#d.darling commissions | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

delldarling · 3 years

Text

diving stars | hior

male bog mummy x male reader 3754 words citrus | mild description of death, minor mention of blood, mild description of mummy having stitches (though not getting them), kissing, implied future relationship test match-up: Waaaayyyy back when, I decided I should try my hand at some match-ups. I wanted a unique experience for those coming to me for commissions, and so went through several versions of a 'choose your own adventure' kind of personality questionnaire. Matt, or @severedreamerbeard, was one of the people lovely enough to let me test out my match-up process! Thank you a whole gosh darn bunch Matt, for letting me do so in the first place, and I'm going to heap on extra thanks because I've been such a snail about it! <3

————-　🌠　————-

Much of the bog is a terrible endless black, with nothing to reflect but the cloud covered nighttime sky. Scrubby, dried grass circles the edges of the water, the torchlight making their flickering shadows look like creeping, growing thorns across the opaque surface, ready to snag the unwary and drag them down into the depths. There’ll be no coming back out of that dark water, Hior knows, not once he’s been pushed in.

I’ll close my eyes before I go under, he silently promises, though either way he supposes it shouldn’t matter much. The last thing his body sees will only ever be darkness. He swallows, tucks auburn hair behind his ears, calloused fingers catching at his skin, and pastes on a grim smile, turning to face the gathered people. He can’t linger any longer, no matter how much he would like to, not if he wants the rest of the village to make it through this. Not many of them have gathered, either. Just enough to see the ritual through to the end. Honestly, it’s better this way. If his brother had been allowed to leave the defenses, then Hagan would have interrupted Mother Gree, ritual or not. He would have tried to stop her, tried to stop Hior, even if it meant the loss of the village.

Hagan will be angry.

Hior sweeps his eyes over the surrounding villagers, their frightened faces and trembling hands, their teary eyes reflecting the torches in the misty dark. Hagan will be angry, but the fact of the matter is that he will still be alive to hold onto that anger. Hior can’t find it within himself to regret that.

There’s no time for being maudlin, Hior tells himself, and his smile becomes a bit too wide, stretching painfully at the corners.

This will be the last he ever sees of the village if the Gods deem his offering worthy, but that’s alright. Really. As long as he knows the village will be protected, as long as he knows that his people will do their best to endure, he's willing to fight his way through the Beyond and stay there.

Mother Gree begins to speak in a rough, ragged voice, worn through by years of pipe smoke and leaning over heavily herbed fires. Her words—the spell, the prayer—drape themselves around Hior’s shoulders like a heavy blanket, sweeping away the tension of his worries and the fear of the crowded villagers. Hior’s smile softens.

Mother Gree’s only warning is the icy grasp of her fingers, twisting sharply into the hair at the nape of Hior’s neck. The blade pinches. Wet heat spills down his throat and over his chest, soaking his clothes as he begins to fall backward.

Overhead, the clouds part, and a fierce rumbling fills the air, punctuated by sharp screams. A star, smaller than a pebble, but more brilliant by far than any flickering fire, falls out of the sky. It dives after Hior’s falling body, following him down into the depths of the bog.

The last thing Hior sees is light.

————-　🌠　————-

It’s midday, or just after, and there are odd shapes in the clouds, like reaching hands backlit by the sunshine. The shifting shades of them make it look like they’re trying very hard to break through the atmosphere, a primordial being grabbing for mortals like marbles. The wind picks up, and the flicker of pale warmth and the cloud hands are blown swiftly away, hidden by a tumult of grey and violet. It shouldn’t rain for hours yet, it’s not supposed to, but you’re starting to doubt the truth of the weather forecast. The sky is very clearly telling all watchers that a storm is on the way.

And here you are: distractedly doing your best to carefully skirt the edges of dreary, muddied water, hunting for a folktale. There are weak spots throughout the area, and one wrong step will have the ground turning to mush underfoot. Which, while fitting with the tales, is the last thing you’d ever want. Risk of drowning aside, all the local stories claim that it's your soul you really need to worry about, or you'll be trapped for eternity as 'a ghost given solid form'.

In other words, from what you’ve pieced together, that might mean something like a zombie?

Water sloshes, lapping strangely at the grassy shore and pulling you clean away from your thoughts. You know you shouldn't linger with the storm on the way, but something about the water keeps you from getting more than a few paces past. The noise, rising steadily, almost bubbling, draws you closer even as tension weighs down your steps. Whatever might be down there, you doubt it's anything pleasant, and you’ve had stories of zombies running through your head all afternoon. You edge closer anyway.

The shore grows terribly soft underfoot the closer you get, and it looks like something is struggling just under the surface, wriggling, a bit like—the water fountains. It soaks your shoe and the hem of your pant leg, while icy droplets speckle over your shirt and face. For a moment, a breath, your eyes fall closed as you attempt to wipe the water away. Something smooth and cold grabs hold of your ankle, yanking your foot forward so you slam back into the ground, a quick burst of pain flares in the back of your skull. Fingernails dig into your skin. You can’t remember shouting, can’t remember a loud noise, but your ears are ringing, adrenaline rocketing through your veins as the hand—the literal hand—heaves with all it’s might, pulling you towards the water. You scrabble backwards, you kick, trying to get free, but the arm tenses, fingers curling tighter around your ankle, heavier than iron. You haven’t gotten loose, but you’re starting to pull whatever is in the water out as you struggle.

The water burbles and the haze of panic begins to clear. This isn’t a story. Someone has just grabbed hold of you. They’re not trying to pull you in, they just want you to pull them out. Because they’re trapped. You suck down air, scrabbling at the hand wrapped around your ankle, trying to get them to grab hold of your wrist instead. Their skin is strange under your touch, hard and smooth and fragile, like flowers dipped in paraffin.

A head finally crests the water, a choking, wheezing noise filling the air as liquid cascades off of his body. His breath sounds wrong though, and his cheeks are hollowed, hair and skin stained with peat. He releases the death grip he has on your ankle, bony, wet fingers smacking against your arm so you can grab hold and pull. His other hand twists into the scrubby grass, ripping handfuls of it free as he does his best to work with your desperate bid to get him out of the bog. And then a few startling things happen all at once.

Your eyes drop to his throat and the wide, old injury spanning the entirety of his throat, stitched shut with a pale cord. His eyes snap open. An eerie light gleams in his eye sockets and you do shout this time, words tripping over themselves as you give up on holding him to try and yank yourself out of his grasp. Lightning quick flashes of the zombie stories and a variety of undead flicker through your mind. He’s too strong for you, you can't push him off, even with the wasted-looking muscles of his arms. He holds on terribly tight, knees and calves and feet splashing in the water and sliding through the slick scrub grass. You continue to try to get his hands off of you, breath coming far too fast, but he lets go as soon as he’s clear of the water. His hands fall away, clutching at your thigh for balance before he finally removes his hands from you entirely. He drops to the grass, retching, and then grabs at his own throat. The tie keeping his hair back crumbles, falling away like drying clay, and though most of his hair is still slick and dark with peat, it looks like it’s normally a bright coppery red underneath the muck.

He wheezes again, hands hovering over the injury, fingers feather soft over the strangely clean stitches. After a moment, he lifts his chin, spotlight eyes roving over your face with awe.

"..you..you answered?" He asks, voice warped by withered musculature. His stained cheeks stretch, a painfully tight smile exposing teeth that don't look altogether human. They're even, and clean, but they gleam with a deep blue patina, as if they’re actually polished stones. “I—I must conf-fess,” he rasps, hands falling to his knees, nails digging into the tattered trousers barely clinging to his body, “I doubted. I..” He leans forward, gasping once more as he stares at the ground. “He answered,” he whispers, and his eyelashes flutter, the light of his eyes flickering. Despite his apparent frailness, despite his inattention, you can't bring yourself to run away now. You’re caught, the desire for knowledge outweighing the potential danger. “What would you ask of me?” He breathes, and your heart twists painfully in your chest. He sounds wretched, reverent and fearful, both, anxiously waiting for you to strike out.

"What would I ask?" You struggle to murmur, tongue thick and too-dry in your mouth. Slowly, you get up, rubbing awkwardly at your wrist and forearm. His grip had been a shade past 'uncomfortably tight', but you don’t think you’ll get anything more than faint bruising.

"In exchange," the man says, clutching tighter to his knees. He doesn't notice when you flinch, not with his head still bowed.

Your heartbeat nearly drowns out the distant thunder, adrenaline chasing the wariness out of your veins. "For what?" You demand, pleased when his head jerks up. He's acting like you're going to kick him back into the bog with a boot to his chest. "For saving you? Why would I want anything? I was just-" Your mouth snaps shut, brain desperately clamoring for you to acknowledge that there's a mummified man currently speaking to you. He’s talking, not groaning, not calling out for brains or blood or violence. He may as well be straight from the local legends and he’s… Fully conscious of his actions, nothing like the eerie embellishments all the tales carry.

"I was being decent. Helping. I didn't do it so you would owe me." Any further words slip your mind as soon as your eyes catch on the stitches in his neck again. The rest of him is withered and warped by the peat in the bog, permanently stained—but the stitches are still silvery pale. What on earth happened to make him this way?

Hesitant, he raises his head, the inhuman brightness of his eyes more than enough to make you wince. Your gaze darts to the soft glint of metal in his earlobes, trying to keep from squinting.

"For… For saving my village," he finally clarifies. "You accepted my sacrifice and allowed me the chance to speak, but surely I must complete some task to prove my faith? To win a boon and guarantee their survival?"

Thunder rattles your bones and the mummy tenses, looking past you to the sky. Nerves or not, you can’t stay out here in this, not if you want to escape the weather… Or the panic that will spread like wildfire if anyone happens to catch sight of him. You offer him your hand.

"You'll help me?" He asks, hand lifting from his knee, but not yet reaching for yours. Mist dots his cheeks, rain trying desperately to break free of the heavy cloud cover.

"Help? Yes. In the way you’re asking me to?” You can’t stop yourself from cringing, but that doesn’t seem to have deterred the bog mummy still kneeling in front of you. He’s still staring with rapt attention, caught on every word you speak. “I—I don't know if I have any answer you want, but I do know we shouldn’t stay out here in the rain." You take a single step closer, fingers splaying as you reach for him. He slips his hand into yours and the rain falls heavy upon your heads.

��———-　🌠　————-

From what you’ve gathered from Hior on the trip back here, he has for all intents and purposes, traveled through time, via his death. You freeze in the doorway of the kitchen, mind whirling as you attempt to puzzle out whether he can eat or drink anything. He hasn’t needed to, not while he’s been in his enchanted… sleep down in the bog. But he’s actually dead, isn’t he? You hadn’t felt a pulse when he’d taken your hand, but you hadn’t been searching for one either, keen as you were on getting him out of the torrential rain and out of sight. He hasn’t asked for any food or drink, but your brain has seized onto hospitality like a lifeline. No matter what age Hior is from, sharing what you have is always appreciated.

Decision made, you fetch the glass, ears straining for any noise, for any hint of where he is in the house. He’s done nothing but stare at modernized gadgetry since you brought him in, taking the towel you’d offered as if he were in a dream, but he’s bound to get curious eventually. You move a little faster, though when you find him back in the living room, sitting straight backed on the edge of the couch, dampened towel around his shoulders, you feel rather silly. He just crawled out of a bog, knowing that he’d given his life for his village. Maybe he’s frightened? This can’t be like any afterlife he’d expected. “Would you like some water?” You ask, still unsure as to whether he can actually drink it or not. He’d been gasping for air when he’d broken free of the bog, but that might only be reflex, seeing as he is very much mummified.

Hior clambers to his feet, lamplight eyes skittering over your face and then down to the floor before he kneels, towel flaring out like a cloak. You pause where you are, fingers tightening around the glass in your hand, but your brain doesn’t catch up to what he’s trying to do until he speaks. “I must thank you for your hospitality. Truly. To be welcomed into the home of a God-”

You nearly spill the water, breath caught fast in your throat as you hurriedly urge him to get back to his feet, fingers brushing over his shoulder. “Ah, no, not—how about some water first?” Hior rises, the fine hairs of his eyebrows catching the light as he furrows them. They’re the same coppery red as the hair on his head and arms, and even on his legs when you take the time to glance down. “Here,” you mutter, slipping the glass into his hand as soon as his fingers uncurl. “If you don’t want it, or, or you can’t, then it’s fine. But, uh, I’m not a deity. Not a God. Just a man.” Like you, weighs down the tip of your tongue, but you clamp your jaws shut. You can’t honestly claim similarity, seeing as you still have blood flowing through your veins and your neck doesn’t have eerily clean stitches from ear to ear.

"A man," he repeats, but he doesn't sound like he believes you, "of course." Hior sniffs at the water, but he must not need it. He cradles the glass against his chest, water untouched and risks another sly glance at your face, waiting, as if he expects you to change your mind and confess to a different identity. Your brain buzzes, skipping over the hint he’s attempting to fish for.

“Those… It looks like that was a bad injury,” you murmur, gesturing to the neat stitches, a permanent, unsettling necklace. It doesn’t really help change the subject.

“Hmm,” he rumbles, reaching up a single hand. For a moment, he marvels at the sight of his own skin, turning his wrist this way and that before he finally ghosts his touch over the stitches. Hior doesn’t shy away from them, or even appear concerned, fingertip dipping between each rib of cord. “I’ve little idea how I came to possess these,” he confesses. “It wasn’t you?” You grimace, and Hior croaks out a laugh when he notices. Warmth blossoms in your chest, the sound of a real, genuine laugh soothing away some of your nerves. “No. I can see that now. And it wasn’t Mother Gree either,” he says softly, eyes lowering. “No one would have taken me from the water. The… the star?”

“Star?” The God you think I am? You want to ask, but the stiffness is easing from his limbs, memory returning, and you don’t want to interrupt. Frankly, you might be a little shell shocked yourself, but something about his question makes your brows furrow.

“It followed me into the water,” Hior adds, and your heart skips a beat, your own memories a cacophony in the back of your head. You’ve read something about that before, you’re certain of it.

“The star followed you?” You ask, clarifying. “Dove after you?”

For the first time, Hior isn’t staring past you or searching your face for any hint of divinity. A wry smile twists his lips, exposing the polished stones serving as his teeth. “From what I recall, yes. Of course, I was dying at the time,” he says quietly, humor in the arch of his eyebrows. “Perhaps I could not comprehend the visage of our Gods? They often take other shapes, so as not to cause alarm. Such as that of a man,” he says. He’s hinting again, gaze heavy on your face, but all you can think about is the phrase: the star followed me into the water, on repeat.

You lick your lips, darting past Hior for the stacks of books you’d left out this morning. “The Diving Stars,” you explain, pushing two volumes to the side and letting them fall to the floor with a clatter. You seize the elderly green book, whirling so you can brandish it in Hior’s direction. The title glitters, faintly golden but worn away by the passing years. “It’s a folktale, a legend, about… About you, I think.”

————-　🌠　————-

Hior never does drink the water. He sets it aside, fingertips lingering along the rim before you settle down on the floor, book laid open across your knees. He joins you, and as respectful as Hior has been up to this point, he sits close against your side, pressed against you from shoulder to hip so he can better see the pages. It’s intimate, and strange, and he’s… He’s not cold, not exactly, but the lack of human warmth is enough to have the fine hairs along your neck prickling with awareness. It only takes a moment before his attention drifts from the book to your face, staring at your mouth as you read the short tale aloud.

The Diving Stars

For the greater good of a war torn village, a sacrifice was made. A favored son was chosen, one beloved by the village, and kind to all he knew. He was strong, and clever, and though he was leaving behind his family, he knew he must act for the well being of all. When it came time for his sacrifice, he smiled and walked willingly to his ending, hoping that the Gods would accept his service and defend the village from invaders.

A God took notice.

You do your best not to lift your eyes from the text, heat spreading over the back of your neck when you realize how hard Hior is staring at you. You might keep trying to ignore his assumptions, but Hior isn’t going to let you forget about them completely. He still fully believes that you’re the deity from his tale.

Moved by his plight and coveting the favored son’s courage for his own hall, the God left his domain. He dove from the sky as a star, following the favored son into the depths and setting the entire blog ablaze with his magic. When the light faded, when the villagers uncovered their eyes, two men stood by the side of the water, the light of the stars in their eyes. One was the favored son, strange and withered, having sacrificed his vitality to the Gods. The other was the God who had accepted his bargain, and behind them, marching up out of the water, was a brigade of the village ancestors, led back from the underworld to help defend the home of their children.

When the battle was won, and the ancestors had marched back into the water, the favored son wished his people farewell. Lit up from within, the favored son and the God slipped back into the depths, and then two brilliant lights fountained up out of the water, diving back into the sky as stars.

When you lift your gaze away from the book, Hior’s eyes are still on you. They’ve grown even brighter than before, the shine of them sharp enough to make you wince. His hands, resting gently on his knees, are steadily curling into fists, and he’s smiling. Small and sweet and absolutely enchanted. “I knew it,” he whispers, voice tight and low, and then Hior yanks you by the neck of your shirt halfway into his lap, knocking the book completely out of your hands. He kisses you, in want or in gratitude, you’re not sure, the taste of rainwater and the chill of stone heavy on his lips. It’s… It’s not unpleasant at all, the kiss. His lips are smooth, and cool, and tingling, like the sharpness of static in the air, seeping through your skin and racing through your veins. When Hior finally allows you to wrench yourself away, lungs heaving as you attempt to remember how to breathe, all you can think about is the way he’s smiling, arousal pooling heavily in every limb.

“No matter what you might believe,” you mutter, trying to keep your thoughts in order, “I’m not a God. Not of any sort, Hior. I swear I’m not lying.” You lick your lips, the taste of rainwater still lingering on your skin. “Though, even if I don’t know how to help you yet?” You take his hand off of your arm, lacing your fingers with his. “We’re bound to find out together.”

————-　🌠　————-

#exophilia #mummy boyfriend #bog mummy boyfriend #undead x male reader #male mummy x male reader #d.darling writes #d.darling commissions

75 notes · View notes