In which we learn Griffin's origins and the events that made him who he has become. Some steamy and violent moments with Balakai after to try and drive away the memories.
CONTENT WARNINGS: drowning, death, period typical transphobia, blood, self destructive behavior, rough sex.
Word Count: 4725
Griffin had always had a thing for blondes. Christian, with his piercing pale eyes and shy brilliance. Julian, who had seemed much the same when Griffin had met him. Maybe that was what had drawn him to the witch in the first place, echoes of that first love that had been the soul of him. And the damnation of everything. Even now, he didn't actually regret anything. Not that he'd loved him, at least. Christian had loved him just the same and even as children there had been a special kind of magic between them. When he'd see him on his way back from Sunday service with his family and the pale eyes would find Griffin’s as he sat with his mother and brothers making flower chains in the morning sunlight. Christian would smile just for him and it would be warmer than the sun.
They'd never spoken much. Christian was shy, but when he did it would be poetry. He took time to open up, but would ask pointed questions when Griffin would lure him out into the wild. Questions about plants and stars and, when the Magistrate's eldest son was feeling very brave, about bits of magic. Griffin had stopped wearing skirts when he was ten and Christian had said nothing. They'd shared a first kiss when they'd been twelve, and by sixteen they were lovers.
Griffin remembered when men had come demanding his mother turn over her wicked daughter. And how his mother had stood before them, strong and fearless as she reminded them that she had no daughters and unless they wished their crops to fail and their wives to birth their neighbors bastards, they could get off of her land and never return. He'd been afraid then, still a child in so many ways, because he hadn't really understood what he'd done wrong. Why they were so angry. Christian loved him, always had. Didn't everyone know that?
It wasn't as if he hadn't known that for a man to lay with a man was forbidden by the faith of the people of Salem town. That hadn't stopped them. He knew of the widows Smith and Mark who lived down the lane. They were lovers to be sure and everyone ignored it. And Captain Birch who was married but had no children because he stole often to the priest's when there was moon enough to make the trip. Griffin had not understood when they all did much the same, why his love was so wrong. He had cried into his mothers apron and she had held him tight, brushing his long hair from his face and whispering comfort.
"People will always find a reason to hate, my beautiful boy. The fault is not yours. You have a wild heart and it is both blessing and bane." Her voice was rich magic and he loved her with a fierceness that was bright. One of his fathers had been taken by a winter illness when he'd been only five and his memories of him had been vague at best, and the other, David, had died for some aristocrat’s whim three years after that. He'd known that his parents loved one another dearly and true. Their home in England had been full of laughter and love. It was after their deaths, and that of his oldest brother, that his mother had sold everything and set them on a course to the New World to start over. She'd taken them to a place to be safe so that they need not spend their lives on magic for others without the freedom to say no.
There were nights, like this one, when he could still hear the sound of her voice, feel her hands caress his back and whisper the secrets of the moon. He'd taken best of his brothers to magic and learned voraciously. He'd been only eleven when his gran had announced that she had nothing more to teach him. Two years later, his mother too. Still he had wanted more. He knew that there were spirits who could teach. Dark stars too that had the knowing of things. The faery and the deathless kinds. He'd learned of all of the secrets of the folk beyond human ken, of men who wore the lives and skins of beasts, of even greater powers still who were the very incarnations of elements and of Life and Death. Griffin had taken to the learning of all that the world had to offer like a man starving and none of it had ever been enough to fill him. There had always been another secret to unlock. Another forbidden knowledge brought into the light.
His mother had always cautioned him, though she did not stop him. He would catch a kind of sorrow on her face sometimes, as if she could see the path that might stretch before him and she mourned for the knowledge that he would not change it. Through it all, there was beautiful, kind Christian who was nothing like his father for all that the stoic and cruel man tried to forge him so. Christian wanted to be an apothecary, for he loved the things that grew and the knowledge of how to help the hurts of people. He learned much from Griffin's family and he was always happiest, it seemed, when they were out in the world collecting herbs and samples.
Then the night arrived when Christian came, frantically knocking at his widow, lip split and one eye black and swelled shut.
"We have to go, Griffin. My father means to kill you." His voice had been ragged, but mother night how he'd beamed with fierce beauty, the defiance of him illuminated by the moonlight shining in the spun gold of his hair. "He arranged a marriage for me and I'll have none of it and told him so. I love only you."
Griffin had felt his heart swell and break, fingers curling into Christian's as he'd let him drag him out into the night with only the clothes he'd hastily thrown on.
"Silly Christian. I always expected you'd take a wife and have many fat babies. Means nothing to me when your heart is mine. And even if you loved her, that doesn't make your love for me lesser to it. My mother loved both of my fathers. Hearts are bigger than people think." He remembered laughing as if that should have been self-evident. The desperation in the other boy's voice had been so lovely and to be loved so fiercely was beautiful. He hungered to hear it all the days of his life.
They'd fled into the night, fast as legs could carry them, but they had been young and ill prepared. It had taken only a day and a night for the townspeople to catch up with them, catching them in sleep so that Griffin could not use magic to protect them. They'd been dragged back, but not taken to town proper. They'd taken them, bound, back to Griffin's family land and he'd gotten to see the burned out husk of what was left. The bodies of his family left to rot, their funeral shrouds the wings of crows.
The Magistrate waited for them, cold and damning, beside the large pond that stood not far from the house. How many afternoons had they lain by the water and gaze up at the cloudless sky, just fingers twined in fingers? It all seemed so long ago now. All Griffin could feel was the icy dread of what was to come, because he knew what came next. The tall, puritan man said nothing as the other men brought his son and his wayward lover back.
"You have bewitched my son and I can think of only one way to rid him of this spell. You are consigned to the depths, witch, and God have mercy on your damned soul."
"Better hope he does," Griffin hissed over the gag in his mouth, "Because I will not."
Even now, he remembered little of what happened next. He knew that they had put him in a boat and he'd heard Christian's screaming from the shore, a madness like he'd never before heard from him. He recalled them shackling him to a large rock and the priest blessing him. They'd put a sack over his head so he had no real idea how he got there, but he heard Christian's voice and had felt the click as he'd shackled himself in beside Griffin. Then the boat had turned over and they'd gone into the water. It was deep and dark, cold that settled into bones and soul and as they had descended the bag came loose so that he could see the beautiful blonde beside him. Christian had reached out and caressed his cheek and he'd screamed what little air he'd had left, seeking his lips and trying to call any magic to mind that could save him. Griffin didn't so much care about himself, but he would burn the world to save Christian; to get vengeance on those who had murdered his family and left this boy with the feeling that this was his only option.
They'd drown side by side.
And then Griffin awoke, and drown again.
And again.
And again.
All with Christian's lifeless corpse there to remind him of all that he had lost.
He wasn't sure how long that went on until he'd woken one time on the shore with Velorum looking down at him with a very perplexed look in his sharp featured face and the depths of compassion that had never changed. Griffin had half-mad and all monster. He'd found the magic he needed to do as he'd promised; made them all pay for destroying his life and taking Christian. He'd taken particular delight in murdering the Magistrate. He'd lost himself in it, the blood and darkness and a hatred so deep that it felt as if there were no end to it. He'd burned away decades, a century in it, and in it he had grown strong.
Very strong.
In time, his wrath played out. The New World became more populated, Sinclaires and Round Table and powers finding their way over so that he could not simply do as he pleased without restraint anymore. He'd traveled, seen all that the wide world had to offer such as he, and found new wells of power. He was ever hungry.
He'd met Julian and he'd been so like Christian that it had been agony. It had hit him so hard, recalled feelings that he'd thought long ago dead and ash. Sweet and shy and beautiful. Only this was not colonial Salem. It was modern Boston and there was none to tell them that they could not be together. He had wanted him with a fire that near consumed him, this man who seemed like salvation from the past.
He could still feel the memory of Julian's hands on him, the gentle sound of his voice in his ear when he woke, night still deep around them and the demon curled beside him.
Balakai's eyes glowed in the darkness of the room, curled up where he was high on the pillows near Griffin's head. His knees were drawn up to his chest, skin pale in the shadows where it peaked out from under the blanket he'd stolen. When he saw Griffin was awake, he tilted his head a little to one side.
"You were making noise in your sleep." His voice was a low murmur, as if in deference to the close and quiet dark around them. If Griffin had woken him, there was no trace of sleep lingering on the hellhound. Only a sort of waiting alertness, an uncanny stillness to his body like a strange sphinx. He hardly appeared to breathe; the little streetlight trickling into the room casting overly harsh shadows on the definition of his muscles, offering an exaggerated strangeness to him. The shadows of night curled around him like ink, painted on by the brush of a mad artist.
For a long few breaths, Griffin did not move. Only watched him with an unreadable expression on his face.
"Dreams," he said in a strained voice. He pursed his lips and then moved slowly, rising to hands and knees as he closed the distance between them. His eyes were dark, little color in the usual brightness of them, and his heart beat a little too fast. There was something fey and burning about him, wild and dark. One hand slid up along Balakai's shoulder to his throat where he pressed just a little too hard and he leaned in to kiss him. It was more teeth than lips and no softness.
His dreams were always pleasant, but that did not make them any less cruel. To recall the beautiful sound of Christian's rare laughter and the feel of Julian's fingers through his hair and along his skin. He wanted it gone. The echoes of it, the memories that made his whole chest ache with a kind of agony that he could not escape. He wanted the drag of claws and sharp teeth and anything to make him forget that he had ever been soft.
Balakai rolled onto his back under Griffin's touch, all sinuous grace. His head tilted, baring his throat as his breath hissed through the tightness of the witch's grip. Limbs uncurled smoothly, hands sliding over his shoulders in a drag of nails and his legs nudged between the witch's. Arched under him with a rumble that was not quite a growl as he kissed him back.
Hungry.
His fingers slid into Griffin's hair, tightened in the auburn strands and dragged the witch's head back hard from the kiss.
"You should dream of me," he demanded, voice not any louder but rough with the edge of growl. He lunged up, as though being on his back was no real disadvantage, and sharp teeth grazed the pale throat his grip forced the taller man to bare, just breaking the skin.
"Make me," Griffin challenged darkly. He made a little pained sound as the teeth drew blood and the pain sparked heat at the core of him. He strained under the hand in his hair, fingers tightening on the demon's throat. His free hand braced him over Balakai so that he could strain to look for that blood red in his eyes. He knew better than to trust the silk of him, and the sound of his voice was warning. And he craved it. The violence and danger and destruction. Anything to chase away the ghosts who haunted him still.
Nails dug into Griffin's shoulder, sharp as sin, and dragged down. Opened lines the length of his back, until his hand found rest on his hip and his nails stayed buried in the witch's flesh. His other hand stayed in the witch's hair, fisted tight. Using his grip, he twisted them in the bed with a sudden buck of his body, swapping their positions. He leaned hard into the hand tight on his neck, though it made the snarl in his throat sound strange for want of air.
"I'm not killing you tonight." His teeth flashed, bright and sharp in the darkness. "I don't want to wait for you to come back."
"You don't have to kill me to hurt me," Griffin moaned into the nails down his back and he could feel the way his skin wept blood into the heather gray of the sheets, staining them scarlet beneath him. The pain of it was centering and he arched into him, ground against his hips above him, the wild of his expression savage. His nails bit into the skin of Balakai's throat, his other hand dragging down his chest above him to grope the hardness of him.
This time when Griffin's grip tightened, the demon gave a violent twist of his head and shoulders to break the hold and instead caught Griffin's wrist in his teeth and bit down. His teeth sank deep into flesh and bones squeezed, but stopped shy of breaking. He shifted to drive a knee into the soft skin of under his thigh using the force of it and his grip on Griffin's hip to curl the witch a little in on himself, forcing him to scrunch smaller under the shorter demon.
He dropped his hips, let the head of his hard cock slide down between the lips of Griffin's cunt, and then lower, dragging Griff's wetness and his own pre. His hand left Griffin's hair and instead reached down under to slide his fingers through the blood, gathering it up so he could coat himself in it. With no more slickness than that he drove his hips forward.
Griffin howled, the shock and agony of it running up his spine like lightning as his asshole screamed at the force of him entering. His whole body curled in and tears sprang instantly to his eyes, an involuntary reaction, to be sure. He couldn't do anything more than try and make himself breathe, try to force air into his lungs that had near shut down from the shock of the violent insertion, his hands gone to claws as he just clung to the demon's shoulders. He didn't fight, couldn't speak, just existed to be used. Right now, he didn't really have any interest in existing.
His back was slick with blood, the furrows that Balakai had ripped into him bleeding freely, now the friction of their motion drove them into the bed and it was like fire. Everything hurt; his chest where he was trying to breathe, the bite at his throat, his back, the way he was being stretched mercilessly, and god if he was ever going to stop him. He wouldn't. This was what he wanted, needed.
It hurt, but Balakai savored the roughness of it, the too-much of the friction as skin dragged against skin. He let go of the witch's wrist and dropped his brow to his shoulder, back arched as he wrecked him with short, hard thrusts. Forcing his way in, aided by the fact that despite the pain the witch pushed back into him. It was a heady thing. He could smell the pain of it, radiating off him in waves and yet also the want. The desire for self-destruction. Despite his own words there was ever a strong desire to set teeth to his throat, to hear his howls and screams die to whispers as his teeth closed down on the delicate column.
He huffed a hard breath against Grif's shoulder, dug his teeth into the meat where neck met shoulder, to satiate his need for something in his jaws. Worried the flesh into a bloody mass but didn't bite so hard as to shred deeply into muscle. The hard slap of his hips against Griffin's ass gradually became a little more fluid as the friction eased and movement became easier. It pushed him to pick up his speed with sharp, quick thrusts. This wasn't a thing meant to last long.
"Yesssssss," Griffin hissed, a broken and helpless sound. He wasn't strong enough to fight against the demon even if he’d wanted to, and his whole body shivered at the heat and pain of the teeth on his shoulder. He could feel the sharp of them, the way that he just knew how hard the demon had to work not to just kill him anyway. He wondered a little if he would. If he would just give up on restraint and end him in fucking agony.
There was no pain that he could not endure. In the end, it all came back around and then he was brought here, where he was flush with heat and pleasure because the lines between the two were just too thin to really exist at all. He cried aloud, broken and pained and exultant all at the same time. It chased away the echoes of a life that was long lost and the brightness of moments that were so much worse than this. Because though he was a monster, Balakai wasn't lying.
There was a delight in that Griffin seemed to have no moderation. He was either stone cold or wildly, extravagantly turned on. It was exhilarating. He reacted with no mask and no buffer most of the time, no attempt at moderation. It made Balakai be the one to moderate, which was...well. Unusual. Interesting. The fact that he didn't have to moderate, but chose to do so, was also novel.
To the music of Griffin's cries, his pleasure rose and peaked, all at once as he hilted himself deep. Shuddered and involuntarily dug his nails in a little harder, bit down just a little more as though to keep him in place as he filled him. After a long moment, he released him and pulled free with an abrupt jerk, making a low little sound before he dropped onto the sheets, eyes and limbs heavy with contentment as he licked the blood from his lips and teeth.
Griffin gave a noise that was cut short when Balakai bit down harder, shuddering without the relief of release. He felt the demon climax and he was helpless, breathless, and senseless. His ears rang, body aching and bloody, and still he would have given more.
He peeled himself from the stained sheets and moved to straddle the spent demon, undamaged hand sliding between his legs to finish himself with a wracking shudder on top of him. The demon huffed a soft laugh when the witch straddled him, eyes alight with quiet, possessive pleasure. He reached up and ran his hands down Griffin's chest, leaving blood painted on his fair skin, playing with what trickled down from the wound on his shoulder. It did not take long and Balakai caught him as he collapsed, easing him back down to the bed beside him so the witch stayed in contact with him, skin to skin. Legs tangled together.
After some time, as he gradually came down from the high of good sex, the demon turned his head to look at Griffin. "Do you have like... a first aid kit? Or do I need to pop down to the shop to get something to patch you up? I said I wasn't killing you tonight and that includes letting you die from bleeding out. Much as you'd probably like it."
"I don't actually enjoy dying, just being dead," Griffin corrected when he had enough breath to answer, body limp, though his gaze was turned to the ceiling. His expression had settled back to something that was hard to read. Still. Quiet. His brows knit a little when he shifted to make sure the blood did not stick him to the bed, because it would hurt like hell if he moved and he wasn't interested in that without the rush of sex to temper it. "And you didn't do enough to bleed me out this time."
He could have though. Griffin never forgot that. And when he wanted to, Balakai would. Of that he had no doubt.
The witch gave a slow sigh and pushed himself up on the hand that wasn't well mangled, elbow giving way once before he properly got himself sitting. He looked over his shoulder at the demon spread out in the darkness, but if he'd had any thoughts he kept them to himself. Instead he rose and moved very carefully, his back and neck absolutely screaming in pain. It made him shiver.
"I'm taking a shower. There's a first aid kit under the sink. I'll deal with it after." His voice still held a strange note, but he didn't turn back around. He didn't shut the bathroom door either, just levered on the water to a temperature he could stand and got in, water turning instantly red with the rivulets of blood that rained down his skin from the furrows in his back and the bites at hand and neck. Griffin closed his eyes and just leaned against the cold tile wall, letting the water run over him.
"Not like I know the difference. Humans are fragile." Balakai yawned and snuggled down, only to wrinkle his nose when he accidentally hit the rapidly cooling blood stain. He squirmed away from the stickiness of it. He didn't mind blood, but he much preferred it hot from a living body, not cooling on the bed. As Griffin started the shower, he roused himself enough to strip the sheets and go hunting up the clean set from the laundry.
This was getting to be a habit, he mused as he finished remaking the bed and nudged open the door to the bathroom. Him changing sheets while Griffin showered, then joining him. Though he supposed that twice didn't make it a habit. Just a coincidence. He stepped into the shower between the witch and the water, reaching over to crank the heat up to scrub the blood and sex off his own skin. Only when he felt fairly clean did his attention turn to the witch. He pointed to the toilet.
"Sit. You can't reach your back and the last thing you're going to do is let that shit get infected. That stinks."
Griffin almost snarled when the water went hot and ran like fire down the claw marks in his back where it hit him around the demon. He'd almost fallen back to sleep standing and for a flicker of a moment he'd forgotten entirely that he wasn't alone in the house. He wasn't actually accustomed to having anyone in his space. For a night, perhaps. A week at most. Millie was the only one with whom he'd lived in a long time and she knew better.
For a moment he almost rebelled, almost didn't sit because the demon had told him to. It made his skin itch to take a breath and not be a shit just for the sake of defiance.
"Sepsis is a horrible way to die," he added a little flatly, grabbing a towel from the bar and wrapping it about his middle, mostly to keep the water from pooling on the floor than because he had any sense of modesty in the least. He turned his back to Balakai, long hair mostly obscuring his face.
Balakai turned off the water and grabbed a towel for himself, just scrubbing the worst of the wet off his skin before he used the rest of it to pat dry the wounds, actually trying not to abrade them too much. The bleeding was sluggish at least, and he was trying not to make it worse. He fished the first aid kit from under the cabinet and used a combination of butterfly bandages, gauze, and copious amounts of medical tape to hold the long lines of gouged skin together and to cover the more aggressive mauling of shoulder and hip. Once the worst of it was seen to, he caught Griffin's chin from behind and forced his head back to put a bandaid over the nip he'd left on his throat. Griffin sat very still under the ministrations of the demon, not making a sound even though it hurt like hell. Not that he had a terribly intimate knowledge of what hell felt like, only in his associations with its denizens.
"There. I'm going back to sleep." He left the trash and blood stained towel for Griffin to deal with and padded back to the bedroom, crawling back to the nest of pillows near the headboard that was his preferred place to sleep.
It was not lost on Griffin that Balakai could have just ignored him and hadn't. And that he hadn't had to ask about the bed. That gave him pause as he stepped back into the bedroom, gaze thoughtful as he studied him assuming what he had come to accept was his spot on the bed. He hesitated, almost joining him, but then he veered off to dig a boxers and a pair of jeans out of a drawer, adding a black tee and socks, slipping into a pair of black Van's. He didn't grab his car keys off the dresser, but left without another word, hair still wet.
