Chapter Text
...They tend to leave the lights on, most nights. Most nights.
But tonight she waits at a bar for him to get finished with rehearsal. He had been trying out something new and it went well, he is in a good mood, and she's just particularly lovely this evening, while he watches her through the window of the bar, and he likes to look at her, likes to admire from afar sometimes, to look at what's his.
(And she is, she's his, she said the words, she put on his ring, even if maybe she didn't all the way understand who and what she was giving herself to. It doesn't matter. It's alright, because he's hers, his woman clothed with the sun, the beast with many names curled up around her size five doc martens, content with a kiss and a sweet word. The peaceable kingdom.)
But he does like to look, sometimes, and she's deep in a conversation with a man, and she's warming to her subject, she's always so warm, and she's getting that look on her face, like she's lit up from within, the look that made him fall for her in the first place. (Fall in love, surely. Among other kinds of falling.)
He can see this man being drawn in, drawn to her, because of course he is, who wouldn't want to walk towards the light? Very well. She is still so sweetly naive about some things, his precious Sophie, not knowing what it is to covet. He smiles a little to himself and slips inside, and she still hasn't seen him, but he goes to collect that which belongs to him, and he can see now that she's seen the way this man is looking at her, and she is less than pleased. Well, here is her handsome husband, to sweep her away, to take her home and curl around her, to warm her with his skin and hear her call him by his many names. (And now among his names are these: sweetheart and darling and babe and honey and sugarpie and babydoll and sweetness and baby baby baby. He loves these names she has given unto him, each more precious than the last.)
And then this man touches her.
This man touches her, puts his actual hands on her actual living skin, and it's nothing, it's a brush of her shoulder, but he sees her, his precious Sophie, his wife, he sees her flinch.
This would be the end of the man, this unfortunate son of Adam, but they are in a public place. There are people. He might also have to end these people. And to end this man, these people here would be to bring down the little life they have built together.
More importantly, it would hurt Sophie.
It would hurt her, to see his fangs and his claws, although he is (almost) sure she would love those, too, as she loves the rest of him. It would hurt her more to see him rend and tear, to watch him inflict the terrible vengeance due to anyone who would dare to lay a hand on her. It would hurt her.
He would open his very veins before he would hurt her, before he would allow her to be hurt. He would chew himself to pieces, first.
Still, he does not trust himself to speak, merely comes to her shoulder, to loom, to press a kiss to the skin that this man would dare presume to defile, to kiss away the stain. He feels her untense next to him, hums deep in the back of his throat, watching this supremely fortunate son of Adam, until his dearest, his darling, his heart's delight takes his hand and leads him away.
Usually, usually they leave the lights on. Tonight she wants them off, and what his Sophie wants, his Sophie tends to get. He knows she has seen the shine of his eye at night, in the dark. She has not asked, and perhaps she's allowing him his secrets, perhaps she is letting him get to them in his own good time. Perhaps that is something like grace. And she knows what grace is, his precious Sophie, whom he has stolen away from God Himself.
She would be wasted on God, was wasted, how she delights in touching, in being touched, how easily she cries out for him, how she has responded to him as no other. Perhaps he has studied her as no other. Certainly he has loved her as no other.
But tonight she wants to see him, as she only can in the dark. She has never flinched away from him, has never backed down from anything in her whole life, his precious Sophie. She's never recoiled from him, not once, not even as she walked towards sealing the joy of her body away for her God, not once has she never flinched back from him.
She does not flinch back from him tonight. She does not ask what he is, who he is, this thing that she has taken to husband. (The answer would of course be the only one that matters: "yours.")
Instead she hums with her accustomed pleasure at his touch, reaches for all of his skin as if she will never have enough, takes him into herself so sweetly, as she always does, cries out for him so prettily, as she always does.
He wishes he knew the words to tell her how sweet he finds her, how lovely. How wise and fierce and brave and strong. He knows every language of man, every language below and above, and still there are none that could convey to her how very much he loves her.
All he can do is pull her close, his precious Sophie, and perhaps he merely needs the confirmation, this evening, or perhaps it's all he trusts himself to speak, as he gathers her in his arms, kisses the back of her neck.
"Mine?" he asks.
"Yours," she agrees.