A/N: For my beta, ALittleTooMuch.
I dunno what I was thinking when I wrote this, given that I wrote this in one sitting, apologising to my beta for being late with everything. I forgot I wrote this, tbh.
This is a sidefic for my witch/witch hunter au (usukus) burning, because I want them to have sex already damn it but my Burning!Verse Alfred is taking too long so.
Warnings for spoilers, for those who read my fic burning. For those who don't, its alright to read it without reading burning first, since this is just a pwp haha
beta'ed by ALittleTooMuch
WARNINGS FOR NECROPHILIA, DUB/NON-CON, MENTIONS OF ABUSE, AND MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH
It was dark by the time Alfred returns to the witch's abode.
The first thing he notices was the smell.
It was no longer wet and cool but dry and strangely warm that it makes his skin uncomfortably damp between his leathers.
He felt his pace quicken when he noticed that the area did not shift, no essence of that bright magic to bring the dead back to life.
Something had happened to Arthur.
The witch's cottage was a mess.
The flowers are ugly and dead in their vases and the basket of fruits Arthur picks for himself to eat every morning were left rotting, maggots already beginning to fester. The meals Arthur prepared for his faeries were left unattended by the door leading to his little garden, thrashed and destroyed.
The entire place smelled foul.
Alfred finds Arthur in his room—laying unconscious in his small, modest bed- clean and white as can be in a rotten-infested home.
Surprisingly, the stench of death and decay did not reach the witch's room; who laid unconscious in his small bed, white and clean. The room smelled strangely of roses, something Alfred had long ago attributed to Arthur's natural scent.
Roses are—were-Arthur's favourite flowers.
The witch laid in his bed, silent and unmoving, still appearing to be completely unaware of the hunter's arrival, how he now stood above his head, a gloved hand slowly moving towards his soft hair. There was no reaction when Alfred's finger played and tangled with the pale yellow locks, not even a hitch of breath to indicate surprise.
Actually, his chest wasn't moving at all to indicate that the other was even breathing.
Taking his hand away to slip off the gloves, Alfred slowly brings his hands towards the witch's nostrils, feeling for a puff of air.
Nothing.
Alfred remembers the lessons France taught him, on witches and their abilities and their weaknesses and how the elder had laughed at him in amusement to hear Alfred ask for more details about the Resurgents. Few they may be, with their abilities so rare and unique, Alfred had always wondered about the paradox of killing the unkillable.
"My child," France told him, "the reason why the resurgents are so few," he tells him, face gentle and kind but eyes holding the years and years of experience and knowledge, "is because…"
Francis' words echo in Alfred's head. "...They would mostly choose death rather than life." The tone was low and mocking, quite uncharacteristic of his mentor, and somehow, the more it repeats in his head, the more it quite sounds like his own voice.
Resurgents are the hardest to kill, standing in the world of the living as bridges between life and death that there are traditional villages, those who still believe in the practices of the old religion, who protect and revere them as gods. Their power to take life and return it was worshipped and the witches are respected. Alfred had only heard of them in passing, in one of Francis' old stories, for they have long perished, at the hands of the hunters, of course, and if there were still those that exist, had now remained in hiding, in fear of falling into the same fate as the others.
The only way hunters had known to kill a resurgent is to make them will it themselves, to tell their own bodies to stop living.
And now, it appears that Arthur had done the same.
Alfred supposes that this is the time that he should feel triumphant, for killing yet another pest in the world. To think about how much the others will look at him with envy and respect as they think about how much reward Alfred will get once he surrenders the body, which will more likely refuse to rot and decay, compared to his normal kills.
But there was just emptiness.
Slowly, he feels himself move to sit on the bed. His cool hand brushing the witch's cheek with gentleness he hadn't though he was capable of when dealing with Arthur. It surprises him how much he can see in the dark, with only the moonlight as his source of light as his eyes roam the witch's face, pale and lacking anything that would say how much Alfred had hurt the other in the last few weeks since he had bound the witch's soul to his.
He marvels at the pale cheek, still warm in his palm. How the dark red and purple and blue bruises never failed to heal in a blink of an eye after a good minute or so of beating, it still managed to surprise the hunter every time he returns to see his little captive in his little home, submissive and pliant to his woes.
Then as his fingers slide down to touch his plump lips, pink and just as warm, he lets his fingers caress them, marvels at the softness, how his fingers will slightly feel bumps of raised skin from the chaps.
Then he's kissing him. He bites at the lips when they refused to open-refused to let his tongue in, to touch him inside and feel his warmth-and tasted blood. Licking at them and tasting the coppery tang of blood-human or witch, they're all the same-he felt his body grow hot, arousal coming to him in waves.
The rest felt like routine, his hands instinctively pulling off his other glove rather clumsily it would've dislocated his wrist or a finger in his hurry to feel and touch that warmth, a feel of Arthur's skin on his.
Breathing or not, Arthur will always be his.
The mark on either of Arthur's wrist, an insignia of Alfred's power, remains and forever will be until Alfred decides to let him go.
If Alfred ever will, that is.
He tears at Arthur's clothes in his frenzy, his lips attached to Arthur's neck, warm and inviting, his wet tongue gliding down his collar bone to take a painful bite after the skin was exposed. He imagines the unresponsive hands thrown on the witch's sides to grasp at the beddings or to push him away, to feel how they shook in fear, those freshly-bitten lips, splotched with his own blood, to quiver and sob pleas of "stop"s and "no"s.
When he pushes himself in, dry and forcefully, he imagines a hand, fisted from the pain, knuckles white with how hard he had it clenched closed, to accidentally hit him in the back. He knows that Arthur would rather die-he crushes the thought in his head-than to provoke Alfred's wrath. The beating Arthur would get for ever daring to hurt the hunter would not be something Arthur can take.
Alfred knows because he had done it before. Multiple times.
He groans when he feels Arthur's heat, tight and familiar on him.
In one thrust, he felt himself release.
It was disgustingly quick.
Usually, Alfred prefers to let it drag on for an hour or so, just to hear Arthur's cries and screams, his face white, shades paler than his usual color, from the pain and exhaustion Alfred brought upon him. And Alfred would simply laugh. Harder, if the witch notices and cries because of it, asking him why is he doing this, hurting him for doing nothing?
Ha. As if he doesn't know.
It's because he's a witch of course, and for being a worse kind for provoking Alfred.
Provoking into doing what?
Alfred pulls out, carefully, and sees blood along with his own release to seep out of the witch's opening. He reaches out and wipes it on the witch's taut stomach without thought before he collapses on the witch's side, panting and out of breath. His sweat dampens the sheets below him, and his arms wound around Arthur's sides tightly, as if the witch will run off at the moment he notices Alfred's short moment of vulnerability.
But Arthur won't.
Alfred, wet and panting, gazes at Arthur's face, still facing upwards, if not slightly tilted from how his lifeless body shook with the strength of Alfred's thrusts, remained passive. Arthur appeared to be only sleeping despite of the debauchery Alfred had just done to his body. He had the face of the innocent.
Looking at them only drove Alfred mad.
The lack of Arthur's noises and movements are driving Alfred mad.
The silence was maddening.
E/N: Basically I had a "what if" moment where witches can actually kill themselves even though they were bound to a hunter. Because being bound to a hunter would mean losing their free will and therefore cannot kill themselves unless their hunter allows it...or something.
Also, hunters have "little" magic in them, where they can bind a witch as their slaves. It makes their job easier to hunt witches that way, but literally few can do this, because magic is fucking complicated as heck if you're not born with it (witch).