AN:

It feels very strange and slightly wrong to write a parody of my OTP after writing a fic that played my OTP dead straight. Let me just say that I am not trying to tell anybody that there is a "proper" way to ship this ship, or to write fanfiction.

If your idea of the Magnus/Kitten pairing fits the second half of this fic more than the first half: Good for you. I hope you enjoy what I wrote, and if this fic feels like an attack on you or your ship, I am sorry. I'm not trying to attack the way anybody enjoys this ship.

Thanks to Justin for the "Mittens" portmanteau and for beta-reading this.

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(M45.348)

Once upon a time, each Primarch dined regularly at lavish banquets with dozens of servants and sycophants delighted to share his table. Magnus didn't know if any of his brothers still did that, but these days he saved such decadence for celebrations and affairs of state.

This morning breakfast was spiced eggs, caf, and toast. Magnus had just about finished, while [REDACTED] took his time, enjoying not having any duties that needed fulfilling until noon.

"What's this?" Magnus asked, picking up a small dataslate from the kitchen counter.

"Somebody wrote a historical romance novel about us." [REDACTED] didn't look up from the report in his hands. "Thought I'd give it a go, just to see how far off the mark they were."

"This doesn't look like Federation print."

"That's because it isn't." [REDACTED] said, taking a sip of his caf. "A rogue trader sold it to one of your sons, who shared it with his troop. One of them knew someone who's an agent of mine, and she thought I should see it."

"This is Imperial literature?" Magnus said, "Can't be very accurate, even the Inquisition has dozens of levels of clearance and lies hiding the truth these days." He paused. "Or does your agent think the author has access to some information good Imperial Citizens aren't supposed to have?"

"Probably not. According to the agent, there's a betting pool going on whether or not reading it will send me into a laughing fit or off on a bloody rampage." [REDACTED] said, eyes still on the report.

"Mind if I read it then? I've been meaning to find new light reading that I can mock while I wait for the senate to move along." Magnus asked. "I swear, Farsight's successors have been getting increasingly dull each year. It's like they're voting for the most boring person in the galaxy."

Once upon a time, Magnus wouldn't have asked. He might have told [REDACTED] that he was taking the book, but he wouldn't have sought permission. Three thousand years had passed, and Magnus wasn't that person anymore. The whole galaxy had changed when the Federation was founded, but Magnus liked to think he and [REDACTED] had changed for the better.

"Go ahead, I wasn't going to try it until I finished the latest TnMEbD novel first." [REDACTED] said, nodding to a dataslate that was labeled Dusk.

"All right, then." Glancing at the time, Magnus left to grab his things. He returned a few seconds later to give [REDACTED] a kiss on the forehead before teleporting away.

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Fifty Shades of Mittens

(Pages 147-149. Last pages of Chapter 5: To Face the Truth)

He lunges at me, like the daemon he is. Like the daemon I know he hides inside. Like the daemon I see when I look at him, like the daemon he wants me to forget he is. Like the daemons I fight in the name of my Emperor, like the daemon I want so badly to wish that he wasn't but cannot make myself desire such a thing. For it is the heresy of the daemon that I know deep down I truly desire.

More than I desire air. No, more than that: this desire is stronger than my lust for food.

The bars don't break, but I feel as though he's already outside of his cell. Standing right next to me. Whispering in my ear. Doing something very heretical to my ear. No. Bad Custodes.

"And is that what you want?" He growls in a voice that screams 'danger' and 'warm.' A voice like hot ghost peppers, warming my soul in soft fluffy blankets while slowly stabbing me to death with chaotic spells.

My whole body shrieks for his touch, but I try to keep it from showing. "It DOES NOT MATTER what I want!" I whisper. I'm trying to be strong, but my voice comes out as a heretical whimper, "The only thing that matters is the Emperor's will!"

"Oh!" He snorts, pushing away from the bars and leaning against the wall of his cell. "Is that all?"

I feel a tingle down my spine. His voice is critical of me and challenging me to act. A fire burns in my belly, stirring something heretical in me that I don't want to encourage but involuntarily keep feeding by keeping my eyes on his face.

It's like the pupa of a Squig, growing stronger and larger the more of the tree it eats, but too swift and slimy to catch and put down before it turns into an Ork cocoon. This fire is the Squig, I am the tree, and the transformation is both heretical and extremely yummy.

I check the purity seals to make sure they're still there. Then I take a step forward. I hate it when witches get inside my head, and I don't want him enchanting me to be a thrall eager to please his darkest and most heretical needs and desires.

Any more than he already is.

His eye continues to pour into my eyes, and I know I should turn away before his voice crawls inside my mind and makes itself a little heretical nest there. His words are parasites, I remind myself. I tell myself that what I'm feeling is just the effect of a heretic's spell.

His words are like invasive tentacle vines with their tentacle thickness and tentacle-like flexibility, worming their way into the deepest regions of my doubt, and it's just a curse. His words are parasites, and it's just a curse. His words are parasites, and it's just a curse. His words are parasites, and it's just a curse. His words are tentacles, and it's just a curse. His words are parasites, and it's just a curse. His words are parasites, and it's just a curse. His words are parasites, and it's just a curse. His words are parasites, and it's just a curse.

I blatantly ignore that inconvenient detail that the seals are still intact and blocking him from casting any magic. 'This is all his fault,' I shout in my mind. My subconscious is rolling its eyes at me. It starts thrusting its hips in a heretical way and making obscene gestures with its hands to let me know what it thinks of him.

I should turn away. I should leave this room and the daemon it holds hostage. But I can't stop myself from challenging him. Some brave part of my subconscious wants to prove that I can face the daemon.

It's being bribed to say that by the heretical part that's currently quaking, shivering, and drooling for his heresy. I step forward again.

"What else would there be?" I murmur.

I take another step forward.

'He knows,' the tiny part of my mind that's holding onto my final shreds of faith and sanity shrieks. 'He can see exactly what I'm doing, and he's using it to set a trap. He can see exactly what I'm really thinking.'

Before I have a chance to let this voice guide me back to safety, he viscously lunges towards me.

I don't have time to move. I'm too close to escape. He grabs my chin, pulling me closer to him. Lifting me off the ground. His grip is too tight for me to break away. Oh crap.

The seals start glowing with power. He must be trying to cast a spell on me. Oh crap!

Terror flutters in my stomach, like hungry rodents with razor-tipped wings.

It's so heretical I can hardly breathe. NO! BAD CUSTODES!

This was a bad idea. I knew this was a bad idea, but I did it anyways. Why did I do that again?

'See, I told you so!' The rational part of me is hysterically giddy with laughter. 'You've been played, oh-so-mighty Lord of Terra, and now you're in the Beast's grasp.'

'Shut up, shut up, shut up!' I tell myself. I'm not in the mood to take this sort of crap, even from my own subconscious.

Holding my chin tight, he pulls me forward until I'm pressed against the bars of his cell. Then he tilts my chin so that our faces are facing each other, forcing me to face the beautiful and terrible face of this daemon whose face is so similar to the face I see every day. It is the face of my Emperor, just as much as this face is the face of a monster. I cannot face this revelation. The face of the sun is easier to gaze upon than facing the face I now find myself facing.

For a moment he says nothing, just staring into my eyes. So do I. He stares back. Me too.

I try my best to keep my breathing even, to not show the fear or the burning desire inside.

But his hand on my face is so warm, so strong, no amount of screaming from the rational portion of my mind can stop me from enjoying his touch. My subconscious is shrieking in excitement so loudly it drowns the rational part out. Like making the children get out of the water so the grown ups can bathe. Where our bodies are so close they almost touch through the bars I feel his hot, animalistic heresy rolling off of him.

'More.' My subconscious demands.

'Heretic.' I accuse it.

'Yes.' My subconscious agrees with me. 'Heretic indeed.'

For a moment the daemon just looks at me, and I into his eye. His gaze is like an atrium in which cultists plot to lure a filly into their cabana of heresy. Yet there is no need to nudge her, for all she knows that this path leads only to slavery as little more than livestock she cannot help but want to be the grox they milk.

He's like a caravansary of cultists I'm spying on from far away right before calling in an exterminatus. There's something there that I know will do terrible and heretical things to me if I am caught, but the mystery is pulling me in like gravity pulling a gun in freefall, cocked and ready to fire.

"You know," He says softly, a little sad and a little viscously cruel. "Just because you don't let yourself have the things you want doesn't mean you stop wanting them."

I manage to catch my breath, though I have no idea how I managed such a feat. "What- what does that mean?" I demand, angry at him for questioning me like this.

"Oh," he says mischievously, "Nothing of importance."

'Asshole heretic.' My eyes scream at him.

His hand loosens, and I manage to yank myself free of his grip. I glower at him while he leans against the bars with cocky confidence. "If that was all you came to say then you should get going, Kitten."

I reach through the bars and slap him. My hand only goes up to his neck, so I have to hop and strike him in mid-air. It is worth it. Ultra worth it.

"You make me sick Magnus!" I say. "Go burn in the warp!"

I want so badly to snap at him that my title is Lord Captain General, to rant and rave about what a monster he is, but I'm too angry to say any more without losing my composure. Instead I storm out of the chamber, and head back to my quarters. My face is flushed throughout the entire trip.

I'm almost halfway there- when I realize with a gasp! This was the first time I said his name.