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If there is one thing that Mapicc and PrinceZam are not, it is consistent. Consistency means the same, over and over again, hitting the same mark every time, the same way.
Mapicc shoves her down onto the bed and stays standing, watching over Zam as she orients herself to look up at him. He kneels down above her, running a hand through her hair.
Sometimes, when Mapicc and Zam have sex they’re angry at each other, he’s her nemesis, she’s prey, they’re going to eat each other alive.
“You’re so pretty when you do what I tell you,” he says to her, and leans down to scrape his teeth along her neck; he is careful enough to not make her bleed but his sharp canines are rough against her skin.
Sometimes they are allies, they are based together, they can’t do anything without the other, and they spend hours in each other’s arms afterwards.
Zam lets out a strained breath, pushing up into Mapicc’s teeth and he is forced to pull back. He slips the straps of Zam’s dress off her shoulders for her and pulls the top down to reveal her chest. The motions are so practiced, such that he could do it with his eyes closed, and he knows Zam would let him. He pulls of his own hoodie, but leaves his undershirt on.
Sometimes it’s in fleeting moments—they’re at spawn and one moment they are fighting and the next her hand is in his pants and his is in her hair.
Mapicc re-positions himself to sit down on Zam’s hips, and he brings her hands together above her head, pinning them down with just one of his. He meets her eyes from above, and they are full of so much emotion it almost scares him. He freezes, staring into twin black holes that threaten to swallow him whole. “Mape, come on,” Zam half-whines, pulling him out of his trance, “Do something.”
So he leans back down, pressing his lips against hers and kisses her again and again, letting his tongue run over her razor-sharp teeth until they draw blood and he lets her drink it. When Mapicc remorsefully leans back, he brings his other hand down to Zam’s lower belly and presses down. Zam’s breath catches and she flushes harder, so Mapicc lets go of her hands and focuses his attention in between her legs.
Zam is a well of emotion and Mapicc is specially entrusted with the ability to tap into that, a fact that he is all too aware of. He wants more than anything to be the same, to show at least a fraction of that emotion from himself to her.
So he pulls her tights down and presses his nose to her body, letting his eyes shutter closed. Mapicc runs his clawed hands up and down her thighs, feeling her shiver with anticipation. She smells not like an abstract concept of home or past or future, she smells like Zam, and she smells like Mapicc’s whole world, and he spares a glance up to look at her face before he goes any farther.
Like glass beads, tears run down Zam’s face and soak into the sheets below. She has one of her hands part ways buried into her mouth, biting down hard to hold back the noise of her sobs. Mapicc freezes.
He pulls back from between her legs, eyes blown wide and he feels his tail slot between his legs like a dog in headlights.
But for all the ‘sometimes’s in the world, Zam is not a crier. She will scream and fight and kill and die but Zam does not cry. It’s so contrary to how she acts, wearing her heart on her sleeve. Zam is a walking oxymoron and that’s part of the appeal—only Mapicc understands her. And he can count on one hand the amount of times he has seen her cry, and he thinks that he has seen it more than any other Lifestealer.
She realizes his abscence, opening her eyes and seeing Mapicc, shell-shocked sitting up at the foot of the bed. But the sight only makes her cry harder. It’s him; it’s Mapicc; all he wants to do is help; he can’t do a thing.
He feels powerless, but there’s nothing he can do but power through. He scrambles up the bed and comes up next to Zam but a century has passed. She is sat up with her knees to her chest, her tears are dried but her eyes are still red. She meets his eyes.
There is still so much emotion in them. “Zam?” Mapicc manages, and he sounds like a child.
“Hi, Mapicc,” she says, with her signature dejected laugh.
He wants to ask what happened. He wants to kiss her again. He wants to deck her across the face. He wants to run away. He never wants to leave. He wants it—wants them—to be like normal. He wants to say, “Do you know how much I love you?”.
“Hey buddy,” he says instead. He knows his ears are pinned against his head and he looks as freaked out as he is feeling. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”
She sniffles. “It’s just—I dunno, you’re Mapicc…” She trails off. “You’re like—a constant, I guess. I mean, you change but we’re still us. And that’s…”
Zam is thinking, brows furrowed, and there is no sign of the passage of time while she does except for the blinking of her eyes, owlish and slow.
“I think it’s scary,” Mapicc says bluntly, partways because he kind of says everything bluntly when it comes to her and partways because it’s the truest thing he’s ever said. “No matter what, you’re constantly there. And—yeah, you can be different but wherever I look, there she is. There’s PrinceZam.”
She smiles because he’s right, he nailed it on the head, and of course he is because he knows her better than she does and they’re both in the same boat here. “Yeah. There’s Mapicc.”
Mapicc and Zam are constant. Constancy means all the time, forever has been and forever will be. Dependably a truth. Steadfast even if they are not steady. Wavering, but the waves are still the ocean.
She reaches over to him and clasps his hand.