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morvantmortuary · 6 months

Text

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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