fic: terminal (marvel, dark avengers, daken/bullseye)
Title: Terminal
Author: swear_jar
Rating: Fighty times! Some bleeding.
Fandom: Marvel (comicverse)
Pairing(s)/character(s): Daken/Bullseye (UST, otherwise known as “Daken”).
Warning: Daken is a manipulative narcissistic jerk who thinks he's well clever?
Notes: For the “headbutt” square on my fight_bingo card. (I actually could have used “improvised weapons” for this and maybe a couple of other squares too, but whatever, headbutt it is). Thanks to apiphile for betaing any remaining fuck ups are miiine.
Summary: Daken pushes things too far, and then a bit further.
Daken perches on the arm of the couch and blows on his nails. The polish is probably dry, but smudges are ugly.
Lester tenses visibly and inches across the couch. He's really just a sensitive soul. Daken grins to himself and watches him sidelong. He's discarded the Hawkeye mask, which is a relief. The costume's colours are offensive enough without the ridiculous masquerade ball shape of the mask. It's a fact of this farce that they have to wear masks at all, but it's doubly a shame on Lester. He doesn't need it, he wears his true colours on his skin, the same as Daken does.
Mac turns his not-quite-eyes on them from the other corner of the couch.
Daken slides off the couch's arm into the small space Lester's shifted out of. The leather of the couch is still warm.
Mac bares his teeth at the move even with Lester between them, a nervous exaggerated grimace like a very large wolf backed into a corner.
"You look hungry, Mac," Daken suggests.
Mac isn't exactly intelligent, but either by his own slimy nature or by whatever influence the symbiote exerts, he has a good instinct for self-preservation. He doesn't even need a hint of a scent to get him moving, he just glances between them one more time and gets up.
"Yeah I'm gonna go get a couple dozen hotdogs or something," Mac says and edges past them. "Seeya freaks later."
Crude and somewhat accurate, but it's still not very nice. Daken pushes his scent at him, just a taste, and watches as Mac slows and his skin ripples like black satin thrown over a nest of angry ants. His face splits redly and his tongue slices through the air. The symbiote, Daken is almost sure now, smells things this way. Tastes the air the way a snake might, and it chases the taste to where the tips of Daken's fingers are pressed to the black leather of the couch arm.
Daken stops pushing before the red point of its tongue can touch his skin, making himself as scentless as he does when he's around Logan. Mac shakes his head like a dog, his skin ripples once more as if settling back against naked little man inside. Mac squints his big eyes to narrow white lines for a moment, then walks towards the kitchen without looking back at them, as if he hadn't paused at all.
Interesting.
Daken leans back into the couch smiling faintly at idle, ridiculous thoughts about what that symbiote could really be used for.
After a long minute of keeping to himself, hands and eye, he glances sideways and sees Lester is staring.
His lips are curled back in a practised expression of angry, confused disgust that doesn't quite match up with the fine lines around his mouth. Lester smiles more, usually. This is an expression only for Daken. The deepest lines on his face are at the corners of his eyes. There is something pleasing in being able to read a person's face so easily, and being able to shove them right out of their years old comfort zone. Lester is suspicious and angry, and just a little aroused.
The look on his face is as pointed as one of Hawkeye's arrows.
Daken takes his time and lets Lester wind himself up like a little clockwork bomb, ready to blow. He shakes his hands out a final time and taps the top of his index fingernail against his lips to test if the polish is dry. It is, and he holds his fingers out to examine it, slick and perfectly black as Mac's skin. Lester's eyes follow his hands.
He pushes scent at Lester as he turns fully to look at him, runs his nail along his own bottom lip. Lester shifts as if he's going to leave.
"You want me to do yours?" Daken asks, covering with mockery, making Lester forgetful in his anger.
"I want you to fuck off. Go find Karla if you want to have a slumber party. She can give you the clap and then you can curl your hair and talk about boys. I'm trying to watch this fucking game."
The huge flatscreen TV that Mac is usually glued to is on some generic sports channel, and there are muscular men in tight pants swinging large wooden phallic objects. Baseball. How dull. He could point out the homoerotic imagery, but, well. It's a little too easy.
"I honestly have no idea how you can watch this," Daken says instead. There are far better games to be played in life than the ones that require rules.
Lester settles back against the couch, still closer than he would want to be if Daken hadn't pushed just a little. If you're so very disgusted by me, Lester, why don't you move, at least another few inches out of my space? He doesn't say this, because it would break the moment entirely too soon, and Lester would remember he had been about to do just that. He can feel the heat of Lester's thigh so close to touching his. It's far more fun to wait and see how long it will take Lester to realise on his own.
"Yeah, well, I honestly have no idea how you can make googly eyes at Venom," Lester says, slathering the first few words in an ugly mockery of Daken's mixed accent, adding a stereotypical lisp Daken knows very well he does not possess. "Guess you and him have something in common. It's not quite bestiality is it, if you're both animals?"
Daken smiles through the snarl that tap tap taps at the back of his teeth, tightens his jaw. The bones in his arms itch as they slide just fractionally forward. He focuses on what Lester had said first and tried to bury under insults.
Jealous.
Daken's jaw loosens and his grin becomes very real.
He shouldn't push any more now, but he can't help the urge to gloat over his silent victory.
And anything at all would be more fun than watching sports.
"Would you prefer I made eyes at you, Lester?" He turns fully to face him on the couch and pushes a wave of scent at him all at once.
Lester's sneer crumples along with the scar on his forehead, and the movement is projected in muscles of his face before he even twitches a finger.
Daken dodges the first knife, but his choices for the second are limited to throat or shoulder.
Shoulder. Daken jerks as the knife slips in to the hilt.
He lets himself make a little sound that isn't entirely pain. Lester's knives are sharp as scalpels, it doesn't hurt yet.
Lester raises an eyebrow.
The sting hits as he rolls his shoulder, but he leaves the knife where it lays. The second he takes his eye off Lester, he's going to try and slit his throat.
“What do you think?” Lester asks, caustically sarcastic.
Daken wonders if he's aware he's returning Daken's smile, or if he thinks Daken can't see the way his fingers are inching smoothly to the next knife in his belt.
Daken moves, claws snapping out as he throws himself halfway across the couch and grabs Lester's belt with one hand and slices with the other. The both tumble to the floor, and he manages to cut through the belt and toss it across the room, but removing the more typical weapons from Lester's hands is only a temporary advantage. The trick now is keeping everything smaller than the couch out of his reach.
Lester's fingers find his wrists too late, grip bruising but pointless. Daken sheaths his claws. Lester may be less breakable than the average human being, but, adamantium coating the most vulnerable of his bones or not, it would be so easy right now to slip one claw softly between his ribs and into his hard-beating heart.
They twist across the space between couch and coffee table, tumbling and tearing at each other with only the bluntness of their fingers, knees, elbows. Lester's forearm crushes his windpipe and his knuckles find Lester's cheek even as he chokes.
It hurts to punch him the same way it hurts to punch Logan, the bruising in his knuckles flaring and not quite fading before Daken punches him again. It's like punching a brick wall with a layer of silk over the top, and the trick to it is expecting the pain and not pulling the punch. He hits hard enough this time to split the skin on Lester's eyebrow open as his knuckles drags the skin downwards so it tears. Daken's knuckles throb.
They hit the glass coffee table and he scrabbles for Lester's hands, but the world blurs and darkens for a long second and he find himself spinning: Lester smashed his head into Daken's, a clumsy but incredibly effective move. There's no need for precision when you have an adamantium skull.
Daken blinks the stars out of his eyes, tastes blood down the back of his throat. He blinks, the first thing he sees is Lester's bared teeth, an angry grimace, and the second is blood: his claws are shoved though Lester's shoulder, mirroring the knife in his. Red runs down his wrists and Lester doesn't back off even when he twists his hand, he just pushes a palm flat against the hilt of the knife in his shoulder to match him, pressing it in even though it means leaning into the claws though his skin.
He's pinned by Lester's superior weight.
Lester's cheeks are flushed still and he grins because he thinks he has regained the upper hand.
Daken grins back at him and ignores the ugly sensation as his flesh attempts to knit around the blade and push it out while Lester holds it in. He could get Lester off of him in an instant, but he would have to hurt him more seriously than he wants to right now.
Lester's eyes dart around for something to stick in him, and Daken bites his own lips and waits for the split second Lester's attention is focused entirely on what he can kill him with, his eyes on the weapons belt that's landed draped over the back of the couch.
Daken shifts slightly. Lester's kneeling over him, thighs pressed to his sides.
He shoves his hips up against Lester's ass and puts everything he's got into it, grinding his hips and straining until he can breathe not quite into his ear, but close enough.
"Your daddy ever do this to you?" He doesn't have to fake the moan, it feels good pushing against Lester's warm hard flesh through their clothing, particularly as a counterpoint to the pain in his shoulder. It feels really good winning.
Lester snarls and jerks back. It takes half a second to retract his claws, ripping back out of Lester's flesh, keeping him hurting and off balance. He cracks the crown of his head into Lester's nose and hears the muffled, stuffy-sounding fuck as Lester reels. He only needs one hard shove before he's falling sideways, toppling into the clear glass coffee table.
The glass cracks ominously as Lester falls heavily across it, palms slapping down too late to stop the edge digging hard into his ribs. He grasps his side and gasps.
Daken grins as he palms the back of Lester's neck and wishes briefly that Lester didn't shave his head and he digs his fingers and cracks Lester's head through the centre of the table.
The glass shatters and Daken grips him by the neck and the back of his uniform and throws him sprawling just out of reach of all those shards of broken glass.
A miscalculation, Daken feels a quick surge of annoyance at his own stupidity that's left a thousand tiny weapons lying shattered at Lester's fingertips. Now he has to keep Lester down.
He climbs on top of Lester's limp form, and listens to him groan as he settles, just right, against him. He lets out both claws to prick against the sides of Lester's neck, the points resting beautifully against the beat of his pulse like they were spaced between his knuckles just for this.
Lester blinks at him a few long, dazed moments. He's more than half hard.
Daken grinds against him and watches him come back to himself gradually, until his eyes go from soft, unfocussed blue, back to their regular frigid clarity.
"I'm going to rip your eyes out and lobotomise you with my dick," Lester says through gritted teeth. He keeps perfectly still, the only movement from the sluggish trickle of blood above his eyebrow and his throat working as he swallows against the points of Daken's claws. He hawks spit in Daken's face. Incredibly accurately, of course.
"Oh," Daken manages and blinks spit from his eye before laughter explodes out of him like he's been punched, helpless to hold it back. Lester gets it before Daken has the pleasure of pointing it out, and his cheeks redden in a charming imitation of blushing innocence. "You," he takes a breath and does not laugh again, "want to fuck me really badly, don't you Lester?"
It's probably the closest thing he's ever going to get to a proposition, he realises, without years more work.
There are factors, not beyond his control, but things already in motion within Lester. Damage already done, long before he'd decided to play with this messy murderer, long before he'd given him his first sniff. A whole history of terrible and predictable abuse, a string of murders that would look very impressive, perhaps, to someone who didn't have a far more impressive and rather more neat history themselves.
Lester's already tasted and lost himself in obsession, with the spice of genuine madness sprinkled on top. There was even chemical manipulation before him, in the far less subtle form of Norman's supply of anti-psychotics and little blue and yellow attempts at mood control.
Lester would no doubt deny taking those, but the guards assigned to his door were so very gracious, handing Daken the key cards to everyone's private quarters, their knees still shaking visibly and their eyes locked on him. They might have dug out their own livers if he'd asked for them to be put in his hands. The half empty pill bottles in Lester's bathroom didn't lie.
Lester Is as broken and deadly as the shards of glass shattered across the floor. He's never met anyone quite as unable to separate sex and violence, and he'd known a whole host of people who has appreciated both his claws and his ability to heal, when he's let them.
Lester clings to his rage like a lover.
Daken is still weak from laughter when Lester snaps his wrist, risking his own jugular being split wide as he twists. Daken swears and jerks his limp hand away, and Lester can't know it but it's incredibly painful pulling the claws back in between shattered bones. The grin on Lester's face says he's guessed by the way Daken can't help cradle his hand to his chest as he pulls them back in. Daken's lips pull back from his teeth in a snarl.
Lester kicks at him and scrambles across the floor, Daken watches him and wills his hand to get fucking functional faster, as Lester grabs at the shattered remnants of the coffee table.
The first piece of glass cuts across his cheek as Daken rolls, wincing as he crushes his half-healed hand, but the second piece catches his throat and the third hit the same spot but deeper. Lester's looming over him, up on his feet and fading fast with the pump of Daken's heart, black takes over with every... pump.
It's confusing, when he comes back, and Lester is right where he was before, looking down at him. Still looking down at him? No, it's takes longer than that. He'd be surprised if Lester had just stood staring as he'd healed.
Daken moves slowly, reaches and grits his teeth when he hand doesn't obey, a violent throbbing suddenly making itself known. Lester presses his boot toe over Daken's fingertips to keep him still.
“Tsk, tsk. Don't undo my work, or I'll have to re-do it while you're breathing,” Lester says.
Daken turns his head and blinks at the long shard of glass pinning his palm to the floor. Wiggles his fingers under the sole of Lester's boot and winces as Lester presses down on them.
“You know Lester, usually it's more fun if you stick me while I'm breathing.”
Daken cranes his neck and confirms his feet are similarly affixed to the floor. Charming.
“You know, when you're right?” Lester's knee thumps down hard onto his chest and Daken can't breathe, “You’re right.”
Lester spins one of Hawkeye's gaudy arrows over his fingers before driving it home between Daken's ribs, he feels his lung burst and Lester jerks the arrow down and there's a bubbling squeak as air escapes the wound. Half an inch further and it'll pierce his heart.
Their eyes meet and Daken doesn't give him the satisfaction of seeing how very fucking much this hurts.
"Oh yeah. Was that as good for you as it was for me?" Lester asks, head bent and watching Daken's face, eyes taking him in hungrily.
Curled up and straining for a kiss, Lester shoves the arrow again.
Daken comes back, again, grinning. He keeps his eyes closed and just breathes for a second, not wanting to dispel the picture perfect last second from his mind: Lester's half open lips, his tongue darting out to wet them, as he swayed closer.
When he opens his eyes, he winces. Mac is looming over him, large and toothy, his tongue guiltily slinking back between his dagger long teeth.
Next time, he'll be sure not to die anywhere Mac might sniff around. He has no idea if he'd regenerate after being eaten by the symbiote and no particular desire to find out.
"You want a taste, Mac, you only have to ask me," he says and sits up, jerking his hands up hard and fast and taking the glass with him.
Mac jumps back like he's been burned.
Lester is nowhere to be seen. It doesn't matter. He will be back.
Author: swear_jar
Rating: Fighty times! Some bleeding.
Fandom: Marvel (comicverse)
Pairing(s)/character(s): Daken/Bullseye (UST, otherwise known as “Daken”).
Warning: Daken is a manipulative narcissistic jerk who thinks he's well clever?
Notes: For the “headbutt” square on my fight_bingo card. (I actually could have used “improvised weapons” for this and maybe a couple of other squares too, but whatever, headbutt it is). Thanks to apiphile for betaing any remaining fuck ups are miiine.
Summary: Daken pushes things too far, and then a bit further.
Daken perches on the arm of the couch and blows on his nails. The polish is probably dry, but smudges are ugly.
Lester tenses visibly and inches across the couch. He's really just a sensitive soul. Daken grins to himself and watches him sidelong. He's discarded the Hawkeye mask, which is a relief. The costume's colours are offensive enough without the ridiculous masquerade ball shape of the mask. It's a fact of this farce that they have to wear masks at all, but it's doubly a shame on Lester. He doesn't need it, he wears his true colours on his skin, the same as Daken does.
Mac turns his not-quite-eyes on them from the other corner of the couch.
Daken slides off the couch's arm into the small space Lester's shifted out of. The leather of the couch is still warm.
Mac bares his teeth at the move even with Lester between them, a nervous exaggerated grimace like a very large wolf backed into a corner.
"You look hungry, Mac," Daken suggests.
Mac isn't exactly intelligent, but either by his own slimy nature or by whatever influence the symbiote exerts, he has a good instinct for self-preservation. He doesn't even need a hint of a scent to get him moving, he just glances between them one more time and gets up.
"Yeah I'm gonna go get a couple dozen hotdogs or something," Mac says and edges past them. "Seeya freaks later."
Crude and somewhat accurate, but it's still not very nice. Daken pushes his scent at him, just a taste, and watches as Mac slows and his skin ripples like black satin thrown over a nest of angry ants. His face splits redly and his tongue slices through the air. The symbiote, Daken is almost sure now, smells things this way. Tastes the air the way a snake might, and it chases the taste to where the tips of Daken's fingers are pressed to the black leather of the couch arm.
Daken stops pushing before the red point of its tongue can touch his skin, making himself as scentless as he does when he's around Logan. Mac shakes his head like a dog, his skin ripples once more as if settling back against naked little man inside. Mac squints his big eyes to narrow white lines for a moment, then walks towards the kitchen without looking back at them, as if he hadn't paused at all.
Interesting.
Daken leans back into the couch smiling faintly at idle, ridiculous thoughts about what that symbiote could really be used for.
After a long minute of keeping to himself, hands and eye, he glances sideways and sees Lester is staring.
His lips are curled back in a practised expression of angry, confused disgust that doesn't quite match up with the fine lines around his mouth. Lester smiles more, usually. This is an expression only for Daken. The deepest lines on his face are at the corners of his eyes. There is something pleasing in being able to read a person's face so easily, and being able to shove them right out of their years old comfort zone. Lester is suspicious and angry, and just a little aroused.
The look on his face is as pointed as one of Hawkeye's arrows.
Daken takes his time and lets Lester wind himself up like a little clockwork bomb, ready to blow. He shakes his hands out a final time and taps the top of his index fingernail against his lips to test if the polish is dry. It is, and he holds his fingers out to examine it, slick and perfectly black as Mac's skin. Lester's eyes follow his hands.
He pushes scent at Lester as he turns fully to look at him, runs his nail along his own bottom lip. Lester shifts as if he's going to leave.
"You want me to do yours?" Daken asks, covering with mockery, making Lester forgetful in his anger.
"I want you to fuck off. Go find Karla if you want to have a slumber party. She can give you the clap and then you can curl your hair and talk about boys. I'm trying to watch this fucking game."
The huge flatscreen TV that Mac is usually glued to is on some generic sports channel, and there are muscular men in tight pants swinging large wooden phallic objects. Baseball. How dull. He could point out the homoerotic imagery, but, well. It's a little too easy.
"I honestly have no idea how you can watch this," Daken says instead. There are far better games to be played in life than the ones that require rules.
Lester settles back against the couch, still closer than he would want to be if Daken hadn't pushed just a little. If you're so very disgusted by me, Lester, why don't you move, at least another few inches out of my space? He doesn't say this, because it would break the moment entirely too soon, and Lester would remember he had been about to do just that. He can feel the heat of Lester's thigh so close to touching his. It's far more fun to wait and see how long it will take Lester to realise on his own.
"Yeah, well, I honestly have no idea how you can make googly eyes at Venom," Lester says, slathering the first few words in an ugly mockery of Daken's mixed accent, adding a stereotypical lisp Daken knows very well he does not possess. "Guess you and him have something in common. It's not quite bestiality is it, if you're both animals?"
Daken smiles through the snarl that tap tap taps at the back of his teeth, tightens his jaw. The bones in his arms itch as they slide just fractionally forward. He focuses on what Lester had said first and tried to bury under insults.
Jealous.
Daken's jaw loosens and his grin becomes very real.
He shouldn't push any more now, but he can't help the urge to gloat over his silent victory.
And anything at all would be more fun than watching sports.
"Would you prefer I made eyes at you, Lester?" He turns fully to face him on the couch and pushes a wave of scent at him all at once.
Lester's sneer crumples along with the scar on his forehead, and the movement is projected in muscles of his face before he even twitches a finger.
Daken dodges the first knife, but his choices for the second are limited to throat or shoulder.
Shoulder. Daken jerks as the knife slips in to the hilt.
He lets himself make a little sound that isn't entirely pain. Lester's knives are sharp as scalpels, it doesn't hurt yet.
Lester raises an eyebrow.
The sting hits as he rolls his shoulder, but he leaves the knife where it lays. The second he takes his eye off Lester, he's going to try and slit his throat.
“What do you think?” Lester asks, caustically sarcastic.
Daken wonders if he's aware he's returning Daken's smile, or if he thinks Daken can't see the way his fingers are inching smoothly to the next knife in his belt.
Daken moves, claws snapping out as he throws himself halfway across the couch and grabs Lester's belt with one hand and slices with the other. The both tumble to the floor, and he manages to cut through the belt and toss it across the room, but removing the more typical weapons from Lester's hands is only a temporary advantage. The trick now is keeping everything smaller than the couch out of his reach.
Lester's fingers find his wrists too late, grip bruising but pointless. Daken sheaths his claws. Lester may be less breakable than the average human being, but, adamantium coating the most vulnerable of his bones or not, it would be so easy right now to slip one claw softly between his ribs and into his hard-beating heart.
They twist across the space between couch and coffee table, tumbling and tearing at each other with only the bluntness of their fingers, knees, elbows. Lester's forearm crushes his windpipe and his knuckles find Lester's cheek even as he chokes.
It hurts to punch him the same way it hurts to punch Logan, the bruising in his knuckles flaring and not quite fading before Daken punches him again. It's like punching a brick wall with a layer of silk over the top, and the trick to it is expecting the pain and not pulling the punch. He hits hard enough this time to split the skin on Lester's eyebrow open as his knuckles drags the skin downwards so it tears. Daken's knuckles throb.
They hit the glass coffee table and he scrabbles for Lester's hands, but the world blurs and darkens for a long second and he find himself spinning: Lester smashed his head into Daken's, a clumsy but incredibly effective move. There's no need for precision when you have an adamantium skull.
Daken blinks the stars out of his eyes, tastes blood down the back of his throat. He blinks, the first thing he sees is Lester's bared teeth, an angry grimace, and the second is blood: his claws are shoved though Lester's shoulder, mirroring the knife in his. Red runs down his wrists and Lester doesn't back off even when he twists his hand, he just pushes a palm flat against the hilt of the knife in his shoulder to match him, pressing it in even though it means leaning into the claws though his skin.
He's pinned by Lester's superior weight.
Lester's cheeks are flushed still and he grins because he thinks he has regained the upper hand.
Daken grins back at him and ignores the ugly sensation as his flesh attempts to knit around the blade and push it out while Lester holds it in. He could get Lester off of him in an instant, but he would have to hurt him more seriously than he wants to right now.
Lester's eyes dart around for something to stick in him, and Daken bites his own lips and waits for the split second Lester's attention is focused entirely on what he can kill him with, his eyes on the weapons belt that's landed draped over the back of the couch.
Daken shifts slightly. Lester's kneeling over him, thighs pressed to his sides.
He shoves his hips up against Lester's ass and puts everything he's got into it, grinding his hips and straining until he can breathe not quite into his ear, but close enough.
"Your daddy ever do this to you?" He doesn't have to fake the moan, it feels good pushing against Lester's warm hard flesh through their clothing, particularly as a counterpoint to the pain in his shoulder. It feels really good winning.
Lester snarls and jerks back. It takes half a second to retract his claws, ripping back out of Lester's flesh, keeping him hurting and off balance. He cracks the crown of his head into Lester's nose and hears the muffled, stuffy-sounding fuck as Lester reels. He only needs one hard shove before he's falling sideways, toppling into the clear glass coffee table.
The glass cracks ominously as Lester falls heavily across it, palms slapping down too late to stop the edge digging hard into his ribs. He grasps his side and gasps.
Daken grins as he palms the back of Lester's neck and wishes briefly that Lester didn't shave his head and he digs his fingers and cracks Lester's head through the centre of the table.
The glass shatters and Daken grips him by the neck and the back of his uniform and throws him sprawling just out of reach of all those shards of broken glass.
A miscalculation, Daken feels a quick surge of annoyance at his own stupidity that's left a thousand tiny weapons lying shattered at Lester's fingertips. Now he has to keep Lester down.
He climbs on top of Lester's limp form, and listens to him groan as he settles, just right, against him. He lets out both claws to prick against the sides of Lester's neck, the points resting beautifully against the beat of his pulse like they were spaced between his knuckles just for this.
Lester blinks at him a few long, dazed moments. He's more than half hard.
Daken grinds against him and watches him come back to himself gradually, until his eyes go from soft, unfocussed blue, back to their regular frigid clarity.
"I'm going to rip your eyes out and lobotomise you with my dick," Lester says through gritted teeth. He keeps perfectly still, the only movement from the sluggish trickle of blood above his eyebrow and his throat working as he swallows against the points of Daken's claws. He hawks spit in Daken's face. Incredibly accurately, of course.
"Oh," Daken manages and blinks spit from his eye before laughter explodes out of him like he's been punched, helpless to hold it back. Lester gets it before Daken has the pleasure of pointing it out, and his cheeks redden in a charming imitation of blushing innocence. "You," he takes a breath and does not laugh again, "want to fuck me really badly, don't you Lester?"
It's probably the closest thing he's ever going to get to a proposition, he realises, without years more work.
There are factors, not beyond his control, but things already in motion within Lester. Damage already done, long before he'd decided to play with this messy murderer, long before he'd given him his first sniff. A whole history of terrible and predictable abuse, a string of murders that would look very impressive, perhaps, to someone who didn't have a far more impressive and rather more neat history themselves.
Lester's already tasted and lost himself in obsession, with the spice of genuine madness sprinkled on top. There was even chemical manipulation before him, in the far less subtle form of Norman's supply of anti-psychotics and little blue and yellow attempts at mood control.
Lester would no doubt deny taking those, but the guards assigned to his door were so very gracious, handing Daken the key cards to everyone's private quarters, their knees still shaking visibly and their eyes locked on him. They might have dug out their own livers if he'd asked for them to be put in his hands. The half empty pill bottles in Lester's bathroom didn't lie.
Lester Is as broken and deadly as the shards of glass shattered across the floor. He's never met anyone quite as unable to separate sex and violence, and he'd known a whole host of people who has appreciated both his claws and his ability to heal, when he's let them.
Lester clings to his rage like a lover.
Daken is still weak from laughter when Lester snaps his wrist, risking his own jugular being split wide as he twists. Daken swears and jerks his limp hand away, and Lester can't know it but it's incredibly painful pulling the claws back in between shattered bones. The grin on Lester's face says he's guessed by the way Daken can't help cradle his hand to his chest as he pulls them back in. Daken's lips pull back from his teeth in a snarl.
Lester kicks at him and scrambles across the floor, Daken watches him and wills his hand to get fucking functional faster, as Lester grabs at the shattered remnants of the coffee table.
The first piece of glass cuts across his cheek as Daken rolls, wincing as he crushes his half-healed hand, but the second piece catches his throat and the third hit the same spot but deeper. Lester's looming over him, up on his feet and fading fast with the pump of Daken's heart, black takes over with every... pump.
It's confusing, when he comes back, and Lester is right where he was before, looking down at him. Still looking down at him? No, it's takes longer than that. He'd be surprised if Lester had just stood staring as he'd healed.
Daken moves slowly, reaches and grits his teeth when he hand doesn't obey, a violent throbbing suddenly making itself known. Lester presses his boot toe over Daken's fingertips to keep him still.
“Tsk, tsk. Don't undo my work, or I'll have to re-do it while you're breathing,” Lester says.
Daken turns his head and blinks at the long shard of glass pinning his palm to the floor. Wiggles his fingers under the sole of Lester's boot and winces as Lester presses down on them.
“You know Lester, usually it's more fun if you stick me while I'm breathing.”
Daken cranes his neck and confirms his feet are similarly affixed to the floor. Charming.
“You know, when you're right?” Lester's knee thumps down hard onto his chest and Daken can't breathe, “You’re right.”
Lester spins one of Hawkeye's gaudy arrows over his fingers before driving it home between Daken's ribs, he feels his lung burst and Lester jerks the arrow down and there's a bubbling squeak as air escapes the wound. Half an inch further and it'll pierce his heart.
Their eyes meet and Daken doesn't give him the satisfaction of seeing how very fucking much this hurts.
"Oh yeah. Was that as good for you as it was for me?" Lester asks, head bent and watching Daken's face, eyes taking him in hungrily.
Curled up and straining for a kiss, Lester shoves the arrow again.
Daken comes back, again, grinning. He keeps his eyes closed and just breathes for a second, not wanting to dispel the picture perfect last second from his mind: Lester's half open lips, his tongue darting out to wet them, as he swayed closer.
When he opens his eyes, he winces. Mac is looming over him, large and toothy, his tongue guiltily slinking back between his dagger long teeth.
Next time, he'll be sure not to die anywhere Mac might sniff around. He has no idea if he'd regenerate after being eaten by the symbiote and no particular desire to find out.
"You want a taste, Mac, you only have to ask me," he says and sits up, jerking his hands up hard and fast and taking the glass with him.
Mac jumps back like he's been burned.
Lester is nowhere to be seen. It doesn't matter. He will be back.