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Your eyes cracked open in the early minutes of dawn, when the sun had just begun to fill the sky with a pastel lilac hue. There was the faintest sound out of the window told you that the vendors of the Crystarium had just begun to set up for the day. Your eyes slid to the sleeping figure you had co-opted as a pillow. His eyes were still very much shut, and the gentle rise and fall of his chest told you he was still very much still slumbering.
Emet-Selch was...tall. But you’d seen him taller. Which, all things considered was a great understatement. You’d seen him monstrously tall, with aether-formed arms with feather-scales, tendrils of nothing but pure darkness that could drag you into the space between stars. Hades. You spoke that name rarely, only in those deepest moments of emotion.
“I saw you like that once before, you know. Just the once, for you were always such a gentle creature.” Emet-Selch’s voice murmured tiredly. “Must you always think so loudly, hero?” His arm tucked tighter around you, clutching you to his side. You made a sound of discontent, but your mind raced, drawing a dry chuckle from Emet-Selch.
“Does that thought get the blood pumping? A little heady rush of all the things you were and could still be , my dear?” His voice became clearer as he opened his eyes, giving up on an extended slumber.
Your mind jumbled and skipped around from this thought to that, your mouth opening slightly, trying to put it into words, but the smile pulling more and more on Emet-Selch’s lips showed that you simply didn’t need to. You were fairly sure the Ascian could not read minds but simply had many millennia of reading a face journey. Eventually you puffed a breath from your nose, focusing on the one question you knew you wanted answered most out of all the ones baying at your mind.
“Could you show me?”
He sputtered slightly under you. “Are you fully mad, hero?” He enquired forcefully, sitting up and letting you slide down to his lap. “You’re still not whole; do you have any idea the damage that could do?” He was...angry? No, he was genuinely concerned. You, however, had a complete disregard for danger, something he knew as well as his shoulders slumped in a long sigh. The flush hue running across his cheeks and ears told you everything you needed. Your fingers squeezed at his side gently, drawing the softest noise from him.
“Please?”
His fingers danced over your body, trailing patterns into your skin, as his voice, low and thrumming with those undertones you only heard at the rarest of times, settled into your skull.
“Do you ever ponder upon why you feel so small? You know you should tower above everybody around you. Your strength beyond superhuman. Your presence commands people surrender yalms of space yet you do not know why.”
Emet-Selch pulled you onto his lap, both hands now tracing around your shoulders, mirrored patterns that begin to tingle on your skin oddly. More than just the feel of nerves set alight again and again. Emet’s lips softly brushed against your forehead, a deep, rumbling rattle somewhere in his throat that would have been a purr had it not sounded so predatory.
“I saw you like that but once, and it was beyond every dream I had or could still have to this day. For thousands of thousands of years that sight has...kept me awake at night.” His nails scraped into your skin, leaving red marks and drawing a soft gasp from you, stolen by his lips pressing to yours. You realised what that tingling, now burning feeling was; a void of aether that was set alight by the liquid icy darkness pouring through those marks, piercing through your body. It was so akin to when you lost yourself to the Light but with the pain it brought the most exquisite pleasure.
“Ghh..E..Emet….” you choked out, shivering. His lips seared dark kisses into your cheeks, your jaw, your neck.
“You couldn’t do this all alone now, my dear. A little rebalancing, a little more aether, and you’ll find that monster. Dig deep, feel that beast you feel when you fight your pretty little primals.” Emet-Selch pressed a finger against your sternum and that burning cold filled your chest cavity, your hands wildly grabbing onto his upper arms, nails digging in deep. Violet and black streaked tendrils snaked around your waist and arms, holding you firmly still. By gods how it hurt, and yet the sound that came from your mouth was not entirely agony; a panting moan as your body ached. Too small, too small, too small, your mind whispered to you, eyes lifting to meet Emet-Selch’s golden gaze.
“Breathe, hero. Let yourself sink into that feeling, revel in your might. Show me once more the exquisite beast you are underneath that mask.”
Darkness crept into the room, into the corners of your vision, you tasted its floral bitterness on your tongue, a fruit you could not name yet knew so well. You forced a deep breath in and the back of your skull fizzed, making you feel far away as the darkness enveloped the room, enveloped you, and you sank with Emet-Selch into it, feeling something deep inside you, all but forgotten, wake up. Something deeply monstrous, an overwhelming power that burst forth from your skin with new bones, old bones creaking and snapping to accomodate whatever inside was becoming outside.
“Emet-Selch…” your voice hoarsely called. Dizzy, spinning, your eyes clamped shut as your body twisted and changed, the shapes Emet-Selch had been tracing upon your skin lifting, cloaking your body in a shroud; a pelt, silken pitch black fur that could swallow the light were there any place for it here. You heaved another breath into your chest before shrieking it out as your head erupted into white hot agony, antlers forming from your scalp, tall and majestic, twisted and gnarled as if tree branches, bright violet light seeping from fissures in their surface.
“That’s it, let me see you again, let me revel in it.” His voice crooned to you, black-violet tendrils snaking around your body to pull you over, hunched, fingers scraping the ground. The darkness that your body was manifested of smothered the light in your body, drowning out the demands of Her blessing, pushing your being away from yourself.
Your eyes snapped open to find his, his gaze now below you instead of above. A sound came from your throat that was fully inhuman, a deep rattle you usually associated with the Ascian looking upon you with such delight. You reached forward with an arm coated in bark-like skin, fingers ending in sharp claws, the same purple leaking from cracks on the surface. Unlike Emet-Selch, your body was less wraith-like in physicality. While he embodied the appearance of an ancient sorcerer, your body was far more bestial.
His hand cradled your chin, your face shrouded by the pelt cloak, but piercing violet eyes shining out to watch him. A low growl came from your throat, baring monstrously sharp teeth at the Ascian.
“Look at you; as beautiful as I remember. Come back from that place, you are here now, with me. Tell me my name, won’t you?” Emet-Selch’s voice was slow and soothing, drawing your head down to kiss your chin.
“Emet…” your voice felt alien to you; terrifying and beautiful.
“There are no titles here, my love. Speak the name you truly desire to.”
Your senses slowly returned to you, dipping your head to place a soft kiss on Emet-Selch’s forehead.
“Hades.” The name still felt so strange to say, whispered in secreted moments, but as it spilled from your lips, you found yourself repeating it, and the smile on Emet-Selch’s face made your soul swell in delight, the bloom of flowers stretching further, further still until the inky darkness he’d pulled you into was alight with violet and lilac blossoms.
His lips found yours and his hands roamed along your jawline, fingertips tracing along your throat that drew a trill from your chest, his touch finding every last point of your body that could have delighted you so. It made sense that he would know; your body was almost entirely supported by his own aether, but you didn’t care.
“Mine. My stunning monster,” Emet-Selch rumbled, his fingers pressing against your collarbone. A simple touch to the surface set your senses alight as his aether sank through your body, drawing a low moan from your throat. “Sing for me, won’t you? Sing for Hades.”
He played every nerve like an instrument, drawing exactly the soft groans and gasps he wanted, exactly when he wanted them. The touch of aether and physical making a chord that slowly brought you to your knees, trembling under his touch, dwarfing him by a multitude of feet and yet so completely under his control. A tendril of aether slid agonisingly slowly across the inside of your thigh before cupping the heated skin between your legs, drawing a tremoring whimper from you; a sound almost too delicate to come from a beast that could tower over the tallest of manfolk.
“What a pretty song, my dear. Do you know any others?” He teased, the tendril sinking deep within your entrance, aetherical and physical sensation so riotously intense your vision goes dark, a soft gasp filling your ears that you know is not yours, and the taste of bitterness and flowers fills your mouth.
“We’ll have to watch those teeth now, won’t we?” Emet-Selch said with a low chuckle. A thick tendril caught the trajectory of your teeth on his shoulder, the aether-formed appendage smooth and oddly slick. Your mind could not stick on that for long as the one buried deep inside you shifted, pulling out just a short way to sink back in again, ripples of either coursing through your body along the marks his fingers had traced before. Your jaw closed tighter on the appendage in your mouth, muffling the soft cries each thrust stole from your body. His body. Something yours, yet not.
Your eyes opened just enough to see his face, a smug, delighted smile on his face as he cradled your jaw, barely-there restraint as you felt the aether around him swell and dissipate, struggling to hold himself together. Your jaw opened, letting the tendril drop out, and leaned in, letting him drink in the sounds of shivering breaths as your lips grazed his ear.
“Hades…” you whispered, your teeth brushing across his shoulder as the presence of his aether became overwhelming, flooding your senses and pushing you onto your back. The looming presence of his monstrous body, faintly lit by the blooms carpeting the ground towered over you, and his feather-scaled arms pinned yours, his body pressing down onto yours, more delicate clawed hands running down your neck and chest, holding you tight as he pressed into you himself , monstrous meeting monstrous, a cacophonous growl coming from Hades as shrouded lips found yours in a bruising kiss, sharp claws sinking into your sides as his hips ground against yours.
Your spine arched up into him, a tremor rippling through your body as the punctures from claws drew dim violet from beneath your skin, pooling on the ground beneath you. Your body squeezed around the firmness pressed deep into you, drawing a low groan from Hades, his claws raking down, spilling more violet onto the ground until he relented, breaking the touch of his lips to yours.
“Mine,” his voice was otherworldly, but the sound alone drew a gasp, squirming beneath him as the grip of feather-scaled and taloned fingers tightened around your arms, using them to pull you harder against him as he thrust, his voice calling a name you couldn’t hear but you knew was yours, once. Aether pooled deep inside you as the sorcerer made fully known his intent to claim you in every way he could.
He held you tight, intimate and near-feral at the same time, with rhythm rapidly disappearing, his aether threatening to snuff out every last glimmer of your own, gasps filling your lungs as you felt yourself beginning to drown under it, arching your back and bucking your hips against him as the pressure you felt inside began to break you down.
You cried out his name, his name, keening as your body stiffened, muscles tight in your climax, breaking free of his hold to sink claws into his back, raking down ridged and scaled skin; deep, inky blackness spilling from the wounds.
Hades was there with you, his teeth biting into your shoulder as he came, filling your body with everything he could to ensure you could never be another’s, you were his, and his alone. Monstrous together like no others could ever be.
A low rumble filled your ears as his climax abated, relinquishing the hold his teeth had on your shoulder to look at you with...you couldn’t tell. Not behind that mask. Not when everything was so very, very dark.
“Rest.” It was a simple command, one you could only too happily oblige for him, for Hades. For Emet-Selch. You let yourself fall into that darkness, exhausted but fulfilled, electric sparks of delight serenading you into a deep slumber.
Your eyes cracked open in the early minutes of dawn, when the sun had just begun to fill the sky with a pastel lilac hue. There was the faintest sound out of the window told you that the vendors of the Crystarium had just begun to set up for the day. Your eyes slid to the sleeping figure you had co-opted as a pillow. His eyes were still very much shut, and the gentle rise and fall of his chest told you he was still very much still slumbering.
Something felt off. A missing scene, a dream, something had happened between the last time you woke, and now, where everything was the same, but not.
You spoke the first name that came to your mind.
“Hades?”
The corners of his mouth tugged into a wide smile, and he simply pulled you closer in against him.