Complex
My goal before my next counseling visit was to visit the apartment's gym. I did that today. I tried out the bike for ten minutes then used the stair machine for 5. That five almost killed me. We also have a lateral step machine, which, if I can figure out how to use it, might help strengthen my hips and loosen up my ankles, but I was only on it for a moment today. I didn't even notice my sore feet while on the stairs, but then I might not have noticed the place on fire as I counted down the second until I could get off.
Title: Complex
Chapter: 10 (penultimate)
Length: 2212 words
Summary: Hezekiel is again stupid, but Steele's chill.
Master list: lj DW
Hezekiel opened his door for Steele. Why couldn't they go out? Or even just meet in neutral territory? Hezekiel felt like a mistress who was supposed to be happy that her lover had bothered to darken her door at all. Might as well get the pleasantries over with. "Come in. How's Doll?"
"He's fine. How are you? Heard your TAing again."
The nosy idiot. "Keeping track of me?"
Steele grinned. "Like I would any friend."
They would never be friends. Steele had already said they wouldn't. Might as well get this farce over with. Hezekiel pulled off his shirt. Steele's hand moved across his chest. "You've been working out."
Why did he always notice whatever Hezekiel didn't want him to?
Steele turned Hezekiel back by his chin. "No need to be shy." Steele licked his lips. "May I see your wings?"
Hezekiel stepped back. "What's so special about my wings?"
Steele cocked his head. "As a land based animal, I think all wings are special."
And what animal would that be? Hezekiel wasn't going to give Steele the satisfaction of asking.
"But it's okay to hold them back. I'm just curious."
And give Steele the satisfaction of thinking he was shy, ashamed, or uncomfortable? Hezekiel spread his wings. Steele whistled, his eyes on the sooty feathers. "So beautiful. May I touch?"
Why would he want to?
Steele walked around Hezekiel, stroking feathers. He stopped at Hezekiel's back and kissed his side of his neck, stirring the soft feathers at the edge of Hezekiel's wings with his breath. "So very beautiful."
And he leaned his hips against Hezekiel's, showing off the evidence that he really believed that.
Then he continued his walk. Hezekiel spread out his wings and gave them a flap. He might have been practicing, but keeping his wings in one position still ached.
"So many colors of grey and sliver."
"Grey is grey."
"Whoever told you that doesn't know how to appreciate beauty."
"Whatever." But Hezekiel couldn't help but keep his wings out. Even Lope hadn't liked them this much. Steele liked his wings, not just wings.
"May I kiss you?"
"That's what you're here for."
"If that's only what I was here for, I'd have you on the table, with your wings spread wide and your legs wider."
Hezekiel got hard just thinking about it. "What's stopping you?"
"You don't seem very happy to see me today."
Hezekiel scowled. "You have to leave at seven again?"
Steele put his arms around Hezekiel's waist. "Can't decide whether you didn't want me to come or you want me to stay forever."
If Steele was going to bother to come at all, the least he could do was stay the night.
Steele lifted Hezekiel's chin and kissed him. Hezekiel body wanted him so bad, needed him so much, at least the parts that linked Steele to Dal.
But Hezekiel had been nothing but the butt of jokes since he'd spread his sooty little wings on the playground. And he'd been the brunt of taunts all week by demons that didn't know Steele was a sex god, didn't care. He may not have been a prefect demon, but even a half-breed like him was better than any human. "Kneel."
Steele grinned. "Going down."
He fell to his knees and mouthed Hezekiel though his sweatpants. The spell hadn't worked. Hezekiel was getting what he wanted, but not in the way he wanted. "Obey."
Steele snorted. "We haven't come up with the rules to that game yet."
"It's not a game." Hezekiel cast a spell the ripped Steele's clothes from him then he tossed the naked man onto the table. He liked his idea even better.
Until the man became a bundle of spikes. That smelled. "Ew! What's that?"
Steele dusted himself off. "That's what I smell like when I'm upset. And we'd better take those quills out carefully and get ointment on you so there's no infection."
Hezekiel stepped back. "Just what are you?"
"Porcupine."
"What!"
"You know, quills. Now let's get them out before you scar your pretty face."
"My face!" Hezekiel reached for his face, but Steele stopped him.
"Careful now. Mostly in your hands, arms, and chest, any place on you that touched me. But we'll get them out." And he set to work as if Hezekiel wasn't the cause of this mess.
"Why are you being so nice to me?"
Steele grinned. "This is nice?"
"I was trying to force myself on you."
Steele nodded like the idiot he was. "What was that nonsense about?"
"It wasn't nonsense." The quills in his hands hurt worse coming out then going in. "Everything smells so bad."
"We'll take a shower after you're quill free and then I'll cover everything in ointment." Steele removed another quill. "I'm willing to go down on you or play any game you like. I've never been into BDSM, but then I've never had a steady boyfriend before."
"You have a husband."
"Dal had been forced to be submissive too much in his life to do more than joke about it." One more quill came out. "You're the boyfriend."
Hezekiel wanted that so much to be true. "You said we were only going to be fuck buddies. No relationship."
"I was wrong." Steele kissed Hezekiel's wrist and went to remove the quills further up his arm.
Hezekiel snorted. "You're never wrong. What are you getting out of this?"
"Having sex with you gives Dal peace, as opposed to guilt. But he'll only reap the benefits of being bound to you, Mated, if I build up our relationship. Think of it this way. You and I build up this thing, maybe I won't just spend the night sometime, but Dal will be with us."
The pain was just too great. He couldn't hold back his sobs. He was so stupid to have lost Doll in the first place and he was continuing to be stupid. He'd lose Steele too. Just watch, he'd patch Hezekiel up and then leave as the hole in Hezekiel's soul got bigger.
Steele carefully wiped his tears. "There's just something beautiful about you in tears."
"You like it?" How could he, the sadist. But no matter how cruel Steele was, Hezekiel still wanted him, still needed him.
Steele laughed. "Dal will be laughing one minute, crying the next. Why do you think I keep tissues in my pockets? Mom says they'll taper off once the kittens are born, but Dal cried a lot before the kittens too." He shrugged. "I'll just keep carrying tissues, which reminds me, I'll need to borrow some of your clothes. My jacket and shoes are the only things that survived."
"And you're not upset?" He had to be upset. Anyone would be. What Hezekiel had tried to do was unacceptable, especially as Hezekiel was trying to make nice with Steele.
"My curiosity is pretty strong."
Really? Just to prove that wasn't true, to force Steele away, to send him running, Hezekiel told him every detail of his horrible week and all those horrible people he met and had to interact with while trying to find his parents, who-now that he gave it some thought-were probably trying to find Doll's parents, which would help Hezekiel in Doll's eyes. Or would have if he hadn't be horrible himself tonight.
Steele didn't say anything for a while, then he kissed the spots on Hezekiel's face where he'd removed the quills. "So you wanted to prove those fleabags right?"
Hezekiel hung his head. "Is that what I'm doing?"
The tears were coming again. Steele kissed them away. "A shower."
Hezekiel let himself be led away, stripped, and put under the shower. Steele joined him. No one had ever soaped Hezekiel up before. Steele had magic hands. "You're to come five times tonight."
In two hours? In one now that he'd wasted the first? That was crazy. "Who decided that?"
"Dal. He can feel both of us come, when we're together."
"What?" Hezekiel froze. Doll could feel him now? Feel his pleasure? His pain too?
"Professor Onesimus thinks it's because of our bonds. I just nod and pretend I know what's going on. Anyway, you let yourself enjoy me five times, and I can stay until eleven, plus an hour more for each time you let yourself go."
"So to stay until morning I'll need to…" Six makes midnight, seven one. "That's impossible."
"Is that what you want, my pretty?" Steele's hands were so wicked. "For me to wake you with a kiss? If you do, let yourself come."
Hezekiel did. He also let himself go on the bed, against the table with his wing's spread and Steele inside him, which he'd told himself he wasn't going to do no matter how much he'd dreamed of it. Once was lying on his side with Steele's gentle breaths in his ear. Once was Steele's mouth on him, once just hands.
Not enough. Hezekiel buried his face in the pillow to hide the tears. "You going?"
Steele laughed. How did he have the energy for that? "You're at seven, so I have a few more hours."
"Seven?" Hezekiel counted them on his fingers and got to six.
Steele added one more that Hezekiel might have been able to remember.
Hezekiel lay back. "What about you?"
"Two, but tonight isn't about me. It's about not thinking of yourself as a mix-breed demon with sooty wings and a weak bond and only the pride of demonhood holding you up."
That was Hezekiel all over.
"Tonight you're a beautiful angel, cloaked in silver, strengthening the bond with one of your two Mates in a way no demon has done before. You are special, beautiful, and mine." Steele kissed his stomach. "Besides you're reading the clock wrong. It's only nine, and I'm sure I can drag one out of you an hour."
"What about you?"
Steele grinned. "If you're game to trying to get me off with your wings alone, I wouldn't object."
Hezekiel finally succeeded but only after Steele got him off twice more. He wasn't going to win this game, but trying was fun.
He fell asleep at some point. Steele woke him up with a kiss. It was morning, but only barely. Steele's hands were warm and strong. "We have five minutes to get you off, or I'll have to go home."
Hezekiel was too tired for this. "Idiot."
Steele laughed. "Would you be happy after all this effort, for me to leave now?"
"The effort was fun." He opened his eyes wider. "Is Doll okay?"
"He's staying with friends. He won't admit it, but he wants you to win this as bad as I do."
Hezekiel wiped his eyes. Tears were coming again. So close, but hope was bleeding him dry. "Then why didn't you wake me sooner?'
"Because," Steele grinned. "I can get you off in four minutes."
"You can't."
He did and to prove his prowess, he got Hezekiel off one more time before letting him go back to sleep.
Hezekiel woke again with Steele hard at his back. "Are you ever soft?"
"Maybe, but it hasn't happened yet when I'm in bed with a beautiful man."
"Idiot."
Steele laughed. "Breakfast or more sex?"
Hezekiel turned toward the clock. "How much time do we have?"
"Enough for both."
"Then food first."
They had a simple breakfast and slipped back into bed, but Hezekiel had come so many times in the last, what was it, twelve hours, it just didn't appeal. Steele held him and whispered silly things in his ear. He pushed Steele away, but he didn't go far. Hezekiel put his chin on his hands and watched him. "What do you see in me?"
Steele swished away the hairs that had fallen into Hezekiel's face. "More than you see in yourself."
"I get that part."
"I'm the part of Dal that was missing, the part which meant he couldn't be happy with you, but as your Mate, he can't truly be happy without you."
Hezekiel hid his face.
"Besides, who's going to keep Dal busy when you're with Lope? You know how horny he is."
Hezekiel bit his lip. "That's you. How do you see me?"
He had to know. His mind and body were at peace in a way he'd never know before and he'd lose that feeling the moment Steele left.
Steele kissed his nose. "You're a child in a man's body, resting your self-worth in the wrong people. You need better friends."
So true. But how was he to get them when the people he cared about didn't want him? Doll, his parents, his supposed childhood friends. And this whole two Mate thing was enough to keep the demons who weren't bullies from ever trying to get to know him. He should just stop hoping.
Steele tugged Hezekiel's face back up. "I see you as the other father to Dal's children. I see you helping out not because you know that'll make some of the next litter half demons, but because they'll be so small and cute and you love the man who carried them. And maybe me too. You should love me because I'm adorable."
Hezekiel rolled his eyes and hid his smile. "Idiot."
Steele grinned, "Just the way you want me."
Title: Complex
Chapter: 10 (penultimate)
Length: 2212 words
Summary: Hezekiel is again stupid, but Steele's chill.
Master list: lj DW
Hezekiel opened his door for Steele. Why couldn't they go out? Or even just meet in neutral territory? Hezekiel felt like a mistress who was supposed to be happy that her lover had bothered to darken her door at all. Might as well get the pleasantries over with. "Come in. How's Doll?"
"He's fine. How are you? Heard your TAing again."
The nosy idiot. "Keeping track of me?"
Steele grinned. "Like I would any friend."
They would never be friends. Steele had already said they wouldn't. Might as well get this farce over with. Hezekiel pulled off his shirt. Steele's hand moved across his chest. "You've been working out."
Why did he always notice whatever Hezekiel didn't want him to?
Steele turned Hezekiel back by his chin. "No need to be shy." Steele licked his lips. "May I see your wings?"
Hezekiel stepped back. "What's so special about my wings?"
Steele cocked his head. "As a land based animal, I think all wings are special."
And what animal would that be? Hezekiel wasn't going to give Steele the satisfaction of asking.
"But it's okay to hold them back. I'm just curious."
And give Steele the satisfaction of thinking he was shy, ashamed, or uncomfortable? Hezekiel spread his wings. Steele whistled, his eyes on the sooty feathers. "So beautiful. May I touch?"
Why would he want to?
Steele walked around Hezekiel, stroking feathers. He stopped at Hezekiel's back and kissed his side of his neck, stirring the soft feathers at the edge of Hezekiel's wings with his breath. "So very beautiful."
And he leaned his hips against Hezekiel's, showing off the evidence that he really believed that.
Then he continued his walk. Hezekiel spread out his wings and gave them a flap. He might have been practicing, but keeping his wings in one position still ached.
"So many colors of grey and sliver."
"Grey is grey."
"Whoever told you that doesn't know how to appreciate beauty."
"Whatever." But Hezekiel couldn't help but keep his wings out. Even Lope hadn't liked them this much. Steele liked his wings, not just wings.
"May I kiss you?"
"That's what you're here for."
"If that's only what I was here for, I'd have you on the table, with your wings spread wide and your legs wider."
Hezekiel got hard just thinking about it. "What's stopping you?"
"You don't seem very happy to see me today."
Hezekiel scowled. "You have to leave at seven again?"
Steele put his arms around Hezekiel's waist. "Can't decide whether you didn't want me to come or you want me to stay forever."
If Steele was going to bother to come at all, the least he could do was stay the night.
Steele lifted Hezekiel's chin and kissed him. Hezekiel body wanted him so bad, needed him so much, at least the parts that linked Steele to Dal.
But Hezekiel had been nothing but the butt of jokes since he'd spread his sooty little wings on the playground. And he'd been the brunt of taunts all week by demons that didn't know Steele was a sex god, didn't care. He may not have been a prefect demon, but even a half-breed like him was better than any human. "Kneel."
Steele grinned. "Going down."
He fell to his knees and mouthed Hezekiel though his sweatpants. The spell hadn't worked. Hezekiel was getting what he wanted, but not in the way he wanted. "Obey."
Steele snorted. "We haven't come up with the rules to that game yet."
"It's not a game." Hezekiel cast a spell the ripped Steele's clothes from him then he tossed the naked man onto the table. He liked his idea even better.
Until the man became a bundle of spikes. That smelled. "Ew! What's that?"
Steele dusted himself off. "That's what I smell like when I'm upset. And we'd better take those quills out carefully and get ointment on you so there's no infection."
Hezekiel stepped back. "Just what are you?"
"Porcupine."
"What!"
"You know, quills. Now let's get them out before you scar your pretty face."
"My face!" Hezekiel reached for his face, but Steele stopped him.
"Careful now. Mostly in your hands, arms, and chest, any place on you that touched me. But we'll get them out." And he set to work as if Hezekiel wasn't the cause of this mess.
"Why are you being so nice to me?"
Steele grinned. "This is nice?"
"I was trying to force myself on you."
Steele nodded like the idiot he was. "What was that nonsense about?"
"It wasn't nonsense." The quills in his hands hurt worse coming out then going in. "Everything smells so bad."
"We'll take a shower after you're quill free and then I'll cover everything in ointment." Steele removed another quill. "I'm willing to go down on you or play any game you like. I've never been into BDSM, but then I've never had a steady boyfriend before."
"You have a husband."
"Dal had been forced to be submissive too much in his life to do more than joke about it." One more quill came out. "You're the boyfriend."
Hezekiel wanted that so much to be true. "You said we were only going to be fuck buddies. No relationship."
"I was wrong." Steele kissed Hezekiel's wrist and went to remove the quills further up his arm.
Hezekiel snorted. "You're never wrong. What are you getting out of this?"
"Having sex with you gives Dal peace, as opposed to guilt. But he'll only reap the benefits of being bound to you, Mated, if I build up our relationship. Think of it this way. You and I build up this thing, maybe I won't just spend the night sometime, but Dal will be with us."
The pain was just too great. He couldn't hold back his sobs. He was so stupid to have lost Doll in the first place and he was continuing to be stupid. He'd lose Steele too. Just watch, he'd patch Hezekiel up and then leave as the hole in Hezekiel's soul got bigger.
Steele carefully wiped his tears. "There's just something beautiful about you in tears."
"You like it?" How could he, the sadist. But no matter how cruel Steele was, Hezekiel still wanted him, still needed him.
Steele laughed. "Dal will be laughing one minute, crying the next. Why do you think I keep tissues in my pockets? Mom says they'll taper off once the kittens are born, but Dal cried a lot before the kittens too." He shrugged. "I'll just keep carrying tissues, which reminds me, I'll need to borrow some of your clothes. My jacket and shoes are the only things that survived."
"And you're not upset?" He had to be upset. Anyone would be. What Hezekiel had tried to do was unacceptable, especially as Hezekiel was trying to make nice with Steele.
"My curiosity is pretty strong."
Really? Just to prove that wasn't true, to force Steele away, to send him running, Hezekiel told him every detail of his horrible week and all those horrible people he met and had to interact with while trying to find his parents, who-now that he gave it some thought-were probably trying to find Doll's parents, which would help Hezekiel in Doll's eyes. Or would have if he hadn't be horrible himself tonight.
Steele didn't say anything for a while, then he kissed the spots on Hezekiel's face where he'd removed the quills. "So you wanted to prove those fleabags right?"
Hezekiel hung his head. "Is that what I'm doing?"
The tears were coming again. Steele kissed them away. "A shower."
Hezekiel let himself be led away, stripped, and put under the shower. Steele joined him. No one had ever soaped Hezekiel up before. Steele had magic hands. "You're to come five times tonight."
In two hours? In one now that he'd wasted the first? That was crazy. "Who decided that?"
"Dal. He can feel both of us come, when we're together."
"What?" Hezekiel froze. Doll could feel him now? Feel his pleasure? His pain too?
"Professor Onesimus thinks it's because of our bonds. I just nod and pretend I know what's going on. Anyway, you let yourself enjoy me five times, and I can stay until eleven, plus an hour more for each time you let yourself go."
"So to stay until morning I'll need to…" Six makes midnight, seven one. "That's impossible."
"Is that what you want, my pretty?" Steele's hands were so wicked. "For me to wake you with a kiss? If you do, let yourself come."
Hezekiel did. He also let himself go on the bed, against the table with his wing's spread and Steele inside him, which he'd told himself he wasn't going to do no matter how much he'd dreamed of it. Once was lying on his side with Steele's gentle breaths in his ear. Once was Steele's mouth on him, once just hands.
Not enough. Hezekiel buried his face in the pillow to hide the tears. "You going?"
Steele laughed. How did he have the energy for that? "You're at seven, so I have a few more hours."
"Seven?" Hezekiel counted them on his fingers and got to six.
Steele added one more that Hezekiel might have been able to remember.
Hezekiel lay back. "What about you?"
"Two, but tonight isn't about me. It's about not thinking of yourself as a mix-breed demon with sooty wings and a weak bond and only the pride of demonhood holding you up."
That was Hezekiel all over.
"Tonight you're a beautiful angel, cloaked in silver, strengthening the bond with one of your two Mates in a way no demon has done before. You are special, beautiful, and mine." Steele kissed his stomach. "Besides you're reading the clock wrong. It's only nine, and I'm sure I can drag one out of you an hour."
"What about you?"
Steele grinned. "If you're game to trying to get me off with your wings alone, I wouldn't object."
Hezekiel finally succeeded but only after Steele got him off twice more. He wasn't going to win this game, but trying was fun.
He fell asleep at some point. Steele woke him up with a kiss. It was morning, but only barely. Steele's hands were warm and strong. "We have five minutes to get you off, or I'll have to go home."
Hezekiel was too tired for this. "Idiot."
Steele laughed. "Would you be happy after all this effort, for me to leave now?"
"The effort was fun." He opened his eyes wider. "Is Doll okay?"
"He's staying with friends. He won't admit it, but he wants you to win this as bad as I do."
Hezekiel wiped his eyes. Tears were coming again. So close, but hope was bleeding him dry. "Then why didn't you wake me sooner?'
"Because," Steele grinned. "I can get you off in four minutes."
"You can't."
He did and to prove his prowess, he got Hezekiel off one more time before letting him go back to sleep.
Hezekiel woke again with Steele hard at his back. "Are you ever soft?"
"Maybe, but it hasn't happened yet when I'm in bed with a beautiful man."
"Idiot."
Steele laughed. "Breakfast or more sex?"
Hezekiel turned toward the clock. "How much time do we have?"
"Enough for both."
"Then food first."
They had a simple breakfast and slipped back into bed, but Hezekiel had come so many times in the last, what was it, twelve hours, it just didn't appeal. Steele held him and whispered silly things in his ear. He pushed Steele away, but he didn't go far. Hezekiel put his chin on his hands and watched him. "What do you see in me?"
Steele swished away the hairs that had fallen into Hezekiel's face. "More than you see in yourself."
"I get that part."
"I'm the part of Dal that was missing, the part which meant he couldn't be happy with you, but as your Mate, he can't truly be happy without you."
Hezekiel hid his face.
"Besides, who's going to keep Dal busy when you're with Lope? You know how horny he is."
Hezekiel bit his lip. "That's you. How do you see me?"
He had to know. His mind and body were at peace in a way he'd never know before and he'd lose that feeling the moment Steele left.
Steele kissed his nose. "You're a child in a man's body, resting your self-worth in the wrong people. You need better friends."
So true. But how was he to get them when the people he cared about didn't want him? Doll, his parents, his supposed childhood friends. And this whole two Mate thing was enough to keep the demons who weren't bullies from ever trying to get to know him. He should just stop hoping.
Steele tugged Hezekiel's face back up. "I see you as the other father to Dal's children. I see you helping out not because you know that'll make some of the next litter half demons, but because they'll be so small and cute and you love the man who carried them. And maybe me too. You should love me because I'm adorable."
Hezekiel rolled his eyes and hid his smile. "Idiot."
Steele grinned, "Just the way you want me."