Chapter Text
It had almost knocked Alastor clean off of his hooves.
When his wife had shown up to the hotel smelling of nothing but flowers and polish. Every ounce of his own scent had long since faded from her fur, and her own natural aroma had reclaimed its place, orbiting her figure in enticing swirls of sweetness and flora.
And it was instantaneous. The twitch of his ears when she’d met the princess’s gleeful welcomings with an enthusiastic greeting of her own. The giddy puff of his tail under the tails of his overcoat when she’d bristled at his apparition behind her, appearing in wisps of shadows and darkness, rounding on him with a bitter grin and snarky tongue. The rush of heat to the edge of his cheekbones when she’d met his every biting remark with one of her own, coming toe-to-toe and nose-to-nose with the Overlord and showing absolutely none of the fear his proximity usually elicited from other sinners.
Charlie had guided her around the hotel, offering a tour that Alastor had shadowed only so that he could try to convince his spouse to evacuate with petulant remarks and outward hostility. She’d brushed him off, stubborn as he’d always admired, stagnant in her assertion that she truly did want to give redemption a try.
She was lying.
He knew it, she knew it.
Charlie remained blissfully unaware as she bestowed a key to one of the hotel’s many vacant suites to the doe demoness.
At first, he’d followed her diligently. Offering a never-ending commentary on her every move with the hotel. Teasing her craving for sugar. Needling at her choice of clothing, her status as a middle-tier Overlord, her choice to invite modernity into her everyday by procuring a smartphone from his lesser, flat-faced counterpart.
Alastor had used his pointed derision as an excuse to be near her. To orbit her like he did when they weren’t so estranged. Before he’d vanished seven years prior, before he’d gotten himself into a deal with an Overlord that could dangle his beloved’s safety over his head, before they’d both died and found themselves damned to a hellish eternity.
That way he had plausible deniability. He could claim he only followed her like a feather followed the whims of a breeze because he longed to entertain himself with her quick-to-lift temper.
That was until he’d realized after just a month of her residency, that the flowery scent of his estranged wife had invaded the hotel and settled in every hall and crevice the building had to offer. That it had invaded his own senses with every inhale, rushing his brain and tilting him a little more than he’d like to admit.
That more often than not, his shadowy mirror unattached itself from his figure and sought her out. That he stole every opportunity of what should have been an inconvenience to watch her through his silhouette’s slitted eyes. That his heart gave an unusual twinge at the mere sight of her.
That he found himself listening in on her own melodic humming in the late hours of the night as she prepared herself for bed through the speakers of the old-fashioned radios he kept manifesting on her bedside table. No matter how many times she smashed the wooden devices into little, splintering pieces and dropped the corpses at the threshold to his radio tower.
But by then, it was already too late.
He knew what was happening to him, could feel his mating season approaching, creeping over his limbs like an unwelcome, burning frost. Heat enveloped his every nerve, and it felt as though the hellfire he’d been damned to had finally caught up to him.
And it’s all the fault of the immovable object to his unstoppable force.
His estranged wife. His better half. The only other deer demon that seemed to both elicit and satiate the sudden spike of hormones and arousal of his annual rut.
The first time it had happened, he’d blanched, tongue-tied as his eyes widened just enough to let her think that she’d claimed victory over him in an afternoon battle of wits. She’d quirked her brows at him, lips tilting up into a satisfied smirk as she sat back in her chair that almost made him think that she knew. Knew that he was seated across from her, two ceramic mugs of deer puns and coffee steaming on the table between them, with pants tighter than he’d been confronted with in over seven years.
He didn’t have a response to whatever petty quip she’d cooked up in quick retaliation to his own scathing remarks. He didn’t really register anything she’d said, not really. He just stiffened and froze, claws digging into the paint of his coffee cup, before he let his carmine gaze flick down to his lap to bear reluctant witness to the clothed protrusion tenting the front of his slacks.
He’d blurted an excuse to leave, departing in a flurry of shadows without rising from his seat and leaving a smug, if confused, wife in his wake. And his stubborn refusal to succumb to the whims of temptation kept him locked within the walls of his suite well into the twilight hours, distracting himself and simply waiting for his erection to soften on its own.
He’d chalked it up to a mistake thrust upon him by the boyish excitement of being near her again. He’d hoped that it was a one-off problem. But as the hours and days dragged on like weeks, and every interaction with his estranged wife was epilogued by the uncomfortable tightening of his slacks. That the mere scent of her was enough to make his pupils broaden and the fluff of his tail to stand on end. That watching her from a distance through his shadow’s narrowed eyes only led to private frustrations and pointed refusals to act on primal urges.
But he was just a man, loath as he was to admit it.
As long as it had been since he’d been damned and bestowed with his demonic physiology, since his once non-existent sex drive had been altered to adhere to the woeful urges of an annual ritual of courting and continuous mating.
He was still nothing more than a man. And the only woman he’d ever had any interest in was tucked up in her bedroom. So close, and so untouchable.
Alastor sought other forms of release. Bickering with characters aside from his beloved, none of which held a candle to the delight she invigorated him with. Ripping them to shreds if they so much as looked at him wrong, tempting his boiling frustration at his own biology and prompting him to eviscerate theirs.
The blood of some ill-fated sinner pooled beneath Alastor’s claws, the smell of iron and life essence permeating within the confines of his radio tower.
It was still wet and warm, still dripping along his wrist bone and forearms as he swept his tongue over his fingers. The muscle caught copper on his taste buds, the flavor of iron doing nothing to satiate the burning hunger in his gut.
He knew it wouldn’t.
Not if he had been honest with himself when the first flutters of unfettered warmth had roused within the shadows of his loins. It wasn’t his usual hunger, not one that could be coddled and thwarted by sinking his teeth into the flesh of another. It was something different, something hotter and hazier, clouding his mind and burying itself stubbornly deep in the pits of his churning stomach.
It didn’t extinguish or dwindle. Didn’t fade under his own initial imposing and stubborn determination to not act on the animalistic instincts that had been unwittingly thrust upon him. Instead, the feeling lingered like an ancient ache, echoing painfully with every unsteady jump of his heart to remind his physiology to act upon the lusty, intrusive thoughts addling his brain.
Whiskey burned hot as it hit the back of Alastor’s throat, a low rumbling of static imbuing the stifled growl of frustration ruminating quietly below his collarbones.
He tipped his head back, the fluff of his ears pressing flat against the curve of his scalp, an uncomfortable shuddering echoing through his bones as he swayed just slightly on his hooves. Heat pulsed off of him in unwelcome, emanating waves, the weight of his shirt hanging heavy on his narrow frame. His free hand clawed at his bow tie, loosening the formal knot collaring his throat and undoing the upper buttons of his shirt.
He swallowed the swill of alcohol thickly, swiping at his lips with the back of his hand, blood smearing slightly over his lips as he settled the rim of the glass on his broadcast panel. Red-tipped claws curled around the edge of his desk, shoulders bunched by his jaw as his breaths came out in short and shallow huffs as he collapsed into the chair.
Alastor wasn’t a praying man, but he’d hoped that the blood of slaughtered sinners could satiate the gnawing thirst inside of him.
And it had, for a day or two.
But, he supposed, nothing lasts forever.
Because, without fail, and despite his every concerted effort to occupy his mind, his thoughts seemed to eternally drift back to the only soul he cared enough to bind his to eternally. And, suddenly, the gratification of maintaining his self-restraint fled from him like heat in an icy tundra, despair that he would never have the humility to admit to flooding his veins in its wake.
The guilt of abandoning her for seven, grinding years gnawed at him the same way his uncharacteristic lust did.
And, no matter how much each feeling ate away at his innards, the hunger didn’t go away either.
Not when he ripped tortured souls asunder and feasted on whatever morsels were left behind. Not when he simply opted to ignore the painful throb between his legs, confined to the darkness of his slacks. Not when he had finally given in, just once, and allowed himself to rut mindlessly into his mattress, face buried shamefully in his pillowcase, when he breathed her name as he finally came to a dissatisfying climax.
She lingered like the ghost of the life he’d thrown away, petulant and stubborn in her refusal to budge from the suite Charlie had proffered to her. But her sudden arrival had also imbued his body with her scent, her warmth, the sound of her voice.
All working in tandem to drive him ludicrous.
He couldn’t bear to even look at her anymore without risking the sudden swell of heat within the shadows of his loins. Especially not when he’d returned from the slaughter to catch her wandering the hotel in nothing more than sleep shorts and an oversized t-shirt, sneaking a bottle of Merlot from under Husk’s apathetic nose before skittering off to her bedroom with the hotel’s resident pornstar in tow. She’d rushed past him, leaving him stiff and frozen as her stifled giggles bubbled alongside the spider’s, legs exposed enough to allow Alastor’s carmine eyes to roam freely across the scattered speckles of white fur dotting the inside of her thighs. To watch as her tail wagged in an amused blur as the Angel bent at the waist to whisper something into the fluff of her perked ears before they disappeared behind the closing elevator doors.
And, once again, he’d had to disappear into a swirl of wispy shadows, to retreat to his radio tower with a heaving chest and an aching throb between his legs.
Which left him with a hand covered in blood that didn’t belong to him, a kill that now seemed a little pointless, and dissatisfaction bleeding into his nerves as he glared down at his lap.
Dissatisfaction that kept him tense in his chair, hooves planted firmly on the floor of his broadcast even as his hand dove under the waistline of his pants to palm at his manhood in an act of nothing more than frustrated agitation and desperation.
His hand clenched around his member. And, even as he swept his thumb over the weeping tip and slicked the shaft in his own arousal, the rush of heat to his groin, the roused tingling of his cock, all working in tandem to climb to the daunting precipice of pleasure, he found no relief. No satisfactory ending in sight, no matter how fast, or how methodical he moved his fist.
Alastor felt his shadow tug at the cast reflection of darkness of his pants leg, head turning just enough to address the silhouette without taking his infuriated gaze from his stubborn lap. The shadow huffed slightly when its master refused to meet its eyeless gaze, and tugged a little harsher.
The Overlord snarled, lips curled and neck snapping.
“What?!”
Undeterred by its owner’s snappish countenance, the silhouette manipulated the thrown shadows within the broadcast room to form a pint-sized silhouette of the doe demoness his mind had long since been haunted by the presence of.
Alastor’s heart seized, fingers tightening around his cock as a short-lived whine warbled behind his ever-present grin. His shadow’s own grin sharpened at the sound and took the noise as concurrence. It made to quickly dive across the flat of the floorboards, intent on seeping between the cracks in the tower’s entry hatch, on seeking out his estranged wife and urging her in the direction of his abode.
“No, wait-”
The shadow vanished in a rush of cold, darting darkness, slipping between the hatch’s hinges, ignoring the sinner it was attached to, andAnd Alastor was left alone to let out a rumbling growl of frustration at the shadow’s disobedience, hand pumping furiously over his shaft as he tried and tried to reach a sudden end. If only so that he could concentrate all of his willpower and rein in his unwieldy, lightless counterpart.
He lasted a total of three dragging minutes before the incessant tugging on the corners of his mind by his unattached, shadowed reflection tempted his lust-addled brain.
A resigned sigh left his lips, hand tightening slightly in its efforts to coax a self-inflicted orgasm out of him.
He screwed his eyes shut, letting the sight his departed silhouette was beholding to him plague his mind as his teeth ground against each other and his fingers failed to work the magic his wife’s had always been impeccable at producing.
He was met with the view of her hotel room, proffered from the highest corner over her bed. All warm fairy lights and florals, curtains pulled to provide an imitation of privacy, Alastor bore witness to his wife straddling the spider demon on the uneven terrain of her bedsheets. An array of glittering powders, eye shadows, and brushes were spread out on either side of them. But Alastor didn’t care to make much note of the internal mechanisms and knick-knacks strewn across her bedroom.
Instead, he focused on her face; on the little scrunch between her brows as she leaned down over her friend to crown his mismatched eyes with glittering dust. That same pinch in her expression that appeared whenever his hands dove between her legs and rubbed meticulous circles over the bundle of nerves throbbing at the apex of her thighs. On the slight dip in her bottom lip where the sharpened points of her canines sank into the gloss framing her grinning mouth, biting back a laugh at something the spider said the same way she used to bite back her keening murmurs of his name and breathy cries of pleasure.
Alastor’s brows furrowed, an irritated scowl filtering across his ever-grinning visage as he readjusted his seating position, pressing the sweat-soaked plain of his back to the back of the chair, legs spreading as his fisted hand pumped angry ministrations along the length of his shaft.
Soft grunts sounded from behind gritted teeth, chest heaving unevenly as his shadow’s focus swept along her curled form; to where familiar thighs bracketed the porn star's hips, knees sinking deep into the mattress by his side as she bent at the waist to lean into the spider’s relaxed face. Her fingers drummed along the stem of an eyeshadow brush, an enticingly contemplative pout adorning the shimmering gloss of her lips.
Alastor let out a low groan. He told himself this was a one-off. That he ought to be ashamed that he could allow his fingers to undo the buttons of his slacks, that he willingly let his hand wander into the darkness of his pants until his palm met the hardened length of his manhood. That he could touch himself so obscenely to the mere thought of the woman he adored so emblematically. Of climbing the treacherous mountain of pleasure with only the memory of her loving caress to urge him forth.
He could feel burning heat coiling tight within his gut, peaking arousal taking its place among the roiling ire of shame. His hooves planted firmly on the floorboards, hips lifting off of the cushioned seat to rut mindlessly into his fist. And with the discomposure of a man bidden by animalistic instinct, he doused the flames of ignominy licking at the back of his brain with a rush of icy resolution.
A primitive need to meet his climactic ending.
A stubborn need to rush to the precipice so that he could return to his usual immutable self.
Within the shadow of his mindscape, he let his own body replace Angel’s. He imagined the feeling that used to be familiar to him of the warmth of her plush thighs hugging his hips, of the comfortable weight of her body on top of his. He mimicked the twist of her wrist when she swept the fluff of the brush along the spider demon’s eyelids and pretended that the hand working himself up was much smaller. That it was a little softer, a little warmer. That his legs were parted to make room for the doe giggling with another man on an entirely different floor.
He imagined her exposed eye finding his, and it made a high-pitched sound quiver in his throat. He thought of her letting her cheek fall against the lean muscle of his bare thigh, of her unoccupied hand holding his knees open before it slid along the pulse of his thigh, finding his hip and pulling him towards her.
Alastor’s hand moved in a blur, body folding in on itself when a particularly high-pitched keen blurted past his teeth as he felt his balls tighten. He pretended she was there, with him, in his room. Above him, under him, side by side. Whatever she wanted. So long as he got to have her. Even if she didn’t move to replace his hand with her own, just her being there would have been enough to finish him.
Her smell, her voice, the amused twinkle in her exposed eye as she teased him gently for the pathetic little whimpers he was letting out.
Nostalgic longing hit him almost as hard as his orgasm, making the corners of his lips tremble alongside the muscles of his thighs. A breathy, needy hum of her name echoed throughout the broadcast room, all staticky and broken, spilling from his lips like a shattered prayer. And he could see in his silhouette’s peripherals as the strings of fairy lights of her bedroom began to flicker, as both she and Angel halted in their interaction to glance curiously at the overhead light.
The porcelain curve of her mask glinted under the uneven pulse of light, and her exposed eye flitted about the wallpaper adorning her walls, falling temporarily to the latest radio he’d bestowed upon her. Angel said something. A stupid little quip, if Alastor had to guess, but he didn’t really care for the spider’s humored comments, the narrowed eyes of his departed shadow zeroing in on his wife’s inquisitive gaze.
And when her scrutinizing eyes slowly shifted towards the patch of shade painting the wall that his dark reflection was cast upon, Alastor bid his shadow back to his side.
The Overlord panted slightly, chest heaving in the contemptible afterglow of his climax, and the embarrassed thrill of his shadow almost being caught by his wife’s roaming eyes.
The hazy glow haloing his pupils began to fade, slow as repulsed realization settled over his grinning expression when he glanced down at his bare lap, at the white, sticky mess coating his fingers. He grumbled unintelligibly, shadowy tentacles retrieving and proffering a cloth to wipe his hand with.
He muttered quiet admonitions to himself as his hand was relinquished from the evidence of his spend, glaring down at his lap.
“Think ya lost this.”
The voice made Alastor jump in his seat, knees meeting the underside of his desk in a violent clatter of bones as the fluff of his ears flattened themselves to the curve of his scalp. An embarrassing little bleat escaped his lips, imbuing a subsequent tinge of red along the edge of his cheekbones as he stared dumbfoundedly up at the old-timey, wooden radio being shoved into his surprised expression’s proximity, and ultimately conquering the entirety of his field of vision.
Instinctively, his claws latched onto the edge of his control panel. Using the desk as an anchor, he dragged his chair closer to the panel, hiding the undone buttons of his slacks, the shameful white stains dotting the fabric of his pant legs, the exposed length of his manhood.
It was his uncharacteristic wordlessness that made the newly apparated doe demoness withdraw the radio away from his face. The remnants of her magic faded behind her, the flurry of scarlet tendrils that had apparated her from her bedroom to his tower dissipating as disembodied petals floated to the floorboards and formed a haloing ring of flora around her.
Brow preemptively arched and lips jutted in a bemused pout, the face of his wife popped out from behind the device. Her lidded gaze swept over his disarray, exasperated expression morphing into something a little less annoyed as she punctuated her proclamation with a muttered; “Again.”
Alastor could feel his chest tighten as she set the radio on the flat plain of wood that framed his control panel. He felt his heart seize when he ducked in a sharp intake of breath only to find his lungs invaded and conquered by a flowery aroma that seemed to orbit her very being.
And after a moment, he let out a tense; “…Thank you.”
She nodded slowly, eyeing him dubiously through one narrowed eye, brows knitting tightly as she leaned over the control panel. And the closer she edged, the further Alastor pulled himself into the desk, until the corner dug deep between his ribs and the aftermath of his unwitting arousal was concealed beneath the table.
She tilted her head, and the buck found her perturbed expression so endearing it made his teeth itch to bite right into it. To smush his cheek against hers and bunt against her cheekbones until the concealed worry in her visage eased into something quiet and gentle. Something meant only for him. Like before.
She questioned him slowly.
“You alright?”
He answered a little too quickly.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
She watched him for a moment, tongue clicking thoughtfully as her forearms settled across the wooden top framing his broadcast panel. She narrowed her eye at him, suspicion tempting the forward lean of her upper body as she pressed her stomach to the hard edges of wood acting as a barrier between them. “You usually make a big stink outta me gettin’ rid of these.”
“You usually smash them,” he countered quickly, leaning his elbows on the desk and tilting his upper body towards her.
Her gaze fluttered to the ceiling, head rolling alongside her eye as her fingers walked along the crowning edge of the radio, fingertips tilting the device and rocking it back and forth.
“Well, I figured you’d take the hint and stop sendin’ me your precious radios if I dismembered ‘em and sent ‘em back to you,” she snarked, emphasizing her point by shoving the device towards him with a petty vigor.
His shadow caught it easily. Just like she knew it would.
“Oh, that was supposed to be a deterrent?” His grin sharpened as he jested, tail beginning to sway against the line of his spine as they both instinctively fell back into the familiar swing of verbal jousting and endless counterpoints. “I assumed you were flirting.”
“‘Course you would, you psycho,” she muttered, straightening finally with a resolute breath that lifted the enticing puff of fur peeking out from the neckline of her tee. Alastor tried to force his gaze onto her face, to keep his already fluctuating hormones at bay by avoiding directly staring at the dotted white spots decorating her inner thighs as she stepped away from his radio desk and back into the ring of petals. “I’m goin’ back to my room, Al.”
She paused to glare at his silhouette.
“Don’t follow me.”
“I’ve got much better things to do than follow you, dear,” he crooned, waving off her accusatory tone with a limp bend of his wrist, acting as though his heart hadn’t jumped with melodramatic and unspoken longing when she stated her intentions to part from him. “You’re not that interesting.”
Her expression flattened, purposeful unamusement painting her masked visage as she halfheartedly glared over the curve of her shoulder at him. A warning finger jabbed in his direction, another aimed for his silhouette. “Quit spyin’ on me.”
She left in a flutter of glittering, scarlet magic, petals swirling within the vortex of power that enveloped her vanishing figure, her parting words echoing throughout the tower.
And Alastor could only sit and watch with bated breath and suffocating longing as the ruby glow faded into the usual haunting shadows of his domain. As the petals floated through the quiet and landed in colorful speckles along his floorboards.
He felt a fondly amused hum ruminate below the slope of his sternum as he watched a particular scarlet petal in its wistful descent, as it fluttered and twirled until it landed on the returned radio’s crown.
He plucked the delicate material between his thumb and pointer finger, claws catching on the soft tissue as he turned it over to inspect the dark red veins webbing the expanse of the petal. He nosed at the floral remnants, and a wistful sigh left his nose when he realized it smelled just like her.
Almost thoughtless, and certainly in an act of unique carelessness, he popped the petal into his mouth. Letting the tissue soften on the wet flat of his tongue before he swallowed it down and internalized her aroma.
And as the aftertaste began to ebb, as he realized with a flush of heat to his cheeks what he’d just done, he felt a growing tightness between his legs.
His hooves pushed against the flooring just enough so that the light poured in from the surrounding hellish atmosphere to illuminate his bare lap.
So that he could glare down at himself with pointed derision.
Down at the angry red tint his member had taken on under his harsh ministrations, at its renewed stiffness now that the scent of his wife had broken past the barriers of his radio tower.
Left behind like a ghostly reflection of his innermost desires as the dawning realization that he was completely and utterly doomed fell over him.
“Fuck.”