A/N:

Title from that one Hozier song I can't shake.
Sometimes I wonder if my stories can live up to my pretentious titles.
Unbetaed.

He welcomes the embrace of death as the knife plunges deep into his heart because this is not the end.

Not for him.

Not for them.

He wakes up one day and realizes that he has to fucking breathe in order to properly function; the basic human action he has lived without for the past millennia returning full force as he gulped in lungfuls of air could only mean one thing.

She's close.

He should've known something was amiss the night before, when his eyes, after an eternity of wakefulness, started to droop down and blissful darkness dragged him to sleep.

It won't be long now before he turns into a complete mortal.

He has to act.

They call her Hooper now.

As far as last names go, this is the silliest one he has heard on her yet. But it suits her, his Molly. The name rolling of his tongue just as easily as it did all those years ago.

It's almost instantaneous, the way his energy leaves him as he makes his way towards her.

His vision darkens until all he could see are her soft lines and auburn hair.

As his feet take him closer, he experiences that same magnetic force that sparked in him when he first laid eyes on her. For a moment, he's overcome by a deep insatiable hunger for her touch, her lips, her breathless sighs because she's made for him and him for her and that is how it's always supposed to be.

But he changed the game and everything went to shit.

Scorn, malice, hate, lust, and hunger gave birth to him and thrown him into existence. A beautiful manifestation of the perversions of the world rolled into a god dressed in finery, black, and blood.

He spreads his long limbs all over the world, reaching corners and casting the strongest of shadows where mortals live. His web extends where the pathetic mud monkeys exist, turning men's eyes to dark, beady, marbles – raising monsters in their souls. He hardly needs to do much – a whisper here, a conveniently placed knife there are all they ever needed.

He owns every one of them, is every one of them, save for one.

He learns of her existence through the fearful whispers of those who fall prey to his beasts; the one final word they utter just before the darkness takes them.

Molly.

He laughs at the pathetic incredulity of her name and yet he can't help but repeat it over and over again.

Singing the two short notes in the air, he searches for her.

His hands burn as he touches the gates of her small Eden.

He has been skirting the edges of her garden for days now. Not one to be deterred by miniscule inconveniences, he prods and tests the area for cracks he could slither into, his skin melting down to the bone in the attempt.

He marvels at the way his flesh knits itself into place, wisps of smoke still rising from where he's been burned.

Could she be another god? Another him?

Curious.

He squints, tries to make out the hazy images beyond the wall to no avail.

There are days where he pretends she has let him in, when her invisible barriers finally welcome him in her fold.

He wonders about her voice and who she is.

Were they borne out of the same devices?

Is she alone too?

He keeps piecing her in his head, building an image of her with the small fragments he could find.

And then the gates opened.

He finds himself taking the hand she offers as she stand beyond the threshold. For a moment, he's speechless, not quite reconciling himself with the reality of the woman before him

One thing rang through his head, as he followed her.

I'm no longer alone.

She holds him, lets him lie on her chest and suddenly the weight of his existence vanishes.

With her he could simply just be.

It's when he suckles on her exposed breast or lies between her legs that he feels the most human and dangerously mortal.

It's so wickedly addicting, taking the air from her lips in greedy kisses full of tongue and teeth, knowing she has the power to end his life should she wrap her hands around his neck.

But she doesn't.

So he marks her neck, mine he growls, and loses himself inside her over and over again.

After centuries spent next to her, he walks the earth once more, just to check how the little meatsacks are doing.

He steps out of the garden and looks in horror as the traces of his web look like mere dust in the air. He tries to wake his shadows but they won't respond to his call.

He wails and unearths the world, desperately finding the innate madness in men and clings to it for dear life.

Slowly his web wraps around him once more, feels the hate seep into his skin, and builds his world again.

Secure in the knowledge that his dominion will still be waiting for him, he returns to her.

This time, it's he who sheds his skin as he enters her gates, surprised that he could still come in.

He finds her sleeping where he left her, skin softly touched by starlight. Gradually, she opens her eyes, looks up at him and says "You're back."

He kneels and gathers her, wrapping his arms around her body.

"I am" he responds, his voice cracking just a little.

He kisses the crown of her head. Tries to imprint the notes of lavender and heat into memory before his blade slides smoothly into her back.

He thinks he shed a tear for her that night.

He's not quite sure.

It's when he thinks he has forgotten the way her chest heaves in exertion or the sounds and sighs she make when he takes her that she reappears again.

If she remembers him or not he doesn't know nor care. But he goes to her, takes her, and kills her again.

He loses and gains a piece of his humanity in equal measure every time he kills her.

He takes comfort in the fact that she will walk the earth again. Still the same beautiful creature he has laid claim to when time began. His body burns in anticipation, looks forward to the day he gets to take her life again.

It's the one flaw the gods of old has given them.

It's their gift.

And their curse.

His eyes see red and his being is filled with blinding rage, waves of electricity threatening to spill from his fingertips when he sees a pale arm curl itself on the small of her waist.

This can't be right.

In all the years they've played this game, she has never, not fucking once, taken a lover because he is in her bones, in her core, because his name sings in her very soul. She should be pulling away from the man and instead she leans into the stranger's touch.

He could barely suppress the urge to slice off the offending limb right there and then.

He doesn't need to see her skin to know that the dusting of freckles all over her body is the exact mirror of the constellations in the night sky. But he wants to. He wants to map out all the patterns that chronicled the downfall and the victories of heroes with his tongue and create new graves and battlefields with his nails. It's utterly maddening how his hands itched to dig into her skin.

He wants to see her body shake like earthquakes that threatened and swallowed whole civilizations.

But he has to take her first.

End Notes:

Originally written on 04/20. Ha.

I'm a little peeved that I can't tag multiple pairings on FFnet. I hope that gets fixed soon.
Uploaded again because fuck if my sleep addled self deems it okay at 7am then I'm posting it.

Listened to Broken Bones by Kaleo while I edit this.
So good.
What do you think? [seriously, lemme know]
Thanks for reading.

Up next: Conversations in the Sitting Room [should be up soon]