[Fic/Art] Ares: Hatesex thing + Illustrations
THE FOLLOWING POST/FIC/THING CONTAINS NON-CONSENSUAL PR0NZ. PLEASE TAKE THIS WARNING AS IS.
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Title: Congress in the Way of Beasts
Series/Characters: [Ares] Mikael/Ares, Mikael/Baruna
Disclaimer: Ares belongs to Ryu Kum Chel. Am only capitalizing on all the UST.
Word Count: 3,080
Notes: Illustrations by butterflycages.
For the longest time this file was titled "Hatesex LOL" before it changed to "I have no idea what to title this fucker." The fic itself was completed sometime last week, but Inaho wasn't able to get the coloring done until... this morning. At 3:00 a.m. LOL Send her some love yeah? Prompt was "prisoners of war." Spoilers for... up to chapter 115 at least, since that was the last chapter we read before hashing out this bit of what amounts to be RAEP TIEMZ.
I'd usually ask for crits but... I think I'm too ashamed to want to revisit this. We'll see. I can't believe I wrote NCS. I can't believe I wrote NCS. ::litany repetition:: No wait, I take it back, TELL ME WHAT I DID WRONG. ;___;
Dedication: For butterflycages. We're even now, right? >_>
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Congress in the Way of Beasts
by kasugai gummie
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The world swims into focus, like some drunken thing-topsy-turvy and very silly. Or so Ares thinks until it becomes quite clear that he’s nowhere near where he last remembered himself being-which was the corpse-riddled battlefield on the eastern plains of Daraak. His legs are heavy, as are his bare arms and it doesn’t take him too long to notice the heavy metal links that trailed from one shackle to the other.
A dull throb behind his ear notifies him of a possible reason as to why his thoughts were so shot. Ares touches a probing hand to the caked blood in his hair, to the torn skin on his scalp and absently scrunches his nose. He somehow remembers stabbing and slashing and a rain of blood; losing sight of Baruna’s spinning blades, more blood. He’d locked gazes with someone sometime between all that blood, he’s sure, someone who suddenly dyed his vision crimson and triggered the singing intent to kill in his veins...
Then there was what had to have been a sucker mace-to-the-head from behind.
Sitting up threatens to spin his head off its axis again, but that doesn’t deter him the slightest. Ares takes stock of his surroundings as best as he could given the limited light from the small fist-sized hole near the ceiling. Granite walls, iron bars, and a rather nasty looking lock on the iron door-no visible weaknesses to exploit, no crumbling stones to kick through.
A well-tended prison then.
The air is extraordinarily dry and the sound of the chains shifting as he moves around is much more distinct than he would have liked.
“Ares?”
Ares’ single eye widens. “Baruna?!” he yells, a mixture of surprise and misplaced delight in his voice. “You got caught too? Still alive?”
A hint of resignation colors the answering “Maybe?” that bounces a little off the walls. Baruna’s voice is quiet, low-key, but sounds close enough; right next to him, or maybe even one cell over.
Ares purses his lips into a frown. This won’t do at all, he thinks, and hobbles to his feet with every intention to beat the bolt lock open with his chains, or, if that doesn’t work, beat his chains off with the bolt lock.
All other thoughts of escape are smothered in the womb however, when the latch suddenly releases open to reveal an unfamiliar figure sporting a more familiar face.
Ares abruptly falls back on his ass, painstaking efforts to stand wasted in a moment of sheer disbelief.
“I see you’re awake,” Michael notes blandly, as a way of greeting. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised though-never mind my instructions for my subordinates to kill and not merely incapacitate.”
Ares’ indrawn breath hisses out between his teeth the way pressure releases from a shaken bottle of soda. Barely controlled. Excruciatingly slow, else it explode. The urge to simply lunge for the other’s throat held back only by a last shred of caution.
Michael doesn’t proceed any further into the cell; instead he stays by the entrance, crosses his arms and leans on a shoulder, waiting patiently while watching the shock and confusion and a single-minded killing intent, half-hidden by a curtain of bangs, chase each other across Ares’ face.
“I will admit to being somewhat surprised when I heard you survived the sky burial. There shouldn’t have been anybody left for miles to save you.”
Because I killed them all, goes unsaid but Ares hears the afterthought in a choir of ghostly screams.
“-the hell is your problem,” he mumbles, voice starting off as inaudible but climbing with each syllable. “Why did you? Why’d you come back? You left, you left us but here you are. What do you want??” When Ares finally looks up from the his white-knuckled fists, it’s to plead and demand in equal parts. “Why, Michael!”
The corner of Michael’s mouth twitches in response. “Must you still ask that question,” he says, more of a statement, but when the said question in Ares’ eyes fails to disappear, he makes a small sound of reproach. “Too bad. I thought I made it quite clear the last time, but if you still can’t understand, then I’m afraid there’s no helping it.”
Michael unfolds from the door, all languid control and purposeful movements. A lion rousing from his sleep.
Ares blinks as alarms go off almost immediately, though he’s not sure why. Instinct carries him backwards, away from the measured steps of his former friend. He stops only when his back hits the wall.
Michael advances unhurriedly. “Your naivety is fun, Ares,” he says as he comes to a stop in front of his prisoner who automatically shifts into as defensive of a stance as he could in his awkwardly crouched position, “and an even bigger nuisance than a poorly executed coup.” A hand reaches down, long fingers curl around Ares’ chin in an uncompromising grip. The rest of Michael soon follows so that they are crouched at the same level. “I can’t stand it sometimes.”
Mind awhirl, Ares stares up at the looming shadow, increasingly wild-eyed and uncomprehending still at the sudden turn of events-until his mind catches on a word; examines it from all angles; turns it around and upside-down.
Naivety? His eye narrows; he begs to differ.
It’s a gamble on low odds; finding secure footing while trussed up like a spitted boar is a joke, but somehow Ares manages. First, escape. Then, look for Baruna so they could get the hell out. Finally, come back at a later date and run his sword through the lying liar’s chest.
Head-butting Michael may not be the most practical move in Ares’ repertoire, not with his head injury, but it’s the only one remotely effective at his immediate disposal. Pushing away from his crouch with both feet, Ares twists his face out of Michael’s grip, tucks his chin into his chest and launches himself forth.
Adrenaline rushes through his system, and what precious balance he had is lost, but Michael falls back, winded from the unexpected punch. They tumble towards the door in a heap of bony limbs and chains and Ares lashing out, arms and legs in awkward unison with every intention to maim. To cripple.
Unfortunately, it’s simply not enough.
By the time they actually hit the door, Michael had already managed to regain his bearings, quickly extricating himself from an incomplete stranglehold and promptly breaks Ares’ right arm at the elbow.
“Ah, shit!” Ares freezes for a split-second, and it’s all Michael needs to wrestle him onto his back.
Inhale. Exhale. And Michael smiles tightly. Irately. “You know, I actually considered letting my soldiers take care of this-” A hand travels down Ares’ front, while the thumb and forefinger of the other tighten dangerously close around his jugular “-and even now I kind of want to throw you to the wolves. So consider this a final favor for our time as mercenaries together-” and squeezes.
Lights flash in front of him and Ares gurgles. “What do you think you’re doing you bastard,” he manages to gasp, clawing at Michael’s hand.
“Making sure you understand,” comes the level response, closely followed by a finger slipping between skin and the waistband of Ares’ shorts. “You simply don’t get it. And Baruna suspected, but didn’t do anything about it.”
Ares snarls. Cries. “That’s because you’re our friend you asshole!” The stinging prickle of fury begins near the corner of his eyes and he thrashes away from the invasive touch-or tries to at least, but Michael keeps him in place by the neck. The sound of a zipper being pulled down barely reaches him above the roaring between his ears and the world spins with him. His knees hit the floor, then the palms of his hands, a shock of cold traveling up from the points of contact. Fabric pools around his thighs, the elastic hindering his movements even further, keeping his legs together.
“You’re a nuisance,” Michael states, deadpan; his voice is a flat death knell rung by judge and jury.
And then, pain.
Something burning. A pain unlike anything Ares has ever experienced before.
He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, his head a maelstrom of outrage and confusion and shock.
It has been years since he lost his right eye... but even so, Ares doubts that the physical trauma he felt back then could compare to the searing agony irradiating from the base of his spine to the tips of his toes now.
Michael’s fingers dig into his hips, hard enough to bruise, but those don’t register. At all.
The next thrust carries Ares forward and onto his elbows, forcing his face to scrape against the ground. Another thrust and suddenly the burning sensation literally rips open with the faintest beginnings of the metallic tang that they were so used to.
Michael’s face is impassive, but his eyes are intent as he fucks Ares into the floor-no pretensions of intimacy whatsoever save for a single open-mouthed kiss that is just short of sheer violence. The subtleties of such an act are unsurprisingly lost on Ares, but Michael is nothing if not thorough.
A hand fists in Ares’ hair, pulling his head back for a pair of lips to touch the shell of his ear and murmur, “brace yourself,” before suddenly introducing his cranium to the wall. The resulting blow, further driven home by a final, blood-slicked thrust, is nothing short of concussive. An explosion of behind his eyes.
Standstill.
The sudden absence of motion proves to be troublesome. It takes Michael a few seconds to catch his breath (though it is arguable that he truly ever lost it), but Ares finds it somewhat difficult to just keep his head up amidst the distracting flashes and all. And there’s blood everywhere: from the corner of his mouth, staining his teeth; from the broken skin of his scalp and leaking into his good eye; from between his legs and down his inner thigh.
A warbled laugh crawls past his lips; Ariadne would probably have a fit if she ever saw him like this-covered in so much blood and most, if not all, of it his own. Goddammit.
“... g’na fucking kill you,” Ares slurs into the cold slates of the floor. And though he isn’t quite sure how exactly, he’s always prided himself in being innovative.
Michael raises an eyebrow, but is otherwise expressionless. “I don’t think so,” he says simply, pulling out of and dropping Ares in the same dismissive motion.
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“Crap” is really Baruna’s only thought when he hears the rather final sounding collision of what had to be Ares’ head on stone. Closing his eyes against the dead-weight thud of a body dropping unceremoniously to the ground, Baruna bites his bottom lip, fervently missing the familiar texture of filter paper between his teeth.
All he could do now is wait. Wait for the inevitable and hope that Ares is still in one piece physically, if not mentally, when this is all over so that they could escape from and heal their wounds. So that they could draw up plans and figure out what the hell they were going to do.
A few, almost inaudible, rustles of cloth later and suddenly the entire area is thrown into an ominous, anticipatory silence. One minute. Three minutes. Five. Ten...
Baruna struggles up from where he lay on his side into a less vulnerable position. One that wouldn’t invite kicks to the stomach as easily as the former if the mottling bruise just above his scar was of any indication. Another half-hearted test against his bonds only reaffirms the utter futility of his situation.
There’s no warning when the cell door swings open, but Baruna stills immediately as Michael steps through the threshold on near silent feet.
“Michael.” Baruna watches from under the shadow of his fringe, never taking his eyes off the other boy’s coldly disdainful expression. “Or would you rather prefer ‘Your Highness?’”
The lock snaps close behind the young king of Isiris who, Baruna notes, looked as cool and composed as ever; no sign of his previous activities at all, save for perhaps the slightest trace of sweat on his neck and the sharp scent of blood that enveloped him like a cloak. Michael smiles down at Baruna, the close-lipped grin of a predator lying in wait.
“Actually,” Michael corrects, matter-of-fact, hoisting Baruna up by the throat, only to the slam the dark-haired boy into the wall, seconds later, “it should be ‘Your Majesty.’”
The impact explodes along the entirety of Baruna’s back, accompanied by a starburst of lights in front of his eyes. Baruna grunts, then coughs, as air is forcibly expelled from his lungs.
“Bad mood? Or simply not worried about sexually transmitted diseases?” he gasps despite the inconvenient lack of oxygen to speak with, body tight with tension and mind working furiously to remain calm. Rational.
The astonishment is almost tangible for but a moment. Michael snorts, then surprises them both by laughing. It’s an almost congenial sound if not for the underlying thread of bloodlust running through it. “Very good Baruna!” he grins, sharp and wry. “I figured you would be the harder one to break.” The blond taps a finger to his temple even as he parts Baruna’s leg with one knee, pressing closer until all the black-haired boy could feel are the sharp stones digging into the small of his back and the stifling warmth of Michael’s body heat.
Baruna exhales slowly, raising his head to look his former comrade-in-arms square in the eye. He says nothing, has nothing to say, and focuses on forcing his muscles to relax instead. His efforts, no matter how slight or gradual, don't go unnoticed by the other however.
“Ah,” Michael muses, “right-” and rakes the blunt edge of a fingernail along the telltale sigil on Baruna’s right arm non-too-gently. “This wouldn’t really be anything new or exciting to a Daraakian slave raised in the coliseum barracks, would it?”
Said ex-slave merely lifts his chin higher in response and fixes his eyes on a collection of notches in the far wall; thinks of nothing even as a hand slips under his shirt, pushing it up.
“Even so...”
The sensation of thin, dry lips pressing against Baruna’s forehead is terribly sudden and purposefully so; the softest brush of a royal benediction that is anything but. Black eyes widen a fraction, refocusing just in time to catch the dark smirk on Michael’s mouth as he pulls away ever-so-slightly.
“That’s better,” Michael says approvingly. “I would prefer it if you paid very close attention to the situation at hand, Baruna. Ares wouldn’t have understood the nuances of what I’m about to do-” to you “-but you don’t have the excuse of his brand of stupidity.”
Baruna blinks out of necessity. Situation at hand... huh. And memories of unnecessary cruelty, of a disturbing penchant for murder resurface at that. With such an irreverently patronizing tone coupled with the thinnest veneer of camaraderie, it’s not difficult to see why Ares went into shock upon discovering the ugly truth during the Temple massacre.
Cigarettes and steel, Baruna thinks, a mantra. Cigarettes and steel. His belt is unfastened in a series of heavy clinks; the fly of his pants undone even faster. He grits his teeth against the hiss that threatens to escape when fingertips, roughened on the hilt of a sword, trace a path from the bottom-most rib to the upper ridge of his hipbone. It’s a methodical caress, light and taunting, that lingers for a heartbeat before dipping into his pants. Down, and down...
Baruna jerks, pupils dilating. He knocks his head against the wall again, trying to look at anywhere but the cruel line of Michael’s self-satisfied smile and almost forgets how to breathe. The hand around his cock is unbearably tight and painfully warm. He could feel himself getting hard after the fourth, painfully slow but very thorough stroke. It’s a vice-like grip that wrings a voiceless choke from the back of his throat, no matter how unwilling he is.
And then he’s turned around, spun to face the wall. Michael doesn’t stop his ministrations, but neither does he move to steady Baruna who barely prevents himself from pitching forward all the way by dragging both manacles against the vertical surface until they caught, screeching, against the natural imperfections instead.
“Nice save,” Michael remarks from behind him, tone unsurprisingly blasé-as if he were discussing the weather, and Baruna can almost remember how the stalk of grass looked between his teeth after he won their impromptu football match.
Almost.
Only, not really.
The next deliberate squeeze-stroke obliterates that thought away, altogether.
Teeth graze over the bony ridge of Baruna’s shoulder blade as Michael mouths his way down, between them to the axis, along his spine, and then there’s a warm, wet pressure tracing an all-too-familiar, very much despised design. Languid sweeps of the tongue rebrand his back in a way ink and needle couldn’t.
The hand on his stomach presses harder. The other around his cock tightens pointedly.
Left, downward-curving blade. Moist words murmured into his skin. Daraak has fallen. Center, figure-eight. Daraak is now part of Isiris. Right, upward-curving blade. Daraak is mine.
His mouth is dry and his breath comes out in short, quickened pants despite his admittedly mule-headed resolve to minimize the extent of his body’s responses. He can’t really see straight, but he stares at the wall anyway-clenches a fist against it.
No, Ares wouldn’t have been able to distinguish between the layers, Baruna concedes, but Kiron’s apprentice would have been able to catch a glimpse of Michael’s promise at least... if given this less than desirable (unwanted) chance. It’s a reminder, he realizes, somehow, of just who Michael is and what exactly he is capable of. What he is prone to do.
Such a brutal reminder.
Cigarettes and steel, Baruna repeats silently, resolutely. Sadly. Is this really necessary, Michael? His pants slip down further, past the crest of his hips, and Baruna barely manages to prevent his body from tensing up all over again, as a result. His fingers twitch minutely around an invisible coil of pliant metal and he could imagine the low hum of twin blades spinning as flat discs in the air.
Smokes and knives.
This has to end, sooner or later.
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Fin
Completed: May 12, 2008
Post-fic Notes: Right so, a few things that I'd like to say before everybody/anybody who reads this starts beating me with a floor-lamp:
1) Prior to writing the actual sex scenes, I ended up having to take a page out of runesque's book and meditate before I got the nerve to just sit down and type my brain away; Ares' part actually took three sessions in fact. (And how the first illustration doesn't match the fic: we know; too bad.)
2) I know there is an uneven dichotomy of the sex factor--but it's all based on the way I perceive they would have reacted. And I just couldn't bring myself to write Ares' part in more detail than was actually necessary.
3) I'm never doing this again, good god.
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LOL-points to whoever gets the inappropriate humor of the title without having to google it.
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Title: Congress in the Way of Beasts
Series/Characters: [Ares] Mikael/Ares, Mikael/Baruna
Disclaimer: Ares belongs to Ryu Kum Chel. Am only capitalizing on all the UST.
Word Count: 3,080
Notes: Illustrations by butterflycages.
For the longest time this file was titled "Hatesex LOL" before it changed to "I have no idea what to title this fucker." The fic itself was completed sometime last week, but Inaho wasn't able to get the coloring done until... this morning. At 3:00 a.m. LOL Send her some love yeah? Prompt was "prisoners of war." Spoilers for... up to chapter 115 at least, since that was the last chapter we read before hashing out this bit of what amounts to be RAEP TIEMZ.
I'd usually ask for crits but... I think I'm too ashamed to want to revisit this. We'll see. I can't believe I wrote NCS. I can't believe I wrote NCS. ::litany repetition:: No wait, I take it back, TELL ME WHAT I DID WRONG. ;___;
Dedication: For butterflycages. We're even now, right? >_>
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Congress in the Way of Beasts
by kasugai gummie
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The world swims into focus, like some drunken thing-topsy-turvy and very silly. Or so Ares thinks until it becomes quite clear that he’s nowhere near where he last remembered himself being-which was the corpse-riddled battlefield on the eastern plains of Daraak. His legs are heavy, as are his bare arms and it doesn’t take him too long to notice the heavy metal links that trailed from one shackle to the other.
A dull throb behind his ear notifies him of a possible reason as to why his thoughts were so shot. Ares touches a probing hand to the caked blood in his hair, to the torn skin on his scalp and absently scrunches his nose. He somehow remembers stabbing and slashing and a rain of blood; losing sight of Baruna’s spinning blades, more blood. He’d locked gazes with someone sometime between all that blood, he’s sure, someone who suddenly dyed his vision crimson and triggered the singing intent to kill in his veins...
Then there was what had to have been a sucker mace-to-the-head from behind.
Sitting up threatens to spin his head off its axis again, but that doesn’t deter him the slightest. Ares takes stock of his surroundings as best as he could given the limited light from the small fist-sized hole near the ceiling. Granite walls, iron bars, and a rather nasty looking lock on the iron door-no visible weaknesses to exploit, no crumbling stones to kick through.
A well-tended prison then.
The air is extraordinarily dry and the sound of the chains shifting as he moves around is much more distinct than he would have liked.
“Ares?”
Ares’ single eye widens. “Baruna?!” he yells, a mixture of surprise and misplaced delight in his voice. “You got caught too? Still alive?”
A hint of resignation colors the answering “Maybe?” that bounces a little off the walls. Baruna’s voice is quiet, low-key, but sounds close enough; right next to him, or maybe even one cell over.
Ares purses his lips into a frown. This won’t do at all, he thinks, and hobbles to his feet with every intention to beat the bolt lock open with his chains, or, if that doesn’t work, beat his chains off with the bolt lock.
All other thoughts of escape are smothered in the womb however, when the latch suddenly releases open to reveal an unfamiliar figure sporting a more familiar face.
Ares abruptly falls back on his ass, painstaking efforts to stand wasted in a moment of sheer disbelief.
“I see you’re awake,” Michael notes blandly, as a way of greeting. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised though-never mind my instructions for my subordinates to kill and not merely incapacitate.”
Ares’ indrawn breath hisses out between his teeth the way pressure releases from a shaken bottle of soda. Barely controlled. Excruciatingly slow, else it explode. The urge to simply lunge for the other’s throat held back only by a last shred of caution.
Michael doesn’t proceed any further into the cell; instead he stays by the entrance, crosses his arms and leans on a shoulder, waiting patiently while watching the shock and confusion and a single-minded killing intent, half-hidden by a curtain of bangs, chase each other across Ares’ face.
“I will admit to being somewhat surprised when I heard you survived the sky burial. There shouldn’t have been anybody left for miles to save you.”
Because I killed them all, goes unsaid but Ares hears the afterthought in a choir of ghostly screams.
“-the hell is your problem,” he mumbles, voice starting off as inaudible but climbing with each syllable. “Why did you? Why’d you come back? You left, you left us but here you are. What do you want??” When Ares finally looks up from the his white-knuckled fists, it’s to plead and demand in equal parts. “Why, Michael!”
The corner of Michael’s mouth twitches in response. “Must you still ask that question,” he says, more of a statement, but when the said question in Ares’ eyes fails to disappear, he makes a small sound of reproach. “Too bad. I thought I made it quite clear the last time, but if you still can’t understand, then I’m afraid there’s no helping it.”
Michael unfolds from the door, all languid control and purposeful movements. A lion rousing from his sleep.
Ares blinks as alarms go off almost immediately, though he’s not sure why. Instinct carries him backwards, away from the measured steps of his former friend. He stops only when his back hits the wall.
Michael advances unhurriedly. “Your naivety is fun, Ares,” he says as he comes to a stop in front of his prisoner who automatically shifts into as defensive of a stance as he could in his awkwardly crouched position, “and an even bigger nuisance than a poorly executed coup.” A hand reaches down, long fingers curl around Ares’ chin in an uncompromising grip. The rest of Michael soon follows so that they are crouched at the same level. “I can’t stand it sometimes.”
Mind awhirl, Ares stares up at the looming shadow, increasingly wild-eyed and uncomprehending still at the sudden turn of events-until his mind catches on a word; examines it from all angles; turns it around and upside-down.
Naivety? His eye narrows; he begs to differ.
It’s a gamble on low odds; finding secure footing while trussed up like a spitted boar is a joke, but somehow Ares manages. First, escape. Then, look for Baruna so they could get the hell out. Finally, come back at a later date and run his sword through the lying liar’s chest.
Head-butting Michael may not be the most practical move in Ares’ repertoire, not with his head injury, but it’s the only one remotely effective at his immediate disposal. Pushing away from his crouch with both feet, Ares twists his face out of Michael’s grip, tucks his chin into his chest and launches himself forth.
Adrenaline rushes through his system, and what precious balance he had is lost, but Michael falls back, winded from the unexpected punch. They tumble towards the door in a heap of bony limbs and chains and Ares lashing out, arms and legs in awkward unison with every intention to maim. To cripple.
Unfortunately, it’s simply not enough.
By the time they actually hit the door, Michael had already managed to regain his bearings, quickly extricating himself from an incomplete stranglehold and promptly breaks Ares’ right arm at the elbow.
“Ah, shit!” Ares freezes for a split-second, and it’s all Michael needs to wrestle him onto his back.
Inhale. Exhale. And Michael smiles tightly. Irately. “You know, I actually considered letting my soldiers take care of this-” A hand travels down Ares’ front, while the thumb and forefinger of the other tighten dangerously close around his jugular “-and even now I kind of want to throw you to the wolves. So consider this a final favor for our time as mercenaries together-” and squeezes.
Lights flash in front of him and Ares gurgles. “What do you think you’re doing you bastard,” he manages to gasp, clawing at Michael’s hand.
“Making sure you understand,” comes the level response, closely followed by a finger slipping between skin and the waistband of Ares’ shorts. “You simply don’t get it. And Baruna suspected, but didn’t do anything about it.”
Ares snarls. Cries. “That’s because you’re our friend you asshole!” The stinging prickle of fury begins near the corner of his eyes and he thrashes away from the invasive touch-or tries to at least, but Michael keeps him in place by the neck. The sound of a zipper being pulled down barely reaches him above the roaring between his ears and the world spins with him. His knees hit the floor, then the palms of his hands, a shock of cold traveling up from the points of contact. Fabric pools around his thighs, the elastic hindering his movements even further, keeping his legs together.
“You’re a nuisance,” Michael states, deadpan; his voice is a flat death knell rung by judge and jury.
And then, pain.
Something burning. A pain unlike anything Ares has ever experienced before.
He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, his head a maelstrom of outrage and confusion and shock.
It has been years since he lost his right eye... but even so, Ares doubts that the physical trauma he felt back then could compare to the searing agony irradiating from the base of his spine to the tips of his toes now.
Michael’s fingers dig into his hips, hard enough to bruise, but those don’t register. At all.
The next thrust carries Ares forward and onto his elbows, forcing his face to scrape against the ground. Another thrust and suddenly the burning sensation literally rips open with the faintest beginnings of the metallic tang that they were so used to.
Michael’s face is impassive, but his eyes are intent as he fucks Ares into the floor-no pretensions of intimacy whatsoever save for a single open-mouthed kiss that is just short of sheer violence. The subtleties of such an act are unsurprisingly lost on Ares, but Michael is nothing if not thorough.
A hand fists in Ares’ hair, pulling his head back for a pair of lips to touch the shell of his ear and murmur, “brace yourself,” before suddenly introducing his cranium to the wall. The resulting blow, further driven home by a final, blood-slicked thrust, is nothing short of concussive. An explosion of behind his eyes.
Standstill.
The sudden absence of motion proves to be troublesome. It takes Michael a few seconds to catch his breath (though it is arguable that he truly ever lost it), but Ares finds it somewhat difficult to just keep his head up amidst the distracting flashes and all. And there’s blood everywhere: from the corner of his mouth, staining his teeth; from the broken skin of his scalp and leaking into his good eye; from between his legs and down his inner thigh.
A warbled laugh crawls past his lips; Ariadne would probably have a fit if she ever saw him like this-covered in so much blood and most, if not all, of it his own. Goddammit.
“... g’na fucking kill you,” Ares slurs into the cold slates of the floor. And though he isn’t quite sure how exactly, he’s always prided himself in being innovative.
Michael raises an eyebrow, but is otherwise expressionless. “I don’t think so,” he says simply, pulling out of and dropping Ares in the same dismissive motion.
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“Crap” is really Baruna’s only thought when he hears the rather final sounding collision of what had to be Ares’ head on stone. Closing his eyes against the dead-weight thud of a body dropping unceremoniously to the ground, Baruna bites his bottom lip, fervently missing the familiar texture of filter paper between his teeth.
All he could do now is wait. Wait for the inevitable and hope that Ares is still in one piece physically, if not mentally, when this is all over so that they could escape from and heal their wounds. So that they could draw up plans and figure out what the hell they were going to do.
A few, almost inaudible, rustles of cloth later and suddenly the entire area is thrown into an ominous, anticipatory silence. One minute. Three minutes. Five. Ten...
Baruna struggles up from where he lay on his side into a less vulnerable position. One that wouldn’t invite kicks to the stomach as easily as the former if the mottling bruise just above his scar was of any indication. Another half-hearted test against his bonds only reaffirms the utter futility of his situation.
There’s no warning when the cell door swings open, but Baruna stills immediately as Michael steps through the threshold on near silent feet.
“Michael.” Baruna watches from under the shadow of his fringe, never taking his eyes off the other boy’s coldly disdainful expression. “Or would you rather prefer ‘Your Highness?’”
The lock snaps close behind the young king of Isiris who, Baruna notes, looked as cool and composed as ever; no sign of his previous activities at all, save for perhaps the slightest trace of sweat on his neck and the sharp scent of blood that enveloped him like a cloak. Michael smiles down at Baruna, the close-lipped grin of a predator lying in wait.
“Actually,” Michael corrects, matter-of-fact, hoisting Baruna up by the throat, only to the slam the dark-haired boy into the wall, seconds later, “it should be ‘Your Majesty.’”
The impact explodes along the entirety of Baruna’s back, accompanied by a starburst of lights in front of his eyes. Baruna grunts, then coughs, as air is forcibly expelled from his lungs.
“Bad mood? Or simply not worried about sexually transmitted diseases?” he gasps despite the inconvenient lack of oxygen to speak with, body tight with tension and mind working furiously to remain calm. Rational.
The astonishment is almost tangible for but a moment. Michael snorts, then surprises them both by laughing. It’s an almost congenial sound if not for the underlying thread of bloodlust running through it. “Very good Baruna!” he grins, sharp and wry. “I figured you would be the harder one to break.” The blond taps a finger to his temple even as he parts Baruna’s leg with one knee, pressing closer until all the black-haired boy could feel are the sharp stones digging into the small of his back and the stifling warmth of Michael’s body heat.
Baruna exhales slowly, raising his head to look his former comrade-in-arms square in the eye. He says nothing, has nothing to say, and focuses on forcing his muscles to relax instead. His efforts, no matter how slight or gradual, don't go unnoticed by the other however.
“Ah,” Michael muses, “right-” and rakes the blunt edge of a fingernail along the telltale sigil on Baruna’s right arm non-too-gently. “This wouldn’t really be anything new or exciting to a Daraakian slave raised in the coliseum barracks, would it?”
Said ex-slave merely lifts his chin higher in response and fixes his eyes on a collection of notches in the far wall; thinks of nothing even as a hand slips under his shirt, pushing it up.
“Even so...”
The sensation of thin, dry lips pressing against Baruna’s forehead is terribly sudden and purposefully so; the softest brush of a royal benediction that is anything but. Black eyes widen a fraction, refocusing just in time to catch the dark smirk on Michael’s mouth as he pulls away ever-so-slightly.
“That’s better,” Michael says approvingly. “I would prefer it if you paid very close attention to the situation at hand, Baruna. Ares wouldn’t have understood the nuances of what I’m about to do-” to you “-but you don’t have the excuse of his brand of stupidity.”
Baruna blinks out of necessity. Situation at hand... huh. And memories of unnecessary cruelty, of a disturbing penchant for murder resurface at that. With such an irreverently patronizing tone coupled with the thinnest veneer of camaraderie, it’s not difficult to see why Ares went into shock upon discovering the ugly truth during the Temple massacre.
Cigarettes and steel, Baruna thinks, a mantra. Cigarettes and steel. His belt is unfastened in a series of heavy clinks; the fly of his pants undone even faster. He grits his teeth against the hiss that threatens to escape when fingertips, roughened on the hilt of a sword, trace a path from the bottom-most rib to the upper ridge of his hipbone. It’s a methodical caress, light and taunting, that lingers for a heartbeat before dipping into his pants. Down, and down...
Baruna jerks, pupils dilating. He knocks his head against the wall again, trying to look at anywhere but the cruel line of Michael’s self-satisfied smile and almost forgets how to breathe. The hand around his cock is unbearably tight and painfully warm. He could feel himself getting hard after the fourth, painfully slow but very thorough stroke. It’s a vice-like grip that wrings a voiceless choke from the back of his throat, no matter how unwilling he is.
And then he’s turned around, spun to face the wall. Michael doesn’t stop his ministrations, but neither does he move to steady Baruna who barely prevents himself from pitching forward all the way by dragging both manacles against the vertical surface until they caught, screeching, against the natural imperfections instead.
“Nice save,” Michael remarks from behind him, tone unsurprisingly blasé-as if he were discussing the weather, and Baruna can almost remember how the stalk of grass looked between his teeth after he won their impromptu football match.
Almost.
Only, not really.
The next deliberate squeeze-stroke obliterates that thought away, altogether.
Teeth graze over the bony ridge of Baruna’s shoulder blade as Michael mouths his way down, between them to the axis, along his spine, and then there’s a warm, wet pressure tracing an all-too-familiar, very much despised design. Languid sweeps of the tongue rebrand his back in a way ink and needle couldn’t.
The hand on his stomach presses harder. The other around his cock tightens pointedly.
Left, downward-curving blade. Moist words murmured into his skin. Daraak has fallen. Center, figure-eight. Daraak is now part of Isiris. Right, upward-curving blade. Daraak is mine.
His mouth is dry and his breath comes out in short, quickened pants despite his admittedly mule-headed resolve to minimize the extent of his body’s responses. He can’t really see straight, but he stares at the wall anyway-clenches a fist against it.
No, Ares wouldn’t have been able to distinguish between the layers, Baruna concedes, but Kiron’s apprentice would have been able to catch a glimpse of Michael’s promise at least... if given this less than desirable (unwanted) chance. It’s a reminder, he realizes, somehow, of just who Michael is and what exactly he is capable of. What he is prone to do.
Such a brutal reminder.
Cigarettes and steel, Baruna repeats silently, resolutely. Sadly. Is this really necessary, Michael? His pants slip down further, past the crest of his hips, and Baruna barely manages to prevent his body from tensing up all over again, as a result. His fingers twitch minutely around an invisible coil of pliant metal and he could imagine the low hum of twin blades spinning as flat discs in the air.
Smokes and knives.
This has to end, sooner or later.
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Fin
Completed: May 12, 2008
Post-fic Notes: Right so, a few things that I'd like to say before everybody/anybody who reads this starts beating me with a floor-lamp:
1) Prior to writing the actual sex scenes, I ended up having to take a page out of runesque's book and meditate before I got the nerve to just sit down and type my brain away; Ares' part actually took three sessions in fact. (And how the first illustration doesn't match the fic: we know; too bad.)
2) I know there is an uneven dichotomy of the sex factor--but it's all based on the way I perceive they would have reacted. And I just couldn't bring myself to write Ares' part in more detail than was actually necessary.
3) I'm never doing this again, good god.
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LOL-points to whoever gets the inappropriate humor of the title without having to google it.