Going under (Leek/Lyle)
Brilliant
Lyle is pretty sure it’s a first class idea even if he came up with it totally and irredeemably wasted, well, if you don’t count the bruises or the scars or the constant headaches or Lester’s bursts of anger at his stupidity or that look in Abby’s jaded baby-blue eyes that tells him she knows why he’s doing it even if she has no bloody idea, really or the splitting pain as Leek pushes his cock inside his broken body - scratch that, that’s a perk, or something.
Think
Sometimes Lyle tries to remind himself that he’s not James Bond to go all Mission Impossible on Leek but the merged image of Sean Connery and Tom Cruise is just a bit too painful and he really doesn’t need another headache so he stops thinking altogether.
Caring
When Leek catches him experimentally leaning over a white line of bliss he throws punch after punch with tears of desperate fear in his eyes until Lyle is bleeding and unable to move
OOC
Sometimes he tries to remind himself that self-destruction is rather out of character for him, he’s not Stephen, after all, because if he was then he’d have slept with 99,9% of his colleagues and he would have gone missing, presumed dead, three months ago, and then he wouldn’t be here trying to fuck some information out of Leek.
Memory
When Leek asks if he ever slept with Stephen, with just a bit too much anticipation in his pale eyes, Lyle laughs and says he was that 00,1% Stephen never made a pass at and he wishes to god he could remember if it was a lie but somewhere in this twisted game truth and reality entwined like slick bodies feeding on blood; he could ask Abby, she kept a list of Stephen’s conquests (an they call him a masochist, bah), but he doesn’t care enough for it to be worth facing her pleading blue eyes.
Funny
Maybe he should get some help - but then he looks around in the ARC and bursts out laughing: from who?
Haunted
Sometimes he thinks there are rats or ghosts in the basement, Leek smiles and fucks him hard against the locked door as if his screams could exorcise the wayward spirits - there has been no scratching since.
Gratitude
They want to take him off the project and send him to a specialist, Lyle finds that more than amusing, almost as much as Lester’s impressive manipulation at convincing the board that the ARC is all that’s keeping Lyle together - his pains are rewarded with quick strokes of rough hands and as Lester comes with a hoarse cry Lyle can tell that Lester already regrets keeping him around.
Freefall
Blade’s punch is an offer Lyle knows he cannot take, falling is no fun with a safety net.
Relief
The bright little-boy smile spreading on Leek’s face at the sight of the illuminated Christmas tree is reassurance enough, as long as there are Christmas trees and dinosaurs and anomalies and breakfasts not tasting of blood then maybe things can still get worse.
Pieces
“You need to get out of here,” Helen whispers into his face hurriedly two weeks after he last walked out of the ARC and Lyle is tempted to kiss her, as an anchor to the fading memory of a man he must have loved once but then he remembers that being like Stephen would mean having nothing left in him to break and he’s grown quite fond of breaking so he just turns over and goes back to sleep.
Marks
Leeks is never unequipped, knives, whips, candles, paddles, you name it, until the bed looks like a flea market, but Lyle prefers to be branded with poisonous words against his sweaty skin: “I need you, Jon.”
Curiosity killed the cat?
Lyle just keeps staring at the rotting, but still recognisable corpse in the basement for hours, then he locks the door again and slides back under the covers, wrapping himself around Leek’s naked, heartbreakingly vulnerable form.
