Childhood monsters
Title: Childhood monsters
Author: creepylicious/alles_luege
Pairing: m/m/m
Rating: NC-17
Summary: This is a bogeymen story.
On some nights he would touch the shadows on the canvas, the pale faces without real features: a hint of a nose, a shadow that could be a smile maybe, a smudge like a bruise under an eye. He imagined soft voices, the darkness around him moving, gliding over floor, walls, skin. Devouring, drowning, eating at his body. Vile black fluids dropping from corners.
Warning(s): sibling incest, age difference, light d/s, slight dub-con and creepy
Author’s Notes: Written for smut-fest. In a way this is what Night Hours could have been if Night Hours haven't been written about the Ways.
Word Count: 3.250
Beta: C.
Disclaimer: Do know, do own, still not real
One
As long as he could think back he has been terrified of the dark. All children are at some point in their lives, Damian knew that. Still he couldn't breathe. The darkness in the basement was encompassing. He was sure there had to be a light switch somewhere nearby, but he just couldn't make himself reach out and touch the wall, feel the ancient dust, touch a few giant spiders in the process, find that damn switch. He took a deep breath. Nothing here to fear except the fear itself. There is nothing in the dark (at least that's what his shrink used to repeat over and over and over again, until Damian's ears were bleeding from it) as long as you'll face it.
“Yeah right,” a voice said from - somewhere.
Damian knew that voice. It gave him shivers, ice cold, down to the marrow of his bones. There always was something to fear in the dark. Always.
He took a step and reached back. The wall had to be there. He knew it was there. It always had been there. He would kill his asshole cousins as soon as he got out of here.
“When will that be, I wonder?” another voice said. Sarcastic as anything Damian has ever heard, but softer than the first. “You can't even bring yourself to find the light switch, Damian.”
His name sounded nearly teasing, like a caress, from that voice.
“You're not real!” Damian said, he was clutching at his dirty shirt and counting silently in his head. It helped him master the unthinkable situations. Well, nothing, NOTHING, could make him master this with all of his sanity intact.
There was soft laugher coming from the darkness all around him. Not unkind, but not kind either. It was a whole other deal. Something usually not heard in a reality made up by adults. Damian would bet that roughly 80% of all children all over the world knew that it was bullshit. They forgot. That was the problem. Maybe with time and more sessions with Doctor Parker he would too.
“I wouldn't bet on that,” said the first voice again. “You just don't seem the type.”
“Clarence can tell,” the second voice said.
There was a shift in the darkness, a subtle one, just the shadows in the corners getting more- not real, but getting sharper somehow. Like a dog raising his hackles or something. It was hard to describe the unfathomable. A part of Damian even wondered why he tried. Maybe so he wouldn't go mad. Crazier than he was already.
There was a funny sound and he didn't know for a few endless seconds, minutes (?), where it came from until he realised it was his own breathing. It was harsh and desperate. He was ready to pass out. The darkness was creeping from the corners, all the corners, all the shadows, like a rug made of tar, towards where Damian was standing. The wall was at this back. He knew it was there, but it was dark too.
“Three...two...” said the soft voice again, “One.”
And Damian screamed.
~+~
Later he couldn't tell how he got out of the basement. Most likely someone had heard him. Probably everyone had heard him. His mom was white as a sheet and he knew that his cousin and his asshole friends were in really freaking big trouble, but all of it was so far away. He was back to three sessions a week with Doctor Parker. Like when he was a kid. He didn't mind. He didn't speak. It did him no good after all. Doctor Parker meant well, but Damian realised after that day in the basement, that Doctor Parker had no freaking clue what was really going on.
It was easier to not speak about it. To not mention the voices in the dark. The shapes moving towards the bed so that Damian had to curl his toes under the blanket and breathe very carefully to not attract them. He feared they would bite his toes off. One by one. They probably would. The things in the dark weren't only childhood fears his brain made up (like Doctor Parker insisted); they were real. Real monsters under the command of something far worse. Of something no child could come up with. Damian was sure of it. He was sure that no kid ever had imagined THEM. Because it wasn't only one. There was an army of them. Two knew his name.
He shivered just thinking about it.
He hoped that Doctor Parker was right and that he would outgrow them. He never heard of an adult talking about them like children do, fearing them. Maybe they only had power over children's mind, maybe only children's eyes could see them. Something to do with the chemical reactions of puberty that were still a mystery to the twelve year old Damian.
~+~
Doctor Parker called it 'night terrors' and it wasn't what Damian was experiencing, it wasn't what was written in the books, but the name was nevertheless very fitting.
They were terrors and they occurred at night.
“You know, Damian,” Clarence said; his voice creeped Damian out maybe more than the shadows, the monsters, the tar like darkness that he commanded, “you aren't safe on the bed.” It was said so casually that the first instinct was to flat out deny it.
“Look at the blanket,” the second voice whispered (Damian had no idea how that one was called, he didn't care). “It's full of tiny shadows. Tiny spots of darkness, grey and getting darker and darker and darker...”
And as he whispered the small shadows got darker and darker, started moving like pools of water at first and then like insects and snakes. Small, creepy, ugly things that only vaguely looked like the things out in the real world. Just close enough to be feared, or just close enough to be feared more.
Damian bit into the fleshy part of his palm to keep the scream in.
“There is nowhere to run,” Clarence said softly.
Damian heard a noise. Movement in the dark. Movement of the dark and sprang out of bed before Clarence could touch him. He knew, his brain knew, that he wouldn't live to tell the tale if Clarence should succeed.
That night was the first night he slept in the hall with the lights on. He got up before his mom, so she wouldn't know.
Two
It didn't just stop one day. It was more like a work in process. A slow process. A fading away.
Damian stopped seeing Doctor Parker at the age of fifteen. It was all bullshit anyway. Damian knew the truth. Monsters were real. It didn't matter what Doctor Parker tried to prove to him with all his books. The thing was: Damian wasn't asleep when it happened and he hadn't been abused more than other children, he guessed. Kids are cruel and everyone deals differently. Thomas, his asshole cousin, got a bloody nose when Damian was fourteen. He's grown a bit and he was on the track-team. Not because he liked running. He needed to be fast. It was just that simple. He was slim and strong. Bending not breaking, but the only way not to be pushed into closets and locked into basements was to show the other kids that he didn't take any shit.
It worked.
~+~
But by then the shapes had taken roots in his mind anyway. Maybe it was all the therapy. Talking about it all the time. Reliving every little horror in detail. He couldn't stop thinking about it. About them. About the darkness. The shapes there. He sketched them, painted them in acrylics on canvases as big as his window. Sometimes he stared at them when the sun went down and - did something that wasn't wishing for them to come back.
At the tender age of seventeen Damian was living alone. Fighting battles against the darkness every single night. Hearing whispers in the shadows on his way home.
His mom gave him concerned looks when he visited her to have dinner. But they got tired with time. Like she's given up on figuring out whatever she did wrong. Like she accepted that it was all his fault. That he just wasn't like all the other (normal) kids.
On some nights he would touch the shadows on the canvas, the pale faces without real features: a hint of a nose, a shadow that could be a smile maybe, a smudge like a bruise under an eye. He imagined soft voices, the darkness around him moving, gliding over floor, walls, skin. Devouring, drowning, eating at his body. Vile black fluids dropping from corners.
He would curl his toes nearly feeling it, stroke the canvas softly, smear black paint onto his skin when it was still wet in the process.
For that obsession he should be seeing a freaking shrink, he thought.
~+~
It didn't stop there. He would go out to those clubs sane people warn their kids about (if they know they exist). He would look around, find a dark corner, all the time battling that stupid fear at the back of his mind, and watch.
He would find that one person with the whitest face and blackest clothes. The cloaks, the trench-coats, the long waving dresses. He would let them drag him away, would let them fuck him, would fuck them in return with the dark soft material embracing him like that living darkness he remembered from his childhood. From that day in the basement when they spoke to him...not only whispered in harsh, distorted voices.
Three
“Take us home,” the boy said into his ear. His breath was chilly on Damian's skin. It was too hot down here, too dark and he was way too drunk. “Take us home,” the boy repeated. He usually wouldn't take anyone home. He would sometimes go with them, yes, but never take a random hook-up home.
The other guy was pressing on his other side and the darkness of his hair made Damian want to touch it, touch him. Drag his fingernails over that pale, pale, pale skin. They weren't supposed to be his random hook-up of the night, but as soon as he saw them, he wanted them badly.
“Come on, take us home,” the other said. “You want to, we can tell.”
Something at the back of his mind was tingling, trying to tell him something, maybe even something important. The boy licked his neck and Damian moaned.
“Yes, yes,” he answered and let them pull him up. Followed them to his car and didn't wonder how they knew.
~+~
In the light of his bedside lamp the boy looked barely sixteen. The other one was more his age. Maybe a bit older, twenty something.
The boy pushed him down, his hand was nearly luminescent in the darkness surrounding them.
“I can't fuck a kid,” Damian heard himself say.
The boy laughed. It was a sound like fingernails on chalkboard. It made Damian shiver. “I'm older than I look and besides, I will be fucking you,” he answered.
Oh, Damian thought, eighteen then, maybe.
“Sure,” the boy said lazily, “eighteen.”
It was obviously a lie, but Damian wasn't going to demand an ID now. He closed his eyes, heard the lamp being switched off and let them undress him. The boy's brother, the one that wasn't talking much, rolled him over. His slender hand grabbed Damian's neck. Thumb stroking the soft spot where neck meets shoulder.
~+~
When he woke up he felt tender all over. He got up in the harsh light of the morning and stumbled into the bathroom. There was no trace of the brothers he hooked up with last night.
He took a piss and stepped into the shower. There were bruises on his body. Around his hips where the boy grabbed him with strength Damian didn't think he possessed. They looked strange those bruises. Like they were smudged somehow. Too long to be a boy's fingers. Strong fingers that had spread him open, held him in place as the boy's tongue found its way inside. He remembered biting into the blanket at that first touch of tongue inside him. Damian shivered just thinking about it. It seemed to go on forever. He had been ready to beg, he never begged, never felt like he wasn't in control anymore, but last night. Last night he so obviously hadn't been in control.
He had squirmed in the older man's grip, trying to get free and the soft, cool hand squeezed. Damian touched his neck under the shower gingerly. It felt tender. He was sure he would find bruises there too.
“Come on,” Damian had pressed out, it sounded between angry and desperate to his own ears. It was answered with another laugh from the man.
“Hear that?” he asked softly not Damian and then Damian felt him shift and his cool breath hit Damian's neck, his ear. “I think you misunderstood something, Damian,” he whispered, Damian was shivering hard and it wasn't only pleasure from the boy's talented tongue in his ass. “You aren't playing with us, we're playing with you.”
As Damian's brain was processing this the boy grabbed his hips harder and pushed inside. The hand on his neck pressed his face into the blankets. He closed his eyes again and just tried to ride it all out. The insane pleasure and the nagging fear at the back of his mind.
He switched the shower off and breathed. He could hear his rattled breath echoing in the small bathroom. He stared at the bruises, not quite human shaped, and didn't want to deal.
Four
He didn't go back to that club, but he didn't stop hooking up. Somehow it wasn't the same anymore. The boys and girls in dark clothes, wrapped in cool black, with pale faces and hands, didn't seem so appealing these days.
He was searching for the boy's face, the mocking whispers of the guy with those long, pale, strong fingers. He needed names to put to those faces. Needed a closer look at lips and eyes, needed a chance to feel mouths against his.
Sometimes he thought he heard a cruel laugh like nails on chalkboard, or saw a wisp of pure darkness out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned it was gone.
He touched the canvas with one hand, his dick in the other and repeated 'we're playing with you' like a mantra in his head until the words resolved, but the meaning, the meaning was burned into his mind.
The impenetrable darkness seemed to be everywhere he went. Seemed to follow him. Was lingering just at the edge of the bed and would grab his ankle when he stepped on the hardwood floor without switching the lamp on first.
Or maybe he was losing it.
Fact was, the apartment didn't feel safe anymore. It felt like darkness was lingering everywhere, oozing from taps in fat black drops as viscous as tar. Waiting for him to make a mistake.
He moved out before the urge to burn it all down became irresistible.
~+~
At first he thought they were dreams.
Flashes of dark shapes moving in the darkness of the night. Pale faces and hands. Pretty lips that revealed small sharp teeth when they smiled. Teeth as sharp as daggers, animal teeth, a deadly predator's teeth. A beast that knew it was one and liked it.
“Take us home,” they whispered, but Damian knew they didn't need to be invited. They came and went when they wanted to.
“We like to play,” the boy said. “We like to play with you.”
The darkness reached out. It looked like a burned thin arm with crippled fingers. Damian anticipated it feeling burned and uneven too, it didn't. It was smooth and cool. Like fresh laundry. It curled around his ankle, moved up to his knee and higher. Slowly making its way to the inside of his thigh: he watched it in horrified fascination. It felt good, he thought, disgusted with himself.
“And there is nowhere to run. We told you that.”
A name sparked at the back of Damian's mind. He kept it inside, but he couldn't suppressed the scream as Clarence's brother, the nameless one, rushed at him, pushing him back. Sharp teeth sinking into the tender flesh of his upper arm.
He moved out the next day as soon as the sun was up. Packed a few things and left.
~+~
“Look what the night dragged in,” Clarence said. The soft whisper of darkness that swung in it, Damian had never forgotten. It was drilled into his brain, burned into the soft tissue of his memory. Damian stopped at the open door, one foot over the threshold to his small apartment, the other still on the wet pavement outside. The apartment lay in complete darkness. The darkness moved. No apartment at night should, could be so dark. It wasn't normal darkness. It wasn't his imagination. This here was real.
“Won't you come in?” the other voice said. That one that was Nameless.
Damian shook his head. He wouldn't. He would sleep outside. In the rain if he had to.
“There are things out there too. Murderers, rapists, monsters of the human race. And you are pretty,” Clarence said. It was like he knew what Nameless was thinking. They finished each others sentences. Were in each others heads, were in Damian's head.
“You have nowhere to hide,” Nameless threw in. “We know where you sleep.”
And they did. They always had. The knuckles of his fingers were getting white from the pressure he put on them clasping the wood of the door frame.
“Aren't we preferable?” Nameless asked, still in that soft beckoning voice that made Damian want to give in, just step over the threshold and into the darkness.
“The monsters you know?” Clarence finished.
The darkness was creeping toward the door slowly, just where his foot was a bit inside. It hesitated where the light of the street lamp shone. Just at the edge of the light. It was shrinking back like a child that was frightened or a pet. A horrible, terrifying pet.
“That won't do,” Nameless said and Damian heard the bulb break in the silence of the night. The light went out. It still wasn't completely dark. It never was on the streets. But it was enough for the darkness to surge forward and wrap itself around his sneaker covered foot, slither up his ankle and leg. Pull, so Damian stumbled into the apartment. Falling onto his ass.
The door closed with a soft noise, locking out the real world where the darkness was caused by the absence of light.
Something brushed his cheek and he bit his lip so he wouldn't scream.
“It doesn't matter,” Nameless said. And Damian knew it was true. He could feel Nameless towering over him. His presence a dark wall of all the creepy, venomous feelings people usually try to keep inside. There was a laugh in his voice.
“No one can hear you scream here,” Clarence finished.
~end~
Author: creepylicious/alles_luege
Pairing: m/m/m
Rating: NC-17
Summary: This is a bogeymen story.
On some nights he would touch the shadows on the canvas, the pale faces without real features: a hint of a nose, a shadow that could be a smile maybe, a smudge like a bruise under an eye. He imagined soft voices, the darkness around him moving, gliding over floor, walls, skin. Devouring, drowning, eating at his body. Vile black fluids dropping from corners.
Warning(s): sibling incest, age difference, light d/s, slight dub-con and creepy
Author’s Notes: Written for smut-fest. In a way this is what Night Hours could have been if Night Hours haven't been written about the Ways.
Word Count: 3.250
Beta: C.
Disclaimer: Do know, do own, still not real
One
As long as he could think back he has been terrified of the dark. All children are at some point in their lives, Damian knew that. Still he couldn't breathe. The darkness in the basement was encompassing. He was sure there had to be a light switch somewhere nearby, but he just couldn't make himself reach out and touch the wall, feel the ancient dust, touch a few giant spiders in the process, find that damn switch. He took a deep breath. Nothing here to fear except the fear itself. There is nothing in the dark (at least that's what his shrink used to repeat over and over and over again, until Damian's ears were bleeding from it) as long as you'll face it.
“Yeah right,” a voice said from - somewhere.
Damian knew that voice. It gave him shivers, ice cold, down to the marrow of his bones. There always was something to fear in the dark. Always.
He took a step and reached back. The wall had to be there. He knew it was there. It always had been there. He would kill his asshole cousins as soon as he got out of here.
“When will that be, I wonder?” another voice said. Sarcastic as anything Damian has ever heard, but softer than the first. “You can't even bring yourself to find the light switch, Damian.”
His name sounded nearly teasing, like a caress, from that voice.
“You're not real!” Damian said, he was clutching at his dirty shirt and counting silently in his head. It helped him master the unthinkable situations. Well, nothing, NOTHING, could make him master this with all of his sanity intact.
There was soft laugher coming from the darkness all around him. Not unkind, but not kind either. It was a whole other deal. Something usually not heard in a reality made up by adults. Damian would bet that roughly 80% of all children all over the world knew that it was bullshit. They forgot. That was the problem. Maybe with time and more sessions with Doctor Parker he would too.
“I wouldn't bet on that,” said the first voice again. “You just don't seem the type.”
“Clarence can tell,” the second voice said.
There was a shift in the darkness, a subtle one, just the shadows in the corners getting more- not real, but getting sharper somehow. Like a dog raising his hackles or something. It was hard to describe the unfathomable. A part of Damian even wondered why he tried. Maybe so he wouldn't go mad. Crazier than he was already.
There was a funny sound and he didn't know for a few endless seconds, minutes (?), where it came from until he realised it was his own breathing. It was harsh and desperate. He was ready to pass out. The darkness was creeping from the corners, all the corners, all the shadows, like a rug made of tar, towards where Damian was standing. The wall was at this back. He knew it was there, but it was dark too.
“Three...two...” said the soft voice again, “One.”
And Damian screamed.
~+~
Later he couldn't tell how he got out of the basement. Most likely someone had heard him. Probably everyone had heard him. His mom was white as a sheet and he knew that his cousin and his asshole friends were in really freaking big trouble, but all of it was so far away. He was back to three sessions a week with Doctor Parker. Like when he was a kid. He didn't mind. He didn't speak. It did him no good after all. Doctor Parker meant well, but Damian realised after that day in the basement, that Doctor Parker had no freaking clue what was really going on.
It was easier to not speak about it. To not mention the voices in the dark. The shapes moving towards the bed so that Damian had to curl his toes under the blanket and breathe very carefully to not attract them. He feared they would bite his toes off. One by one. They probably would. The things in the dark weren't only childhood fears his brain made up (like Doctor Parker insisted); they were real. Real monsters under the command of something far worse. Of something no child could come up with. Damian was sure of it. He was sure that no kid ever had imagined THEM. Because it wasn't only one. There was an army of them. Two knew his name.
He shivered just thinking about it.
He hoped that Doctor Parker was right and that he would outgrow them. He never heard of an adult talking about them like children do, fearing them. Maybe they only had power over children's mind, maybe only children's eyes could see them. Something to do with the chemical reactions of puberty that were still a mystery to the twelve year old Damian.
~+~
Doctor Parker called it 'night terrors' and it wasn't what Damian was experiencing, it wasn't what was written in the books, but the name was nevertheless very fitting.
They were terrors and they occurred at night.
“You know, Damian,” Clarence said; his voice creeped Damian out maybe more than the shadows, the monsters, the tar like darkness that he commanded, “you aren't safe on the bed.” It was said so casually that the first instinct was to flat out deny it.
“Look at the blanket,” the second voice whispered (Damian had no idea how that one was called, he didn't care). “It's full of tiny shadows. Tiny spots of darkness, grey and getting darker and darker and darker...”
And as he whispered the small shadows got darker and darker, started moving like pools of water at first and then like insects and snakes. Small, creepy, ugly things that only vaguely looked like the things out in the real world. Just close enough to be feared, or just close enough to be feared more.
Damian bit into the fleshy part of his palm to keep the scream in.
“There is nowhere to run,” Clarence said softly.
Damian heard a noise. Movement in the dark. Movement of the dark and sprang out of bed before Clarence could touch him. He knew, his brain knew, that he wouldn't live to tell the tale if Clarence should succeed.
That night was the first night he slept in the hall with the lights on. He got up before his mom, so she wouldn't know.
Two
It didn't just stop one day. It was more like a work in process. A slow process. A fading away.
Damian stopped seeing Doctor Parker at the age of fifteen. It was all bullshit anyway. Damian knew the truth. Monsters were real. It didn't matter what Doctor Parker tried to prove to him with all his books. The thing was: Damian wasn't asleep when it happened and he hadn't been abused more than other children, he guessed. Kids are cruel and everyone deals differently. Thomas, his asshole cousin, got a bloody nose when Damian was fourteen. He's grown a bit and he was on the track-team. Not because he liked running. He needed to be fast. It was just that simple. He was slim and strong. Bending not breaking, but the only way not to be pushed into closets and locked into basements was to show the other kids that he didn't take any shit.
It worked.
~+~
But by then the shapes had taken roots in his mind anyway. Maybe it was all the therapy. Talking about it all the time. Reliving every little horror in detail. He couldn't stop thinking about it. About them. About the darkness. The shapes there. He sketched them, painted them in acrylics on canvases as big as his window. Sometimes he stared at them when the sun went down and - did something that wasn't wishing for them to come back.
At the tender age of seventeen Damian was living alone. Fighting battles against the darkness every single night. Hearing whispers in the shadows on his way home.
His mom gave him concerned looks when he visited her to have dinner. But they got tired with time. Like she's given up on figuring out whatever she did wrong. Like she accepted that it was all his fault. That he just wasn't like all the other (normal) kids.
On some nights he would touch the shadows on the canvas, the pale faces without real features: a hint of a nose, a shadow that could be a smile maybe, a smudge like a bruise under an eye. He imagined soft voices, the darkness around him moving, gliding over floor, walls, skin. Devouring, drowning, eating at his body. Vile black fluids dropping from corners.
He would curl his toes nearly feeling it, stroke the canvas softly, smear black paint onto his skin when it was still wet in the process.
For that obsession he should be seeing a freaking shrink, he thought.
~+~
It didn't stop there. He would go out to those clubs sane people warn their kids about (if they know they exist). He would look around, find a dark corner, all the time battling that stupid fear at the back of his mind, and watch.
He would find that one person with the whitest face and blackest clothes. The cloaks, the trench-coats, the long waving dresses. He would let them drag him away, would let them fuck him, would fuck them in return with the dark soft material embracing him like that living darkness he remembered from his childhood. From that day in the basement when they spoke to him...not only whispered in harsh, distorted voices.
Three
“Take us home,” the boy said into his ear. His breath was chilly on Damian's skin. It was too hot down here, too dark and he was way too drunk. “Take us home,” the boy repeated. He usually wouldn't take anyone home. He would sometimes go with them, yes, but never take a random hook-up home.
The other guy was pressing on his other side and the darkness of his hair made Damian want to touch it, touch him. Drag his fingernails over that pale, pale, pale skin. They weren't supposed to be his random hook-up of the night, but as soon as he saw them, he wanted them badly.
“Come on, take us home,” the other said. “You want to, we can tell.”
Something at the back of his mind was tingling, trying to tell him something, maybe even something important. The boy licked his neck and Damian moaned.
“Yes, yes,” he answered and let them pull him up. Followed them to his car and didn't wonder how they knew.
~+~
In the light of his bedside lamp the boy looked barely sixteen. The other one was more his age. Maybe a bit older, twenty something.
The boy pushed him down, his hand was nearly luminescent in the darkness surrounding them.
“I can't fuck a kid,” Damian heard himself say.
The boy laughed. It was a sound like fingernails on chalkboard. It made Damian shiver. “I'm older than I look and besides, I will be fucking you,” he answered.
Oh, Damian thought, eighteen then, maybe.
“Sure,” the boy said lazily, “eighteen.”
It was obviously a lie, but Damian wasn't going to demand an ID now. He closed his eyes, heard the lamp being switched off and let them undress him. The boy's brother, the one that wasn't talking much, rolled him over. His slender hand grabbed Damian's neck. Thumb stroking the soft spot where neck meets shoulder.
~+~
When he woke up he felt tender all over. He got up in the harsh light of the morning and stumbled into the bathroom. There was no trace of the brothers he hooked up with last night.
He took a piss and stepped into the shower. There were bruises on his body. Around his hips where the boy grabbed him with strength Damian didn't think he possessed. They looked strange those bruises. Like they were smudged somehow. Too long to be a boy's fingers. Strong fingers that had spread him open, held him in place as the boy's tongue found its way inside. He remembered biting into the blanket at that first touch of tongue inside him. Damian shivered just thinking about it. It seemed to go on forever. He had been ready to beg, he never begged, never felt like he wasn't in control anymore, but last night. Last night he so obviously hadn't been in control.
He had squirmed in the older man's grip, trying to get free and the soft, cool hand squeezed. Damian touched his neck under the shower gingerly. It felt tender. He was sure he would find bruises there too.
“Come on,” Damian had pressed out, it sounded between angry and desperate to his own ears. It was answered with another laugh from the man.
“Hear that?” he asked softly not Damian and then Damian felt him shift and his cool breath hit Damian's neck, his ear. “I think you misunderstood something, Damian,” he whispered, Damian was shivering hard and it wasn't only pleasure from the boy's talented tongue in his ass. “You aren't playing with us, we're playing with you.”
As Damian's brain was processing this the boy grabbed his hips harder and pushed inside. The hand on his neck pressed his face into the blankets. He closed his eyes again and just tried to ride it all out. The insane pleasure and the nagging fear at the back of his mind.
He switched the shower off and breathed. He could hear his rattled breath echoing in the small bathroom. He stared at the bruises, not quite human shaped, and didn't want to deal.
Four
He didn't go back to that club, but he didn't stop hooking up. Somehow it wasn't the same anymore. The boys and girls in dark clothes, wrapped in cool black, with pale faces and hands, didn't seem so appealing these days.
He was searching for the boy's face, the mocking whispers of the guy with those long, pale, strong fingers. He needed names to put to those faces. Needed a closer look at lips and eyes, needed a chance to feel mouths against his.
Sometimes he thought he heard a cruel laugh like nails on chalkboard, or saw a wisp of pure darkness out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned it was gone.
He touched the canvas with one hand, his dick in the other and repeated 'we're playing with you' like a mantra in his head until the words resolved, but the meaning, the meaning was burned into his mind.
The impenetrable darkness seemed to be everywhere he went. Seemed to follow him. Was lingering just at the edge of the bed and would grab his ankle when he stepped on the hardwood floor without switching the lamp on first.
Or maybe he was losing it.
Fact was, the apartment didn't feel safe anymore. It felt like darkness was lingering everywhere, oozing from taps in fat black drops as viscous as tar. Waiting for him to make a mistake.
He moved out before the urge to burn it all down became irresistible.
~+~
At first he thought they were dreams.
Flashes of dark shapes moving in the darkness of the night. Pale faces and hands. Pretty lips that revealed small sharp teeth when they smiled. Teeth as sharp as daggers, animal teeth, a deadly predator's teeth. A beast that knew it was one and liked it.
“Take us home,” they whispered, but Damian knew they didn't need to be invited. They came and went when they wanted to.
“We like to play,” the boy said. “We like to play with you.”
The darkness reached out. It looked like a burned thin arm with crippled fingers. Damian anticipated it feeling burned and uneven too, it didn't. It was smooth and cool. Like fresh laundry. It curled around his ankle, moved up to his knee and higher. Slowly making its way to the inside of his thigh: he watched it in horrified fascination. It felt good, he thought, disgusted with himself.
“And there is nowhere to run. We told you that.”
A name sparked at the back of Damian's mind. He kept it inside, but he couldn't suppressed the scream as Clarence's brother, the nameless one, rushed at him, pushing him back. Sharp teeth sinking into the tender flesh of his upper arm.
He moved out the next day as soon as the sun was up. Packed a few things and left.
~+~
“Look what the night dragged in,” Clarence said. The soft whisper of darkness that swung in it, Damian had never forgotten. It was drilled into his brain, burned into the soft tissue of his memory. Damian stopped at the open door, one foot over the threshold to his small apartment, the other still on the wet pavement outside. The apartment lay in complete darkness. The darkness moved. No apartment at night should, could be so dark. It wasn't normal darkness. It wasn't his imagination. This here was real.
“Won't you come in?” the other voice said. That one that was Nameless.
Damian shook his head. He wouldn't. He would sleep outside. In the rain if he had to.
“There are things out there too. Murderers, rapists, monsters of the human race. And you are pretty,” Clarence said. It was like he knew what Nameless was thinking. They finished each others sentences. Were in each others heads, were in Damian's head.
“You have nowhere to hide,” Nameless threw in. “We know where you sleep.”
And they did. They always had. The knuckles of his fingers were getting white from the pressure he put on them clasping the wood of the door frame.
“Aren't we preferable?” Nameless asked, still in that soft beckoning voice that made Damian want to give in, just step over the threshold and into the darkness.
“The monsters you know?” Clarence finished.
The darkness was creeping toward the door slowly, just where his foot was a bit inside. It hesitated where the light of the street lamp shone. Just at the edge of the light. It was shrinking back like a child that was frightened or a pet. A horrible, terrifying pet.
“That won't do,” Nameless said and Damian heard the bulb break in the silence of the night. The light went out. It still wasn't completely dark. It never was on the streets. But it was enough for the darkness to surge forward and wrap itself around his sneaker covered foot, slither up his ankle and leg. Pull, so Damian stumbled into the apartment. Falling onto his ass.
The door closed with a soft noise, locking out the real world where the darkness was caused by the absence of light.
Something brushed his cheek and he bit his lip so he wouldn't scream.
“It doesn't matter,” Nameless said. And Damian knew it was true. He could feel Nameless towering over him. His presence a dark wall of all the creepy, venomous feelings people usually try to keep inside. There was a laugh in his voice.
“No one can hear you scream here,” Clarence finished.
~end~