we all (have a) hunger

A/N: Features my reimagining of canon lore and characters. This... thing should be for a later story, but I get ahead of myself.

This is heavily(?) influenced by Anne Carson's "The Company of Wolves" because that work is just... *chef's kiss* I read it back in high school for literature class, and I was fifteen, and that was one of the works that formed my taste and style in writing smut.

(Originally posted on AO3, where my more... "adult" works are posted. But I don't think this violates the site's guidelines, so I'm posting it here too.)


At heart, Zeke Yeager believes he is a hedonist.

"One would think the Beast would be more animal than man."

Alternatively, primal urges and primal encounters.


At heart, Zeke Yeager believes he is a hedonist. He takes pleasure in life, whether in the simple things such as a warm mug of coffee in the morning or a fresh pack of cigarettes, or in the more complex pleasures, the more natural and basal desires, such as wine and steak for dinner, or a glittering string of gold, or even a warm body to keep him company.

As the Boy Wonder of his younger days, people wouldn't pay him any mind. He wasn't anything worth gawking at, and if they did give him anything, it was looks of disdain and disapproval. Him, the weakest of them all, inheriting the most versatile Titan in Marley's arsenal? That must be the joke of the century. And it was only when he became the Warrior Unit's own War Chief, did he get the respect he deserved.

(...the respect that should be rightfully his, as the heir to the throne of Eldia, the only son born to the would-be empress Dina Fritz.)

As the War Chief, he is praised and he is raised. He is better than all of them, more powerful than any of them, and more valuable. The blood that flows in his veins is magical, they had said, and the fluid kept in the hardy bones of his spine is exquisite. He is something to be coveted, something the military holds in high regard, despite his tainted lineage of beasts and monsters–devils, they are called.

He is someone–something–desirable. He is young, younger than most of the military's top brass, and he has his mother's good looks and his father's sharp intellect. Sometimes, they would flock to him, Eldian men and women alike, just to hear his voice, to be in his very presence. As if he would bring luck and goodwill to their own sad, pathetic lives. He stands tall, with board shoulders and the bones of the mighty Beast itself, with eyes that could almost shine like gold in the sun.

(And this is something he will get used to, he thinks, once he's fulfilled his dear mother's ambition, once he's claimed his birthright.)

And this is why the Marleyan soldiers fear him, he thinks, why they look past his shoulder and beyond him, like they want him to disappear. He is their Warrior Unit's War Chief, hurtling stones and bombs to dismantle enemy lines and pierce through fortresses and strongholds. He is the Beast that keeps the Titans together, like an alpha in a pack of wolves, those rabid and ferocious creatures. He is the incarnate, the man in a monster's skin–or is it the other way around? Without him, what would the military be?

(Destroyed, dismantled, crushed–reduced to nothing. Just like his mother had wanted.)

Zeke Yeager lights a cigarette between his lips and sits upright in a bed that is not his. It is abundant in its trappings, with all the decorative pillows that could fit in a bed; it is superfluous and unnecessary, terribly tacky, juvenile, naive. This room is too, with all the gilded figurines and shining statuettes placed on display; he feels this is more like a museum than a room, more a toy factory than a personal quarters.

Right. Because the woman who owns the room is a new brand of nobility in Marley, an Eldian commoner who'd just been granted the grace of the Grand Emperor himself and went out of their way to plaster it all over the walls, floors, and ceilings. He sniffs. The paint smells new, the carpet smells old–so, they're not that wealthy.

The woman is sleeping beside him now, snuggled about his legs and snoring like a pig. She's young too, young and pretty, with a tight cunt and pouty lips, and would do anything to have a husband like him–decorated War Chief of the Marleyan military, and that was the problem.

Well, not a problem, really. It's just a matter of preference, a matter of perspective. Priorities, even. His priorities.

(Because, when one is meant to be king–no, emperor–will he settle for anything less?)

There are many women like her, many men too, who would willingly tear and claw and even kill to be with him, to be his. And he thinks he's seen them all, probably even tasted them all, with their grabby hands and desperate moans, all clamoring and clenching and crying for their names to be on his tongue–

"Zeke, Zeke, Zeke!"

They chanted his name like he is their god–"God will strengthen me!" Like he is their retribution, a salvation of things to come. They are desperate, needy and willing, and ever-hungry for his acknowledgement. They are thirsty for the recognition, for the time that he would so freely give them what they need. Is he like a god in that regard, then? Is he no longer the Beast Devil bound in invisible chains by Marley, their cursed homeland? Is he like God, even, this God that had created both man and monster?

(And is he a hungry God? A God whose medium and method of sacrifice is through the body–his own and theirs–and the carnal, hedonistic ritual by which he takes his fill, sometimes too much and rarely too little, of the flesh of his humbled worshippers?)

And when he spills his seed–shining white-gold in the moonlight, in the candlelight–is it only just? All over their bodies, their faces, into their mouths, but never between their legs–was it what they deserved? What they wanted? Do they wish, deeply, to bear to him a child, an image of his likeness, a vessel of his people's taint, a brand-new carrier of his devil, demonic, dirty blood–

But no news of such a thing ever comes to him. It is as if he is cursed, more so than all the others, that he will foster no children and die as his own lineage is dried out and uprooted from the world. Still, he gives them that illusion, that feeling, that filth of his own come; and it makes them... happy. He fucks and he fucks, like a bitch in heat, more animal than man, and they allow him, welcome him and hold him as he does.

Because he is the Beast, the War Chief, the Boy Wonder, Zeke Yeager.

(..the savior and successor, heir of the Fritz throne, Eldia's true king, the emperor in rags...)

And when he meets her, when she is introduced to them–limbless and gagged like a rogue Titan Shifter–does he see a potential.

"I present to you the Ancient Colossal, right-hand of the Ruler of Paradis, Chronicler and Archivist of The Walls, the Burning Behemoth of the Devil Herself."

It is when he hears its titles, all sounding fantastical and bringing shame to his meager own–no, it is when he hears her name that he sees this potential, this temptation, this long-drawn and achingly ancient desire.

(Could this be what had foiled all his ancestors all those centuries ago? That the Devil Herself had come in the form of flesh, only to destroy, taint, and devour all of the known world?)

But he sees her eyes, dull and disinterested, and he thinks it to be impossible. What a waste of power, what a waste of potential. What a waste, such a waste.

The War Council erupts in a chorus of murmurs and mutterings. They don't believe it, they don't believe whoever brought her to them, like she was chicken bones on a silver platter, a gift horse with two bad legs. But when gag is removed and she is told to speak, she says only one thing:

"I am at your service, generals."

She holds her head high, far above them all, and that is when he realizes it. Her eyes, those that shine like the barrel of a gun at night, are no mere soldier's eyes.

The Beast recognizes the eyes of a Titan.

A god.


The wolf is carnivore incarnate; once he's had a taste of flesh then nothing else will do.