2025-01-08 9:27:56 ¶ ● ⬈

somuchbetterthanthat:

> The thing about Jonathan Sims is that he looked at the Unsettling Manor on top of the Hill, cast in half shadows already, and decided he had to go there; he pushed the door open. Yes, it was perhaps for the reputed library deep into the heart of the house, yes it was because he wanted answers and to work through the trauma of his childhood, there are billions of reasons that might have lead him to that door, but he opened it. And when he was welcomed in, he decided to ignore all the ways the shadows creeped inside the manor as well, because he was being seduced and it was working.

> So there had been others before him; so their ghosts haunted his every step; so the Head of the House dismissed the dangers to encourage knowledge; but, well, wasn’t the head of the house SO knowledgeable? So charming? Wasn’t he opening all the doors to Jon, or at the very least indulgently offering the keys whenever Jon craved them? Was it his fault or Jon’s when Jon stepped into a new room fulled of traps that hurt?

> And when Jon finally looked at himself, drapped in beautiful clothes and scars, and realized he’d grown claws, didn’t he feel relief and curiosity first about them? Didn’t he look at his delicate, innocent hands, and realized they might let him fight back and defend himself at last from the shadows? Didn’t he flush when the Head of the House craddled his fingers now covered in blood not his own to kiss them in marvel?

> Of course one day it became too much; of course one day he understood he had stayed so long in the house, peering outside hurt more than staying in; the light hurt; everybody else, in the vilage below, was fearing the shadows that had build up in his dark, pretty, irresistable eyes that called them in to feed his newfound hunger.

> But he’d opened the front door and let it close back behind him. And wasn’t the House and its Head giving him all that he’d ever desired? When the Head of the House led him, at last, to the Master Bedroom, to the sacrificial altar, when he locked the door behind him and let Jon watch the key burn into the fireplace, when he lovingly took off the impressive white gown to kiss every one of Jon’s scars, of course Jon fought back. But among the terror and the agony of the completion of their marriage, wasn’t there genuine, unspeakable bliss as well?