Renegade [NSFW] (ThenThereWereNone & MoldaviteGreen)

[MoldaviteGreen]

Eishrin dreamt only darkness. An ever-consuming, forever-reaching abyss. It gripped him with the same fervour as the tendrils of that Keeper, dragging him down into the cold nothingness. He was aware of nothing, only that he was still falling, nothing ever catching him. And where his soul would usually reside, would pull him from such terror, its home lay empty; now caged beyond Eishrin's own understanding. Out of reach. Out of safety. Out of his hands, entirely.

He wasn't aware of the hours that slipped by, nor of the rats that scurried by and gave the unconscious titan of a man a wide birth. He wasn't aware of the blade having been returned to him, laid by his shoulder as the Keeper's final parting gift. The sky above him had begun to shift from deep midnight black to early morning navy; not quite colourful, and dawn not quite ready to break. Still, Eishrin's mind kept falling.

From the shadows, a watcher crept quietly. A young man edged close to the fallen form of Eishrin, having observed carefully for the better part of the last hour. The Adonis' breaths were shallow, though regular, but there came no movement from the rest of him. He was deeply unconscious, deeply vulnerable, and that glittering knife must be worth some pretty price.

With stolen sneakers and baggy jeans, the youth crept closer still; confident in his thievery. It would be as easy as stealing candy from a kid. Take it, and leave. Olive fingers wrapped around the dagger's hilt, the youth's greedy eyes going wide at the strange carvings along the blade. Perhaps it would be more than just a pretty penny. Maybe it would be worth even a grand. There was a market for weird things like this, with symbols and meanings unknown to him and the rest of his gang of urchins. Maybe this would be his winning ticket.

But thick, ebony fingers caught a tan wrist, and the youth nearly screamed. Eishrin's grip nearly crushed bone, torn from his endless mental fall and lurched back into the alley. He'd reacted to the warmth of a body, the sense of another, and he'd caught the thief red handed. His eyes snapped open, glaring up at the youth's still-round face as he snarled; "Drop it."

The blade clattered unceremoniously to the cobblestones, the youth flexing open his fingers in the wake of the command, as he tried to struggle free. The teen's panic began to rise, a scent sharp like lemon against Eishrin's nose. It went ignored.

"What day is it?" Eishrin's voice, rugged and hoarse, demanded an answer. His grip still upon the narrow of the youth's wrist tightened until the bones began to grind. "What day is it?"

"Friday." It came more as a yelp than the teen would care to admit. "Please. Let me go."

Please.

Please.

The same word Eishrin had begged, down on his knees. The same word pleaded by his lips, Eishrin willing to do almost anything to have his spirit back. It did not come from the youth in the same desperation, the same soul-yearning ache, but the word spoken aloud was enough to have Eishrin's hand wrenching free of that olive wrist, disgusted in himself at how cruelly he'd snatched the teen.

Free, the youth fled the alley, leaving Eishrin alone under the moon's gaze; judged.

~~*~~

~~*~~

"Eishrin Wahd."

His name spoken as it was truly meant, a pair, elicited a low snarl from the Wendigo as he slipped down the wide corridor of the Compound. It lay buried beneath the outskirts of the city, beneath poor suburbs that held no ties to the enemy; a series of rabbit-warren like corridors, wide bunkers and concealed compartments. It lay as an underground network that fed the uprising against the Keeper influence and control, the Sect's base of operations.

"Eishrin Wahd," that voice came again; gravelly and masculine. A young man, no older than thirty, stepped out from a dark-windowed room; his brown hair chestnut under the too-white lights of the corridor. Oliver had an awful way of sensing Eishrin's lies. "We expected you to report for the East assignment. Where were you?"

"Hunting."

Eishrin had done the best that he could given the circumstance. To return to the Sect as a bonded Guardian would be signing his own execution order. By right, they attained firm understanding that a bonded Guardian could never truly serve their own purpose. By extension, it made Eishrin an enemy. The waters of the sea had been enough to scrub his neck and shoulder free of the dried blood that caked his skin. The rest didn't matter. Eishrin had returned home in far worse states than tattered clothes and a few gashes. He'd only had to flick up the collar of his jacket.

"We've spoken about this, Eishrin Wahd," Oliver sighed, and Eishrin knew he was rolling those obnoxious green eyes. "So long as—"

"So long as I'm under this roof, and in this family, I must obey the rules." Eishrin's lip twitched as he spoke 'family'. He knew that to be a farce, a façade that had proven valuable in luring people to their cause. It was easy to tempt the forgotten, the broken, the deranged to your cause when you promised a sense of belonging, a family. "Yes, yes," Eishrin waved a hand, still marching onwards and uncaring if Oliver followed. "Would you honestly rather have me stake out and watch a building, than go hunt and actively reduce them?"

Silence came from Oliver, and Eishrin knew he'd won the argument.

Shoving the pad of his thumb onto the sensor pad, Eishrin unlocked the heavy door to his allocated bunk room. Without looking to the other man, Eishrin said flatly; "Goodnight, Oliver."

To which the human grumbled dejectedly; "It's morning."

The slammed door came as his only response.

Hunched against the door, Eishrin's hand came to press into the meat of his shoulder. It throbbed. The marks from the Keeper's bites, the first far deeper than the other, were still trying to heal. Was it the venom that slowed the process? Or was this just another extension of the Keeper's control, now able to limit Eishrin's own healing?

He shoved away from the door, locking it quickly with a flick of the deadbolt, before moving to his mirror hung on the far wall. The satin of his shirt was drawn overhead, his muscles aching as they flexed. In the dark of the room, his eyes glowed softly, his gaze falling to the slope of his sculpted shoulder. Against his skin, the bites appeared toxic; black webs creeping out from under his skin. The edges of the puncture wounds still wept slowly, the bites relatively neat, but remained open. The rich red of his blood trickled free, falling to pool into the groove of his collarbone in a thin, slow river. This should have been healed by now. Just how much control did this fucking Keeper exert over him now?

The muscle at the corner of Eishrin's jaw pulsed as he grit his teeth. One slip up, one stupid manoeuvre, had cost him more than his freedom. This Keeper had stolen his life, his soul, his very sense of being. For Eishrin, there really was nothing worse.

The first aid kit Oliver had given him years ago, to which Eishrin had laughed in his face for, was retrieved from where it had been shoved deep under his simple steel-framed bed. As he stood before the mirror, the medical supplies set out on the ledge beneath, Eishrin began to clumsily stitch the wounds' edges together, knotting them off and then stitching another.

How long did wounds like this even take to heal?


~~*~~

~~*~~

The answer, as Eishrin would soon discover, was never.

For the few days after, he'd been careful enough to wear shirts with collars or high necks. Not that it mattered much, since the Wendigo had all but holed himself up within his small bunker of a bedroom. The soft brush of fabrics drove him wild. The draught beneath the door against his skin was even enough to elicit goosebumps and a shiver that coiled low in his loins. The sheets that tangled about his body as he tried to sleep—tried, because he never truly did the past few nights—were too much. He'd taken to sleeping upon the floor, curled up against the concrete as it wicked away the ever-growing heat of his feverish flesh.

Eishrin half wondered if this was what infection felt like. If this fever, this sensitivity of his skin, was because those wounds deep in his shoulder still hadn't healed. The black webbing had not changed, and remained weaving just beneath the surface of his flesh; so dark that they could be seen even against the rich ebony of Eishrin's colouring.

But Eishrin knew better.

In all the times he'd stitched up humans, that he'd been witness to them falling ill, none of them had ever harboured an intense need to fuck. Yet, this very desire burned through Eishrin like he were starved.

He lay now, the muscled landscape of his back pressed down into the cool reprieve of the concrete, with his hand about the thick girth of his shaft. It ached against his own palm, swollen and hot, and a single upward stroke from thick root to pink tip had a bead of glistening cream well from the slit, drooling down along a throbbing, fat vein. Eishrin caught it with the pad of his thumb, sweeping it over his cock to smear and soak into his flesh, as his fist smoothed back down.

His pinky finger struck something cool, and it made Eishrin snarl.

That damned gold ring sat nestled against the root of him, cold against his skin and yet burning. It served as a reminder more painful than the un-healed bites, themselves. It had grown ever-so-slightly tight with the swell of him, nestled down between the juncture of his swollen, heavy sack and the fat base of his ebony cock. It ashamed him, it humiliated him, for this reminder had its way of degrading him even in the absence of the Keeper, himself—it made Eishrin come quicker, and it made him feral for it.

The strokes of his fist grew quicker in tempo, until the heavy sound of his wrist striking against his belly begun to echo gently about the room. Eishrin didn't care. He didn't care if someone was listening out in the hall, wondering why this sound had been coming incessantly from Eishrin's room for the last two days. Eishrin needed release, his body begged for it, but it was never enough.

One final downward stroke and Eishrin came, spilling himself over the hard grooves of his tensed abdomen. The cream of him lay white against his skin, shimmering, that same pristine white as the Keeper's smooth skin. Eishrin's eyes glowered up at the ceiling, the peak of his climax having faded the very same second that it came. It was fruitless, doing this. It gave him nothing but sticky skin and an ache in his balls for more.

"Fuck."

And fuck Eishrin did.


~~*~~

~~*~~

The girl beneath him buried her face in her black-satin pillow, moaning whorishly as she was rutted down into the mattress. She'd been promised a night without breaks and had, in turn, promised that she could take it. But after Eishrin had tossed aside his eleventh condom to replace it with another, all full and flooded with his seed, he'd seen how her eyelids had begun to grow heavy with sleep.

"Oh, fuck, yeah, Daddy," she whimpered.

Eishrin winced, the pet name sounding wrong spoken with such feminine high-notes. A hole was a hole, he reminded himself, his hips slamming hard into the fleshy orbs of her rear; jerking her inch by inch across the bed until she was nearly at the headboard. He'd fucked her standing. He'd fucked her bent over. He'd fucked her on her back, on her side, on her belly, and on her knees. He was fucking her ass now, his need for something tighter outweighing the smooth glide of her pussy.

"I don't think…" the redhead began, turning her face to the side. She blinked slowly, tired and worn out like her holes. "I don't think I can come again. I'm so tired."

Eishrin withdrew from her, the pucker of her ass struggling to close quickly after the thick of him. The glint of his gold ring caught his eye, but Eishrin refused to acknowledge it. Refused to give it any of his attention, even if it kept the last inch of his cock from burying within a warm body.

"It's okay," Eishrin shuffled away, standing out of her reach. He gathered her crumpled blankets, drawing them over her prone body, and brushed a lock of copper hair behind her ear. "Sleep. I'll show myself out."

Eishrin left, his only souvenir being well-fucked holes and eleven filled condoms, as he went in search of another.


~~*~~

~~*~~

By the fourteenth day, everything had changed.

Eishrin's need to fill, to fuck, to breed, became something else entirely. It had become its own entity, forcing him to seek out warm, supple flesh to bury himself within each hour of each day. He'd hardly been back to his bunker, hardly slept a wink, and it showed in the dark purple beneath his eyes. Each time he came, that warm, liquid sensation of pleasure just evaporated. Gone to the wind as if it'd never happened. But each time, it was enough to dampen the emotions running through him that weren't his own—cruel satisfaction, bitter anger, feverish irritability, and smooth pride. Pride for what reason, Eishrin was unsure. It didn't matter, because it all changed.

His skin was on fire, a hellscape torture from within. With each shift of a muscle, it felt as if it were tearing from the bone. Each roll of a bone felt like it might wrench free of its socket. A few times, it did, Eishrin becoming reckless in his own body; and he'd had to take his own wrist and force his shoulder back into place. Worse than this, worse even than the never-ending arousal that held his cock jutting and hard at all times, was the headache that pounded through his skull and dampened his vision.

It felt like his head was going to split. Like someone had taken an axe to his skull and was taking all anger out on his brain. It left Eishrin a shivering, tormented mess upon his familiar concrete floor; his hands no longer reaching for his groin.

He couldn't eat.

He couldn't move.

He couldn't sleep.

Oliver had knocked on his door more than once, and it had sent a stabbing hot-iron poker behind Eishrin's eyes. The human had earned one-worded responses, and then only grunts. Still, Oliver didn't dare enter. That had been their agreement, typed out into Eishrin's contract with the Sect—that this space was his, and no one would enter, not even if they needed him desperately.

If Eishrin could feel anything besides agony, he would have felt thankful for that condition.


~~*~~

~~*~~

The days and nights bled together, and Eishrin quickly lost track of time. He'd managed to move himself up onto his bed, where the brush of the sheets stung his skin like nettles. More than once, Eishrin had tried to bring himself release, hoping for a reprieve from this torment; but no matter how hard his shaft remained, how hotly his balls ached, nothing he did could help him reach it. He yearned for it, craved it, but even his own fist could not deliver and that door, only twelve feet away, felt like too far to reach.

His sheets were soaked in sweat by the time the hallucinations came, and Eishrin wasn't sure what was real any longer. He saw faces of his past, faces of his present, and warped distorted features that he wondered could be his future. One face stood out above all others, sharper, even, than his old loves.

High cheekbones. Cream skin. Silvery hair. Black sclera and blue irises. Dark talons. Pretty mouth. Angry sneer. Hatred. Greed. Godliness.

Eishrin screamed, tormented, but still no one entered. He became lost to this waking dreamscape, consumed by vivid and nonsense imagery. His thoughts became blurry, nothing but agonised moans and snarls ripping free of him.

Please.

No answer came.


~~*~~

~~*~~

As Eishrin would learn from Oliver, whom caught him yet again within the corridor, he'd lasted twenty-seven days. Twenty-seven agonising days that left him but a husk of a man. Eishrin should have caved at four if he were like the rest of his kin. The longest known to have lasted all but eight. Twenty-seven, and he could last no more.

Beside him, Oliver was trying to keep step, peppering him with questions Eishrin's one-track mind heard but didn't comprehend. Where are you going? What's going on? You look like shit, have you been taking drugs? Why haven't you been answering me? Talk to me!

But Eishrin stalked on, bursting free of the Sect's underground compound and hissing through grit teeth as the frigid night air bit at his too-sensitive skin. He didn't know when Oliver stopped following him, or when he was free of the Sect's security cameras, but he stalked deeper into the city, following that pull within the centre of his chest. A draw, a connection, an invisible thread that led the man to the base of glistening, glass buildings.

The Elysium Bridge Towers.

Eishrin, dressed in nothing but loose fitting, cotton gypsy pants, shoved through the spinning doors, the glass cracking under the force of his palm. If anyone stopped him, they were met with a blood-curdling snarl. Eishrin, in his agony, had descended into beast in all but form. He'd caught the front of the concierge's shirt, drawing the scrawny fucker over the counter until he answered Eishrin's growled demand.

"The Ghost."

The Wendigo didn't accept 'I don't know what you're talking about' as an answer; the man's head left metres from his body.

The ebony of his skin bloodied, his pants stained, Eishrin tore open the locked lift's doors and wedged himself inside, pressing every damned button that would illuminate. When it didn't move, he shoved his dagger into the key hole and wrenched it sideways. The lift groaned, grinding upwards at Eishrin's forceful command, until it lurched to a stop and the doors slid open with a too-enthusiastic trill of a sound.

Eishrin, his lip curled back to reveal thick canines, his hand still wrapped around the dagger jammed into the elevator's console, his skin bloodied and glimmering, snarled; "Where? Where is Ghost?"

The dagger pulled free of the electronics, sparks flying and the elevator powering down, as Eishrin stalked into the glimmering, grand space. His mind was too far gone to admire the elegance, the decadence of the gallery surrounding him. Too far gone, even, to take in any faces that looked upon him. If any approached, they’d be met with a blood-thirsty snarl, and a well-aimed slash of the dagger.

He looked less than he’d been twenty seven days ago. Those bites upon his shoulder abyssal black, jagged and still un-healed. His eyes were blood-shot, his pupils dilated and unfocused, his steps slightly haphazard. Despite it all, there was still defiance in him. A refusal to allow any Keeper close.

The shining gold of his gaze searched for one face and one face alone, and when he did not find it, Eishrin unleashed the most unholy of roars that reverberated throughout the tower; "Ghost!" ​

 

[ThenThereWereNone]

The high noon sun glared through the wall of windows that lit up the quiet of the office: a room of white and glass and chrome, the tasteful placement of plants adding a touch of colour and nature to the space. Papers rustled occasionally and the seconds softly ticked away on the clock.
Beyond the frosted glass doors the floor buzzed with voices and the ringing of phones and the clattering chaos of business as usual.

Bellamy sat in one of the two leather chairs opposite the sleek modern office desk. Behind which sat Anaïs; second eldest of the five Busson children. She–like Bellamy–had inherited their mother’s pale eyes and complexion. But that is where their similarities ended. For Anaïs was willowy, severe, and much like Max, their features were sharper; their father’s children. Though Max was the man’s spitting image, his black hair, dark eyes, and even darker temper.

"You're staring." Leg bouncing, Bellamy peered through the pale of his lashes,"It's unlike you to bite your tongue."

Anaïs studied him in silence for a long moment and he forced himself not to fidget. To silently bear the weight of her scrutiny.

"It is two weeks today," she said finally, leaning back in her chair, hands clasped loosely in her lap.

"Yes."

Silence.

A raucous burst of laughter sounded beyond the closed glass doors.

"If he is not dead, he will be."

"Yes."

Anaïs' expression remained impassive, nary a chink in her calm statuesque countenance. "How much longer will you wait?"

Until the man either died from the agony or came crawling home. "However long it takes," he said, turning back to the sheaf of papers in his hand. Concluding the conversation.

Anaïs didn’t agree because she went on to say, “The longest a Guardian has ever endured is a week and a day. None have survived any longer than that… none that retained any shred of their sanity. It has been two weeks. Perhaps what will come to you will be a shell of what you claimed."

Bellamy sighed, slammed the folder in his lap closed and laid his hand flat atop it. He looked across the desk to his sister, "I will not change my mind."

"It’s prudent that you be prepared for the possibility of disappointment." And for the first time, he saw a hesitation in her, as she seemed to pick her words carefully, "If what comes to you is a broken, rabid beast... what will you do?"

“Put it out of its misery."

"And you will take another Guardian. Yes?"

Keepers’ law dictated that a clan leader was to be bonded. An unbonded clan leader was not recognized to have any of the authority or privileges that accompanied the position; they could not sit on the council of Keepers or delegate a second to speak on their behalf. Which is why Bellamy–a well known unbonded Keeper–who was now heir following his brother’s death, was haunting the floors of the two towers instead of visiting with the other eleven members of said Council. No, the current head was none other than their father's brother who stood in as Regent. A serpent of a man who had coveted the position for much longer than Bellamy had been alive, had finally seen his dream realised, if only temporarily.

‘Until Bellamy took a new Guardian and grew beyond his infantile behaviours, he would never amount to anything of worth.’ His uncle’s exact words.

Since Yvain had been clan leader, Bellamy had had no intention of ever being bonded again. Had sworn it off entirely. The very thought of it had brought to the forefront the carefully buried animosity Guardians awakened in him. Their fanatical obeisance was exhausting, their blind loyalty, their pathetic obsession to please in all ways, to follow without questions, no sense of self. But worst of all, their lack of self preservation. It made him want to hurt them. To break them.

If it was mindless puppets they wanted so badly to be, then mindless puppets is what he would make them.

~~*~~​

~~*~~

A few eyes passed a cursory glance in the direction of the opening lift doors. The sight of the crazed Guardian caused more than a few wide eyed double takes.

“Who does he belong to?” Someone whispered.

The snarl drew more gazes.

“No collar.”

A handful of Guardians watched, tense, hackles raised, sensing the threat of Eishrin. The majority of the Keepers on the other hand—in their decked out finery and glittering jewels, an inhuman shimmer to them; some in the thick of conversations, or having a turn on the dancefloor around the raised platform where a string quartet weaved honeyed melodies through the air, or appreciating the eclectic display of art in various mediums, or partaking in refreshments both of a Human and Guardian variety—thought nothing more of Eishrin’s display than a piece of a curated experience. Some more interested than others.

It was common practice for gatherings to present unbonded Guardians in creative performances as a source of entertainment for guests, as well as a means for Breeders to show off their premium stock and display a Guardian’s talents.

And Eishrin struck an imposing figure. He was a magnetic presence beneath the luminous glow of the crystal chandeliers, his ebony skin glistening with blood and sweat, the fever in his glare, the ripple of power that seemed to ripple around him. His presence inspired awe and a well balanced caution. No one quite so eager to step within the dangerous arch of the man’s blade.

Animated whispers filtered through the onlookers. Someone commented on the blade and fresh blood being a nice touch. ‘The creative team had outdone themselves.’

"Extraordinary!"

He truly looked the part of the tormented hero come to seek vengeance against those who’d wronged him. ‘A natural showman.’

Noticing the sudden excitement surrounding the front of the gallery, Max pushed his way through the gathering onlookers. He stopped, eyes widening. Shock. Disbelief.

All it took was one look at the Guardian for the pieces to click into place and he barked out a laugh. He’d been adamant that Eishrin was a lost cause, and to be proven so wrong… he doubled over, clutching his stomach, tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry.” He gasped out, “I’m sorry, it’s. It’s just…” He waved away the few concerned glances, shaking his head.

Eishrin’s roar seemed to reverberate through every inch of the tower, a shockwave that pierced through its steel bones and all. The room fell into stunned silence. The musicians played on and Max chuckled and sighed, wiped at his eyes.

He coughed up another laugh before managing to reign himself under control.

“I can take you to your Ghost.” He said, a tremor of amusement still tugging at his voice as he stepped forward, careful to stay out of slashing range. His Guardian, a sandy-haired lion of a man kept close, a step behind to his left, amber gazing never wavering from Eishrin.

Cautious and questioning murmurs gradually picked up.

“But you have to lower the blade, yeah?” Max raised his hands, palm forward. A show of peace. “Teddy doesn’t take kindly to threats. And you want Ghost, while I don’t want to get sliced to ribbons. Neither do my guests. So, deal or no deal?”

He waited. Patient. Giving Eishrin the chance to consider the two possibilities laid before him. One: he could take Max’s offer, lower his blade, and be escorted to the person he demanded to see. Or two: he could attempt to fight his way there and he may well cut down more than a handful of Guardians and Keepers, but he would not make it any closer to his desired destination. He would die there in that gallery.

The choice was his.

~~*~~​

~~*~~

Dressed down in a loose red button up–the top three buttons undone–tucked into a pair of black pants, Bellamy coasted on a drug induced wave, ignorant to the commotion happening over a dozen floors below. The sharp edges of his frustrations that had gathered, festering over the agonising trickle of days were softened. Not quite numb. But he could think beyond the intensity of emotions that were not all his own. It was the lightest he had felt in the past twenty-seven days.

Bellamy was not one who dabbled in recreational substances, he left that to Max. But recent events had proven to be an unsettling series of firsts, so when Niko, visiting from a neighbouring clan and a long time friend had offered his Guardian, hinting that Bellamy would thank him later, Bellamy had reached the point where he would try almost anything to still the internal chaos. Even if just for a short while. The Guardians blood, sweet at first bite, had a sharp tannin aftertaste he wasn't familiar with.

He'd asked Niko what he fed his Guardian, but the man had only winked and claimed he couldn't reveal his trade secrets.

"How long’s it been since you were last bonded?" Niko asked from where he lay prone on one of the four occupied chaise lounges encircling a tabletop fire pit, his arms folded under his head.

Bellamy licked his lips, the dry bitter texture of the Guardian’s blood still thick on his tongue. "Not long enough.” He sank deeper into the firm plushness of the lounge beneath him, legs crossed at the ankles, an arm tossed over his eyes while the other hung languidly off the edge. Mellow as a milk-drunk kitten.

The soft notes of the grand piano behind him occupied the silence when conversation trailed off. Max’s gift had proven himself quite adept with musical instruments.

More than once Bellamy found himself fading in and out of focus, his thoughts drifting towards the cause of his out of character behaviour. Eishrin. In some form or another the Guardian made his presence known. Shutting him out had been an effort in futility. Another first Bellamy found he was not readily capable of controlling. Uncharted territory.

There would be consequences for the Guardian’s insolence.

And then he felt it, his skin prickling, bones rattling with the jolt of it. His head cleared and he dropped his arm from his eyes, breath held. Suspended in doubt, a gathering flutter of nerves in his stomach.

The Keeper smiled, slow and triumphant.

He was here.

Welcome home, Eishrin Wahd.

~~*~~​

~~*~~

Tipping slightly to the right, Max peered around Eishrin to the damaged lift behind him. The doors hung partially open, sparks periodically kicking up from within the darkened space. “Ah, yeah. You fucked it.” He swept his arm to the left, gesturing in the direction they would go, “Side lift, shall we?”

The crowd parted. Staged performance or truly deranged Guardian, there was an air of vigilance all around.

A small pillared alcove led to an intricately carved wooden door that pushed open into a long quiet hall. The music of the gallery snuffing out as the doors clicked shut behind them, only the sound of Max and Teddy’s shoes sounded off the Portoro marble floors that glittered beneath the spotlights. Art mounted the walls, while statue figurines and glass displays lined the walkway interspersed between a handful of heavy wooden doors on either side, and to the left, another lift.

Max pressed the arrow to take them up and the doors slid open with a cheerful ‘Ding’. Stepping inside the mirrored box, he lit up the button for the 66th floor and swiped his key card.

As the lift began its ascent, Max facing forward, stole glances at Eishrin through the mirror walls. The position indicator slowly ticked up.

17…

A silent ascent. Max rocked back and forth on his heels, drumming his fingers against his thigh.

21…

Max pursed his lips, considering asking a question. Decided not to.

32…

Fuck it. He shifted slightly, “So how did you happen to meet my brother, uh, Ghost?” He pointedly ignored Teddy’s glare of disapproval. “I know he can be uhh… an acquired taste. And trust, I’ve tried to kill him myself a few times, even tried to eat him in the womb if you can believe that story, but if you’re planning to separate his head from his shoulders with that pretty blade of yours, I’d really rather you didn’t.”

He didn’t really care if Eishrin engaged with him or not. The silence was just… well he didn’t handle silence all that quietly.

56…

Had the lift always taken this fucking long?

“I’m Max by the way. I realise introductions got lost in all the excitement an–”

66…

The lift came to a standstill and the doors opened with a cheery chirrup. The trio were let out into a hall not dissimilar to the previous one. Max led them down the hall and through a set of double doors, down a short corridor–with two closed doors on either side–that opened into a cosy sitting room: floor to ceiling windows drew one's attention to the lit up city-scape beyond. A tasteful combination of deep blues and dark greys with warm undertones and touches of green gave the space a moody, intimate ambience. Textured walls and abstract paintings covered half the wall to the right, along with a fully stocked bar with three stools, backlit crystal decanters casting prismatic light over the marble surface. A floor to ceiling bookcase took up the leftmost wall, climbing vines weaving through the shelves that held leather bound books, obscure antiques, and a random scattering of gnomes, their ruddy faces staring down upon the room's occupants. In the far corner, facing the windows at an angle, a grand piano glimmered beneath the warm lighting. And smack centre in the room, the chaise lounges and the tabletop fire pit centrepiece.

Eight pairs of eyes turned, settling on the trio.

The piano came to an abrupt stumbling silence.

Max’s grin was wide, “Look who stopped by.” He rocked back and forth on his heels, “Ghost.” His grin only widened and he huffed out a low chuckle as he noticed the near imperceptible narrowing of his brother’s eyes as they met his own for the briefest of seconds.

~~*~~​

~~*~~

Diminished.

That was the first thought that crossed Bellamy’s mind when he laid eyes on Eishrin. His attention caught and held.

Twenty-seven days.

Defiance flared bright in the man’s manic, bloodshot gaze. But what stood before Bellamy was a woefully diminished version of the man he’d stalked to an underground nightclub nearly a month prior. A man who had forced Bellamy to stare into death's maw. A man who inspired an instinctual wariness as well as awe. A man, who, even kneeling and begging for death had exuded such a vibrant magnetism and aura of danger Bellamy had been incapable of taking a full breath until the man had lost consciousness. This thing was a shell. A stumbling mockery.

Bellamy didn’t want it.

He sneered. A cruel curl of his lip as he took in the miserable state of the man from where he lay, not deigning Eishrin worthy enough to sit up for, “How pathetic you are.”

 

[MoldaviteGreen]

Eishrin was almost blind in his agony. It was taking every last scrap of energy to keep himself standing, his dagger held tightly in his fist as he slashed forward through the air before him with it. No matter how eager he was for a Keeper to come forward, to fall victim to his reach, none did. Except one, who remained just a little out of Eishrin's arm length and began laughing.

The beast that he was, Eishrin snarled and nearly rushed the man, but a wave of dizziness hit him instead. He grit his teeth, trying to keep down the bile his stomach threatened to upheave. His lunges turned into staggers as the room began to spin around him. That crazed laugh, that amused face of the dark-haired Keeper, suddenly multiplied until they were spinning faster and faster around Eishrin like a nightmare.

It wasn't until he snarled, shoving his hands against his temples, the dagger biting his cheek as he shook his head, that reality began to filter back inside his mind. When he registered the Keeper's words, he blinked heavily.

He could fight them. He could kill as many as he could on his way to Ghost. But Eishrin knew his own limits, and he was less than half the danger he was almost a month ago. This Keeper had reduced him to nothing by forcing this bond upon him, caging his soul.

Only one word was snarled, Eishrin's voice rough like gravel. "Deal."

Max would find Eishrin quite the silent companion as he led them through the corridors. Much like the grandness of the gallery, there might have been a time where Eishrin would stop to note the absurdity of so much luxury and the grandiosity of it all. But now, all Eishrin did was storm after the dark-haired Keeper, staring daggers at the back of his head as he itched for him to hurry up. Eishrin wanted his Ghost now.

Eishrin was a hulking figure within the shine of the mirrored elevator, and while his eyes remained forward, they were mostly absent. The familiar sharpness of pain rippled through him and he tried to keep it at bay. But then there came the cutting of a voice and he flinched.

"I tried to kill him." His answer, while blunt, was honest. At the continued oddness of Max's near-friendliness, Eishrin's blood-shot black eyes slid sideways. "We were both unsuccessful then."

66.

The shrill delight of the elevator announcing their arrival was nothing in comparison to what hit Eishrin as the doors opened. The scent of the Keeper had been muted within the nightclub, but it struck him like a brick wall now; drawn down into his lungs with a deep inhale. Eishrin held his breath, wanting to keep the clove and cinnamon of the man there longer than he ought to, before exhaling through his mouth. But it was tainted by the thick smog of something synthetic, something foul and it clung to the space before him like smog. Eishrin nearly choked on it, his eyes watering a little as it struck his nose again. The square of his shoulders, slumped before, drew taut as his spine became rigid. Tension ran through him as he felt eight pairs of eyes lay on him; seven of which didn't matter.

All that mattered were those ice blue eyes, and when they finally did look to him it was with obvious disgust. Eishrin's stomach curdled, for a reason he could not sense. And then his Keeper bit at him with his viper-sharp words and they boiled like acid in Eishrin's head.

"Pathetic?"

Eishrin's husky voice nearly crackled with the sudden roll of rage; as violent as any thunderstorm and as dark as his eyes. A ripple went through him, one from head to toe, as his hands curled into pale-knuckled fists by his sides and his teeth grit. The fat tier of his upper lip lifted, a snarl beginning at the back of his throat that then rumbled deep within his chest as he stalked forward.

That sharp synthetic scent had struck him the second those elevator doors had opened; a cruel and damning awakening. It was acrid enough to shake Eishrin out of his own self-pity, to shove the agony down a degree so that the Wendigo was at least able to comprehend where he had dissolved into a creature that only reacted. That stench rolled mostly from a Guardian set off in the corner, but also trickled, pungent, from the fair-haired Keeper's cream skin.

Eishrin was over his Ghost within a millisecond, and he caught the lean man by a fistful of his shirt. He was in pain, yes. It took everything in him to not give in to the agony as it felt like his muscles were tearing from his bones, but Eishrin had been pushed too far. He snagged his pale haired Keeper, wrenched him up from where he lay so casually upon the lounge, and shoved his back so hard against the cushions that the lounge lifted from the floor and nearly toppled backwards.

The hand upon the shirt shifted, rising higher to catch the slender of his Ghost's throat, his fingers curled into the slow drill of his pulse point. It was enough to make him hurt, enough to prove a point, but not enough to completely, successfully strangulate. It was the finest edge with which Eishrin was walking that dangerous blade of sanity, proving how carefully he still managed control despite it all.

"You call me pathetic and have the audacity to mellow yourself out with that trash?" Eishrin took a deep inhale, his lip curling in disgust. "I suffered for you, and you can't even handle it. Are you really that pathetic that you had to turn to drugs to…" Eishrin's throat closed over. He wasn't sure why he cared. He wasn't even sure why he thought of it at all. But the flicker of a concern made his hackles prickle and stopped his next accusation. As much as he had so much to say, so much to accuse his Ghost of, it would not be done with an audience.

You couldn't shut me out, hm? Serves you right.

"Your brother said he'd rather I not cleave your head from your shoulders, but it seems I don't even need to do that," Eishrin hissed, lifting and then shoving the Keeper against the cushions again. "You're already on a path of self-destruction. How easy you are making my wish come true—that of your death. I'd never have thought you'd be the one to grant it for me."

A little quieter, the deep rumble of Eishrin's voice almost intimate, his dark eyes held the soft blue of his Keeper's own. His, because there was no denying what had become of them. "Don't touch that shit," he growled. "Even second-hand, I can smell what it's doing to you."

Eishrin told himself he cared because what effected his Keeper would, eventually, effect him through the bond too; in that whatever drugged-bliss thoughts the other man had, Eishrin would be peppered with also. He told himself the only reason he gave a shit was because of that. But it wasn't the truth, and the deepest parts of him knew that, hinted by the slow softening of his grip upon the pale slender of his Ghost's throat as he said; "Don't do that to yourself, you arrogant little fuck. Go kill us both some other way."

Shoving away, he took only a single step back. The hand that had held the smooth skin of the Keeper's throat remained held open, his fingers flexed wide, as the warmth stinging at his palm felt like the new invigoration of life. Touching him had…eased the twisting of his bones within his hand and the burn of his sinew tearing. It gave him reprieve, and Eishrin nearly moaned at the thought of it. To be without pain, to be without this goddamn fever. Fuck, he'd do anything.

That same violent nausea struck him again, his nerve endings suddenly lit on fire, and Eishrin shoved his hands against his eyes as he snarled. Without meaning to, he fell to his knees, the pain bringing him to the ground as it rolled through him in ever-intensifying waves. That bite upon his shoulder had continued to fester, demonic-looking in the way those black webs of veins spidered out from the open wound. It burnt like a continual hot poker to his skin, but it was something that seemed mellow in comparison to the rest.

Make it stop.

Eishrin's skin took on a pallor, sweat beading upon his forehead to drool down his temples and linger against the usually rich ebony of his skin. It tore through him, clawing at his insides, like a beast trying to break free. And, perhaps, in a way that's what he was for he'd never done longer than a day without shifting. This was torture.

Please, make it stop.

It ripped through his spine, singing his nerve fibres, before shredding apart the viscera and tissue of his brain. Eishrin howled as he pressed the heels of his palms deeper into the sockets of his burning eyes. He wobbled on his knees, catching himself blindly; his hand unknowingly clutching at his Ghost's knee. Eishrin sought something to ground him, something to give him strength and reprieve, but he found nothing.

"P-Please…" Eishrin whispered, his blunt nails sinking into the skin of his forehead and dragging downward, leaving behind angry, un-healing lines. His hand fell away, sinking into the soft cushion of the lounge until he tore at it with deathly strong fingers. Even as just a man, he was deadly, and his fingers tore down to sponge and springs by his Keeper's thigh. "Fuck."

Kept alone, segregated from the rest of his kind, Eishrin knew nothing of what would take over him after being bitten and bonded. He knew nothing of why the bite was refusing to heal, nothing of why he was so overcome with the need to fuck, to fill, to breed. He had no idea why he would dream of silver hair, cream skin, wicked mouth, and icy eyes, only to awake as the hot ropes of his cum struck the hard lines of his stomach; the orgasms rushing through him even in his sleep.

Eishrin knew nothing of what to expect, or what he was asking for. Only that he wanted an end to this pain. Only that there, surely, had to be a cure to this godforsaken agony.

Please. Gods, please.

Blinded by the pain, Eishrin could see only the outline before him; the apparition that had haunted him since their first meeting. The halo of silver hair, back-lit by the moon, and snowy skin. Glowing, ethereal, haunting. His pupils, blown wide, stole what little gold had begun the flicker through his irises in his fury.

Instead, Eishrin blinked, his jaw tight as he grit out, begging; "Ghost, please. Make it stop. Whatever it takes, I will give you. Just make this end." ​

 

[ThenThereWereNone]

Eishrin's rage was a living breathing beast and the man's sark eyes seemed to clear of the pain writhing in them for the blink it took for him to cover the space between them. The Guardian's hand fisted in his shirt snatching him forward, triggered Max's gift—he couldn't remember the red-headed Guardian's name—to leap to his feet, a growl rumbling in his throat. Bellamy limp and pliable as a ragdoll, his irises blue on a canvas of black narrowed, a glitter of amusement in their depths. "Leave him." His gaze holding Eishrin's, he lifted his chin, skin tingling beneath the touch of the man's fingers squeezing at his throat.

The Guardian hesitated, clearly agitated.

Bellamy was more focused on the bullshit spilling from Eishrin's mouth. Suffered for him. The sharp crackle of anger that tried to rip through him was held at bay by the drugs swimming through his veins. Dulled. More intuitive knowing than a reaction.

Do you really wish to antagonise me any further than you already have?

Bellamy’s teeth clicked, and he deliberately forced his hands not to reach for the man above him, to shove him away, there was only so much manhandling that he would tolerate. And in the same breath he wanted to pull him closer, inhale the spiced heat of his skin, taste what he'd been denied for twenty seven days. "How little you know," he said, voice low. He flexed his fingers, feeling the lazy curl of magic within easy reach.

And then there came something wholly unpleasant, Bellamy's entire being attempting to shrink away from the concern in Eishrin's lowered voice. Rationally, it would be the man's concern for his own well-being, and yet it didn't make it any easier. He forced himself to hold Eishrin's gaze, even as he wanted so badly to look anywhere else. A rising petulance in his chest, words gathering on his tongue. The man had no right to tell him what he could or could not do. But he said nothing. Shoved the words down and away.

And then his space was his own again, his neck feeling cold where Eishrin's grip had vacated.

There was hushed silence in the room, thick with a perverse fascination of what was transpiring between Guardian and Keeper. Max had silently slipped away, taking Teddy with him. But Niko and the other two Keepers, an olive skinned woman, with long silken hair a deep midnight blue-black, and blood red lips; and a slight mouse of man, brown haired and empty eyed, though now there sat a spark of life in his gaze.

Eishrin dropped to his knees suddenly, the man near writhing with pain. Bellamy sat up, his feet planted firmly on the floor. His head vibrated with the deep rumble of the man's pleading.

The Keeper shivered, his pulse kicking up as his Guardian's pain and desperation ricocheted outward, that howl a most unholy of sounds and he leaned forward slightly. Eyes lingering at where Eishrin's hand clutched his knee.

The pleading whisper caressed his ear and Bellamy shuddered. It was a grim scene, watching such a physically powerful man tear at his own skin, at the plush upholstered lounge, crumbling beneath the oppressive weight of his agony. Eishrin’s gaze, dark and unseeing, seemed to look through him.

"Aw Bells, It begs so sweetly doesn't it. You can…" Niko who had pushed up onto his elbows, licked at his lips, voice a purr, "taste the agony. I think It's earned some relief."

Bellamy stared, unmoved at the man kneeling in front of him, the pain radiating off of him, the ashen and dull pallor of his skin, the desperation of him. "He can do better."

Pricking the soft pad of his middle finger, Bellamy reached out, smearing the drop of blood that welled up over the unhealed wound of Eishrin's shoulder with spider webbing veins of poison, stark even against the man's darker skin tone. "How many humans did you fuck seeking relief? Did it help? I expect it didn't." His fingers slid up the thick column of Eishrin's neck, and he cupped the man's jaw. "Is that what you need, Eishrin?" His voice dropped to a low, intimate murmur, "To fuck something?"

 

[MoldaviteGreen]

That perpetual pain that had been Eishrin's companion in every waking moment, that sharpness at the juncture between his thick neck and broad shoulder, suddenly intensified. Eishrin felt the touch of something cool against the wound and, blinded by the piercing agony tearing through his skull, he realised it was a finger. The only way with which Eishrin could know was how, with the touch, there came a gentle ease after the flare.

The flesh began to sear, twisting to knit back together far slower than it ought to. But after twenty seven days of that wound being open, jagged and aching, it made Eishrin's shoulders fall forward, his other hand reaching out to clasp at his Keeper's ankle, as the intensity of his agony dropped the smallest of degrees.

And as that same finger touched him, gliding like melting ice over his feverish skin, Eishrin tried so very hard not to bare his throat for him. Not in invitation to bite, but in invitation for that touch to continue, for it to turn from a finger to a hand. Anything had to be better than this. For several seconds, the trail the Keeper had smeared his touch along Eishrin's pulse to then curl under his jaw felt like heaven. It was a reprieve Eishrin wished this Keeper could not grant him, but it was relief all the same. Even if, in the wake of his touch, that pain doubled down as the invisible trail of touch faded from his skin.

Please…

Eishrin growled, the sound like thunder as it rolled within the broad of his chest. To beg went against every weave, every fibre of his being, but what else was he to do? Nothing Eishrin had done had seen him free of the pain. Everything he had done had only ever made it worse. While he'd begged for death in the alley for glory, Eishrin was so very close to begging for death for mercy.

"I…don't know," Eishrin hissed through tightly grit teeth. His jaw was set beneath his Keeper's firm hold, the skin there singing with relief. The hand upon his jaw felt like a bucket of ice to burning flesh, and the soft sag in his shoulders likely gave it away. "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know."

He tried to shake his head, but another tear through his skull stole him and the world spun. It was an odd feeling, seeing only in flashes of colour but also feeling the world spin about him. It made the bile rise higher in the back of his throat, and Eishrin let out a low moan as his head fell forward. Forehead kissed knees, his posture almost one of reverent prayer or submission, caused instead not by loyalty but the blinding pain that swept through his veins like razor blades.

"I tried everything," Eishrin swallowed the saliva forming in his mouth, nearly choking on his words. "Nothing worked. Nothing fucking helped."

I wanted to break this thing in our heads because I felt you too much. Too vivid. Too intense. I thought with this broken it would be easier. I was wrong.

Eishrin's ebony fingers circled his Keeper's ankle tighter, the smallest of squeezes, before it smoothed a little higher up his lean calf. Some deep, innate part of him wished he could see how dark his fingers appeared laying over soft, milky skin.

Instead, Eishrin was unaware of how intimately, how near-familiarly, he was touching the Keeper above him. He only knew that the shrill pain in his head lessened the smallest of degrees; and not that it was because his fingers had slipped under the hem of a pant leg and touched cold skin. He was blind to everything but flashes of silver and cream and blue. He was blind even to the exploration of his fingers and the hard grasp of his hand upon a knee.

"I d-don't know what I need," Eishrin growled, trying to lift his head from where it had fallen, only for the ropes of muscle at the back of his neck to protest. "I don't know what this is."

The confession was bitter in his mouth, sour on his tongue, as Eishrin revealed the small piece of his truth. He wanted to take it back the moment he spoke it.

All I know is that your touch gives me reprieve, and I beg you, please, to grant me more.

It killed him. It killed him to so weakly beg, but the Adonis had suffered by way of his own for twenty seven days and the torture had begun to break him. He hated what he'd become, hated what he'd been doing, because he knew he was dissolving into a piss-weak version of himself.

The hand upon the front of his Keeper's knee slid around to the back, an equally intimate touch that Eishrin didn't see as such. He only knew that his thick fingers felt greedy, that this blanket of cloth over his Keeper's flesh was a sin. He only knew that he wanted to touch the bare cream of him, to sink fingers into muscle and watch it dimple beneath ebony.

You have haunted me. Every second of every day. Every one of my dreams; terror or otherwise. You have haunted me. I have seen you everywhere and I cannot escape you. I have been tortured by visions of silver and cream and moonlight and ice. All I think of is your eyes, your mouth. Of that fucking kiss. I see a blonde and I think it is you. I fuck a blonde and I…

What was he doing? What was he saying?

Eishrin tried to clamp the connection closed. He tried his damned hardest to sever what had re-opened. But like the festering wound that had been upon his shoulder, it remained open; allowing the Keeper to hear the words Eishrin thought he had admitted only to himself.

…and I dream it is you.

Another unholy roar ripped from Eishrin then as a familiar wave of agony shot through his bones, the twists of his dark hair falling forward to lay against the soft fabric of his Keeper's trousers. The few beads within glittered gold in the absence of his beloved jacket; left behind in his feverish need to be free of the Compound's stuffy constriction.

"Please."

Please, Ghost. Please.

"What more will you have me say?"

What more will you have me do for you to end this? What would you have me do? Beg? For gods sakes, I already am. I'm on my fucking knees for you. What more could you want?

Flashes of anger, stabs of resentment. Dying flickers of hope, sticky need.

"You have me. I am here."

And I should have been so much sooner than this. Take it out on my body. Take it out on my mind. Just please…

Ghost, please help me.
"Ghost, please help me." ​

 

[ThenThereWereNone]

Bellamy nearly smiled as Eishrin sagged forward, the man's hand around his ankle sudden, unexpected. But he didn't admonish his presumptive handling. The Guardian clearly lost to his agony, his body punishing him for resisting what it knew it needed.

The thunderous rumble of a growl through Eishrin's chest drew forth that stifled smile, a twitch of muscles at the corners of the Keeper's mouth. Here kneeling before him was a man felled by his own hubris.

How the mighty had fallen. And Eishrin had no one to blame but himself.

"He doesn't know." Spoken with a sardonic edge. He stroked the pad of his thumb along Eishrin's cheekbone, the man's skin feverish and damp with sweat. "Did your beloved Sect only teach you how to kill and maim your own? Or were you prone to shirking your studies?" His hand fell away from Eishrin's face as the man sagged forward even more, his forehead coming to rest against his knees. Bellamy blinked down at him. His hand hovered above the man's head.

What a wretched creature he'd become. His pain held a physical presence, the tremors of which could be seen beneath the man's sweat damp skin. Bellamy let his hand fall to his side.

"Not everything," he said.

How arrogantly presumptive of you to think you could break this. As if it would be so easy. And look at you now.

Tension snaked its way down his back and Bellamy straightened, his skin tingling where Eishrin's touch squeezed and travelled higher. The larger man had all but curled himself around him. And Bellamy wanted to touch him. Needed to touch him. To explore the expanse of skin bared to him. To feel the power in the rippling muscles of the man's body. Taste his pain. Claim his pleasure. Shatter him into thousands of sharp edged pieces. Put him back together again.

Pale brows drew down in response to Eishrin's confession and he looked up, meeting Niko's raised eyebrows and bemused gaze. The man shrugged in answer to the silent question.

How could he not know?

Eishrin's desperation pierced the drug induced fog of Bellamy's mind and he shuddered, the first icy trickle of shame borne of self-loathing touched him. He shoved it away. But it persisted. A trickle turned a pouring torrent of wanting. Wanting with a feral intensity that had him blinking away suddenly blurry vision.

Too close. Eishrin was too fucking close. The direct physical too much and not nearly enough.

He held himself still. Not trusting that he wouldn't simply lean forward instead of away.

And how unfair, how selfishly cruel his Guardian. The man's words weaved a thorned web and the Keeper found himself trapped within its sticky threads. Incapable of hearing anything else; of feeling anything else but the heat of the man, his hands on his body but not in the way he wanted them. Not where he wanted them.

Too many fucking layers.

A sudden pressure built inside in his head and he could feel Eishrin attempting to pull away. But they were both trapped, neither capable of escaping the other. He didn't fucking understand it. How or why he was being punished this way? Had his mental defences simply atrophied over the years that he'd refused to be bonded? Yes, that's what it had to be. The only thing that made sense. The only answer that wasn't accompanied by unsettling implications. Unbeknownst to the Keeper, his hands had gradually tightened into fists, tearing into the fabric of the lounge.

Eishrin's roar snapped him free of the emotional whirlpool that threatened to drag him under and he held his breath, trapping the air in his lungs. The room and its occupants easing back into focus. But they remained in his periphery.

Eishrin claimed the entirety of his attention.

With concentrated effort, he willed his body to relax, the tension bleeding out on a slow, controlled exhale through his nose. He captured a single loc loosely in his hand, thumbing the golden bead that glittered beneath the lights.

Ghost.

After Eishrin's raw and oddly provocative confession of being haunted, the epithet seemed amusingly apt. He might have laughed were it at any other moment. Bellamy pressed the flat of his palm against the back of Eishrin's neck.

Please. How effortlessly it comes to you now.

A rising contempt. Cloying need. Malicious satisfaction.

Slipping his fingers into the man's hair, pale digits curling, gripping, he jerked Eishrin's head back, harsh and unforgiving.

Who do you belong to?
"Who do you belong to?"

 

[MoldaviteGreen]

He doesn't know.

He doesn't know. He doesn't know. He doesn't know.

But what did any of it mean? What did any of it matter?

The words, simple, felt foreign to Eishrin's ears; his mind so many light years away as he battled the agony that gripped the soft sponge of his brain. He heard only the song of Ghost's voice—honeyed and yet sharp, sugared with something that bit just as hard as his own fangs. Words came as notes, as trills and bass, that licked at his ears. His senses were fading, his vision flickering in and out as that same red-hot fire tore through his nerves.

Eishrin's reality warped; becoming streams of colour, blurs of sound, flickers of heartbeats. He could hear them all, ever so faintly, but there came only one that drilled its way into Eishrin's very being. So familiar that its tempo provided Eishrin just enough of a second to snatch onto it, to ground himself, to count it. It came, a flurry of its own kind, before it began to slow. Its resonance, however, remained within the Guardian's skull; carving its pattern into the bones of his skull, branding its crescendo into his grey matter. With each beat, it drove fire down into Eishrin's loins; his ever-hard length now marble.

The thick, dark flesh of his upper lip twitched with a snarl, the thick white of his canines catching in the low light of the room in a threat. Please had been a word Eishrin believed to be flowery. He'd never spoken it, for none in the Sect had deserved it. How ironic that his first utterance of such an adverb had been to the Keeper whom had torn his life from him. How ironic that the creature that now held his soul had been the first to earn it.

Quivering muscles bunched and drew taut, a heat gathering at the back of his neck before slowly dispersing; chased away by the cool tendrils of a touch. Like water lashing at a fire, the sear of his nerves was smothered. Plush tiers parted, chin lifted, eyes closed as relief, albeit minimal and temporary, washed over his spine. Eishrin would steal any moment he could of this, and he lifted a hand clumsily trying to reach behind his shoulder to secure whatever it was that held him there.

Wide fingers brushed smooth skin, an electric pulse jolting through the touch, as digits skimmed over lean knuckles. Eishrin was not deterred, his fingers forcing Ghost's to spread wider so that they may interlace. I need this, his hand seemed to say as it pressed the cool of Ghost's palm against the nape of his neck that little bit firmer; greedy. I need this, please give it to me.

I thought you'd want that.

Eishrin's heavy presence within his Keeper's mind flared; that temporary reprieve granted by the chill of Ghost's touch returning his vocabulary to him. Words made sense, but his eyes still did not see in lines or detail, flickering blindly.

I thought you'd want your head free of me. I thought you'd be pleased to feel me gone. To have this over. To be alone inside your dark, dark head again. Was I wrong?

Then the touch at the back of his neck shifted. Fingers shook free of Eishrin's hungry grasp, instead sliding into dark locks, wrapping several about a palm before they were yanked with such ferocity that Eishrin's breath hitched. It caught in his throat, his canines bared in a silent snarl on instinct, as his throat was exposed; thick, meaty, with a pulse that beat wildly beneath ebony skin. He tried to shake free, to twist out of the hold, but Eishrin was caught like a fly in a spider's web.

"No one."

His answer came in a seething gravel tone.

But he knew it to be a lie. Each night had been cast in the same moonlight glow. Each dream had been haunted by the same smooth, milky skin dimpling beneath dark fingers and blunt nails. Each stroke of his fist along his cock had been driven by a flash of silvery hair, a glimmer of sea-glass blue, of soft pink tiers.

His Keeper—his and no one else's—had carved his very claim on Eishrin's soul and it had penetrated so very deeply that it had been unable to be erased. His Keeper's name lay branded across the inside of Eishrin's heart, scrawled over the bones of his skull, and yet it still evaded him.

"I hate you," he snarled, a hand catching Ghost's thigh; clawing at the lean muscle of the leg as he sank his fingers harshly into cotton trousers and the flesh hidden from him beneath. He wanted this cotton gone. He wanted each barrier between them torn, shredded and cast to the wayside. "Does it please you? This? Does it please you to know that I am suffering, for what I still do not understand?"

Eishrin wasn't aware of his hands, wasn't aware of how one had fallen again to his Keeper's ankle and had begun shoving the leg of his trousers high over the cream of his calf. It moved of its own accord, seeking silky skin and bare touch; dragging blunt nails over cream flesh. His other squeezed tighter, the pads of his fingers spread wide over Ghost's left thigh, so dangerously close to his groin.

I belong to you.

It slipped from him, a quiet confession whispered into the swirling darkness of his Keeper's ever-present mind. Soft, murmured, echoing about that abyss.

I belong to you, and you have made sure of that. My dreams, my body, my blood—it all screams for you. And I fucking hate you for it.

His vision flickered, a glimpse of malicious blue moonstone eyes. Those eyes captivated and terrified him. It made that violent hatred bubble in his chest, his need to claw his way free surging, but something else sliced through him. That pain, vivid as it was, felt like nothing compared to the icy contempt with which he saw so vividly now, there within those blue eyes.

What more do you want from me?

What more can I give when you already have my soul and my fate?​

 

[ThenThereWereNone]

Eishrin's fingers looping between his own sent a violent jolt of lightning straight through Bellamy's veins. It triggered his heartbeat to speed up and he pulled gently at first, to try and extricate himself. But his Guardian held firm, his actions speaking where his words failed him. The relief, brief and soft as a whisper, made the razor edges of his Guardian’s anguish all the sharper and Bellamy kept his palm pressed against the back of the man's neck.

You thought. You thought. You thought. Just as you thought you would kill me. Just as you thought you could force me into killing you. Just as you thought you could fuck away the pain without being aware of why you even hurt. You have only yourself to blame for your misery.

He plucked his hand free of Eishrin’s fevered grip then. Finding purchase in the man’s hair, his grip harsh as he forced the man's head back. Eishrin’s attempts to shake himself free only caused Bellamy’s grip to tighten. His eyes drawn from the threat of the man’s silent snarl to the fluttering pulse beneath his skin, his throat presented with a siren’s song of an invitation.

Who do you belong to?

A simple enough question with an even simpler answer.

Eishrin’s rough edged response came as no surprise. “Dishonesty will bring you no closer to the help you so desperately seek.” Tone admonishing, almost disappointed but eternally patient.

And then there came the snarled truth. Eishrin’s harsh grab of his thigh seeming to drive his point home. Bellamy's muscles tensed beneath the roughness of it, the bruising ache of it, even as a smile touched his lips. “It does please me. Your hatred. Your suffering. Your self-loathing. Your shame, forced to beg the very critter who stole your soul.” The hand not gripping Eishrin’s hair, encircled the man’s wrist, those capable fingers much too close to the hardening length of him for comfort.

Not a moment later Bellamy huffed out a soft laugh. Sweet surrender, finally. Reluctant, softly admitted, but there all the same. Leaning down, he brushed his mouth against Eishrin’s own, his breath a cool puff of air as he murmured, “Now that wasn’t so difficult was it?”

I want you to keep your hatred. Stoke the flames of it until it threatens to consume you from within, until you think you can bear it no longer. Until the sight of your own reflection makes you ill knowing that you have knelt, begged, debased yourself before the enemy. And that you will do it again, and again, and again if only to keep the pain away.

I want you to hate yourself as much as you hate me.

He bit down into the pillowy softness of Eishrin’s bottom lip, lapping up the precious crimson droplets that welled to the surface. It hit his tongue with a vicious intensity, chasing away the bitter aftertaste of Niko's Guardian's blood. Thick and rich and smoky and overflowing with the sweet-tart of agony. A low moan trembled in his chest and he sucked the man's bottom lip into his mouth. Greedy. Insatiable. Suddenly ravenous. Were it not for their riveted audience, he would have taken Eishrin right then and there.

And will you beg for death again, do you think?

 

[MoldaviteGreen]

I want you to hate yourself as much as you hate me.

So simple, that demand. So easy, that command. For each time Eishrin's body had tensed and convulsed in his release, only to never be granted that wave of pleasure or reprieve, a bitter seed had been planted in his chest just beside that which had bloomed for his Keeper. Every time, thereafter, that Eishrin had dreamt, wept, stalked, whimpered, that seed had grown; sinking its roots down about his tepid heart. It was that very loathing that had kept Eishrin within his locked bed chamber. It had been that very hatred that had seen Eishrin crawl and claw at the vanity beneath the mirror, trying to haul himself to his feet to see his own reflection; desperate to ensure that he was still, indeed, himself.

Eishrin had been a man so pious, so self-sure, that considering failure had never come easy. That trip on the cobblestones, that slight feint too far to the left as he'd swept by his Keeper on his knees, had been the end of it all. It had cost him everything, and he could never forgive himself for it. He should have killed his Ghost there at the bar, regardless of witnesses. He should have ended their fight instead of twisting it into a game. Why hadn't he shifted? Why hadn't he unleashed that beast inside of him that would have never seen this come true for a future?

Because Eishrin had been cocky, and it cost him is soul.

That, in itself, was enough to spurn on his self-loathing. As he knelt before his Keeper, his dagger dropped upon the carpet just off to his side, his hands hungry as they clawed over cloth, Eishrin didn't consider his actions. He couldn't because he knew that to do so would be to become overwhelmed in disgust, unable to complete what was needed to see this torment over. He'd resigned long ago to the knowledge that he'd do anything to end this; even be it dragging the sharp blade of his dagger across the ebony skin of his own throat.

He wouldn't tell Ghost that he'd already tried. He wouldn't admit that he'd stood before the mirror, his knife pressed to his throat, his hand tight and shaking as he looked into the dark pools of his own eyes. Eishrin had stood like that long enough that he couldn't recall when he'd even stood. It would have been easy, to take the life that was no longer his own to control, but there had been only one thing which had stopped him and saw that knife clatter to the ground.

Ice blue eyes that flickered across his vision and a glimpse of a face.
His haunting apparition so sudden it terrified him.

Now, the brush of cool lips against the plush of his own came as balm to his aching skin. His tiers parted, plump and split from his own biting, as a soft gasp left him. The sound was minute, but he knew it would have licked at his Keeper's ears all the same. Wherever Ghost touched, a chilled ease was left in his wake. Not even the sting at his scalp from the yank of his hair was registered as pain. For Eishrin's existence had been only ever-increasing agony the last twenty-seven days. What more was a little pain? What more was a little desperation?

Relief.
Reprieve.
Release.

Eishrin yearned for it all, and the bite that came to the fat pulp of his lower lip had the Adonis moaning low. It rumbled in the broad of his exposed chest; gleaming with diamond droplets of sweat and rubies of splattered, congealing blood. The sting of his Keeper's teeth was followed by a smooth of a wet tongue, the muscle gliding between the seam of Eishrin's mouth and nearly caught by the man's own teeth. Eishrin would have bit it, would have suckled that tongue into the hot cavern of his own mouth, if Ghost hadn't drawn it away.

They'd kissed once before, and it had been Eishrin to pierce and split the soft skin of the other's mouth. This time was different. Where the first had been slow, teasing, a press of mouths in knowing that one felt the taboo of it, this kiss was something other. It grew insatiable as Eishrin leant forward, pressing his head back into the hand that gripped at his locks. It became greedy as thick, ebony fingers flared wide, his thumb pressing between his Keeper's thighs, all suddenly clutching tighter at the lean muscle under his palm despite the circling of cream fingers about wide wrist. They became suddenly ravenous, a fight of lips and teeth and bated breath, as Eishrin's other hand slipped free of the trouser leg it had been shoving high over milky calf and instead shot between them, fisting in the man's shirt to draw him tighter.

Where that kiss grew heated, Eishrin's heart drilling so frantically against his ribs that it may implode, something cool flushed through him. Where his blood would have heated in his brewing arousal, his desire to take and command and dominate, what rushed through him was iced in comparison to his feverish flesh. Eishrin's eyes fluttered closed, that harsh tension that held his body rigid suddenly rolling through him and easing. For the slightest of seconds, Eishrin became malleable; sagging slightly back onto his heels as his sigh mingled with Ghost's own sweet breath.

I will kill you.

Eishrin's grip gathered tighter within the silk of Ghost's shirt, a button popping free and dropping to the floor. He fought with the hand that held his wrist, trying to slide his fingers over the man's hip. He knew not of what he needed, nor of what he felt, only that his body, his blood, craved his Keeper in ways that made him, once, feel sick.

When all is said and done, I will kill you.

He lunged a little then, his rear lifting from where it had settled against his heels. Between the sharp points of his thick canines, Eishrin caught the pulp of Ghost's lower lip; piercing it in a fashion far hungrier. The blood that wept forth, a slow trickle that soon ceased, was spiced but tainted with something sour. The foreign bitterness of it was all that kept Eishrin from moaning, from humming his delight at tasting his Keeper again; taking what was also taken from him.

I will be the end of us both.

From where he stood, his olive palm upon the piano, the sweet boyish features of the young Guardian had hardened. The time he had spent here within the Elysium Towers had been the best of his life. To consort with Bellamy, to let him take freely from his sinewy body, was transcendent. He'd drawn up from the piano seat as the ebony stranger had stalked and lunged at his Keeper.

His in all senses but truth.
For this boyish Guardian held no bonding bite, no collar, no claim.

He'd been forced to watch it all. To watch as his Keeper, his Bellamy, had spoke so intimately with this beast. How freely that mutt touched Bellamy, how casually Bellamy received that touch…it made his blood boil with pitiful, jealous rage.

The blade upon the carpet glinted, and the boy made his move.

He rushed forward with fox-like agility and snatched at the knife, his fingers curling around the hilt. His wrist was caught by ebony fingers, but a second too late. Instead, the silver of the blade kissed ebony skin; held over pulsating artery as he loomed behind the kneeling mutt.

"You're mine," the boy snapped, his eyes wild. "You said I belonged to you. Why are you doing this?"

Eishrin had felt the sudden surge of an approaching presence, and broke the kiss. His lips had parted so regretfully as he'd released Ghost's hands and caught the fine bones of a wrist. The blade had been stolen, and it earned a furious snarl, but it pressed to the side of his throat all the same. Eishrin went still at the threat, but something wicked swirled within the dark of his eyes as he looked to his Keeper. Amusement.

I wasn't the only one, was I? I wasn't the only one seeking bodies and holes in the hopes of finding relief? It found you, too, that need. Was it mine that consumed you? Or did you have your own share, stemmed innately from yourself?

The boy growled, the sound pathetic and impish in comparison to the Wendigo's bass. "You said I'm yours! You lied!"

"He does not lie," Eishrin rumbled against the threat of the knife. Still, those tourmaline eyes held moonstone blue. "If he is anything, it is bluntly honest."

"You lied to me!" The boy wailed, the blade pressing harder and beginning to split smooth, ebony skin. "I'm gonna kill him. I'll kill him and then you'll have me. We can be together. I deserve you!"

Are you attached to him?
Eishrin's eyes grew impossibly darker as he licked his lips.
To maim or not to maim, that is the question. ​

 

[ThenThereWereNone]

The sharp arousal that flared to life beneath Bellamy’s skin had little to do with the furnace-like heat of the man kneeling before him and everything to do with the soft gasp that his touch elicited from the other, the way man opened to him. The rush of his blood, a drug so much more potent than anything Niko could have offered. He swallowed his guardian’s sweet, desperate moan, liquid heat pooling low in his core. Eishrin leaned forward and Bellamy parted his legs further, drawing the man closer, taking his mouth with all the fierce desperation and frustration of twenty seven days of being denied.

Now that he had him, he had no intention of letting him go; and as if they were truly of one mind, Eishrin’s hand fisted into his shirt, anchoring him just as his own hand in Eishrin’s hair kept him close. He might've laughed at the madness of it all, if he could’ve torn himself away for even a moment.

A harsh drumming started up in his head, filling his ears, consuming coherent thought entirely. He was lost to the need to take, to claim, to hurt, to ease the frustration that had nipped at his heels in the absence of his Guardian. Eishrin's lips beneath his own, a balm that he would never admit to needing; to craving with a ferocity that defied reason, that blinded him to everything but where they touched.

At some point came the distant realisation that the drumming in his head was the jack-rabbit beat of Eishrin's heart, his own syncing up in a way that made him want to pull away. But he was weak to his impulses. Feral with a primal need that only saw him draw closer to the other, unaware that he'd slid forward, perched on the edge of the lounge as Eishrin sat back on his heels. Chasing, loath to part.

Yes, you will try.

Bellamy's fingers tightened around Eishrin's wrist as the man’s thick fingers twisted tighter in his shirt, blue veins standing out against alabaster skin, a sharp contrast to the deep richness of Eishirn’s darker complexion beneath his fingers. The man fought against his hold, his hands greedy, persistent.

His breaths came in sharp puffs of air, lips slick with their mixed saliva, the taste of the man’s blood and an unexplainable flavour that was all Eishrin thick on his tongue. He wanted more of it.

Perhaps when all is said and done, you will not fail for a second time.

And as if the man could read the shuttered thought, he lunged forward, capturing Bellamy's bottom lip between sharp canines, hungry and punishing, eliciting a shudder from the Keeper. A groan swallowed. And even as his hand anchored Eishrin's own from wandering farther than the punishing grip on his thigh, he burned with the need to have the man’s touch against his bare skin, to be seared beneath the heat of his touch, the bruising press of his hatred.

And I will hold you to your word.

It was subtle. A shifting in the air that raised the fine hairs on the back of Bellamy’s neck but it was Eishrin who pulled away from the kiss first. A low growl of protest sat trapped in his throat as he forced himself not to chase after the man. Reluctantly, he released his grip in his Guardian’s hair, his hands falling away as his gaze briefly lifted to consider the cause of the abrupt interruption. He stared at the wild eyed amber gaze of the young Guardian, emotions as fiery as his hair.

What was his name again?

He caught the dark amusement in Eishrin’s dark eyes. A flutter of irritation tugged at the muscles in his cheek. He would be admitting to nothing.

Which of us do you suppose could endure another twenty seven days?

But far more pressing than Eishrin’s smug delight was the press of the blade against his Guardian’s throat. The threat of it. A cold rush of alarm and bubbling rage washing over him. Deathly still, a hush fell upon the room, save for the young Guardian’s ranting and raving.

Fucking Guardians. Pathetic, needy, infuriating. He had no tolerance for neediness. And he didn’t take kindly to being threatened; least of all by a clingy, naïve, inexperienced Guardian who presumed to deserve more than what he was given.

His gaze held in the bottomless void of black that were his Guardian’s eyes, though his words were directed at the one who held the blade. “Go on then,” he said, a frigid calm to his tone.

“Kill him.”

A dare.

“And I will give you what you deserve.”

A promise.

No irreparable damage.

 

[MoldaviteGreen]

All it took was a millisecond.

Fine-boned wrist was snatched by thick, ebony fingers. Tender, olive skin reddened then bruised deep indigo and bright violet. Calcium bones crumbled, tendons sliced by shards. Copper curls were snagged by violent fingers, wrenched until scalp nearly lifted from skull. The knife fell to the carpet, its descent slower than Eishrin's own movements and its bounce upon the floor softened by woven fibres.

That blinding pain that surely came from fractured wrist had not even been perceived, the youth's eyes only wide at the initial sudden movement of his assumed victim. The boy's miscalculation, his faulty prediction, had not even dawned on him as Eishrin drew the youth's arm wide and wrenched it until tendons pulled tight and nearly snapped free of a socket. The hand in the copper curls drew the boy over Eishrin's shoulder, the Wendigo posturing himself forward away from the boy so that the youth's weight became misbalanced and awkward. Flung like he was weightless, the youth catapulted over Eishrin's shoulder and down onto the carpeted floor; prone.

Eishrin's hands had shifted just as quickly, catching the back of the boy's neck to bury a juvenile face into the floor like a master would take a dog's nose to its mistake in reprimand. His other hand had snatched, taking the boy's arm behind his back, held like a broken wind up and out, twisted tightly at its socket at a near-snap.

Eishrin hadn't moved from where he knelt, turned only slightly as he held the boy down upon the ground by his side. Mortal eyes wouldn't have been able to perceive the blur his hands had become. Guardian eyes would have caught the suggestion of it. Keeper, perhaps, with their sharpened, predatory eyes, would have seen the flicker of his hands, the twist of his grip, and the pristine expanse of smooth, ebony skin.

For that knife that now lay an inch in front of the boy's carpet-shoved nose was stained only by the blood of the concierge that lay beheaded in the bowels of this godsforsaken tower.

As the youth lay there, his legs brought up under him so that his rear was raised, his nose pressed down into the rug, that delayed pain finally rushed through his nerves and flashed through his synapses. He howled, shuddering in the agony as he felt the breaks of his bones and the taut pull of his tendons; arm so very close to popping free of its socket. All he could say, all he could beg was; "You said I'd be yours. You said you wanted me."

Eishrin's lip curled in a disgusted snarl. Shoving the boy's face harder into the floor, Eishrin tossed that captured arm to the side and released him. Dark fingers reclaimed the knife and with a speed as fast as he'd disarmed the boy, Eishrin stabbed his dagger deep into the couch an inch from Ghost's thigh; buried to the hilt.

"Get out of here," Eishrin growled at the boy, watching as the redhead gathered himself, staggering to stand as he nursed his broken wrist to his chest. "Get. Out."

He turned his head then, locking eyes with the Keeper he smelt that same Guardian’s blood on, Nico, and snarled; “All of you. All of you get out before I gut you awake and stuff your gizzards into your filthy fucking mouths.”

Maybe if he'd been in a right state of mind, Eishrin would have told the kid to run. To be free. To escape while he could. But all Eishrin could see was a youth who'd greedily touched his beloved knife, held the blade of it to his throat and threatened to spray his life across the very Keeper who'd gladly watch it bleed free of his corpse. That wasn't how their story would end. That wasn't how Eishrin would see their twisted, fucked up tale come to a close.

For Eishrin knew that it would be he whom would tear the life from the Keeper's body, and it would be Ghost who crushed his soul into oblivion.

They were destined to be the end of each other, and nothing would alter it.

That fire he'd found, the energy he'd managed to snatch up from the depths of his dark haze, had come from instinct and adrenaline. It burned quickly, now a smoulder, before it flickered and died and Eishrin was forced to steady himself by taking a fist of the couch's edge as his world tilted like a collapsing stage.

Put me out of my misery, you fucking bastard.

That agony of before returned with an intensity that had Eishrin gripping both sides of his head and nearly drawing himself down into a ball. His fingers bit at his temples, the muscles over his shoulders fluttering beneath the rich dark of his skin. Still, he faced his Keeper, the broad expanse of his bare back hidden from Ghost's view.

Now. Please. It hurts.

Fire, searing hot. Acid, dissolving and boiling. Tearing, torturously slowly.

There was only so much the mind could take before it began to crack, but something flickered between them. A snap in their bond, the fragments of their connection, allowed a flash of Eishrin's agony to crash through Bellamy before it faded as quickly as it came. A glimpse. A taste. A warning that if left for too long, it would bleed across and infiltrate him, too. Impossible, just as it should have been for Eishrin to steal his Keeper's memories. Impossible, like how Eishrin had lasted twenty-seven days and still, somehow, clung to the man he was.

Carve it out of me. Bleed me free of it. Tear it out as you did my soul. Whatever it takes.

Eishrin shuddered, his entire, massive form shaking as he blindly reached out. Wide palm found the soft skin of his Keeper's hand, the other found the bottom of Ghost's silken shirt and loosely grappled there. Wherever he touched, it had been out of chance, for he fumbled as he tried to blink his hazy, obsidian eyes.

Whatever it fucking takes, Ghost. ​

 

[ThenThereWereNone]

Did Bellamy want Eishrin dead? No. The Guardian would be of no use to him dead. And yet if the man managed to let himself be killed at the hands of a young, untried Guardian then it would have only proved he had been a waste of time and effort. A monumental failure. Better to learn this sooner rather than later.

Fortunately for all parties involved, that particular scenario had no real teeth. In the time it took to blink, Eishrin effectively disarmed the young Guardian and had him planted face down into the thick rug beneath him.

In that pregnant pause before pain caught up with brain and the Guardian howled out, it came to him.

Jesper.

The fiery headed Guardian’s name.

Bellamy, expression impassive, looked on as Jesper whimpered and shuddered, his words thick with pain and dogged in their insistence. His blabbering would be met with icy silence. The Keeper hadn’t lied to him. They may not be a bonded pair and never would be, but Jesper was his in whichever way appealed to him in the moment.

The stab of the blade sinking into the lounge far too close for comfort had pale eyes shifting away from Jesper to settle on the seething form of his Guardian. Watching his Guardian watch the other stumble, unsteady to his feet, clutching his arm close.

“No, he stays.” A commanding calm to Eishrin’s growling menace.

He did nothing but nod slightly as Niko’s wary gaze darted from Eishrin to Bellamy. A question there.

Niko didn’t trust this Guardian, didn’t trust his friend alone with him. But Bellamy appeared quite unbothered and so he gathered himself up, snapping to summon his Guardian close. The others followed his lead. Niko was last to leave the room. He hesitated in the arched entrance. “Find me later, yeah?”

Bellamy smiled, “I will.”

And then there were only the three of them. Alone. Jesper wavered near the archway Niko had disappeared through. Amber eyes glittering with anger and stubbornly unshed tears. He stayed only because Bellamy had commanded it. Otherwise, he would have long scampered off at Eishrin’s growl, to lick his slowly healing wounds in private.

Like a snuffed out flame, all the fight fled Eishrin’s large frame and as Bellamy watched the man steady himself with a bracing fist, he mused on how the man seemed one light push away from collapse. Which would give up the fight first: His body or mind?

There was no warning for what tore into Bellamy then: a white hot blade of agony with no end and no beginning. No rhyme or reason. His bones seemed to vibrate, attempting to crawl out of his skin. Burning. Dissolving. He was being torn apart, limb by limb. Bellamy's lean, slender form went rigid and his mind flatlined. His soul wailed. A blink. A breath. And it was gone. But the memory of it, the echo of it rippled through his teeth, skin, and muscle. He inhaled a trapped shudder.

How?

How had Eishrin not succumbed to the agony? How was he still more or less aware, coherent? How had it managed to leak across their bond?

The Keeper found himself suddenly needing space. Just a moment to gather himself. To extricate himself from the desperation and madness of the larger man that pawed at him, blindly seeking contact.

He slipped free of Eishrin's kneeling form, his steps taking him closer to Jesper, to the archway and the exit it offered. Back facing Eishrin, he reached up with pale fingers to touch his neck, blunt nails pressing lightly as if seeking the invisible constriction that tightened there. But there was nothing. He swallowed thickly.

What the fuck was that?

You will bathe first.

Knowing Eishrin would follow at the promise of impending relief, the Keeper only tipped his head in Jesper's direction, gesturing for him to follow as well. The light clip of his boots against the marble floors served as a point of focus, the rhythmic echo of it he counted the steps, each breath filing down the sharp edges of the agony that should never have been his to experience. Made it less sharp and pronounced. And by the time they arrived before the double doors—engraved with a winding whorl of oleanders— that led to the baths beyond, Bellamy had regained a steady equilibrium. A simmering anger steadily grew alongside the hollow ache of arousal that had doggedly snapped at his heels for a near month.

The baths welcomed the trio into its expansive space of curling steam, marble, glass, natural stone, and hollow echoes. Past a row of benches and dark lockers opposite, opened into a large space boasting two lapping pools of opposite, steam rising and curling from one, a large grey touch-pad with colourful knobs and dials controlled the temperature, sound systems, and lighting features, the generously sized shower area with its built in seating area for added comfort included multiple shower heads—ceiling mounted waterfall heads as well smaller installations jutting from the walls—as well as the expected accessories; plush towels, bathrobes, bath amenities to round out the luxurious touch.

Bellamy settled into one of the alcoves carved into the walls, breathing deeply of the fresh, soft aromatic scent of calm and relaxation. The spice of Eishrin’s arousal, the tart of his pain curled thick and heady. Drawing one leg beneath him, he tipped his head in the direction of the showers, “Go on, undress.”

Pale gaze assessing, he didn’t ask whose blood it was that stained the man’s arms, chest, and the white of his cotton pants. Some unfortunate soul who'd come between the Guardian in his blind rampage no doubt.

“Jesper will bathe you.”

 

[MoldaviteGreen]

Like the wraith that he was, Ghost slipped free of Eishrin's grappling hands and desperate fingers. To the near-blinded man upon his knees, the Keeper had become immaterial, transcending to another plane only to reform feet away. He knew it wasn't possible, was not the truth, but with his mind and senses so addled in the height of his agony, it was all he could comprehend. For Ghost had been above him, over him, and then feet away within what felt like the very same second. Ghost, because of his colouring, but also because of his wraith like grace.

The instruction came loud and firm within his head, reverberating through his skull. While Eishrin had promised to do whatever it took to see this pain wash free of him, he struggled to understand the necessity of bathing. What did it matter that his ebony skin was gleaming with the thin film of perspiration that clung to him like dew upon blades of grass? What did it matter that the congealing globules of haemoglobin painted his frame and clothes even still; once syrupy?

The feet between them had his Keeper feeling like a world away. Too far, Eishrin thought. He needed to touch him, to feel his skin, to dig his fingers into the man's flesh in order to ground himself before the next wave. As Ghost began to move, slipping from the room and down a wide corridor, that sting Eishrin had felt within the centre of his chest pulled taut and nearly snapped. It spurred him to his feet, a man motivated only by his most base need for release and reprieve, and began to stagger.

With his vision warped, the colours drained of what little of the world he caught glimpses of, Eishrin's journey to the baths was far less graceful than that of Bellamy and his Jesper. The Adonis of a man teetered sideways, often striking the wall with the brunt force of his broad, well-muscled shoulder or the splayed thick of his fingers before righting himself. His steps were slow, clumsy even, like a faun learning to walk after birth. Eishrin felt pathetic, trailing after the Keeper and his whore as he did now, but what else was there to do? Succumbing to the agony had long ago been removed as an option.

Eishrin was drawn forward down the marble-lined corridors not by sight, but by the pull within his chest. He realised, now, that he'd become acutely aware of where Ghost lingered; Eishrin's deepest internal compass having rearranged and shifted its magnetic north to something other. Him. All of Eishrin's inner bearings, inner workings, guided him only to the apparition before him; out of reach, out of touch, and too far away.

Don't leave me behind, Eishrin wanted to snarl, but he swallowed the thick of those words down in a resonating growl. He fought to keep up, to keep himself upright as the beginning shadow of the next wave of agony was cast long over him. It would be seconds, perhaps even less, and Eishrin wasn't sure he could take very many more.

The only thing that alerted him to their approach was the sudden thickness of the air. It had grown humid, a blast of hot, sticky air licking at his already feverish skin. The marble beneath his feet shifted to large, smooth tiles as he staggered forward another step; lingering upon the precipice of a space that wanted to choke him. His breaths, strangled by the heavy humidity, were shallow and uneven; irregular like his brain was forgetting its need to take them.

The curling steam licked at the sharp features of Eishrin's rugged face. The beard along his jaw and chin had grown unruly, scruffy even, for when Eishrin had clutched a blade it wasn't ever to shave. The gold and bone beads within his locs glittered against the bright lights of the bathing space, glinting against the expansive darkness of his bare torso. As Eishrin took his next shaky breath, his wide nostrils flared.

Blinded by the beginning surge of pain, he was oblivious to his Keeper's non-verbal instruction that came in the way of a nod of his blonde head. Instead, he staggered sideways, pressing a large hand against the side of his skull and curling his fingers hard against his scalp as he crashed into the tiled wall of the exposed showers. The air left his lungs in a grunt with the impact, his other hand finding the slick tiles and bracing, as the wave intensified, crippled him, before slowly fading away to its baseline sharply aching linger.

This is too much. Please.

Ghost's spoken words fluttered to his ears, slightly echoed, and Eishrin went rigid. To have another's hands on him made his saliva turn sour. He didn't want to be touched, least of all by the youth who'd held his very own ceremonial blade against his throat and claimed to be worthy of the Keeper now lounging somewhere all too far away. The youth, Jesper, as his name was spoken, couldn't have been any older than nineteen—lean, pig-headed, full of youthful cockiness with no skill to back up such claim.

That same amounting pain threatened to crash over him, and Eishrin grit his teeth. Thick, ebony fingers caught the laces of his loose-fitting pants, pulling the knot undone. The elastic at the waistband was the only thing holding them low over Eishrin's hips, and it submitted to a single, swift pull. Falling, the pale cotton glided down over dark musculature, pooling above bare, blood-stained toes. The loss of his clothes bared more of him than Eishrin cared to acknowledge; not just to dark, honed flesh of his quads and calves and the scars that littered them, but also the thick stiffness of his cock that jutted hard from his body, throbbing and ringed with gold.

The trousers were kicked aside, Eishrin's teeth grit tightly together as he took another deep inhale and turned to face the tiled wall of the showers. The large of his hands pressed into the slick tiles, his fingers splayed, as he rolled his broad shoulders forward and braced. Braced, for the unwelcome touch of another when all Eishrin craved was the cream body of his Keeper. Braced, for the cold strike of water that would soon come as pin-pricks. Braced, for the next surging wave of agony that rippled through his thick ropes of muscle.

With his back to both watching men, the landscape of Eishrin's skin had been exposed in all of its marked glory. It was a piece of himself that he'd wished to keep private, the one thing Eishrin had hoped to keep to himself after so much had been stolen. But this, too, was taken for him; traded, instead, for the promise of relief.

Risen from the dark ebony of his otherwise smooth skin were geometric shapes, mystical whorls, and smaller, flatter dots. Each carried a meaning not yet revealed, though appeared symmetrical and purposeful. Two stars rose from just above the upward curve of Eishrin's scapula, at either side of the valley of his spine. Beneath, lay rune-like markings; each always reflected with mirrored similarity upon the opposite side of his spine. They decorated his flanks, the muscular globes of his buttocks, and the tail of his spine. What had once been carved into Eishrin's skin now stood proud as raised scars, an intricate pattern of smaller, flatter dots weaving down like lace over his flanks.

Yet, if one looked closely enough, they would spy that not all markings were mirrored. There were some, laying beneath the delicate runes, that were faded, old, and paler. Pock marks of small, circular burns. Oval-shaped tears from angled punctures. Straight lines, carved and then stitched. The beauty of Eishrin's ceremonial markings overlay all of this, but could not entirely hide his juvenile past.

Jesper, whom had stood aside while nervously clutching a cloth, finally stepped forward. He cast an uncertain, amber gaze at Bellamy, his unease clear. This Adonis, his muscles rippling beneath his marked skin as he snarled through another wave of agony, had held Jesper's nose to the floor only moments ago. Who was to say that he wouldn't attack him again now?

The youth, timid in nature but not in his love for his Bellamy, pressed the cloth to Eishrin's skin and ignored the flinch of the far larger man. Anything for Bellamy. Anything to please him, whatever it is that he wishes for. Jesper, in his Guardian naivety, saw no reason why he could not also be claimed in the same manner Bellamy had taken Eishrin. By law and biology, it was impossible, but Jesper had always been a fool.

As the cloth, frothy with soap, smoothed over his skin, Eishrin flinched unwittingly. His senses had been stolen from him in the height of his pain, his nails curled and digging into the grout between the tiles until it flaked away. Eishrin had not heard, smelt or seen the youth approach, and the sudden touch had jolted him. The fibres of the cloth felt like a grater had been taken to his flesh; grinding away the top layers to leave pickled, subcutaneous fat on show. He tried to edge away, but the cloth was just as persistent as the boy whom wielded it.

The water that drew down his body, raining over his marked back to fall like rivers across the bare expanse of him, first swirled crimson, then ruby, then rose as it filtered down the drain. The blood washed from his skin with ease, congealed globules falling into the rush of the water by his toes before disappearing.

Still, that pain intensified and the dedicated scrubbing of his skin left Eishrin feeling raw. His knees wobbled, threatening to buckle. The Wendigo tipped forward, pressing his wide forehead to the tiles, letting the cascade of water run over his face and hair, its coolness only meagrely soothing. That agony tore through him, a familiar foe now, and Eishrin barely breathed. It showed in every inch of him, the thick muscles beneath his ebony skin fluttering, twitching and tensing. His spine stiffened, drew curled then taut, as his toes curled into the swirling water.

"F-Fuck…" Eishrin's curled fingers dragged down the tile, his hand moving without thought. He needed relief, needed reprieve from this soul-tearing pain. The baths had fallen away, his awareness of witness no longer existent, as his palm found the thick root of his shaft and pressed hard, his fingers brushing over the achingly hard flesh. The pain only intensified, Eishrin's touch only worsening as his fingers brushed the taut flesh of his sack. Hand slamming back into the wall, Eishrin snarled, his shoulders shaking with unreleased tension.

Jesper looked to his Keeper, his eyes alert but softening as his gaze fell upon the pale features of his deity. For Bellamy had become his icon of worship, his dedication, and Jesper boldly took a step towards the ebony Adonis and pressed the cloth up, under the heavy weight of the man's sack and smeared the soap over his tender flesh.

Eishrin visibly shuddered, a hand coming to the fine bones of the youth's wrist and shoved it away. "Don't touch me."

When Jesper fought against Eishrin's grip, the cloth dragging along the underside of the visibly twitching, ebony length, the Wendigo blindly shoved Jesper with enough force the youth staggered back. Eishrin snarled, his eyes flickering between obsidian and gold.

His touch bears me nothing.

Eishrin's forehead pressed into the cool tiles once more, another wave of agony making his legs tremble as he caught a ledge to prevent his fall.

I need yours.

The confession came, bitter and never sweet. Has it been spoken aloud, it would have been sour within his mouth, foul over his tongue and rancid in his throat. But it drifted between their minds, their wild flurry of emotions and feeling brandished against one another like a weapon of internal struggle.

Ghost. Please. End this, you fucking bastard.

The agony peaked again, Eishrin's knees buckling. He caught himself against the wall, barely keeping himself upright.

Fucking hell. What more would you have me do?

Quieter, spoken with desperate reverence:
Please, Ghost, let me touch you. ​

 

[ThenThereWereNone]

Neither Bellamy nor Jesper slowed to wait for Eishrin’s unsteady, stumbling gait. Though the latter did glance behind them, once, twice. Amber eyes lingered. A rising bitterness that he’d allowed himself to be so physically humiliated by such a filthy, lumbering beast. A sneer curled on thin, rosy lips. He didn’t understand what Bellamy saw in the deranged giant. But it wasn’t his place to understand; to question.

And then they were in the baths and a knot of unease twisted in the Guardian’s stomach. Eishrin was quickly disregarded as amber eyes darted to his Keeper. He didn’t know why Bellamy wanted him to accompany them, not after what he’d done. He feared what it meant, what would happen.

It is much too late to complain about any of this being too much. You did this.

"Jesper will bathe you."

Bellamy stifled the surge of amusement that tried to touch the corners of his mouth as his words landed. For a brief moment the two Guardian’s aversion to the very thought of it was mirrored in the rigidity of their bodies.

Good. They had only themselves to blame.

Like a snake hypnotised, Bellamy found himself transfixed, pale gaze following the movement of Eishrin’s hands as the man tugged at the drawstring of his pants. Chest tight and heat gathering, pooling below the waistband of his pants, he traced with his eyes the sculpted curves of his Guardian’s nude form. Pale gaze following the distinctive, powerful lines of muscle, the scars defining the body before him as one belonging to a warrior: one that'd been bested and brought to his knees, raging and rabid. His eyes lingered on the glint of claiming gold circling the base of the man’s thick cock., Bellamy licked his lips, mouth suddenly dry.

Then Eishrin turned and for the first time he saw the markings. Intricate, deliberate. Bellamy’s fingers itched with the need to touch, to trace the texture of them. He battled with himself to stay seated. To not give into the primal, hungry need to cross the divide, to press himself against the other man, to feel the power and pain rippling beneath the other’s skin.

Pale eyes met amber. The Keeper gave the slightest of nods.

He didn’t expect the acidic rush of envy that burned through his chest, searing his throat as Jesper touched the flinching form of the other man. The young Guardian was following his orders and yet Bellamy wanted to break his fingers. It was an irrational feeling and the anger it drew forth only caused the searing heat of his arousal to turn molten, the hardening length him pressing uncomfortably against the snug confines of his pants. Teeth clenched, his breath rushed out on a hiss, hands fisted at his side.

Unwittingly, he found himself flinching every time a raw rush of agony slammed itself into Eishrin. He didn’t feel it himself, but the memory of that small sampling of it rang raw and fresh and taunting and he never wanted to feel it again. And fixated as he was, he could pinpoint the exact moment Eishrin was tormented anew, the man an earthquake trapped in a flesh suit.

Bellamy shifted, planting both feet firmly on the ground, fingers carving claw marks into the sea coloured he's sat upon. Body rigid, his skin too tight, too hot, the humidity of the baths stifling, the roar of the shower bouncing off the tiled floor like thunder in his ears. A flare of satisfaction rocked through him as Eishrin palmed at himself, the man’s frustration mounting as relief continued to evade him.

Again, he felt Jesper's gaze, soft and ever reverent before he offered Eishrin the best kind of torture. It came as no surprise that Eishrin was less than receptive to the other's touch. One might even say violently abhorred. A smile did touch Bellamy’s lips then. More grimace than anything but amusement still fluttered beneath the sharpest parts of it. Were it not for the gradual crumbling of his self control, of the roaring hunger that demanded to be sated, he would’ve toyed with the two men more. But as it stood, he was one step away from falling to prey to his own primal urges.

You've hardly given him a chance to try.

"Jesper." Those two uttered syllables accompanied by the come-hither hook of Bellamy’s finger beckoned the young Guardian to him; who lowered himself to his knees in one fluid motion, a bright flush crawling up his neck.

Reaching out, Bellamy combed his fingers through those fiery curls. His touch was gentle where his words were anything but. "You will stay. You will watch." Dropping his hand, he rose to his feet and hooked a single claw beneath the kneeling man's chin. "And as you wallow in your misery, know that this is a consequence of your own failure.”

Come.

Footfalls near silent, he met Eishrin halfway between the curling steam of the heated pool and the showers, his hands loosely clasped behind his back as watched the man draw near on unsteady legs.

Undress me.

 

[MoldaviteGreen]

I don't need to give him a chance.

Eishrin's words were bitter, his teeth grit as his knees continued to tremble. That surging wave of pain flushed through him, leaving his tormented nerves singed.

I have suffered twenty-seven days with this agony. You think that I don't recognise that it has been only your touch, no matter how brief, that has given me milliseconds of relief?

It felt horrid to admit, but it was earnest. It came as spoken, known truth. For there was no doubt, no possibility, that anything else was right. Where Ghost's fingers had lingered, cream upon ebony, there had been ice against simmering burn. Whether with knowledge or not, Ghost had granted Eishrin momentary peace, a glimpse of reprieve, and it had the far larger man aching to feel it again. Not for him. Not for Ghost. Eishrin would never care to consider, nor admit, that the ache he felt deep within the marrow of his bones could be for the man, himself, and not what he offered.

But a little voice within his skull whispered; Why else have you seen only silver hair? Why else have you woken to find yourself naked and staring up at the moon? Why else have you craved to touch pale marble, white crystal, silvery threads of silk, and milky flesh? Why else have you been craving these things if you have not been craving him?

A shiver ran the length of Eishrin's spine, trembling down through his already shaky legs as he grasped at the small cut-out embedded into the tiled wall as a home for soap. The ledge granted him a finger-hold against the weight of his own body trying to drag him back down to his knees.

Dark lashes fluttered, the water catching on their curled lengths before drooping down heavily to cascade over high cheekbones. They fell like tears over his skin, snaking down into the thick of his beard, before running like blood over his throat. Eishrin held there, forcing himself to breathe as his body forgot how, unaware of what transpired behind him. His chest rose and fell, those ribs flaring beneath the dark of his midnight skin, as he felt the youth draw away.

That pull within the centre of his chest drew tighter; the bond between them pulled taut. His blood sang—not with anger, or pain, or revulsion, but with something Eishrin could not identify. It curled low within him, his blood brewing warmer than before, a mere second before he felt the silken honey of Ghost's words within the jagged recess of his mind.

'Come.'
Ghost spoke, and Eishrin's hands fell away from slick tile and soap-holding ledge; obeying, despite it all.

The stream of shower-water tumbled over the broad of his shoulders for a flash longer, before the swirling humidity of steam threatened to choke Eishrin again. His feet slapped against the floor, his steps shaky, lopsided and clumsy. But as he spun, turning under the guide of that pull within his solar plexus, Eishrin faced his Keeper and finally saw.

Where the world had fallen away, the agony having stolen his senses, some returned. Eishrin did not see the curl of steam, nor the colours of the tiles and flooring. He did not see the pools stretched out beyond, carved deep and lit from within. Nor did he see how the youth knelt off to the side, his face twisted in his own agony born of pious jealousy.

Eishrin saw nothing but the halo of Ghost.

He flickered at first, only an aura. Standing feet away, lingering, the posture of his leaner frame was lost to the light that was him. He glowed brightly, shining more so than he had beneath that full moon when they'd first met, and Eishrin's knees nearly caved.

Silver. Moonstone. Diamond. These were the things that Ghost seemed crafted from. He would have been heavenly if he were not of his nature, or his person. Eishrin hated him more for it. How could something so vile, so cruel and inherently wrong be so beautiful? How could something so savage, repulsive, and feral be so sweetly gorgeous?

When Ghost spoke again, Eishrin's dark eyes flickered downward, finally blinking from his stare and tearing his gaze from the cream, feline features of Ghost's face. That command, alone, made colours begin to bleed into Eishrin's view; graphite grey, charcoal black, blood crimson. These were things that seemed so stark, so gaudy, that Eishrin's hands balled into fists with his need to remove them. Remove them, because they did not suit the fae-like prettiness of Ghost's face, and Eishrin wanted to be blinded by the bright pale of his entire form.

He was before his Keeper before he realised, his stumbling feet carrying him forward. Their toes nearly touched, Eishrin towering over the other, with his chin tipped to his collarbones and eyes cast downward. His next breath came in a steamy swirl, just as hot as the air clawing at them, licking warmth into Ghost's cheek.

Nothing passed between them as Eishrin's thick fingers caught in Ghost's satin silk shirt. It wasn't necessarily rough, but it was needy as it drew Ghost a step forward into the burning heat of his body; that gap between them suddenly shrinking. There was no hiding Eishrin's naked body, for the thick swell of his cock struck the angle of Ghost's hip; stubborn, and almost proud. The gathered silk was released, those grappling fingers instead coming to the top-most button. It slipped free of its clasping hole, the opening of Ghost's shirt deepening towards his navel. But Eishrin wasn't looking, for his obsidian eyes, ringed thinly in gold, bore down into the pale blue of Ghost's own; unblinking and unwavering.

I can see you.

A revelation of sight returned.

I see you.

Those words, only one removed, carried more weight than Eishrin had wanted, and that of previous. They carried more heat, coiled deeply in the lush velvet of his timbre as it resonated through Ghost's mind.

Eishrin's fingers continued to work lower, until he flicked away the crimson silk from cream expanse of nude skin; offended that it had once been concealed. The satin brushed over his scarred knuckles as Eishrin slid a hand between shirt and exposed stomach, airily teasing the tips of his fingers towards Ghost's flank; exploratory.

What awaited Eishrin with the touch of his fingers against the soft of Ghost's skin was not the same relief he'd felt when cream fingers had fisted hard into locs and dug into his scalp. Instead, it was different. It was lingering.

Plush, dark lips parted in a gasp; a sharp inhale that slipped between the soft pink inner seam of his mouth. Dark eyes pulled away, eyelashes fluttering down as his gaze dipped low. It fell to where dark, ebony fingers smoothed more boldly over milky flesh, where the connection of their skin left a tingle upon his fingertips that melded higher into his palm. What would it feel like to touch Ghost all over? What would it feel like to have this touch all over himself?

Fingertips dipped down beyond the waistband of dark trousers, running from Ghost's left hip to his right. They pressed lower still, seeking what lay beneath, until Eishrin's knuckles were granting friction across his Keeper's lower abdomen. He shouldn't have been aching for this, shouldn't have been engaging in it, but the promise of relief encouraged him. It stole away the remains of his logic and reasoning, leaving Eishrin only with instinct—and this was what it demanded. Ghost.

Why do I want you?

The thought was supposed to be his own, kept within the confines of his own skull, but it slipped free; shared intimately as Eishrin's fingers clasped the button of the trousers, slipped it free, before drawing the zipper of the fly downward. Whatever clothing lay beneath the dark trousers was caught in a firm grasp, both items shoved down over pale hips, drawn over thighs, then flicked over knees. They'd fall to pool against Ghost's ankles, finally leaving the silvery apparition of his form bare.

Eishrin's eyes closed. It was all that he could do to keep the last remnants of his sanity that threatened to swirl down the drain of the showers far beyond.

What is this?

It had to be a spell, it needed to be some part of the curse Ghost had forced upon him during the formation of their bond. It had to be foreign, to be forced…surely? For what else could it have been besides these?

When Eishrin's eyes opened, they glowed gold; a shifting liquid metal. They pierced his Keeper, his next breath shared between their space, surely brushing against Ghost's own lips. One of Eishrin's hands balled into a fists by his side, his knuckles turning pale with the force. The other held open, his wide palm hovering over the milky skin of Ghost's hip. The heat of his hand, radiant, would lick at milky skin. His fingers were splayed in the air, clenching and then flexing, as if he were considering whether to touch the other man.

Agony rose, building far quicker and more intense than before, as if in punishment for the lack of touch. Eishrin stumbled, catching his step, but his hand went to Ghost's flank. His fingers spread, dimpling alabaster skin, as he drew himself flush to his Keeper. His body, firm and unyielding, crashed hard against Ghost's own, his face fallen as his knees struggled to hold his weight. The sharp bolt of electricity came with the friction of his shaft dragging against Ghost’s bare hip, drawing sideways to stab at the steamy air.

Still, despite it all, Eishrin did not press any of his frame hard onto Ghost, did not transfer his bulky weight, and did not share his soul's old desire to crush the Keeper. Instead, Eishrin merely held him tightly, his forehead falling further to press into the line of Ghost's shoulder, as his hand clung to the Keeper's hip and flank.

While it had come swiftly, the tearing pain was slow to fade, but each point of their contact washed that space free of it. A dirty, sinful shiver ran the length of Eishrin's spine as he released a shaky breath against cream skin, his lips nearly brushing over the smooth flesh of his Ghost.

What is this, Ghost? What haunts me as well as you?​

 

[ThenThereWereNone]

Awh, only twenty-seven days to reach this conclusion?

As far as Bellamy was concerned, Eishrin was the sole cause of his suffering and now having tasted the barest acidic drop of that agony, he couldn’t have conjured up a better punishment himself.

Like a marionette cut free of its strings, Eishrin stumbled his way forward. An unsettling awareness lit from within the dark of his eyes, an awareness that seemed to peel away clothes, skin, muscle and bone to lay bare the very essence of who Bellamy was beneath it all. Where Eishrin had looked through him before, now he looked into him. The intrusive nature of that gaze had Bellamy tightening his clasped hand into a fist behind his back.

Pressure built in his chest, tightening with every unsteady step Eishrin took forward. It was the humidity; the room was thick and swimming in that clinging, sticky heat. Nothing else. Then Eishrin was towering over him, all the hard muscled, dripping wet bulk of him. He took up the entirety of Bellamy’s vision. An eclipsing presence. Water dripped from Eishrin’s hair and beard, clinging like tear drop crystals against his dark skin, just begging to be licked away. Bellamy lifted his chin, eyes cast upward. His cheek burned beneath the swirling heat of the other man standing too close. But not close enough.

Drawn forward beneath the greedy grab of the other man’s fingers, Bellamy's hands fell to his sides as he resisted the aching need to reach out for the other. He could feel with an intense awareness the press of the man’s hard cock against his hip, but he kept his gaze locked on the gold ringed darkness of the other man's eyes.

The smooth rolling thunder of Eishrin's voice in his head beckoned forth a cramp of unease and a question. What do you see? The thought remained concealed. To ask felt like a confession in itself.

'I see you'

Those same words the Guardian had uttered that night in the alley as he'd ripped into Bellamy's mind. An impossible violation. Something he shouldn't have been able to do. Shards of ice still clung to the memory it and Bellamy shoved it down and away.

His heart thumped faster with every button freed, his breaths shallow and controlled. Pulse roaring in his ears, an urgency clawed just beneath his skin. But his expression remained impassive as Eishrin continued to undo the buttons of his shirt. The steam of the baths seemed to thicken, swirling around his gradually bared skin: milky pale, smooth, unmarred, covering a wiry, supple musculature of a predator built for speed and agility rather than pure brute strength. And then Eishrin’s large fingers were brushing against his bare skin, the faintest of touches and Bellamy felt something within him shudder. Collapse. A shiver ran through him. A sigh married with a groan held fast in his throat. He didn’t breathe. Didn’t press into that searing point of contact in spite of his whole being wailing to be closer.

Beneath the heat of both Eishrin’s touch and his gaze, Bellamy felt suddenly ravenous. A primal hunger clawing to surface, spreading through his blood. The teasing brush of the man's fingers, slightly firmer, was almost painful in its lack of proper contact.

He tipped ever so slightly forward, pale lashes fluttering as those damned fingertips dipped beneath the waistband of his pants. His abdomen quivered and a small sigh did escape him then. Already half-hard, his cock twitched, swelling to fullness. Bellamy swallowed a growl, rolling his shoulders to free himself of the silken crimson of his shirt. It slid down his arms, catching at his wrists.

How he longed to press himself close. To be surrounded, completely engulfed in the roiling heat of the other man’s bare skin against his own. Honeyed arousal pooled liquid and molten. Violent in its intensity. ‘What the fuck are you doing to me?’ The rising indignation warped and sharpened with that punch of arousal jolted across their bond, though the question itself remained Bellamy’s own. He twisted his wrists back and forth, once, twice, and the shirt fell to the floor.

Why wouldn’t you want me? Came the purred answer. Teasing. Amused. Would you question your attraction if I were human?

Head clouded with a heady neediness and a roiling confusion at the intensity of it, Bellamy stepped free of the last remnants of his shed garments. Long hair tumbling past his shoulders, alabaster strands against cream skin; he could have been carved from marble for all the colour he lacked, save for the rosy red of nipples and the glistening head of slightly curved cock, the blush of heat and prickling sweat near pearlescent beneath the soft lighting.

You’ll have to be more specific. This could imply a lot of things.

Eishrin had had his eyes closed and when he opened them again, gold glittered down at Bellamy. A gilded liquid richness that held him fast. His lips parted slightly as the man’s breath brushed so close he needed only to press up onto the tips of his toes to close the distance. The space where Eishrin’s splayed fingers flexed and contracted at his side thrummed with a searing, wild, volatile energy that lashed out, trying to connect the two. But Bellamy remained still as he ever was, simply watching. Waiting. You have me now, what are you waiting for?

Fucking touch me.

As if the agitated weight his sealed thoughts had slipped free across their bond, he watched agony ripple across the larger man’s features right before he stumbled, rocking Bellamy back on his heels as he crashed forward, reaching out and placing his large palm flush against Bellamy’s flank. The Keeper shuddered. Almost whimpered as their skin finally made contact. Electric bolting outwards from where they touched, a travelling ache that spread to the very tips of his fingers. His cock twitched where it pressed against his stomach trapped between their bodies, and he turned his head, breath rushing cool and shuddering against the shell of Eishrin’s ear.

‘What is this, Ghost? What haunts me as well as you?’

To say I don’t know would be an admission of his nescience. But worst still, it would be admitting to his own suffering.

He didn’t have the answer because he’d never needed it. His bond with Eishrin was unlike any he’d formed before. The past twenty-seven days had shattered the very foundations of what Bellamy thought he knew of the bond between Keeper and Guardian. The things he’d experienced should have never been possible. It shook him. Thrilled him.

Scared him.

‘I don’t know’ would never pass his lips. Would remain firmly sealed within his mind. Compressed to the size of a pebble and wrapped in thorns.

His lips pressed lightly against Eishrin’s ear as he whispered, “I can take the pain away.” The tips of his fingers feathered down along the valley of man's spine, his skin thrumming with heat, wet and slick from the shower and ambient humidity of the baths. He traced over the textured stipples of the markings, fingers slowing, pressing into the base of the other man’s spine just above the muscular globes of his buttocks.

Wisps of his cursed shadow magic grew outward from between his shoulder blades–like a twisted impression of wings–gathering into writhing tendrils of tangible darkness, flicking out, curling, licking icy fire across Eishrin's body; his arms, thighs, following the path Bellamy's fingers had taken down the man's back. His free hand eased between them, circling the pulsing hardness of Eishrin's shaft, stroking the length of him, thumbing at the warm metal of the ring. He wanted to touch. To be touched. To take, consume, feed until he was heavy with satisfaction.

Not peeling himself away, Bellamy took a step back and then another, his hand circling Eishrin's cock leading the man as if on a leash. Instinct and memory guided his steps. Bare feet deathly silent over damp tiles. One step down, then another, a third. Blistering hot water lapped at their ankles, calves, thighs, waist. Now waist deep, Bellamy released Eishrin and slipped free of the man’s hold, lightly kicking off the tiled bottom as he lowered himself, gliding backwards through the water without so much as a splash. Tense muscles relaxed, softening beneath the sluicing rush of the pool's heated depths, steam curling up from the surface.

Well, you have me now.

He came to a stop at the far side of the pool, the disturbed water lapping around his waist as he settled himself onto the built-in seating that ran the length of three of its sides. The tiles were warm against his lower back, water dripping from his spread arms resting back against the lip of the pool.

And yet so hesitant to touch. Is that not what you asked for?

With a languid grace, he created little whirlpools and splashes as he dragged his fingers across the surface of the water. A slight tilt touched the corner of his mouth, not quite a sneer but not a smile either.

Begged. For.

 

[MoldaviteGreen]

A flicker of a memory blinked across Eishrin's torment-addled mind, stealing the gold from his eyes and the sense of his hands. Where he fell into the past, into his recount of dreams and nightmares, his thick fingers ran free over silken, alabaster skin. They drew over the round peak of a hipbone, tracing backward over a flank to find the shallow valley over spinal column as he fell deeper into memory, and further from the present.

"Don't look at me."

He wanted those eyes, those sweet near-colourless blue eyes to be the same as those which haunted him. He wanted to see their corners pinch in pain, to see them narrow as brows crinkled deeply with a blend of torture and pleasure. He wanted to see the depths of them, an ache and begging. But these eyes, the ones that looked up to him so glassy, were wrong.

Their blue was faded. Weak. It was not the colour of thick ice, not the glacial crystalline. They were grey. A shade of monotone colouring absent of all Eishrin yearned for, and they were soulless, meaningless, as they gazed up at him from below. Those light graphite eyes stared upwards still, burning into Eishrin in all the wrong ways.

And it felt precisely that.

Wrong.

Wrong, and so very traitorous.

"I said, don't look at me."

Graphite held obsidian; defiant. It flared a deep-rooted anger within Eishrin that wasn't wholly driven by the pale-eyed lover beneath him. The hard drive of his hips became a stutter, a slow grind, and then fell away as Eishrin withdrew from tight, warm hole. His attempt of seeking relief, of mirroring his need and nightmarish desire, had proven treacherous.

But what Eishrin found himself staring at now was not graphite. It was not colourless shades of grey that peered up at him emptily. Within the glacial crystalline blue there sparkled something malicious. The same dark tether that worked its way deep within Eishrin's chest and barbed his innards with something noxious. These were the eyes that had gazed back at him within his dreams. These were the eyes which Eishrin yearned to see crinkle with pain, pinch with regret, glimmer with hate-driven pleasure. These were the eyes Eishrin had been haunted by, and he fell so deeply within their icy depths that he forgot how to breathe.

The agony that had torn through him, buckling his knees and forcing him to crash against his Ghost, forced lungs to expand and hot, humid air to be inhaled. It choked him, the heat of the room suddenly stifling as his nerve endings were set ablaze, cooled temporarily only by the sudden press of Ghost's skin. Like taking a melting block of ice to a burn, the cool of Ghost's pale flesh momentarily soothed before becoming a sting of its own; distinctly different from the agony that lay within Eishrin's marrow. Distracting. Different. Delicious. This sting was something Eishrin could bare.

The slight tremor of the breath that licked at the shell of his ear was not something, however, that he could bare. That, alone, had Eishrin's spine growing stiff as his thick ebony fingers splayed wide over the cream skin of Ghost's flank. The trapped, hardening pale flesh remained pinned between them; caught by Eishrin's higher, rigid abdomen and Ghost's lean, lower belly. Eishrin was not the only one moved by their proximity, by the swirling steam, the heat of his blood. He drew the smaller man to him tighter, his own toes pressing between Ghost's feet. They were flush, and it still was not enough.

What are you doing to me?
What have you done?

Ghost's lips were cold against the shell of his ear, brushing gently as he whispered his salacious words. Thick, ebony flesh, hard and strained, flexed with the sudden flare of his arousal. It wasn't possible for Eishrin to swell any further, his cock already standing, throbbing in time with the hot beat of his heart. Every word, every touch, seemed to prove this wrong. The narrow gold piece at his base pinched tighter as Eishrin's cock grew heavier.

A moan echoed the space, caught within the steam, and it took Eishrin several hard beats of his heart to realise that it had slipped free from his softly parted mouth. Against Ghost's shoulder, that richly velvet sound had been sung against milky flesh, his moan low and resonating as his hips bucked at the sudden touch of fingers to his bare spine.

Eishrin had had nails rake over his back. He'd had fingers at his hips claw in pathetic attempts to draw him closer, harder, deeper; and he'd met them all with varying degrees of fury. To be touched gently, to have fingers draw low over vertebrae, tease over risen scars, before pressing over pelvis, had Eishrin's hips bucking forward. Dark, rose-tipped ebony flesh struck and glided against Ghost's side, Eishrin's cock grazing over cream skin as he sank his teeth into the inside of his cheek.

What are you doing to me?
What have you done?
What will I let you do to me?

Ghost's promise was not empty and that, alone, should have filled Eishrin with vitriol. While he was burning with the fever of his torture, he was burning for the man against him. Burning. Yearning. Longing. All things that should have been driven by his hatred and desire for vengeance for the stripping of his soul and forbidding of his free will. They were all things, however, motivated by something far more insidious. His need to break, to destroy, to ruin, had all been replaced by something laced with a need for mutual pleasure. Eishrin's fingers, curling into the soft flesh of Ghost's flank, began to claw harder, tugging his Keeper tighter to his form where it was still not yet close enough.

Never close enough.
And Eishrin knew that it would not be until he was inside him.

That realisation came as instinct, unbidden, just as another moan escaped his parted lips against creamy skin. The prickle of another touch rippled over his back, his tense muscles flickering beneath his skin with quick quivers. Ghost's fingers rose from his pelvis, the touch so very close to the round globes of his buttocks, leaving behind only the ghoulish chill of shadow. For that's all they could have been, those tendrils of midnight ink that rose from behind Ghost's shoulders, furled forward to tease and tremor over Eishrin's frame. How can a man so pale, so devoid of colour and carved from marble harbour something so deviously dark?

But that was the dichotomy of Ghost. Eishrin had become lost within the haunting beauty of him as Ghost had lured him closer, standing apart from him among the swirling fog of steam. Ghost was haunting in his beauty, in his elegance and grace; all things unbefitting of a creature cast from a world of ruin and poison. Beautiful, but egregious.

The touch that came to Eishrin's core startled him, his body growing rigid and suddenly still. Cool, slender fingers brushed knuckles over the underside of sensitive length, Eishrin's hips bucking forward, seeking blissful friction. The thick of him was taken in hand, the heavy weight of Eishrin's ebony shaft laid within palm as fingers dipped low and shifted the tight band of gold at his root. Heat pooled between his hips, a heaviness befalling his already straining, full sack, as Eishrin turned his face into Ghost's pale throat and pressed his broad nose to his pulse.

Fuck.
"Fuck."

The crudeness, the belligerence, of the twice-uttered word came in salacious moan; within cavernous, foreign mind and against cool, silken flesh. The touch bestowed upon him was like no other. Where Eishrin had sought the pleasures of mortal flesh in base attempt to relieve this torture, all had fuelled that fever and fire. Ghost's fingers, catching and circling, holding Eishrin firm within his hand, was like salve. Eishrin took a step forward, seeking to press himself so flush against his Keeper that their flesh would meld. He wanted to melt into him, to get beneath his pretty, cream skin, to fuse together and let that be the end of this agony.

"Ghost…"

A name, spoken in whisper.
A moniker, granted in hubris.
A longing, so very wrong and ought to be forbidden.

Where Eishrin edged forward, seeking to meld himself into the cool flesh of his Keeper, Ghost withdrew ever-so-slightly. A snarl curled at the Wendigo's lips, thick canines grazing over the lean slope of pale shoulder, his wide nose drawing away from the throb of immortal pulse point. Eishrin drew forward, lured by his need to be and keep close, the hand circling the root of his cock giving a gentle pull that saw white-hot fire through his veins. The friction of sensitive, swollen flesh over smooth, pale palm had his knees buckling as he took a stagger of a step forward. The hand upon Ghost's flank tightened, trying to tear the Keeper back to him, but it failed and forced him onward.

Eishrin was driven by many things—his desire to be close, the promise of relief and reprieve, an innate need to be beneath Ghost's very flesh. The hot lap of water against his ankles as he began the slow descent of steps was not, at first, noted; for it felt the same heat of his own skin, the blaze of his fever raging within his form. He felt nothing besides the clench of his Keeper's hand upon his sensitive flesh; a grip of possession that should have bothered him where, instead, it fuelled his blood hotter. The swirl of water rose over tense calves and strained thighs, before Ghost's hand fell away and Eishrin was left with the shock of scorching water.

Thick, dark lips parted but whatever Eishrin had taken an inhale to say was lost to time. He stood upon the last step, utterly motionless, as he watched the nude, lean form of his Ghost draw away; soundless and with predatory grace. Like everything he did, Ghost did this with elegant ease, the water parting about him like a carving bow of a ship, before he moved to settle waist-deep upon tiled ledge.

So far away.
Too far away.

Brows pinched close over broad nose, Eishrin's hands flexing and then fisting by his sides. He stood there for a moment too long. With the weighted up-curve of his cock twitching once, a glimmering bead of arousal grew upon the deep slit of his rose-tinted flesh. It grew heavy, sliding forward over the thick tip, before drooling along the length of a fat, twisting vein. That droplet knocked the gold ring at Eishrin's root, lingering there before falling into the water.

He couldn't stand there any longer, another bead of slick arousal already forming at his tip. The steps that led Eishrin down into the pool were clumsy, but drew him across the distance that held them apart. Halfway, with the scorch of steaming water lapping at his own waist, Eishrin's mind filled with silken, honeyed viciousness.

I do not have you, Eishrin wanted to bite, his hands so very empty of soft, silken skin.

That same prideful voice echoed about his skull; taunting as much as it teased. The gold-ringed darkness of Eishrin's eyes held the glacial blue of Ghost's own, his brows drawn low over ever-darkening gaze. What was spoken was true, though Eishrin deigned to deny it. To be upon his knees, his hands kneading at the flesh of the other man's calves, eager to touch and needing to feel, he had begged to touch his Keeper. What had fuelled him into such a pathetic state was unknown, but he didn't linger on it. Not when Eishrin had realised that every gentle brush of knuckle, every quick graze of contact, each firm snatch had granted him a prickle of relief. He'd begged for it, yes, but the war still raged violently within Eishrin's chest.

The water swallowed him then, meeting loudly with a splash above his head as Eishrin sank to the pool's tiled bottom with his legs crossed. Silence met him, welcomed him, and the heat burned at his eyes. Eishrin deserved this pain, a foreign sting that carved its harmony among the beginning wave of agony of his nerves. He'd let himself fall for the spell of his Keeper, to long for something he should have rebelled against even still.

But how could Eishrin fault himself when the web of soul-bound connection wove about them both so tightly that it pierced his chest, dived deep into contracting viscera of his heart and bled into his marrow? The pull that Eishrin felt with each and every heart beat was a hot iron slash against the insides of his bones. Eishrin knew that if a mortician took his body, carved scalpel deep within his flesh and peeled back the layers, they'd find every inch, every millimetre of Eishrin's tissue to be branded with one name.

Ghost.

Ghost. Ghost. Ghost Ghost GhostGhostGhostGhost

And those marks had been lain into his flesh, into the calcium of his bones, not entirely by the forced connection but by Eishrin's obsession. Each thought of milky flesh, silvery hair, ice-blue eyes engraved another scripture of a name into his being. Each dream, each imagined touch, each meeting of their eyes.

There exists no word that truly defines the way I so vehemently hate you.

The hatred was true, it was real, but it was so hotly felt that it spilled over into desire that haunted Eishrin with as much strength as the agony.

He was struck by images then, ones of his own mind's creation. Visions of catching those slender ankles swirling beneath the water, dragging Ghost down into the pool until silvery hair became a cloud about his face, pressing him to the hot tiles of the floor until lungs committed treason and inhaled. Images of breaking free of the pool's hot surrounds, catching the back of slender throat and forcing hot mouths to crash so violently lips would split and blood would fuse. Flashes of dark, ebony shaft piercing pinned, pale body. Of wrists held down against slick tiles while cream rear was drilled, taken, pumped full.

A bubble of a scream left Eishrin, then, tearing upwards to unleash upon the steaming surface of the water.

Feet shoved into tiled floor, Eishrin crashing free of the pool's burning hold, the water carved by the narrow of his hips as he drew quickly towards his Ghost. He was the north to Ghost's magnetic south; drawn in with such ferocity the water splashed against the lean muscles of Ghost's abdomen. It glittered like diamonds upon pale flesh, drooling low before melting back into the pool.

With a movement far quicker than any other of this night, Eishrin caught the back of Ghost's head, his fingers threaded through and fisting in silver threads of hair. He'd pressed himself closer, his thighs flush to the submerged bench, his cock jutting above it and between the space of Ghost's knees that Eishrin's hips had forced between. As quickly as Eishrin had stolen Ghost's space, he grew still, their breaths mingled as their mouths held only inches apart. Eyes as dark as a starless night bore down into crystalline blue; a flurry of forbidden emotion.

"I should drown you here."

It would be the end of it all, the final act that would grant Eishrin ever-lasting peace.

But instead I am drowning in you.​

 

[ThenThereWereNone]

With a sick swoop in his stomach, Bellamy tumbled off the ledge of thought, plunged into the vast wasteland of memory.

'Don't look at me.'

Graphite eyes.
A wrongness crawls under his skin. Not his skin! An anger he can't place.

And then he's back in the baths, blinking up at the man who'd once again managed to drag Bellamy down with him. The invisible boundary where their two consciousnesses connected and tangled round one another like creeping vines is far beyond blurred. It's completely erased. Nonexistent. And that's not how it should be. How it should ever be. A Keeper does not find themselves dragged unwitting and unwilling into their Guardian's memories. They do not have their own memories ripped apart and violated by said Guardian.

How is that?
How the fuck is that!?

Something cold and thick and mean wraps sticky fingers around his neck, oozing down his throat, wrapping around his pounding heart. He'd just started to tear into the other's mind, to push him back when the man crashed forward into him. And he can't think beyond how good it feels. The weight of the man—even though he held most of himself back—the heat of him so right; so wrong in its rightness that Bellamy stifled a moan.

He burned beneath the clinging, clawing grip of the other man. Touched him in turn. Fingers gentle where the other's touch pressed harsh and bruising into his skin. Noting the way Eishrin's body responded to his words, his touch. His skin stippled with goosebumps as the man moaned out against his shoulder. The way he quivered beneath the caresses of shadow made manifest; his hips bucking forward into cool palm, face pressed against fluttering pulse.

'Fuck.'

That single syllable uttered twice, with such feeling drew a huff of amusement from the Keeper.

Yes, yes, we'll get to that.

And then he was moving backwards, pulling the other along. The man followed, but not without snarled protest and the bruising ache of his thick fingers digging painfully into Bellamy's sides in an attempt to pull him back.

But they reached the pools, and as he pulled away, he watched a comical stupor flicker across the man's face as he stood so still; only the steady rise and fall of his chest, the twitch of his cock spoke of animation. The moment stretched onwards and Bellamy lifted a pale brow, inquisitive, amused.

What Eishrin did next, the Keeper hadn't expected, didn't know what to make of it: The loud splash sending ripples over the waters surface as he plunged beneath.

How long until his lungs burn for breath?

The thought formed as he watched the space.

An intrusive thought turned impulsive curiosity. Growing and solidifying itself the longer Eishrin remained submerged.

Then the man's voice, rich and thundering and smooth, darkened with hatred echoed in his head.

Such a thin line between love and hate as they say. You should tread carefully.

Words weren't needed when Bellamy could feel it so hotly; the dark tangled mass of Eishrin’s writhing hatred as it turned on itself, full of sharp teeth and poisonous thorns. The contradictions that sat within it making it all the more potent. If released it would corrupt all it touched.

A bubble floated to the top, popping and rippling across the surface.

Bellamy had only time to draw in a breath, an anticipatory inhale as Eishrin broke above the surface of the pool, rivulets of water running down his skin, steam curling off of him. Hot water splashed against his abdomen from the rough disturbance. And then the man was upon him suddenly, his fingers fisting in Bellamy's hair as he forced himself between his legs. The domineering domination of his space reminiscent of that moment in the club when Eishrin had done much of the same: forcing Bellamy to spread his legs to accommodate the man's solid frame, the painful twist of his fingers in his hair.

Emotions, unidentifiable, swam in the depths of Eishrin's dark eyes as stillness gripped them both. A live crackle of energy flickering in the mere inches that separated their mouths.

Eishrin's words were so close Bellamy could almost taste them.

"You should."

Breathed out as a whisper against soft lips, he lunged forward. Hard, hungry, vicious. A bruising, breathless kiss that stretched, morphed, grew in intensity and need. His hands grabbed at the hard muscles of Eishrin's shoulders, claws digging into ebony skin. Bruised, warring lips smeared blood that sharp teeth nipped to the surface of plush mouth. Urgent and unbridled. He wrapped his legs around Eishrin's waist, drawing himself forward and tight against the hard, feverish bulk of the man. The tendrils of shadow curled around Eishrin's back and waist, cocooning the man as close as physically possible.

A tremor ripped through Bellamy's chest and clung sticky at the back of his throat, before spilling out as a moan. Slinging an arm around Eishrin's neck, his other hand fisted a handful of the man's dark locs.

The Guardian's blood bloomed across his tongue, sharp and spiced, chasing away reason, restraint. Locking his ankles at the small of Eishrin's back, his hips bucked forward, dragging his aching cock against the hard, defined plains of the larger man's abdomen, seeking friction, that electric zap that jolted down his spine, pooled low in his gut. Pre-cum drooled pearlescent drops down his throbbing shaft, adding to the slick slip and slide of their wet bodies. How he needed. Needed with such a fierceness that his body shuddered with it.

If he weren't so blinded with the need to fuck or be fucked, to fill or be filled, to claw his away beneath Eishrin's skin; if he weren't so lost in the wailing fever of it, he'd have balked at the madness. The hunger. The chokehold it had on him. Unnatural. Inexplicable. Terrifying. But his thoughts, the coherent, rational parts had scattered to the edges of his consciousness. He'd been reduced to base yearnings. To the ravenous arousal that had only room for one thing and one thing only: Claiming the man he clung to.

Nownownow. I don't know what this is. I don't knowIdon'tknow.
But it burns. It burns. Why it does it fucking burn?

He broke away from the kiss with a frustrated snarl, resting his forehead against Eishrin's own. Eyes closed. Crimson stained lips, wet and slightly parted on little gasps of self control wrested back. Bellamy’s voice when he spoke was lust drunk rough.

"I need—"

You.

"—to be inside you. Now." A demand. Nearly a plea. Never a question. A dark tendril of shadow, liquid slick, slid between the crease of muscled rear.

 

[MoldaviteGreen]

Eishrin should have done a great deal of many things. Back within the alleyway, the space that had carved this future, he should have caught the pallor of slender throat by the edge of his blade, and drawn it so swiftly across vasculature that arteries would have taken a heartbeat to bleed. Within the room, amidst the heavy smog of chemical, illicit concoction, Eishrin should have squeezed the life from neck, torn pretty little head from lean shoulders. Eishrin should bind narrow wrists within the grasp of his single hand, to capture the body of his Ghost and draw him down into the depths of the searing water until lungs committed one final act of treason. He should have killed him thrice over. He should have been strong enough to see it through.

Yet, there was a great deal of difference between should and would and could. It was a matter of all, in a myriad of ways, so delicately interwoven that Eishrin wasn't sure that it was ever truly a question of only one. A blend, so it were, of all possibilities.

You should, Ghost had said, and Eishrin wondered if it was a dare. Was it a coax? Was it a lure of reverse psychology in the hopes of preventing precisely that? By what manner did it extend from Ghost's intimate web of mind games and ploy? You should. But Eishrin would not. He could not. For water to rush deep into expanding viscera, to shunt oxygen from lungs, to starve body of precious air and see him wither and die, would be too peaceful of a death than Ghost deserved. Eishrin had burned for twenty-seven days, continued to burn even as they lingered close, and Ghost deserved to die by the same fire.

An inhale, a beginning formation of words, held Eishrin's plump mouth ajar. Humidity licked at his throat, coating the back of it and brewing a cough of reflex, before that was suddenly torn asunder. Ghost lunged with a feline grace Eishrin knew to exist, but had forgotten to anticipate. The slowness of his mind, the beginning blurriness of his vision, prevented his comprehension of such minuscule tells of predator gathering itself before its final, purposeful strike.

Soft, hot mouths crashed, Eishrin's parted lips claimed by the hunger of another's. Teeth dragged over the pulp of lower tier, piercing the soft flesh until it split and blood drooled free. This was the price of their hatred, their vitriol-laced lust. This was the price Eishrin was to pay for having failed. But neither were things that Eishrin considered, for he thought of nothing as he drew forward, pressing back into the kiss with as much blinded fury as his Keeper. He thought of nothing as saliva mingled, blood fused, and mouths slid hotly, torn only by gasps and low moans.

Thick fingers threaded through silken hair spread wider, cradling head tighter. Scalp was pulled softly, Eishrin's grip changing, as threads of silver hair slipped over his knuckles and fell from his grasp. Hot, feverish palm claimed the back of Ghost's neck, fingers drawn over pulsing arteries, and held. Demanding. Yearning. Supporting. The ledge behind Ghost was caught by reckless hand, the tile nearly crumbling from the crash of his palm. His Keeper became trapped; by pressing hips, caging arms, and leaning torso. Ghost had nowhere to go, but he demanded just the same of Eishrin.

Lean legs wrapped around the narrow of Eishrin's waist, feet hooking over one another to dig heels into the beginning round of his rear. The tug forward saw Eishrin's jutting cock nudge against the underside of Ghost's own, velvet against silk, and Eishrin moaned into his mouth. The prickle of shadow crept over his back, tendrils that drew over the marks of his skin in ways fingers never should have. It tore a shiver from him, one that left Eishrin's breath hitching in his throat, going momentarily still, before he surged forward and lashed the thick muscle of his tongue against the seam of his Ghost's mouth.

I need you. Let me in.

He wanted Ghost to coat his tongue in his flavour, to drink him down like that spoiled whiskey. He needed the sweet of him to burn the back of his throat like too-hot sugar, until he could taste nothing else. He wanted the flush of cinnamon, the rich of spice, the tart of noxious blood to fill his mouth just as he'd stolen twenty-seven days before. Eishrin needed it more than he needed air.

Heavy palm found lean hip, fingers curled over rounded bone. As fingers dimpled deep into flesh, Eishrin groped at Ghost's flank, tearing him forward over the slick tiles of the ledge. There would be no space left between them, not even as Eishrin lifted a leg and pressed his knee into the space tight against Ghost's hip; almost straddling his lap. The water sloshed, kicked up against Ghost's stretched-taut abdominals, glittering over alabaster skin. Diamonds.

The hand at the back of Ghost's neck grew tighter, but not angrily so—something that should have terrified Eishrin, but was given no notice. Nor was the way he pressed his nose into Ghost's cheek as he deepened the kiss even still. Neither was the way his hand first pressed into the lean muscles of Ghost's abdomen, his thick fingers playing with a trail of fair hair, before teasing lower, the inside of his wrist knocking against hard-pulsing flesh. Ghost had touched Eishrin so freely, and so very suddenly, but the touch that came to Ghost's cock was uncharacteristically tender.

Ghost was taken in hand, fingers curling slow about the root of him, before drawn upwards in a languidly slow stroke. It ended as quickly as it began, but not entirely. It was traded for something else, transforming into something entirely abhorrent. With Ghost pulled forward, leaned at an angle with Eishrin half-straddling, half-towering over him, Eishrin's hips had ground close and over Ghost's belly. Their shafts had smoothed together, slick both with water and glistening pre-cum, but they were caught suddenly in Eishrin's palm, pressed together until the beat of their pulses was forced to meld, and stroked in one fluid, tender rise and fall.

You feel…

Soft. Forbidden. Silken. Immoral. Flushed. Monstrous. Heavenly. Salacious.

Right.

Where graphite eyes had felt so bone-marrow-deeply wrong, the stroke of their cocks within his palm, their pulsing flesh bound tightly by ebony fingers as their mouths warred, felt so inherently right.

When Ghost pulled free, his forehead pressed to Eishrin's own, no sobriety washed over Eishrin where it should have. He was granted no clarity, no sanity, no reprieve from this utter madness that had swallowed him. Instead, Eishrin moaned low, lashes dark against his cheeks, as his hand smoothed back up to tangle within pale strands of hair.

The words spoken, within Eishrin's mind and aloud amidst the steam, drew no icy reaction at first. With his leg drawn up onto the ledge, the hard muscle of his thigh pressed tight to the side of Ghost's own, Eishrin was almost balancing upon the man's knees. The heavy weight of his sack dragged with each slow, upward pull of their flesh, the swell of them settling back upon Ghost's thighs with the downfall of his fist.

Ebony hand fell away, their hardened, aching shafts lingering together before pulsing free. Eishrin began to rock forward, to press his weight into the bent leg to bring up the other. The submerged tiles bit at dark flesh, grazing over his knee as it slid tightly along the outer length of Ghost’s thigh.

Higher now, Eishrin tilted his chin nearly to his chest, the water of his locs dripping down onto angular face. They beaded against Ghost’s cream cheeks, glittering in the low light of the baths, before drooling low and falling upon bare, lean chest. Dark eyes swirled with something sinister, drawn down the form beneath him. Straddling the lap of his Keeper, Eishrin suddenly drew tense.

Instinct had fuelled him, but it was not alone in its control. Lust vied against it, as did an alien need to please.

What the fuck is this?
Why the hell is this happening?

Still, something darker emerged as Ghost's words rang through his mind once more. I need to be inside you, spoken with all the clarity of a lust-drunk mind; Ghost's honeyed voice roughened by carnal need.

Eishrin did not take, he always gave. No body, soul or thing had penetrated the confines of his body, nor had he thought they would ever. He needed the control, the power. It was something he could not do without. Eishrin did not take. He did not kiss. He did not love. Tender emotions were not part of his spectrum for they had been carved out of him within the foundation of his youth. I cannot love, Eishrin knew. And I will never take.

But he'd said the same about pressing his mouth to another, the intimacy of a shared kiss, and yet Ghost had taken that from him and made him crave it. He had said the same about saying someone's name as he climaxed, fearing the curse of obsession that could follow, but Ghost's name had come to his lips each time he had spilt over himself and within another. Would Ghost take this from him, too? Would Ghost make him so insane that this last piece of sanctity would be given?

Obsidian eyes met crystalline blue, falling once more into their depths.

"I—" Eishrin began but did not finish. How was he supposed to admit it, confess to it, when he knew it would only be used as poison? Ghost would take his words, his most intimate disclosure, and twist it into a different kind of bitter torture. It would haunt him, if Eishrin spoke the words he found on his tongue. Ghost deserved nothing, least of all a tenderly given confession.

He needs me, but I don't know how.
I had never kissed.
He needs to be inside me, but I don't know what to do.
I've never been fucked.
He wants me, but I don't know if I can.
I've never been taken, never been filled, never belonged.
I don't know anything. I don't know. I don't know.

Eishrin turned his face away, his cheek now against Ghost's nose as his brows drew tighter together, furrowed deep over broad nose. Dark eyes fluttered closed, his face turned to the shine of water at the far side of the pool. The lights shifted colours, their climb across the spectrum a slow fade, but it was nothing in comparison to the hard throb of a two-timed pulse within Eishrin's own skull; once for his own, twice for his Ghost's heartbeat.

"I don't..."

…know. I don't know what anything is anymore. I don't know who I am.

Ghost had buried himself within the very marrow of Eishrin's bones and carved his name upon calcium. He'd claimed every cell, each membrane, every wilful beat of beastly heart. He'd wormed his way inside of Eishrin's mind until he haunted his dreams—both waking and asleep. Ghost had driven inside Eishrin's soul, that sacrosanct part of him imprisoned. The Keeper consumed so much of Eishrin, what more would this cost? How much worse could this be? How much more of a sacrifice could this be when Ghost already held his soul, the very essence of him?

"S…" Eishrin's voice came husky, but chipped. Thick fingers found the soft flesh of his Ghost, taking cream cock in hand and stroking all-too-gently than he ought to. The agony, momentarily placated, began to claw forth; no longer soothed just by the stroke of hands and the press of bodies. It demanded a far higher price, and Eishrin gave in. "Send him away." Please. I cannot have him watch.

Him, the young man barely out of his teens that remained kneeling, submissive in his punishment, behind Eishrin's turned shoulders. The copper-haired Guardian that had been forced to wash the ebony of Eishrin's skin clean and now instructed to remain and watch as the Keeper he vehemently believed to be owed to him so salaciously touched another.

Eishrin realised then that each thing Ghost had taken from him had been done with only their eyes, their bodies, as witness. Each possession belonged only to them; never shared and never observed. It was theirs. Something that could never belong to anyone but them. Selfishly, Eishrin wished the same for this—for it to be something of their own—and it made him dizzy.

Just as brazen as Ghost had touched him, leaving invisible brands across the rich ebony of Eishrin’s skin in his wake, Eishrin was just as greedy. With Ghost’s parted lips, the slip of a soft sigh, the drill of a pulse against a ribcage that began to tamponade against Eishrin’s own…it all became too much to bear.

With instinct occurring faster than rationality, Eishrin pressed his weight forward onto his knees, dragging the muscled globes of his rear over the smooth of Ghost’s thighs. A thick hand caught the back of Ghost’s neck, fingers curled over flurrying pulse, while the other caught and dimpled angry fingers into lean, milky bicep. Eishrin loomed so close, the steam of the room engulfing them nothing in comparison to the heat between their bodies. His arousal could not be denied, jutting angrily from his body and smearing over Ghost’s taut abdominals, the man beneath Eishrin forced into a backward lean.

It began with the tinkle of beads, first, as dark locs swung forward over broad, dark shoulders. The huff of air, a sigh of Eishrin’s own, met the tepid air and turned immediately to steam before their near faces. Ghost would find the hand at the back of his neck tightening, drawing it a little at an angle to bear to slope of his pale shoulder. Hot breath swept over smooth, dewy skin, Eishrin leaning down and all but caging his Ghost against the pool’s edge.

The hand at the bicep, keeping Ghost still, crept between the feverish skin of their bodies, Eishrin seeking the silky length of the man beneath him. Thick fingers brushed over smooth flesh, sure in their momentary gentle touch, before Eishrin’s wrist twisted and he claimed the thicker root and stroked once, hard.

I think, little Ghost, that it shall be you bent over the ledge, taken by me.

His nose ran the length of slender throat, the pulp of his lips brushing the sweep of a collar bone, before he gathered the lean muscle of Ghost’s shoulder between his teeth and bit. Not to pierce. Not to bleed. But to temporarily mark, to stave off the need burning deeply inside him, to force muscle to quiver and relax.

You are sin.

To be beneath Ghost’s skin, to flood his veins and stain his viscera. To be touched, to be held, to have, would not be enough. This, Eishrin knew with each fibre of his being. He wanted nothing more than to be beneath Ghost’s skin, to be within him.

Not close enough…

Ghost was too far away, even with the slick heat of their flesh melded together. Their arousal was but a spark from utter combustion, a palpable beast, but Ghost was still not yet close enough. Eishrin was becoming more aware that he never would be close enough until their atoms had fused and their bodies blended.

Moaning against creamy shoulder, the pulse of his shaft throbbing once to knock against Ghost’s belly, Eishrin bit harder. Eishrin’s skin prickled cold then, an unwanted reminder of what he had lost. These teeth claiming Ghost’s shoulder should have been far sharper; but instead they remained mostly mundane. A reminder that Ghost had taken from Eishrin, and held it still.

That ache, the sudden reminder of emptiness, culminated with another, far more intense, wave of pain.

Ebony hand tore away from mismatched flesh, Ghost's shaft striking hard against the low of his belly with a sound that tore through Eishrin's spine. He snarled, catching the lip of the pool's edge. Not out of violence or hatred or defiance, but in attempt not to crush the man beneath him as agony shifted from a low simmer to intense boil and made him collapse forward. Fingers curled into tiles, the other hand diving beneath water to slam against the ledge beneath Ghost's submerged thigh. Pain intensified and it stole Eishrin's senses from him, ridding him of the world. But it didn't matter, because Ghost was still there; forever lurking, forever felt, forever connected.

Sh-Show me.

Eishrin's mind-piercing inner voice was curdled with his agony, as he bent forward and growled; the sound cutting short as it warbled into a whimper. Their foreheads kissed, the tip of his nose hot against Ghost's own.

It was the pain making him do this. The agony addled him, tore through him, without ever truly ceasing and it ripped the choice from him. Eishrin needed reprieve from it all; the fire in his blood, the heat in his loins, the madness constricting his mind and the pain within his nerves.

This isn’t a choice. I am not choosing this. I do not want this. I have to. I have to, for this to stop. I do not want this.

Straining legs beginning to buckle, Eishrin’s clawing hands could not stop him from sinking into the water. His body moved only on instinct. As agony fired again, he shuddered and collapsed, falling upon Ghost’s thighs; the weight of his cock striking hard at Ghost’s pale, slick belly and catching the pallor of Ghost’s own between their bodies.

Show me how you want me. Whatever it takes. Please. Just make it stop. Promise me, Ghost, that this will stop. That this will be over.

What Eishrin did not confess lingered in the dark recess of his mind: I need you, as deep as your venom, as rough as your bitterness, as completely as our hatred. I need you under my skin, in the marrow of my bones, just as much as I need to be within your own. ​

 

[ThenThereWereNone]

The warm tiles at Bellamy's back gave a crumbling protest as they were gripped in Eishrin's clenching palm as the man pressed in, closer. The larger man's hand against the back of his neck a searing brand of contact that he both pressed back into and away from. His own hands, alabaster against ebony groped over smooth, heated skin, flank, abdomen, lingering along thick neck and the thrumming pulse, down across stippled back. Caged in as he was, he only sought to draw Eishrin closer.

A shudder running the length of his spine as he stifled a whimper as their cocks brushed, slick, velvet heat. Lips sore, he pressed closer, an grating itch to crawl into the other man's skin had him biting down hard into the pillowy softness of his lower lip, swallowing Eishrin's moan, the salacious vibration racking through his body. Every tremor, every juddering exhalation, even the momentary stillness of the other man was felt as if it were his own.

'I need you. Let me in.'

And he did. Easy enough. Parting kiss bruised lips, Bellamy grasped that probing tongue between his teeth before sucking the rough, wet muscle into his mouth, the taste of Eishrin like spiced honey and lightning, rain on stormy nights and a flavour unique to him. Irresistible and wholly addictive.

He released his grip on the other, legs unlocking, dropping as he was dragged forward across wet tiles, the water sloshed round his waste, hot droplets splashing against his abdomen as Eishrin almost straddled him now, forcing Bellamy to tilt his head, back arching as the man's hand at the back of his neck tightened. Abdominal muscles quivered beneath the searing path of Eishrin's fingers, a clench of something tasting of unease at the tender touch against his cock. Even as his toes curled with the contact, even as he fought the instinctive drive to rut forward into the man's hand.

That gentle touch was cruel in itself, a slow, soft stroke that had the Keeper wanting to tear into the man with teeth and claws if only to elicit a flare of the hatred that would see his grip turn harsher, firmer, harder. But it was gone just as suddenly as it'd come, and Bellamy was left light-headed, a demand that Eishrin return his hand, to touch him like he fucking meant it silent on his tongue. He had only time to tighten his fingers in the man's hair before he was gasping, hips rolling forward, cock sliding against the velvet length of the other's before Eishrin grasped them both in the fist of one large, capable hand. Pulse against syncing pulse. Still too soft. But so so good in its tender agony.

He tongue fucked into Eishrin's mouth—silky and warm—the way he wanted to take his body. One part bitter anger, two parts violent lust.

And it wasn't enough. He needed, yearned, ached for more. He tore away from the kiss then, giving voice finally to what he needed. What they both needed. Eishrin's hand released them and Bellamy swallowed a growl.

Cream hands came to grip at thick thighs, fingers kneading into dark skin, feeling the corded muscle beneath as the man straddled him properly, drops of water from his locs falling, dripping down Bellamy's cheeks like tears. The tension gripping the body above him as his words finally struck true drew the faintest of tilts to a corner of the Keeper's mouth. Pale eyes staring up into the sinister darkness of near black eyes, the barest ring of gold the only colour in their void depths.

False stops and starts had Bellamy's hands stilling in their slow, exploratory glide up and down the heated expanse of Eishrin's thighs. And then the Guardian was turning his face away, hiding his eyes, Bellamy nuzzled lightly into his turned cheek, the man's beard tickling his lips. "You don't…" He parrotted, a 'go on' rise of inquisitiveness attached to the end.

But Eishrin changed the subject, unfairly grabbing at Bellamy's cock once again with that jaw clenching tenderness. Was it to distract him from pressing for an answer? And for the moment at least, it did. That, coupled with Bellamy's clouded mind grasping to decipher who this 'him' Eishrin was suddenly referring to. Send who away?

Realisation came slowly.

But eventually.

Jesper.

Bellamy smiled against Eishrin's cheek, with a low, "No, he stays." The idea that it bothered Eishrin, enough to ask so graciously that Jesper be sent away was all the more reason to have him stay.

The suddenness with which Eishrin released him—the wet slap of his cock against his stomach obscene in the humid echo of the baths—Bellamy thought that the man was truly, defiantly adverse to having an audience. His pulse spiking, excitement, wariness. But then he saw the dark wave of agony wash over Eishrin's face; could almost feel the razor sharp texture of it if he dared.

He didn't dare.

Instinct drove his claws to pierce into the corded flesh of Eishrin's thighs as the man grabbed him suddenly at arm and neck, effectively trapping him. Stilling him. His grip bruising and forcing Bellamy to tilt his head, baring his neck. Vulnerable. Oh so tempting to sink teeth into thunderin pulse. Every touch torture and bliss. He'd never been so sensitive, so responsive to the simple suggestion of contact, the heated whisper of breath against his skin enough to make him shiver.

Bellamy gasped, a sharp inhalation as his body attempted to press up into the hard stroke of Eishrin's hand around his sensitive flesh. That single stroke so much closer to what he wanted. Craved.

A breathless laugh. Ah, there he is. Derisive in its amusement. Will you force yourself inside me? Stretch me till I break? Would that satisfy you?

Neck bared to Eishrin's whims was a vulnerability that beat in the racing of the Keeper's pulse. There was nowhere he could go. Nowhere else he wanted to be in that moment, his skin alight beneath the searing intimacy of his Guardian. Teeth pressing into skin, a suggestion, a temptation, one that Bellamy answered in the quiet of his mind 'Yess, harder. Please.'

And you are a most eager sinner.

A blossom of pain pulsing outwards from where teeth bit down harder into the meat of his shoulder. Not enough to break skin, to spill blood and Bellamy nearly whimpered. Always just short of being enough. He lifted a hand to press against Eishrin's flank, annoyance, impatience manifesting in the angry drag of claws over wet skin.

And then Eishrin was releasing him with a snarl, and there it was again: that wash of agony that mere words could never truly define.

How quickly you change your tune. Such a lack of conviction.

Growl softened to whimper from the larger man sent a bolt of arousal so sharp, sudden and unexpected to his aching length that Bellamy's eyes fluttered half closed. Fuck.

Who knew you could make so sweet a sound. A soft nudging brush of his nose against Eishrin's. Let me hear more of you.

A soft grunt followed the full weight of Eishrin's shuddering form collapsing down onto him. The man's surrender an involuntary act. One ripped from beneath the demanding weight of his agony. A cheapened, hollow submission for the Guardian was not in his right mind; not in control of himself. It wasn't a choice. And that made the inevitable return to senses and sanity all the sweeter. The sinking realisation darkening over sharply defined features of what he'd allowed to happen to him. What he'd begged for. The relinquishment of control.

Bellamy had noticed during their first meeting that Eishrin was someone who valued control. Needed it.

It will stop.

Pale eyes studied the tortured man's face. Missing nothing. The slick tendril of darkness, the width of a finger at its tip slipped between the crease of Eishrin's rear, the tip circling the man's hole, a languid flick back and forth.

'I promise, but tell me first'

The tendril nudged against that tight ring of muscle, once, twice before breaching, forcing its way into Eishrin's body a few inches.

"How many humans have you allowed inside your body, seeking relief?

The tendril writhed its way deeper inside Eishrin, thickening gradually as it did, working him open with slow exploratory strokes of slick cool. Invading. Relentless. Unhurried.

 

[MoldaviteGreen]

Ghost's words were a javelin, thrown with such precision that each met their mark—the hurriedly beating, near-fibrillating heart of the beast shuddering above. They pierced Eishrin, one by one, until he felt each puncture of his will, every snap of his resolve, and each burning coal of unwanted desire. Ghost fuelled something within Eishrin his body demanded, yet his heart refused. If he'd still had his soul, Eishrin knew that it would have found this very thing abhorrent.

Yet, the essence of him had been torn free, leaving behind a cavernous hole that had been replenished only with undying hunger. Not for flesh. Not for violence, or pain, or inebriation. What Eishrin so deeply craved, with every cell of his being, was the man trapped beneath him, now, and the sharp, cracking edge of the pool. Eishrin may not have realised this within the slow descent into sin, when each body he'd taken beneath him and fucked down into the mattress had been silken, alabaster flesh. But he realised it now.

The men and women he'd drilled, the snow-haired beauties he'd bred, had not been enough for him. They never would have been enough.

Because they were not Ghost.

And, yet, with each sly purr of that silken voice, Ghost wormed his way deeper within Eishrin's shattering mind. Need and desire had long since broken, giving way to instinct driven purely by survival. Yet, there was something else there, deeply buried and ignored. While Eishrin refused to name it, it lingered upon the peripheries still, flaring and throbbing as Ghost spoke:

'Will you force yourself inside me? Stretch me till I break? Would that satisfy you?'

To break Ghost had been something Eishrin had craved more than life itself. That very same craving had shifted, transformed—a need to be beneath that milky skin, to line the viscera of his stomach, to paint insides just as cream as his skin, to fill him until lean belly swelled softly and his voice was left hoarse. Eishrin was a beast, after all, for he'd been made that way and each of Ghost's taunting words jabbed at his need to possess, to claim, to mark.

The agony that coiled through Eishrin was familiar and yet hotter. This was hell, he was sure of it. His body and soul cast into the torture by Ghost's own selfishness. The Keeper should have killed Eishrin when he had the chance. Eishrin should have killed himself when he'd stood before that mirror. There was too much pain for the Wendigo to feel the bitterness of regret, but he knew that it swam there within his heart.

Sealed off from himself and yet controlled by another, did Ghost taste the flicker of true emotion within Eishrin's soul? Did he find it revolting? Did he sense it and let it grant him yet another flare of self-important pride?

Eishrin wondered what his own regret would feel like in the mind of another, just as he wondered what the slick cream of Ghost would taste like across his tongue.

Sin.

Sin. Wrong. Not my own.

Thick muscles bunched beneath sharp claws, a shiver running the length of Eishrin's bent spine. Against his Ghost, his Keeper, he tried to shove away but his hands found the alabaster of Ghost's hip and snagged hungrily; digging digits into soft, pliable flesh until they bit at bone and turned skin red.

How do you do this to me? How do you get inside my head?

Because that thought had not come from Eishrin, surely. It could not have been conjured nor inspired by his own mind. He'd rather die, rather carve out his tongue from its base and leave his mouth an empty cavern than to draw the flat of it along the underside of Ghost's pale flesh.

Stop.

Ebony fingers caught tendrils of silvery hair, snagging them between thick digits and forcing Ghost's head to tilt. They bit at his scalp, clawed lower and then slipped free, capturing the bare front of Ghost's slender throat and squeezing.

"I said—"

His threat remained empty, for that familiar agony returned; beginning within his hand and forcing those cruel fingers to flex open. It shot through his arm, his skin quivering with the run of it, tearing through him with enough force that Eishrin jerked and finally collapsed forward. Slick, ebony chest against lean, alabaster, and Eishrin's breath came in pants at gently curved ear. His fingers, rough even still, found the narrow of Ghost's waist and drew their bodies tighter.

To himself, Eishrin wondered: How is it possible to desire something so terribly and yet want to destroy it?
To the conjoined mind of his Keeper, it slipped: Why do I want to be within him, to consume him, and yet want to tear him apart?

Then came the promise of the end, and the tension within Eishrin's spine eased infinitesimally. The agony was growing too much to bear, as was the consuming need to have Ghost. Eishrin didn't understand, but he didn't need to to comprehend Ghost's offer; to allow the man within the depths of his body, to use him, to stain him, to degrade him. There was only so much torture Eishrin could suffer.

Cast over Ghost's lean body, the thick of Eishrin's arm curled about the other man's waist and drew their bellies flush. The throbbing thick of them lay caught between tense abdominals, ground together as Eishrin's hips instinctively bucked, the slip of the water making his jaw taut with a flare of the most primal need. Drawn in against the Wendigo, Eishrin's fingers curled over Ghost's lower ribs, his entire arm able to encircle the Keeper. They danced across flesh, patterns and whorls drawn over silken skin.

The flat of Eishrin's nose found that bite-ripened skin at Ghost's shoulder and pressed. The sweat of Ghost, beading over pale skin, remained laced with what clouded those ice blue eyes, that had stained that room, diving deep into Eishrin's lungs with his hungry inhale. Even now, he sought more. More of his scent. More of his touch. More of him. Nothing had been enough and Eishrin feared it may never be. Would this curse be eternal? Would this craving, this visceral instinct to have him, forever haunt Eishrin?

Agony gripped him, and Eishrin's hand bit firmly at the soft flesh of Ghost's waist. He rode it just as he had all the others; with grit teeth, held breath, dizzy mind and swaying body as his nose pressed in deeply to the side of Ghost’s slender throat. A nuzzle, a shaky inhale, a growl. When it eased, it did not completely relinquish him from its grasp, and Eishrin's hands began to move on their own accord.

Rough, wide palm drew southward, dipping beneath scorching water and smearing over upper thigh. A little part of him hoped that his own touch was torture; that it, too, would never be enough. Fingers curled beneath delicate knee, forcing it to slip over ebony thigh and to bend as Eishrin guided cream leg upwards. Leg bent, it carved through the water's surface and pressed back towards Ghost's hip, leaving his own rear half-bare beneath steaming pool as his foot was set down upon the ledge. A sensible man would have taken Ghost as he'd promised—taken hold of his cock, smeared it down between Ghost's legs, and driven himself within the hot sphincter of an alabaster form. A nastier man would have taken Ghost by the throat and squeezed as he'd forced himself inside the Keeper's tight body.

Agony, however, was surely Ghost's accomplice, as it burned through Ghost's veins and had his hips grinding forward, to smear his own length against the velvet turgor of Ghost's own. The heavy weight of his sack, unattended and aching, bunched in against Ghost's rear, sliding swollen flesh over puckered rim.

'I promise, but tell me first…'

"Anything." I'll tell you anything. "Please."

Fat, kiss-swollen lips brushed over the slope of a cream shoulder; the lower tier catching against silken skin. Relief. Reprieve. It was all so deliciously close and yet held just out of reach. It was cruel and callous, and so terribly expected. The sudden slip of something cool between the muscled globes of his rear had Eishrin's spine stiffening. A hand cut backwards through the water, Eishrin reaching out instinctively to stop the probing touch at his hole as it flickered. If he did this, the pain would stop. That was what was promised. ​

How can I trust you?

Instead, calloused fingers slowly curled around the tendril's girth, holding loosely as it slipped through his grasp, pressing more firmly to the tight pucker of muscle. This much was not new, for tongues had tasted Eishrin's hole, dived through his sphincter and suckled his flesh. With a tight squeeze of his eyes, Eishrin promised himself that it was only that. Just a tongue. Just a press. Nothing more.

Too many things happened all at once, and Eishrin lost sense of himself.

A flicker, a press, a hard squirm. Tight sphincter fought, held clenched against the probing tendril. Yet, with each slide, every press, slightly peach skin slowly began to release; the hot water soothing the muscle to obey. Ghost lingered there, dancing upon the precipice of entering, before Eishrin's body spasmed with another wave of agony. That spasm alone, that violent shiver, saw his hole quivering open against Ghost’s onslaught, swallowing the inky tendril into the heat of him with a shameful greed.

"Oh, f-fuck…" Eishrin's words were a silken whimper, his hand catching Ghost's thigh in a grip so tight it ought to bruise.

The tight ring of muscle tried to spasm closed, to press out the sudden, cool intruder; but it was seconds too late. It, instead, merely clenched down upon thickening girth, squeezing at the inky tendril that fought fiercely to press deeper, still. It left him feeling full, the tapered tendril beginning to writhe and knot and bunch within his body, Eishrin’s hips driven forward in a sudden buck as another several inches slid within.

It felt wrong. So very, terribly wrong. This was not how this was supposed to go. This was not what he had imagined as he’d torn through the building’s entrance and burst into their prissy little gala. This was not how it was supposed to feel—deliciously hot, achingly full, yet deeply empty. So, why, then, did it not feel like enough? Why did it feel so horrifyingly right, known by the thud of his heart and the melting marrow of his bones?

Ghost, I need…

What? What was it that Eishrin needed? More? Less? Time to adjust to the writhing, hellish tendril within him? Eishrin choked on his words, instead biting at the already reddened flesh of Ghost’s shoulder; the pressure on the precipice of splitting cream skin.

Still, it was not enough. For Ghost's tendril writhed deeper, coiling thickly within Eishrin in ways that made him dizzy. If their hips had not been submerged, Eishrin knew that his own slick would have drooled over the ebony of his length, would have fallen to pool against Ghost's own root. Instead, Eishrin drove his hips forward, the swollen, velvet flesh of their trapped cocks dragging over one another with such delicious friction. But Eishrin's desperate movements shifted the tendril inside of him, drawing it an inch from his body, and he snarled at his mistake. It cost him pleasure where he now wished it'd cost him pain. How was he supposed to stand this?

Ghost's voice curled into Eishrin's mind, lazy and amused.

Answer. I have to answer.
But what he said was not truth.

Six.

Eishrin swallowed, the hot of his tongue sweeping over Ghost's shoulder as he ran his lips over pale flesh, his toes curling as he shifted his knees closer; one under Ghost's half-tilted rear and the other over his hip, half-straddled. Despite everything, he tried to keep himself still. Yet, body stretched wide, a thickness so foreign coiling and curling inside of his abdomen, drawing friction across sensitive nerves, Eishrin grit his teeth in attempt to not move. It was all too much, too intense, and Eishrin's cock swelled until it hurt.

Lie.

I took six within my body, chasing relief.

Lie.

You're not the first to have me, Ghost.

Lie.

That honour went to someone else. ​

Lie.

How does it feel to have something already taken and used by someone else?

Each and every word was a falsehood, but all spoken with conviction. For they hid Eishrin's truth in desperate attempt to protect it. Ghost could not learn that he was the first to breach Eishrin's body. He could not learn that he was the first to take him, the first to have him so completely. ​

Against the slip of Ghost’s milky skin, Eishrin’s lips brushed over collarbone, the sharp of his teeth dragging over the gentle curve. Slow. Teasing. Barely held at bay.

“How does that make you feel?” Eishrin’s velvet deep voice was a rumble within his chest. His hands slipped free of Ghost’s lean body, clasping both edges of the pool in a grip that saw tile crumbling into the swirl of the water. Instead, positioned as he was, Eishrin drew closer, forcing Ghost’s back to bend sharply over the rounded edge of tiles, his hair nearly brushing the elevated floor as Eishrin loomed over him. “Does it make you feel disgusted, ashamed, to have taken someone else’s left overs?”

Hot breath kissed Ghost’s lips, their faces held but an inch apart. The ebony of Eishrin’s skin glistened with steam and perspiration, his hips having risen from the water slightly with his lean. It had afforded him yet another grind of the tendril within him against his walls, but the shiver that threatened him was shoved away. If Ghost wanted to remain within him, he’d have to chase the stretching hole of Eishrin’s body from the water; where the kneeling, subservient Jesper could finally spy how midnight black pierced and probed rich ebony.

“I should have come to you filled with another man’s cum,” Eishrin hissed through grit teeth, eyes an abyssal black. This was madness, and it was drawing out his only true nature. Feral. “What would you have done then? Filled me with your own, adding to the churning mix? Sucked it from my hole, before starting afresh?” Then, a wicked, toothy grin as Eishrin’s hand suddenly slammed against Ghost’s left pectoral. “I bet you’d swallow, too.”

In his haze, Eishrin had reached for his inner self and found his gaping, spiritual hole. His soul was not within himself, no longer within reach, and the splayed fingers that tried to shift into claws, to rake over Ghost’s unmarred flesh, remained mundane. Eishrin wanted to harm him. To draw lines down his body. To sink sharp teeth into muscle and sinew. To leave the pretty man beneath him marked and bruised; hurt for having taken him.

It was Ghost, however, whom held the key to Eishrin’s soul, and it had the Wendigo snarling and capturing the man’s jaw in his hand.

Thick fingers bit into soft skin, his blunt nails scraping at the flesh over angular jaw. The grip was harsh enough to bruise, cruel enough to force Ghost to tip his chin, and stare up into those crazed, obsidian eyes. He shoved harder.

Yet, something hot settled at the base of Eishrin's spine, and the man stiffened.

"No…" Eishrin hissed, pressing a hand into the edge of the pool and forcing space between them. Dark, furious eyes found crystalline blue, his upper lip twitching in a snarl as he caught Ghost’s chin in his hand. "You said you needed to be inside me. You are. You said this would be enough. Then why…?"

That coil, that boiling heat in his spine was that very familiar agony.

Why isn't this enough?! ​

 

[ThenThereWereNone]

The smell of burnt sugar. Sharp and acrid. A rose garden blackened and charred, smoldering embers still glowing on shriveled and brittle petals. The sorrow of it spread outwards like a blight bringing ruin to everything it touched. Regret. The familiarity was in name alone.

Not his own.

Eishrin.

What a giddying sensation it was to be the cause of it. The target of the man's ire, his hatred, and yet to be the only one who could give him what he needed. No one else could soothe that yawning pit of agony and primal lust.

No one but him. And Eishrin was painfully aware of it.

And what is it exactly that I'm doing to you?

Incapable of extricating himself from the harsh press of fingers biting into his hips, Bellamy met the discomfort head-on. A gasp slipping past his lips as pain zigzagged across his scalp, pale strands caught fast in Eishrin's fist. "You should at least tel—" His words were rudely caught off by the hand at his throat.

But just as suddenly as it'd appeared that constricting grip faltered before falling away entirely and Eishrin collapsed forward against him. Tremors shook the larger man's frame, bleeding into Bellamy as he was drawn flush against the other's body by the rough, grasping fingers at his waist. The man's breath puffing hot and wet against his ear.

The Keeper huffed out a chuckle. The spillage of Eishrin's mental musings, sweetly ignorant. And once again he wondered at just how little his Guardian knew about the bond formed between them.

Sagging forward into Eishrin's encompassing embrace, Bellamy shut his eyes for a brief moment. The press of skin against skin, slick with beads of water and sweat, the rise of the man's chest, the thundering roar of his pulse near deafening. The torturous glide of aching length against his own. Nostrils flaring, he inhaled deeply and swallowed a moan, mouth watering. How was it possible for one to smell so fucking perfect? He wanted to lick him. To taste the heat and spice of him, to feel Eishrin tremble and shudder beneath him as he took his time exploring the man's body, licking, biting, discovering all the places that would draw forth those animalistic snarls and those sweet-sweet whimpers that would have Eishrin's cock twitching as it drooled his raging desire down the thick of him.

Did his cum taste as irresistible as his blood? As sweet? As profoundly addictive? Bellamy would take his time: a slow drag of his tongue from root to tip. Just a taste. To start.

Eishrin's one-armed embrace could be easily mistaken as an intimate gesture. If one were to happen upon them from the outside looking in, unaware of the vile and vicious emotions that bound the two of them together; unaware of the truth drumming in synced heartbeats; incapable of feeling the searing hatred and resentment from the larger man who held his partner as if he were something fragile and precious, tracing indefinable shapes into pale, heat reddened skin.

Jesper was aware that there was no love lost between the pair, and yet even he couldn't shake the impossibility of what he gazed upon. The sheer wrongness of it. A molten fury oozed thick and foul down his throat, tightening in his chest. He choked on a breath his lungs refused to take. He didn't understand it. He didn't fucking understand.

It was becoming easier for Bellamy to notice when the relentless agony reached for Eishrin again and again, sinking its acid dipped thorns into the very marrow of him. The man's whole body would go rigid, chest vibrating on a pained growl as he nuzzled closer. And every time it happened there was a sick flip in the pit Bellamy's stomach, his own body bracing for a pain he never should have felt.

It was in that moment of stillness borne of anticipatory dread when Eishrin's hand moved, his calloused palm settling against Bellamy's thigh. The Keeper thought nothing of it as the man took hold of his leg, maneuvering him. He didn't fight it.

Leg now bent with his foot perched flat against the ledge left Bellamy open and vulnerable to Eishrin were he to make good on his promise. A stupid man might have tried. And there was a sinister flash in those dark eyes that did not go unnoticed.

Another spasm seemed to tear away whatever foolish thoughts that might’ve have been gathering in Eishrin's mind. As Bellamy had rightly assumed, his Guardian was not a stupid man. And as such, Bellamy had no trouble with promising Eishrin the relief he so desperately sought as he rutted against him, the catch and drag of their aching lengths rubbing together, the thinly veiled threat of his heavy sack sliding against Bellamy's quivering pink pucker.

An easy promise.

With an exception, of course.

Instant capitulation.

'Anything.'

The tease of soft lips against his shoulder felt almost reverent. Dripping with relief. And yet Eishrin's hand lashed back through the water with a soft splash as he took hold of that probing tendril. It wriggled through his grasping fingers, unhindered in its goal.

Trust? Bellamy had to bite down on his bottom lip to keep from laughing outright. A better question would be: whether you can afford not to trust me.

Anticipation coiled like a snake readying to strike as Eishrin squeezed his eyes shut. His body rigged. Confliction running sharp across his tense features. A shudder and another spasm took him. A full body tremor and Bellamy watched—the moment branding itself deep into his memory—noting the instant his shadow breached the man's stubbornly tight entrance. The choked whimper that followed.

His breath caught on a shuddered exhale as his cock twitched, a thick drop of cream drooling from the tip. Pale fingers curled into fists to keep from reaching for his cock and stroking himself to some semblance of relief; from manhandling Eishrin with the aid of his magic, into a more favourable position and burying himself deep into the tight heat of his body and taking out his pleasure and frustration.

Tell me what you need. Too much? Too little? Not enough?

His hands shot forward, gripping at Eishrin's rocking hips, "St—" Words choked off on a hiss as their cocks slid together, torturous friction like a bolt of lightning straight to his balls. A bead of sweat slid down his temple and he grit his teeth. A slow drag of breath. In and out. One. Then another. He could come like this if he allowed himself. He was close enough that it wouldn't take much to push him over. But he possessed more self-control than that. Even as his body tried to call him a liar.

He held himself still, fighting the instinctive need to drive his hips forward.

No, he wouldn't come like this.

He intended to breed the raging bull of a man now rutting against him. He needed to fuck him. To feel that wild, unfettered strength bucking beneath him, the tight passage of him clenching around his cock. He wanted to watch his cum leaking from the man's ravaged hole. To know that he had taken him so completely and that Eishrin could feel the evidence of that possession.

'Six'

Bellamy blinked, his vision slowly clearing as his fingers went slack. Ah, right. An answer.

With Eishrin's tongue and lips brushing against his shoulder, he wouldn't see the way Bellamy's eyes narrowed. Just six. It was a wonder he could be so sure of the number. The Keeper couldn't quite put his finger on what it was about the answer that sat amiss. Perhaps it was the ease with which Eishrin offered it up.

But then Eishrin kept talking. Oddly persistent. And the feeling that the man was attempting to conceal something from him grew.

He's lying.

Perhaps if his head were less muddled, if he were in full control of his senses he might have wondered why Eishrin felt the need to point out that Bellamy wasn't his first. But rather, he lingered on why exactly he felt the need to lie at all.

So it was likely more than six, that would have come as no great surprise. Why lie about it?

'How does it feel to have something already taken and used by someone else?'

Once again his thoughts were diverted, the rough and tumble of Eishrin's voice, that deep seductive rumble licked across Bellamy's ear, calling into question his feleings regarding Eishrin coming to him as used goods.

Back digging into the pool's edge as Eishrin pressed close, he tried to make sense of what the man hoped to gain with his prodding words. Clearly he sought to incite a reaction. An emotion. Jealousy? Disgust? Shame?

The tease of teeth had his skin tingling with need. Oh, just fucking bite me. You know you want to.

And then Eishrin was rising, leaning over him.

The man's breath brushing hot against Bellamy's mouth had his lips parting slightly and he tilted his head. That inch of space, a chasm for all that Bellamy was incapable of closing it, caged in as he was by the larger man. His shadows on the other hand were unencumbered by Eishrin's looming form and that writhing tendril thickened as it nearly slipped free of the man's body.

The image of a kicked pup, Jesper swayed side to side where he knelt, eyes flickering a bright, burning amber. An unwilling witness he forced himself to watch. He was stiff, remembering the sensation of that pulsing tendril pressing into his own body, thickening with every breath. A low whimper, wretched and pained tore free of him. The sound of it echoing across the tiles.

Eishrin's looming bulk blocked Bellamy's view of Jesper's kneeling form, but that wounded sound, pitiful and heartbroken, provided a satisfying enough mental image.

An image replaced by the filth that Eishrin hissed at him. Goading questions. Bellamy mirrored that wicked grin leering down at him.

What a filthy mouth you have. But you give my feelings regarding who has and hasn't fucked you far too much credit.

Make no mistake, I would allow a clan of Keepers and their Guardians to fuck you, breed you, use your body in whatever way they desired and remain unmoved. It would not matter to me, because I have the one… the only part of you worth anything.

He lifted his hand then, fingers closing around Eishrin's wrist, voice dipped low.

"Your soul."

His pale gaze alight with levity, the answering snarl was the only warning he received before the harsh grab of his jaw had him tipping his chin. Lean body pushing forward into the grip that bloomed a throbbing pain from the tips of those cruel fingers. I am your first and your last in the only way that matters. No one will ever possess you the way I do.

You. Are. Mine.

Eishrin's fingers flexed where they pressed against his chest. What violent delights was he imagining behind those dark eyes as they gazed into the middle space, distant and burning with blood lust?

And then the man was stiffening again. His voice rough, his eyes dark and refocused with a dangerous intensity.

A glacial coolness glittered in pale blue eyes as they rose to meet the lashing fury of darker gaze. Snarl was met with sneer. The rising confusion and indignation in the man's voice as he took hold of Bellamy's chin had the Keeper arching a pale brow, amusement tugging at his lips. Was that panicked desperation he tasted?

Did I specify exactly—Coiling tendril withdrew from Eishrin's body save for the very tip—that this—before thrusting back into him with force enough to rock his body forward—would be enough to soothe your torment?

A second tendril lashed out, wrapping itself around Eishrin's throat, squeezing. Constricting.

You lied.

No true bite behind the words. More a bemused and probing curiosity.

What I don't understand is why.

"I have half a mind to punish you for it. Make you wait."

But Bellamy wouldn't wait. Couldn't. He knew with the ringing echo of agony previously felt that he couldn't. An instinctive surety that prolonging the consummation of their bond any longer would leave him just as mindlessly desperate and writhing in a twin mutation of the other's pain.

But you'd be no use to me broken.

"It seems you shall be the one bent over the ledge, taken by me." With an unhurried caress, the tendril coiled around Eishrin's throat unfurled itself just as the one invading the tightness of his body slipped free. “Go on then.” Bellamy patted the curved lip of the pool’s edge that he was pressed back against. "Why don't you show me how desperately eager you are for me to fuck you."

 

[MoldaviteGreen]

Eishrin could afford nothing.

Within the oppressive stream of the tiled space, Eishrin was choked not only by swirling humidity, but by his own disastrous stubbornness. His sense of pride, always larger than the man himself, was what truly stood in his way. For the promise of relief had been given, served to him on a platter, and how was Eishrin to bite the hand that offered it to him? Ungrateful, perhaps, but not entirely. The neglect of himself came from something far dark. Something, even, far deeper. Eishrin only took. Took life. Took bodies. Took peace and turned it into chaos.

What Eishrin did not do, was give.

Yet, as little as Eishrin was able to completely comprehend, there were still gentle subtleties that drew his dark eyes and his burning attention. As if his very being was woven tightly with every atom that formed Ghost, he felt a shift within himself that felt like lightening. A powerful crackle edged with something far more lingering, that coated the back of his throat. He watched, then, as Ghost's own breath caught on a shuddered exhale, as the turgid length of his pale flesh throbbed hard, just once, against Eishrin's own girth. It slid velvet flesh against silken, the softness of swollen veins brushing and yielding. What was not lost to Eishrin was the curling scent that touched his nose. Addictive.

Like opium, the honey of Ghost's own slick stole all thought from Eishrin's mind. Pupils dilated, blowing wide, and body became eerily still. All Eishrin did was breathe, deep inhales and shallow exhales; as if he wished to stain the viscera of his lungs with the fragrance of his Ghost, and never let it out. He wanted it all. He did not wish to share. These thoughts of possession did not startle him in his lustful craze. Instead, it was Eishrin's hand sweeping between their bodies until his knuckles brushed low over Ghost's taut abdomen, the pad of his forefinger finding the ridge beneath the head of Ghost's cock, and letting the cream bead there. It clung to his ebony flesh like dew, pooling heavy. And as Eishrin drew his hand away, smearing it between forefinger and thumb, he sank his teeth into the side of his cheek to keep from licking the digits clean.

It seemed that Ghost, despite all of his perfectly schooled neutrality and cutting remarks, was not entirely unmoved by the slick glide of their bodies and the obnoxiously building heat. So why, then, did Ghost not grant them what they wanted? Why did he press, and toy, and dance, when Eishrin could give them both what they so desperately needed?

Because it had not been Eishrin's own forceful suggestion that had Ghost beginning to stiffen, the droplet of arousal pearlescent against the flushed shaft. It has been the clench of Eishrin's own body, the attempt to push the tendril free, and the sudden spasm that had possessed every muscle within his body. Perhaps, even, it had been that salacious whimper that he'd choked down.

The agony that struck him with a force of a thousand trucks stole logic and reason and sense from Eishrin. A second longer and he very well may have realised what this was to cost him. He might have realised that they both ached for the same thing—to be inside the body of the other, held by tight cavity, to leave it ruined and filled. Instead, synapses misfired and Eishrin's own vision blanked as he, despite all burning hatred, tried not to crush Ghost beneath him as he caved.

Ghost's words echoed his mind, but they were everywhere. They carved through the pain to etch into his flesh, burn through his blood, and crack through bone. Eishrin felt Ghost's voice in a place stolen from him, the quick fire of connection granting him the barest of glimpses to what lay caged. His soul. Untended and unbound. Possessed by another that claimed to own it, and with such pride. To be someone's trophy was revolting. To be someone's object was humiliating. But why did Ghost's harsh words of possession stoke the fire of Eishrin's inferno of need?

In all but a moment, Eishrin was suddenly achingly empty and his hole spasmed again in desperate attempt, not to expel, but to contain. The dark sphincter clung at the tendril, needily trying to suckle it back into the heat of his body. It came, punctuated with words, so rough that Eishrin was nearly shoved from the pool. His back arched, face tilting skyward as he felt the thick of the obsidian magic twist deep within cavity.

Vision beginning to filter back in, Eishrin jerked at the touch to his throat. A second tendril wrapped twice about his neck, tight over his pulse and windpipe, and he tried to tear it from his skin. His fingers slipped, falling instead to Ghost's shoulder where it fisted bunched muscles and dug nails into milky flesh. He could not breathe. He could barely see. But he knew the look in his Ghost's face—haunting him, as ever.

Eishrin's lie was known, it seemed, but its reason evaded the Keeper. That, at least, came as some kind of solace against Ghost's cruelty. Still, his shoulders heaved against tightening wrap of his throat. He'd wanted to die. He still wanted to die. But faced with the ever-clenching tendril at his throat, the beginning muteness in his ears, Eishrin's instinct to survive was far stronger. It became the reason Eishrin shoved away when he was finally free; breaking all contact to step back from the ledge within the water. And while the loss of Ghost's touch, the satin heat of his pale body, proved to be a soul-reaching kind of agony, it was nothing in comparison to what Eishrin already endured.

"I am eager for nothing," Eishrin snarled, blinking as the world flickered back into colour. Dark eyes pinned his Ghost, locking with crystalline blue.

It was but his last spar venom before Eishrin drew away, his narrow waist carving through the water. The ledge that he drew himself over, his fingers cracking the tiles as they first slammed into them, before curling into fists. He tucked one leg up onto the ledge, the other his only source of balance.

He knew in the deepest part of himself that to be free of the agony, he had to do this. Play by Ghost's rules, play his game, only for now and be free of him. Once it was over, he'd never let anything like this happen again. He just needed to bear this, and put his pride aside.

But to have another man's cock fill him…

Stop!

Not to anyone, but himself, yet the sudden scream tore through the bond and would echo within Ghost's own mind.

He could do this. He could bear this shame, and take no pleasure in it.

Eishrin gathered himself, drawing the edge of the pool against the carved ridges of his tense abdomen. Rivers of water drew paths down ebony skin, skipping through chiselled valleys. As the Wendigo gave his Keeper the broad planes of his back, Ghost would be presented, yet again, with the raised markings of his skin. It came as no thought to Eishrin, who folded his arm beneath himself and gripped the edge, to steady himself against the rising torrent of nausea. Instead, his only reassurance came with his knowledge that, like this, Eishrin would not see those glacial blue eyes or sharp aquiline features.

You haven't won. This is not submission.
This is not supplication.

His world was spinning, balancing on the precipice of collapse, as all he'd been sure of steadily crumbled. Ghost was his apparition, but he was also his curse.

The mountain of his frame stood tall against the swirling humidity of steam, his back rigid despite his lean over the edge.

Be fucking done with it. You want my hole? Then fucking take it.

Destroy me, if you crave it. Mark me. Mutilate me. Break and ruin me.

There is nothing that you can do that it worse than what you have already done.

Pain would be Eishrin's companion. It would keep him clinging to some sense of reality. Eishrin would prefer brutality, the sting of the assault, the burning stretch of his tight ring of muscle. The bodily pain he yearned for in his hope that it would chase that agony that stemmed from his stolen soul.

Give me back my fangs, that's all that I ask of you.

To sink those sharp teeth into his own flesh, to maim himself like a wolf trying to chew off its own, trapped paw. He'd need the pain, Eishrin knew, to keep that foreign feeling of being filled from tainting his soul. He'd need it to ground himself against the onslaught and the lingering aftermath that would claw deeply into his sense of self; forever shaken.

Don't think. Don't contemplate how this changes everything. Don't think about anything at all.

A droplet, heavy like that of Ghost's own slick, glided down the slope of tense, ebony back, pooling within the dimple just above Eishrin's submerged buttocks. ​

 

[ThenThereWereNone]

For a man who’d begged for death, Eishrin tore at the constricting tendril with the ferocity of one who refused to part with life. A brief clawing of futile fingers that slipped to land in clenching fists against Bellamy’s shoulders. The man’s body heaving with the instinctual desire to draw breath. To live.

Made all the apparent by the speed at which he propelled himself away the very moment the tendril’s hold loosened. The space he cut between them settled hollow and cold, even as the disturbed water sloshed up hot against Bellamy’s chest and abdomen.

Pale eyes dropped to those pretty lips snarling more lies, before rising, a knowing gleam in their depths as they met that venomous gaze.

Liar.

But he only looked on as Eishrin did as he was told. Crafted and honed for a singular purpose, Eishrin's movements—fraught with tension as they were—were hypnotic to behold. Aesthetically appealing. His body was a work of art.

Simply put: The man was beautiful.

Beautiful because of the power and strength and violence writhing beneath the expanse of glistening wet ebony skin.

Straightening up, the sudden scream that rang out in his head brought Bellamy to stillness.

‘Stop!’

That single word. Again.

It held the unkind razor’s edge of a thought directed at oneself. Though it had tumbled outward.

Were Bellamy’s mind not bound down a singular track, he’d have likely forced his way into the man’s thoughts, ever curious as to what had caused such an unintentional outburst. But for the moment, he was more focused on closing the distance between himself and his Guardian who settled himself against the pool’s edge. The Keeper's whole being was a drumming beat of tightly wound anticipation and need.

So much fucking need.

And while sight may have been obscured for Eishrin with his back facing his Keeper, there was no avoiding the prickling weight of hungry gaze that traced over every scar, every mark, every carved valley, every—previously—obscure detail.

I need neither your submission nor your supplication. I have your body.

The water barely rippled as Bellamy’s lean frame cut through it, pressing his body flush against the larger man with a shuddered sigh, turgid flesh slipping along the cleft of the man’s shapely rear.

And your aversion makes it all the sweeter.

The tips of cool fingers brushed over wet skin, tracing the textured markings etched into the man’s flank, finally close enough where he could study the details with sight as well as touch. The sentiment behind them unknown to him.

The words spilling from Eishrin's mind into Bellamy’s were pointed, ever goading. Impatient even.

You would like that wouldn’t you? For me to break you. Ravish you. Leave you used, bloodied, and bruised. Exchange pain for pain.

Cool palms followed the exploratory, unhurried glide of his fingers. The pad of his thumbs pressed with some pressure into Eishrin’s back on either side of his spine, heat and texture and a crackling wire of barely-there restraint humming beneath Bellamy’s hands. Eishrin was all steely rigidity. A rigid wall of muscles coiled tight.

A brutal assault where you claim the role of the hapless martyr sacrificed on the altar of the flesh.

Were Bellamy to press harder, to dig his claws in, could he perhaps peel the man apart? Slip beneath his skin, fuse into the very marrow of him. The mental musing was a pulsing ember of madness on the periphery and Bellamy licked his lips. Mouth suddenly dry.

‘Give me back my fangs, that’s all that I ask of you.’

Give them back so you can… what?

Bellamy shook his head. He was no fool. He did not have to think hard or long to recognize the man's intentions.

“No."

Curling his fingers, claws digging, pressing, he raked welts down Eishrin’s flank. Slowing and gripping at the man’s hips as he folded forward, pressing his tongue into the dimple of his lower back. He licked at the liquid that gathered there, dragging wet, pink tongue up the slope of the man’s spine. Fangs replaced tongue, dragging lightly as he reached the center of his back. He could have spent far too much time simply toying with the Guardian's body, with hands and tongue and teeth just to feel the quivering muscles and the way they jumped beneath the man's skin as if attempting to avoid Bellamy's touch. But there would be time for such focused pleasures later.

He straightened up, a hiss escaping his lips as he curled his fingers around his shaft, so achingly sensitive to the touch. His free hand dipped beneath the water, smoothing along a firm cheek, more markings tickling against his palm. All he could think was how badly he wanted to sink his teeth into the plump, tight globes of muscle. Salivated at the thought. But the current moment demanded the sealing of a bond not fully completed. Demanded that they both be given what they needed.

His thumb dimpled into Eishrin's skin, parting him as he lined himself up with that tight ring of muscle and pushed slowly.

Invading. Persistent. A rising, fervid 'Claim him claimhimclai...

Ohhhhhh!

The crown slipped in and Bellamy’s breath caught. His eyes nearly rolled back in his head. Tight. So tight. Blazing heat clamped down on him. Eishrin's clenching hole attempting to strangle his cock. Fuck.

Oh fuck. Fuckfuck!

Impatient, he rocked his hips. No warning. No soothing words. No urging to breathe, to relax tense muscles, to make entry a little easier on Eishrin. A single, brutal thrust forward, the wet slap of skin on skin and he was fully inside of his Guardian. Balls deep. Vision doubling. A whimper choked up from between parted lips.

He couldn’t move. Even as his body screamed for friction.

You feel…

Perfect. So tight. Infernal. Too perfect. Soft. Heavenly. Made for me.

He moved, slowly. Clamping down on the last dregs of self-restraint just as his thoughts scattered. Lost in sensation, pulling back—achingly slow—and pushing in with vicious force. Slow and hard. Even as his whole body thrummed with a red hot pulsing of primal lust to rut hard and fast. To chase down the pleasure skipping just within reach and tear into it with fangs and claws.

Fangs that bit down into his lower lip, rising, pooling blood to the surface that crawled slowly down his chin. Claws that dug into Eishrin’s hips, dragging him back flush against rolling hips as he fucked into him. Making waves. Hot water jumping and licking at skin overheating, sweat prickling.

Thoughts tried to return. “You feel—“ Words gathered. Breathless. Rough. A deliberately slight change of angle had Bellamy’s cock brushing against that sensitive bundle of nerves inside his Guardian. “Good. So. Good.” Each word punctuated by a hard thrust forward. “Perfect.”

 

[MoldaviteGreen]

The soft lap of water against the top curve of his rear was Eishrin's only warning of predatory approach. Ghost, an apparition both within Eishrin's mind and the waking world, moved silently through the water until the burning heat of him licked at Eishrin's bared back. It had the Wendigo bristling, the feathered muscles beneath ebony skin flickering as his shoulders rolled forward; markings pulling taut across dark flesh.

With baited breath, he waited for the touch. He waited for claws, for cruelty, for roughness, and dragged his blunt teeth across the meat of his forearm in anticipation. What grazed him was far more sinister. The tingle that fluttered across his skin followed the path of raking eyes, Ghost's gaze carving deep beneath Eishrin's flesh. He felt it in its entirety—every mark with which it lingered, every inch that earned attention. It burned deep, Eishrin all too aware of Ghost's proximity and gaze. A slap would have been better than this. A strike, hard across his skin, would have been welcomed. But this? This slow agony of anticipation had Eishrin's heart gripped within tight-squeezing claws.

Against the broad expanse of him, silken skin kissed and melded into his pocked flesh. Ghost draped himself close, stealing back the inches held between them. A man held frozen in expectation, Ghost was his fire; and Eishrin found himself leaning back into the burning heat of him. That held breath came exhaled between gently parted lips, obsidian eyes fluttering closed as he drank in the touch of his Keeper. It should have disgusted him. He should have found it revolting. Yet, the all-familiar sting of Ghost's claws as they raked down his flank and curled over his hip had Eishrin's jaw clenching as a shiver ran then length of his spine. Too close, they had come. Too tightly interwoven, they had drawn. When faced with distance, Eishrin found every atom of him yearning for the nearness of Ghost's own matter.

Fingertips found the scars along Eishrin's back and he stiffened. Caught between the instinctual need to pull away and his bone-deep need to remain close held him at a war. Upper lip curled back, the deep rumble of a growl resonating within broad chest like that of a nearing storm. The gentleness of those curious fingers startled him. They touched the markings like a stone skipping over water—brushing, light, fleeting. Some dark desire swirled within Eishrin, clutching at his chest and squeezing, as he recognised the need for something rougher.

Pain for pain. It is only fair.

Was it fairness he sought or was it a need to stifle this feeling within him? A sadist, not a masochist, why did his blood warm as those claws raked over his skin, as those thumbs pressed and forced tense muscles to quiver? Pain could cleanse. Pain could distract. Above all, pain could provide excuse. Was that what he sought? Eishrin didn't know anymore.

Ghost's refusal was double-edged. The denial of the pain Eishrin sought so keenly left him bare to the onslaught of what was to come. The refusal of gifting him his fangs held Eishrin apart from his soul. His true self, his whole, held caged within the abyss of an unworthy, depraved mind. It rendered Eishrin as less, left him a glimpse of what he truly was, and the denial of it had Eishrin slamming his hands against the tile, fisting them down into the floor, crumbling porcelain within palms until it turned to dust. A redirection of the violence he wished to inflict upon the man behind him.

You fucking—

The press of a warm, wet tongue to the dimple in his back had Eishrin's hips bucking forward. The slick heat glazed the ebony of his skin in saliva, staining his flesh. Aching, turgid length throbbed against his tightly-pressed thighs, his balls tightening as that forbidden tongue drew upwards. Over scars, along the valley of his spine, that tongue saw a bead of pearlescent slick weeping free from ebony cock, the bead blending to swirl within the water over his lap. When fangs found his flesh, grazing, Eishrin's spine bent sharply; held taut like a bow.

"Oh…" A whisper. A quiet exhale. It came laced with forbidden, unwanted pleasure. Electricity fired within him, shaking the pooling discomfort within his belly free. A shiver ran the length of Eishrin's spine, those tense muscles quivering beneath Ghost's attention, until it curled his toes and had him inhale shakily through parted lips.

It should have ended there, that shiver, but it dug deep within Eishrin and possessed him. Mind became muddy, logical thought shoved to the wayside. There existed nothing but tempestuous lust. Nothing but a lingering promise, a leering threat. To take. To have. To steal. Heat pooled low within his loins, the thick shaft of him pulsing angrily, neglected, against the surface of the water. Eishrin moved not of his own will, but out of the haze that possessed him as a hand glided over and clutched the firm cheek of his rear.

Hips rolled, the water sloshing against the edge of the pool as Eishrin shoved a hand down between crumbled ledge and his own, taut abdomen. The heel of his palm pressed firm against the root of his shaft, the pressure at the base, gifting him not enough. Thick, rough fingers fisted his cock, dragging to the flushed head to sweep the pad of a thumb beneath the glans. Still. Not. Enough.

And then there came an unfamiliar sting. A press against the tight ring of his hole. Eishrin's breath came as a hiss through grit teeth, the sphincter spasming closed in rebellion. With a downstroke of his fist, his pinky knocking against the gold nestled firm against his sack, Eishrin's hole quivered and betrayed him. The plush, slick tip slipped within him, Ghost finally breaching the heat of Eishrin's body. He flinched, his hips jerking forward to stir the water, but he remained plugged; Ghost's own hips chasing him.

Instinct was all that fuelled him now, and it saw tight sphincter clenching hard upon invading flesh; choking the inch that had slipped within him. Eishrin's vision prickled, his body braced against the ledge and his breath held. There was no time to warm to Ghost's presence. There was no pause granted, allowing that tight sphincter to learn to release. Instead, Ghost pressed forward, shoving beyond the second ring of muscles that fought stubbornly; hilting himself deep until swollen, peach sack tapped and lay firm against ebony pair.

Ghost's choked whimper became a song with Eishrin's strangled groan, rising above the double-beat that drilled within his skull. "Wait…"

Eishrin shivered, the thick, invading heat of Ghost's shaft grinding hard against his walls as it withdrew. He felt every inch, every vein, every throb that came through swollen muscle. It was all that he could feel—that impossible, despicable fullness. It stung. It burned. But Ghost chased it away with another forward roll of his milky hips, driving the thick of him deep into Eishrin's hot hole; knocking hard against a notch that saw Eishrin's own cock twitching without touch.

"F-fuck…" Choked, his words came stammered. Oh, fucking Christ…

The absurdity of it all was becoming too much. The stretch of his sphincter, the fiery sting of it so damn good. The weight of another man driving deep into his virgin hole. The knock against his now-discovered bundle of nerves and how it made his knees quiver. The snag of his hips, pulled back into the forward roll of Ghost's hard, pistoning cock. Eishrin tried to wash it away with desperate jerks of his fist, but they came haphazard and unsteady, yearning to sink into something else.

Hot water sloshed, drooling down ebony forearm as Eishrin blindly reached behind him. Fingers found those silken tendrils of silvery hair, taking through them to cup the back of Ghost's back-tilted head and pull him closer. Closer, still, because even as their bodies blended it still was only scratching the surface of what Eishrin's body yearned for.

Revulsion had cracked. Resistance had shattered.
Instead, Eishrin had become a slave for that coiling, depraved need.

He wasn't sure where he was pulling Ghost—mouth to his shoulder, face to the crook of his neck, or cheek to his back—and he didn't care. Eishrin simply grappled, one hand clawing through the shattered pieces of tile upon the floor as the other silently begged Ghost to draw himself closer.

Was it always supposed to feel like this? Was he always supposed to yearn to have the man sink under his skin, fuse with his bones, flood his veins? Was he supposed to feel like he may combust at any second, held on the precipice of something he couldn't yet comprehend? Where had his yearning for death slipped in the face of it all?

In all the times he'd fucked, Eishrin had never been as hard as he was now; swollen, pulsing, aching. And, yet, he neglected even himself as his wide palm slipped down to grasp the back of Ghost's slender throat, his fingers over the man's pulse. But he didn't need to feel the blood rush beneath his touch, for Eishrin could feel Ghost's heart beat alongside his own; the premonition of it flush to his own beating muscle.

But those words, that praise, broken by hard, possessive thrusts, had Eishrin falling away.

“Good.”

A silken moan escaped him, purred into the humid swirl of the steam. He tumbled forward, his forehead striking the taut muscle of his forearm, his shoulders hunched as he shivered.

“So. Good.”

His body clenched again, muscles quivering upon each slow, receding drag.

“Perfect.”

As Ghost pulled back, shaft dragging heavy within Eishrin's abdomen, he snarled and thrust back; his rear pillowing against cream hipbones. An instinct that should have shocked him, should have terrified him, but Eishrin was no longer sane.

Ghost…

Eishrin's fingers squeezed at the back of his Keeper's neck, kneading the muscle as he insistently yanked again. He wasn't sure was he was begging for, only that he was begging for him. His Ghost. His Keeper. His Hell.

Tell me it always feels like this.

Desperation, for this to not to be unique.

Tell me this isn't us.

Fear, for this to be something belonging to them that Eishrin could not fight.

A whimper, long and silken, escaped Eishrin as he shivered; back arching as he pressed his hips back into Ghost's next hard, spearing thrust. With each press forward, every deep drive of Ghost's cock, the heaviness within his belly fanned the pooling, liquid heat within Eishrin's heavy sack. He'd never felt so full, stretched and filled, but something impossible snagged at the peripheries of his mind and forced it wide.

Between them, Eishrin's building pleasure, his internal war, began to seep. Each knock of Ghost's plush tip against the bundle of nerves, every desperate clench of his hole to keep withdrawing shaft from leaving him empty, all filtered across the channel that had become their bond. Eishrin, lost to immoral pleasure Ghost committed to every nerve, slipped his hand free of his Keeper's neck and clasped hungrily, instead, at the tensing, cream muscle of the man's thigh.

Tell me it always feels like this. ​