Archive of Our Own

Your naked corpse lies belly-up on the floor, carefully positioned somewhat like the Vitruvian Man by Johnny’s shaky hands.

Beneath you, an inverted pentagram drawn with his blood. Wobbly, not even half as uniform as it should be, looking like something even a six-year-old child would find poorly drawn – but tha’ doesnae matter; Johnny keeps reminding himself. What matters is the blood. What matters is the pentagram drawn with intent, with his blood, with the blood of someone that is alive, with the blood of a living thing the same species as you. 

…Right?

Checking your notes for maybe the thousandth time within the last ten minutes, he squints, taking a bit too long to understand your rushed scribbles, until finally Johnny releases his breath in relief. Right. Right. That’s right. He’s doing it right, he thinks.

Your handwriting got unusually spiky in your final moments, almost angry looking, the words written with so much urgency that you didn’t even bother with proper grammar, or with making it legible, or with crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s. And you always crossed your t’s and dotted your i’s; Johnny knows this because he’s seen it many times, when he helped – when he tried to help, more like got in the way – with your spells. He’s used to how loopy and curly and neat your letters usually got when you were jotting down a new idea, like a new potion recipe, or a new breakthrough with your whole necromancy stuff that Johnny never really understood but still tried his best to help you with anyway.

And now he wishes, fervently so, that he understood. That he felt confident in this. That he knew whatever the hell it is that he’s doing right now. 

“Pentagram… blood… the candles...” Johnny mumbles to himself, crudely wrapping his left hand in gauze. The cut stings, salty sweat mixing with blood, his voice raspy, throat feeling raw from all the crying he has done and continues to do. Through teary eyes, he lights up the candles, burning the tips of his fingers as tremors run through him in random waves. The smoke isn’t thick, but it certainly doesn’t help with deciphering your notes under dim light, and he has to blink hard, over and over and over again, just to try and bring the letters back into focus. Swallowing down something metallic that tastes like blood, or like bile, or like both, tongue pressing to the roof of his mouth and making it stick to his gums like he took a mouthful of tar.

This is a kind of desperation that Johnny didn't know existed. It goes beyond uncertainty, beyond helplessness, beyond guilt, straight through his heart, straight into his soul. It is pure, unadulterated grief, collapsing everything from inside out, something his mind and heart weren't prepared to deal with – not that anyone ever is, but still.

How long has it been, Johnny doesn't know. He should know – you had told him it mattered, that a body left rotting for too long wouldn't take the spell right, that there was some kind of window, some kind of time-limit, but he doesn’t fucking remember how wide because he was damn near having a heart attack as he’d watched the life drain out of you. He does the math in his head, and it’s completely useless, Johnny loses count every time, starts again, confuses himself, rushes to puke in the corner of the room, cries like a motherless child.

Too long. It's been too long, he knows. Hourglass with sand only at the bottom, the merciless passing of time a looming, clawed hand tearing at him. Leaves him feeling like he’s been forever stuck in this fucking nightmare of trying to resurrect you.

Even though Johnny is absolute ass at magic and all things related, because he wasn’t born into it like you were, and because every time he had tried something slightly magic-adjacent he’d fuck it up so badly that you wouldn’t even know where to begin cleaning up the shitshow he’d started, Johnny wishes he’d insisted more on learning something from you. Anything, from your spells, to your curses, to your potions, even to your messy experimentations – Johnny wishes that he hadn’t backed down at your disapproving glares and acidic insults about his lack of skill, that he’d asked more questions, paid more attention, pestered you about the inner workings of the ruins you’d draw and the words you’d pronounce when summoning something. He wishes he’d learned the weird alphabets and the ancient tongues you spoke, the Latin, the Sumerian – hell, even knowing some Romanian would be useful right now.

But Johnny is painfully aware that, realistically, even if he had straight up begged on his knees for you to teach him something, you would have probably brushed him off with some cruel comment about how he’s a lost cause, beyond saving, not worth your efforts, not worth the trouble, not fit for magic. And he wouldn’t have disagreed. 

“You’re about as useful to me as a wet match, Johnny.”

You had told him that, once. Said it so calmly, too. A casual observation, a footnote written at the end of a page and born from an afterthought, something fleeting for you but sticking at the front of Johnny’s brain like a tumor. And it was true. 

But it cannae be true right now, he tells himself. Shaky hands balled into fists, feeble attempt at shaping the amalgamation of absolute fear and regret and denial clogging his throat into something useful, because Disaster-At-Magic Johnny is your only chance of being brought back to life. So he can’t be useless now. He has to get this right; out of everything that he’s done throughout his life, this is the one thing that truly matters, and he’ll fucking get it right.

He will. He has to.  

Johnny tries to force his neck to turn, his eyes to open, and his gaze to focus on you, like it might change something. Might make his hands steadier, or strengthen his resolve, or shock some much-needed courage into him. It doesn't; he can’t. His eyes can’t meet your face, can’t glance down at your body for more than two seconds, can’t look at what he’s done to you.

A very powerful witch, you are. You… were. Christ, he really can’t even as much as glance at the black veins littering your body, the pale, sickly tone your skin has taken, the purple lips and red-rimmed eyes. Johnny shudders out a breath that almost sounds like a choked sob, doubling over as he retches again. He doesn’t throw up, but only because there’s nothing left to throw up anymore.

Alluring eyes, sharp smile, dry sense of humor – winding your way into his heart like a vine, squeezing, settling behind his ribcage like it had always been your home, and absolutely refusing to leave. You’d shown him who you were, bared your soul to him, his merciful little witch, his haloed angel, offering grace to the part of him that believed itself beyond salvation.

It was beautiful; you are beautiful, every aspect of you, from your eyes – where Johnny likes to get lost in the most – to your hair – which Johnny likes to card his finger through the most – to your skin – where Johnny likes kissing the most, every single millimeter of it. Everything.

Devotion is a good word for it. Adoration, respect, worship – all fitting. Obsession also makes sense, but Johnny doesn’t really like that one, because it strips away the love, and if he had to choose a single word to define what he feels for you, then obviously love would be it. 

You, on the other hand, would probably have gone with obsession. Whatever; Johnny loved – loves, he loves you, just the way you were – are. Just the way you are.

An unusual thing – being generous – for someone like you, a powerful witch, so full of ambition, so full of potential, respected by your sisters, blessed by the spirits, becoming the lover of a simple man like Johnny. Magicless, and a witch hunter at that. A man who had undoubtedly killed some of your sisters, who had made a living out of hunting down your own species to extinction, who you were told to be weary of ever since you were a little girl still learning about the dangerous world you were born into.

But you didn’t care about any of that, as wrong as it was. If anything, Johnny knew it spurred you on, a forbidden romance, a doomed love, something that went against nature’s design. You loved it, always meddling with stuff you weren’t supposed to, always experimenting with dark magic and necromancy and blood spells that had centuries of horrible tales warning against practice. It drew you in, Johnny drew you in, and christ, did he get incredibly lucky to find a woman like you, so sure of herself, so certain of what you wanted even if other people judged you for it.

Finally, rain after years and years of drought, someone who loved him as much as he loved them, unabashedly, shamelessly, all fire and thunder and power – so much power that sometimes you absolutely terrified him.

Which only made him admire you even more.  

Warning after warning, from family and friends and clan, something about Johnny being out of his mind, being deceived, being under some kind of spell or delusion. It was jealousy, Johnny was certain of that. They were all jealous of his bonnie wee witch, and he’d told them all to away n' bile yer heid, the same way as you had left – more like you were cast out of – your coven.

Johnny’s retirement felt less like ending something, and more like beginning the life he’d always dreamed of. A woman to call his, a house to call ours, plans for the near future that involved children.

You wouldn't have him as an active witch hunter, especially not if he came home with the blood of your sisters staining his boots, and, aye, fair enough, hen, ye've got a point. Didn't even argue with you, because quitting was easy, for Johnny. He would have given up everything ten times over; that's the extent of his love. Endless. So pure that he knows, Johnny just knows, that all the poems, all the stories about true love, Romeo and Juliet, Heathcliff and Cathy, they were all about him and you. They spoke of the exact feeling that washes over him with terrifying strength every time he thinks of you. He'd never understood it, not really, how such love could truly exist, until you came along – looking like a goddess, burning his retinas, searing your own image into his brain like you were carving a self-portrait into the bones of his skull with your own nails.

“Love conquers all,” a pathetic whisper to his own ears, desperately leafing through your notes. Even if you’re… lying on the ground, cold, unable to get up, Johnny will fix this. He will fix this. He just – he loves you, he loves you so much, so it’s only logical that he can bring you back to life, that his love for you will bring you back to him. You’d already done most of the work, anyway; he just had to follow through with it.

Just like… following a recipe. A cake recipe.  

He reads the same words again and again, trying not to let your agony bleeding into the spiky letters get to him.

Pentagram must be drawn over salt w/ blood–

Body must be placed over pentagram facing sky–

Candles must be lit after positioning-

Chant must be–

Salt, his brain suddenly backtracks while he’s in the middle of the page, the word materializing into his mind’s eye in bold letters, alarms blaring, heart falling out of his chest.

The salt. He forgot the fucking salt. 

“I think the order matters,” you had mumbled once, pretty face buried in the pages of some old, worn-out grimoire, written with symbols that meant absolutely nothing to him. 

“Yeah, lass?” Even though he understood fuck all about your current fixation – something-something necromancy-resurrection-dark-magic spell – he’d ask you about it every time you gave him an opening, since it had pretty much turned into your entire world, from the moment you had gotten a hold of some extremely rare Solomonar spellbook that, unsurprisingly, Johnny also didn’t understand a word of.

Brows knitting in thought, pink tongue flicking over your bottom lip, delicate hands caressing the ancient parchment. Johnny wanted to lick the tips of your fingers so you could turn the pages more easily.

“Tell me about it, hen.”

You’d sighed, grumbling something he didn’t quite catch, scratching the back of your neck in thought, and Johnny had promptly dodged the bubbling cauldron and walked over to where you were sat, planting a soft kiss on your neck, then another, then another one, wetter, firmer, lingering so he could inhale your scent–

Suddenly getting up and away from him, you’d turned to inspecting jars of severed fingers and eyeballs and teeth, not sparing him a glance. “Gonna need some of your blood later. And a fingernail,” thrown over a shoulder.

You would get like that, sometimes. So engrossed in your witchy stuff that Johnny was lucky if you even glanced twice his way on the same day.

But he didn’t mind it, he really didn’t, even though he couldn’t help but feel neglected sometimes, Johnny knew that you were just… busy. Busy with your stuff. You still had your life, after all – even without a coven, you still managed to channel enough of your power to carry on with your spells. And Johnny had you, and you’re his entire world, and he can’t possibly demand more attention from you when you get that cute little crease between your eyebrows every time you’re trying to read runes, and when your pretty mouth does that little downwards curve when you disagree with a ritual, and when your eyes absolutely light up like the sun when you finally manage to replicate a particularly tricky spell.

How could he ask you for more attention, to pull you out of your element, when you looked so happy doing your dark magic? He couldn’t. He just couldn’t; Johnny is selfless, thriving when he sees you content, when he sees you happy, so he couldn’t really bring himself to bother you too much in these moments. And if he’s a sensitive man by nature, if he’d feel like absolute garbage every time you brushed him off as though he were a fly, well, it was his problem, and he made sure not to let it get to you. 

"Hen." He'd said it so softly he could barely hear his own voice, testing, watching you rummage through your colorful potions. "Hen? Ye ever gonnae show me what that one does?" He'd nodded at a jar of something purple and pulsing on the shelf.

"Mm," you'd hummed, which wasn't a yes. Unforgiving back turned to him, the easy dismissal stinging at something behind his molars. 

Johnny had waited, perched on the edge of the stool near the cauldron, feet dangling, looking at you expectantly. Counted the seconds it would take for you to answer him, or to just look at him, like how he counts after lightning to see how close the storm is.

One... two… three... four…

He'd convinced himself it didn't matter – and it really didn’t, because he wouldn’t have been able to do anything useful with that information anyway, so it’s not like it would have made that much of a difference.

You’d never really turned to properly look at him for the rest of that week.

But you indulged him, sometimes, so it’s not as if you were living totally separate lives. Sometimes you’d let him help you with your potions, even if he didn’t really have the talents for it, and he’d jump at those opportunities like a thirsty man lost in the desert. Lying awake, thinking of your experimentations instead of sleeping, of the chance you might let him hover near you a little while longer. Might let him hand you ingredients, might let your fingers brush his. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder while he stirred the cauldron for you, if the potion turned out too thick and your arms ached from working it.

Johnny is a simple man at heart. A plant bending itself into awkward angles just for a measly strip of light it'd never reach. Easy to please, feeding off crumbs, much like a dog. He certainly loves you like one would.

Orbiting around you, some pathetic beast always angling its ears towards wherever its owner stood. You would step away from the cauldron to stretch your sore arms above your head, Johnny's hands already moving before his brain could catch up with it, hovering an inch away from your spine, aching, aching to press flat against it.

He rummages through your shelves now, books and boxes and vials falling in the wake of his desperate hands, shattering at his feet, setting free trapped spirits that are probably millennia-old, searching for the godforsaken salt. It’s a very specific one, you’d written; something you’d acquired in a black market once, from Persia, probably riddled with incantations that would have Johnny itching to hunt down the responsible witch, once upon a time – not anymore. Feels like a different life, now. Doesn’t even feel like that hunter was him, confident, unshakable, disciplined, driving silver blades through the hearts of witches and the occasional werewolf with terrifying precision.

Johnny’s hands shake and sweat so badly that he can barely grab the small vial once he finds it, cursing under his breath as he almost drops it twice. Some old muscle memory rearing its head slowly like a senile animal, easing his shaking just enough to hold up a crossbow and aim at an alp from eight feet away, helping him pour the salt in one clean, even ring around the pentagram. He doesn’t know how much he’s supposed to use – you hadn’t written it down – so he goes with his gut and uses as much as needed to complete the full circle. 

Like a moth to a flame, he tries to look down at you again, waiting for praise. The steadiness leaves him all at once, salt spilling wide of the circle, and there goes almost all of the vial’s contents.

“Like tha’, bonnie, yeah?” He asks your lifeless corpse. You don’t answer. “Salt… before the blood, but it could be after, right? Doesnae make a difference, aye, bonnie? Doesnae – doesnae need tae be even? Hen?”

His voice catches with a sob on the last word, and he starts crying again. Hasn’t really stopped crying ever since… well.

It was his fault. 

This whole ordeal was, obviously, not meant to happen. It was a mistake, so stupid that the shame of it is almost unbearable. And it was his fault.

A vial of manticore venom carelessly positioned at the corner of a table, his clumsy elbow unaware of its surroundings that knocked it over, you standing a bit too close, wearing that black skirt that reached just past your knees; that one that made Johnny's focus waver, made him question things about himself because he wasn't aware that a pair of bared calves and ankles could steal his gaze like that and get him all worked up.

It only took a single drop of the venom to splash on your skin. Fatal. Just like that, a witch so powerful yet not immune to nature’s dangers, or to Johnny’s distracted mind. 

You were never one to get angry. Always so calm, so collected, so level-headed even in the direst of situations. A mind of steel and a heart of ice, but a heart of ice that always made Johnny’s melt.

Well.

“What the fuck have you done?!” You’d screamed at him, voice raw from the pain crawling up your leg.

“Hen–”

“How could you fuck it up so badly–”

“Bonnie, ah–”

“You useless piece of shit, I can’t believe–”

You were just... upset, that’s what Johnny was internally telling himself as you lashed out at him, saying cruel things, saying terrible things to him, yelling, hitting at his chest, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him violently. You were just upset, that’s all; he’d made a silly mistake, but it’s going to be fine, everything is going to be alright because you always have a plan, and Johnny always helps you, and he loves you so so much, and it’s not that bad, you’ll fix it, he’ll help you fix it, you’re screaming something about there’s no fucking antivenom but it’s going to be fine–

Wide-eyed and breathing shallowly, in a matter of seconds the venom had already spread past your knee, painting your veins a dark shade of purple like some nasty blood infection. Johnny’s eyes had welled up with fat tears, his ears ringing, and he didn’t know exactly when you had stopped yelling, when you had turned away from him and started scribbling furiously on your spellbook, but there you were, doing just that, writing in bullet points about how to perform the resurrection spell that you had been carefully studying during the last few months.  

“It’s incomplete,” you’d told him in contrasting calmness to your furious writing, almost ripping the page in half with how hard your pen was pressed down on the parchment. Voice oddly serene like you had, in a matter of seconds, accepted your fate and made peace with it. “And I’m not entirely sure if this is right, but – well, it’s all I’ve got.”

Your voice didn’t tremble, your hands didn’t shake – so different from him.

Johnny could barely speak through the knot in his throat, accent impossibly thick with emotion. “Ah’m – hen, ah’m so fuckin’ sorry – christ, bonnie, ah–” 

“Not now, Johnny. Focus. I’ll be dead in a few minutes at best, so I need you to focus on this for me, alright? Can you fucking do that, at least?”

With your icy eyes pinning him down like the double barrels of a shotgun, you’d spoken to him like he was a toddler – and at that moment, he might as well have been; crying uncontrollably, snot running down his face, eyes so wide it felt like they were going to jump out of his skull. 

He’d just nodded meekly, unable to trust his voice. 

Most of the instructions were given to him in your emotionless tone because you wouldn’t have time to write everything down for him, and as much as Johnny had tried his absolute best to cling to every single word you were saying, he couldn’t help but let his eyes drift down to your legs and to your arms.

He could see the dark veins nestling underneath your skin. Rotting your blood. Draining the life out of you in front of his very eyes. And he was completely useless.

A wet match.

“The chant is the most important part, so do not say the words wrong. I wrote down the pronunciation, so you’ll get it right.”

“Ah’m–” Johnny had sniffled through the choked sobs, “ah’m not magic–”

“Doesn’t matter; the candles will draw the power for you. You just gotta – you just have to – just…” you’d sighed shakily, pushing your hair away from your sweat-dampened forehead with a specific kind of helplessness that had almost made Johnny vomit right there on your feet. “Just. Follow my notes. It’s clear, what you have to do.”

“It’s nae fuckin’ clear, hen,” he whispers now, shivering, trying to make sense of your notes. 

He doesn’t know if he’s doing it right. He just – Johnny simply does not know. He has no way of knowing.

Inverted pentagram. Salt. Candles. His blood. Inverted pentagram. Salt. 

And the chant. He can’t even begin to imagine how to say these words out loud. 

“Z-zore…” Johnny mumbles under his breath, practicing, the words sounding so wrong to him, so alien, nothing like how he remembers hearing you speak. “Male-keth… eeya-leth…”

One of the candles flickers, suddenly burning a deep red for all of maybe two seconds before returning to a warm orange. Johnny almost jumps out of his skin. 

“Christ! Bonnie, ah–” he desperately looks down at you, really looks at you, for the first time ever since he’d set you up for the ritual.

His words catch in his throat. Leftover determination from his days as hunter forces him to push through the churning inside his guts; he has to speak to you while looking at your face like a proper man would. He fucking owes you that much. “Ah cannae do this, bonnie. Ah’m so sorry, lass. Hen,” he wipes at his eyes, vision blurring again, irritated at how he can’t even see you properly now that he’s managed to drag his gaze to your paled face. “Ah cannae – s’too much – ah cannae do it…”

Falling to his knees before you, the tips of his fingers brushing at the salt and the blood-circle, smearing its irregular shape even more. Tears and snot and sweat drip inside the pentagram. “Bonnie… ah cannae live without ye…”

But he’ll have to. He’ll have to live without you, if he doesn’t finish the ritual. 

He did this. He killed you. And now he’s refusing you the only thing that might bring you back to life because he’s got no fucking backbone anymore.

As useful as a wet match.

Johnny doesn’t need much of a pep talk from himself as much as he needs for his unstable mood to swing on the opposite way, providing him with enough desperation and delusion to make him get up off the floor, his bad knee aching something terrible. Gritting his teeth, huffing like a horse, gripping your spellbook with both hands like it might disappear at any second.

The veil separating him from psychosis stretching and stretching, as thin as tulle. He’s doing this. He’ll bring you back to life, even if it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.

“Zor elatha noxiel,” he starts, voice a little uncertain, wavering, trying his best to mimic your accent from the many times he’d watched you summon something, “varen oth malekh.”

This time, all of the candles flicker and burn a strong crimson light that makes the entire room seem drenched in fresh blood. Johnny pauses for a second, shifting on his feet, eyes flicking anxiously from your notes to your corpse, his hope at odds with his poor pronunciation. “S-sora ven ialeth nox, irae var…” he squints at your handwriting, “vareth.”

All of the candles collectively go out.

Something cold, something slimy crawls up Johnny’s spine – you didn’t write or say anything about what was supposed to happen, what he’s supposed to expect, how he’s supposed to know if it worked or if he just completely botched it, and it’s so fucking dark he can’t fucking see, ears ringing, teeth grinding, and nothing is happening, another wave of nausea hitting him because what if he did something wrong, he can’t do it all over again, not when he used up almost all of the salt–

Ever so slowly, the wicks start burning up again, their weak light still a deep red and barely illuminating the room.

But it illuminates enough.

You’re standing.

Right in the middle of the inverted pentagram, you’re standing up, hunched, chin almost touching your chest, hair hiding your face, arms limp by your sides.

Johnny lets out a strangled noise that sounds completely inhuman.

He runs, literally sprints through all of the two meters separating you from him, hugging you close to his chest, so close, and he’s a very strong man with big arms, he knows this from all his years being a witch hunter, yet he hugs you with the utmost care as though you were made of porcelain. 

Sobbing into your shoulder, Johnny can barely breathe, can barely choke the words out. “Holy fuck it worked, ah cannae believe it worked, bonnie – steamin’ Jesus, bonnie, ah missed ye so much, ye’ve no idea how much it hurt–”

Your skin is still so cold to touch, though. Freezing. He wants to check on you, wants to make sure you’re alive and well, but he fears his heart might literally turn to dust inside of his chest if he lets go of you right now.

“Ye’re awright, hen, ye’re awright. Ah fixed it. Ah did it, ah did the spell, ye’re alive–”

“MacTavish,” you croak, voice sounding… different. 

Oh. You'd never once called him by his family name. Spat at it the one time he'd offered it, like something rancid on your tongue; ancient witch hunter lineage, you'd sneered, dripping disdain. But you’re obviously not yourself right now. Literally just came back from the dead. A miracle – and a miracle of your own doing, really, for curating that resurrection spell. Johnny is all but a vessel to your genius, an indescribably happy vessel. 

“Shh, hen,” he coos, stroking the hair at the back of your head. A few clumps of it fall on his hand and stick to his sweaty palm. You’re still so fragile. “Shh, shh. Ye’re awright. Ye’re fine, now. It’s over.”

You’re so weak that he doesn’t even feel you breathing against him; can’t really feel your heartbeat, even as his hand on the small of your back presses you impossibly closer. 

“No; not over,” you whisper hoarsely. “I haven’t even begun.”

He frowns slightly, though he supposes it’s to be expected, some confusion and nonsensical babbling on your side. How should he take care of you? Like you took a hit to the head? Like you just barely escaped death by drowning? 

“Let’s get ye wrapped up, hen,” he whispers, shivering, his own body temperature plunging lower than usual just by having you in his arms. Christ, you’re so fucking cold. “Need tae keep ye warm.”

Johnny moves to lead you towards the nearest chair, where the clothes you died wearing are still haphazardly hanging from the back, but your icy hands stop his movements with an unexpectedly strong grip on his shoulders.

“Hen?”

Instead of answering, you press your nose to the pulse point just below his ear, inhaling loudly – except Johnny doesn’t really feel the shift of air, he just hears it, like you’re trying to mimic what a set of healthy lungs should sound like – and groaning. 

“You smell so good,” you whine, hands dancing from his shoulders to his back and to his chest, restless, gripping and scratching slightly. He feels your tongue brushing ever-so-gently across his neck.

A sound catches in his throat, something between a surprised moan and a confused gasp. Nevermind your unnaturally cold hands; the way you’re touching him makes Johnny’s skin feel on fire. You’d never touched him like that, always so distant, always making sure that the sex felt as impersonal as possible, like it was but a bothersome thing for you to do, just another chore, just another annoying task you’d have to go through to appease Johnny so he didn’t misbehave like a bad dog.

You’d made it feel much like you were cleaning up his mess after another one of his many failed attempts at magic; couldn’t wait until it was over. Almost made Johhny not want it. Almost.

“Hen – wha’ are ye–”

“Such a good boy for your little witch,” you murmur against his throat, kissing it slowly, pure instinct making Johnny throw his head back to grant you more access because he’s literally seeing stars. “Not an ounce of magic in you – but you were so good to her, weren’t you? You helped her, yes?”

“Ah – aye,” he manages, fisting your hair, gripping at your waist, not believing this is happening. He must be dreaming. “Always.”

He feels your lips stretching against his skin in a wicked smile, and you bite down where his neck meets his collarbone. He gasps, but it hurts deliciously so, and you must be aware of that because you soothe the bruised skin with your tongue, licking a cold line up to just below his chin. 

Johnny shudders out a shaky breath that blows away most of the hair covering your face, and, through half-lidded eyes, he finally manages to take a close look at the face of the love of his life. 

You still look… dead. Colorless skin, littered with dark veins. Purple lips, glassy eyes, a pungent smell of brimstone and decay wafting off you.

Maybe… maybe he should tell you to stop. Tell you that you’re not yourself, that you just came back from the dead, that you need rest–

But before his lust-hindered mind can properly process that, you surge up, hands framing his face, your mouth crashing against his with uncharacteristic hunger. 

And he can’t help it; god, he just can’t help it, not when you’ve denied him this for so long, not when he’s prayed for you to want him like this. Johnny moans against your lips, breathing in sharply as you respond by rocking your hips against him once, then twice, then again until he has to break away for air all too soon because he’s already so hard it hurts, and it’s been so long, and he doesn’t want this to end, ever.

You seem to have other plans though, he thinks, as your mouth chases his, not allowing two centimeters between your faces before you’re kissing him again, harder, hungrier, licking into his mouth and drawing another moan out of him. All but a rutting animal, pushing him until the back of his knees hit the closest chair and then he’s suddenly sitting down, you straddling him, thighs framing his lap so perfectly it should be impossible. You deepen the kiss with the new angle, your head just a little bit taller than his.

Johnny’s hands are shakier and sweatier than they ever were before, but for entirely different reasons now. He places them on your hips, gripping, grounding himself because this truly feels like something he would dream about when you spent too long without as much as sparing him a glance. Pulling your core closer to his, he hisses a string of curses when you start dry humping him. 

“I’m gonna take care of you, now,” you whisper against his ear, sucking at his earlobe, the sensation so foreign to him but so good that Johnny yelps. 

“Bonnie–”

“Shh,” it’s your turn to shush him, and you do so by shoving both hands under his shirt and scratching your way up to his chest, ripping it off him in an unnatural display of strength. 

“Wha – christ, wha’ was tha’–” 

You don’t answer. “Pants off, handsome.”

Oh, he’s done for.

A million times more aroused than confused and concerned, Johnny obeys you, trembling hands managing to make quick work of his belt by some miracle. You lift yourself off him by less than an inch, barely enough room to allow him to drag down his pants, and he doesn’t think twice before pulling down his underwear with it too, but you don’t seem to mind his eagerness this time. Merciful, because Johnny doesn’t know whether he would survive you rejecting him in any shape or form right now.

Cold, cold fingers wrap around his warm cock, the contrast in temperature something downright sinful, forcing a groan from somewhere deep within his chest. Johnny barely has any time to let the sensation properly register before you’re gripping the back of his head and pushing his face against your breasts, and he gets the message alright, the disbelief of finally having you craving him as much as he craves you wearing down. Licking a lazy circle around your nipple – he’s wanted to do this for so long but you never let him – his hips buck needily into your hand.

“Holy mother of–”

“You’re a good MacTavish boy, aren’t you? Good to your witch, and now you’re gonna be so good to me.”

Your hand does something wicked to his cock, twisting, squeezing, turning pain into pleasure and pleasure into pain. It hurts so good that no sound comes out of his open mouth, and he almost comes embarrassingly fast.

Panting, drooling over your breasts like a beast in heat. “Ah – ah’m close – ah’m gonnae –”

You press the pad of your thumb over his slit, whispering shushing noises against his ear. “Not yet; no, you’re not.”

Whimpering pathetically, his breath catches in his throat, his eyes screwing shut. Christ, what has gotten into you? You were never this eager, this forward, never one to play with him like this–

His hands must be leaving purple bruises on your hips with how hard he’s gripping you, blunt nails digging into your skin. You unlatch one of his hands, bring it to your face, and Johnny closes his eyes in bliss as you press a kiss to the inside of his wrist, then to his palm, and then you’re shoving his hand down to cup your sex, moaning as his fingers touch you.

Johnny’s eyes fly open, and he groans. “Fuckin’ hell bonnie, you’re so wet–”

“All for you.”

Your other hand is still gripping his cock, unforgiving thumb still pressed against the slit, squeezing as he slides his fingers across your folds. You’re all but literally dripping on him, he can feel it; he can feel you soaking on his palm, down his wrist, down to his thighs, over his balls. How is this even possible?

“Please,” he begs, but he honestly doesn’t even know what he’s begging for. You’re already giving him more than you ever did, allowing him to touch you like this, sitting on his lap, your hand wrapped around his cock–

You throw your head back, moaning as he traces tight circles over your clit, the sounds you’re making literally melodic to his ears. Your hand shows him some mercy as you finally slide your thumb off, dragging your hand down to his shaft, then up again, syncing with his fingers.

Johnny buries his face on your neck, peppering it with kisses and kitten licks, murmuring sweet nothings into your rotten skin. He’s close, he’s so close, and you must be as well–     

One moment, you’re right there, on his lap, seconds away from an orgasm – and on the next, you’re gone.

The sudden absence is like a bucket of freezing water poured over his head.

There’s no time for Johnny’s clouded mind to really think too much about it, because when he opens his eyes to search for you, you’re standing in the middle of the pentagram again, facing him, a finger curling in a beckoning gesture.

“Come.”

And he’s obeying you. Johnny doesn’t get up from the chair, or walk over to you – he floats, Johnny glides through the air, inexplicably so, completely weightless, the tips of his toes dragging against the floor and his nails catching on the wood.

Thoroughly terrified, his cock twitches. Fuckin’ hell, he loves it, your casual displays of power. Always leaves him breathless.

There’s a cocky smirk on your lips that he wants to kiss the corners of, but he doesn’t have the chance, because as soon as his nose is almost touching yours, you snap your hand down, and his floating body follows the movement, his back hitting the floor and knocking the air out of his lungs.

Johnny coughs and gasps, wincing, blinking away tears. You don’t give him time – and he really wants it, really wants to take his sweet time with you, but you just won’t let him have it. Straddling him again, a decaying hand on his throat and another lining up his cock with your entrance.

“Need you inside me, MacTavish. Need you to finish the ritual.”

The crimson candles agree with you, burning impossibly bright, almost blinding.

His eyes roll to the back of his head as you sink down on him. The sounds are lewd and absolutely horrid, like a knife plunging over and over inside an open wound. Ichor and blood trails lazily out of you, cold, always cold, mixing with his now mostly dried blood from the pentagram.

Drunk-dazed, turned into some organic robot made to serve you, Johnny bucks his hips as you bounce down on him, letting you set the rhythm, ringing ears drowning out your chanting.

Distantly, Johnny knows. 

Between a kiss and a bite and a wandering hand, he has known from the start that this isn’t you. A small part of his mind, oddly sane and completely horrified, knows that he fucked up the resurrection spell. Maybe when he poured the salt after the blood, maybe when he said the chant wrong, maybe when he drew the wonky pentagram. He knows. Whoever – or whatever – is possessing your body, it isn’t your spirit, not your soul, doesn’t have an ounce of your personality.

But Johnny’s just a man.

The candles flicker violently as he comes inside you, plunging the room into darkness once more.