Puppet on a String
You got your education from just hanging around
You got your brain from a hole in the ground
You come on up, look around for a will of your own
But you're mine
[A/N: Hey, look! I did things while the power's out! ...No, not a post because I am a week behind in game plot, BUT. I did fill a Korrin!prompt! Because I had nothing more exciting to do with my life other than watch movies when I could charge the battery and play cards. And work, but that's more like four-to-six hours of running around and being SUPER BUSY surrounded by 6-to-8 hours of NOTHING. Gotta love ambulance companies, they work even when the weather and general state of the state say reasonable people shouldn't be out. So. Free time: I have almost infinite amounts of it from now until we get power back for real. Long story short, I have a not-even-remotely-drabble-length drabble to share! And even a complete one now; I could probably poke at it for days but then it would NEVER get posted, so I am calling this finished so I don't.
CROSSOVER FIC: I HAVE ONE. Devil's Rejects / From Dusk Till Dawn (Baby/Richie with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance by Seth) because we are all horrible and enjoy maximizing horrors. AU too, since it...pretty much derails things before FDTD even happens; I'm ticking all the boxes apparently. Rated R for implied violence, vague gore (mostly just blood), and similarly vague smut because KaOS cannot do harder without feeling self-conscious about it. Oh, and some dub-con thrown in for good measure. I told you; all the boxes, I am ticking them.]
With porcelain eyes and the mind of a monkey
Rode around town on the back of what looked like a dead donkey
So I do to you what a puppet master would do
Can you tell?
"You didn't have to do that!" He's whining, the sound broken and plaintive, and he knows it's all wrong but he can't keep it from happening; there's a moment's pause, a long one, filled with oozing and dripping and a growing splotch of red on the floor, and he tries to keep it in but it claws its way out anyway.
"He only would have kept us apart," comes the answer, high and childish and scolding, like he should really know better. And maybe he should; he can't remember now. She does that, twists the world so up is down and he can't tell which way things go anymore. "You know that." She crosses the gap between, saunters and slinks and glides, the echoing red soaked into pale skin and speckled across fabric; a dark faerie queen from the Never Never, or maybe a Changeling switched at birth, he hasn't been able to decide since they picked her up two days ago outside Big Springs. Or maybe she picked them up; Seth thinks they did, but that doesn't matter now.
He wants to agree, wants to please, wants it so badly but there's nagging things he can't let go of. Not yet. The dripping thing on the floor that used to be his brother before she decided to use him for fingerpainting, for one. "But..."
Paper crinkles, falls heavily to the ground but it's worlds away now, he barely remembers where the bags came from let alone their sudden departure, and he's got fingers wrapped around her throat before he registers moving at all, an ache behind his eyeballs and in his chest to match the pained snarl forcing its way out of his throat. This isn't how it was supposed to be, and he's not sure if the protest makes it out but she's twisting and turning in his grip like the cats when he was a kid, clawing at fingers and arms and face, drawing blood that matches but isn't the same. He doesn't relent because he can't, he doesn't know the right steps without Seth to give them or correct when he gets them wrong, but it doesn't matter anymore; the clawing stops, and now there are fingers to replace instead of talons, sliding, soothing, gripping as the tendrils of words crawl and dig and search for a foothold, worming their way in and around to choke everything else and he knows he shouldn't listen but it's getting harder to refuse.
Whispered heat against bare skin, with pleading words and fingers wet with liquid warmth sneaking underneath to coax agreement from all too yielding flesh, and he presses though he shouldn't but it's never quite enough. Teasing. "It's better now. I promise."
She knows how he works, what to do and what to say and the even more important how and he can't possibly refuse; they're the same, after all, she's said so before and he can't find the words to argue right now, not when his entire world is narrowed to friction and pressure and NOW. "Okay," he sighs, relenting, relinquishing his grip before she invades the rest of the way, choking any more words off with licking and probing, dominating the space and making it hers, making him hers as thoroughly as any brand could mark him. It's not his air he breathes, nor theirs, but hers, allowed in gasping breaths when lights begin to sparkle from a lack and not a moment before and he accepts it gratefully. She tastes like copper pennies and fear and him, and he should protest because it's wrong, but that will bring the end and he fears that more than any immorality.
She retreats before he can finish anyway, pulls away in triumph with a delighted giggle like a cat might when toying with a mouse, even as he groans in protest, senses frayed and newly released skin throbbing with the lack. "Not yet," she admonishes, as if it were all just a game.
He could force her, he knows this. He almost does, but that would leave him completely alone in the end, so he doesn't, instead contents himself with her words, a promise of things to come. It hurts, but the reproachful look she gives him, like she knows what he's thinking, roots him to the spot and he doesn't, even though it feels like he might split apart at the seams and tear into a thousand pieces if he doesn't take care of it now before it finally eases. Soon it becomes as much a part of things as breathing, so it doesn't matter so much.
The body's cooled by now, beginning to stiffen without life to sustain it. The end of the leash, the end of curbing the thoughts he's not supposed to have, the acts he's not supposed to give reign to, and while before he was numb with horror and shock now he feels only regret. If that; it's hard to say what he's supposed to feel without someone to supply the right answer. She asks, he does; she suggests, he acts; he acts, she doesn't judge or lecture, only rewards with the things he understands. There hasn't been a repeat of the broken hostages since they found her, or she found them, because he hasn't needed to; she gives before he asks, uses it to direct and gain complicity and obedience, and before long he forgets how it was Before, forgets everything but red and copper and wet patterns on the walls and shouts cut short, sometimes after days. He can't think anymore after too many of them strung together, too many voices pressed into too small a space and all of them grating, but the pressure of fingertips and whispered intentions and he endures.
States pass beneath their boots and tires, small towns in the middle of nowhere, dying motels in out of the way places, and everywhere they go they leave a trail of missing persons reports and blood in their quickly retreating footsteps. Always on the move, never in one place for long; only enough to do what they have to, collect the ungrateful and leave them in empty heaps where people won't find them to miss them until later. It's freeing, it's right, and now he knows why Seth was always so careful to keep him in line; he's not sure he could stop now, not with the power it brings, the satisfaction of pleading without hope of reprieve, of lights gone dim, the thrill of seeing what's inside. This is who he is, it's what he is, and he could never go back to cringing and whining and begging forgiveness now.
Two weeks in and they're both stained with rust, a pair of emptying shells at their feet quickly dying the carpet, unnoticed by the two still living. It's a triumph, of a sort, an obscure goal outlined and at long last reached, a quota met but he isn't sure of which one and it doesn't really matter anyway. The important thing is he's been making Progress, advancing towards what he should be in leaps and bounds now that the obstruction's been removed, and in an impulsive fit of glee it's finally declared to be "Yet". He likes to think he has something to do with it, pinned against the wall like a dangerous butterfly as she is, hardened length he's been trying to ignore for most of the day's work now pressed insistently against her, fingers working between her thighs making up for what they lack in skill with raw enthusiasm and a blind eagerness to please, but he knows she could easily outwait him if she tried; it's her decision, not his, just as with everything else, but he can't find it in him to complain. Amid the morbid scene of twisted limbs and paint-spattered blood they rock and writhe against the wall in a display that seems as much punishment as pleasurable, a tangled mess of limbs and exposed skin and fingernails and teeth sunk into whatever flesh is closest. Voices mingle, snarls and growls and whimpers and groans all mixed together, and it's hard to say who's in control, or if either of them are. He comes too soon, in a sudden gush that pulls a stuttered groan of apology from his lips which she swallows and shushes with tongue and teeth and claws that draw blood then soothes with dulcet tones that, while amused, don't sound as disappointed as he's expecting.
"We'll just have to work on that."