So this fic has been in the making for like… more than two years now. (Three? Longer? I don't even know at this point.) It's this kinda fic I wanna NAIL, because I have a lot to say with it, but don't trust my ability to get it across. Maybe that's why it's taking me so long. Because overthinking is no fun, and it doesn't help that I've been in a pandemic funk for - well, the pandemic, and it has shriveled my creativity to nothing. (Gee, who knew I needed a carefree mindset in order to let my mind wander? Hm.)
All this being said, I'm gonna start posting. I'm not fully out of my block, so please bear with me, I'm trying lol! (And my eternal thanks to Antigone2, who literally first beta-ed what you're about to read here in MARCH. She's been holding my hand throughout all this time and is still sticking with me and I'm SO GRATEFUL!)
ANYWAY. What I am attempting to tackle here is an evil Endymion story. I wanted to give the classic bad boy trope a detox (or maybe more like, give it some needed nuance?) in the same way that I've previously done with the teach seduction trope. Wanted to lace it with careful input about consent, agency, empowerment and how those are hard to navigate in situations one is ambivalent about AND where power dynamics are involved. You'll get what I mean down the road. Either way, the draft of this has been slowly growing, and I'm not confident about what it brings across, but if I don't start posting now, I never will. So here you have it.
Please note that the prologue is in media res, as I like to do, and thus is meant to lead you a little astray, but I will clear everything up later on.
A few important notes: This fic is smutty all the way. That's the point of the trope. The power never is where it seems. And. Since the prologue is in media res, trust me that they have contraception covered.
A note on word usage: I'm European. As such, while I am aware of American's horrified relationship with the word cunt, it's my preferred word choice. Until now, I've always kind of danced around it, tried to replace it for you Americans among my readers where I could. But with this story I've decided to stop doing that. Instead, my evil plan is to condition you to like it too, eventually. Reclaim it like so many places in the world are currently doing. Because, see, actually, cunt is a fucking beautiful word. (Yes, yes, you don't think so, but let me explain.)
Vagina (still a good enough word) is comparatively new, turning up sometime in the 17th century to replace cunt (which seemed too 'vulgar' when it hadn't before, more on that below), and it comes from the latin word "to sheath": meaning to "hold a sword," its function thus literally to describe the female genital as the place where the dick goes in (yes, really). So whereas vagina is a word that describes female genitalia exclusively and only by what male appendage can go in, cunt (a word so old we have no fucking clue where it originally comes from) has fucking spectacular meanings. While we lost its origins, we know that it shares the roots of and most likely has inspired absolutely fantastic words that mean creation, becoming (gen/gon which we still have in words like genes and genetics and gonads), woman and queen (cun/gyn, sounds and meanings we still have preserved in words like gynaecology and queen), and wisdom and knowledge ('cunning', 'cognition'). But, as feminist linguistics will tell you (check out the book "wordslut" by Amanda Montell for an AMAZING intro into that field that will blow your mind) words that mean essentially "woman" are very often victim to a process called "pejoration": Over time, neutral words evolve to be colored obscene and myriad other ways of negatively connotated. And often, simply because they're about women. One example here: Master and Mistress used to be equal terms. Only one of these terms took a deep dive. And no word for something very womanly had a longer time to go down this pejorative road than the glorious, queenly cunt. So yeah, the reason it's so scandalous and dirty and sinful in many places today is because women have been seen as scandalous and dirty and sinful across history, and because the word became to represent women as a whole ( and just like we today still call men (and women too) "girls" to insult them), the cunt became a slur. So history rendered it to the sidelines, took a beautiful word for the female genitalia that described femininity, creation, wisdom and feminine power from us and replaced it with a word that means "this is where the cock goes." (And if you wanna read up more on the HISTORY of this all, go consult Dr. Kate Lister's amazing book 'A Curious History of Sex', you're welcome.) So, yes, outside the US the word cunt is long in the process of being reclaimed, like so many other terms stolen and turned into slurs. But I like cunt. I like its power. I like its impact. I like its meaning. So many others do, too. And especially in a story like this, where I'm trying to bring power into a narrative so often used for submission, I'm gonna go back to using the word I like most - but only when Usagi uses it, as I have done in every case I have used the word beforehand in my writing. It's a woman's word to reclaim. Mamoru (or Endymion, or any other man I write) will not get to use it.
Also, because this author's note hasn't already been obnoxiously long lol, have a few more ambiguous thoughts on the title of this fic, because I fly like that lol:
"Shadow puppets are figures that are placed between a light and a screen. Moving them creates the illusion of moving images on the screen. An experienced puppeteer can make figures appear to walk, talk, fight and dance. Shadow puppetry is a popular form of entertainment in countries all over the world. Shadow play, also known as shadow puppetry, is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment which uses flat articulated cut-out figures (shadow puppets) which are held between a source of light and a translucent screen or scrim.
A puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object, called a puppet, to create the illusion that the puppet is alive. The puppet is often shaped like a human, animal, or legendary creature."
Anyway, settle in, we're gonna be here a while, and I hope you stick with me!
Puppeteer
Chapter 1: Prologue
Make your mama sad type
make your girlfriend mad type
"Are you certain you have this 'under control,' Usagi?"
Not 'Usagi-chan'. Just 'Usagi'. Her mother's fingers were digging into her blouse, arms crossed, shoulders tense, and yes, Usagi knew that tone of voice painfully well. The pressed, clipped cut of it. That unique cocktail of annoyance, worry and exasperation with just a pinch of despair. It was the one her mother only ever adopted when she tried really hard not to let her anger show.
In answer, Usagi did what any respectable Disappointing Child would: She got quiet and stubborn and just as tense. Screw communicating healthily, then. It was reactive, instinctive, and went against every law of constructive conversation. She couldn't even help it, even though she really, really wanted to help it. She didn't want to be this kind of daughter. The worrying one. The troubling one. The one that made the other mothers in Mother Club shake their heads in open pity while being silently glad they weren't burdened with that one. The failure.
But this was another thing she could never help, and so she slipped. The old dance they'd danced ever since Usagi had started elementary school and had brought home more scrapes and accidently damaged school books and significantly less utensils that she'd left with in the morning than any number of good grades.
"I'm not a kid anymore," Usagi hissed between a tense jaw.
The Tsukino dinner table held a neat stack of leaflets and informational flyers that Usagi refused to even look at.
Her mother just sent her that look.
She could read her mother's face like a book, of course. 'You sure are acting like one,' her furrowed brow said. 'You're not giving me any reason to think of you otherwise,' the little worry-lines around her eyes said that were only ever reserved for her daughter. Even more hurtful when it was the truth, she supposed. Oh-so familiar disappointment laced through the way her mother pinched the bridge of her nose and tried so hard not to sigh. It stung.
Her mother didn't voice any of it, though, and that kind of made it harder. She couldn't argue with things that went unspoken. That had kind of always been the problem, here.
Startled, Usagi was saved by the most unlikely of candidates.
"Hey, I'm gonna head over to Mika's and study, ok?" Shingo poked his head in and announced without, as always, reading the room. A few red spots on his cheeks where he'd fought against his teenage-acne successfully, a deeply pink flush to his face. He'd changed out of his High School uniform and wore the kind of outfit that tried, like, really hard. Freshly ironed dark grey button-up and all.
Study. Sure.
"Sure," her mother said, kindly. As if she'd traded in her whole demeanor at the express counter. Because Shingo wasn't the troubling kid in this family.
It wasn't Shingo's fault, not at all, she knew that, but jealousy had always been the worst of her, and so it bubbled in her chest like boiling water left on the stove too long.
Fuming, Usagi got up from the end of the table with a violent, uncomfortably loud scraping of chair legs on hardwood floors and brushed by Shingo with a harsh, petty bump to his shoulder - now located higher than hers, if way skinnier - as she poltered out the room.
"Hey!" he hollered at her, quite validly offended.
Shingo was wearing her father's aftershave, and her mother wasn't done with her, and why couldn't she just let her be a disappointment in peace.
"Usagi!" This time it was loud and stern alright.
Twin pigtails whipped around her quite dramatically as she turned to glare back.
But her mother's face was still soft. All concern. It was worse, because it took the fight out of her and replaced it with shame. A feeling she really didn't prefer.
"I'm just worried," Ikuko Tsukino said, and it broke Usagi's heart and made her feel so, so guilty.
It was her fate, maybe. Disappointing the mothers in her lives because they expected things from her that didn't align with her own heart.
"I know," Usagi said. Beside her in the hallway, the door clicked with Shingo's retreating back. He'd wisely fled the scene.
But the way Ikuko slid the leaflets and flyers across the dining table towards her had her seeing red again. Because why the hell didn't it matter what she wanted?
Not that she had an answer if her mother ever decided to do so. Not one she could speak about openly anyway. Definitely not one her mother would enjoy to hear, regardless of how vaguely she phrased it.
"Usagi!" her mother called after her again, but was ignored completely. Usagi fled the room, her face fixed into an irritated grumble as she trod up the stairs in pure spite, stomping her feet on the carpeted stairs in petty reaction.
Downstairs, a door banged in mirrored emotions, and it made Usagi's skin crawl in pent-up frustration.
It was one of those days. The kind that came too frequently lately. Being confronted with her own lack of control of her life and her fate and her duty and her losses was never fun, and her mother didn't make it any easier, especially since she couldn't know the half of it.
But what was she supposed to do? Surely it was better that her mother thought she was a floozy who skipped school all the way to graduation instead of worrying herself to an early grave over her daughter protecting the world from monsters. Ya know —The kind of monsters that this woman who killed me in a past life is unleashing because she's horny for someone who was horny for me instead.
Surely, surely it was better that her mother thought she'd irresponsibly and voluntarily been choosing to go to parties for the past four years instead of getting a good night's sleep, instead of, like, letting herself nearly get shishkebab'ed by a hairdresser who turned out to be a youma sent to kill her.
Surely it was better her mother thought the worst of her, was disappointed in her for things that weren't true, so she couldn't be disappointed in her for all the terribly disappointing things Usagi was actually doing.
All her selfish secrets. Her decidedly unheroic betrayal. Piling and piling and piling.
There were a lot of things she was keeping from her mother. In fact, there weren't many things left in her life that she was able to share with her. Truthfully, there were few things about what was going on in her life that she could share with but a few select people.
And some things she was keeping from everyone.
She didn't even jump anymore finding Endymion in her bedroom.
He sat on her bed like he owned it, one leg over the other. This beautiful man with that barely-there quirk in his lips made from sin, that arch in his brow. Beauty and desire in a stern façade, Adonis clad all in black.
On her unmade bed with her rumpled, ratty old comforter and her crumpled candy wrappers and her horny manga by his feet. As so often, he looked totally misplaced there.
She stilled in her doorway. Neither said a word, mostly because none were needed at this point. Watching him sitting there so very entitled, she simply held his gaze.
The irritation fizzled in her, found a new target, found a new flavour, and after a moment, she closed the door with a soft click behind her and turned the key. Funny how anger was an emotion so easily funneled. Mutely, she walked over to her vanity and started to remove her earrings, first, then the bobby pins from her hair.
"No," he said, his voice at her neck, and his dark presence all around her. As always, he was this odd mixture of comfort and guilt for her. "Leave them in," he said, and it was kind of an order.
She didn't listen. Instead, she found his eyes in her mirror and held his gaze calmly, challengingly, as she plucked one out in confident defiance and let it noisily clutter amongst all the other clutter on her vanity, and then repeated the same for the next.
His face remained calm, too, even as his hands glided underneath her shirt.
Her skin exploded in goosebumps under his touch. She never could manage to keep it from reacting to his fingers in craving greed.
"What are you so tense about," he purred, his fingertips gliding up her spine as if in a little dance and finding every knot in her shoulders as he brushed them there.
In that utterly unfair, magical way, the way that felt too good, his fingertips dug deep and kneaded over a stiff muscle. She melted against his so-fabulously rude, soft hands and tried not to let it show.
She grunted, "Arguing with my mom."
Steeling herself not to shiver, she dug her fingertips into her hair - as warm as her skin right against her scalp - and one more bobby pin dropped to the white lacquered wood.
"She's not your mother, Serenity," he said calmly, his hands slipping down to whisper tingles across her sides and slide to where she was sensitive.
"She IS." She glared. Hard.
His head tilted in the mirror. His chin against her head and his nose into her hair, his eyes steady on hers and his face that complacent, patient, 'if you want to insist'. All with that small smile she was slowly learning to hate.
"What were you arguing about?" he asked instead, indulgently, and stroked his tender hands back against her stubborn skin.
Usagi sighed, and with one more bobby pin removed, her bun unraveled. She slipped the hairband from her pigtail and smoothed one hand through the freed hair to untangle it. "She wants me to apply for university," she said with a small frown at her hand. "I'd rather find work."
His fingertips froze just underneath her breasts. She was in his embrace completely now, and she felt his biceps flex beneath the rough, black fabric of his shirt, before they resumed his gentle trail.
She raised an eyebrow at her mirror, both in question and in challenge.
"You're a princess, Serenity. The heir to an empire. You're not meant to do a mortal's work," he told her reflection, one hand gliding down the little pouch of her belly, his lips that snarl that she hated, too.
Her fingers fumbled with the second bun, one bobby pin dropping to the wood after another, and she rolled her eyes but moaned, his hand slipping down to cup her over her leggings, only to slide into the waistband and run a finger on top of her panties.
"Usagi," she corrected him meekly. Without strength. Hell, she'd take Odango Atama. But he wasn't gonna listen anyway.
"Hm," he just said. A soft sigh, nothing more than a note of acknowledgement, but not of betterment. No, instead he stroked a long tapered finger too-routinely across the damp-too-fast spot of simple cotton, barely touching in that way that was both infuriating and addicting.
Her hair spilled from her fingers and down his entire side, and the way his hum got a little deeper, the way it vibrated through his chest and into her back… She shivered against his hand as if to chase his touch and cursed herself for the slip-up in control.
It wasn't that she didn't want this. No. That was not it at all, much the opposite in fact. She wanted this in a way that was too much. But it was too complicated, too overwhelming, her mind rattling with uninvited thoughts. Of Mamoru, and what he would think if he could see her like this. Of the girls. Of the judgement of all those she loved that would not understand that she wanted these hands to do whatever the hell he wanted with her. That she wanted this man no matter what.
It was easier if he did it for her. So, so much easier.
Nose in her hair, inhaling almost reverently, his eyes never left hers in the mirror.
His dark hair falling into these intense and so pretty, pretty blue eyes. Fine hairs and blue veins on that just-so-perfectly-modestly muscled forearm, like it ought to be painted, as it disappeared into her clothing. The obnoxiously beautiful curve of that unfairly sexy red mouth, open and breathing just that bit hard for her. The way he looked at her with unpressing, unadulterated devotion, like he'd follow her across lifetimes and crawl into her bed even when he wasn't himself.
Everything in her curled in blood-red, shivering want.
She couldn't not.
She spread her legs.
One foot shifting apart every so slightly in a way that felt almost noisy in the dark, and his smug smile was too sexy and too arrogant to stand.
So well, yes. She didn't sneak out to go and party with her friends. She went out and saved the world instead of skipping out of responsibilities like her family seemed to be so certain of. She didn't want to look at glossy flyers of mediocre private universities she had no interest in attending, that might take her for a lot of money despite her atrocious grades, and still she wasn't the failure they apparently thought she was. She didn't do these things.
But this? This she did do. Sometimes she did let herself get fucked into next year under her mother's roof and under any other roof. Did allow herself that addictive, exhilarating feeling of being full and filled by that warm cock of the very man who'd been so horny (so obsessed, so seduced, so lost) for her when he shouldn't ever have been any of these things. Even when he's supposed to hate her. Or when he was supposed to kill her. This man she was never allowed to have, not back in a past life that felt like vague snippets from a too-vivid-dream, nor this one. She had him anyway, she always did.
If she wasn't gonna be sure to be alive tomorrow, she'd at least go out with the one thing she had never been supposed to have but couldn't seem to not want regardless of who she was. (Or he.)
In whatever form she could have him, she took him.
She wasn't picky, apparently. Just specific.
And she was wet. She was so fucking wet. All her frustration pooled into this one defiant act turning her on like a light switch to her genitals.
She could feel the press and heat of his hand through her underwear. Could feel the moisture of her own wetness move like molasses along her slick skin and soak the cotton and his fingers.
"Hmmmmm," he sighed again. Longer, more smug (if that was even possible), his wet lip tracing the shell of her ear and she shivered.
He stroked her over her panties. Stroked her like he'd done too often, his fingers having known the rhythm that made her swell and flush and tremble thousands and thousands of years before they were reborn in this life. South to north, first one finger and then more, first barely no pressure at all until she pressed herself against his hand in writhing desperation to get more.
She spread her legs wider for him. To the point her panties left the slightest gap at the indents of the hollows of her thighs if only he were to slip his fingers beneath the hem, but he kept so stubbornly, infuriatingly within the line of the cotton. To the point her clit was so swollen the damp cotton chafed over it in a way that danced the line of mind-numbingly good and almost painful.
One firm yet so surprisingly careful hand around her throat pressed the back of her head to his torso, and he read her scrunched up mess of a needy face like it was the most important thing in the world.
She cried out, a long whine that made his lips tremble as if in answer, and just when it got too much, when her clit throbbed and almost hurt, his hand stilled. Instead, he carefully scratched the nail of a curled finger along the rise of her swollen clit and it felt so good over the wet fabric that she was ready to beg, but bit her mouth.
He hummed again and pressed his hips against her leggings, pressed her whole body into the vanity with his wider, stronger one. Not quite grinding against her, but she could feel the heavy, thick outline of him against her in a way that flooded her in a savage kind of need.
Her insides fluttered with every stroke of his fingers, her demanding cunt clenching for him, needy and impatient. She wanted him to fuck her. Wanted him to pound her into this vanity so hard that it would bang loudly and harshly against the wall with every thrust. Wanted to fall limp against him and let him take her. All the while knowing that the wanting of this was so much more satisfying than the having of it, and so she kept her mouth shut until she could no longer take all that delicious want.
The press of his cock against her ass was familiar and she bit her lip and reached back to cup him.
But his hand flew from her throat and around her wrist immediately, slamming it against the vanity.
"No," he whispered, breath harsh at her ear. "Spread your legs. Watch yourself," he ordered, his own voice quivering, and moved his free hand from her wrist to the inside of one thigh. His warm, strong hand pulling her apart under his touch even more than before.
It was freeing, the way he spoke to her like this. In a way she would never have expected to turn her on like this. This bossy/take-charge attitude she found so fucking irritating turning out to be some sort of liberating drug to her. He was doing everything she wanted, and she didn't have to take it for herself. Could pretend she wouldn't ever do this otherwise. Could pretend it was his fault she was betraying her friends, was betraying Mamoru. (Mamoru who, she knew in her heart, would never act like this.) At least here, with this, for this moment, for once, Endymion was taking the guise of responsibility off her shoulders and she could pretend it was never hers to begin with.
It was a sweet release that stood proxy for so many other things she held responsibility over that she'd never wanted to have in the first place.
His breath blew down her trembling throat. "Just like then," he added.
She found his gaze in the mirror. She looked feral. On the brink. She was all flushed red cheeks and painfully pebbled nipples, panting in anticipation, her reflection basically spotted with red blotches of arousal that she couldn't hide with her moonlight complexion at all. Her loose, wild hair a mess against his pristine clothing. She couldn't help the image superimposing itself onto a similar one —messy hair in silver strands instead of gold, the frame of a gilded vanity much more intricate than hers.
It had been so close, that day. Secretly, she'd hoped to be discovered. Anyone might have walked in and found the cock of the Terran Crown Prince where it wasn't supposed to go. He'd held her gaze in the mirror through every desperate thrust. He'd stroked and licked her into a begging mess beforehand, too.
He'd worn the exact same clothes back then. The narrow pants, that stiff black coat with the thick, black silken embroidery that hugged his shape in a way that made her mouth run dry and her eyes run wild. Her prince in mourning even before they had died.
Before he'd met her, Endymion had been untouched. She taught him everything he'd done that day. She'd taught him everything he was doing today.
His lips traced her ear, his eyes a trap. "Do you remember?"
Of course she remembered. How could she not? Her memories may be fuzzy, but things as intense as this were clear as day, even if sometimes they felt like someone else had lived them.
It was him who hadn't remembered for the longest while, not her.
Now he did. At least this part of them, he remembered. Oh, how he remembered.
Flushed and panting, she bucked her hips against his cock and he smirked.
In the mirror, she watched that fucking infuriating smirk and those dark shadow eyes, watched that red mouth breathing harshly, pressed against her temple in arrogant victory as his eyes roamed and took in every buck of her hips, every heaving lift of her chest as his personal achievement.
"More," she begged, and his lips stretched wider.
Instead, he slipped his hand out from her pants. She was ready to bite him if she wasn't too busy gasping a loud, protesting whine.
He blew her a kiss, the asshole.
She inhaled sharply when his hands moved back beneath her shirt, both of them. Fingers pinched hard nipples in synchronicity and she keened before his hands were moving back down, grasping the hem.
In his arms, in this moment, letting him do this, she felt no shame in lifting her arms so high and so willingly to let him stroke her shirt up and away. If he was the one doing it, she wasn't doing it herself. There was no guilt in that, right?
He stripped her like he always stripped her. Like he was unwrapping a present.
Infuriatingly, frustratingly, thankfully, he was one of those people who took their time with that. Stripped her down with his palms hot against her body and with his nose pressed against her skin, humming with way too much relief. Stretching to lift her shirt from her hair as high as it would go and running his hands along the strands, kneeling to peel her feet from her leggings with pressed kisses to her ankles, unperturbed by the insistent erection tenting in his pants all the while like it was the least of his worries.
She melted into it. Fell against him and watched every patch of her revealed body against this broad, hard, dark man in the mirror.
He stripped her down until she was left in nothing but her washed-out, ratty cotton underwear.
He snapped the elastic with one eyebrow lifted in challenge, the curve of his lips an assault on her pulse.
Naked Usagi, dressed Endymion. Dark and menacing and beautiful and 100% her prince in that thick, priceless fabric, the coarse threading of the embroidery along the hems as old as her memories, his eyes as dark as his ancient choice of attire.
Usagi mewled when he let go of her, when his fingers stroked slowly down her legs to bring her panties down, touching them as though he was relieving her of the finest silks. The shiver that ran down her spine when his breath moved hot down her naked skin when he fell to his knees behind her, Endymion trailing Mamoru's hot lips down the back of her thighs and back up her ass, his fingertips stroking so tenderly up her sides it burned her, almost tickled.
Then, fucking finally, he slipped a tapered finger between her folds. Her hand curled into his hair, pulling hard, and he moaned right along with her.
For a solid minute he enjoyed her harsh grip in his hair, while he drew patterns in her wetness right along her impatient, fluttering, greedy, oh-so-empty cunt.
Only when his rhythm stuttered and his body started to shake did he swat her hand away from his hair and back against the vanity. Yanked her thighs apart when she'd clenched them closed around his hand, trying to trap him. He slapped his hand against the inside of her thigh and pulled.
She let him. Shuddering. Staring. Her knuckles white against the vanity and her wetness smearing thick down her thighs.
She stubbornly tried to keep her eyes open. She refused to miss a moment of this, wanted to see his tan hand over her pale skin in the mirror — cupping her, rubbing her, wet fingertips noisy and smacking on wet skin. Her whimper was a bitten back whisper that died in her throat when his eyes bore into hers in their reflection, his finger swirling around her like picking up a tip of whipped cream.
Holding her gaze, his eyes so black and half-lidded, he brought his messy, sticky fingers to his mouth, licked them clean with a gutteral hum of a moan and pulled them from between his lips so slowly, so noisily, only to walk them back down her belly where they belonged.
It was a heady feeling, watching him. Watching him as he kissed her shoulder with wet lips and then moved out of her sight. Moving lower and tracing her spine with his wet mouth. His clothes rubbed against her skin as he slid down her body once more, and her breath stumbled in anticipation. For just a moment, her eyes rolled back into her head and her legs nearly gave out when his tongue parted her folds so-very expertly from behind.
She fell forward. Her hand left imprints on the glass of her mirror, left alone in her reflection. Just her own panting, naked body, heaving in desire and arousal, as if a ghost was pleasuring her (and maybe that was kind of true). She looked good this way. In a way she couldn't put her finger on. In a way she'd always liked to see herself across worlds and lifetimes.
It was almost overwhelming her, the sensation of his tongue licking long strokes from her center to her clit. She was so swollen, so worked up, so sensitive. Biting her tongue to not cry out and tasting copper.
He never entered her. Fucking asshole. His tongue swirling but never dipping. His finger orbiting her clit but never brushing over it. He was pulling her taut but not letting her fall.
She brought a frustrated hand between her legs, straight to her clit, and he slapped it away and back onto her vanity with a loud smack - skin on skin on wood. Held it there and laced his damp hand so surprisingly gently with her dry one when she tried to free it.
She was nearly crying in sweet, sweet sexual frustration when he finally got up, her knees weak, his fingers white around her fierce, squeezing grip on them. Growled at him for the way he still managed to draw it all out so eternally. Fucking tease, pulling at her nipple, licking up her throat and moaning against her skin.
When she reached back this time, he didn't stop her. She probably fucking ripped those pants.
His cock at her entrance had her bite her lip, unable to keep still. His fingers at her clit were just that side of not enough - in the way that fingers that weren't your own were both so frustrating and unpredictable and didn't get it just right, kept her suspended just at the edge. But she supposed this was on purpose, his eyes on hers in her mirror so single-mindedly focused even when his cock was wet and weeping.
And god. It looked so good. They looked so good. So familiar and so right and how could she ever not want this? How could anyone ever ask her to not want this? It was the same image, a vision of her past in her childhood bedroom. She stark naked in front of him, Endymion and that reckless, determined, dark and needy look in his eyes in that exact outfit, cock out and poised at her slit.
It was like traveling in time. Like being transported back to that afternoon in the moon palace. And because this she remembered so vividly, she knew exactly what he was holding out on her. That afternoon so forbidden like all of them, the most prolonged explosion she had ever felt, her orgasm so loud and hard and wrecking, he'd had to clap his hand over her mouth so they wouldn't be found as she came and came and came hanging limp in his embrace, and until the end he'd never even been undressed.
Her breath wobbled in a silent sob and the vanity rattled as she braced herself against it when he took his cock into his fist and stroked, stroked, stroked it up the whole length of her sex, his tip catching in her lips excruciatingly slowly and deliberately, and she violently shook.
But his hand pressed at the small of her back, pressing her down, pressing her away, even when he hissed in pleasure.
"Do you want to let go?" His voice was about half an octave deeper and vibrated through her, and it made her walls fucking ripple.
"Yess," she hissed, bucking. "God yes. Please, yes."
"Hmm," one languid stroke and he hovered at her entrance, the ridge of his tip opening her up, "however shall I be of assistance?"
She shuddered, lips open and gasping and fucking god—
"A good girl like you," a swirl, a dip, and he stroked back up and away and she was ready to sob, to chant, to beg, "whatever could she want from me?"
"Fuck me," she begged.
"Hmmmmm," he hummed again. That fucking smug bastard.
Stroked his cock down her slit, dipping the tip into her almost but not quite, but didn't let himself slip in.
"Not yet, my love," he purred. "You know the spiel."
Hngh.
"I'm already begging," she croaked breathlessly, eyes wild.
"Uh-uh," he hummed, his fingers at her clit, his teeth at her ear, biting down ever-so-softly.
She shuddered violently.
She did know the spiel.
Not until she begged, not until she babbled his name. The 'right one', not the wrong one, at least in his opinion. Never before.
Endymion, always had and always will (just like Mamoru, she was sure of it), really got off on being wanted.
The head of his cock, smooth and hot and wet, swirled against her clit and down to nudge ever so slightly at her entrance that spasmed around nothing, and she babbled.
"Please," she cried. "I want you. So badly. Please, please, please, please."
The slip of his thick, veiny, warm, and pulsing skin against her. The grunts. The way his whole, shaking body pressed down on her so heavily.
She bucked, something fell off her vanity and crashed onto the floor, cheap fashion jewelry scattering like shiny marbles across the hardwood. She didn't care anymore.
"Please," she cried.
But then he stilled. Not in the way that was right, no. He froze.
His eyes in the mirror were no longer on hers. Instead they looked off into the distance with a heavy, frustrated glare. She knew immediately what it was.
"No," she growled, freed herself like she always could have, and backed up against him.
His own hiss was more pitiful, more tortured than hers when her sudden thrust pushed his cock into her all the way, stretching her open and filling her up.
He never pulled back out. Instead he yanked at her chin, pressed a deep and yet too-tender kiss against her lips, and then he disappeared.
Shimmered out of existence and out of her, because Beryl had called him to her.
Cockblocked, she hit the vanity, hit her forehead against the cool wood and grunted in cruel frustration.
Of course she knew what was coming.
She'd had three minutes to calm herself down, and no, she was still ready to throw things. Trembling legs and robbed, her communicator beeped.
Showtime.
"Oh thank god," came the reply over the device once Usagi answered it with some great delay. "We thought he'd got you."
Usagi growled, her frustration momentarily bubbling out of her unobstructed, because that entirely depended on which 'he' she'd meant.
Ami-chan did frown briefly at her. Halting her flow of whatever spotty information they already had on Kunzite's current newest nonsense-plan over a miniature screen long enough to note Usagi's state of upset. Usagi brushed it away, and Sailor Moon's legs pumped against concrete rooftops to get there faster.
'There,' after Ami's instruction, was the old shipping port in Shinagawa, a place she wouldn't ever know or even have noticed in her city if it weren't for the Shitennou's apparent weird affection for it.
Kunzite and his plans. Those always tended to have one directive: lure her in and kill her. Over and over and over again. Most of the time, unsurprisingly, she was the one who stumbled into them (blindly, naively, flushing in shame), not one of the Senshi.
A ghostly-still warehouse by the docks. Steel beams and shipping crates made from corrugated iron sheets in all sorts of colors that all looked gray in the dim light.
When she arrived, Endymion was there floating behind Kunzite. In a stolen tuxedo, no longer in the intricately dramatic outfit he'd left her in minutes before. And unlike her, he looked completely unaffected. With a practiced look that swept over her and didn't linger, as if she was nothing to him. So convincing that, not for the first time, she wondered if she was going crazy and her nightly encounters with Endymion were just a figment of her imagination.
Maybe it was just all clever shadow play in her brain giving her what she wanted. Maybe her mind had cracked under the pressure.
But she wanted Mamoru, not Endymion, her mind whispered, trying to reassure herself. But flashing back to the cocky smile in her mirror, his lips in her hair, his hand between her legs like it belonged there, she wasn't sure if that belief held the same strong conviction it once had, or if parts of her just didn't care as long as some part of him was fucking her, and she hated herself for it.
"Sailor Moon," Kunzite boomed in that drawn-out, pretentious-lower-pitch and stoically dramatic way that screamed violent, authoritative asshole, and Endymion behind him dramatically rolled his eyes the second he started speaking.
But with a flick of his hand, Kunzite had a frightened girl in his arms in blonde pigtails, hand going around her throat not unlike Usagi had been held just half an hour before, just with way less of a gentle touch and way more tears involved. Apparently, this poor, poor girl had walked into the latest scheme designed to lure Usagi in. This poor girl whose only fault it was to share some visible traits with her.
Rei's high heels clicked on the tar beside her, Makoto's glove a comforting weight that directly flew to Usagi's shoulder.
"Please," the girl whimpered, terrified, and Usagi's heart bled for her immediately, tears pricking at her eyes even when she'd been admonished so often not to be so emotional in battle, but she couldn't help it.
Endymion's gaze stayed on her, then.
"Let her go," Sailor Moon shrieked, and automatically fell into her power stance. "I won't forgive you for terrorising innocent women by… doing whatever you did here. In the name of the moon, I'll—"
"It's a shame we didn't find you tonight, Sailor Moon," Kunzite interrupted her speech with disdained arrogance. And with a snap of his fingers and to the static sound of spotlights turning on behind them, the whole thing turned into a sickening horror show.
Each spotlight flickered on to be trained on a bound girl. Ropes and duct tape and tears and muffled whimpers. They were all blonde. They were all about her height and build. They all seemed to be around her age. Spotlight by spotlight, one after the other.
All because of her.
She was already in shocked tears that dripped down her chin when the next spotlight flickered to light and revealed one woman that she very much recognized.
"I'm gonna kill him," Rei growled to the soundtrack of their gasps.
Minako fiercely fought against the massive, coiled fibre ropes that tied her to the beam, her skin visibly angry and red where it chafed against her, her eyes liquid fire.
"Be a good girl," Kunzite boomed down at Sailor Moon in a sickeningly self-satisfied voice, the girl in his arms crying and squirming, Minako glaring murder at the back of his head, "and surrender. If you come freely, none of these girls will be harmed in your name."
While she'd begged to be fucked in her childhood bedroom, somewhere in Tokyo Kunzite had captured Minako and all the women he could find unfortunate enough to share a resemblance with her. The nagging guilt that barked 'your fault,' 'your fault,' was barely something she could silence, barely something she could scream at in her head: 'No, Kunzite's fault. Beryl's fault.'
...Endymion's fault.
Endymion with his smug smile as he made her tremble beneath his touch while this was happening.
She didn't think he did it to distract her. She didn't want to think he might have known. That he might want to keep her safe, she knew that, but that he didn't care if others weren't. But he was evil. He was. She knew that. So...
...Did he know? Was one part of the reason he'd picked tonight, kept her so very occupied, only so Kunzite wouldn't find her? Did he do it because he did not care that others were captured as long as she was ok? Was this one more of his 'solutions' to keep her safe regardless if other people had to suffer for her?
Or did he take his time with her to keep her distracted? Did he do all this so Sailor Moon wasn't around to Moon-Princess-Halation their plans?
Her eyes flew to his angrily. Accusatory. As if he'd been the one to do this.
Endymion held her gaze. But at least the set of his jaw told her that no, no, this wasn't his way either.
"You're an asshole," he said low and biting to Kunzite's back.
"Noted," the bastard said dryly.
Sailor Moon's eyes were a pool of tears. Hot and angry and his gaze didn't help, and the women's whimpers didn't, and Minako's fierce grunts didn't, and Makoto's cackling thunder at her fingertips didn't either.
"And then what?" Sailor Moon shouted up.
"Then we'll see," Kunzite shrugged.
At least it wasn't straight up execution threats this time. Progress.
It was stupid, but it was instict: "Ok," Sailor Moon said, spreading her arms.
She couldn't live with herself if others had to suffer in her stead. It really wasn't even a question in her head. Surrendering came natural to her, after all.
Luna shrieked from god-knows-where, the girls shouted, Endymion's face morphed into hot anger.
But it wasn't the worst plan, she reckoned, she hoped. It was one they'd had before after all. Infiltrate the Dark Kingdom, go willingly (but without the crystal). She did know she had someone down there who wouldn't kill her. It might work?
Kunzite didn't get it. "Ok what?" he repeated.
"Sailor Moon—" Ami's hand at her elbow, Makoto pushed her bodily behind herself, a move to protect Usagi with her own person and she wanted none of that, ever, from no one, least of all those she loved.
Her conviction only grew. "Ok, I'll surrend—" she shouted from behind Sailor Jupiter's back.
"No."
Endymion's voice was a cutting slash through the air echoing off corrugated iron and steel. It was hard and final and cold rage, and Kunzite's face in reaction was almost comical.
Really, she would have liked to have seen this play out. As it was, though, Kunzite barely had the time to whirl around at Endymion, starting that infuriating glare-fest all over.
Because Minako had found the time to free herself, apparently, without anyone noticing, and a red-hot burning love-me chain cut through the dimly lit warehouse and wrapped itself tight and sudden around Kunzite's throat, choking sounds and metal branded hearts into sizzling skin and all. Minako was fucking angry, too, apparently.
Kunzite screamed and dropped the girl (Mako-chan caught her), and then everything happened fast. Shrieks and whimpers picking up in noise and bouncing off the walls. One immediate, unprompted, quick-thinking Shabon Spray later, the whole site was covered in fog, making it even harder to see, and Kunzite groaned and croaked around some expletives before he shimmered away to lick his wounds.
Endymion left, too. Stood there looking at her through the mayhem, then wordlessly, expressionlessly turned and shimmered away as if dissolving with the fog.
Usagi's skin tingled in irritation.
They cut the girls free, one by one. Called emergency services because rope-burn was one thing but shock quite another, stuck around for questions and reassurances until the docksite was no longer deserted at all but alight in the halogen lights of sirens and floodlights reflecting rhythmically off of shipping crates no longer looking gray, women with gold-and-silver space blankets wrapped around their shoulders being led into ambulances.
He found her afterwards. She'd only just tiredly waved goodbye to Sailor Jupiter - when she so briefly passed behind a container building and out of sight and he'd quite apparently waited for the opportunity to snatch her away, like he sometimes did.
It was a weird sensation, being teleported. Even weirder to be used to it by now. The vibrations that pulled at her so fierce and suddenly, as if pulling her apart. Like your skin being stretched and compressed at the same time. She'd half expected him to bring her back into her bedroom, back to her vanity, and if he had, she was pretty sure she would have slapped him.
But he didn't. They rematerialised in some alley she did not recognize but must be somewhere close to home, because behind him, Tokyo Tower glimmered bright and orange-white in the night much closer than it had a moment ago.
"Did you know?" she cried and slapped his hand away.
He turned. Seemingly calmly, yet his eyes were a storm. He didn't attempt to touch her again.
He enunciated every word slowly. "Did I know what?"
"This!" she gestured wildly. The kidnapped women, the ropes, the docks, the everything. Of course it didn't make sense now that he'd changed their location. "That he was doing this!"
He frowned at her, towered over her, tuxedo and cape and no mask and no hat, and it made her flush in horror that he did not answer.
She walked up, angry. Shoved him. "He went too far," she cried.
He barely budged under her assault. Head tilted down at her, unmoving. But when his quiet, calm, "I agree," found her ears, it took the fight right out of her.
She dragged the palms of her gloves across a pristine white waistcoat that did not belong to him, not really, and let go.
Of course he agreed. Evil or not, he had principles. He didn't hit Mako-chan back when he could have. He helped her when things got too close. He didn't harm a hair on her head, even though he had so much opportunity to do so. But...
He bowed his head down at her, but didn't touch. He never touched her when she didn't want him to. Never had and never would.
His eyes were liquid regret. "I'm sorry, my love," he whispered.
Her hand at her mouth, stifling a sob, and he turned to leave, but stopped at a distance.
He spoke with his back turned. "I didn't," he said.
She started, confused. Wiped at her angry tears.
His hair shifted across his forehead when he turned back to her, backlit by the bright silhouette of Tokyo Tower. "I didn't know he was doing this," he promised.
She hated herself for the bone-deep relief she felt.
She didn't dare ask if he would have prevented it, had he known. She didn't know if she could handle the answer to it, regardless of what it might turn out to be.
Neither did she tell him to stay, and he shimmered away as if he'd never been there.
So as I said, I'm a little rusty lol. But I'm doing my best and I'm hope you guys are still here with me. Next up, we'll go back in time, and I'll tell you how all this came to be. Thanks to anyone who's reading!