Fic: Between (NC-17, Lupa/Gale)
I have been bunnied hard for an exceptionally obscure femslash pairing in a fairly obscure fandom where I can't even name the pairing because it would be spoilery. Argh. Argh! ...I'll probably write it anyway, though.
In other news: forgot to repost the other of my yaoi_challenge stories. Whoops! Here it is. I... really liked working on this one, for so many reasons.
Between
They wait in the space between. AU.
Digital Devil Saga, Lupa/Gale. 1400 words. Written for laylah, for the yaoi_challenge 2007 Obscure Fandom Reverseathon.
NC-17/MA/Not Worksafe for violence, cannibalism, sex. Spoilers through the Waterways.
Cerberus' middle head snapped snarling just inches from Argilla. She bent out of the way, the long unraveled whips of her arms snarling into a counterstrike, but she was making a thin choked noise even as she struck thrice in rapid succession. Grieving not only for Lupa, Gale knew, but also for Jinana, with whom she had had a bond peculiarly strong for the short time they had known each other -- and grieving for them. Grieving for all of them.
There was something heavy and unnamed in his chest, but he dared not spare attention for it; all the attention he could muster was spent already on keeping an eye both on Cerberus' three snarling heads and on his comrades, judging when they needed healing, when it was the better part to cast dekaja, when to attack, when to defend. The arctic wash of Serph's magic flowed over him; he could hear Argilla weaving a healing spell around them. Cerberus howled, three heads lifted, and fire rained down on them all -- he cast a ward of protection-from-fire over Serph, but too late. Serph howled, the wordless pain-noise he made when he was Varna and at no other time. Gale could smell his singed flesh.
Serph's magic rose in a glittering wind and hit Lupa -- and stalled him, chilled his muscles to torpor, which was Gale's cue to strike and strike hard. He brought his foot up, under the long exposed line of Cerberus' -- Lupa's -- throat, held in that vulnerable position by Serph's magic.
And froze, himself.
It was not -- it was not emotion that stopped him, or at any rate he did not think so. It was a deep and terrible sense of waste, of the death of hope and the death of honor and the loss of an ally and a comrade. Without knowing why he did it (and he never did anything without knowing why he did it), he reached with one hand for Lupa. He never used his hands for fighting. His palm touched the brow of one of his great heads -- he could hear Serph rumbling a growl and Argilla's demand to know what he thought he was doing, distantly -- and though his hands were thick with demonskin he could feel the cold there, and also the great fervent heat of Lupa-who-was-Cerberus burning beyond that, and the warmth of his own hand melted a handprint in the frost.
Perhaps it was the touch; perhaps it was the warmth; perhaps it was something else. With a great shudder, Lupa shook off the coating of rime, threw up his head, and, faster than Gale could block or track, sank his heavy jaw into Gale's arm at the elbow.
Pain, pain like he had never known -- and he could see Argilla and Serph moving at the edges of his vision but all his attention focused on the tear, the hot gush of blood, the grate of tooth on bone; he could feel the beginning of Argilla's spell but it could not restore a dismembered limb, he knew that, and he cursed himself for a fool --
-- and then he saw that Cerberus -- Lupa -- was gagging, spitting blood, releasing his arm which he caught and clung to and held in place by the few resisting tendons, so that when Argilla's spell hit him bone knit to bone and muscle to muscle. Cerberus hunched, spitting blood and saliva, eyes averted but sane.
With the brief elation of powerful healing he said, "Stop, no more."
Argilla spoke in the fierce two-part harmony of her breast-mouths: "He tried to bite -- " and Serph snarled a protest.
"No more," Gale said. "Look."
Lupa-who-was-Cerberus shuddered, digging claws into the damp stonework of the sewers, and coiled in on himself, three heads bowed and teeth gritted. The red lines burned like fire into his skin, and then receded, drawing back and in toward Lupa's atma mark: and then he was merely Lupa, blood-tracks marring the careful lines on his face, shuddering, whole, himself.
"If you're going to fucking let him live, then feed him," Heat snarled, still Agni, treading heavily from where he had taken up sentry-post, holding off the lesser demons and giving them a chance to fight Lupa uninterrupted. He was dragging a dead mothman. "Otherwise he'll just lose it again." There was an air of disdain to his voice; Gale gave it only a moment's thought, and then set it aside.
Lupa looked up at Gale, and his eyes were fierce and resistant but also starved, half-mad from hunger even now, even when he was in control of himself. "Do it," Gale said, and Lupa closed his eyes.
Afterward, when he had fed and cleaned himself while they waited -- Cielo delighted, Heat surly and contemptuous, Argilla grave and joyful, Serph a silent mirror -- Lupa touched Gale's shoulder, held him back a moment, and said, "You... permitted me to taste your blood."
Gale drew a short breath. "I was not given much choice."
Lupa looked at him, solemnly, and did not speak.
After a time, Gale said, "I do not understand. I did what I must."
"No," Lupa said, intense but not fierce -- not serrated like Argilla's moods, or simmering like Heat's, simply focused. "You did what you believed right. There is a difference."
Gale had no answer, but he had many thoughts.
Later, when before the assault on the base they rested, and restocked supplies. After due consideration, Gale drew Lupa a little aside, into one of the small useless rooms that littered the base.
"I have been thinking about what you said," he began.
"Yes?" Lupa asked.
"I have always done what I felt was necessary. And yet you say -- "
"Between what is and what should be, there is honor," Lupa said. "And between what must be done and what should be done, there is the test of honor." He looked away. "But I have fed on human flesh, now. Where is the honor there?"
"The honor is in continuing," Gale said after a long silence. "And finding the end, and what lies beyond."
"The end," Lupa said, and when Gale turned to look at him he was suddenly there, close, so close in that Gale would have reached for his weapons, but that Lupa did not touch him except to press their mouths together, firm but without teeth.
Gale felt the force of it shake his bones.
"Do you remember that?" Lupa asked. Gale shook his head. Lupa did it again, and Gale's hands were on his shoulders though he could not recall putting them there -- could not recall --
"Then tell me if you wish me to stop," Lupa murmured, and again, and again, and then his mouth descending as he sank to his knees, his fingers surprisingly clever on the fastenings of Gale's trousers.
"What -- "
"A need that can be satisfied without shame is precious indeed," Lupa said, and then his mouth sank over Gale's phallus, and Gale rocked and caught his breath.
He tried to remain distant about it, to analyze the sensations -- like and yet unlike the disorientation of Marin Karin, as intense in its way as the feeling of teeth rending his flesh from his bones -- but it was difficult, it spoke to his body without addressing his mind as readily as the hunger did, and it was very much like hunger. He felt exposed, and he did not like the closeness of Lupa's teeth; but Lupa could have devoured him before and had not. And the sensations rose and rose until he scrabbled with his fingertips against the rough cement of the wall at his back and something uncoiled within him. Then it was like the satiation of a full belly, like the bone-deep calm of Sera's singing, and he exhaled and relaxed as Lupa regained his feet.
"A better taste than your blood," Lupa said.
Gale was suddenly unsure of the correct protocol, and as he realigned his clothing he said, "Perhaps I should -- "
But Lupa interrupted him. "When you remember more," he said. "Then, yes."
In other news: forgot to repost the other of my yaoi_challenge stories. Whoops! Here it is. I... really liked working on this one, for so many reasons.
Between
They wait in the space between. AU.
Digital Devil Saga, Lupa/Gale. 1400 words. Written for laylah, for the yaoi_challenge 2007 Obscure Fandom Reverseathon.
NC-17/MA/Not Worksafe for violence, cannibalism, sex. Spoilers through the Waterways.
Cerberus' middle head snapped snarling just inches from Argilla. She bent out of the way, the long unraveled whips of her arms snarling into a counterstrike, but she was making a thin choked noise even as she struck thrice in rapid succession. Grieving not only for Lupa, Gale knew, but also for Jinana, with whom she had had a bond peculiarly strong for the short time they had known each other -- and grieving for them. Grieving for all of them.
There was something heavy and unnamed in his chest, but he dared not spare attention for it; all the attention he could muster was spent already on keeping an eye both on Cerberus' three snarling heads and on his comrades, judging when they needed healing, when it was the better part to cast dekaja, when to attack, when to defend. The arctic wash of Serph's magic flowed over him; he could hear Argilla weaving a healing spell around them. Cerberus howled, three heads lifted, and fire rained down on them all -- he cast a ward of protection-from-fire over Serph, but too late. Serph howled, the wordless pain-noise he made when he was Varna and at no other time. Gale could smell his singed flesh.
Serph's magic rose in a glittering wind and hit Lupa -- and stalled him, chilled his muscles to torpor, which was Gale's cue to strike and strike hard. He brought his foot up, under the long exposed line of Cerberus' -- Lupa's -- throat, held in that vulnerable position by Serph's magic.
And froze, himself.
It was not -- it was not emotion that stopped him, or at any rate he did not think so. It was a deep and terrible sense of waste, of the death of hope and the death of honor and the loss of an ally and a comrade. Without knowing why he did it (and he never did anything without knowing why he did it), he reached with one hand for Lupa. He never used his hands for fighting. His palm touched the brow of one of his great heads -- he could hear Serph rumbling a growl and Argilla's demand to know what he thought he was doing, distantly -- and though his hands were thick with demonskin he could feel the cold there, and also the great fervent heat of Lupa-who-was-Cerberus burning beyond that, and the warmth of his own hand melted a handprint in the frost.
Perhaps it was the touch; perhaps it was the warmth; perhaps it was something else. With a great shudder, Lupa shook off the coating of rime, threw up his head, and, faster than Gale could block or track, sank his heavy jaw into Gale's arm at the elbow.
Pain, pain like he had never known -- and he could see Argilla and Serph moving at the edges of his vision but all his attention focused on the tear, the hot gush of blood, the grate of tooth on bone; he could feel the beginning of Argilla's spell but it could not restore a dismembered limb, he knew that, and he cursed himself for a fool --
-- and then he saw that Cerberus -- Lupa -- was gagging, spitting blood, releasing his arm which he caught and clung to and held in place by the few resisting tendons, so that when Argilla's spell hit him bone knit to bone and muscle to muscle. Cerberus hunched, spitting blood and saliva, eyes averted but sane.
With the brief elation of powerful healing he said, "Stop, no more."
Argilla spoke in the fierce two-part harmony of her breast-mouths: "He tried to bite -- " and Serph snarled a protest.
"No more," Gale said. "Look."
Lupa-who-was-Cerberus shuddered, digging claws into the damp stonework of the sewers, and coiled in on himself, three heads bowed and teeth gritted. The red lines burned like fire into his skin, and then receded, drawing back and in toward Lupa's atma mark: and then he was merely Lupa, blood-tracks marring the careful lines on his face, shuddering, whole, himself.
"If you're going to fucking let him live, then feed him," Heat snarled, still Agni, treading heavily from where he had taken up sentry-post, holding off the lesser demons and giving them a chance to fight Lupa uninterrupted. He was dragging a dead mothman. "Otherwise he'll just lose it again." There was an air of disdain to his voice; Gale gave it only a moment's thought, and then set it aside.
Lupa looked up at Gale, and his eyes were fierce and resistant but also starved, half-mad from hunger even now, even when he was in control of himself. "Do it," Gale said, and Lupa closed his eyes.
Afterward, when he had fed and cleaned himself while they waited -- Cielo delighted, Heat surly and contemptuous, Argilla grave and joyful, Serph a silent mirror -- Lupa touched Gale's shoulder, held him back a moment, and said, "You... permitted me to taste your blood."
Gale drew a short breath. "I was not given much choice."
Lupa looked at him, solemnly, and did not speak.
After a time, Gale said, "I do not understand. I did what I must."
"No," Lupa said, intense but not fierce -- not serrated like Argilla's moods, or simmering like Heat's, simply focused. "You did what you believed right. There is a difference."
Gale had no answer, but he had many thoughts.
Later, when before the assault on the base they rested, and restocked supplies. After due consideration, Gale drew Lupa a little aside, into one of the small useless rooms that littered the base.
"I have been thinking about what you said," he began.
"Yes?" Lupa asked.
"I have always done what I felt was necessary. And yet you say -- "
"Between what is and what should be, there is honor," Lupa said. "And between what must be done and what should be done, there is the test of honor." He looked away. "But I have fed on human flesh, now. Where is the honor there?"
"The honor is in continuing," Gale said after a long silence. "And finding the end, and what lies beyond."
"The end," Lupa said, and when Gale turned to look at him he was suddenly there, close, so close in that Gale would have reached for his weapons, but that Lupa did not touch him except to press their mouths together, firm but without teeth.
Gale felt the force of it shake his bones.
"Do you remember that?" Lupa asked. Gale shook his head. Lupa did it again, and Gale's hands were on his shoulders though he could not recall putting them there -- could not recall --
"Then tell me if you wish me to stop," Lupa murmured, and again, and again, and then his mouth descending as he sank to his knees, his fingers surprisingly clever on the fastenings of Gale's trousers.
"What -- "
"A need that can be satisfied without shame is precious indeed," Lupa said, and then his mouth sank over Gale's phallus, and Gale rocked and caught his breath.
He tried to remain distant about it, to analyze the sensations -- like and yet unlike the disorientation of Marin Karin, as intense in its way as the feeling of teeth rending his flesh from his bones -- but it was difficult, it spoke to his body without addressing his mind as readily as the hunger did, and it was very much like hunger. He felt exposed, and he did not like the closeness of Lupa's teeth; but Lupa could have devoured him before and had not. And the sensations rose and rose until he scrabbled with his fingertips against the rough cement of the wall at his back and something uncoiled within him. Then it was like the satiation of a full belly, like the bone-deep calm of Sera's singing, and he exhaled and relaxed as Lupa regained his feet.
"A better taste than your blood," Lupa said.
Gale was suddenly unsure of the correct protocol, and as he realigned his clothing he said, "Perhaps I should -- "
But Lupa interrupted him. "When you remember more," he said. "Then, yes."