said, tilting his head further to meet your eyes. “But trust me when I say there’s nothin’ about you I’m not into.”

You laughed, disbelieving, but there was a curiosity in your eyes that, when he saw it, he couldn’t look away from. “Define ‘into’ here, babe.”

Maxi sat up a little more, skimming your torso with a rakish glance. “Put it this way,” he drawled, leaning down to kiss just underneath the elastic of your top. “When you do what I do, there isn’t much about the human body you don’t learn to appreciate, in its own way.” He ran the broad swathe of his tongue down the curve of your stomach as he moved lower, causing you to inhale through your teeth and squirm slightly. He trapped your plush hips in his hands, fingers nimbly spreading and adjusting to hold you down against your mattress. His thumbs worked their way under the waist of the pretty sheer underwear you’d worn - for him, he thought with an eager twist of his insides - down over the skin, as though he were unveiling you. “There’s nothin’ I don’t find more beautiful than somethin’ alive just bein’ allowed to be itself.” He kissed your lower abdomen with parted lips, his teeth grazing lightly below your navel just to hear your gentle sound of surprise, to feel you try to move against his palms… and find you couldn’t break his grip. He couldn’t help but sneak a peek at your face, or help the grin that was just a touch too sharp when your eyes were already hazy and huge. “…And it’d be a sin,” he added quietly. “For you to feel like you had anythin’ to be shy about.” He held your gaze as he shifted his hands to your thighs, letting you watch as he pulled them a little wider, his fingers sinking into the plush flesh.

He waited for a response from you - the barest nod, given with only a short dazed lag - before he settled his torso between them, his thumbs tracing the velvet of your skin. He planted an open-mouthed kiss to the inside of each, just adjacent to your cunt, with all the slow measured movements of a ritual. He took the opportunity to adjust his grip again, his right hand shifting slightly upward to mitigate the jolt of your hips, his left staying anchored to your thigh as he continued to rub circles there.

He didn’t know what his eyes were doing when he looked at you a last time, but he could feel the Reaper poised just behind their sockets, unable to resist the proximity of something so vulnerable and precious. He didn’t bother to try to knock it back - it liked this too, too much to ruin it for both of them.

He’d let it watch, it didn’t matter.

Pleasing you would be something that would strictly fall to him. He’d make sure of that.

His eyes flicked downwards, seeing you were already visibly wet - something that sent another searing jolt through him - and there, as though a sign, the beginning bloom of red.

When he swiped his tongue brazenly up your slit, pushing into your folds, the moan you let go from your chest hit him at the same time as the unmistakable taste of blood.

He fell on you like a man starved, pulling your thighs even wider to spread you for him. He felt suddenly insatiable, taken in by your heat, the way you shivered on his tongue, and couldn’t help but cant your hips just slightly upwards to allow himself better access.

You made a sound of surprise that turned into a mewl, your thighs pushing slightly against the side of his face and his palm as though to keep him there, and he felt himself grin wickedly as he continued giving you exactly what he’d wanted to since that first encounter in the cemetery.

In the midst of the familiar human essence, the iron across his palate, there was something that left the vague impression of… sweetness. He chased it, lingering on your clit to lave the flat of his tongue there like a wave. He heard your moan twist into a whine, and he couldn’t resist the urge to echo it, his cheekbone scraping the inside of your thigh as he unashamedly lapped at your core. Your slick spreading across his mouth and further left him wanting, and as his hands clenched at your body with need, yours fell to his hair.

He couldn’t help the moan at the feeling of your nails against his scalp, the way he was sure you didn’t realize just how hard you were pulling. He had to fight to keep his eyes from rolling back as you tugged hard, your hips pushing against his mouth for more. He didn’t know which got him to start rutting lightly against your mattress, the little licks of pain or the way he was tempted to just let you grind against his jaw until you were done with him.

“F-fuck,” you groaned, your first actual word in a while, and it came from somewhere low in your chest. This was beyond the breathy noises of a first time, what people thought the other person wanted to hear or expected. There was a rawness as your groan became something strangled, your voice breaking, and when your heel very lightly came to rest on his back, his nails sank into your skin before he could stop himself.

“Fuck, Maxi, I’m—!” You punctuated that sentence with a keening cry as you came apart, and he held his tongue steady against your clit when your hips spasmed against his face. Your heel dug further into his back, and your hands knotted in his hair as evidence of your orgasm coated his tastebuds. He drove his own hips hard against your bed as you shuddered, already inescapably aware that he wouldn’t know peace again until he could have you making a mess on his cock too.

But this was more than enough, for now. He would’ve been happy to do this until the day he died - and then to be resurrected, at your whim, for this express eternal purpose. His name sounded so much more pleasant from your mouth, especially when you sounded on the verge of tears with sensation, your throbbing cunt indecisive as to whether it wanted more or if it couldn’t take anything else.

He only let up when he felt your fingers go slack in his hair, your foot hitting the mattress with a soft little thud. When he pushed himself up to catch his breath, you were gazing sightlessly at the ceiling, your eyes like a starless night as your own chest heaved.

The blood he could feel congealing around his mouth only exacerbated the sudden overwhelming urge he felt to cage you in his arms and never let you go again, to meet everything else that sought your attention with a murderous glare and hands that itched for cold steel.

“Mine,” the Reaper hissed in the back of his skull, and for once, he had found himself in total agreement.

- Fuck. This wasn’t working. If even open wounds weren’t enough to dull the heat he felt spreading through his veins, he didn’t know what would. “Christ, M’sorry,” he muttered sheepishly to the woman on his table, hastily throwing down the clay knife as it felt like his skin was going to combust inside his protective gear. “I’m so sorry, ma’am, I’ll fix everythin’, I swear I’ll make it up to you, I’m—“ He couldn’t even finish the sentence as he pulled the sheet over Mrs. Berthelot-Yang for her dignity’s sake, then bolted out the door of the prep room towards the door to the hearse’s loading bay.

A full-throated peal of laughter rang out as he left, echoing off the stainless steel on the walls.

He slammed through the exit door, barely noticing the pouring afternoon rain as he scrabbled free of his gloves first, ripping the black latex in the process, before yanking off the splash guard and tossing it over his shoulder and back inside. He was already panting as he ditched the mask underneath, then clawed off the protective coat over his dark scrubs and throwing it behind him as well. Only then did he let himself lean over to put his hands on his knees, letting the somehow still warm rain run through his hair and over his face as he tried to figure out how to deal with the throbbing ache that drove him to literal distraction. If work wouldn’t do it - especially a hard restoration like this one - he wasn’t left with a lot of options.

One tempted him in particular. One he’d been trying to avoid, to be honest. It wasn’t something he liked to do, and it was definitely something he wanted to get in the habit of doing whenever a… similar situation occurred.

But as evening loomed on the edges of the afternoon, he couldn’t see himself with a lot of other options.

If he wasn’t in such a state, he would’ve admitted to himself that it was probably troublesome how he could’ve made the drive to your house blindfolded by now. How it was probably even more troubling that there was starting to be a spot in the bushes in the empty lot just down the street from you where he hid the old Mustang. Or how he’d already had a change of clothes in the back seat for just such an occasion, and he stripped out of his wet scrubs with as little eye contact as possible with the smugly smirking figure of his uncle in the rearview mirror.

He followed the little not-path that was starting to form between the lot and the trees that encircled your house, carefully ducking as needed to avoid any sight lines to the neighbor’s place across the street, avoiding the thorn bushes he’d learned were there the hard way, and carefully stepping around what rodent warrens he’d come across -

And at last, ending up exactly outside your bedroom window.

Your light was on, but your curtains were closed. He checked his phone, scrolling to his last text message from you - before lunch, if he remembered correctly. Amidst a flurry of bad jokes and some random dancing skeleton .gifs, you’d told him you had been feeling kind of gross today, and were planning on taking it easy.

So you were definitely home, then.

He peered through the small crack he could find in your blackout curtains, scanning your room and finding it still charmingly messy, but blessedly empty. Your bedcovers were rumpled, but there was no sign of you.

He hadn’t seen any light from your front windows when he’d driven by, though - so you weren’t watching TV on your couch. But where were you, then, if not here?

Slowly, he cracked the window, listening to what sounds he could catch to see if he could tell: sure enough, he heard strains of music, loud, but distant - further in the house. So no headache then, he thought with a touch of cheer. Good, you always seemed so miserable when you had one of those. You were endlessly restless on your mattress when you were, like you could never get comfortable.

He took the faraway music as his cue to crack the window wide enough to slide in, bending over to fit through in as little space as possible. It was a careful step over the window seat (something he was rather envious of, if he was honest) to your carpeted bedroom floor, and he immediately removed his shoes, not wanting to track dirt around your room.

From there, he dropped into a crouch to hide behind the silhouette of your bed in the middle of the room, carefully lowering the window as he himself sank to the floor. Once he was sure it was secure, he fell over on his side and rolled in one motion under your bed -

And came to a stop right before he ran face-first into your box of clean bedsheets. Perfect, he noted, you hadn’t moved anything in the few days since he’d been by. He’d carefully arranged everything under your bed so he was concealed from view from the doorway, but gave him enough room to stretch comfortably and avoid a dreaded leg cramp. He even had enough room to stash his shoes down by his feet, safely out of sight and nowhere where they could leave a mess.

He curled into his familiar space, resting his head on the hoodie you’d left down here once the weather had turned warm. He wasn’t even sure if you’d noticed it gradually sliding off your bed - genuinely, without any manipulations on his part - but after multiple nights of being tossed about in your fitful slumber, it had finally hit the floor when you’d rolled over, and he’d snatched it up immediately to repurpose it for himself. It was an old lesson he’d learned early: never waste a good opportunity. Not only did it make lying here easier, it had the lovely bonus of smelling like your soap, too.

…But that scent was a little stronger than usual, if he wasn’t mistaken. He sniffed your hoodie again, confused - it wasn’t like you’d found it to wash it, recently. When that wasn’t it, he kept still, trying to figure out what was happening to create this change. Your room wasn’t a place that changed drastically, and definitely not under your bed, so anything that caught his notice was definitely worth assessing as a potential new hazard.

However, it took him all of a minute to realize the music he’d heard was coming from your bathroom - accompanied by the sound of water rushing through the pipes in your walls. You were just having a shower. Was it cramps, then? Heat might relieve those, or it could just be general exhaustion. Bodies were tricky things when they were alive - he’d just have to wait and see what was ailing you.

He took a moment in the stillness to pull his phone out of his pocket and turn off vibrations along with sound, putting it completely on mute. He couldn’t risk him responding to one of your texts giving him away - wouldn’t that just be awkward.

As he did so, he caught another layer of sound amidst the water and the music, and he froze in place instinctively, trying to identify it. It was a voice, but not unfamiliar - yours, he decided after a moment.

After another moment still, he realized you were singing.

His heart was fit to burst; he’d never heard you sing before. It wasn’t professional, by any means, but it was just so… adorable. Genuine. You were no songbird, but neither was he. And he would’ve listened to this for hours, just to hear you sound so happy and at peace.

The song itself was familiar too, although the instruments weren’t quite right - a cover, maybe? He scooted as close to the far side of your bed as he dared, trying to make out the lyrics through the wall and the water. You’d stopped singing, your part apparently ended, and the voice had changed:

“—Sing once again with me,

Our strange duet.”

Maxi sat bolt upright in his excitement - or tried to, before he smacked his forehead hard into your bed frame. He immediately lay back down, cursing himself quietly and touching the tender spot that he was sure was going to bruise. Pulling his fingertips away, he was grateful not to see any blood, at least. But he was definitely going to have to not slick his hair back for a little bit, lest he attract unwanted attention.

But you’d rather liked it when he did that, he remembered you saying so. He squirmed a little where he lay at the idea of your fingers running through his hair, playing with it, the ache in him only slightly assuaged by being so close to you (after being tempered somewhat by having to walk through the rain in the growing dark, on top of that).

But the song was definitely a Phantom cover - he was surprised it had taken him so long to place it, but he was willing to chalk it up to the water and the less-than-spectacular acoustics of being stuffed under your bed. But it had just gotten to Christine’s part again, and he could hear you trying to keep up as she swept into her grand finale. You were admittedly nowhere near the singer’s range, but it was obvious you were having fun. When her final note sounded, he could hear you laughing at your own attempt to match it that came out more of a squeak at the end, and he thought his heart would melt out his mouth and dribble all over your floor. He couldn’t believe he’d never thought to ask you if you liked the show, when he knew the two of you had discussed the book before. He was already reaching for his phone to google when the next tour would be in town when he heard the water shut off.

He froze even though you were still in the next room, listening hard. You’d turned the music down as well, the playlist having shuffled to something else - another singer he liked, he noticed with glee, making a note to ask you about it later - and he could still hear you faintly through the walls, singing at a much more subdued level to match the quieter melody.

He heard the clattering of your various skincare products as you moved around, before the music moved as well, leaking into the hall as you opened the door and stepped lightly back into your room. Only wearing a huge t-shirt and (he could barely glimpse them) a pair of underwear, you seemed to move on a cloud of steam and something sweet, the whole room filled with the scent of your favorite products now, and he relished just laying there and drinking it in.

He watched your bare feet as you walked around your room, your nails freshly painted your favorite color, and surmised you must have been trying to treat yourself to a spa day. You had said you’d been feeling less than your best, so this might have been your way of trying to take care of yourself. He had to resist the urge to check the date, make a note for next time - he knew he was weird, sure, but there were lines even he was willing to respect. He’d have to trust you to tell him if you wanted his assistance with… something like this. He could respect your discretion if not, your relationship with your body was your own.

But still. He’d at least make sure to have some extra of your favorite snacks in his kitchen. It wouldn’t stand out too much, he supposed.

At last, you fell over onto your bed, and he heard you sigh contentedly as you relaxed onto your mattress. He resisted the urge to echo it aloud, instead just stretching out as much as he could manage to pretend he was resting alongside you. This wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely better than trying to white-knuckle through things at the Mortuary alone. At least you were here. At least the overwhelming feeling of… everything, had subsided somewhat now that he was with you.

He heard something move from your nightstand, and a moment later, he saw an empty wine glass come into view as you set it on the floor. You stayed leaning off your mattress, opening the door to your nightstand, and he moved backwards as much as he dared, trying to make sure you wouldn’t happen to notice him if you happened to glance underneath your bed. But you seemed fixated on whatever was in the cabinet. He couldn’t help but be a little curious - he hadn’t gotten to see what you’d kept in there, before, and it wasn’t like he had the opportunity to ask when he was here last night.

With an impatient sigh, he heard you moving to the right side of your mattress, then settle your feet back onto the floor. A moment later, his heart - previously melted - resolidified and jumped into his throat as he saw your knees follow suit, and you kneel in front of the cabinet you were still digging through.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. There was no excuse for being under here, especially this early on, and double especially since you didn’t Know. He held his breath without realizing, pulling as slowly into himself as he could manage. It wasn’t like you had a direct line of sight under here, but it also wasn’t like you wouldn’t see him as soon as you bothered to look.

He had no one to pray to for this - the good ones wouldn’t dare grant his request, and the bad ones weren’t worth talking to. So he just held his breath and hoped, watching you rifle through a collection of —

Oh.

He watched you set what was very definitely a vibrator on your lap, then a second toy: long, made of dark silicone, it looked like. You picked up and held a couple similar ones of different sizes after that, clearly trying to decide something between them.

He knew he would’ve been scarlet if anyone could see him, the ache from earlier returning tenfold in an instant. So that’s what you kept in there. How… educational.

You were holding the dildo in your hands, and he felt one of his own slide up to cover his mouth, while the other slid… elsewhere. Your fingers were perfect, and once again, he found himself wishing you would touch him, as you had last night.

…In very different circumstances than right now, obviously. But still.

You were tracing the shaft with your thumb, humming thoughtfully to yourself. “Close enough,” you mumbled. “Or close as I’m going to get, anyway.” He heard you laugh to yourself, sounding a little embarrassed. “Yes, wonderful date conversation. ’Hi, Maxi, maybe-strange request, but can I just measure your dick for a sec? …Why? Oh, y’know, just wanted to commission something custom off the internet so I could fuck myself while thinking about you, even though we’ve only been going out for a month, no big deal.’ …God, I’m such a fucking weirdo,“ you muttered, sounding amused yet exasperated with yourself.

Maxi felt his fingers digging into his cheeks as his palm clamped hard over his mouth, barely cognizant of that possibly leaving yet another bruise. His brain felt like it was on fire, his sweats suddenly uncomfortably, impossibly tight. You… what? You what? You were doing what? Regularly enough that you wanted a what?

If he could’ve moved either of his hands, he would’ve pinched himself to make sure this was real, and not some pleasant fever dream from accidentally inhaling embalming chemicals. But one was firmly latched onto his face, determined not to give himself away and ruin this, while the other was already subconsciously desperately rubbing over his cock pressing against the front of his pants.

You pulled out a bottle of lube before you closed the cabinet, stepping back up onto your bed. He listened as you moved like a fox would track a rabbit, aware of every little slip of your skin against fabric, every slight motion of your legs -

Then the familiar sound of your gasp, soft and fluttering. Unexaggerated, wholly yours.

You writhed slightly on the mattress over him, and he could tell you were just warming yourself up. His face felt searing to the touch as he heard the growing sound of your wetness, you moaning quietly as you touched yourself, trying to relax.

Slowly, his left hand slipped under the waistband of his sweats, finding a slickness of his own already leaking from his sensitive tip. He bit down slightly on his right hand, determined not to make a sound as he spread it with a painful slowness over his shaft. As much as he dared, he tried to match the pattern of your movements, wishing it was him with you for real - as much as he was deathly curious about the version of him with you in your head.

He heard a quiet, choked sound from you not long at all after - a muffled moan, you biting your lip as you brought yourself to your first orgasm. You let out an unsteady exhale, and he heard you adjust, reaching for something you’d set down on the other side of your bed.

He had to hold his left hand still as he heard the pop of the plastic cap on the lube, the further hushed sounds of you spreading it along the proxy shaft, before finally you fell back again with a soft ‘thud’.

“Okay,” you murmured quietly to yourself. “Let’s see if I can manage not to totally embarrass myself with another person.”

Maxi was all too aware of his physical body being anchored to the floor as he resisted the urge to climb onto your mattress and kiss those fears away. He could never find you wanting, not in a million years, he could prove it to you right now if you just knew he was there, if it wouldn’t scare you—

But behind his eye sockets, he was aware of something looming, a dark near-arrogance that he couldn’t totally separate from himself. You thought you couldn’t take him. That you might struggle, be shy and flustered if you couldn’t manage it one one go.

The Reaper wanted to see you try, to see the embarrassed tears that might result if you couldn’t, to feel you try to push him back out again because you just couldn’t keep him there.

The part of his brain that was still wholly his wanted to soothe any such tears, reassure you with coos and murmurs about just how good you were, how well you were doing. But there was the tiniest part of him that wanted to lick those tears away, not kiss them, and savor them instead.

His train of thought was entirely interrupted by your sudden gasp, and your quiet groan. “Fuck,” you whimpered, and he could hear you writhing slightly, your feet sliding as you struggled to get comfortable. “Fuck, okay. Okay, it’s fine, I just need…” He heard your head hit the pillow with a sigh, and he felt like his body was one exposed wire.

He couldn’t help but squeeze just a little as he heard you panting softly, making a small, muffled noise as he heard you try to take the toy deeper, accompanied by the occasional slick sound of something moving in you. He felt his cock twitch in his hand at the noise, wishing desperately he could be letting you adjust around him instead.

A breathy whisper of his name sang across his nerves like a bow over strings, followed by a quiet resulting mewl. “I’m trying,” you whispered to the imaginary version of him with you, your voice sounding a little frayed and overwhelmed. “You’re just… a lot.”

Christ, you really were going to kill him. Carefully, painstakingly, he timed the movements of his hand over his cock to what he could make out of yours - his hand hoping to even fractionally capture the way you would squeeze around him, the achingly slow pace of pushing into you and pulling out again, trying to offer you some relief while still trying to satisfy the gnaw of need he could feel building at the base of his spine.

“I can,” you murmured to him and not-him, your voice shaking a little. “I can, I promise, just… I need a minute.” He heard a groan muffled by you biting your lip, trying to push the toy further. “There’s just so much of you, Maxi.”

He bit his own lip so hard it could bleed, trying his damnedest not to react to that out loud. You thought he was a lot. You’d seen him - you’d had him in your mouth, for christ’s sake - so it’s not like you were exaggerating, but still. You were already anticipating not only fucking him, but wanting to take him fully, and in that moment he thought his own anticipation might burn through his skin from the inside out. He wanted to be in you, for real, now.

Then he heard a soft cry, followed by another thud of your head against your pillow, the scrabbling of your feet as your back arched. “There,” you moaned, and his eyes threatened to roll back in his skull yet again. “See? I- oh, fuck, I told you I could.”

And then, slowly, he heard you starting to fuck yourself on it.

He bit fully down onto his own palm, matching your pace now, hoping your own slick sounds and now-desperate whines would cover the sounds of him trying to jerk himself off as quietly as possible. He wanted to be on you, his chest pressed against yours, feeling your sweat and your heart racing under your bones and your warm panting on his neck as he fucked you properly, gave you everything you were begging for just a foot away. He wanted to pin you down and fuck you until you forgot your own name, until he only knew his own from the way it fell off your lips and onto his. He felt your pace pick up in his own grip as you got closer, and the way his whole body tightened, he desperately wanted to fill you with his own release, to feel it slide down your thighs as he stubbornly fucked it back into you, not for anything to take but just to know that you wanted him inside you.

“Please, please, Maxi, don’t stop,” you whined above him, and he tasted his own blood as his teeth finally split the skin of his hand. He wished it was your neck, your shoulder, those wicked little lips of yours - he’d kiss it better in a second, he’d apologize immediately for marking your precious skin, but he was so hungry to feel you with him, for real, that he longed for even the warmth of your wounds on his lips.

Just when he thought he couldn’t take anymore of this, the closest thing to heaven and hell at the same time, he heard you come with a last cracked moan of his name. He shattered immediately, spilling his own load from a day of obsessing over and repressing the memories of you inside his clothes, and utterly ruining them in the process. He flushed even more furiously, the heat spreading down to his chest from both the ecstasy of relief at last, and embarrassment for coming in his pants like a freshman. He fucked into his hand as he heard you coming down until he went fully soft, bordering on the ache of overstimulation but trying to satisfy the gaping hole that came from not actually being able to pull you against him, to descend together in each other’s tangled, sweaty limbs.

For a moment, the two of you just lay there in silence - you still panting softly, him still biting into the flesh of his hand, not trusting himself not to moan the minute he pulled it away. He wanted to kiss you, to tell you that you were perfect, that you took him like you were made for him - or that you would, when the time was right, he was sure of it. But not until you were feeling better, not until you wanted to, until you chose.

“…Holy fuck,” you mumbled above him, sounding somewhat hazy, and he instead had to fight his usual giggle-snort. How were you this cute, he wondered, it wasn’t even fair.

He heard you shift slowly, reaching for something else on your nightstand - he winced as he caught himself secretly hoping it wasn’t the lube again. After a day of agony, he wasn’t sure he could go another round as enthusiastically as you.

But instead, he heard a soft, familiar tapping. In his scattered haze, it took him a minute to place it — until he saw your arm dangling over the side of your mattress, your phone still clutched in your hand as you waited for a text to send.

He caught his name on the screen before you pulled it up again, and hurriedly, he rummaged in his pocket to pull out his own just as the notification of a new message appeared.

<[Thinking of you, handsome <3 Hope work isn’t giving you too much trouble today?]

You wicked little minx. Maxi slowly released his palm from his teeth, bringing up his second hand to write back.

[Aw, miss you pretty. <3 Work’s been… work haha. Feeling better?]>

That was as close as he could think to summarizing the situation, anyway. And he was reasonably sure ‘hey look down here :)’ wouldn’t be very well received, even if he was starting to become aware of your own more… interesting tendencies. He glanced up at the bottom of your mattress as he waited for his own message to send, pondering this. He knew the two of you were still in the early stages, but he was now deeply curious what other strange urges you were hiding in that sweet little head of yours. Besides apparently liking his dick enough to want a memento of your own - something that, if he wasn’t already still flushed, would’ve made him do so all over again as he thought about it.

He heard your phone buzz, and his heart lept at your quiet little excited noise as you rolled over on your mattress. He was half-tempted to peek and see if you were kicking your feet in the air, for as much as you made him want to do the same, but he kept himself out of sight.

A second of fast typing later, your response appeared:

<[So much better omg. Sorry about work though :/ Do you maybe want to hang out tomorrow? We could watch a bad movie and drink about it.]

‘Yes,’ Maxi sent immediately. He winced at his own eagerness, then quickly added:

[Whenever works for you, if you feel up to it! No pressure if you start feeling bad again.]>

He heard you roll back over onto your back, giggling to yourself. He restrained himself from sighing in relief. At least you thought he was cute, and not desperate.

Another response popped up on his screen:

<[Oh I’m definitely better, no worries. <3 My place, maybe seven-ish if that’s okay?]

And then, as he was typing a confirmation, another:

<[And don’t sweat needing to drive home or anything btw. I have a spare toothbrush and stuff lol. ;)]

Maxi resisted the urge to punch the air, both because it would send his fist straight into your box spring, and because he was far too old to be doing that and not feeling ridiculous about it. But he definitely wanted to, in the moment.

[Haha sure. I’ll see you then angel <3]>

You wouldn’t need to know he was seeing you before.

Or at least, he would tell you later. Much later.

(as always, if you read this far, you’re a saint and I love you! <3)

#SFBF #Blood Fest #Blood Fest 2022 #maxi morvant #maximilian vincent morvant #maxi morvant x reader #maxi morvant x you #slasher oc #slasher oc x reader #necromancer oc #plus size reader #non-binary reader #genderqueer reader #morvant mortuary #monsterkisser fics #mdni

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morvantmortuary · 2 years

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Maxi my love & 29 and/or 47 🥺🥺🥺🥺

“Come one more time for me, I know you’ve got it in you.”/“Are you holding back? Don’t.”

nonny, I am. so, so incredibly sorry it took this long. I’m sure you’ve entirely forgotten you sent this in by now, and for that, I totally understand. :’D but you will see, hopefully, why it took me a while to finish. I think this thing was 15k when I finally cut it off, and I was deeply tempted to go on.

so! when I say these two lines got in my head, I mean I took them and I ran a whole usian football field with them. I hope y’all like it, bc I certainly enjoyed myself writing it. I meant to have it up for Pride month, but alas, the best laid plans ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ here’s hoping you’ll find it just as queer now.

let me dirty up your mind (18+, mdni) --

summary: you explain to Maxi just how his peach of an ass makes you feel, and when he still doesn’t believe you, your afternoon takes a different direction while the two of you indulge in something new.

warnings: smut, mdni. discussions of gender feels/dysphoria, discovering queerness, coming out, some v v minor references to past closeting due to homophobia/transphobia. some verbal body worship, anal play, pegging, strap-on blowjob, handjobs, cum-eating, overstimulation, brief facesitting (afab receiving). feelings are shared in the middle of all of this, bc ofc. Maxi uses mostly fem petnames for reader, but I don’t think the word “girl” is used specifically.

general: this one’s for all my fellow queers who developed feelings for a murder blorbo and/or daniel brühl and his perfect ass. dedicated again to my saintly nonny, I really am sorry this took so goddamn fucking long. :’D

okay! here we go~

You weren’t entirely sure how you’d gone from a simple conversation to slowly, languorously spreading lube along the shaft of your strap-on while Maxi watched your every move, his face already ablaze with heat.

It’s not like the two of you hadn’t discussed this before, in that haze of first learning everything about each other, how your bodies responded to one another. The first time he’d lifted off your shirt to find one of your looser binders on a bad dysphoria day, he’d paused, suddenly less intent on railing you senseless and more curious to hear how or if you would like to be railed senseless, or if you’d rather be the one doing the railing. Maxi was different than a lot of your exes - understatement of the century in some cases, but still - and you remembered what followed as the most comfortable conversation you’d ever had with someone about how you worked. How you understood yourself, how it felt like sometimes the world was just determined to sing your name off-key, or how they kept writing it with the wrong spelling, but more. How it felt when you knew people looked at you and didn’t see you right. How sometimes you weren’t sure what you were supposed to look like or feel like, anymore.

He’d sat in front of you on your bed in just his boxers, watching patiently with his warm brown eyes and handing you a tissue when you got overwhelmed and teary with the weight of taking inventory of yourself. He’d intertwined his fingers with your free hand, asking you question after question with his thumb tracing your knuckles: what should he call you on days like today? When did you like being his “good girl,” and when did you want to be something else? What wasn’t he thinking to ask?

He spoke slowly and softly, his eyes never leaving your face and never once pulling away, and inside, you felt something light up that had been dark for a long time. It was all the things you’d been holding back - hesitating to explain, not wanting to see someone’s eyes glaze over again, or the tight smile when you asked if they could please just call you what you wanted. You weren’t going to have to drag them out of your chest one at a time and nervously hold them up for someone to see, hoping they wouldn’t immediately roll their eyes. Maxi just listened, and nodded at each new thing you told him, and asked to see whatever else was hidden inside you like it was perfectly ordinary.

He was more than willing to open up himself, then - a little shyer, pulling his knees to his chest as his eyes fell to your bedspread. He told you about his first crushes when he was young: one of the few good friends he ever had in middle school, a boy with dark hair in cornrows and warm deep skin, then a red haired girl with freckles who always smelled like laundry detergent and fresh cut grass. How he kept his cards close to his chest until he could drive something other than the hearse, and all of high school was just hushed, messy encounters in the backs of cars and hidden in alleys that no student at his school would ever acknowledge in the light of day (not with him, not with the family he belonged to, anyway). How he’d briefly met the red-haired girl again when he graduated and they lived together for a year and came to hate each other, and how his only serious boyfriend had been another student at the mortuary school who’d he’d never told where he lived and promptly ghosted upon getting his certification. You understood how deep he must have reached into himself to tell you this - how he couldn’t quite look at you, his voice soft and stuttering more than usual.

With hindsight, you would’ve said he almost had a harder time telling you this truth than telling you about the Curse later. But for this confession, you knew what to do. You knew how this felt. You traced your thumb over his hand, listening silently, taking everything he handed you and putting it safe behind your own bones next to what you kept there yourself. You knew what it meant to be heard. When at last he let out a shaky breath, reaching the end of this, you asked him all the ways you didn’t know how to make him feel loved in his own skin - what might not occur to you, what you might need some assistance giving him, but were determined to do so nonetheless.

Neither of you ever once let go of the other’s hand.

The way he’d wrapped his arms around you after - loose in just the right places, firm in the ones that made you feel safe - felt like the first good, solid hug you’d had in a long time. The two of you had just laid there the rest of the night, tracing each other’s scars and talking in low whispers, though for once neither of you were afraid of being overheard.

Cut to today - time, new scars, and a magic you didn’t quite understand between the two of you - and this afternoon had honestly started innocently enough.

He’d come back from a wake as you were sitting in his office, tapping away at your latest project on your laptop. You’d gotten weirdly used to sitting in the office off the embalming room in the first sub-basement - for reasons you didn’t understand (and maybe didn’t want to), the wifi was still weirdly perfect, and something about it felt… it was hard to explain. Lighter, than the rest of the House somehow. Less likely to be engulfed abruptly by gloom, despite being the closest to the dearly departed. Maybe because it was a room that felt like Maxi, with a framed photo of the two of you on his desk (a particularly adorable candid Hector snapped in the graveyard when it first snowed, and begrudgingly gave him for Christmas) and a stash of sour candy in his bottom desk drawer (next to an emergency bottle of whiskey). Maybe it was the fact that he triple-layered salt in the corners of the room out of client eyesight, who knows. You’d been in flow state for a while when you heard his familiar footsteps on the stairs; he’d gotten in the habit of announcing himself, in a way, after the third time he’d accidentally startled you and the first time you notched a scalpel an inch from his eye in the doorframe. After that, a discussion was had, and protocols were established.

Maxi hopped the last step and beelined right for the open office door, where he opened his mouth in a bright smile to say hello — and then paused, immediately turning around as he held up a finger to walk back out for his phone or something. This gave you ample time to watch him leave.

“My favorite distraction,” you’d joked, making a point to close your laptop and plant your chin in your hands as he’d walked away. “You have a decent crowd today, babe?”

“More than I’d thought, actually!” Maxi chirped, walking back in with his phone in hand. “I hate to say it - bless her heart - but I wasn’t actually expectin’ a turn-out like that for Miz Elmwood.”

“Oh yeah?” You’d paused in your appreciation, your eyes flicking back to his. “Why, no old flames? No siblings with a grudge?”

“No anybody,” Maxi shrugged, leaning against his file cabinets in front of you. “Heard she wasn’t very popular at the senior center, either. I was walkin’ in thinkin’ it was gonna be empty, but damn if all the ladies of the Greymoon Historical Society weren’t there.”

You couldn’t help a smirk curl at the corner of your mouth. “You don’t say?” You leaned slightly over the desk, making a show of confirming your suspicion with a knowing look. “Mmmhm. That it explains it.” You leaned back in his antique leather chair, wondering if you looked as smug as you felt in that moment.

“…What?” Maxi looked at you, then looked down at his shoes and back again. “Explains what, gorgeous?”

“You’re wearing the grey pants today,” you said as you tried to fight a grin.

Maxi blinked at you, uncomprehending. “Well… yeah. If I’m wearin’ the grey suit, the pants need to match.” He looked down and back at you again, as if trying to figure out if he should be self-conscious or not. “Is there somethin’ wrong with ‘em?” he asked, the tiniest bit of concern creeping into the voice.

You giggled, unable to help yourself. “No.” You shook your head. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with those pants. In fact,” Your grin broke through as he looked back to you. “I bet if you wore those every day, you’d have the best attended funerals in the parish.” You chewed your lip for a moment, thoughtful. “What time did you get to the chapel this morning?”

“9:30, service was at eleven,” Maxi said without hesitating, his brow furrowed. “Wanted to say hi to the pastor first, set up the flowers.”

“Mm. And you picked up the flowers from the usual place?” You asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Della’s, yeah. But that’s not it,” he shook his head, and you couldn’t help but think about how adorable he looked when he was confused. “My grandpa was the one that started goin’ there, that’s where we’ve always gone. ‘Til Rora gets the garden established enough that we can do it in-house, anyway.”

“And who’s the person who handles pick-ups in the morning?” You prompted, smirking again like fucking Sherlock Holmes over here. Living in a town as small as Greymoon meant you knew all of this already, even if you hardly went to these places yourself: Maxi knew just about everybody, even if just on a congenial level due to his work, and you in turn heard all about them when he told you about his day.

“Miz Amelia,” he said slowly, still staring into space as he tried to figure out what you were getting at. “…But what’s she got to do with it?” He looked back to you, shrugging.

“Amelia’s also in the Historical Society, right? And she was there today?”

“Yeah,” Maxi nodded.

You muffled a full laugh, gesturing at him. “You just answered your own question, handsome.”

Maxi pursed his lips thoughtfully, then crossed to the desk, placing both palms on the surface to lean over conspiratorially. “Clearly,” he said, nodding with an exaggerated sage expression. “…But, let’s say we had to hypothetically explain it to someone who didn’t know just what you were on about? What would we say, exactly?”

You cracked up laughing, and he beamed, unable to resist at the sound. “Maxi,” you managed, still fighting giggles. “Amelia saw you were wearing the grey suit and called all her old lady friends so they could come check out your ass the whole time! It’s obvious!”

Maxi immediately went bright pink, looking somewhere between vaguely scandalized and amused. “Are you impugnin’ the honor of the good ladies of Greymoon?” he asked with an overdramatic flourish, still trying to keep up the bit.

“No, they have excellent taste, clearly,” you said, gesturing to him. “Your ass is always great, babe, but it’s a whole Second Line when you wear the grey suit.”

You watched as he went fully red, looking sheepishly away even as he laughed to himself. “You better watch that mouth of yours, you liar.”

“I’m dead serious! Have you seen you?” You got pushed back from the desk and walked around to his side, determined now. “Here.” You seized his hand, pulling him to a full length mirror he kept in the office for when he switched between his embalming scrubs and his suit.

“Okay, okay, I accept your conspiracy theory,” Maxi rolled his eyes, holding your hand but not making any move to follow you. You looked back at him, and saw him wavering - still smiling like he was laughing with you, but like he was internally trying to figure out if you were teasing him or not. “The little old ladies of Greymoon have a phone tree they use for nefarious purposes. Next you’ll tell me they rig the jambalaya competition every year.”

“It’s not a conspiracy theory when I’m right,” you rolled your eyes playfully. “Come here and let me show you.” You tugged on his hand again gently, but he still didn’t move, glancing from you to the mirror with a hesitant face. “…Baby,” you faux whined, swinging your joined hands between the two of you childishly. “You tell me all the time how into me you are, let me have a turn.” You play-pouted when he looked back to you, knowing that was a weakness he’d never openly cop to, but had nonetheless.

Sure enough, he sighed. “That’s different,” he half-mumbled, letting you pull him over towards the mirror. He was still smiling at you, but you could see where it didn’t meet his eyes. “You were some lovely creature that tripped into my cemetery while I was sweaty and covered in dirt.” He stood with you in front of the mirror, giving himself a cursory glance while taking more interest in you. “Then you stayed,” he added under his breath, his eyes softening as he looked you over.

“First of all, I would’ve done unspeakable things to you in the hearse while you were still sweaty and dirty. Hell, I would now,” you said casually, prompting Maxi’s familiar giggle-snort as he turned to meet your eyes again. “I didn’t want to freak you out, though, considering we’d just met. And second of all,” you reached up and grabbed the lapels of his jacket, spinning him so he was standing sideways in front of the mirror with you. “You really want to stand there and tell me you don’t look good?”

“This is how I always look, darlin’, I’ve had this suit for years,” Maxi said, giving it another critical once-over. “…Kind of impressed it’s still holdin’ up, actually.”

“Daddy, you’re killing me,” you rolled your eyes again, not missing his soft inhale at the name. “Here, look—“ you reached around him, pulling him flush against you as you blatantly grabbed his ass with both hands for emphasis. “Look at that and tell me that’s not a gift.”

Maxi made a noise that was half an embarrassed squeak, half his laugh. “C’mon now, chances are I’m already buyin’ you dinner, flattery is unnecessary.”

“I’m serious!” You squeezed the flesh in your hands, watching him giggle flusteredly in the mirror. “Do you have any idea how often I look at you and forget how words work for a minute?”

Maxi looked nearly overwhelmed, his hands finding their natural place at your waist after a second of clearly not being sure what to do. “I appreciate you bein’ sweet, pretty.” He wasn’t quite looking at you still, half-heartedly glancing between you and the mirror.

You turned to face him directly, standing up on your tiptoes. “I mean it.” You locked eyes with his as your voice dropped, your face serious as your lips were barely an inch from his. “Do you have any idea how often I forget what I’m working on because I catch sight of you, and then I really, really just want to bend you over and…” You trailed off, suddenly realizing just how detailed you were about to get with that particular fantasy. You felt your face heat, biting your lower lip to shut yourself up. This had escalated quickly.

But Maxi was searching your face, eyes going slightly wide as you trailed off. He was silent, and for a moment you’d wondered if you’d gone too far — until he tilted his head. “…And?” he prompted, his voice just slightly breathless.

The air in the room was suddenly thick, and you weren’t sure if it was warm in here or if it was just your face. “I—“ You hesitated, your mouth open slightly as you saw just how dark eyes eyes got in the span of a second, his hands squeezing your hips just a little harder. You licked your lips slowly, not once looking away. “…Are you busy this afternoon, by any chance?” you asked softly, oddly shy now.

“Not anymore,” Maxi shook his head quickly, his eyes growing darker still behind his glasses. “Now, you gonna finish that thought, or what?”

You’d made a quick trip back to your apartment for your essentials, and when you’d gotten back to the House he was already waiting for you at the front door, catching you as you walked in with a kiss like teeth and hunger.

You smiled against his lips at the feeling of a hand on your hair, one on your waist, backing you up to the front door as it closed. “I told you I’d be right back,” you laughed, a little breathlessly when he finally let you go.

“I know, I just missed you.” Maxi was barely an inch from your face, hands moving to rest lightly on either side of your shoulders on the door.

You caught his jaw with your free hand, your thumb traveling down the line of it affectionately. “Needy already?” You couldn’t help but smile, seeing him open his mouth briefly to protest… before closing it again with the slightest pout.

“Did you get what you wanted, gorgeous?” he asked instead, glancing curiously down at the dark duffel bag in your hand.

“That and then some.” You kissed the end of his nose while he was distracted. “Now, our room?”

“Uh. Well.” Maxi glanced at the staircase, biting his lip thoughtfully before he looked back to you. “…You’re gonna think I’m bein’ needlessly weird.”

“Oh, it’s far too late for that,” you said with exaggerated grimness. Maxi rolled his eyes at you before you set a hand reassuringly on his chest. “Whatever you need to be comfortable, Maxi, it’s fine. I’m not about to argue.”

At the sound of his name out of your mouth, you saw him visibly relax a bit. “…Let’s go to my old room,” he said at last, looking back to you. “I know it’s not… our usual,” he said quietly, off your curious head tilt. “But I just… it’s more—“

“You don’t want me to fuck you in the room that used to be your parents’ room?” You asked, raising an eyebrow. “Again, I’m not arguing,” you soothed, fiddling with his tie when his overactive capillaries turned his skin pink again. “Wherever you want to go, baby, that’s perfect. Hell, I’d be cool with the graveyard if it weren’t still light outside,” you added with a shrug.

Maxi paused before he could get his words out, as if considering this. “…We’re gonna come back to that later, because I like the way you think,” he said, pointing to you and making you laugh again. He glanced at the stairs again, his gaze wandering reflexively upward. “But it’s just--“

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” you said softly, tugging slightly on his tie so he looked back down at you. “Seriously, whatever you need to do. I want you to feel safe, okay?”

“But I don’t want you to think there’s some… double standard, about this,” he said, his brow furrowing anxiously. “I don’t want you to think I think it’s different if I’m— or, well, if I’m not— if you’re—“ He gestured frustratedly, trying to find the words.

“Honey.” You dropped the bag next to your feet, taking his face gently in your hands and forcing him to hold your gaze. “I love you. You know that.” He nodded instinctively against your palms. “I know you love me just as much, and I know there’s not a double standard. We can do this in your old room if it means you can relax, it’s totally okay with me.”

Maxi sighed, leaning down so his forehead rested against yours. “…I haven’t done this in ages,” he explained softly, his arms loosely circling your waist. “And when I did, I never brought someone… here. And sure, maybe it’s ridiculous, but I’d just… rather not be surrounded by all my parents’ antique furniture covered in dust and disapproval while we’re tryin’ somethin’ new, y’know?” He winced, and you weren’t sure if he realized he had done so.

“There’s no dust in that room, and you and I both know that,” you murmured reassuringly, lifting your face to press a kiss to his forehead. “You’re in there with the polish and the rag like clockwork, you big Virgo.” You smiled a little when you heard him give a low exasperated chuckle, then met your eyes again. “I won’t disagree about the furniture, though - I’ve definitely felt mildly judged by the armoire at the end of the bed after a night or two.”

“Mahogany just has that feelin’,” Maxi nodded. “I swear, it’s always the hardest casket to sell - you can only picture the person inside frownin’ the whole time.”

“You’re such a nerd,” you cooed, giving him a proper kiss at last. “Now come on,” you said, grabbing your bag again and taking his hand. “Let’s go have fun with this, okay?”

Maxi squeezed your hand slightly, his shoulders finally relaxing as his smile reached his eyes. “Lead the way, pretty.”

It took you everything not to wander around Maxi’s childhood bedroom like a museum whenever you were in there. It was a rare occasion; he preferred to romance you in the much more spacious, airy master bedroom on the third floor, with the west-facing windows, the four-poster bed, and the clawfoot tub in the adjoining bathroom. Here felt entirely different: walls clumsily painted black in a fit of teenage pique; scary movie posters and flyers for tiny local bands that never made it hanging on with yellowed tape; faded red curtains that look like they’d barely survived a fight with a belligerent straight razor, covering the small window that overlooked the empty side of the yard. It made you both a little amused and a little sad to see that your usually meticulous boyfriend’s room had once looked like yours often did, after a particularly rough tango with your old friend depression. But there were little joys, if you knew where to look: his Playbills for his favorite musicals were carefully kept in a bottom drawer of a beat-up old desk, his stuffed gator from when he was small was hidden under his bed with its button eyes, an entire collection of vintage horror comics kept in a long white box next to his rickety bookshelf. And your real favorite: photos all over the far wall of the room, badly lit and sometimes blurry polaroids of teenaged Morvants. You could only assume Hector was the photographer - he only showed up in some of them, and even then only from the now-familiar vantage of a selfie (usually making a goofy face with Maxi, occasionally clearly trying to tempt Rora into participating). You were smiling to yourself as you walked slowly past a collection of them, giggling softly at Maxi’s too long-bangs and braces, Rora’s perpetually annoyed expression and frosted lipgloss, Hector’s barely-there wisps of the beard he had now.

The now-adult Maxi groaned quietly behind you, and you turned to see him leaning against his closed door on the other side of the room. He’d changed out of his suit into just some sweatpants - still grey, you noticed with a small flutter in your stomach - but he had his arms folded over his chest, the familiar rogue curl of his hair falling loose onto his forehead.

“I forgot why I never bring you in here,” he muttered, nodding at the photos with a grimace. “Especially not…” He trailed off, rolling his bony shoulders towards you in a shrug that explained the rest of his thought.

“Oh, hush,” you soothed, crossing the room to him. “You’re adorable in those photos, I love them.”

Maxi made a small, doubtful noise of protest as you hugged his bare torso, his hands running from your shoulders possessively down your sides. “Let’s just say I’m grateful I met you when I did,” he said quietly, his grimace cracking into something softer as you nuzzled the scar over his heart.

“Here, look,” you said, looking back up to his eyes and resting your chin on his chest. “If it makes you feel any better, next time we’re at mine, I’ll show you my high-school pictures. Then we’ll be square, right?” You tilted your head to meet his still hesitant gaze.

“…I saw some of yours, back when,” he admitted with a shy half-smile. “Diggin’ through your old facebook.” He giggled as you let out your own frustrated groan, wrapping his arms more securely around your waist and swaying with you in a playful hug. “You were cute with your hair like that. Different, but cute.”

“God, I’m never doing that again,” you rolled your eyes, swaying with him. “I kept it for a while for a boyfriend who said he liked it at the time, and all it got me were some terrible photos.”

“Good.” Maxi kissed your forehead, nuzzling your cheek with the end of his nose. “…He didn’t know what suited you, anyway,” he added with a defensive mumble.

You giggled, turning to kiss his cheek. “Look, if it really makes us even,” you said, smiling as he kissed softly down your neck and to your shoulder. “I’ll show you some of the prom ones I hid before I went to college. …Unless you found those already, you fucking snoop,” you teased.

Maxi made a curious noise, releasing the spot he’d been marking with a soft ‘pop’ to look at you over the frames of his glasses. “…With the white dress?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

You smirked, pleased you still had some secrets. “Nope. That was junior prom. I wore a pink one to my boyfriend’s senior prom to please my mother.”

“No,” Maxi gasped, looking at once smitten with the idea and mildly horrified on your behalf.

“It’s true,” you said with a grim nod. “Bright pink. You could’ve spotted me from across the hotel, in their little, like, pretend ballroom or whatever.”

“That’s awful, darlin’,” Maxi said, his eyes wide as he clearly struggled to balance his discomfort for you and his amusement at the thought. “…I bet you were just precious, though,” he added quietly, his smile winning out at last.

“You better be careful, Morvant,” you warned, your voice exaggeratedly threatening in a way your teasing smile completely undermined. “I might just revoke your Choosing privileges.”

Maxi paused, gaze wandering over to your black bag at the end of his bed. “…I thought you were doin’ that anyway?” he tilted his head as he looked back to you.

You shook your head, kissing his collarbone. “Nope. That’s all you, handsome.” You pulled back to meet his eyes. “That’s the rules: I picked the color already, you pick the size.”

Maxi looked from you to the bag again, hesitating with an expression of both apprehension and curiosity.

“Here,” you said quietly, lacing your fingers through his left hand. “C’mon.” You pulled him over to his bed, sitting down next to the bag and unzipping it as he hovered next to you.

You took out four dark-colored toys of sleek, clean silicone, laying them out in increasing size on his bed. You’d stuck with the ones on the smaller, leaner side - those were easier to control, and if this was going to be your first time trying this together, there was no need to go with the big guns just yet and stress you both out.

“Shi-it,” Maxi drawled in genuine surprise, looking at you with an arched brow and the beginnings of a faint blush. He shuffled slightly in place, crossing his arms again. “You do this a lot, sugar?”

“I bought most of these for me, or a girlfriend du jour,” you said with a shrug. You paused, fidgeting slightly with his duvet. “I… actually haven’t done this with a guy before,” you confessed, smiling shyly.

Maxi blinked, then smiled a little himself. “Oh. …Well. I’m honored,” he said, leaning down to kiss the end of your nose. “I, on the other hand, have only done this with guys,” he added with a chuckle, reaching up to push his hand nervously through his hair.

“Cool, okay, firsts all around,” you said, trying to seem nonchalant with a shrug. “So we’ll just play this by ear.”

“Sure,” Maxi returned your shrug, clearly trying to match your chill about this himself. He looked back to your assortment, seeming to relax a little more now that he knew this was going to be something new for both of you. He sized them up thoughtfully, his tongue subconsciously tracing his lower lip in a way that made heat rush to your face. After a moment, he reached forward, his hand hanging in the air before he nudged the base of your second-largest one with his knuckle. “That’ll work.”

“Looks good to me,” you said softly, your voice already fading a little bit at the idea of teasing your boyfriend with that particular toy. You picked up his selection, testing the weight of it in your hands as if just holding it for the first time. You felt like you were seeing it with new eyes now as you re-explored its shape and length, curious what made this the one Maxi chose - if he was going easy on himself for a first time, or if this was about what he could handle. You were lost for the briefest of moments, a lick of heat spreading through you as you wondered just what he’d handled before, tantalized by the possibility of wrecking him in the way he so often left you feeling wrecked in turn.

When you glanced up at him, your next question froze on your tongue, seeing the way he was watching your grip on the dildo as he bit his lip. You cleared your throat, and his eyes found yours again with a slight start, but you were sure you couldn’t quite hide the want that was starting to spread at the core of you. “You, um.” You felt your tongue dart over your own lips, wondering if it was warm in here or if it was just you. “You wanna warm up with one of those while I get this on, babe…?” You jerked your chin towards the smaller options left on the bed.

Maxi shyly shook his head, smiling. “I’ve got my own for that,” he admitted, nodding towards a nightstand that looked like a relatively recent addition to the rest of his old room.

You followed his gaze, looking between him and the dark furniture. “Oh! Okay, cool,” you nodded. “Perfect.” You paused, your eyes flicking back to his. “You, um, want me to use that instead…?” You were thinking quickly, hoping the O-ring of your harness would fit whatever he happened to pull out.

“Nah, yours’ll be fine,” Maxi nodded towards the toy you were still holding. “…Probably be more fun, anyway,” he added with a smirk.

You felt your breath catch as his voice sent a white hot bolt straight to your clit, trying to keep your face in check - but realizing it was pointless when his eyes went dark, his lips parting just slightly at your expression. “…Okay,” you said quietly, suddenly feeling a touch overwhelmed with how much you actually wanted to do this.

“Okay,” he echoed, his hands flexing slightly at his sides, and you could hear a mix of your own nerves and anticipation in his voice.

You two switched spots - you standing next to his bed as you swept the unchosen toys back into the bag, him sitting on the edge to watch you. This was a little weird, being much less spontaneous than the two of you just ripping each other’s clothes off and falling into bed. But there was something to the preparation aspect you found yourself enjoying; the feeling of enacting something ritualistic as you pulled out your harness, fitting the dildo inside the O-ring before turning your back to him. You took your time shedding your clothes - dragging your shirt and compression bra up over your shoulders, letting your shorts slide slowly down your lush thighs. When you slipped off your scant excuse for underwear, you heard the softest whine from the bed behind you.

You glanced coyly over your shoulder, meaning to tease - but froze in place instead, mesmerized by the sight you found.

Maxi was watching you with his familiar dark hunger, his sweatpants and boxers pulled hastily down his thighs to reveal his waiting cock, already dripping at the head and stretched against his soft stomach. But while that was a welcome sight in itself - one that had your tongue tracing across your lower lip before you were quite conscious of it - it was something else that had rather caught your attention.

You turned around entirely, captivated with the sight of him working a smaller toy in and out of himself with a deft hand. His pale skin was already flushed to his shoulders, his hips twitching slightly as the lubed — glass? Were you seeing glass? - rod penetrated him fluidly, leaving him already panting a bit as you watched him adjusting around it.

Your knees briefly threatened to fail you, as it felt like your entire face caught fire at the spectacle of your boyfriend’s bitten lip and quiet whine.

Maxi, who had been blatantly letting his gaze roam up and down your now-bare form, regained a somewhat unsteady smirk when he caught sight of your expression. “Now, baby,” he said slowly, his voice betraying him a bit as he pushed his warmup piece further than he had a minute ago. “Y-you’re not just gonna stand there and watch, are you?”

You blinked, remembering just what it was you were supposed to be doing. “And let you have all the fun? Hell no.” You shook your head perhaps a touch too eagerly, and he chuckled. You turned back to the harness, lifting it over your thighs and settling the various straps into place. You checked each side to make sure it wouldn’t chafe before moving to fasten it around you —

“Wait.”

You froze, looking to Maxi with concern. “You okay?”

Maxi nodded, still gazing at you with a dreamy haze over his eyes. “You, um… want help?” He nodded at the harness straps in your hands, his expression a muddle of curiosity and need.

You couldn’t help but smirk, realizing what this was. “Is it more that you want to give me a hand, Maxi?”

Maxi nodded again, and as his eyes fell to the harness, you distinctly saw his cock twitch where it lay.

Unable to suppress a grin, you walked back to the side of his bed, holding it in place as he set the glass rod back on the nightstand and sat up eagerly. He took your murmured instructions like gospel, notching each belt exactly where you needed it, tugging with just enough force to make sure they were solidly fastened, then near-greedily watching you run your thumbs along the insides to make sure they would hold without cutting into your skin.

When you were satisfied, you leaned back slightly to admire yourself in the strap-on. It had been a weird sensation when you first tried it, to be sure — you weren’t used to having anything there, much less something with weight and mass — but once your brain adjusted to having something so intimately attached to you, you had to admit: it was hot.

“Fuck me,” Maxi murmured, taking in the sight himself with something akin to awe.

“We’ll get to that,” you reassured him, undeniably enjoying the way he seemed to like you in this as much as you did. You went to avail yourself of the bottle of lube he’d used on his glass object earlier, but he caught your wrist delicately, causing you to look up with a raised eyebrow. “Babe?”

“Here, just- we’ll get to that,” Maxi echoed absently, his voice somewhat flustered in its hush. He surprised you by stepping out of bed before gently grabbing your hips, switching your positions so you were now back against the edge of the mattress.

“What do you…“ your voice failed you as he dropped to his knees in front of you, his hands sliding from your hips down your thighs like velvet.

Your question was immediately answered by the way his tongue slipped out to wet his lips, dark eyes traveling from your face to your strap and back again.

Oh.

He drummed the fingers of his left hand lightly on your thigh, the shy smile he gave as he looked up at you making your whole nervous system feel electric. “Well.” Maxi half-shrugged, casual. “You’re always so… obligin’, y’know,” he said quietly. “I figured… might as well return the favor, now that I have the chance.”

You had to swallow, your brain pleasantly fuzzy. “I- As long as you want to, babe,” you managed, a touch breathless.

Maxi’s pupils were endless dark pits. “Oh, trust me, sugar,” he said, shifting on his knees so he was more between yours where you perched. “I do.”

So you were willing to be this wasn’t quite the same as when you did it. But just the sight of his pink tongue tracing up the underside of your strap’s black matte shaft knocked the breath from your lungs, feeling your own eyes widen as it left.

You were deeply glad you’d chosen a strap that gave some sensation on your end of things as well, the ridged base of the o-ring grinding against your clit as Maxi took his time tracing every inch.

When his eyes met yours, gazing up at you from hip height, your toes about curled. You absolutely understood how he seemed to quickly lose all powers of speech when it was your turn — even if the feeling wasn’t quite the same skin-wise, just the sight of him on his knees for you left your insides a molten mess.

“Fuck, you’re so hot like that, Maxi, that’s not even fair,” you murmured, your hands unclenching from his duvet to stroke his hair.

Maxi made a noise between a whine and an appreciative hum, his lips suctioning around the tip of your shaft as your fingers combed out the last of the careful hair gel. You gasped as he took you into his mouth, your hands curling into fists faster than you’d realized.

He didn’t seem to mind at all that you were pulling a little — if anything, he made a show of taking you deeper still, the sound of his saliva on the silicone leaving you feeling intensely warm even if it wasn’t direct contact. You obliged him by pulling a bit harder, and you swore you could feel his moan vibrating down your length.

His hands resettled around your upper thighs, taking you by surprise as you were reminded you existed as a whole body. He tugged gently, causing your hips to rock just slightly, and you steadied yourself quickly against his shoulders.

“Are you okay?” You watched his face anxiously, worried about him choking by accident. You had a bit… more to deal with, when it was your turn, but still — you knew choking in this particular situation could really suck.

Maxi huffed air lightly around you, and you realized he was laughing. He tugged to shift your hips again, and you realized after a moment he was asking you to thrust.

“Oh.” Something white hot squeezed at your core at the idea. “…You’re sure?”

Maxi glanced up at you again, something in his eyes the slightest bit sardonic as you felt another huff of air. You got the vibe he felt vaguely insulted you were doubting his abilities.

“Okay, okay.” You were unable to help a smile. Your hand moved from his shoulder to his chin, keeping eye contact. “You tell me as soon as something feels off,” you said softly, brushing his hair away from his glasses - which, you noticed with a small flutter, were fogged from the attention he was paying to you. “Promise?”

Maxi squeezed once at your thighs - your silent signal that everything was fine.

You leaned down, kissing the top of his head as best you could (he craned up just slightly to help you in that regard). After a second to plant your feet for more stability, you hesitated, calculating just slightly — overthinking, you were sure — before thrusting carefully into Maxi’s mouth.

Maxi gave a small moan - something along the lines of “Finally” - and squeezed your thighs again.

You nodded, giving your hips more of an experimental snap, and you heard him moan again lower in his chest. Another, more insistent squeeze to your thighs.

“Okay, fine,” you murmured, one hand coming up to rest on top of his head. He looked up at the touch, and the two of you locked eyes as you allowed yourself a small smirk. “But remember: you asked.”

Maxi’s eyes were onyx, nearly engulfed by his pupils as he nodded once.

You put more force in your hips, your hand curling in your boyfriend’s hair as you thrust hard into his mouth.

Maxi’s groan was a one of raw enjoyment, and you watched him adjust to take you deeper as the two of you established a pleasant pace. He was a sight — saliva dripping from his lower lip and down the shaft to the tops of your thighs, his breath hot and shallow against your hips. Your hand tangled further into his hair, mussing it, and you felt yourself clenching at the sight of him looking so debauched. His noises of pleasure, combined with the slick sounds of his spit over your strap, went straight to the core of you.

You could get to used to this, you thought, admiring Maxi’s face as you fucked his throat thoroughly.

You were so taken with the feelings, wanting to get closer, that you didn’t realize you’d thrust a little too hard until he gagged around you.

“Oh shit,” you panted, your hand immediately leaving his hair to pull away. “Shit, I’m sorry, baby, are you okay?”

Maxi came up for air at last, and as concerned as you were, the sight of tears at the corners of his eyes mixed with his mussed hair and the saliva still dripping down his chin left you feeling a new strain of… possessive, almost. Jesus. It was absurd how he somehow looked more delicious the messier he got.

Maxi let out a low, hoarse laugh as he wiped his mouth. “I’m fine, pretty, I promise,” he said, looking up at you. “If I had to pause a blowjob every time I gagged, I would’ve never had time for anythin’ else in my twenties.”

He froze as this statement hung between the two of you, glancing at you as if he wasn’t sure how you’d take that. You couldn’t blame him — old instincts died hard, especially in a town as small as this.

You couldn’t help but bite your lip at the image of him playing out in your mind, tilting your head as you looked him over while still on his knees in front of you. “…If that’s the case,” you said slowly, reaching up to twist his familiar loose curl around your finger. “I almost want to make you keep going.” The twisted curl became a whole lock of hair that you pulled to force his head back. You weren’t sure when the two of you had fallen into this particular dynamic — whether it was the offer to blow you, or him wanting to help you with your harness, or what. But it was definitely new.

Maxi’s eyes gleamed, his lips slightly puffy from his efforts. “I’d be inclined to agree,” he said, his voice low. “Contrary to popular advice, I never wanna leave you wantin’, sugar.”

“You haven’t, love,” you crooned, releasing his hair to lovingly stroke along his cheekbone. “But we have more to try, don’t we?” You caught his chin in your hand, admiring the wide-eyed wrecked look he already had. “It’s my turn,” you added in a near-whisper.

Maxi stared at you with a hybrid of reverence and blatant lust, his gaze feeling like hands over your skin as he took you in from his knees and made no move to break your grip.

You felt your face heat and the cool collectedness threaten to leave you, and you reached down for his hand. “Come on, handsome.”

Maxi seemed to remember himself at the sound of your normal voice, blushing a little as he took your hand with a smile. You helped steady him as he got to his feet — though his cock caught your attention, now flushed dark and dripping more still with want.

“Aww, Maxi,” you purred, reaching to swipe a droplet of precum onto your fingertip. He hissed at the contact, his blush darkening on his skin. You kept your eyes on his as you licked it off, giving your palm a lick as well before you took his shaft in hand. “Did you enjoy giving me head, babe?” You felt him spasm against your palm as you gave him lazy, loving strokes.

“You know I always do, angel,” he managed as best he could, clearly having to make an effort not to thrust into your hand. “W-whatever that might involve at the time,” he added, biting off a whine at the end as you swirled your palm around the swollen head.

“You marshmallow,” you cooed, moving carefully so it was you stepping him back against the mattress now. You sped up your strokes as he perched where you’d sat, watching him squirm and moan through clenched teeth. “You’re such a gentleman, aren’t you babe?”

“Baby, c’mon,” Maxi ground out, clearly struggling to keep a grip on himself. “I— fuck, I’m not gonna last if you keep this up.”

“But I’m fucking you, remember Daddy?” you murmured, learning close to his face to watch his agonized expression. “You could cum all over my thighs or my stomach right now, and just let me take care of you while you’re still all cute and speechless.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Maxi groaned, but you could hear the edge of an exasperated laugh. “You’re so mean to me when you wanna be, pretty baby.” He reached up, holding your wrist in a gossamer grip to slow your pace.

“Excuse me?” you laughed, leaning forward so your lips were a breath away from his. “Who had me tied up all Valentine’s Day, huh?” You smiled, watching Maxi try to close the distance to kiss you but leaning back to stay just out of his reach. “Consider this me giving as good as I get.”

Maxi let out a frustrated huff, settling with staying as close to you as possible. “I’m gonna remember this on your birthday, you tease,” he mumbled, his soft smile giving him away.

You closed the distance between you when he least expected it, kissing him as you pushed him back towards his mattress. He made a small noise of surprise, but his hands moved immediately to your back, wanting to keep you close to him as you directed him towards his pillows.

You only broke the kiss when he was well and truly pinned underneath you, sitting up to take him in. You were well aware of the burning proximity of your hips, your strap arched against his pelvis, his erection pressing urgently into your thigh. “It’s not a threat if I’m going to enjoy myself, lover boy,” you murmured, enjoying how his already expanded pupils managed to stretch just a little wider as he gazed up at you. You were sure yours were just as helplessly dark as you leaned down to kiss his forehead, then the end of his noise. “…So.”

“So,” Maxi echoed, his eyes flitting between the strap-on at your hips and your breasts, which thus far were much neglected by his standards.

You reached back to the nightstand, picking up the bottle of lube again and pouring some into your palm. Sure, it felt like you were still plenty coated by Maxi’s spit, but you weren’t about to take chances.

Plus, you couldn’t help but grin as he watched your hand moving along your own shaft as though he was in a trance, coating yourself a bit more salaciously than you needed to. “How do I make this more fun for you, Daddy?”

It took Maxi a moment to answer, his eyes still caught at your hands. “…I mean,” he said slowly, at last looking back to your face with a brand new flush over his skin. He gave another half-shrug. “I’m already enjoyin’ myself a great deal, t’be honest with you.”

You giggled, and his soft smile returned. “Well, I’m always glad to hear that,” you said, your voice low. “Pass me a pillow.”

Maxi reached behind his back without ever looking away from you, as if afraid to miss something.

“Thank you.” You took it and tapped the pillow against the side of his thigh. “Up.”

Maxi lifted his hips with a confused scrunch of his brow long for you to slide the pillow underneath them. As soon as he resettled, you moved to settle yourself between his thighs, pulling them just a touch further apart as you did so.

You hesitated somewhat, aware of some sort of shift happening. You’d seen each other naked a million times - you’d probably spent more time naked with each other than alone since you’d started dating - but something about right now felt… well, new. You looked over Maxi’s thighs to either side of you, your hands sliding softly over the coarse dark hair on his pale skin.

One of his legs twitched beneath your hand, and you glanced up at him, curious.

He was watching you just as intently from where he sat at the top of his bed, taking in the way you were sitting on your knees in way that put you above him somewhat.

You leaned down as he watched, making a point to run your fingertips along the inside of his thighs. While he still shivered softly at the touch, you placed a careful kiss to the innermost part of his right thigh.

His gasp was hushed and half bitten-back, like he was hesitating to let it out. You glanced up from where you were leaning, seeing him watching you with a new expression; while you’d both been vulnerable with each other before, of course, there was something to the way his face was filled with a hopeful uncertainty that made your heart absolutely melt.

You leaned down again, kissing his inner left thigh even more sweetly, and savored both the the feeling of the hair on your cheek and the soft noise Maxi couldn’t hold back.

You took your time there, lavishing his inner thighs in soft kisses that turned warm and open-mouthed, with nips like you were trying to take the smallest bite of ripe fruit. Your hands slid up to his hips — partially because you enjoyed the feeling of his hipbones against your palms, and partially because the poor thing just wouldn’t stop squirming at the contact. You only let up when one of his thighs began to twitch, his hips giving an abbreviated buck against your hands as he sought some sort of friction. This didn’t do much to curtail you; you instead just relocated to the skin on the inside of his hips, moving your hand so you could suck a small bruise into the flesh next to the left ridge of his pelvic bone.

“Gorgeous, c’mon,” Maxi broke the silence at last, his voice strangled with need.

You held up a finger, finishing the small heart-shaped bruise you’d been determinedly nipping into his skin. “I just wanted to make sure I was taking advantage of the… different perspective,” you said, batting your lashes in exaggerated innocence. “I can’t have any part of you feeling neglected, babe.”

Maxi growled in frustration, his head falling back against the pillow. “I appreciate the attention to detail,” he said, running a hand under his glasses. “But you’re killin’ me here.”

“Well.” You sat up, making sure to catch his gaze as you smirked. “We can’t have that, can we?”

You reached back down to his thighs, pulling him so he slid down the mattress and closing the space between your hips. As he blinked, adjusting, you leaned up and supported yourself to hover above him at last.

“Now,” you said quietly, watching the way his breathing had sped up ever so slightly as you gazed down at him. “Do you want me to hold you down?” You adjusted so your hands were resting on his wrists, which had been resting on either side of his head.

Maxi thought about it before shaking his head. “I wanna touch you.” His fingers spread subconsciously, and the way he said it had you shifting slightly where the bottom of the strap was in contact with your clit.

“Noted,” you said, trying to hide that he’d left you just a little breathless as you moved your hands. You couldn’t help but linger over him, reaching again to play with the stray lock of hair that hung down over his forehead. “…Any chance you’d want to call me ‘Mommy’ while we’re trying new things?” you asked, your mouth curling amusedly at the thought.

Maxi snorted, catching your hand to kiss your palm. “Absolutely not.” He stopped, his lips still brushing the center of your hand before he pulled it gently away. “…Unless you… want me to…?”

You giggled at the clear conflict etched on his face; if you didn’t already know he was technically a serial killer, you would’ve thought he was incapable of hiding anything with those big doe eyes of his. “No, Daddy, don’t worry.” You kissed the back of his hand in turn. “I just thought I’d offer. Wanted to be fair, y’know?” You gave him a wink.

Maxi visibly relaxed into his pillow. “I appreciate it.” He laced his fingers loosely through yours. “But that’s… complicated, for me. I would’ve tried if it was somethin’ you wanted, though—“

You shook your head, squeezing his hand. You hesitated, trying to figure out how to word this next part. “…You know… me wanting to do something doesn’t outweigh you not wanting to, Maxi,” you said quietly, watching his face.

Maxi squirmed slightly, his eyes dropping from yours for the first time in a while. “I know,” he said, shrugging. “I just wanna make sure I’m givin’ you what you need. If it means tryin’ somethin’, that’s part of it.”

“That’s different.” You ran your thumb over his knuckles, waiting for him to meet your eyes again. “That’s trying something we both want.” You turned his hand so his palm was resting on your thigh, and he ran his thumb over the skin there in turn. “I don’t ever want you to feel like you have to try something for my sake, when it’s not something you’d choose yourself.”

“You’re sweet, darlin’.” Maxi gave you a small smile, but you still felt his fingers briefly drum over your thigh.

You shifted so you were sitting back slightly, watching him still. “It’s not about that,” you said gently, covering his hand on your thigh reassuringly with your own. “I want you to trust me.”

“I know,“ Maxi cut in quickly, sitting up just as fast. “I know, and I do, of course I do—“

You made a soft noise of mild skepticism, leaning forward to kiss him quietly. “So,” you said, pulling back just a fraction to meet his eyes. “Why do you seem nervous?”

Maxi didn’t move, his eyes still on your lips for a long moment before he met yours again. “…I don’t want you to think I won’t do whatever you need,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Or want… to keep you happy.” He flipped his hand on your thigh so his palm was facing up, intertwining his fingers tightly with yours. You looked from this and back to his eyes, seeing a familiar gleam of red reflected from the late afternoon light in the window. “Anythin’. I swear.”

“Maxi.” You couldn’t help but smile, leaning forward to press your forehead against his. “Of course I know that, love.” You set your free hand on the back of his neck, your fingers twisting in the part of his hair that had been left to grow closer and closer to his shoulders for a while now. You felt him shiver lightly and saw his eyes scrunch somewhat closed, clearly enjoying the sensation. “But I don’t want you feeling obligated to give me anything that doesn’t fulfill you in the same way.” You kissed the corner of his mouth to punctuate that statement. “I only want what makes us both happy. Especially here.” You brushed the end of your nose with his.

His eyes, when they opened again, were less brown and more burgundy. His expression was inscrutable: you recognized the studied calm of him trying to keep something close to his chest, but there was a light there that looked something like longing as well.

You bit your lip, hoping you weren’t about to kill the whole mood. “…I know,” you began slowly, reaching up to hug his shoulders. “That in your line of work… hell, even before then,” you amended. “You’re used to handling things that are truly difficult. The duties that you have to take… because you’re expected to, or no one else can. Because if you don’t step up and handle it, who will, am I right?” you murmured. “Not the grieving family, not the deceased, not the demons in the house. There’s just you.”

The coolness of his gaze immediately fractured into something less certain, and you could feel his tapered fingers clutch at your hips as if he was looking for structure, something safe to cling to.

“I know you don’t think of me that way,” you reassured him, seeing the concern looming in his wrinkling brow. “But I don’t want you to ever think of any part of what we do here, together, as something else you have to white-knuckle your way through. …Fuck,” you mumbled, looking aside for a moment to gather yourself. “I don’t know if I’m making sense here. I promise you don’t do anything to make me think I’m a chore for you, I swear.” You looked back to him, seeing the concern pulling his mouth into a frown. “Just…” You hugged his shoulders again as you stared at the hollow of the base of his neck, trying to untangle what was on the tip of your tongue. “I just…”

You took a deep breath before you locked eyes with him again. “I know,” you said slowly. “That a lot of times in your life, you’ve had to grin and bear it. With your job, with the… night work,” your agreed-upon term for his less legal activities. “Hell, with your family, because if you didn’t you were going to lose it. And I know you’re good at it. You’re very good at it,” you nodded, reaching up to run a hand affectionately through his hair. “You handle shit every day, Maxi, that would leave me not wanting to get up in the morning. You’ve done a job for decades that would break most people after a month. And you take care of those people well, you have as long as I’ve known you. And I love that about you,” you beamed, unable to help yourself. “And I know you’ll take care of me too, always.” You bit your lip again, leaning against his chest somewhat more as you chose your words. “I think… part of me wanting to take care of you is to tell you that I don’t want you to ever have to grin and bear something when we’re here, ever. If you’re not into it like I am, then it’s off the table, period.” Again, you leaned your forehead against his, closing any last space between the pair of you. “I want that to be part of how I can take care of you. To let you have a place where you can say ‘no,’ and that’s that. That I won’t be disappointed, or… or leave,” you murmured, your eyes unexpectedly warm. “That you can just… be. And I’ll be here too, with you. Because that’s all I want. I swear.”

You swallowed, your throat suddenly thick and pressing against itself. “…Am I just talking in circles?” you asked, glancing sheepishly back up at him through your lashes.

You weren’t sure how the world was moving around you until you realized you’d both fallen sideways onto the mattress, Maxi kissing you like he’d just come up for air from a cavernous depth. His hands — still somewhat cool against your abruptly searing skin — moved from your hips, over your stomach, and across your back so he could pull you against him in a ferocious hug. You hugged him back as tightly as you could manage, still knowing it wouldn’t even come close to his true strength.

He kissed the corners of your mouth, the hollow of your throat, your pulse, and your eyelashes before he finally settled nose-to-nose with you. Somewhere in the process, you could swear you’d felt the faintest trace of something warm and wet tracing softly down your skin.

The eyes that stared back into yours were the shadow that felt like home, carmine into obsidian. “I love you.” His voice was from somewhere deeper in his chest, and as soft as it was, you knew it was from both halves of himself. The one that was yours daylight into darkness, and the one you only encountered sometimes — in the cemetery, or the ruined church. “I love you more than anythin’,” he breathed. “I want you to always be certain of that. As sure as you are of your own pulse, or air in your lungs.”

“As the grave,” you said, unable to help a smile at your own promise in a terrible joke.

Maxi kissed you with a bite, as he had at the front door, and you weren’t quite sure who moved how; if he’d pulled you on top of him, if you’d rolled to pin him down, or if you’d simply succumbed to a natural gravity existing only between the two of you.

You only stopped kissing him when you were holding his hips, pulling back to look him in the eye. “Just tell me what you need,” you whispered. “If you want me to slow down, or—“

“I trust you,” Maxi whispered back, grazing your cheek with a messy kiss.

You pushed into him slowly, your eyes moving quickly between his face and the strap as you did so. Partially so you could keep an eye out for any signs of pulling away or pain, but mostly because watching Maxi take you, even carefully, was… intoxicating, to say the least. Something in you twisted keenly at the way he moaned, his head falling back against the pillows as his eyes closed. You watched them crinkle briefly as he adjusted to your length, then relax as he exhaled a slow, shaking breath.

When you glanced down again at your strap-on, pushing further still, you were suddenly intensely aware of just how possessive he seemed to get when he penetrated you. The way your face felt like a flash fire, the strange, slightly giddy, slightly demanding sensation in your chest to curl around him and keep him there forever.

You heard a soft chuckle, and looked back up to find him watching you in turn with a smirk. “Right?” he breathed, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah. Oh, definitely.” You nodded a little too quickly, your hand finding one of his on the pillow and interlocking your fingers tightly. “Fuck,” you hissed, withdrawing a little just to push in again. “I never want to let you go.”

“M’fine with that,” Maxi managed around strangled near-whine. “God, pretty.” His free hand scrabbled to your harness, tugging insistently at the leather. “C’mon, give it to me, I’ve been good.”

Face again hot enough to burn, you leaned down to nip at his lower lip as you gave him your first real thrust. Your insides felt similarly aflame as he groaned from deep in his throat, tugging again on the strap insistently. You tried to move in sync with how he was guiding you, trusting him as you fell into the pattern, and before long the air was thick with the sounds of his gasps and soft, growled pleading.

You were half in anony, the ridged base teasing your clit but not quite providing the full, rough touch you craved. You were willing to deal with that for now as you rocked into Maxi, still trying to be careful so as not to hurt him, but also wanting him to just relax and give up control. Your beloved Reaper, who you knew would move this world and the next for you, deserved to just let himself be taken care of and adored. To not have to lift a finger for his own pleasure, to be loved just as completely and thoroughly as he loved you.

You wanted to give that to him. You wanted to give it so badly, it threatened to burn a hole through the skin and bone in your chest. You wanted to watch the calculation and the careful cunning leave his eyes, for any thought of having to stay two steps ahead to totally leave his skull. You just wanted him to be here, in this moment, with you.

“H-hey.”

You looked up, your hips falling out of rhythm for a moment as you wondered if you needed to stop, if you’d hurt him somehow —

But you felt his left leg curl around your hip, pinning you closer to him, and when you looked back, your clit positively ached.

He looked completely debauched, skin flushed, hair starting to stick to his forehead as he looked up at you through half-lidded eyes. “You holdin’ back, darlin’?” he drawled, gazing up at you with pupils like fathomless pits.

You hesitated a little before nodding once. “I’m just trying to be careful, baby,” you soothed.

Maxi gave you a grin that made you realize just how slick you were behind the hardware. “Don’t,” he said softly, shaking his head.

Almost without thinking, you reached up to pull him down hard, pushing into him as deep as you could manage. He moaned encouragingly, his other leg crossing over your back so it was impossible for you to pull away as you let him have it.

The room was filled by the sounds of skin on skin, and your free hand twisted into his hair and pulled.

Maxi let out a sound somewhere between pain and pleasure, and it didn’t take you long to realize he wasn’t content to merely let you fuck him - his hips met yours thrust for thrust, tugging still at the harness before his nails clawed over your ass, your back, seeking some sort of hold.

“Come on, Maxi,” you cooed in his ear, pulling again at his hair to expose his throat to you. You leaned down, sucking a bruise near the base of his throat. “I’ve got you, Daddy, let me take care of you.”

Maxi’s cock throbbed, fluid leaking freely from the tip, and you reached down almost without realizing to slather it down his shaft, enchanted.

“Fuck, baby,” he groaned, his hips spasming slightly at your touch. “Goddamn, I’m c-close.”

“So let go,” you murmured, pressing a sloppy kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Come on, love.” You felt yourself smile wickedly to yourself as you leaned down, nipping hard into your collarbone. “Show me how a good boy gets his ass fucked, won’t you?”

Maxi’s whole body shuddered, and with a cry that bordered on a yell, he came spurting messily onto his own chest and stomach in a gush.

Without losing a beat, you leaned down, pistoning your hips harder into him as you cleaned him carefully with your tongue.

His pants became gasps as he squirmed underneath you. “B-baby, c’mon—“

You glanced up at him as you licked up another rope of fluid, which drew a ragged whine from him. “Are you asking me to stop?”

Maxi clearly still dazed, riding his high, his legs moving as if uncertain whether or not to unlock them from around you.

“Because if you’re not,” you murmured, your hand coming up to stroke his cock again. “I want to see if you have one more for me, Daddy.”

Maxi watched you, skin flushing harder as he nodded like he was hypnotized.

You grinned, feeling a sharpness to your own teeth. “That’s my Maxi,” you purred. You leaned up, moving to kiss his cheek, but he grabbed you firmly by the jaw so he could kiss you with an open mouth. You felt him tasting his cum on your tongue, shivering slightly as he did so.

Your hand found his throat, gently lowering him back down to his pillow, and after a nod from him, you squeezed lightly on either side to impact the blood flow to his head, fucking him deeper still into his mattress.

Maxi’s legs re-locked around your back, his hands moving to clutch your hips in their new ferocity. His panting turned again to soft moans, his hair now thoroughly a mess on his pillow.

Under your hand, you felt his shaft hard and hot, spasming against the force of your palm and the way you spread the renewed beads of fluid down towards the coarse dark hair at the base.

“You take this so well, Daddy,” you murmured, your lips moving against his cheek. “You should’ve told me earlier how much you like being greedy this way, too.”

You heard Maxi gasp a laugh through his frustrated, teeth-gritted groan. “You make it hard to choose, gorgeous, what can I say?” He hissed back at you, and when you turned to kiss him, he nipped your lower lip so hard you swore you felt a drop of blood.

You hissed softly, your hand tightening on his throat with a twitch, and only leaving it when you saw his eyes flash keenly in response. “Come on, Maxi, one more for me. I know you’ve got it in you.”

Maxi growled as he shoved one hand into your hair and pulled just enough to surprise you, his legs so tight around you that there was no space left between the two of you at all.

You gasped at the yank to your hair, your hips shoving hard back, and that seemed to be enough. Between one hand on his cock and one on his neck, Maxi was quickly overwhelmed again, your name bordering on a scream on his lips as he made a second mess between the two of you.

From the way he fell back hard on the pillow, you knew he was truly fucked out this time. You stilled your hips slowly as he came down, moving your hand from his throat so you could reach up and idly twirl his hair around your fingers as he lay there trying to catch his breath.

“You did so well,” you murmured, your other hand slowly moving between the pair of you to gather his cum on your fingers. “You did so well for me, Maxi, taking all of it like that. You were so good.”

You saw Maxi blushing still, both from the exertion and your words, and a shy smile on his face even as his hair fell messily over his glasses. “Yeah, well,” he said quietly, blowing his hair out of the way so he could glance at you. “You made it easy to let go, pretty.”

You froze with your liquid-covered fingers almost to your mouth, wondering how this man could make you feel so shy even while you were about to clean your hand with your tongue to make a point. What the fuck, how was that remotely fair. “Yeah, well…” You sat there wondering if he could feel the heat from your face radiating all the way over there, before quietly attending to the task at hand while your brain was overwhelmed by your feelings and his sweetness.

Maxi watched you attentively, eyes following the motions of your tongue on your own skin like it was something holy. Before you could swallow, he pulled you back to him, kissing you again with as much fervor as before.

You moved carefully so you could lay there with him,, sweaty and still side by side, just kissing. Over your heart racing in your ears, you could just make out the dim whirr of the cicadas outside, and the growing chorus of crickets joining in. The two of you had been here a while.

You watched Maxi next to you, dreamily licking the salty beads of sweat from your shoulders and throat, his fingers rubbing the skin beneath the straps of your harness as if to massage it. You found yourself moving your hip against his hand, craving his touch. Subconsciously, you were rocking ever so slightly against the base of the dildo — hazily content with Maxi’s pleasure by proxy, but still enjoying the sparks it left when it hit just the right place.

Your Reaper, ever watchful even when so sated, noticed before you did. He made a small, gravelly noise of concern, and you looked up, startled out of your own subtle squirming.

“Did you not get off, gorgeous?” he drawled, looking from your hips to you through the strands of his hair.

You blinked, still slightly spaced out yourself. “I… not directly?” You shrugged a shoulder against the mattress, nuzzling your face into his pillow. “I was having too much fun watching you to worry about it, to be honest.” You reached up, pushing some of his hair away from the eye you could see. “We really should bust this out more often, love,” you teased.

Maxi’s tongue ‘tsk’ed softly against his teeth. “We can’t have you goin’ without, though,” he murmured. You felt his fingers move from the inside of the strap to the outside, still impressively dextrous with the buckle. “Here, let me take care of this…”

“Maxi, it’s okay, baby,” you murmured, reaching one hand to smooth down the dark trail of hair down his stomach. “It doesn’t have to be about me this time. It can just be about you.”

“Oh, that’s a definite ‘absolutely not’,” Maxi snorted, smiling at you as he got the first side loose.

You set your hand gently on his cheek as he worked his hand between the mattress and your other side, looking for the second one. “You don’t have to, if you’re too…” You let the air have the rest of your sentence, knowing he’d understand.

Maxi shook his head, his hand finding the other side of the harness as you rolled slightly to give him access. “This is somethin’ I’d never be too tired for, trust me.” He winked at you as he got the second strap off, and he sat up to lift it off your hips.

You sighed in pleasure as your bare skin touched the soft sheets, relieved to be free no matter how well-fitted the harness was. “This feels so good, oh god. Thank you,” you added, glancing up at him as he leaned over to set the whole thing gently on the floor.

“Don’t thank me for anythin’ yet,” Maxi chuckled, laying back down next to you. He reached down, drawing a line across your bare hips with the tip of his finger and making you shiver. “I’ll do whatever you like, gorgeous,” he purred, watching you move. “But if I could make a humble suggestion?”

“Hm?” You glanced at him from your side of the pillow, one eye sunken into the fluff.

He smirked. “It’s been a minute since I got to have these on either side of my face.” He traced his finger down your full thigh, and you felt yourself clench around air. “If you don’t mind, I’d love to get re-acquainted.”

You wondered if he could feel the skin on your thighs flush at the contact — if it could ever be hot enough to send up a tiny plume of steam from his cool skin against it. “…Are you sure?”

“Only if you are,” Maxi said, glancing at you even as he was tracing spirals into your flesh. “If you don’t wanna, I’ll happily try somethin’ else.”

“I mean, I’m not saying I don’t want to,” you said quickly. God, did you want to. You’d gotten yourself off more than once in your morning shower just thinking about Maxi’s cheekbones rubbing against your inner thighs. “I just…” You hesitated.

Maxi moved further down the pillow so the two of you were nose to nose. “‘Just what,’ angel?” His eyes were still holding a hint of red in the iris, but it was warm. Safe. “If you wanna, and I wanna, who else do we need to chime in?” He paused for just a moment, then glanced quickly up to the ceiling. “I don’t think this counts as a ‘leave room for Jesus’ situation by any means.”

You laughed, and Maxi grinned. “It’s not that, I swear,” you managed, still giggling at the idea. “It’s not that at all, it’s just…”

“Just what?” Maxi said again, his voice soft as he kissed you sweetly. He paused, and you could see him thinking. “…Did I do somethin’ to make you uncomfortable last time?”

“No!” You propped yourself up on an elbow. “It’s not that at all, babe, I promise.” You reached over, running your fingers up the thick line of scar tissue over his heart. You watched him relax slightly — this was an unspoken gesture between the two of you that you were sincere. “It’s like… okay,” you said, sighing slightly. “So, we’ve established my thighs are… thicker, than some.”

“And I will not hear one word of slander against them for that,” Maxi said immediately, his other hand moving to your thighs as well. You couldn’t help but giggle as he ran his hands lovingly over the pair of them, his face mock-serious. “They’re precious gifts, and one of my favorite pairs of anythin’ in the world. It isn’t their fault they’re blessed.”

“I wasn’t going to slander my thighs, Maxi,” you laughed again, your fingers lingering over the scar on his chest. “They’re fine. I like them plenty.” You paused, biting your lip as you tried to choose your words. “…You’re gonna laugh and think I’m ridiculous.”

“Oh honey, no,” Maxi’s tone was suddenly soft, concerned and coaxing. He slid his hands back up from your thighs to your waist, pulling you tightly against him in a hug. “I would never laugh at somethin’ you were concerned abut, baby doll.” He kissed your forehead, leaning back so he could see your eyes. “Tell me what’s wrong. I’ll fix it.” His own were serious, searching, and you almost felt bad he looked so worried.

But you also knew he was absolutely going to laugh.

“…Okay,” you began again. “…Do you remember… that tweet I showed you, a while back,” you said slowly. “With the photo of the girl in the hospital?”

Maxi frowned, clearly trying to remember what you were talking about. Eventually he shrugged silently, clearly coming up blank.

“…The one with the neck brace?” You tried again. “Whose girlfriend—“

Maxi made a loud sound you couldn’t identify, somewhere between a snort and a yelp, and suddenly clapped one of his hands to his mouth as he curled into himself on his side.

You were worried for just a second, concerned you’d somehow offended him… until you realized he was, indeed, laughing and trying to hide it from you. Very poorly. “…You can laugh and it won’t hurt my feelings,” you sighed with a smile, after watching him try to muffle it for a minute and doing a terrible job.

Maxi rolled onto his back, laughing so hard he was nearly in tears. A couple of times, he caught his breath, trying to talk to you — only to immediately snort-giggle all over again, falling to pieces at the memory of the girl who went viral because her girlfriend sat on her face too hard.

“I told you,” you said, watching him with a smile of your own you couldn’t help. “I said you’d laugh.”

Maxi’s laugh turned into a groan, then a soft sigh as he wiped a tear from his left eye. “Aw, darlin’,” he cooed once he finally caught his breath. “I wasn’t laughin’ at you, I swear. I just—“ He cut himself off, trying to muffle a snicker that threatened to escape as he reached over to stroke your cheek. “I think it’s really sweet that you’re worried about that, s’all.”

“Are you kidding me? Of course I am!” You were giggling yourself, but still feeling like you were confessing your secret darkest fear. Which you were “Think about it! How the hell are you supposed to show up to work in a neck brace? And at your job, specifically? I can’t have you directing funerals like that, Jesus Christ.” You watched Maxi dissolve into giggles again. “What- what would you even tell the little old ladies at the Historical Society? You know they’d all be fussing over you, thinking you had an accident or something terrible.” You giggled harder as Maxi did, clearly tickled at this idea. “I mean, they have a phone tree dedicated to what pants you’re wearing, for crying out loud!” Can you—“ You had to take a moment to try to breathe through your laughter yourself. “Can you even imagine what they’d do if you showed up to work with an injury? Especially if they thought it had anything to do with me?”

You were still giggling until you felt Maxi’s hands at your sides, and then squealed slightly as he - seemingly effortlessly, somehow - scooped you up to set you lightly so you were sitting on his chest.

“Tell you what, gorgeous,” Maxi said, still chuckling a bit himself. “How about you just relax,” he turned his head, kissing the inside of one of your knees where it rested now on his shoulder. “And let me take care of you,” he punctuated, kissing the inside of the other. “And we won’t worry about what the fussy old ladies think, alright?”

He scooted you forward, and you felt your cheeks blaze again as you felt a trace of your own slick left on his skin.

Maxi licked his lips, locking eyes with you so your breath caught in your throat. “’Cause trust me,” he said, his voice low. “That’s the last thing I’m worried about right now.”

You immediately felt the same, suddenly more concerned with how he lifted you again, followed by the scalding muscle of his tongue pushing into your cunt.

Honestly, at this rate, it would be a good while before he let you remember that anyone existed outside this room.

(if you’ve read this far, as always, I adore you, and I’ll see you in the next prompt pulled from the shadows of time long forgotten :’D thanks! <3)

#nice people #nonny!!#maxi morvant #maximilian vincent morvant #maxi morvant x reader #maxi morvant x you #maxi and his reader #maxi's final them #genderqueer reader #non-binary reader #plus size reader #slasher oc #slasher oc x reader #Daniel Brühl fc #morvant mortuary #monsterkisser fics #minors dni #nsfios

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morvantmortuary · 2 years

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in honor of another monday, I present a time-honored question:

Would the Morvants still love you if you were a worm? 🧐

If you asked Maxi, he’d put down whatever he was doing (mortuary paperwork, reading a book, properly sharpening his scalpel and his lister knife before stalking his next victim) and focus on you intently, brow slightly wrinkled in confusion. “...Run that by me one more time, darlin’?”

When you repeated the question, he’d nod without a second thought. “Oh yeah, of course. I mean, obviously,” he gestures at you with one of his crooked smiles. “That would... change a few things, sure. But wouldn’t change who you are, I bet. And if that stays the same...” He’d pause, staring into the middle distance for a second with a thoughtful moue before he looks back at you. “...Do I get to be a worm too?”

When you blink at him, he’d shrug. “You didn’t specify how you got to be a worm. If it was a Kafka kinda deal, or if it was maybe a mistaken misapplication of dark forces beyond your knowledge, or a witch got mad and misfired a spell or somethin’.” He leans his chin on one hand as he ponders this, intertwining the fingers of his left hand with yours. (...You kind of want to ask if he knows witches who have accidentally transformed people into worms. Maybe later.) “But the way I figure,” he goes on, his eyes slightly distant in the way you recognize comes with his compulsive need to plan everything three steps ahead. “Is that my first thought would be to see if I could break the spell somehow. I don’t know,” he blushes a little when you giggle at this. “Maybe it’s like kissin’ a frog, or somethin’. I’d give it a shot. Then, if that doesn’t work out, I’d just ask whoever did it if I could be a worm too.” He squeezes your hand. “It’s only fair. Sure, that’d leave Hex and Rora in charge of the mortuary, but that wouldn’t be our problem anymore, we’d be too busy doin’ worm stuff.”

When you laugh at this, he grins, pulling you gently so you’re settled in his lap now where he’s sitting on the couch. He kisses your cheek, lingering there for a minute before he tucks you protectively under his chin and against his chest. “Of course I’d love you if you were a worm,” he says, like he’s stating the color of the sky. “Worms are an important part of the process of decay, you know? They’re just Death’s little helpers. Not that’d I’d be makin’ you do that, obviously,” he adds, distracted again.”I’d probably get you set up in a terrarium or the like, somethin’ nice and safe with good soil quality and adjustable temperature and some cute little decorations. But we could still go to the cemetery for picnics and stuff, if you wanted.” He kisses the top of your head, the fingers of his free hand now trailing up and down your spine. “I’d probably keep you in a little travel-sized terrarium to make sure the birds don’t try their luck, but y’know, we’d still go all the places we’ve been wantin’ to go.”

The two of you would stay entangled like that for a while, giving into the temptation of going over the list again: the one the two of you had made after the Halloween Incident, when you’d both been unable to sleep the first night of November due to anxiety and adrenaline, and were dreaming of somewhere you could go together. A little escape, even if it’s only temporary.

The list is longer now, and you know it’ll take your whole lives to finish it. It’s just nice to know that your Type A funeral director has a plan for everything, even the unexpected.

When you ask Hector, he looks up at you from where he’s editing some of his work on a tablet, narrowing his eyes just slightly with a dead serious expression. “You piss off a witch, Querida?”

When you explain no, it’s just a question, he��d narrow his eyes a little more, setting the tablet aside and stroking his chin. His eyes are fixed on something you cannot see, pouting slightly as he tends to do when he’s thinking hard. “...Is this a metaphor?” He looks at you with a glimmer in his eye, like he’s trying to figure out your game. “You know if you need something, you can just ask for it, my love. I’ll give it to you. Or do it, whatever it is.” He tilts his head, watching you still. “You just need to tell me straight, that’s all.” He holds up a hand, palm up and waiting. When you give him yours, he grazes your knuckles with his lips, his eyes never leaving yours. “Are you feeling neglected, gatita? Do we need to have another feelings check-in?”

He tugs gently at your arm until you join him where he’s stretched like a cat on his bed, making a happy little hum as he folds around you in a flat bear hug. He takes his time inhaling the scent of your hair, then tickling your face with scratchy kisses he knows make you giggle uncontrollably. “I’d love you no matter what shape my baby took,” he says, his voice soft. “But you’re so much prettier than a worm. You’d be a better raven, or a mockingbird - something smart, something that can tease and laugh and sing songs when they’re happy like you do. When you think I can’t hear you.” He nuzzles your cheek. “You always struck me as something that should be able to fly, you make me feel so light.”

He’d pause for a moment, going still, and his eyes would flicker open. You could almost swear you could see the dark thought there, circling, like something had whispered it to him. “...Did someone say something to hurt your feelings, preciosa?” His voice is softer still, but in a way that sends a chill through the soft insides of you. “Someone running off at the mouth?” He kisses your hair. “Need a house call? Because I can do that too, you know.”

You’d reassure him quietly that no, that’s not the case. This was just something you saw going around, that other people were asking their partners, and you’d been curious what he’d say. Your hair would stir with the warm breath of his muffled snort. “...People are weird,” he’d mumble. He’d reach up, his thumb tracing up and down the side of your neck as his palm cradled the back. “Yes, I’d love you if you were a worm. You’d love me if I was a snail. It’s the same thing. I love the you-ness of you, you know that. It’s simple. A fact.”

The two of you would lay there in contented silence, you comfortable against the worn-in cotton of his flannel shirt, and in the stillness of the room and the soft stroke of his hand, you’d just be dozing off for a nap when he spoke up again, amused. “...Hey. You would still love me if I was a snail, right?”

Rora would stare at you for a long moment when you asked her, her expression unreadable at first. Slowly, she’d cross her workshop to where you were sitting in a worn armchair, looming in front of you for a moment with her face gradually solidifying into puzzled concern.

That would be when she’d touch your forehead with the cold back of her hand, pressing it there with a critical eye on your face. “You don’t feel feverish.” She’d frown, folding her arms. “Are you gettin’ sick, sweet pea? Do you need to go lie down?”

When you explained to her no, you were just curious, she’d continue to stare, her perfect forehead puckering in thought. “...Why on earth,” she’d say slowly. “Would you be a worm?” She’d pause, her eyes suddenly alarmed despite the stoicism of her face. “You haven’t crossed paths with that infernal ginger woman, have you?” She’d ‘tsk’ her tongue against her teeth, turning to glare at the door. “You don’t listen to a thing she says, petal, she’s all talk. I’ve been telling my dumbass--”

At your question of ‘Who?’, Rora would look abruptly back around, blinking in surprise. “...Oh. Well.” She’d tuck the dark strands that had come loose from her bun behind her ear. “Never mind all that. Why are you askin’ me about being a worm, cherie?”

You would maybe show her a couple videos - Rora was always a visual learner, after all. She’d watch them with a cool, skeptical expression over your shoulder, at most arching an elegant brow. “...Is that all?” She’d look back at you when you put your phone down, and again, she’d be looking concerned. To your surprise, though, she’d come around to the front of your chair, sitting on the mismatched footstool in front of it so she could be at your eye level.

“You deserve so much... more, than that.” She’d slip her hands, ice cold as ever, into yours. Even when you giggled and tried to explain it wasn’t serious, Rora would shake her head. “No, I know - I’m undead, little bee, not ancient,” she’d add, giving you a wry look. “I saw what you showed me. But just -- listen,” she’d squeeze your hands, her face uncharacteristically open. Vulnerable. “That... that should be the bare minimum. ‘Could someone love you if you were a worm’,” she repeats the question with dry distaste. “That’s so abysmally small compared to how anyone should be loved, much less you.” Her thumbs would stroke the skin of your hands, insistent somehow. “You deserve people tellin’ you they love you if you were... a forest. As widely as they sprawl and deep as one can ho, and unknowable in all their parts but still beautiful. Even in the darkest parts where the sun never shines, and the mushrooms grow on everything, where things go to sleep forever because it’s quiet there and they know they’ll finally get some rest...” She trails off, her green eyes feeling like you might fall into them if you look too long.

She clears her throat, suddenly marshaling her face and looking down at her knees. “...I might’ve gotten a little away from myself, there,” she’d say, her mouth for a brief second flattening into a slightly embarrassed line. Finally, she’d look up at you again, her mask of impenetrable perfection back in place. “But I know I’m not wrong.”

Rora just manages to brace herself when you practically tackle her into a kiss - a kiss so enthusiastic and messy that her expression melts entirely, and you can feel her smiling against your lips a moment later.

The two of you get a little distracted after that, what with neither of your hands willing to stay still and both your shirts mysteriously on the floor.

This was inspired by the very sweet @darkhairedmenrule - thank you again for sending me that note, darling, and sorry it took me a minute to get it done! :’D I hope it was worth the wait. hopefully I’ll get to write more soon now that my schedule is kind of establishing itself, knock on wood.

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morvantmortuary · 1 year

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Morvant Mortuary Playlists -

(Because we finally got to the point where it’s worth having a separate navigation for this! :’D Thanks so much to everyone who continues to humor me and my ND need to have music to pace to whenever I’m in the brainstorming process, y’all are the real MVPs 🖤)

Links to all playlists below the cut; this masterlist to be updated as more are posted!

Maxi:

maxi’s spotify playlist

maxi catches feelings spotify playlist

(sssh don’t tell him I posted this)

running through the graveyard

cemetery sunrise

maxi playing piano when a bit tipsy at 2 am

maxi comfort vibes

covers our mortician would lose his shit over

Hector:

hector’s spotify playlist

hector catches feelings playlist

hex comfort vibes

(sssshh definitely don’t tell him I linked this)

hex and the balcony (meant to be for the unwritten NOLA reunion scene from don’t ask me how I’ve been, will probably turn up in his actual arc!)

Rora:

rora’s spotify playlist

rora catches feelings playlist

rora comfort vibes

(I’m still talking her into trying karaoke again, but she’s shy :) check back later!)

Greymoon/The Mortuary:

something is stirring playlist

halloween masquerade playlist

greymoon, louisiana playlist

morvant song recs from nice people (my playlist that anons/friends have been kind enough to make suggestions for and I’m always adding to!)

can I get a necromancer please?

scooby doo and the cursed mortuary (from this brief chaotic au)

holidays with the morvants (xmas 2021)

being festive at the mortuary (xmas 2022)

Others:

vincent etienne morvant playlist

leon labeau (the grey man) playlist [in progress]

sybil lavinia clay (the redhead) playlist [in progress]

(all dividers, as always, made by daisy at @firefly-graphics! ✨

to everyone who got this far, I hope your favorite song comes up next on your shuffle 🥰)

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morvantmortuary · 2 years

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first of all, omg, that maxi garter ask was so sexy, BUT it did make me wonder oddly enough about like…how the morvants get off in a sense? especially with the way you talked about how maxi’s person would be stuck in their head 24/7 or listening to them get off while spying on them 😳😵‍💫

So sorry this took me eons, nonny. :’D I hope you don’t mind me using it now as a way to kick off the things I’m trying to clear out of my askbox, after y’all have been so kind and patient through my exams.

so, I've been turning this over since you asked - since it's such a very good question, after all - and while I think I've maybe made a couple one-off comments here and there, I don't think I'd really gotten a chance to ponder it in-depth.

(nsf tumblr under the cut. yandere/stalker/possessive behavior from the three serial killer necromancers, surprise surprise)

All the Morvants are fine getting themselves off, to some degree. Maxi and Hex are both fairly comfortable with it, Maxi thinking he was going to die alone in that fucking House for ages because he couldn't stand the thought of bringing someone there he actually liked, Hex because he spent so long in tunnel vision pursuit of his latest favorite prey/next link in his Chain that he got pretty used to seeing people casually just being one more thing that held him up. Rora has a more complicated relationship with it after death, but we'll get to that.

All three of them would usually rather be with a partner than handling things themselves, so to speak, but in a pinch, if it works it works. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In writing this, it became less a question about how they get off in general and more about the first time they get off to You, specifically, bc you're usually going to be the thing that tempts them to action if you're not around. Although they usually all tend to be around you in some way or another, even if you don't realize it at the time.

Maxi spends weeks after that first afternoon in the cemetery trying to keep his cool. He spends his days working with people in sensitive states of grief, or performing procedures on their late loved ones that have to meet very specific standards, he cannot afford to be distracted. Ever. But the more time the two of you start spending together, the more he finds himself spacing out at odd moments thinking about the way your favorite scent smells on your skin, or the way you playfully nudged him when he made a particularly bad death pun, and how it was some of the first human contact he’s genuinely enjoyed in a while. When the moment you bit your lip when you were thinking about a question he asked you plays over and over in his brain for what feels like hours one day, he realizes just how much he’s actually into you, and it truthfully scares him just a little bit. It’s been a while. He’s gotten used to doing this alone. This could complicate things considerably.

But he has eyes, he knows you're gorgeous in a way that appeals to him in particular. It's not like he didn't look you over once or twice when you weren't looking even the first time you met, as much as he was trying to be a gentleman. Eventually, the more he likes you, he starts thinking about you whenever he's alone. The particular set of your lips, the light in your eyes when you say something clever, the glint of sweat on your collar bone on an especially warm afternoon. The first time you kiss that man, he's done for. He finally cracks when he's in his office later that night and has to hastily jerk off under his desk, just so he can get the way your chest pressed against his in the moment off his mind and finish some fucking paperwork with a clear head. When he can finally think straight, he's annoyed with himself and the literal mess on his hands for letting himself be so impatient, but when you're as starved for affection and touch as he is by that point, obsessing over someone he likes as much as you feels inevitable. And it will be, although he doesn't realize quite how Literally yet.

After that, he tries to only get himself off when he's safely alone in his room - but the thought of you refuses to leave him be. He catches himself looking for you whenever he's running errands in town, hoping for even just a glimpse outside of your next planned get-together. More than once, he makes up a reason to drive past your house, just to see if you're home or busy in your yard or whatever flimsy weird excuse he concocts. He starts getting desperate the more he realizes he really, really likes you: he checks your socials constantly whenever he has a break at the Mortuary, wanting to see what you're doing and who you're with; he combs your goodreads or something similar if you have one to see what books you have in common, or what favorites you mention that he can find later and read himself; he quietly keeps tabs on your spotify once he finds out what it is (to see what mood you might be in, if you're doing okay, all definitely Normal People Stuff). He finds himself straight up laying on the prep table when he's not using it in the embalming room, listening to the music you listened to for ages and trying to retrace what he imagines your thought process to be. He wonders, when he listens to a particularly romantic song, if you’re thinking of him, because he feels like he’s always thinking of you now.

There’s at least once, and he would be mortified if anyone else ever found out, where he can’t help himself and makes himself come while imagining you riding him against the cold flat steel. He scrubs everything down obsessively after and immediately showers in a fit of pique and shame, but there’s some part of him surrounded by steam and soap and the smell of bleach on his hands that still likes the idea.

When he realizes he's In Deep, he realizes early, and he's doing his best to balance indulging in his fantasies/hopes of finally getting you alone, trying to keep his stalking urges under control, and justifying excuses to track you down to himself with trying to stay a reasonable fucking person for you, because he doesn't ever want to scare you off or give you a reason to not trust him, ever. You're the closest he's felt to a home in ages -- if he lost that, he really would go insane. He adores you, he’d do anything for you to the point of pain or death, and it kills him not to know how much you reciprocate.

He spends more and more time between your dates just chasing breadcrumbs of you: he keeps a small list in his phone of things you mention in conversation, either when you’re together or just texting, that he searches as soon as he’s closed the embalming room for the night. Any word of yours is fodder for him to look, to read, to investigate. He has audio versions of your favorite books that he listens to while he’s repairing a shattered skull (saves him from having to hear the guy’s ghost muttering in his ear); he has a playlist of songs and artist you’ve said you liked that he listens to as he does laundry at one in the morning; his search history is a running tab of things you even half-heartedly mention you like. He’s definitely watched at least a season of your favorite show when he can’t sleep (the whole thing, if he liked it too), and whenever he picks up flowers for his services at Della’s (the town’s oldest florist), he gives different ones a quiet sniff when he’s not looking, trying to figure out which ones feature in any scent you wear.

But the longer he spends with you, the more it’s just not enough, until finally, he catches himself standing at your front door with his lockpick when he's sure you're away from your place. He checks your doors, your windows, wanting to make sure you're safe from everyone else, and finally, the darker voices inside him howling in his brain, he walks into your room and immediately snatches up in the t-shirt you slept in last night that you left on your floor this morning. When he forces himself to leave your place, he kidnaps it, fairly certain he hadn't seen you wear it anywhere else before and hoping it won't be missed. He makes himself come multiple times that night with one hand holding it over his nose and mouth like a gag, at this point not even trying to pretend he's being remotely sane about how badly he wants you. It's as deep in him as blood and bone at this point, just as undeniable, essential. He keeps it under his pillow when he sleeps, dreaming of you, tossing and turning for the first time in decades when he doesn’t find you there next to him after all.

If you or his clients think he looks oddly tired, you are kind enough not to mention it to him.

Before you've ever stayed the night with him, he's hidden himself under your bed multiple times - whenever he was worried about you, or hadn't seen you in a few days, whenever your spotify alluded to some storm of sadness you hadn’t told him about. Whenever he craved the nearness of you that he had no right to claim yet. There’s a part of him that doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near you, he knows this. But the dark voice in his head is relentlessly demanding in its clench-toothed growl: Mine.

It was these nights that he learns you crave him just as much, with the sheer number of times he hears you fuck yourself senseless on a toy, or your fingers with a brutal pace he desperately craves to match, whining his name breathlessly into the dark of your room where he cannot answer. He resists the urge until his hands positively burn, trying to allow you this, this one single act for yourself... but the way you plead so sweetly for him, it takes everything in him not to crawl up onto your mattress and pin you down to give you exactly what you’re begging for. He bites his own lip until it bleeds more than once, trying to keep silent as he desperately ruts against his palm until he comes with you in the closest way he can, for now. But he won’t dare touch you until you ask him to outside your room, and even then, he’ll only come back here with you when he’s absolutely sure you’ll have him. It’s only after he ruins two of his lighter pairs of suit pants that he realizes he has to just stick to sweats or jeans when he crashes under your bed, just out of practicality (and not having to explain things to his dry cleaner).

He gets a little bolder after these agonizing nights under your bed about stealing a kiss when the two of you are out, or sliding his hand under your shirt and up your side when you’re making out on your couch, or in the hearse, wherever. He’s still near-reverential of your boundaries, and he’s the one who suggested taking things slow. But if you notice he’s a little needier after you’ve enjoyed a particularly fun fantasy alone, you’re just excited that the two of you seem to have more in common than you first suspected - especially when he pins you just inside the door to your place, pulling your clothes and finally your underwear aside as he kneels in front of you, like you’d been dreaming about the night before. There’s definitely a date or two that ends with his fingers or his tongue on you in a way that makes you whine, and even if you do reciprocate in the moment, when he’s alone in the middle of the night he’s only really thinking about the sounds you made as he makes himself come repeatedly in his dark bedroom.

If you start to notice some clothes seemingly disappearing from your laundry more often - first an old shirt you only wore sometimes, then the one you wore on your most recent date, and finally, weirdly, your second favorite pair of Nice underwear - you chalk it up to forgetfulness or a wonky dryer trap.

Your first time together, once the two of you have been obviously pining for each other more than usual, he cares for you like you’re something achingly precious, giving you everything you’d fantasized about all those nights you’d thought you were alone in your room. He’s half out of his mind from finally getting what he wants, and he’s determined to give you exactly what you want in return, now that he knows how. Knows he can, which he’d been afraid of for a little while - that you would find something in him wanting, the touch of Death too overpowering to find enough foundation for a life. You’re left gasping, near tears with overstimulation from everything he puts you through, and you refuse to let go of each other for the rest of the night. Something in you sings, and you feel at home for the first time in an age.

Maxi sleeps with his arms wrapped around your waist, pressing his chest to your back and keeping his nose buried in your hair. It is the first time he doesn’t toss or turn in a month.

When you’re together, and all of this is out in the open, he still gets himself off sometimes when he catches himself thinking of you. He’s just more inclined, when possible, to seek the real thing for himself - he knows that his imagination isn’t a substitute by a long shot.

Ever the gentleman, he’s more than happy to return the clothes he ‘borrowed’ from you eventually. Except for that first t-shirt - that he saves for the rare nights his nocturnal activities keep him away from you. A little piece of home, just in case.

Hector’s urges aren’t quite so linear. When he first sees you, it could be anywhere in Greymoon: at the weekend market, in the window of the local cafe or diner, or wandering through a little local shop. Maybe even just taking a walk through the cemetery, drawn in by the quiet feeling of company even when you think you’re all alone.

His lens will be his eyes, for a while. He’ll watch you through it like you’re merely a passing spectacle, struck by something about you he cannot name. The sunlight on your hair, the way you smile at whoever you’re talking to. Even the way you look down at your phone is fodder enough for his inner muse, and he wonders what secret joke makes your mouth quirk up like that at the corner. There’s something to you he must unravel, or piece together. He likes the way you look in the center of his frame - you wear it almost like a mantle.

So he starts to follow you before either of you have ever exchanged a word. For a while, it’s quiet. He wants to get a feel for you, see you in your natural habitat. He wants to understand your comings and goings as pieces of the larger intricate choreography that is your life. You are something separate from him still, something entirely ephemeral. You could be as distant as a sunrise, yet more captivating in the fact that you’re alive.

The first time he thinks of you when he’s getting himself off, it’s late at night in his darkroom and he’s more bored and restless than anything. This is just trying to get his brain to shut up, to make himself feel rooted in his skin again after being in the House for too long so he can focus.

It’s only when the thought of you fleetingly crosses his mind - your skin, your lips, the way sunlight at golden hour looks in your eyes - that he feels something so electric pass through him, it only takes a couple more passes of his hand for him to leave a mess quite by accident on the darkroom floor.

Panting, slightly dazed, he wonders what that was all about. It’s been a while since he’s had someone who… inspired that particular reaction, in him. Even as he’s looking for something to clean up the mess, he’s already thinking of what day it is tomorrow - where he usually sees you during this time of the week.

He wants a closer look, now. To see if maybe this would be interesting to chase.

The next day, when you wander in to the cafe for your usual morning cup of coffee, you about jump out of your skin when there’s a particularly bright-eyed man suddenly standing next to you at the counter. He laughs and apologizes immediately, offers to pay for the cup he about made you spill - but there’s a gleam in his dark eyes like he knows something you don’t. A joke he’ll let you in on, eventually.

Nonetheless, he’s charming, he’s more than cute, and by the time you realize you’re running half an hour late for whatever it was you were actually on your way to, he’s more than happily given you his number.

When you text him a couple days later, just to say hi, that’s all he needs. This is a Sign.

Maxi and Hex are both adept at finding people through social media breadcrumbs - it’s been both a necessity and something to do when they’re bored over the years - but Hex is the one who’s been learning how to brute-force a password during his years in Mexico, remotely accessing other people’s stuff when he needs to keep an eye on them. The Internet of Things is everywhere, now, and people are pretty routine creatures when it comes to things like this. He’s weirdly proud when it takes him more than a couple conversations to figure out what one of yours might be, having run through all the basic clues already - he likes that in a person. He drinks in your private data like it’s water, leaving no metaphorical stone unturned. Clearly, your essence called out to him for a reason, he’s determined to find it.

Turns out you take some beautiful photos yourself, when you’re in the mood. He has quite a bit of fun with those, alone in his bedroom on the second floor. On the nights sleep is particularly evasive, he wears himself out thinking of exactly how your thighs would feel wrapped around his back, or resting on his shoulders. It becomes a favorite ritual in the evenings, especially once he gets to know you better in the daylight.

After every outing together - starting simple, just a walk around the weekend farmer’s market, then another coffee at the usual place - he immediately goes home to check what you’re texting your friends about him or what mushy posts you confine to your drafts, what songs you throw on your music app before and after. He grins to himself the first time he sees you search a song he mentioned in conversation, and he starts doing it at least once every time he sees you after, trying to see how many times he leaves an impression.

He makes sure to park the mustang very strategically when he starts watching your windows, only when it’s dark and only when he’s sure he’s mostly obscured by the fixtures of your yard. More than once, as you’ve been getting changed for the night, he’s definitely had to palm himself through his jeans to take the edge off until he couldn’t take it anymore.

The first time he’s the intended recipient of one of your photos, he sees it on his laptop before he actually sees it on his phone, and he’s hooked. He can’t stop staring at it for at least three days, (much to the annoyance of his cousins, when he keeps forgetting to set the fucking dishwasher because he sneaks off to his room immediately after any shared meals). Once they put two and two together, however, they’re both more than fine with him not mooning over your nudes in the kitchen - and grateful their respective bedrooms are on different sides of the House.

The first time he sends you one back (with an admittedly killer angle, damn him), it from somewhere dark, kind of cramped-looking. You just shrug it off and decide he deserves a video, poor baby, being stuck wherever he is on a shoot. Something to help him pass the time while he’s waiting for his time-lapse shot to give him enough contrast to be worth shooting, or whatever.

As you’re filming yourself in a very… compromising position, one hand holding the camera and the other occupied, you’re too busy to notice the way your closet door just slightly cracks open.

By the time you hit send, he’s already trying to catch his breath on your floor with his cock still in his hand, one of your scarves shoved in his mouth to muffle any sounds that might give him away.

Hex is still respectful of your physical boundaries - he’s more than happy to stare at you when you’re not looking, that’s the only line he’ll cross with you in person - but he doesn’t hold out long after that, if you two haven’t fooled around before then. If he gets his way, he invites you to go stargazing after dinner one night in a particularly secluded spot, with a soft blanket and a bottle of wine and - well. You get the picture. But he’s just as happy if the two of you end up back at yours after going shot for shot at dinner, leading to a messy makeout session on your couch before he finally cracks and begs to take your shirt off, please preciosa.

After the two of you have been going out a while, if he wants to get himself off, it’s usually just because he’s restless or bored. He still usually sticks to the dark room or his bedroom - but his new favorite source is less his imagination, and more the collection of photos of you (both knowingly and unknowingly received) that he’s started on his phone. (If you’re around, though, he’ll usually just come find you himself and ask with those eyes of his.)

Rora is the one of the three that holds off the longest after she first encounters you - but when she does see you, for the first time, it feels like a lightning bolt. Wherever you are - in the plant nursery, or the bookstore, or the little rent-a-stall market where she sells her taxidermy - she literally forgets to breathe for a beat.

After so long of being dead, of being fixated on getting back and getting revenge and taking the title that’s rightfully hers with blood in her teeth and hair… she feels something Else. Something she hadn’t felt since she was alive the first time.

She remembers what it is to want something outside yourself. Someone.

She tries to make a point of not staring so long you’ll look her way - she does not do Looking well, not yet - but she’s taken in by your hands. They look… soft. Or, more specifically, like they know how to touch things softly. Gently, that’s the word. She watches the way your lips move when you talk, animated and lively, all the little muscles underneath your skin performing in a way entirely unique to you. She admires the curve of your ear, like a pretty shell of cartilage.

She wonders what it would be like to place a flower behind it. She thinks about what kind of flower would best suit your eyes, and what shape would complement the arch of your brow.

And then she has to not jump half a foot when Maxi and Hex walk up behind her to see if she needs help carrying things out to the car. She shoves whatever she’s holding at them in a hurry, spinning on her heel and heading for the door before either of them can track her gaze.

But even as they drive back to the House on the edge of town - the guys up front and her contented to be chauffeured in the back - she’s twirling a strand of her own hair around her fingers and wondering what yours would feel like instead.

Truthfully, she’s so busy with her plans around the Mortuary (planting her gardens, setting her workshop back up after decades of disuse, figuring out how to be a fucking person twenty years later than she was supposed to be) that you slip her mind, for a bit.

When she sees you again, it’s like lightning striking twice.

She sees you walking around town, just going about your day, but it’s still a revelation to her. She watches you from afar, determined not to let you see her Looking still, but she shadows you quietly - just to see. To get a taste of what it might be like to fit into your own skin, your original skin, like it was made for you. To move seamlessly through the world, as if you didn’t have to think about it. You were just… still part of it.

Admiring your bone structure, she thinks you wear your skin rather well.

She starts thinking of you at random moments throughout her day: when she’s up knuckle-deep in damp potting soil, or removing the delicate entrails of a raccoon, or up wandering around in the middle of the night because after the grave nothing feels dark enough to sleep.

She grasps for the curve and the hook of things - roots, bones, dreams - and wonders what it would be like for your fingers to intertwine with hers.

She starts making excuses to go into Greymoon proper - walking when Maxi’s too busy to drive and Hex is out of the House. She waves off their protests (their not unreasonable concern that someone might recognize her, even with her face on a new skull; their shared secret worry that she might disappear as quickly as she reappeared), too determined to get a glimpse of you to be kept from you by a mere hike down the dirt road that they use as a cut-through back to their place.

She knows she can’t keep staring at you forever, though. Not without you noticing eventually. And indeed, once or twice, she swears she feels your eyes pass over her when she turns her head to take in something in her surroundings. There’s a small part of her that hopes, maybe, you’ll just accept her in your orbit as part of Greymoon - a distant satellite, something that watches but never passes too near.

But, inevitably, you run into each other face to face. There’s plenty of ways it could happen: you finally get up the nerve to approach the beautiful, silent woman you see looming like a graceful specter around town; she finally swallows her nerves and figures if she can transpose her own soul back into her body, she can talk to someone she thinks is lovely; or you two literally bump into each other, coming from around the opposite sides of a building because you lost sight of one another in your silent watching. She does her best to keep herself calm, pretending her small smile is more coy than nervous. She just manages to ask if you’d accompany her for coffee, or lunch, or another trip to the nursery - something to see you, even just for a little while. When you agree, she keeps her response poised, cool, her mother’s lessons back to haunt her.

But all the week leading up to your - visit? gathering? (Not a date, it’s too soon - or is it?) - she finds herself pacing restlessly around the House, looking for things to fix, knots that need undone, hems that need altered and holes that need sewn. There’s something in her just below the surface, she can feel it shifting, pushing through her chest like new shoots.

After the date (is it a date? she’s allowed to call it a date, right? people do that now?), you’re all she thinks about. The way you smiled at her when she made a joke, or the curve of your elbow resting upon the table, the way your hair moved in its particular fashion. The way sunlight plays off your skin like the petals of a rose.

She’s in her garden one afternoon, gazing at one of her perfect blooms, when she finds herself lightly tracing the lip of one - her fingertip sliding down the curve, towards the bell at the end of the stem. She imagines what your lips would feel like if she happened to trace them; she’s had a hard enough time trying to find the right flower to match them as is, but she hopes the texture would be close… right?

She catches herself awash in the scent of her roses, her thighs pressing together as she strokes the blossom until the petals come apart under the pressure of her hand, her eyes sightless and staring somewhere else entirely.

She keeps making up excuses to come find you - both to make it so you don’t have to come out to the House where she died, and because maybe it doesn’t hurt that it gives her an excuse to be out in the world again, in a way. To remember what it was she left behind. What she could have now.

She’s possessive in a different way than the boys - it’s still visceral, when she realizes she wants you all to herself. That she wants to cradle the back of your skull in her hands like it’s something precious, to lavish your hair in love and perfume, to know exactly what you taste like and if it’s anything like nectar. She finds herself having to ask the boys how people work nowadays - where she can wander through your mind, or part of it, and immerse herself in you for at least a little while. But she gets bored with the social media stuff; sure, it’s more than the mixtapes she and her girlfriend passed back and forth back in the day, but it’s so much less tangible.

No, she takes after her twin in how she shows up at your place when she knows you won’t be home. She gets a lay of the land - literally, looking around what portion of a yard you may or may not have. What trees you have, if any, what plants, what grass calls your yard its habitat. She uses a pin from her hair to pick your door’s lock and waltz right in. She takes a look at what plants you have, where they sit in the light, makes a note of what tips she can casually drop into conversation about how to keep them healthy (and maybe gives them a little water while she’s there).

She heads for your bedroom last - wanting to savor that part. She runs her fingertips over the clothes in your closet, takes in the art and posters on your walls, fingers whatever jewelry you might have on a dresser or in a box. She looks for patterns, repeating signs, trying to see what you associate with yourself. How you want to be seen, so she knows how else she might see you. If you wear any fragrance, she pulls the handkerchief she keeps hidden (one of the only traits of her mother’s she found useful since coming back to this side of the veil) and sprays it there. She folds it up before it can dry, wanting it to permeate the entire fabric.

That night, in the white sheets of her bedroom, she holds it to her nose and breathes like she’s preparing to dive, her fingers plunging deeper into herself before greedily circling her own clit. Her fingers, as strange to her as they still are, are no replacement for yours. Her hands don’t stray too much further - the breasts of this body still don’t feel like they’re quite hers, and the lines of the tattoo on her thigh that she never chose still spook her when her hand ghosts over them by accident.

But the thought of your lips on hers, her lips elsewhere, yours lower - those, she can handle. Those make her feel at home in this new skin, even when that’s been denied to her for so long.

Whenever she smells your fragrance on you when she comes to see you, she wonders if you can see the way her fingers twitch needfully, having to look away from you for a moment just to catch her breath again.

The first time the two of you kiss - in her back garden, where she’s invited you out for a glass of her own lavender lemonade - she tastes it on her lips for three days, and does everything she can to keep it on her tongue for the following two nights.

The first time you successfully convince her that she’s safe with you, on your favorite quilt in your room, she relishes every drop she gets of you. She devours you like a woman starved, and when your tongue finally skims her clit in return, she feels the thunder from your last lightning strike at last shake her entire body. The whole of the storm, at last.

Afterwards, no matter how many flowers are around - in your house or her garden - it’s still the scent of you that makes her weak at the knees.

Thanks again for your patience, Nonny - this was exactly the kind of warm re-start I needed! <3 Looking forward to posting more soon :D

If you read this far, I hope you have some fun of your own later :3c

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morvantmortuary · 2 years

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I've had like zero energy the past two days because of my period, and I've been wondering how the Morvants would be with a reader who struggles with it

well first of all, babe, a big solidarity high five from me, bc Omg Same :’D I’ve been on the daily pill since I was a teenager, and Istg my symptoms have only gotten worse. the first two days of my placebo week every month just wipe me the fuck out now, and those were this past monday and tuesday for me and I swear I’ve been at half-battery since ☠️ I’m feeling a bit better today - I got up at a normal person time and have managed to get some stuff done - but I hope if you’re starting to feel a bit better if you’re not quite on your feet again yet 🖤♥️ Fatigue as a symptom can be hard, esp. when lots of people already don’t take PMS super seriously.

The Morvants, however, know bodies can be complicated things, and would be happy to help their sweetheart out when you weren’t feeling well 🥰 (mdni, we get a bit 18+ below the cut)

Maxi would love the excuse to have a slow, sleepy day with you - but Death usually has other plans. If he has decedents to prepare or services to arrange, he’ll have to tend to those, but depending on where you are when you wake up will dictate how his day goes:

If you wake up with him at the Mortuary, he’ll insist you stay there with him so he can take care of you. You’re welcome to spend the day in his bed sleeping as you need to, or working remotely, or whatever you need to do. You can even stay in pajamas all day, he’ll be the last person to judge. Instead he’ll check on you whenever he finishes a client appointment or an embalming, bringing you a snack and something to drink, some pain killers if you’re having cramps or a headache, or ordering delivery for the pair of you from wherever you like. He’ll linger with you as long as he can until he’s called away for work again, fiddling with your hair, adjusting your pillows or the fans in your room.

If you wake up at your house, he’ll still do as much of the above as he can when he can get away - if your neighbors weren’t so used to the hearse in your driveway, they’d be concerned about how much it drives back and forth on these days, as he walks in with your favorite silly little coffee drink or some other treat from town to cheer you up whenever he walks into your room.

When he’s finally off work for the day, his attention is entirely on you. If you haven’t bathed yet that day and want to, he’ll take it upon himself to care for you that way, whether that’s stepping with you into the shower to wash your hair and lather your skin (and get the formaldehyde smell off himself, tbh), or drawing you a bath to let you wallow in the warm water as he rubs your muscles where they ache.

After this, he’s going wherever you want to go in his old joggers and a t-shirt: if you want to just lay in your bed with a hot water bottle and listen to podcasts or watch movies on your laptop, he’ll spend the rest of his evening as your big spoon, idly kissing your neck and shoulders (and muffling soft scoffs if you’re listening to a true crime podcast about cops being fucking incompetent again). He’s content to drift in and out of naps with you, holding you firmly in his gator’s grip and sniffing lightly at your hair as he enjoys your warmth and nearness.

If you’re feeling well enough to hang out on the couch, he’s right there with you. If you want to lay on his chest while the two of you watch creepy YouTube videos or play video games, he’ll absently kiss your forehead every now and again, his hands resting on your body where you aren’t pressed up against him and rubbing circles there when he’s distracted. If you just want to binge a season of whatever new spooky tv show you’re watching together or a bunch of bad horror movies, he’ll lay on you if it won’t make you feel sore, happy to provide some comforting weight (and enjoy the solid thud of your heart beneath his ear) and cuddle you like you deserve.

If you want, he’ll absolutely read to you from an old favorite, or something you’d been meaning to get around to forever but just didn’t have the energy for. His drawl adds something to the book, a dimension you hadn’t considered when you read it alone, and you’re reminded as you listen just how long your beloved has been living in Cajun/Creole country - it gets a little stronger the longer he reads as he relaxes into his words, and you go back later to re-read some passages, smiling to yourself at how the words sounded completely different on his tongue.

He’ll bring you snacks as you desire, cook about any comfort food you ask for (you discover he’s actually really good at pancakes and crepes when you guys opt for breakfast for dinner one night), and build a nest of pillows and blankets for you both if it means you’re comfortable and looked after

We know our boy absolutely has A Thing for period sex, but he obviously won’t ask if he knows you feel exhausted/gross. He’s had partners like that before, he knows it sucks. But the minute your hand tangles a bit too long in his hair, or he feels you grind ever so lightly against his thigh if you were laying on him, he’ll turn to you curiously, his hand sliding over your lower back. “Can I help you with somethin’, baby doll?” He’ll ask innocently enough, eyes wide and soft, but you can see the smile pulling at the corner of his mouth as you feel a mirroring one on your own face.

If you tell him yes, he’ll ask you exactly what you want, and give it to you. In spades. He’ll plant soft kisses down your stomach as he moves, pulling your pajama shorts down and shushing you gently as he kisses your inner thighs. “Easy, darlin’,” he murmurs, glancing up at you over his glasses. “You don’t have to do anythin’, just let me take care of you.”

He’ll put your thighs on his shoulders and keep your hips in his grip as he devours you whole, and by the time you’re shaking and out of breath from overstimulation, his mouth is as red as his eyes are now shining. He licks every drop of blood and slick from his face as he looks up at you, still your sweetheart, but something closer to the feral, frightening thing you know that’s hiding inside him. (…If his tongue looks maybe just a touch… longer? Narrower? Than it normally does? You’re willing to chalk that up to the fact that you’re literally seeing stars, holy shit.)

If you prefer something else, he’ll lay you out however you’ll be most comfortable - on your back, or maybe on your stomach - and wet your cunt thoroughly with his own spit and some careful applications of his fingers before he works himself into you, taking his time not to overwhelm you (but unable to resist a light lick of his own lips when you moan at the stretch, the ache of adjusting around him). Slowly, with soft reassurances in your ear - “There you go, pretty, look at you, I knew you could. You’re so good, takin’ all of me like this—“ he’ll pull you so his hips are flush with you, watching you squirm admiringly for a moment before he experimentally rolls them to move in you. “It’s okay, angel,” he murmurs, his thumbs running over the soft skin of your hips. “You relax. Daddy’ll do all the work.” You then only have to lay there and whine for more as he gives you all of him, as slowly or as rough as you want, until you’ve thoroughly soaked his cock as many times as you can manage and he’s filled you with as much as he can give, pressing soft kisses to your panting face as he lovingly fucks his cum further into you, before the two of you at last collapse in an exhausted tangle to cool off before you can cuddle properly.

This always happens when you’re not well - there comes a point whee he lays awake, gazing at you like it will never be enough no matter how long he looks. The monster inside him is only ever silent when you’re this close, when it knows you’re safe at his side and only Hell itself could part you. It has no business being this close to you, but as much as he hates it, he can’t help but agree that this is the most at peace he ever feels. The thing inside him - not quite demon, not quite him, all reaper - would tear the world apart for you, this one or the one beyond.

Hex’s work doesn’t demand as much socially from him, so if he can afford to cancel his latest shoot or cancel whatever plans he was making to stalk his next Chain link, he will. He’ll be happy to either bring you to his place or to come over to yours, armed to the teeth with your favorite junk food, his softest flannel shirt for you to borrow, and scratchy beard kisses wherever you want them.

As much as his first thought to make you feel better is usually to get you moving, he understands that in cases like this, that’s just not going to work. So he’s determined to keep you comfortable: he rubs the muscle balm his mom used to give him after training with Maxi and his dad into your lower back, he rubs your feet if he thinks that would help, he sits behind you while the pair of you watch tv to rub your neck and shoulders.

He keeps you on a steady diet of fruit juice and homemade dishes, a constant deluge of scents of cooking and baking coming from the kitchen of whoever’s house you’re crashing at. It feels like every time you wake up from a nap, he’s standing over you with a new batch of rolls or conchas, or with a new smoothie recipe, or something smothered in cheese. If you really want something greasy and fried from your usual take-out place, he’ll get it for you without complaint, but he always prefers to cook for you when you’re not feeling well. He’s proud to be able to take care of you that way and it dispels the nervous energy he always has just under the surface when you’re not feeling well.

He’s content to lay around wherever you want to lay around - be it your bed, his, or the couch at either person’s house. He’ll be tweaking some photos on his laptop while you scroll through your phone, or he’ll happily hold you between his legs so you can rest against his chest as the two of you take on a season of your shared favorite shitty reality show. (He’s a sucker for Catfish and the Circle - cyber drama always intrigues him, and the wilder episodes will have him cackling in a way you only ever hear when he’s with you or around the twins. The boy was raised on telenovelas, after all.) He might doze off in the middle of your favorite prestige drama or procedural (if he’s not quietly mumbling observations about the camerawork and the lighting to himself), but he mysteriously always keeps up with the plot. If you turn on Great British Baking Show, he’ll wake right back up, I promise. He might even want to make you more snacks after, just to try his hand at some of what he saw.

If you’re napping on the couch or reading quietly, he will take stealth candids on his phone. Lots of them. He loves it when you’re just hanging out with him, casual and in your comfiest clothes. He thinks you’re beautiful - even if you don’t always - and he’ll want to look at this photos later, to admire the light on your skin and the engrossed expression on your face.

If you want to bathe, Hex will happily offer to help - but if you just want to stick to dry shampoo and a washcloth, he’d help with that too, making sure to spray the deeper layers of your hair evenly and get that hard to reach spot between your shoulder blades for you. He’s done that plenty of times himself when he was on the run traveling, he knows sometimes that’s all you need if you just don’t have the energy. He’d always make sure you had fresh pajamas, though, even if it meant you stole a t-shirt and a pair of his worn-out sleep pants for a day or two.

If you need a nap buddy, he’s always down to be a nap buddy. He sleeps a bit more restlessly than most (as happens when you tend to slip a bit more easily Beyond the Veil from your dreams), but even if he can’t be your big spoon the whole time, he’ll sleep with one part of him always in contact with you - be a hand on your thigh, or his shoulder blades against your back, even intertwining his legs with yours. Even if he can’t sleep, he’ll lay there and watch you, taking in the little things about your face: the way your brows knit together and smooth out when you dream, your little sniffles and mumbles in the deepest parts of your cycle - how vulnerable you are, and how much you trust him to let him see you like this.

Period sex isn’t quite as much of a thing for him as it is for Maxi - he has his own... cravings, as it were - but if you ask him, he’s not about to deny you.

This could be anything from sliding his fingers past your waistband and teasing your clit while you watch a bad movie, pretending not to notice as you flinch and whine and writhe in his lap while he makes you come until you’re ready to cry without once pulling away his hand, or on your sides in bed, whispering to you as he fills you while holding one of your thighs on his hip.

“Aww, pobrecita,” he mock-coos at your muffled moan, tilting his head to look at you as he snaps his hips against yours. “You’re just feeling way too much, huh?” He nips your lower lip before you can respond, pressing closer to you and deeper inside in the same movement. “Don’t worry, baby, I’m gonna make you forget all about that...” His hair falls in his eyes, but you don’t miss the way he grins as you whine and cling to the fabric of his shirt, the way his free hand squeezes your ass as he eliminates any possible space left between you two.

He only lets you go when you’re having to bite back a scream, having left a few bites of his own along your collarbone and shoulder earlier. When he does, he smirks. “How’re you feeling now, Querida?” he asks like he doesn’t know, his tone light as he takes his time cleaning you up.

For acting so smug, he really is a big softie. He’ll get you anything you like after before he stretches out next to you, sighing contentedly as he pulls you against him and fits you under his chin. He strokes your back, singing what sounds like a lullaby under his breath as you fall back asleep on a wave of hormones, satisfaction, and exhaustion. You feel a soft kiss to your forehead as your eyes finally close, and his lips linger there like a ghost.

He’s overwhelmed with how much he loves you. He hadn’t believed Maxi when he talked about that dark other self living inside him, how possessive and utterly greedy it became when he found his own Obsession. But he gets it now, and he has to banish that shrieking wraith inside him that wants to take you over just the same, to keep you prisoner to his worst impulses and fears. He never wants you to know about that, just how much of you it would take for himself. It scares him too.

While the boys are sweet, Rora’s the one who will absolutely Get It. “Oh, Petal,” she frowns, taking in your dulled eyes and the bags beneath them. “You too, huh? Don’t worry,” she runs a hand over your hair, affectionate and soothing all at once. “I remember how this works.”

She’ll move a bare-bones version of her workshop into whatever bedroom you make your main crashpad - yours at your house, hers in the Mortuary - tiny portable desk and all. When you want to just lay there, slipping in and out of consciousness or boredly scrolling through your usual apps, she’ll sit off to the side, a silent but constant watchful presence as she works. She knows that sometimes cuddling just doesn’t cut it, and being able to stretch out in a big empty bed alone is the best remedy, but she still wants to be close to you. You’re impressed with just how quickly that woman can taxidermy small rodents. It’s kind of alarming.

Heating pads, ice packs, anti-ache ointments of her own concoction - you want it, she’s got it, and she’s got it in a million combinations she probably tested on herself back in the ‘90s. She keeps you regularly dosed with Motrin (or whatever painkiller is most compatible with anything else you take), giving you your next set pills as soon as is reasonable so they can’t wear off and leave you achey, so you can sleep as much as you need to.

(If you express surprise she isn’t sticking entirely with Natural TreatmentsTM, she snorts. “Cramps are never the time for farmer’s market bullshit, Little Bee. There’s treatments, and then there’s painkillers.” She gives you a withering, knowing glance. “I know which one I’d prefer to have when a linin’ of tissue is tryin’ to expel itself from my body. I’m not about to mess around when it comes to yours.”)

She brings you fruit-infused water from the kitchen with fresh slices floating in it, ones she obviously just cut herself. She’ll have a glass herself in the process, but she’ll watch you like a hawk to make sure you’re staying hydrated, only swapping that out with something caffeinated if she thinks that would help your sleep schedule from getting completely out of whack.

The woman has an entire collection of silk sleep masks you didn’t know about. She’ll pass you a fresh one each day you’re not feeling well, and you luxuriate in the cool smooth fabric against your tired eyes. You wouldn’t have thought to get one of these for yourself, but you’re grateful for her stray flourish of fanciness she only shows on unexpected occasions.

She will take her time showering with you or giving you a bath, if you want one. As much as you know showering can sometimes give her a bit of vertigo in her host body, she’ll focus intently on yours, covering your skin with her favorite English lavender soap and giving your hair whatever it needs to keep it clean and healthy. She spoils you after with sweet-smelling oils, thick creamy lotion, a facemask or just something cooling for your undereyes if you’re feeling up to it. Her hands are firm but tender as she rubs your scalp, your shoulders, your thighs and the backs of your calves - everywhere that can get too tight if you’re stressed, or laying down a lot.

Rora doesn’t have quite the same attention span for bingeing that the boys do - when she was alive, she got told off for watching tv for too long, and she’s still getting used to the whole “everything streaming all the time everywhere” kind of thing. But she’ll sit with you through whatever you feel like watching. While she has patience for all sorts of shows, she perks up during nature documentaries, shows like How It’s Made, or - her favorite - anything involving cold cases or autopsies. If you watch a costume drama, she’ll pretend to only be politely interested for a while, but eventually you’ll hear her softly gasp at an especially pretty dress, or titter or tsk at something happening on screen. When the service finally asks if you’re still watching, she glances at you, holding a pillow to her chest and looking somewhat enchanted. “...Maybe just one more? Y’know, just to make sure the Duke gets what’s comin’ to him,” she’ll ask quietly.

(You finish the rest of the season in a night, and spend the rest of the evening googling whatever you can find out about the upcoming next season as she looms quietly over your shoulder. When you show her the tag for the show on a site like this one or AO3, she’s mesmerized.)

(You open your eyes at one point late that night, aware of her cool, solid presence beside you - still, but with her breathing too shallow to be asleep. You peer over her shoulder to see her browsing the same tag on her phone, screen on minimum brightness as she scrolls with abandon.)

(If she hears you chuckle, she doesn’t say anything. But when you kiss her shoulder and wrap an arm around her waist, she squeezes your hand as it rests on her stomach and finally sets her phone on the bedside table.)

Period sex for Rora is, like many things, a bit complicated - it brings up memories of her own original body, but she’s never not enticed by yours. If you ask, she’ll answer with a kiss, and her cool hands sliding possessively over your frame as she hums low in her throat.

Rora’s fingers are strong and sure despite their aristocratic taper, and she knows exactly the way to work them in you to make you feel like you’re lighting up from the inside. She twists and scissors them in a way that makes just how wet you are extremely audible, her emerald eyes never leaving your face as you come undone repeatedly under her calculated touch.

Or, taking another route, depending on who’s house you’re at she’ll pull out one of your favorite toys - or her old reliable of a spotless hitachi wand if you’re at hers - and apply it mercilessly to your clit with a cool reserve. She observes with a deceptively stoic mask how long it takes your thighs to shake helplessly, for you to try to flinch away when it all becomes too much, and exactly how many soft pitiable whines it takes until you soak the sheets with a softly pink-ish rush of warmth. “That’s okay, daffodil,” she soothes, leaning down to kiss your flushed brow when you mumble a slightly teary embarrassed apology. “They’re just sheets, nothin’ worth gettin’ upset about.” She runs a hand over your hair, and her pale pink mouth quirks in the hint of a smile. “You wanna go again? It’s good for you - it helps, I swear.”

If you ask to make it up to her, by burying your head between her cool thighs and feeling her nimble fingers now curl helplessly in your hair, for once - she won’t refuse. After, she’ll take your face in her hands with a still-dazed expression, and kiss you messily with an open mouth to hide just how much her breath is still shaking.

Rora watches you sleep - it’s no secret. She has problems getting to and staying asleep since she came back to this side of the Veil, and she would sooner shave her own head than get out of bed and risk disturbing you. But sometimes she feels something else watching out of her eyes, taking you in with an avarice that isn’t entirely hers. She and the boys have talked about it since she found you: that urge to keep, to claim, to never let you out of her sight again. To never let you be parted by something as flimsy as the Veil. While the creature in her head coos over you like something more precious than gold, counting your every breath, she knows in her conscious mind that she would bring you back a hundred times if she never had to be without you again, damn the consequences. She has lived too long alone, her and the monster inside her - and neither of them will be denied now.

Sorry this took a while, sweet nonny!! I was feeling a bit worn down myself this week 🖤 I hope you’re feeling better now, and have this for the next time Shark Week decides to throw you out of whack 🥰✨ sending love your way!

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morvantmortuary · 2 years

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alright, today we’re prepping to head back to louisiana tomorrow, so I might be a bit slowER on answering what’s in my inbox while I run around my folks’ place and make sure I’m not forgetting to pack anything vital lmao :’D

in the meantime!! I found this really cute sleepy couples picrew the other day —

https://picrew.me/image_maker/551533

so I killed some time on the ride back from Austin making the Morvants and something close to a blank reader figure for funsies ✨ they didn’t have the blank page white option for a skin tone, so I went with something that’s more of a dark beige-ish so the insert wasn’t just white themselves ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ they also unfortunately didn’t have a beard option, so we’ll say Hex is just freshly shaved lmao

here’s these for your fluff needs on this monday afternoon!!

#and then rarae says #morvant mortuary #maxi morvant #maxi morvant x you #maxi morvant x reader #maxi and his reader #hector morvant-casares #hex morvant-casares #hector morvant-casares x you #hector morvant-casares x reader #hector and his reader #aurore morvant #rora morvant #rora morvant x reader #rora morvant x you #rora and her reader #picrew

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morvantmortuary · 2 years

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Something I was using to get me through my exam writing - a mix your morbid mortician would make you if he knew you were dealing with a lot of pressure lately, just to take some of the edge off. this is a combination of softer/mushier songs and some spooky lofi to help focus. Probably has the most familiar songs of the three, but that’s because I was just cherry-picking some of my favorites from his playlists to keep them close lmao.

Here’s this in case anyone else needs something sweet on a Friday - more to come!

#maxi morvant #maximilian vincent morvant #maxi vibes #maxi morvant x reader #maxi morvant x you #maxi and his reader #final them #daniel brühl fc #morvant family playlists #morvant mortuary #monsterkisser fics

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morvantmortuary · 6 months

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paint the town red --

(Maxi Morvant x non-binary/genderqueer plus-sized Reader, 18+)

(summary: Maxi returns to you after some night work. You don't hate the result.

warnings: smut, minors dni. dead dove do not eat for the following: blood kink, minor descriptions of gore, Maxi goes down on Reader after some light cannibalism. oral (afab receiving, some anatomy mentioned), oral wound fucking (reader giving), pain kink, handjob. some possessiveness, mentions of stalking. some allusions towards a homophobic/transphobic politician who gets got. serial killers are serial killing, don't act surprised. needless to say: don't fucking try this at home, for all sorts of health reasons.

general: Reader is, as always, non-binary/genderqueer, fat/plus-sized, and also just plain Queer. afab anatomy is referenced for reader, so just be advised. otherwise, everything else is meant to be relatively neutral to let people have a more seamless experience, and suggested tweaks to that language are always appreciated.

general: well. this was meant to be part of @jmathesonandsiblings's Spooky Season in the Barrens (for 'covered in blood' and 'gore', in case you couldn't guess!) but life was Not Cooperating. :'D so! here's this, better late than never!!

'...hey rae wtf is with that warning section' buddy, your guess is as good as mine, honest to god.)

Standing on the back porch in the dark always reminded you just how far the House was from anywhere else in Greymoon.

The autumn chill was still nowhere to be found, the last crickets of the warm weather singing uneasily around you. The cicadas had fallen silent weeks ago, leaving the evening air feeling almost… too big. Too capacious.

Like something else would ooze into where the familiar bayou lullabies should have been, concealing itself in the silence until it jumped out to surprise you.

But tonight, you couldn’t bring yourself to worry as usual. The moon was full, pendulous, threatening to drip harvest honey all down the dangling strands of spanish moss and throwing your world into soft, gauzy focus.

You, however - your mind, your sight, the sense of certainty in the center of your ribs - had never felt clearer.

Your senses felt like the scalpel’s cold edge; the sussurrus of every breeze sounded like a chorus of whispers. The shadowy shapes in your peripheral vision, in the darkened corners of the porch and near the waiting light of the kitchen door, couldn’t draw your attention like they would have before. Like they wanted.

It was impossible to even think of those late shades when you were too busy listening to the sheer life all around you. Pulsing just beneath the night and your own skin was your heartbeat, calm and dependable and steady —

And one more besides, providing a counterpoint to the rhythm you could swear was filling the air around you.

You glanced down at your wrist again, the scarlet mark as fresh and vibrant as an open wound, glowing to rival the moon in your own tiny universe.

You hadn’t put much stock in any kind of invisible string when you were younger, red or otherwise. But when you brushed the sigil with two of your fingers, you almost swore you felt an answering tug from some distant spot.

A tug that you swore was growing stronger, more insistent, with the passing minutes. Something in the vast night was pulling you towards it, or itself towards you, already on course for an inevitable collision.

It must have gone well, you thought. Maxi had told you that the full moons always had more magic in them, even for that as necrotic as the Morvants’.

But the seasonal moons, the ones the world quietly turned around without anyone noticing anymore? Those were best of all.

All three of them had crept out tonight with some mysterious errand or another, each of them notably distracted during the daylight hours. You knew Hex and Rora wouldn’t be coming back before daybreak — they had their own people to visit, after whatever terrible deeds they’d done in the dark.

Maxi - or the Reaper - one of them - had promised they would come back for you, though.

They had even asked you, all sweetness and kisses, to wait for them, right at this spot.

So of course, there you stood. The unseasonably warm autumn caused your nightclothes to cling to your skin and every passing breeze to ghost a finger down your spine, somehow leaving you chilled and sweating all at once.

But he was near. He was so close, you were certain of it.

You had no idea how you knew — you’d barely seen him leave, already asleep in his bed when he’d kissed you goodbye and slipped near-seamlessly into the pitch black. But somewhere in the last hour, you had awakened instantaneously, as though you’d never even dreamed. You’d been walking down the stairs before you fully knew why, with not even a phone or a flashlight to guide you.

You had, however, at least paused to light the lone backyard jack-o-lantern to keep you company. You knew - again, no idea how - that he wouldn’t need it to guide him back to you. But you thought he might at least enjoy the welcome when he did arrive. A cheerful diabolical little smile he could see even from far away.

Your body sang, heady without so much as a single glass of wine. You wondered if your heartbeat always filled the world around you like this, consistent and assertive, and you’d just never bothered to really listen.

And there, again, just underneath - what had to be his, slightly slower, slightly harder. The reverb to yours, solid and deep.

Something dark to it, though you couldn’t say what or why.

Inhaling felt like drinking the warm, perfumed air, and you closed your eyes to let it wash more completely through your lungs. Your nerves twisted agreeably in anticipation of something, everything in you straining against the shroud-like black to catch every rustle, every ghostly step —

The taste of copper hit your tongue, heavy and brash, even before something took your hand.

You didn’t even realize you’d been extending it to the empty dark, only seeing when you finally opened your eyes that you’d been standing on the edge of the top step, your palm facing out as if expecting something.

And in answer, Maxi’s chilled hand clutched yours in his long fingers, the whole of it awash in clotting burgundy.

He was staring up at you from the bottom of the porch steps, eyes fully black behind his blood-spattered glasses. The usual red of his iris was everywhere else tonight - all over his face, clinging in his damp hair, utterly soaking his clothes. You knew immediately there would be no saving any of the fabric, even with hours of soaking. The knees of his trousers in particular were blooms of something near-black — stomach or arterial blood, you were willing to bet.

If you had been anyone else - if he had been anyone else - this would have been a vision that took away every chance you’d ever get at sleeping soundly again, until you finally breathed your last.

But instead, you found yourself smiling.

You stepped back, gently tugging him to follow you.

He walked up the steps as if asleep himself, almost immediately leaning down to be eye-to-eye with you as soon as he stepped onto the porch. For his perfect silence, his gaze felt searching, his face close to yours but still careful to leave you just enough room to lean away. To choose to remain clean of this, whatever new stain he’d brought home with him.

When he had you backed against the wall, his hands came to rest slowly at either side of your head as he continued to stare unblinkingly, his gaze an inescapable void. You knew from the way his palms were light as gossamer against the wall that you could break his stance and turn away if you really wanted. You could go back upstairs, leave him to come to and clean himself up. Pretend this whole thing wasn’t the life you had decided you wanted after all. He would understand when he was… sober, to speak. He really would. You knew that with absolute certainty.

With the slightest stuttering tilt of his head, there was an unspoken question he let hang between the two of you, as pendulous as the moon.

You reached up to his face, his skin sticking slightly against your palms as the blood continued to cool, and fully licked the waiting red from his lips.

The space between you was sealed by this. He was ravenous at your mouth, claiming yours with tongue and nipping teeth and a hunger that felt like the edge of a bottomless dark pit. You were caged between the sticky warmth of him and the solid wall behind you, his hands clutching at your waist, your stomach, his hips pressed impatiently to yours.

You shivered as his mouth moved lower, down your throat that you willingly exposed to him, at your clavicles, leaving bites sharp enough to bruise like they were jewelry. His knees dropped to the wood of the porch with a thud that would’ve made you wince if you hadn’t been so distracted, and you felt him mouthing, needy, at your chest and your stomach through your shirt.

You could only curl your fingers through his hair in response, your hands having to force their way through the tissue and heavy clots of blood that had tangled in it somehow. You would’ve worried about pulling if you knew he didn’t enjoy the pain, and when you broke through a lock plastered to his scalp, you felt him shiver lightly.

The hiss through your teeth was unbidden as his mouth dropped to the underwear you were wearing under your borrowed nightshirt, his tongue pressing a curious lick to the thin layer of fabric between your sex and his heat. When you pulled on his hair a little harder reflexively, he looked up at you, resting his chin on the softest part of your stomach under your navel.

He still said nothing, his eyes blacker than space itself, but the tiny exhale through his nose was all you needed to know what he was asking.

He stayed still as a statue as you bit your lip, pondering, scanning the backyard. There was no one here, you knew that. The nearest living neighbors were miles away. The dead ones — well. There’s nothing to say they wouldn’t watch.

But between the elemental contrast of his eyes and the moon above, you’d already made your decision.

When you looked back down at him and nodded, one hand left your thigh to yank your underwear down your legs with a force that nearly ripped it. You had barely enough time to see him lick his own lips in anticipation before there was a searing heat against your slit, and you gasped aloud to the now-silent yard.

There was the distinct smell of blood warming as he voraciously devoured you, sucking at your clit in a way that made your head fall back against the wall. He kissed your entrance like a man condemned receiving a reprieve a minute to his execution, like he thought he’d never get to taste you again. His hands clutched at your thighs, and every so often he would turn his attentions to one of them, kissing and nipping at the inside with a fervor that would’ve seared your face if the blood wasn’t already elsewhere.

Whenever you tried to move, your body shuddering and writhing at white hot electricity racing down your nerves, he would force your hips back against the wall with an iron certainty, pinning you there as he laved your clit and pushed his tongue into you the best he could.

As you gazed upward, unfocused, struck speechless and your breath elusive, you swore your vision was flickering.

Snippets of scarlet flashed in and out, your senses overwhelmed briefly with the impressions of somewhere else entirely: a ribbon of red that followed the sleek, precise strike of something silver.

Flesh opening itself to the impatient ripping of hands and steel, a rib cage being revealed like a boudoir.

A heart that still trembled in its home of muscle and bone even as an echoing scream died away, as the bespoke-suited man ( you recognized him, distantly - a state senator?) trapped and pinned between your (his - your?) thighs started to convulse from shock.

When the hands that now clutched your hips tore the heart from its proper place, holding it aloft as it ceased to clumsily twitch and spurt, the sound you made was something unholy.

You remembered faintly why you usually avoided wearing white, even to bed — the borrowed undershirt of his was now blooming with rust-colored stains, handprints overlapping over where the cloth covered your hips and stomach, swipes of red where his head had rested as he dipped the hard bridge of his nose just so to make you gasp, or grazed his cheek against the fabric as he circled your clit intensely enough to make your leg begin to shake.

You were barely aware of the world around you, but just enough to feel an insistent grinding against your shin, your surroundings coming into focus just enough for you to put together that he was already aching for attention from this alone. When you moved your leg just a fraction of an inch closer to his hips, he groaned gratefully while he still had the tip of his tongue in you, which in turn had you seizing his hair again just for the sake of having something to anchor you to earth.

You were trying your best not to double over him or fall, but your thighs were traitorous, too-warm and shaking slightly as you felt your juices already dripping down them - from your own cunt or Maxi’s panting mouth, you weren’t entirely sure, but it was all the same. Distantly, you were still aware of him rutting lightly against your ankle, and just the faintest sensation of something slick through the fabric of his pants.

You heard a sound that it took you a moment to realize was a word, and then a repetition to realize what was being said —

“Please,” a voice with an echo like something frigid rasped between lingering strokes of his tongue. Against your leg, you could feel the slightest shaking of his own thighs, the muscles taught with need.

Your hand clenched in the hair at the back of his neck as you finally let out a groan from the shadowed parts of you, shoving your clit roughly against his waiting tongue as you rode out the storm that felt like it had been building in you all night. He moaned low in his throat, holding admirably still so you could grind against his mouth with abandon until every last drop of your orgasm had pooled like liquid fire onto his tongue.

When your knees finally gave out, sending you sliding down the wall, he wordlessly moved his body further between your legs so he could catch you against him.

The two of you sat like that for a while, you straddling his lap, your chests heaving against one another as the smell of blood and sex permeated the air with every gasp and pant.

Your hands found their way to his chest, feeling almost blindly down the fabric of his vest, then his arms and his mussed rolled sleeves, as if to make sure he would stay solid under your touch. He pressed his forehead against yours in response, and you felt a mixture of blood and sweat transferring to your own skin with a heat that was near-searing.

His eyes were still pitch black as he gazed at you, mouth still slightly slack as he tried to catch his breath.

You couldn’t help but smile once more, your hands catching at his shoulders to pull him closer. Planting kisses to either side of his mouth, you hummed, soft in your throat. “What’d you do with the heart, lover boy?” He had to have known you’d seen. There was no way he hadn’t felt the memories, visions, whatever they were, passing from him to you as if he’d licked them into your skin.

The demon behind your beloved’s face leaned back slightly to give you a slow grin that exposed almost every tooth, tell-tale pieces of thin red tissue caught between a few towards the back.

“Oh yeah?” You were still checking him over, palpating flesh and bone gently in your palms to search for any sign of something wrong, something that might have been missed in the adrenaline of the chase and the subsequent catch. “You could’ve brought it home. I would’ve at least seared it with some seasoning for you.”

He made a sound from somewhere deep in his chest, pushing his face into the side of your neck to lave his tongue lovingly over the marks he’d left in his frenzy.

You giggled at this blatant affection — until a feeling under your palm made you suddenly still. A spot on his side was too warm, the blood too fresh even after his journey back. When you pressed cautiously, another warm wave covered your skin.

“Baby,” you said, leaning back to inspect the spot more thoroughly. “This is yours.”

Maxi followed your gaze even as his hands remained clawed at your hips, his still-pitch eyes looking more distractedly curious than concerned.

Your fingers discovered a rip in the fabric before you could tell it apart from any other bloodstain, parting the damp cloth to discover a wound that made you hiss through your teeth again.

“Maxi,” you whispered, even though being overheard had hardly been a concern mere minutes ago. “What happened?”

Your lover’s ribs had been grazed by something — experience you couldn’t imagine having years ago now told you, based on the angle and the specific marks of damage, that it was something close-range but not too sharp. An attempted defensive wound from the quarry, you guessed, remembering the brief scarlet flashes of Maxi pinning the man down for the prize between his ribs.

His own flesh was torn: too deep for some hydrogen peroxide and a bandaid, but hopefully able to fix itself relatively quickly with his own magic and a couple of sutures to hold it closed through the night.

“Come on,” you coaxed, trying to force yourself to your feet despite your body’s exhausted protests. “Let’s go get that clean.”

Maxi - or the Reaper, or the combination of them that had made enough peace to share his flesh for now - made a sound that was somewhere between a protesting groan and a sullen whine, caging you more insistently in a hug and nestling his ear over your own heart. You knew this now for the tell it was.

“I’m not saying we won’t still cuddle,” you said, unable to help a smile at his peculiar priorities. He was always clingy, but especially so when he wasn’t… entirely his human self. “But you can’t have an open wound in our bed, babe. You’ll drive yourself crazy with the bleach in the morning trying to get it clean before we open. Not to mention, you just changed the sheets yesterday, remember?”

Your demon was quiet, and though it was harder to tell when his eyes were monochrome, you got the distinct impression he was glancing off to the side as he always did when trying to recall something.

“Please?” You angled your head to kiss the end of his nose, causing him to blink in an owlish way that was almost entirely human. “You said I needed the practice, after all.”

He sat there, seeming to consider this, and for the briefest moment, a tongue that was slightly pointier than it usually presented probed absently at his teeth, as if searching for remnants of the evening’s ritual.

Before you could entreat him again, though, his eyes locked back on yours - and for an instant, you wondered just how that snide little grandstander, one who’d whipped his constituents into a frenzy about the ungodly corruption lurking in schools and public libraries, had felt when he realized just what kind of “demonic influence” he’d failed to take into account.

A secret part of you, one you would’ve refused to acknowledge not too long ago, hoped he’d felt every second of it.

But before you could linger too long on this thought, Maxi gave a small sigh through his nose - assent, you guessed, combined with a sleepily satisfied urge to return to closeness quickly.

“That’s my good boy.” Your smile grew to a grin. Demon scion of an ancient line of necromancers or not, he was still quite agreeable when it counted.

The grin stretched his features again, eager and weirdly sweet despite the deep red stains on his teeth.

As you tried to stand again, he lifted you to your feet as though you weighed next to nothing, taking a touch too long to gaze at your exposed thighs at his eye level before he drew himself up to his full height.

“Come on, you.” You rolled your eyes, taking his cold fingers in your own and leading him back inside.

He followed, a deeper, darker version of his familiar laugh echoing as the door closed behind you both.

The jack o lantern snuffed itself, though neither of you had bothered to check.

—

The bright lights of the embalming room activated as you walked through the drop-off door together. The tools needed were already carefully laid out on the embalming table, pre-sterilized and arranged in order of procedure as always. You hardly ever needed them - thankfully - but it was still a ritual he performed before every solo trip out of habit.

Too many years of having to fix himself alone made him overly prepared, you’d realized. There was still some part of him - you didn’t know how much - that always quietly expected the worst.

“Up,” you said as you washed your hands at the sink, too light to be a real order. You were already glancing nervously at the curved needle — it was new, fresh out of the wrapping, but the severity of the tools for the dead always made you a little gun shy when applying them to your still-mostly-alive soulmate.

Maxi hopped up on the table, his feet kicking just slightly as he watched you with keen interest. He could do this in his sleep — hell, he could probably still do it now, not entirely in his own mind. But you doing it seemed to delight him in some strange way.

“Shirt off.” You’d crossed to the table, now focused solely on trying to thread the thing, your hands shaking just a little as you were watched. You knew he would only ever offer gentle correction or guidance, but still. There were studies about how people were worse at things if they knew someone was looking at them, right?

There was motion in your peripheral vision as he wriggled free of the sticky dress shirt and the thin undershirt, the two of them tangled together as they were soaked all the way through. He tossed them lightly towards the crematory, as if also having come to the conclusion they were unsalvageable. His skin still had a rust-ish tinge even bare, small crystalline red clots occasionally dotting his dark chest hair.

“I’ll get your glasses next,” you added, glancing up at him as you set the needle down to pick up a sterilizing solution for the wound itself. “It’s a wonder you could see at all on the way home, handsome.”

Something laughed, too deep to be human. As used to the sound as you were now, it still set off goosebumps as some deep primal part of your brain tried to warn your body.

Run for your life, it whispered, generations of your ancestors echoing in your ears. Death is here, and it won’t leave until it has you.

He already did, though, you thought. Body and soul.

“I say something funny, love?” You looked back to him, the eerie grin, the empty eyes. You could tell the difference by now between a threat display and genuine amusement - this really did seem to be the latter. “This might sting,” you warned, reaching towards him with the cotton pad and stopping short so he could give you permission.

He nodded, and when you dabbed at the wound, you heard the sluice of air between his teeth. It wasn’t a pain reflex, though — at least, not all of it. It sounded too close to when he had his hair pulled.

“Didn’t need to see,” he hissed softly, his voice still double-layered. He closed his eyes, shuddering lightly as if enjoying you tending to the raw wound.

“No?” You trapped the tip of your tongue between your teeth as you cleaned, making sure you could tell where his prey’s blood stopped and his own continued to run and start to clot. “So why’d you need your glasses, then?”

Maxi made a soft, exasperated huff and nudged you gently with his elbow. The Reaper, as familiar as the two of you had gotten with each other — as intertwined as it was with the man you loved, as much as you didn’t quite understand where it ended and he began — was at least becoming more willing to joke around with you about its dark agenda.

“S’different,” he rasped again, his voice submerged in the otherworldly presence that still possessed him.

“Yeah?” You were stalling a little bit, the needle clutched in your dominant hand as you stared down the wound. For your relative lack of squeamishness with everything else about this arrangement… you still hated this part. The actual piercing of flesh.

He was already hurt, and you knew at his rate, it would be a mere flowering bruise by morning. But you were still somehow scared of hurting him more, despite everything. Despite the violence that had engendered it, the life that had already been taken.

A bloody hand covered your wrist, and you turned your attention back to the thing sitting in your partner’s body.

The fathomless eyes were somehow gentle, watching you, and you realized they were just beginning to lighten: the voids were sliding slowly from black to deepest maroon, the iris starting to somewhat distinguish itself from the sclera. The Reaper was giving the reins back, at least a little.

“I saw you,” their voices spoke again, and the ominous timbre had given way ever so slightly, like someone was fiddling with knobs on a speaker for balance. “Through the darkest parts of the night, I saw you there, bright as fire.”

You tilted your head, trying to figure out the metaphor, but he only nodded at the wrist he was covering.

“You think you don’t call to me like I call to you? I can always find you,” he said, and there was more of Maxi there. “Anywhere. In the pitchest black of this world or the next, you are mine.”

That would be utterly terrifying, if those teeth and eyes and that voice were coming from anywhere else.

But it was Maxi that tapped the back of your hand softy with his index finger - twice. Two squeezes, two taps, two knocks: your universal signal for ‘are you okay?’.

You exhaled slowly through your nose, trying to force your heart rate to slow so you could think clearly. “I’m fine,” you said, trying to sound more certain than you felt. “I do want to do it,” you added, looking at him so he could see you were genuine. “…Unless you rather would.”

You looked back to the wound again, frowning. You didn’t blame him; he’d been doing this so long, he could probably stitch up a whole body with his eyes closed when he needed to.

…Okay, maybe not quite, but you bet he could get pretty close.

“Try,” the thing said, and there was a stronger undercurrent of your partner in there than there had been yet. The smile was less tooth-y, but still a touch manic. “You can’t hurt me, pretty baby.”

“I wish I was that sure,” you mumbled. Even just looking at the wound again made your mouth automatically tug downwards at the corners.

But you took another deep breath, and the thing in your boyfriend’s lean frame sat up straighter, giving you better access to the angry red gash that split his pale skin.

You reached forward with the needle… before your hand stopped itself mid-air, second guessing yourself.

Glancing (what you thought was) surreptitiously to him, you startled ever so slightly when you realized he was still watching you, unblinking.

“All you have to do is look first,” he said. “Just look. See the shape of it.”

Nodding, you set the needle down on the steel surface, grateful for any excuse to get it out of your faintly trembling hand.

You stared at the wound instead, just as he said. You winced automatically at the angry red edges - you supposed you should be grateful whatever swiped him hadn’t been more serrated. But even if it wasn’t as deep as it could have been —

You didn’t realize what you were doing until your fingers rested, feather light and unsteady, at the very border of the torn flesh.

The Reaper inhaled sharply through his teeth, reminding you exactly what you were touching, what it was, and you went to withdraw your hand like it had been scalded…

Until you heard the tiniest little sound at the end of that hiss that made you pause.

A small, punctuating groan from deep in his chest, rich and dark — But one you recognized from another context entirely.

…No, you had to be getting some wires crossed somewhere. You leaned back in the chair, searching his face while your hand still hovered anxiously in place.

Once again, his gaze was riveted on you — but this time, rather than finding the void of space waiting in the sockets of his skull, you recognized the color of a deep wine.

No pupils still, so Maxi wasn’t alone. But he was definitely in there. No words passed between the pair of you, but the twitching, jerky tilt of his head was a question.

When you didn’t immediately voice the logical response - ‘no,’ obviously, there’s no way, not to mention the sanitary concerns… the response any other person would have given by now - the frozen, toothy smile somehow spread even wider.

Your brow furrowed. This was… not something the two of you had discussed before, as extensive as your discussions of desire often were.

And yet. Your eyes drifted to the wound again, scarlet and dark and… inviting. A split pomegranate, red with promise.

…Well. This was… new.

The Reaper shifted ever so slightly where he sat, and you clocked the way his thighs were pressed together, hopeful. The way the dress trousers seemed tighter than they had when you’d walked down here.

You sat all the way back in the chair, taking him in, nervously wetting your lips with your tongue. Even with the feeling of a double pulse racing now under your skin, you had to be totally sure.

“…Use your words,” you prompted, your voice hushed even in the sterile silence of the embalming room.

His head tilted the other way. “Kiss it better?” the layered voice asked, higher than usual, a note of pleading. He knew what he was asking, then.

Your eyes moved between those of the thing sitting in front of you, to the wound in its side, and back again.

You recognized a point of no return when you saw one.

A distant facet of you reasoned from the depths of your mind, as if in a dream: Did Thomas the Apostle not inquire of the wounds of his returned Lord, after all? Did he not part the flesh with his own to find his own proof of divinity, to alleviate his fear?

Was this really any different? Another form of worship, without the doubt?

Did that not make your love all the stronger, that you already knew you had nothing to be afraid of?

You got to your feet, resting your hands on the embalming table on either side of Maxi’s knees.

“Come here,” you whispered, but it was somehow less tentative than your earlier hush.

Maxi moved to the edge of the table, taller than you again when he was this close, and you leaned up to kiss the questioning smile.

You could taste yourself on his tongue, still, and more besides. Just the faintest trace of blood, not yours, not his.

Blood from too deep down to taste like a surface wound.

Maxi’s hand curled possessively around the back of your skull, and you wondered what it would feel like for your teeth to pop the thin membrane around the human heart.

Your hands were steady now in their purpose, moving between the two of you to free his cock. It was already hard again and leaking, and when your thumb slid the pre-cum along his slit, his hips bucked into your hand.

“Please, pretty?” he rasped against your lips, the need returned in full force.

As your hand moved lazily along his shaft, causing him to shiver and sigh, you looked again at the wound, leaning down as best you could without giving up your grasp on your prize.

The scarlet mouth waited in his flesh, hopeful, expectant.

With a bit of careful angling, you leaned closer. Your breath shook just slightly before you probed it with the very tip of your tongue.

Maxi was abruptly racked with a full-body shudder, his hissed curse somehow ethereal and unholy.

In your hand, you felt him spasm and flex, warm and heavy against your palm.

You swallowed the first mouthful of your lover’s blood like communion wine, searching inside yourself again first. Making sure.

Anything given in less than total faith in your love - in him, in you, the life you were building amidst the bones of those before - would be sacrilege.

The way he moaned when your tongue pushed further in relieved you of all doubt, however.

You weren’t entirely sure what to make of the feeling of blood flooding over your teeth and tongue as you kissed the gash in his side, lapping at the edges with the same greed he’d shown you. But you could feel the way his cock was achingly hard in your hand, the way his thighs began to shake as you could feel your mouth being coated with a red in a mirror of his when he’d arrived here. When he’d found you.

You used your free hand to hold his hip firmly in place when he tried to thrust against the hand gripping him, his fingers curling in your hair possessively.

“More,” he growled from somewhere down deep, and it was hard to tell which of them you were hearing speak. “Please, pretty, more, that’s perfect, that’s exactly…” He lost his words to something between a keen and a groan as you deepened the kiss, the warmth slicking your cheeks, your lips, dripping hotly down your chin.

You picked up your pace, your strokes faster and harder now as his mouth fell open and he outright panted, unable to hide just how much he was enjoying this. You sucked delicately at one edge of the wound, laving the place where the skin parted, and his head fell back with a moan.

“There, just there, that’s—” Maxi did his best to restrain a whine, his hips nearly arching off the table to meet your hand as your face was smeared in his blood.

You ran your tongue along the length of the injury, a bit dazed yourself in just how warm it was. How soft and willing the flesh was to part, even when it shouldn’t.

You heard his breathing hitch and felt him shift under your attention, turning slightly.

When your eyes flicked upwards to see what had changed, they locked with his, and his hips spasmed hard as his now-visible pupils ballooned black again to swallow the lingering red.

With a strangled guttural shout, he came over your hand messily, warm, coating your palm and fingers almost as much as you’d coated your face at his side.

You stroked him through his orgasm as he shook and whined desperately, wanting everything he had to give just as you’d given him.

You only stopped when he seized the front of your ruined night shirt and pulled you upright, seeming just as eager to taste his own blood in your mouth as you’d been to taste your orgasm.

There was an instant where the change from your tongue in him to his tongue in your mouth felt seamless, where you weren’t sure whom was gently probing at the delicate insides of the other, and the shiver down your spine was electric even as your stomach flipped dizzily.

“Thank you, sugar,” he whispered, peppering your face with kisses after the initial claiming. His hands were everywhere again, on your hips, in your hair, his arms encircling your back to keep you close. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, you damned beautiful creature.”

You laughed, half-breathless, one hand tangling in his hair to kiss him fiercely again. “What,” you whispered, your lips brushing his as the two of you half-swayed together. “The fuck?”

Maxi giggled, high and manic, and he tucked his face against the side of your neck - his favorite place. “I don’t know,” he whispered back, and there was a shake to his nervous giggle. “I don’t know. But god, did I like it.”

“I’ve - I’ve never done that before,” you turned, your lips against his cheek now as he pressed needy, open-mouthed kisses to your throat. “I’ve never thought to… I don’t know.”

“Well, I should hope not,” Maxi’s arms tightened their embrace slightly on your back, and you caught the scarlet gleam of his eyes through his hair and his glasses, his tell for ‘mine.’ You knew the Reaper was still there — if it had been just him, he would’ve been less concerned with that than other logistics.

“It’s just you, Maxi,” you soothed, kissing the corner of his mouth. You stood between his thighs as he sat on the embalming table’s edge, and he tilted his head to catch your mouth again, the two of you still out of breath even as you couldn’t let each other go.

When you went to clean the mess off your hand, still waiting for you, he leaned over, his tongue brushing against and even caressing yours as you licked your palm clear together.

Maxi continued to suck hard on your index finger after, his eyes never leaving yours, until you pulled ever so slightly on the hair at the back of his neck. He shivered agreeably, and you kissed the other corner of his mouth.

“I don’t know what possessed me,” you said quietly, resting your forehead against his. “I’ve never done… anything like that. You’re just the only person I’ve wanted to let under my skin like this.” You nodded dreamily at your wrist with your mark, the obvious thing, but your other hand rested just at the edge of the open gash you’d just tongue-fucked.

Maxi chuckled, the sound still layered underneath by something demonic, and he tilted his head without separating from you. “You’re the only one I’d trust enough to undo me, darlin’.” He kissed the end of your nose, weirdly gentle even as both of your faces were still thoroughly coated in drying blood. “It’s not a wound when I’m with you. It’s just… opportunity.”

You actually laughed - a real, genuine sound, both your arms wrapping around his neck as he kissed your cheek with all the sweetness in the world.

The two of you lingered like that for a bit in the silence of the surrounding dead, your hearts beating confidently in sync despite the separation flesh between them.

If this was your forever, you thought to yourself, captivated by the hush of your shared breath, then you were fine with that. More than fine.

You weren’t sure who moved, who decided it was time, but at some point, the two of you wordlessly took your original places. In a comfortable, sleepy silence, you thoroughly cleaned the wound like you would have cleaned him off in your bedroom. Like he’d cleaned you countless times, lovingly and with ardent attention.

You were halfway through closing it, your stitches surprisingly even and measured, when he spoke again.

“There was a part of me,” Maxi said quietly, and it was all him. The Reaper had fully abated now. “That was convinced I could only ruin you.”

You glanced up at him, automatically skeptical as you continued your work. “Yeah?”

Maxi laughed, and it was low, with only a sliver of nervousness still. “I was convinced you were too good for all this. That you should have somethin’ else. Somethin’ better than… well.” He gestured around at the embalming room, at you working on his side. “A nice house in some suburb. Someone who loved you who was… safe. Who would never come home to you with so much dark at their heels. Who would never dream of — of contaminatin’ you with it.”

He looked away from you, and when he spoke again after a time, his voice was small. “I guess that part was right about me, huh.”

You snorted audibly, pausing what you were doing to meet his gaze. “Maxi. Look at me, baby.” When he complied, you spread your arms wide. “Do I look I’m here against my will?” You gestured to handiwork as you picked up the needle again. “Do I look like I’d be content to just sit and twiddle my thumbs in someone’s dollhouse, somewhere?”

He gazed at you, and you saw his eyes were just his again, a rich brown bordering on burgundy and looking vaguely dreamy as he studied your face.

Slowly, tentatively, he shook his head.

A part of you melted inwardly at how, even after all this time, a small smile crept over his face the longer he drank you in. Like he was always pleasantly surprised to recall just who had his heart, and vice versa.

“Really look, now,” you urged softly, leaning close to him again so you filled his vision. You gestured with a hand to the blood that thoroughly covered the lower half of your face. “Do I look like I think I’m ruined?”

Maxi’s eyes moved from yours down your face, lingering briefly on your lips before they met your gaze once more.

You leaned your forehead against his again, closing the gap between you. “All I see in this is a mirror of the person I love more than anything,” you whispered. With the hand that wasn’t hold the needle, you smeared some of the blood from your face on your fingers, then added it to the blood coating his skin. “That’s all.” You repeated the gesture in reverse, adding some of the blood from his skin to yours - even though you were sure it had transferred in your original acts, as well. The important thing was that he needed to see you choose it.

“I love you,” you reminded him softly. “And everything that comes with you.”

You returned your attention to the wound, tying off your stitches before opening a fresh bandage. “So what if that looks different on us?”

You smoothed the bandage and some clean gauze over the incision, sealing it off behind its protective barrier. You knew by morning, it would have no need of any of those things, already miraculously closed.

Your eyes returned to his, your hand lingering over your work nonetheless. “I already told you, there’s no one else I’d let under my skin,” you said, your lips barely an inch apart. “And you’re the only person I’d want to be with when I do something that scares me. When I might even scare myself.”

You didn’t think your eyes glowed like his, but for just an instant, you swore this is what it would feel like. This certainty. This resolve.

You let him see it on your face. “I chose you,” you said quietly. “And I chose this too. Whatever shape it takes. Or I take.” You wrapped your arms around his neck. “You’re the only person I’d trust with whatever I become, love.”

Maxi’s arms encircled your waist, and the way his eyes sparked with light again, you could swear the two of you would burn if you stayed this close.

“The dark is so much better with you in it,” he whispered. “If you’re happy, then I’d spend an eternity here with you.”

“Good.” You smiled, reveling in his closeness. “Because I’m happy.”

The moon outside was the only thing that came close to how bright you felt against that endless night when he kissed you again.

— If the mortuary opened an hour later the next morning, no one complained.

It couldn’t be helped — it had been a hell of a time getting all that blood out of your bed sheets.

Even then, with all the remaining tinges of rust, you’d both eventually conceded to relegate them to being for “fun” rather than for regular sleep.

They wouldn’t be the last set you ruined, by far.

(so uh. a very dear friend of mine mentioned they'd sent this blog to someone they liked irl. and I would just like to say, on the offchance they're still reading this at all -

sup ig. [waves]

anyway! if you've read this far, as always, you're a saint and also wow what are you doing a the devil's sacrament buddy :'D

this might be the last long-ish piece I post for a while bc I have to make a mad dash on my dissertation before the end of the semester, but I will still be here, circling, reading every word directed my way, thinking deeply on them, appreciating them, taking forever to respond as always

Ilu all <3 happy belated halloween, cheers to spooky season year-round for the believers)

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