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Vaughn had been having a good day, or as good as days came when your sworn enemy kept sending you obnoxiously scented letters sealed with red wax and signed “Miss me, Daddy Heathen? xoxo, your Serpent.”
He didn’t even roll his eyes this time. He just… tucked it away, carefully, into the drawer where he’d been hoarding every one of Yulian’s idiotic love letters like a cursed romantic.
Don’t ask him why. He didn’t know.
Maybe he liked the way Yulian’s words dripped mischief like poison. Maybe he liked being wanted.
Or maybe—God forbid—he liked Yulian.
The room smelled like expensive ink, gunmetal, and regret.
Then the door slammed open.
Gareth’s face was pale. Too pale. “Vaughn—there was a clash in the east docks. Serpents got hit. They’re saying…” He hesitated. “They’re saying Yulian’s dead.”
The words didn’t compute at first.
Vaughn blinked slowly, like his mind was buffering through firewalls.
Niko stood in the hall. Jeremy leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching carefully. Even Killian looked up from his blood-stained gloves with unnerving stillness.
They were all waiting.
He’s dead.
The drawer with the letters was still open.
He can’t be.
Vaughn didn’t say a word.
He stood up.
And snapped.
The chair went flying first, then the whiskey glass, then the table itself as Vaughn flipped it with the kind of unholy rage that made grown men flinch. Bookshelves shattered. The mirror cracked. He grabbed the lamp and hurled it against the wall so hard it sparked.
A storm of violence. Not grief. He refused to call it grief.
He punched the wall until his knuckles bled.
Then kept punching.
Jeremy made a move to stop him, but Niko shook his head. “Let him burn.”
Because they all knew. Vaughn wasn’t heartbroken.
He was ruined.
He’d loved Yulian quietly. Obsessively. Stupidly.
And now he was gone.
........
Vaughn had stopped feeling things weeks ago.
After the news of Yulian’s death, he bled out in silence—violence had become his language, and death his punctuation. He'd ripped apart hideouts, executed anyone who breathed wrong, and turned the Heathens into a fear-fed storm. No one questioned his rage. No one dared.
He had loved Yulian in the worst way a man like him could.
Quietly. Obsessively. Violently.
And now, Yulian was gone.
So why was he here?
Standing beneath the golden chandeliers, dressed in black velvet and wearing a silver half-mask, dancing like nothing ever happened?
Vaughn stood frozen. Like he’d seen a ghost.
But no—there he was. Yulian. Alive.
Spinning in the arms of some faceless boy too beneath him. Laughing. That same stupid, wicked laugh Vaughn had memorized in his nightmares.
He watched, expression carved from ice, until Yulian broke away from his partner. Their eyes met across the ballroom. Masks didn’t matter. Not when obsession ran this deep.
Yulian’s smile curled, slow and venom-sweet. He moved toward him with the grace of a sin reincarnated.
When they were close enough to share breath, Yulian tilted his head.
“Did you miss me?” he asked softly, like the world hadn’t shattered in his absence.
Vaughn didn’t speak at first. He only looked at him, like he couldn’t decide whether to kiss him or kill him.
Then, in a voice like cracked glass:
“You ruined me.”
Yulian’s breath hitched. Barely.
“I know,” he whispered. “It’s what I do best.”
And Vaughn?
He reached out and grabbed Yulian’s wrist, tugging him into the shadows. The music swelled.
Some dances began with footsteps.
This one began with destruction.
...........
Vaughn slammed Yulian against the marble wall. Not hard enough to break him—though the thought did cross his mind—but enough to feel him there, alive, warm, breathing.
“You think this is funny?” Vaughn growled, voice raw and cracked from too many sleepless nights and too many dead bodies.
Yulian only grinned, devil-mouthed and gorgeous. “You missed me.”
Vaughn grabbed his jaw roughly, tilting his face up. “They told me that you died. I buried you in my mind.”
“I wanted to see how far you’d fall.”
“You’re a f***ing monster.”
“So are you.”
And then—
They kissed.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t sweet. It was the kind of kiss that left bruises, the kind meant to draw blood and pull confessions from bones.
Yulian tasted like wine and war, like every terrible thing Vaughn had been dreaming about. Their teeth clashed. Their lips split.
Still, he smiled against Vaughn’s lips. “You taste desperate.”
“I am,” Vaughn said, and kissed him harder—like he could punish him into staying, like he could bite memory into skin. Their masks hung forgotten, falling to the floor like broken promises.
Yulian clawed at Vaughn’s shirt, nails dragging down his chest. Vaughn pushed him harder into the wall, one hand on his throat—not choking, just claiming.
Blood dripped from a reopened cut on Vaughn’s knuckles. Yulian caught his hand and kissed the blood from it like holy wine, tongue slow, eyes half-lidded.
“Obsessed with me,” he whispered.
“Ruined by you,” Vaughn whispered back.
And in that stolen moment, they weren’t heirs. They weren’t enemies.
They were just two men so in love it broke them.
And they kissed again—harder, messier, memorising each other in blood and breath, in teeth and tongues, because nothing was promised in their world.
Except this.
...........
Author’s Note:
okay so i was literally just minding my own business, vibing to taylor swift’s red—like casually, not even trying to suffer—and then that part of the song hit:
"Fighting with him was like trying to solve a crossword
And realizing there's no right answerand suddenly it was vaughn. and yulian. and blood. and ruin. and that kind of love that makes you feel like you’re burning alive but you’d still go back for more.
idk man something in my soul snapped. i was just like—what if he saw him at the masquerade, weeks after thinking he was dead?? what if the grief curdled into obsession and then exploded into a kiss and too many unsaid things between them???
like?? what if memorizing him was easy but letting go was impossible???
anyway. i blacked out and this happened.
i’ll see myself out. 🫠🖤
p.s. they’re so made for each other.
p.p.s. i love them so much it hurts.