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The world spun and grew inky black. You clung to Alastor’s suit as that blackness swallowed the red world around you. Static filled your ears, stronger as the darkness blocked your vision. The ground fell out from under you rather suddenly, leaving you no choice but to cling to Alastor.
Your hair, seemingly forever wet and floating as if in water lifted behind you. The sound of the beads of your dress were lost to your ears. There was nothing but blackness and static.
And then the world came back into existence, slowly clawing the shadows back.
It was dark and red. The city streets were dirty, crumbling, and unkept. Turning, you looked from the streets to the building Alastor stood proudly in front of.
“It’s not much yet,” he said. “But it will be soon.”
The building was two stories, dirty brick and atop it shot a spear of metal you knew instantly was a radio antenna.
“A broadcast station?”
“And my home,” Alastor’s clawed hand settled on your lower back, urging you to step forward, closer to the door. “Our home, now.”
“Our home?” You stepped away from Alastor, turning to face him. “It’s improper.”
“Propriety is a choice here.” Alastor’s smile turned softer. “It is dangerous for you to be on your own. Right now, you’re vulnerable. At my side, in my home, you’re afforded protection and status.”
“Status?”
“The tower is at the heart of my territory,” Alastor opened the door and stood aside, urging you in without forcing you.
He was right, you didn’t have much choice. You could leave and hope to find Rosie again.
And if this was hell, did it really matter? Had you not spent years dreaming about sharing a home with Alastor as man and wife?
The interior of the building looked more like his cabin in life than you expected. Warm woods and familiar furniture filled the space.
“how?” You spun, feeling a touch of the tension leave your shoulders inside the building.
“I made it.” Pride was clear in Alastor’s voice. “I wasn’t sure when you’d join me. I’d hoped it wouldn’t be for some time but I wanted to make sure I had a home ready for you.”
“You made this?”
Your shoes clicked against the wooden floor as you walked through the living room. The home was modest and you quickly found yourself standing at the doorway of the bedroom.
“You can go in,” Alastor said from behind you. “It’s as much your room as it is mine.”
“I don’t have anything,” you hugged your arms around your middle as you spoke. “All of this is yours.”
“Lies,” Alastor said. “This is ours. Tomorrow we’ll get you dresses and whatever you’d like to start settling in. I would have clothes ready for you but I didn’t know how you’d change when you got here.”
“How long did it take to get used to this? To how you changed?”
Alastor’s head cocked to the side, the large, ear like tufts of hair atop his head twitched. You realized with a start that they were indeed ears. “Who says I am?”
“You seem so at ease,” you turned, just catching his smile grow smaller as he shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter. You managed to get off easy with the change.”
“Did I?” For a moment all you could think about was the haunting beauty of Rosie. There was something clearly demonic about her but that only enhanced her beauty.
Alastor reached out, hooking your chin with his fingers. He forced you to give him your whole attention. “Some of us became monsters. You however? You’re stunning, Cher.”
You wanted to protest, though you weren’t sure what you were going to say. Instead, his lips met yours as they parted to form the first word. The kiss was soft and for a moment, as your eyes fluttered shut, it was the Alastor you knew kissing you.
Your breath caught in your chest, the sharp pain of emotions, of weeks of grief, welled in your chest and spilled over your eyes. Tears ran down your cheeks as you wrapped your arms around shoulders that felt so right.
He was too narrow as his torso pressed against you but the smell of him was there, under the copper and sulfur. Sharp teeth nipped at your lips as he kissed you the same as he always had.
It was just right enough to be comforting. It soothed the ache that hadn’t left you since you’d been told.
“Alastor.” His name passed your lips in a soft sigh. Your hand ran up the back of his neck, fingers threading through hair that was too straight, too soft. The style was something unlike anything you’d ever seen, bright blood red with tips dark as sin.
“Cher.” Alastor’s hands ran down your sides. His palms ghosted your curves before he was urging you up.
You didn’t hesitate, wrapping your legs around him as he held you up by your thighs.
He carried you easily through the room. The jacket he wore melted off him, turning to inky shadows that fell through the floor.
He laid you down on the bed, watching as your perpetually weightless hair settled slowly down. Your pale eyes looked up at him, watching him as he undid his bow tie as he had done countless times before.
Long fingers worked the first few buttons of his shirt undone, exposing more pale brown skin before he folded over you, kissing you deeply. You tilted your head back, up to meet his lips.
Your stomach rolled slightly, nausea washing over you as you felt the branch like horns atop your head push into the mattress. You must have made a face at the sensation because Alastor whispered in your ear, “You’ll get used to it.”
He kissed down your jaw, his hair tickling your neck as he traveled. You could see that the hair atop his head was indeed ears, twitching with every sigh you made. How long hand it taken him to get used to it?
And then his lips were on your clavicle, teasing nips that made you think of red.
What color would you bleed, if he cut you? Would he cut you? Would be bite you? Would he devour you?
Stop. Stop thinking about it.
It was Alastor. Your Alastor.
Under all the changes. Under all the red. It was the same man.
“Alastor,” you whimpered, lips seeking his in a kiss that stole your breath and sent the world spinning around you.
“You’re safe here,” Alastor said, pulling back to gaze at you. He looked at you the same way, as if nothing had changed. If you pretended, you could believe nothing was different. His eyes were red from the blood. Nothing had changed and you where back to that day when your life started over instead of living your first day in hell. “You’re home here.”
“Home?” You whispered. “Here?”
For a second, fear and anxiety washed over you but then the world was turning again. When the world righted, you sat straddled over Alastor’s lap, looking down at him. Your hands rested on either side of the black trim on his red shirt.
“You really are beautiful,” Alastor said as his hands ran up your sides. The way he looked at you, you believed it in the moment, though you couldn’t wrap your head around how he could think so with what you’d become. “Kissed by the bayou I’ve loved so.”
“Really?” You hadn’t realized how much it meant to you for Alastor to find you desirable until you looked down at him.
He was handsome in this new form. It had scared you at first but you could see the things that were him peeking out from the horrors. The longer you looked at him, the more the form seemed to make sense.
His nose was just as sharp, though the bridge was narrower now. His smile cut but when your eyes met his, it grew softer again. It became that smile you knew well. His touches were the same.
He was the same man.
He was the same.
“May I?” Alastor asked as the black pads of his fingers toyed with the zipper at the back of your dress.
“Are you sure?”
“I love you,” Alastor said, tugging lightly at the tail of the zipper. “I want you. Here. Now. It changes nothing. For us, nothing has changed.”
He knew he was lying. In so many ways, so many thing have changed. It was a matter of time before the two of you faced those changes. He simply needed to be sure that whatever you’d learned of him since his death, you were still his.
He needed you to still be his, though he couldn’t understand why. He didn’t need you for the reputation. No one gave a damn in hell what someone’s marital status was.
Still, he needed to have you as his.
Laurence may have taken your first time but now, in hell, Alastor would be the only man that would lay with you. He would see to that.
“Alright,” you whispered, feeling very much like a virgin once again. He would be the first man to see your new form naked, let alone touch it. You hadn’t even seen yourself properly yet. At least with Alastor, you were sure you would be pleased.
The zipper was loud, pulling down it’s track in the nearly silent room. Around you, there was static, pushing away the sounds of the city. With the static, it almost sounded like the city you left behind. Almost.
But the zipper demanded your attention. The bodice of your dress was once wrapped tightly around your torso, holding your fuller breasts against gravity grew slack as Alastor guided the zipper lower. The beaded straps over your shoulders no longer felt steady.
A shiver ran down your spine as the grip of the dress around your waist slackened. The straps slipped down and the front of your dress began to hang from your chest. You crossed your arm across your body, holding the bead heavy dress against your breasts.
“It’s alright,” Alastor said, fingers trailing up your bare back, tracing the path up your spine. It was a simple action but one that brought you comfort. He’d done it countless times over the last few years, before and after laying with you. “Nothing has changed.”
Your mind screamed that everything had changed.
Your heart wanted nothing more than to believe Alastor.
The heavy, beaded fabric slipped from your body as your heart won. The warm air caressed your still somehow slightly damp skin. Alastor’s eyes ran over your chest, tracing dim brown lines where your root like veins traveled under your skin.
They branched near one of your nipples, wrapping around the darker areola. Lines ran down your torso, reaching over your ribs. The thin fabric, heavy with glass beads pooled around your waist, settling on your legs.
You took a deep, shuttering breath and met his deep red eyes. Blood red. So much blood. Everything felt like it was stained with the blood you spilled.
Alastor was stained with the blood you spilled.
Or was he?
Your thoughts floated away as the world flipped, embraced in shadows as Alastor guided you back down on the mattress. Your back settled onto the soft blankets and that cold inky blackness pulled away from where it grasped you. Was it even ever there?
You couldn’t be sure.
Your hands trembled as you reached up. Too long fingers worked the buttons of his shirt open, one at a time. His chest looked so much like what you remembered. Toned muscle moved with each breath he took.
His waist was far more narrow than you were used to. It left you unsure if there was room for all the internal workings of a body but did it matter? Did he need them? Or did there just need to be enough mass to him to hold up his spine and chest?
“I’m still me,” Alastor said, watching you as your hands carefully explored his chest and abdomen. “I’m the same monster.”
“You’re not a monster,” you whispered as he shrugged out of his shirt, tossing it to the side. The blackened metal of his belt reflected the dim light in the room. Without even looking down, Alastor made quick work of unfastening it and pulling it from the loops of his pants.
Leaning forward, his lips met yours in a kiss that soothed every worry in your heart. His lips moved against yours in slow, careful caresses. Those soft caresses traveled down your jaw and lavished your neck in sweet attention.
He kissed your chest, feather light touches of his lips over sensitive skin that, though different in appearance, responded to his touch as it always had. Your breasts rose under his attention, carried to his lips by your gasps for air.
Each kiss pushed away the worry you held over your new form. He did not reach your darker nipples and scowl. He didn’t look at your pale green skin in disgust. He ran his tongue over the pebbled nubs of your nipples.
The long, pointed muscle of his tongue had no issue pulling your nipple into his mouth. The tips of his pointed teeth scratched at delicate flesh in a way that felt dangerous. That danger sent a thrill down your spine.
He eats people. He could devour you.
Hush.
You pushed the troubling thoughts out of your mind, focusing on the way his fingers gripped your waist as he kissed down the ridge where your lower ribs met and into the dip of your abdomen.
Fingers guided the wad of bead heavy fabric down your hips. He nipped the sharp point of your hip bone as he worked the dress down your body. Black lace panties hugged the curve of your hips, exposed for only a few seconds before they too were swept down your legs by his fingers, pulling a trail of slick down your inner thighs.
He stood, ears loose and relaxed atop his head as he worked his pants open. It took a few short seconds for them to join your dress on the ground.
With the same slow reverence, Alastor picked up your ankles and slipped your simple heels off them. Dark toes, black just as his hands, flexed slightly when freed. He kissed the dark skin of your ankle, working his way up your calf as the darkness faded and was replaced with that same soft, pale greenish color.
You were breathing heavy as he kissed along your inner thigh, making his way closer to the core of you. His breath was coming slow, focused as he took in the scent of you. Your slick was fruitier now, scented ever so slightly of apples.
He had intended to plant you an apple tree and yet he hadn’t needed to. In your death, you became a living embodiment of one. You were a walking tribute to the things shared between you in life.
He climbed up your body, placing kisses on your mound and traveling up. Your legs hung on either side of his legs. His body was lean, even without the cut of his clothes highlighting it.
As his hands settled on either side of your shoulders, you reached out, tracing your fingers along the lines of him. You traced your fingers over the skin where black gave way to pale brown.
Up and up your fingers went until your arms were looped around his neck. You urged him down. It didn’t take much more than your fingers running through the short hairs at the nape of his neck for his lips to find yours.
Your long fingers explored, running through his hair as he kissed you passionately. Your fingers explored, running through strands. When you found the place where the hair gave way to his ears, he sighed into the kiss. They twitched under your fingers.
He shifted his weight off one hand, freeing it to run through your hair. You expected tangles and snags, the way wet hair tends to be. Instead, his fingers flowed through your hair, as if your hair was still submerged in the water.
His hand passed through strands to caress your side. You could just feel the points of his claws as he caressed down. Each touch hand you seeking more. His chest pressed down into you, warming the water chilled swells of your breasts as his weight shifted from his palm to his forearm.
“Alastor.” You whispered his name, lost in the feeling of him.
In that moment, as he pulled your thigh up along his hip, you were not in hell. Your body wasn’t changed. Alastor wasn’t changed. There wasn’t truths you were not ready to face hanging over you.
You were just a woman with the man that you loved.
“Cher,” he whispered into your neck as the head of his cock pressed against your opening.
It felt different. Slightly off from what you knew, but that could be said about everything in this strange new world you found yourself existing in.
“I need you,” you whimpered. “I need you to take me. Make love to me.”
Alastor didn’t need to be told twice. He pushed forward, slightly pointed head of his cock parting your folds easily. He pushed into your tight, weeping opening. The hot, wet, velvet of your walls fought his intrusion at first but with his steady persistence, they welcomed him inside.
Your back arched under him, pressing your breasts into him harder. His lips landed on your neck, nipping kisses distracted you from the burning stretch of your virginity breaking around him.
He eased into you, taking his time. Your walls fluttered, accommodating the stretch of his long member as you relaxed. The evidence of your desire welcomed him, coating his shaft as he thrust shallowly inside you, each move pushing deeper.
The ridges of his manhood were different from what you knew. His shape was different. That didn’t prevent him from feeling right within you.
The sharp bones of his hips pressed into you as the rest of his length settled inside you. Pain clamped through your core, cramping rather than sharp, as he pushed against your cervix in a way that he hadn’t been able to in life.
It wasn’t unpleasant, just uncomfortable.
“You’re bigger,” you whimpered into his ear.
“You’ll get used to it,” Alastor promised, rolling his hips back, pulling out of your tight wet embrace. “You’re so tight. Virginal. Pure, even down here.”
The idea of purity, virginity in hell was laughable but as he thrust into you, the start of a laugh turned into a moan. The size of him stroked your walls, pulling pleasure from you in a way that was more efficient than in life.
As your walls relaxed around him slightly, he moved freer above you. His thrusts were still restrained however he rolled his hips in a building pace, listening to your breathy moans and whimpers to gauge your reaction to the changes.
The muscles within your core flexed as he moved faster. Your slick walls gripped his member as he continued to build his pace, not fighting his presence but welcoming him in a way that he knew so well.
Your body was asking for more from him. Demanding it. Pulling him deeper.
Who was he to deny the woman he loved, who loved him enough to damn herself to be with him what she wanted?
“You’re home,” Alastor whispered in your ear as he pushed you closer to your orgasm. “My darling, you feel like home.”
He wasn’t wrong.
For the first time since you’d been told the terrible news of is death, wrapped in Alastor’s embrace, you felt at ease.
Your body relaxed and tensed as waves of pleasure rocked through you. Your head tilted back, branched horns pushing into the mattress as you bore your throat to Alastor. Pain jointed the pleasure as his kisses turned harsh, nips of sharp teeth crossing into the realm of bites.
That only heightened the pleasure that had you wrapping your legs around him. His pace was no longer soft. Claws dug into your thigh, controlled but harsh, as he chased his release. His name was on your tongue and your blood on his as he spilled his seed deep inside you.
His long tongue lapped at your neck, swiping up the tin trail of dark blood that extended from a small nick his teeth had left in the pale skin. Blood welled, but did not run any longer as he licked his lips clean one last time before kissing you properly.
His arms snaked under your back, holding you to him slightly as he rolled from you, settling at your side. His member slipped from your core, letting a rush of fluid trickle out and down your legs.
It didn’t take much urging for you to settle into his side, held in his arms. With a soft touch, you traced patterns on his chest as you took the time to process the truths of the day.
You were dead. You were in hell. It was alright though, because you were with Alastor. He loved you still. Despite everything, you couldn’t deny that love for him was still rooted in your heart.
“I’ve missed you,” you whispered, not lifting your head from his chest. His hand settled around your waist, clawed fingertips stroking the swell of your hip idly. “Is it wrong that I’m glad you’re here with me?”
“I was always going to be waiting for you here,” Alastor answered. “I’d hoped I would be waiting much longer. What happened?”
“I’m sorry.” Your voice came out soft. “I wasn’t strong enough. I tried to be but I wasn’t.”
Alastor waited, hoping you would add more. The clock on his dresser ticked, each click of the hand seeming too loud in the space. On the street outside, someone let out a scream that cut through the air and sent a shiver running down your spine.
“Alastor?”
He hummed at his name, fingers tracing the soft patterns on your skin. “What is it, my darling?”
“Is it true?” Your stomach twisted and turned with anxiety. You didn’t want to ask these questions but you needed to know.
“It depends on what it is.” Alastor answered simply, giving you the chance to change your mind. You didn’t have to go down this route if you didn’t want to. You could turn away.
But you couldn’t.
You had to know.
“Laurence wasn’t the only person you’ve…” You squeezed your eyes shut. Your delicate eyebrows knitted together as you grappled with the fact that you couldn’t assign all the blame for your late husband’s death to Alastor. “You’ve killed other people.”
It was Alastor’s turn to let silence linger for a few moments before speaking. “It is true.”
“Why?”
Alastor shrugged under you. “Because I wanted to.” It was a rare moment of honesty from him. There was no reason to justify the killing anymore. What were you going to do? Leave him? Who else would keep you safe? “At the end of the day, that’s what it is. They were immoral men and didn’t deserve to live.”
“Oh.”
“Does that make you want to run from me? From the monster you fell in love with?”
“No,” you said, though you didn’t know how true it was. “Were you ever going to kill me?”
“No,” he answered quickly. “I have never harmed a woman.”
It was a stretch, Alastor knew that. What he had done to Emma, the way he had framed her for Laurence’s murder was harm.
“Have you… they said you ate people?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes,” you lied to him.
“I did.”
“Why?”
“I came from nothing.” Alastor said. “Mother didn’t exactly have much money for groceries, even less so after my father perished. Mother would go without to ensure I had enough to eat and even then, sometimes it wasn’t enough. She got thinner and thinner.”
“So you started killing people and eating them?” You were scared to look up at him.
“I hunted deer originally. Birds. There wasn’t enough time in the day to hunt them and work.”
“That’s why you started killing people?”
Alastor was quiet for a moment, weighing his options. How honest did he want to be? Would you run if he told you it all? Would you find out from someone else?
“They were independent hobbies that intersected.” Your heart hammered in your chest as you listened to his words. You wanted to ask when he killed the first time but there was a large part of you that just didn’t want to know. The less you knew, the better. “I started building a fire were I was going to leave them and eating before I came home. I’d tell ma that I ate while I was out and that she could eat my serving.”
“Do you like it?” You whispered.
“Cher, I think that’s enough questions for tonight. You’re here. We’re together. Let’s enjoy that?”
“I love you, Alastor.” Part of you hated how true that was. You loved him. You couldn’t imagine living a life without him. You couldn’t imagine being with anyone else in hell or in life.
“I love you, cher.” Alastor placed a soft kiss at the crown of your head as you closed your eyes.