Enucleation

by sadandhorny

Summary:

There's something wrong about Tamsy. A strangeness that you can't quite place. It's always made you wary. So it's fitting that a dust storm would leave you two trapped alone together. Miles away from civilization, where not even the walls around you are enough to make you feel safe.

This day could hardly get any worse, though you're almost paranoid to even have the thought, lest the universe throw a curve ball in your direction just to prove you wrong. That it could indeed get so, so much worse than it is now. Maybe you should count your blessings. You are still alive. That's always a plus — well, you feel mostly alive. Your bones ache, knees pulsing with the dull throb of exertion, and you know that as soon as you make it back to the safety of HQ that you're going straight to bed to pass out.

The trash beasts you had to deal with had been particularly nasty today. Persistent bastards, and they refused to go down. You would have been impressed if the entire ordeal hadn't been so incredibly frustrating. Formidable monsters, made almost impossible to ward off by their scale and ferocity alone. They'd tanked the first barrage of your fire as though the twisting pyres had been nothing. Barreling straight through the heat like the inferno had been flies bouncing from their armored bodies and nothing more.

It had only served to piss you off really. This entire day had gone down the drain as soon as you had managed to track them down. They weren't exactly difficult to find, having wandered a little too close to Hole Town for comfort. Four hulking beasts, all big enough to make the ground tremble whenever they took a step. Team Eager had been assigned to deal with them before they could do any damage, and by Team Eager you mean yourself and Tamsy, because Delmon had requested the day off. To do what exactly, you aren't sure. As far as you know, the guy doesn't even have friends outside of work (not like any of you do, honestly), so you don't have the faintest clue as to what he could be doing.

Knowing him he's out trying to buy exotic plants on the black market again.

It's not the fact that he's gone that's the problem. You can manage trash beasts just fine on your own. You have before and you'll have to in the future. It's the fact that Delmon's absence has left you alone with him.

You could say that it's a blessing in a way. It can get grating, listening to Tamsy's irritated huffing when Delmon projects his voice a little too loudly — which is near constantly. His absence offered a reprieve from that. But on the flip side of the coin, it also meant that you would be alone. Just you and Tamsy. With no other soul around for miles.

You'd think after all of this time in Team Eager, you would have grown used to him by now. But there's always been something strange about him. Something that you've never been able to properly place. It settles around him like an invisible veil, an undercurrent, projected around his body in a field that no one seems to be able to peek through. It prickles at your skin, the kind of primal unease that happens when you're in the sights of something that you can't properly comprehend. Dangerous. Like a predator lying in wait, anticipating the moment it can flash its fangs and bite.

Paranoid.

That's what you've come to call yourself. Or maybe a little crazy. It's the pollution probably. The fumes have finally gone to your head. Realistically, he's given you no reason to assume anything insidious. He's always been kind. Welcoming to you even when you were brought into HQ clad in torn clothes, soot and grime and blood smeared across your face.

A supportive teammate. That's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Tamsy. He's aloof, always walking around with an air of placid reticence, but as much as he unsettles you, he's reliable. That's an aspect of his nature that can't be denied. He's proven that he's tactful, a mindful comrade out on the field time and time again and today was no different. He was always there to back you up, seamlessly slotting himself within the line of danger when the beasts had weaved outside the path of your fire.

All it had taken was for him to bind a pair of them in place, the wide scope of his thread slicing through the thick atmosphere with a speed and agility that's always left you a little breathless. In the blink of an eye, he had them trapped where they stood, living garbage and rusted steel left to struggle as any caught animal would. They were as good as dead once they were arrested within his grasp, two insects twitching flutily on the adhesive silk of a spider's web.

It had given you a good opening with your attention and power reduced from four beasts to a more manageable pair. You didn't have to worry that he wouldn't be able to handle the other two. You knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had them right where he wanted them, and now that they had been spun within Tokushin's threads, you were able to focus your attention into a more narrow scope.

Your flames had become more direct, more focused with your targets decreased to a smaller number, and the fire that spilt from your vital instrument had burned hotter; it licked and swept wide and high. In a burst of a lashing gold and searing red, they had been gone. Obliterated, eaten away by heat as though they never existed at all. Reduced to ash and fragmented rubble that glowed like embers, winking dimly before completely dying out on the parched, toxic earth.

And it was all thanks to Tamsy's help.

It sets your teeth on edge.

But the universe wasn't finished in its goal to irritate you.

A damned dust storm of all things had swept up. You swear that bastard on the TV hadn't mentioned anything about it, but it was there. A thin, but blatant bruise on the blank horizon. Dark and troubling, like a warning of what was to come. You knew what it was as soon as you'd seen it. You've spent enough time out in the field to notice the subtle shifts in things. You both have. There wasn't any denying what it was that you were looking at. It had seemed miles away, but the speed that it was moving at was quicker than the eye could properly track, growing larger — closer by the second.

It wasn't anywhere near as brutal as the damage that a Trash Storm could dish out, but dust storms still hold enough violent force to flay through skin. And it would only be minutes before howling wind and dust would be upon you, spitting air so wildly that the fine sand blowing through the storm would be lethal enough to rip through your clothes like bullets.

Hole Town couldn't have been more than ten miles away, but without a vehicle close by, it might as well as been in an entirely different dimension. You two would die long before you'd ever reach it. But it was by sheer luck that you had passed an old scattering of dilapidated buildings earlier. An odd cluster of them far outside the limits of Hole Town, and they couldn't have been more than a few miles off. Sure, they had looked like they were being held together by hopes and dreams, but they were the most viable option for shelter against the oncoming storm.

You were able to see them with your naked eye, tiny and in the far distance, dark dots on the dunes ahead. Torn, flimsy shanties, but they'd be better protection than just the clothes on your backs. If you hesitated any longer, you'd both be dead. Torn apart by sand and shrieking wind.

You hadn't spared a single though when you had snatched ahold of Tamsy by the back of his coat, scuffing him like a cat with a hasty, "We've gotta get the hell out of here Tams."

He didn't have time to properly spit out a complaint, only a clipped "What are you do—" before you were flicking your lighter open behind you. Fire had spilt from the Zippo in a powerful stream, heat and energy spilling out like thrusters. In a single breath you two were being hurtled through the air in a smooth arch, fast enough that you would narrowly escape the dust storm before it could sweep you up inside of its reach.

It sounds angry outside now. A relentless wail. Shrill as it claws across the structure of the shack, tearing at the shutters, heaving at the metal panels that create the roof like it wants to tear it apart. The building groans from the weight of the storm. Shifting with metallic sighs and groans. The entire structure wobbles around you, rusted walls flexing like a spasming throat, thrumming from a scream that it longs to release. A pained wail like the badgering of the tempest physically pains it.

You feel as though you're being swallowed whole. Eaten alive. But you aren't sure if it's the storm that you should blame for that, or him.

He's seated himself on the other end of the shack, legs crossed at the ankles, back slumped against the tattered cushion of an old, collapsed sofa. His eyes are shut, expression calm and unbothered, as though he can't hear the wind howling outside. He looks peaceful despite the circumstances. His chest rises and falls, gentle beneath the layers of his uniform, a steady rhythm that softly lifts his hands from where he's folded them across his stomach. You could almost let yourself believe that he'd fallen asleep, but you know better.

The room is dark; any possibility of light having been mostly blotted out by the storm outside. The only scraps of it that exist come from your Zippo. And the glow of it blinks in and out of existence from how you listlessly flick the lid open, thumb catching on the flint wheel long enough to spark a flame only for you to snuff it out second later with the flick of your wrist. The lid snaps shut with a thin noise, but a split second later you jerk it back open, over and over again.

A small fire gutters on its hidden wick, tiny but bright. Bobbing around in place, blue and amber. The shine it casts spills across the room, creating shadows in the corners, painting the walls an oily hue. It swathes over him, tracing over his shape in warm strokes, catching on the strands of his hair in muted flecks of gold. If you allowed yourself to think of it for longer the necessary, you'd even go as far as to acknowledge that he actually looks pretty with that tranquil look on his face. The shape of his mouth settled in a relaxed pout, lashes thick and heavy against the ridge of his cheek bones.

You find yourself staring at him like this more and more now, like some kind of freak. It happens without you being aware of it, like your mind is trying to figure him out on some subconscious level. That if you study him enough, the answer might reveal itself to you in some microexpression playing across his face. You swear that you've noticed hints of what lies beneath the surface before —or at least you've convinced yourself that you have. A glimpse behind the curtain in the form of kind smiles that are a little too strained around the edges or words that are too clipped to be truly noble. But really, it's his eyes that betray the most.

You see slivers of emotions break through the façade. Blink and you'll miss it glimmers so fleeting that half the time you believe that you've completely imagined them. And maybe you have.

Tamsy is an enigma in his own right. His entire existence is a mystery to you, held far beyond your reach, and nothing seems to encapsulate that daunting feeling more than his eyes. After all of this time, you still haven't quite been able to figure out what color they are, analyzing them from a distance as best as you possibly can, but you haven't been quite able to nail it yet.

More often than not, they seem like some kind of shade of yellow, but on occasion, you swear you've seen them shift with fragments of gray. The color of metal, cold and detached, the silver flash of a blade caught within the expanse of a muted amber. But when he uses his jinki, they become something else entirely. Bright and electric blue scintillating within the rings of fiery iridescent irises.

A kaleidoscope of hues. Sunlight trickling through stain glass.

"Would you please stop fiddling with that thing."

Of course, he has to go and ruin the moment.

He didn't yell, but he doesn't have to. Tamsy isn't the type to shout, and even when he reprimands someone, the pitch his voice reaches could hardly be considered aggressive. His tone was raised certainty, only by a small scale, but the firmness behind it has you going still. When you sweep your attention back over to his corner of the room, his expression has hardly changed except for the subtle furrow that's wedged between his brows. Though he hasn't bothered to open his eyes to look at you, you can feel his annoyance, scattered across the space between your bodies, prickling like an itch.

"Alright, damn. There's no need to bite my head off," you snap, venomous and exasperated. It left you more aggressively than you intended, but the following apology never leaves your lips. Instead you close your Zippo shut with a sharp twitch of your wrist, and when it snaps closed this time, you don't flick it back open again. You leave the room in darkness, and the only thing that keeps it from drowning in a horrible silence is the wind screeching outside.

"You aren't subtle." It's said softly, but the accusation hangs heavy in the air.

"Hmm? What do you mean?" You tilt your head to look at him as best as you can through the shadows that eclipse the shack. It takes a second for your vision to adjust to the dark, but once it does you can make out the outline of his body, a vague silhouette still perched on the sofa, hair pale underneath the gloom.

"Staring at me like that. You do it quite often. Is there something on your mind that you'd like to share?"

You're actually glad now that your lighter isn't on, because you don't know if you'd be able to handle it if he opened his eyes and looked at you right now. Not to be dramatic, but you're pretty sure that you'd die on the spot. You should have expected this, really. Not much slips past Tamsy. He's exceptionally perceptive, it's one of the things that makes him such a valuable teammate to have out on the field. All sharp wit and cunning.

You've been kidding yourself this entire time to think that he hadn't noticed. Or maybe you'd just been too caught up in your own mind to truly try and be discreet about it. Now that you've been caught, you struggle to formulate a proper response. You could be honest about the entire thing. You are on the same team after all; there's not much use in having secrets. But what the hell are you supposed to tell him? That his vibe his off? That he seems a little weird to you for absolutely no reason and so you've been watching him like some kind of creep?

Your face cringes, mouth twisting in a grimace as though you've swallowed something bitter and you're thankful that he can't actually see it.

You feel words forming on your tongue, but they don't actually take a proper shape. Not enough for them to be pronounced, to make it out from the trap of your teeth. You just sit, back tense from where it's pressed against the uncomfortable support of the wooden chair you've been resting on. The rails dig into your spine, harsh and biting through the layer of your clothes.

You know that he's waiting for a proper response, patient and relaxed on his corner of the shack while you're busy tussling with your internal struggle.

"Your eyes."

That's the explanation you spit out instead of the truth. But it's not technically a lie. It borders on honesty just enough that maybe he won't be able to tell that you aren't entirely being candid with him. You almost feel silly for it. That strange instinct to hold your suspicions close to your chest. (Suspicions of what, exactly?) They're so inexplicable that you aren't sure yourself. It's only an urge, deep seeded, rooted somewhere down in your marrow that keeps the confession from slipping free. You feel that odd paranoia creep up the back of your neck, like fingers tracing over the flesh there to raise your hair on end.

Your voice catches in your throat and you sweep the pad of your thumb over your lighter to collect yourself, tracing the familiar grooves of the engravings on your skin. You've known Tamsy for a while, long enough to become intimate with the kind of person he is. You've spent free time with him and Delmon, chatting amongst yourselves inside the booth of some hole-in-the-wall restaurant, laughing and recounting missions while you eat. You've gone out of your way to tease him, joking and prodding at him all out of the intention to get under his skin, to see his lips tug into a bothered frown. And despite all of that, it never fails for that odd worry to creep its way inside of your head like a cold draft sweeping inside a house. Drifting in though the cracks and crevices.

Tamsy is a paradox. Pleasantly familiar and yet completely other. Like a stranger wearing the face of a loved one you never had.

"What about them?" He asks. His voice is as gentle as it always is. Gliding through the bleak atmosphere with an almost hypnotic quality.

"I've never been able to really figure out what color they are. Whenever I think I've finally pinned down the shade, it's like they go and shift into something completely different. It's frustrating."

He hums, not in agreement or rebuff, just acknowledgement. It sounds almost musical. Bells chiming in the distance. But what he says next is more comparable to a bomb detonating. You feel the impact of it explode inside of your chest.

"If you're really that curious, you could come in for a closer look."

He says it was no consequence. As if it was nothing. Now you actually hate that it's dark, that the storm outside has shunned even the most delicate scraps of light because you wish that you could properly see him. Though you're sure that his expression probably hasn't changed. He's probably just as serene as before, eyes closed, hands draped over his stomach.

You can somewhat make out the shape of his body, and he hasn't so much as twitched since this entire interaction has begun. You see the hair that he has done up despite the dark, vaguely visible through the shadows from the pale color of its tresses. The long, blond strands spanned out to frame his head like great antlers or the plumage of a striking bird.

You've never exactly put Tamsy above you. In talent regarding his handling vital instrument, absolutely, but in terms of being a teammate, you're both equals. But right now, he seems so far beyond you, shrouded in shadows. A figure from a myth, past basic human understanding. You've hardly felt like you've been in control this whole day, but whatever confidence you were holding onto has been singlehandedly tugged out from beneath your feet with nothing more than a few words from him. Worse than all of that, is that you're not entirely sure if that was his intention. If he only means to tease or if he's being authentic.

"Are you being serious?"

He has to be joking.

"Come now, we've been co-workers long enough, it's nothing embarrassing." You hate how polite he sounds, like he's genuinely entertaining your inquisitiveness. No taunting or underhanded intentions, just pure cordiality. "I have no problem in indulging your little fascination with me."

"Ugh, you make it sound so weird."

"Do I?"

He actually sounds surprised and somehow that's so much worse than if he was mocking you. This whole thing is stupid. There's no reason why this situation in particular has you tripped up. You've been in circumstances so much more compromising than this. You've literally sat in his lap before, your group and Team Akuta all smashed into the same vehicle, contained within the walls like peaches packed inside a can. You'd be uncomfortably wedged between Tamsy and Zanka, and when the car had abruptly swerved over a rough patch of terrain thanks to Enjin's exceptional driving, the jerk of the wheel had sent you careening into his space (not that you hadn't already been in it, technically).

You hadn't realized that you'd gripped onto his thigh in an effort to stabilize yourself, but before you could attempt to right yourself and fit your body back between the sliver made from his and Zanka's shoulders, Tamsy had grabbed onto your waist. His hands were just there. Firm around the shape of your hips and then he was guiding you onto the seat of his lap, voice brushing against your ear and purring out a low, "Is this okay?" that you had struggled to respond to. You all but forced yourself to practically spit out the confirmation that it was, breath catching on the rapid pulse of your heart.

You awkwardly sat there on his thighs, trying desperately not to focus on how he felt beneath your body. How good he smelt, perfumed by something light and fresh. You especially tried not to notice how Zanka had passed you looks from the corner of his eyes, brows furrowed like he wasn't sure if what he was seeing was truly happening. You were just thankful that Rudo had been passed out, slumped and drooling against the door and that Enjin was too focused on driving to glance back in the rear-view mirror. You never would have heard the end of it if either of them had they noticed how you were curled against Tamsy's chest, his hands still holding onto your waist.

You swear that his fingers had swept over you, tracing vague shapes over the fabric of your uniform. Absentminded, but terribly intimate.

But this somehow has you on edge. Maybe it's how he offered it. All casually, voice stretching out in the soothing hum, as though it was nothing. It would be easier to believe that he was only teasing you, and you almost hoped that he was.

"The wide-eyed, ignorant look doesn't suit you Tamsy." The accusation slips from you before you can fully process it. Low but heated around the edges. You grip onto your lighter harder, squeezing it within your palm in a desperate attempt to ground yourself. It doesn't work.

The quiet that follows is uncomfortable. Well, as silent as it can be with the squall outside screaming and tearing at the shack like it might be able to rip its way inside if its persistent enough. Maybe you'd let it put you out of your misery if it did. Allow it to snatch you up within its current and cut you down to the bone. That would be more merciful than whatever the hell this is.

Your paranoia is a chill, and it had crept in since day one. He was so pleasant when you'd first met, welcoming you onto the team with a warmth that had unsettled you, that you had been convinced had been fake. But you had assumed that everyone at the Cleaners HQ had simply been luring you in to a false sense of security. They had all urged you into the fold with little fanfare, no hoops to jump through or grueling tests. All it had taken was a simple evaluating glance from Semiu and it had been done. You were one of them.

You hadn't believed it at first. You expected some sort of catch. It was a dog-eat-dog world, and kindness wasn't bestowed freely. But they'd given you a roof over your head, a place to call home, a family, and Tamsy had been there to guide you through it all. He and Delmon were the two people who had taken care to show you the ropes, to assist you in getting your footing in the new territory that had been set out before you, and they did so with incredible patience.

But as nice as Tamsy has always been to you, there was something to him that you never could quite place. His kind words, his tender smiles, the way that he's always there to rush in at the first sign of danger to push you out of its path. You think that it all just may be hollow. But you can never come up with a solid reason as to why and it's maddening. There's nothing more than that tingling along your spine, a persistent flutter behind your ribs that urges you to stay vigilant. To look out for a threat that you know isn't really there.

Tamsy has only ever been a good teammate to you. Diligent, reliable. He's a familiar comfort, the kind of person that you'd follow into a fight without hesitation. It makes the uncertainty that's creeping down your back feel like a betrayal. As though you've somehow harmed his trust by just thinking that maybe there's something lurking beneath the surface, right behind his eyes. A danger that you know doesn't exist, but your subconscious demands that it does anyway.

You're going insane and there's nothing you can do about it.

"You know, I've always had the feeling that you've never liked me all that much," Tamsy reveals. No warning, no preamble.

Your skin crawls. "What makes you say that?"

You see the outline of him shift in the dark, the slightest tilt of his head but it makes you feel trapped all the same. As though you've foolishly stumbled into the direct path of a predator.

"You say that wide-eyed ignorance doesn't suit me, well it certainly doesn't suit you either. Don't play coy." His voice is calm. Hitting the same steady notes that it always does, placid and amiable, but there's something else there beneath the veneer. Something sharp. Like a bite. But it's subtle, so minute that maybe you've only just imagined it.

"I don't hate you Tamsy," you answer and it tastes like ash on your tongue. But you don't hate him. Not really. You've tried to, keeping yourself off at an arms length, hiding the tenderness you feel for him behind snide comments and sarcasm. You think that might just be impossible with how important he's become for you. He's a permanent fixture in your life. The ground beneath your feet, a hand guiding you forward. And maybe that's what this all is. It's fear. A fear for the worst. That maybe, he'll turn out like all the others. That he's only here to use and discard, a carrion picking meat from a bone. That once he's used you for all of your worth, he'll discard you. Toss you away like all the other garbage down here.

"No? Then what is it?" He presses, tone flowing like the soft trickle of water.

"I, uh. . . " you sigh lowly and shrug. "It's nothing really. Just personal shit. Dumb stuff." Your reassurances feel flimsy, even to you. Weak on your tongue. But you try to salvage it as best as you can, hoping that he won't be able to sniff out your trepidation. You will yourself to smile, instinctively shaping your expression into one of joy; your voice comes out teasing. "I mean come on, you know you're my favorite team member."

"Oh, really? Well don't let Delmon hear that, you'll break his heart."

For a moment, it's nice. This casual back and forth. The sort that you're used to engaging with him, and you're almost able to forget your paranoia entirely. For a split second, it flickers, water sprinkled on a small flame, and you're able to sit and enjoy his presence unencumbered. And you've been like this before with him. Sometimes you find yourself sitting at the bar on base with him, unplanned. Two creatures in the night, silent, lost within your own worlds but only feet apart. Connected by proximity only. Quiet, solitary, all while everyone else sleeps soundly within their rooms.

And the two of you will just sit, idle beneath the warm lights and burning neon. Something about it feels private. A secret only for you both. An indulgence that you weren't entirely aware you've been committing.

You rarely ever speak and yet a connection has tethered between you, translating far more than words ever could. A hushed, reluctant companionship. An ease that you've been hesitant to name, much less acknowledge. The simplicity and assurance that comes with just sitting with someone, hearing the gentle rise and fall of their breath, feeling the low brush of their body heat seeping past the barrier of your clothes. No expectations, no promises, just the presence of another.

Damn, he's dug his way past your skin, and you hadn't even realized it until now.

You hardly notice he's moving until you register the hushed shuffle of footsteps brushing along the floor, the wooden boards creak lowly under their moving weight, barely discernable beneath the shriek of the storm. You can hardly see him at all in the dark; there's only the sound of his approach, diluted from the wind that tugs and rips at the corners of the shack, making the metal whine like a wounded beast.

You're an animal that's fallen inside a snare. Made as still as a statue while you wait for him to come closer, lungs motionless within the cavity of your chest. It's only once he's directly in front of you that you're finally able to make out his shape, traced over in scant, muted brushes of light. His stare locks onto yours through the cover of the shadows, appraising and weighted, like he's searching for something, and it strips you bare. He's so close that you can feel the heft of his coat press against your knees. You have to angle your head back to properly see him from where you're sitting, but it only feels like you're baring your throat.

He just stands there, a figure looming in the dark.

"You good Tams? You're being kind of creepy."

He doesn't respond. He lets you stew in the silence. In the anticipation. Of what, you aren't sure, but it's there, thrumming inside of your bones and veins like a second heartbeat.

And then he's lowering himself, hunching himself over until he's balanced only on the balls of his feet, crouched so that now he's the one who's looking up at you. Despite the shift in perspectives, you still feel as though you're being stared down upon, not him. Even in the dark, the way he's watching you is flaying. It's like his gaze has locked you in place, an insect pinned down on a cork, exoskeleton carefully dissected to display its delicate insides. It makes your skin prickle, nerves flaring with cold and heat, a conflicting reaction that has your breath snagging in your throat.

"Spark your vital instrument."

His order coils through the atmosphere, almost melodic. Your hand seems to take on a life of its own to heed the command, thumb slipping up to nudge the lid from its place with a metallic click. You can't manage to tear your focus from his face, not with how intently he's observing you. Attention narrowed down and settled on you with a weight of its own. It seems to glide over you, murmuring over your flesh like soft hands mapping over the shape of your body.

When you strike the flint wheel, the flame flares to life and dances. Wobbling on its wick, and as it twitches, the glow spills over the room like gold paint spreading across a worn canvas.

His eyes are there in the shadows. Made incandescent from the small fire. They graze over somewhere close to your soul. Too deep, pressing where they shouldn't. A place that's too vulnerable, one that you want to pretend doesn't exist. But now, it's like you're forced to confront it. That hesitant warmth that rests within the pit of your chest, delicate and saccharine, humming like a second pulse. It expands against your will, fluttering and molten, shifting like a roused animal beckoned by the weight of his stare.

He's unfairly pretty. Made of rounded edges, almost cherubic in nature. You can't help but admire the soft shape of his cheeks and the pronounced swoop of his nose; eyes framed with lashes that are unnecessarily thick. You've always been jealous of them, as long and full as they are. Just another part of him that's stupidly beautiful.

The scar on his face isn't enough to mar how attractive he is. It's just another thing that makes him more of a mystery to you. For as long as you've known him, you've never bothered to ask about it. And he's never attempted to divulge, to share what had harmed him, or who. But you know that he has more scars than just one. Gnarled, pink flesh peeks out past the collar of his button-up, raised with old and damaged tissue. The fringes of it, just like the one that spills down the right side of his face, are jagged and broken, like glass that's been dropped and shattered.

You almost dare to ask him about it now, but decorum keeps the question from slipping free. You can't be sure if he's insecure about the wounds, if being reminded of them would dredge up hurtful memories. He's never struck you as particularly ashamed of them. He doesn't shy away when people gawk or stare. There's been a number of times while ambling down packed street corners or interacting with civilians from neighboring towns that he's been openly goggled at. Mostly by children, too young to understand that what they're doing could be perceived as rude. But he's never shied from the attention, never wavered or flinched like it made him uncomfortable inside his own skin.

Still . . . you can't manage to ask. The very notion of it feels like too much. Like if you dared to prod at the mystery, if you went digging for answers that weren't freely given to you, then you might not like what you'd find.

The flame sways on its wick unsteadily, caught within a fleeting draft sneaking in from the outside storm. It wobbles unsteadily, like it might just tip over from where it burns and vanish. But it doesn't. It persists, still bright, bathing the ramshackle space in a dusky radiance.

The light of it reflects in his eyes, and finally you can see them so clearly from the aid of your proximity. His irises are a motley of shades. An almost cosmic burst of champagne, pale and mesmerizing, broken up by scattered fragments of gray and dusty brown. The two hues that you've always struggled to nail down, trying to guess if it was one or the other, but it's actually both. Delicate flecks of silver and muted bronze. It's like the cosmos are held within in his eyes, nebulous, stardust and sunlight, caught within the cradle of his skull.

Just like the rest of him, his eyes are pretty. So, so pretty—

A burn bites at the edge of your thumb, and were you not used to it, you might have dropped your lighter. The pain douses you with reality. You snap back into yourself, and it's with a cold realization that you become aware of how close you've leaned within Tamsy's proximity. So close that the point of your nose is separated from him by only a few scant inches, close enough that if you angled your head by a hair or two, they'd brush against each other.

You flick your Zippo shut with an abrupt jerk of your wrist. The noise cuts across the atmosphere, seeming to sever through whatever spell clouded your judgement and made you tilt towards him, back bowed like a flower straining to reach the sun.

The dark engulfs the shack once again, and while under its cover you allow yourself to lean back. The chair groans with the shifting of your weight, a punched out, thin noise. Your palm squeezes tight around your vital instrument, fingers sweeping over the engravings made into the metal, the familiar texture of scales and the shallow lines that make flared wings felt beneath your thumb.

You don't hold onto it for much longer even though letting it go feels like giving up a lifeline. You slip it down safely inside the front pocket of your pants, and you cherish the weight of it on your thigh.

The shadows aren't enough to protect you. They can't make you feel unseen. You're terribly exposed, stuck underneath the persistent hold of his stare. But it's the subtle press of his knees against the front of your legs that give you no other option but to be aware of how near he is.

"Did you finally figure it out."

It creeps out lowly through the dark, satin gliding, rich and delicate. The sound of his voice makes you motionless. As angelic as it is, something about it makes ice scatter over your flesh, goose bumps raising; unsettled and captivated all at once.

"What?" You ask dumbly.

"My eyes, remember?" He clarifies, and he almost sounds amused. "You wanted to know what they looked like."

"Oh, yeah." You adjust on your seat again. A simple attempt to keep your mind centered on something that isn't him. He's so close that you can smell him, clean musk and resin. Far more mouthwatering than he has any right being considering that he spends his days fighting sentient garbage piles.

"You seem nervous."

There's barely any light to properly see. It's all vague outlines and silhouettes and yet he's still able to see you so clearly. You're sure he can hear it, the wariness held inside of your voice, the way it trembles around its fringes.

"I do?" You're playing dumb now. Like feigning ignorance might save you from wherever this interaction is heading. You already know that it's a lost cause. Worse than the need to stay afloat, to try and keep ahead of whatever this conversation is, is that you don't think you'd actually mind getting swept under it. Not really.

"You do," he replies. Point blank, blunt. "You know you can talk to me about anything, don't you? We are teammates after all. It's important that we're able to speak to each other about things that might make us uncomfortable."

His amiability chills you to the bone for reasons you can't name, not even after all this time. But it makes that stupid, starved thing inside your chest grow bigger, throbbing like a hunger pain. You like it when he gets like this, caring, gentle. It makes the paranoia that haunts the corners of your mind go numb. The longing that you've been carrying with you, an open chasm, a wound torn behind the protection of your ribs cage, is placated. Soothed by words that you've always wanted to hear.

It's awful, more than a little pathetic how deeply you want him.

You really are hopeless.

"I know—"

You don't get the opportunity to try and save yourself. To make excuses and pull yourself back together, because the chance is stolen from you before you could take it.

His hand cups the side of your face. You stop breathing.

This isn't the first time he's touched you. It's pretty common to sustain injuries on the job, and on occasion you've all helped each other as best as you can while out on the field. As a team, you're all familiar with the motions of cleaning lacerations made by trash beasts or making temporary braces for sprained ankles and wrists while out on the field. You've done it for Delmon and Tamsy before and they've done it for you. Caring for each other is all second nature, as easy as breathing, and the skin-on-skin contact is obligatory.

But this is so much different. This isn't done out of necessity. He already had your attention and he knows that, and yet he's gone out of his way to hold you anyway. His palm is warm, fingers spanning around your ear, thumb moving in a short caress over the swell of your cheekbone. A gesture so small it almost didn't seem real.

It leaves you stuck. Seized under the tender weight of his hand.

When he speaks next, it's said softly. Like he's making a confession that he only trusts you with. "You know, you worried me earlier today, trying to take on all of those trash beasts all at once. It's been a while since you've been so impulsive. If I'm being honest, it worried me a bit."

Suddenly you're stripped bare. Exposed in a way that you haven't been in a long time. And he is right. You haven't been so reckless in a while, not since you'd first become a Cleaner. Back when you were a little younger and had something to prove. When you would run directly into the fray without bothering to properly gauge the situation before you did. You didn't worry about danger, or death. All that mattered was that you would become stronger, that your worth to the team would be solidified. Made undeniable.

But today hadn't been that. You were trying to outrun your own thoughts, and combat, the heat of your fire scorching earth and breathing metal, is the surest way to do that. You hadn't bothered heeding Tamsy's warning from where it rose out behind you. You only acted, ignoring him because it was easy, because it got under his skin. Charging in towards monolithic jaws flashing with jagged, steel teeth, flames pouring from your instrument in a blaze. It was all to try and escape the pandemonium inside your head. To shake free of the voice that murmurs and chants that you can't trust him, you never could.

That can't be the truth though, can it? He's here now, crouched in front of you, holding onto your cheek as though you're something fragile and important. Like you could break if he handled you too roughly, and he's trying to diligently to keep that from happening.

You've encountered manipulative people all your life. Those who only wanted to use and pick you clean for all you were worth, demoting you down to little more than a tool. A thing to be used and cast aside once your purpose had been fulfilled. Murderers, petty thieves, the lowest of the low who feed on the weak and indulge in cruelty, they all have the same look in their eyes. And Tamsy isn't one of them. You know this, and yet that little voice, the very one that kept you alive when you'd lurk within grimy alleyways and fight inside blood-soaked basements for money, won't shut up.

It screams from the sidelines, demanding to be heard. But for the first time in what seems like forever, you choose to ignore it.

You draw in a tight breath, all but willing your lungs to expand in order to draw in a gulp of oxygen, and you hope that it will help clear your head. All you want to do now is lean into him. To bask in the warmth his skin provides.

"You're right," you admit. "It was dumb of me. I don't know what I was thinking."

"You weren't." The tension that seeps into his tone surprises you. The faintest traces of irritation coiling underneath his usual placidity in an undercurrent. A riptide you didn't realize you were wading towards. A tremble skips down your spine, but it isn't out of fear. It's a different animal entirely. One that you always knew was there, pacing around the corners of your subconscious, but one you never dared to confront. But it's here now, and with him so close, the traces of his body heat and scent curling around you, you have to see it for what it is.

Maybe it's the darkness the storm provides that emboldens you, but something that feels a lot like courage ignites deep in your gut, white-hot and vibrant. You're no stranger to having disagreements with Tamsy. You're both able to go from squabbling to being cordial at the flip of a switch, a phenomenon that not even you understand. But it's so common that the occasional back and forth's have long since become a facet of your dynamic that everyone back at HQ has accepted. And whatever this is — this new, unexplored territory that's expanding out in front of you, seems a lot like that. It's perilous but also perfectly familiar, an intoxicating blend that nearly blindsides you with how much you like it.

You lips shape into a smile, one that he must feel more than he sees. The corner of your mouth twitching beneath the heel of his palm. "Would you believe me if I said I'm sorry?"

He actually leans closer to you. You hear the rustle of fabric as he moves, and your eyes struggle to track the vague outline of his body when he tilts his head up to properly assess you. He watches you through the shadows, eyes narrowed. But it's not aggressive. It's the heavy-lidded look that comes from someone who's intrigued. Who's been surprised and pleased with an outcome they didn't expect.

His breath sweeps over your face and the hand on your face flexes like he's tempted to squeeze. Like he might sink his fingers in hard enough to leave bruises while he pulls you in closer.

"No."

All of a sudden, you're standing in front of a yawning precipice. A chasm that runs deep. One that if you dare to step forward and plummet, you might not come back out the same. But the trepidation that might have held you back once seems to thaw. Snow bared to smoldering coals.

"Is there some way that you might be able to forgive me?"

You hardly recognize yourself. The voice that reaches your ears is hardly your own. You've teased him before but never like this. All of the taunts that you've snubbed at him in the past have been out of irritation or a playful malice, but this is provocative. Saturated with something hungry and wanting. You don't even know what you're doing at this point. But that's a complete lie isn't it. You know exactly what you're doing, you just don't want to admit it. To confront how debased you've become by nothing more than the weight of his hand.

For one dreadful minute, he's silent. It makes your stomach drop. You second guess everything in a matter of seconds. Terrified that maybe you've stupidly misread the signals you though he was sending. That you were seeing things that weren't really there — that you've gone and made a damned fool of yourself.

You almost pull away entirely, jerk out from his grasp, but then you feel it. His thumb moves. A light glide, dragging over your cheek, navigating softly. It's almost agonizing how slowly he trails it over your face, as though he's memorizing the feel of your skin, leaving fire in its wake. And then his thumb settles, right there along the corner of your mouth to tease over the shape of your lower lip. Feeling you in a way he never has before. Intimately. With a quiet admiration.

It's not even intentional when your jaw parts open, tongue lapping like he might actually let you taste him, but the press of his thumb doesn't move from where he's left it. It leaves you starved for it. Longing for the simple taste of his skin.

This whole thing has gotten out of control. You aren't sure how you've even managed to find yourself here, but all of your shame has apparently left your body because you hardly care. There's no humiliation stinging at your cheeks, no worry shrieking from the fringes of your mind. There's only him.

"Is that what you'd like to do?" He asks, and it's layered in mockery. Scathing in that gentle way of his. It makes your body burn. "Apologize properly?"

You have no idea what 'properly' entails, but it your imagination runs wild with the possibilities. Each one lewder and filthier than the last. It should cloud you with mortification, but it doesn't. Because this isn't the first time your mind has been flooded with obscene images, all revolving around Tamsy, the very guy that you've been futilely trying to convince yourself to hate. Endlessly feeding yourself the unfounded notion that he can't be trusted. And yet nearly every night, while you're alone and too awake to properly fall asleep, the fantasies always creep in. Involuntary and pornographic. You can't even get yourself off anymore without picturing that it's his hands coasting over your body, playing with you just right and not your own.

You don't fight it. Not like you used to. You tried hard in the past not to visualize him. It used to feel dirty and wrong, imagining your co-worker while you had yourself spread open on your bed, fingers working deep inside of your cunt, but it couldn't be helped. An incurable sickness. One that couldn't be shaken by reason or denial. The guilt, the shame was never enough to keep your mind from taunting you, bleaching images of him across your eyes. Always him.

So you shouldn't be surprised that you've found yourself here. Maybe this was always bound to happen. You were just resisting the inevitable, fighting an uphill battle all this time.

"Yes," you answer. Something inside you seems to fall loose at the admittance. A strip of armor cracking and falling, exposing the tender sinew that lies beneath.

His eyes are there, even in the dark, made visible only by how near he is to you. His attention has a weight of its own. He's studying you, watching like you're the most fascinating thing in the world, pinned under his palm. When his thumb begins to move again, slipping around the center of your bottom lip, you feel as though you're being tested. Like he's waiting to see if you'll flinch or yield. But you don't.

You meet his stare through the shadows, and lean into the pressure of his touch. A challenge going unsaid. A soft noise leaves him, something like a sigh, barely heard under the wailing of the storm and the metallic whine of the shack shifting and breathing beneath its angry squalling. But you manage to hear it regardless, the anticipation held inside the sound of it.

His thumb pushes in your mouth, and all of your thoughts draw down into a blank. The weight of it drags over your tongue, the traces of salt on his skin spreading across your palate. Your jaw drops further, letting him press it in deeper until the second knuckle sits right against your lips, and then he just holds it there. His other fingers are still spanned across your face, curling around the hinge of your jaw to keep you still. Not that you have any desire to slip away from him now.

Something about him like this, thumb held in your mouth, staring at you with an intensity that burrows down into your bones makes you realize how alone you are out here. It's just you and him, hidden underneath the cover of a violent storm. He could do whatever he wanted to you out here, and no none would be able to save you. It's a thought that would have haunted you before, it still might deep down, but in a way that's completely twisted, it's also thrilling.

You can't keep yourself from sealing your lips around his thumb and sucking. Lapping the tip of your tongue around the length of it with a contented hum.

He doesn't so much as twitch. He remains composed, annoying unaffected. But you can see the faintest glimmer of it in the dark. Smoldering in his stare, lurking within his flat stare. Hunger.

"Are you actually going to listen? You didn't earlier today, running headfirst into danger like a common idiot."

The thumb in your mouth presses down more, almost painful in its pinch, the pressure sitting right on the edge of being uncomfortable, but you don't allow yourself to jerk beneath it. You stay firm, suctioning your mouth around it as best as you can, your throat bobbing while you swallow down the spit that's begun to pool behind your teeth.

"You deserve to be reprimanded, don't you think." But it isn't a question. He's not really asking at all. It's embarrassing how it makes the nerves across your body light up, pale tension coiling deep inside the base of your stomach. Whatever shred of resistance your psyche might have been holding onto evaporates, tugged easily from the back of your mind like the threads of sun-bleached satin clutched in a controlling grip. Roots plucked from soil.

You don't remove your mouth from his thumb, you keep it there. Opting instead to answer him in an agreeing hum, nodding your head in confirmation, and the motion has your lips dragging up and down the finger in a lazy glide. Softly fucking it on your tongue like you would a cock.

His eyes blaze despite the schooled expression on his face. The only indication that you've had any impact on him at all. It has satisfaction curling around your spine, smoky and languid.

"We could keep this mouth of yours busy," he supplies conversationally, but it's mean spirited. All mockery because he's still got your mouth occupied, stuffed full around the gag of his thumb. "But something tells me you'd enjoy that too much. It would make a lousy punishment for someone so desperate."

The point of his thumb bears down on the flat of your tongue. Enough that pain smarts, darting across the sensitive nerves, bright and sharp. You almost wince, tears threatening to well up along the corner of your vision, but you level yourself through the sting. Determined to keep your composure, to deny him the satisfaction of seeing you tremble.

"Wouldn't it?" He asks, tilting his head inquisitively. He doesn't wait for you to even attempt to answer. He does that for you, using the leverage of the grip his still has around your face to nod your head for you.

It's sadistic. Arrogant. A side of Tamsy that you've never witnessed. Even during your little spats he's hardly been comparable to something like this. He may get annoyed, voice clipped and strained with exasperation, but he'd never been so needlessly cruel.

And somehow, you like it. You actually like it.

"Hmm." His voice glides out, silk coasting on air. It makes you thrum with anticipation, every ounce of you electrified with what he might possibly do to you, but then he's retracting his thumb from your mouth, intentionally smearing spit across your lips as he does it. You feel dazed, and it has you struggling to track him once he moves, abruptly standing up from how he was crouched in front of you. His body unfurls in the dark, the pale hue of his dual-toned hair shifting from how he cocks his head and appraises you.

You probably look pathetic. Eyes glazed over, mouth parted from how you pant around your stuttering breath. You're thankful once again that it's too gloomy in here to properly see all the proper details because you must be a dazed mess, and he hasn't done anything to you yet.

"Stand up." That all he says to you before he steps away, footsteps brushing along the floor as he returns back over the other side of the room, reclaiming his seat on the tattered sofa.

You just sit there, for a second or a few minutes, you can't exactly tell. Time seems to blur into an undefined circle. A thought forms, temporary, as delicate as mist. Are you really going to do this?

Once you open this door, once you step past its threshold, there will be no going back. You won't be able to turn around a pretend that it never happened. When it's done, it's done. You'll have to live with the truth of it. That you've seen Tamsy in a way that you've never imagined you actually would. Remembering how his skin tasted on your tongue, the heat of it, how his voice sounded in your ears, degrading and smooth. That's all it takes for you to have your answer. To make a decision. You shed the final remnants of your hesitation and stand.

You cross the space dividing you carefully. Treading slowly as though he's a threat that might strike. But he remains poised, trained on you as you draw closer. You don't let yourself stop until you're directly in front of him.

He considers you for a moment, lashes low while he stares, a lazy kind of focus. Unbothered and appeased. Like a predator that's convinced its prey to walk directly into its open maw.

"You're going to strip yourself of your clothes and then you're going to lie down across my lap." It's matter of fact, delivered as though it's a future that's already been done. As though he's managed to peek inside of your mind and found that you won't resist him. That for all of your bite, all of the petty arguments you've entertained in the past, here and now, he's got you pliant. Or that's what he believes, at least.

"And if I don't?" You challenge, brows raising even though he probably isn't able to fully see it.

"Then you get nothing." And with that he snuffs out whatever little bit of superiority you had. Out like a light. It's not cold per say, it's just said with the briskness of someone who's already made their mind up. A person who won't be dissuaded and you hate it because you know that Tamsy isn't the kind of individual who relents easily. You'll have to play by his rules or not at all.

"I always knew you wanted to get me naked, Tamsy." You're reaching for security at this point, falling back into the safety of your usual dynamic to try and keep yourself from feeling so unmoored.

"Well, the same could be said about you, couldn't it? After all, our rooms are right next each other, and the walls seem so terribly thin sometimes, don't they."

You think your heart quits beating. It's pulse hiccupping inside of your chest before flatlining all together. Horror drapes over your body like a second skin, too tight and itching, made worse by the embarrassment that sinks down to your gut like a rock.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

He's smiling now, the bastard. "Oh, was I not supposed to hear? What a shame, you sounded so pretty saying my name like that. And here I thought you were putting on a show just for me." He pretends to be hurt, voice raising in a playful but biting lilt.

Your mouth opens to defend yourself, to call him out on being a pervert, but the words never leave your mouth. It would be another case of the pot calling the kettle black. You realistically couldn't accuse him of being a creep without owning the fact that you really weren't any different, getting yourself off to thought of a co-worker who you had assumed was ignorant to your perversions. But it makes you both a little depraved, doesn't it. Dirty. And you like it, knowing that the each time you've been in your room, toying with your own body, pumping your fingers inside of yourself, he's been on the other side of the wall. Hanging onto each sound and muffled moan, just as eager and wanting.

He pats his lap invitingly, the soft thump of fabric on fabric rustling beneath the wailing tempest. "Come one now, there's no need to be shy."

You don't allow yourself to hesitate, fueled only by the desire to prove to him that you aren't some timid thing that he can humiliate and back into a corner. You make steady work of your uniform, working on your coat first, shedding it from your shoulders and allowing it to fall to the floor behind you. It meets the wooden boards with a dull thump. The tight fit of your undershirt comes next. Slipped over your head and discarded alongside your coat.

You're emboldened by the dark. To him, you must be nearly undiscernible, made from shadows and the weak traces of light that have been begun to peek through the barricaded windows. You don't waver or worry about how your body might look; you only focus on your current goal.

You work your boots off next, sliding them to side with the nudge of your foot so that your pants will be able to pool down freely around your ankles once you unzip them. You thumb them off alongside your underwear, hooking your fingers through the elastic band and the belt loops to aid you in rucking them past the shape of your hips. Once they're around your feet, you slip them from around your ankles and step out of them.

Now you're completely naked. Bare with only the exception of your choker, the temperature cold on your neck. His blood is housed inside the cord, clasped directly around your throat, and the thought of that alone turns you on more than it should. Carrying a piece of him always, secure around your flesh.

You don't give yourself the chance to think any longer. If you think, you'll hesitate, and there's no place for that now.

He pulls his arms from his lap when you lean over him, allowing you to plant one of your knees on the sofa, using the support to begin settling yourself over his thighs. You hold your breath when you stretch yourself over him, stomach balled into knots with the suspense of it all, the vulnerability of it. You're right on top of him, so close that your body thrums with the proximity. Everything in you is pulled taut, muscles bunched, lungs tight.

He gives you the curtesy of getting comfortable at your own pace. Remaining silent as you settle on your knees and elbows, smoothing your body downward until your stomach is stretched flat upon his lap, snug within the cradle of his thighs and torso. You fold your arms over the other, using it as a way to rest and prop your head, cheek pillowed on the length of your forearms.

He hums like he's content once you go still. A syrupy sound that pours from him like honey. The graze of his hand follows soon after, the curl of his knuckles and thumb gliding exploratorily down back of your neck to tease across the divot of your spine. It's the kind of touch that someone would hold something delicate with, porcelain or fine glass. Handled with reverence, as though you might shatter into a thousand tiny shards if he were to be too harsh. And it continues downward, sweeping low until he's curiously palming the swell of your ass. Somehow, it doesn't even feel sexual. It's appreciative, like an artist molding clay with their fingertips.

It has something guarded but soft splitting apart inside of you, weeping open with the desire to be held and cradled. A gasp escapes you without you meaning for it to happen, shuddering and dim. As though even your body was reluctant to release it, but it couldn't be contained. The warmth of his palm sweeps over you, fingertips tracing over your hips and ass, tensing to grope and squeeze at the fat.

You didn't expect to be handled this carefully, and if you weren't in the right head space, it might have broken you.

"How many do you think we should do." It's murmured in a way that you know isn't truly directed at you, a musing only for himself. Coasting over the form of your body like satin. "How about four. One for each beast you tried to face without thinking. Hm, no. That seems too easy." His pats you on your right cheek, deceptively gentle considering what he has in store for you. "Let's double it then. Eight strikes in total for misbehaving. You'll be able to handle that, won't you?"

You're already wet and it's humiliating. Arousal damp, leaving your pussy to clench around nothing.

"Yes, I can handle it," you choke out.

"Really. Let's test that, shall we."

You don't get to linger on how the tone of his voice spikes, raising the slightest degree with what sounds suspiciously like delight. You hear the impact before you feel it. A sharp, pronounced crack that splits across the heady air like kindling being broken over a knee. And then comes the pain. White-hot, doused over your nerves in a rush that throbs.

It has you more shocked than anything. You expected him to take things slow, to work you up into it, but maybe you were just being delusional for trying to convince yourself of that. The way he had dug his thumb onto your tongue earlier should have proof enough that he wasn't going to be sweet. He's bearing his full weight into his arm. Hitting you strongly enough that you know you'll be tender after this, skin inflamed and sore. Covered with bruises that will take weeks to heal.

"What the fuck, Tamsy—"

"Is it too much for you?" He asks, but there isn't an ounce of care to heard. It's all mockery. Gloating sadism.

"No," you grit through clenched teeth.

"Good. Then start counting."

You center yourself with a deep breath, stilling yourself as the flare of pain decreases and melts into a raw pleasure. Violent but blissful in its own right.

"One— "

He doesn't let you get the first number out before he's striking you with the second blow, palm flat and harsh, brought down directly over the same cheek that he's already hit. Absolutely determined to leave you tender, wracked with pain and pleasure. It makes you toes curl, muscles flexing as the hurt sears through you.

"Two." You spit it out like its toxic and dig your nails into the sofa's worn fabric in a feeble attempt to brace yourself.

"There you go," he coos. "So you can be good. You just need a little directing. A firm hand to keep you in check."

His words, as much as they piss you off, reach some needy part of you. The one that longs to please, to be wanted and kept. Captured and embraced. A feeble thing, starved for attention. The musical cadence drips inside your ear like sap, saccharin and intoxicating. You find yourself arching your back, spine bowing to press it against the palm of his hand when he sweeps it over your ass, soothing and irritating your screaming nerves all at once.

His sweetness is temporary. In a blink, he draws his arm back and brings it down where you're still raw, one, two strikes in quick succession. It douses you in liquid fire, a burn that has more cum smearing down your inner thighs, soaked and shameless. It ebbs through in deep, vibrant rolls, cresting over the other, and you have to concentrate to breathe through it. Manually urging your lungs to expand and contract around the air.

Through the haze you just barely remember to count the two hits. You breathe around your voice, a trembling noise that sounds pathetic to your own ears, but your mind has become too muddled for you to truly care about things like pride. Your ego having been weighed down, buried underneath the brutal ecstasy boiling through your veins, clouding your skull in an intoxicating vapor.

"Look at you, you're already halfway there," he says, managing to praise and degrade you in a single purr. "Such a pretty thing for me."

You moan without meaning to. The sound is more of hitch. A strangled whine, but it pours out you anyway, lewd and punched out. Everything about it is jarring. The noises coming out of you, the sting of his hand, this entire interaction. It's all unexpected. Never in a million years would you have imagined that you would actually end up here, naked and laid out on Tamsy's lap in the middle of sandstorm. It almost makes you laugh, delirious, but you swallow it down before it can escape.

He's like a juxtaposition. Balanced dangerously between tender and malicious. He's usually so soft spoken and demure, you should have known he'd be a sadist—

He traces a finger over your pussy, gliding it down over your entrance to soak it in your arousal. It's dirty how he smears it, a second finger joining in to crudely slip over your clit and then back up again. Back and forth, over and over, feeling the way you involuntarily clench around nothing when he circles the tips over your hole, spreading you open. You're so soaked that you can hear it, how wet it is.

You nearly get lost in it, hips lifting on their own to chase after the pleasure, but you should have known better. You should have expected it. His fingers leave you, and you aren't able to mourn the loss, to complain like you want to. He touches you again, but it isn't with a hand that gives. It isn't gentle or rewarding. It's an open palm, flat and firm, brought down directly against your cunt.

It's molten. Light explodes behind your eyelids — you hadn't realized you'd squeezed them shut from the impact — bright and searing, the blaze of a thousand suns. The hit seems to reverberate through you, sparking through your blood and setting your skin ablaze in a confused torrent of a rapturous torment. It is painful, but truly it's the surprise of it that really gets you, muddling every thought in your brain, burning them down into ash, insignificant. Leaving you dazed and helpless, caught within the cage of his body while everything seems to roll through your entire being.

You're tempted to lash out at him, to call him out for neglecting to at least give you a proper head's up, but the words melt on your tongue, turning into another useless whine.

". . . asshole." That's all you can manage. A weak insult on a shuddering breath.

His free hand settles on the back of your neck, fingers looping around your choker and gripping it until the cord hugs your throat, making your lungs feel tight, airways shallowly restricted from the pressure. It makes you lightheaded.

"No, I don't think that's the word you're looking for. Did you forget to keep count?" He taunts. Sharp teeth disguised behind the veil of geniality. "If you can't remember, then maybe we should start over all again. Give you the chance to get it right."

Alarm reaches you despite the haze, lighting splitting through fog. Your head tries to tilt, just enough for you to glare at him from over your shoulder but the press of his hand on your choker keeps you pinned. Cheek held down on the couch from where it's slipped off of the folded support of your forearms, skin shoved on worn polyester. You can just barely make him out from the corner of your peripheral vision if you strain enough, and your eyes meet his over the slope of your shoulder. They're just as tranquil and unfazed as they always are, pale in the darkness, watching you with the relaxed satisfaction of a predator that's got its pray trapped between its claws.

A taunt is right there, on the tip of your tongue. Burning hot like the point of a heated poker, but the insult never comes. Instead, there's a shaky exhale, and then: "Five."

Disappointment echoes through you, scathing like a venom, but it's vanquished just as quickly as it appeared. Extinguished underneath the tide of pleasure that froths up when you see how gratified he looks when you give him the response he wanted. He's smiling, like the smarmy jack ass he is. It's one you've never seen on him before. There's an element about it that's alarming, lips pulled just a bit too wide to seem normal. Stretched to a degree that hangs on the fringes of the uncanny valley. Gloating, arrogant, inhuman. Eyes glinting with a fervid contentment. The expression of someone who's relishing in the sight of you vulnerable, quaking from the rousing blend of pleasure and pain.

You've seen him smile before, of course, but never anything like this. They're always soft, pleasant, showing a kind of quiet restraint and manners. Nothing like this, all sharp edged and cruel spirited. But some twisted little part of you, small and buried deep behind your ribcage, seated between the crevice of your lungs and sinew, likes it. It would creep you out — it should, but you're already a lost cause. You were since the moment he held your face with his hand. Probably further than that, honestly. All those quiet moments in the bar, sipping on bad booze and lazing in each other's company, every time he's protected you against trash beasts and traffickers, have all lead to this and you were just too blind to see it.

He had you from the very start.

His fingers caress between the apex of your thighs, calming the sting he made. The cool temperature of them is a balm on the ache, and you can't help the way your eyelashes flutter, how you sigh in relief when deft fingertips trace low to circle your clit. The pleasure melts through you, draining the tension from your muscles. You go lax across his lap instantly, turned docile with only a few nimble strokes of his fingertips.

"See. This is how things can be when you don't act like a brat."

You hum in response. The scowl you meant to flash him ruined by how your eyes squeeze shut instead. Lulled into a stupor by the way he's still pulling at the choker around your neck, keeping it firm around the base of your throat, and the steady rhythm of his fingers on your clit has your reasoning turning liquid.

"But you've only got three more to go. Keep being good for me, and I might just reward you after." He leans in just a little then. Enough that you can feel the strands of his navy hair tickle over the flat of your back, drawing out a shudder that trembles through your bones. "Do you think you can manage that?"

"Yes."

"Yes, what?"

Your brows cinch close, lips parting dumbly. It's instinctual to want to snark back. And there's bubbling under the surface, and you can tell he can see what you're contemplating. Recognition dances in his eyes. It isn't frustrated but delighted. Like the prospect of you defying him would only entertain him. The temptation to oppose him is there. To offer some scathing jibe.

But it doesn't come. You're shocked by the discovery, how the vexed heat beneath your skin simmers and dies. You're tired of the constant fighting. The resistance, the battle you've been ceaselessly struggling against. For just this once, if only for an hour or few minutes, you'd like to simply exist. You don't want to think, you want to feel.

Your gaze softens, the fire in your eyes reduced to sparks that extinguish into cinder. You swallow unsteadily around the saliva that's pooled inside your mouth, and the flex of your throat strains against the restriction of the choker. "Yes, sir."

"There's my good girl. I knew she was in there, buried down behind all of those petty insults, the stupid fighting. You really needed this, didn't you?" Something like a laugh puffs from him then, pleased with himself. "Well, I suppose I don't have to ask that. I already know you did with how often I got to hear you moaning my name like some cheap slut late at night. All worked up over your fingers. I wonder what you'll sound like on mine."

Of course that's when he chooses to slip them inside of you, two at once, agile and long, stretching you open. You gasp into the sofa, a ragged moan, drawn out like you've been wounded breaks from you. Your cunt spasms at the abruptness of it but ultimately yields to the intrusion. You're so wet already that they slide in without any resistance, your body giving in. Your hips move on their own, gingerly rolling to try and build the pleasure deeper.

He's hard. You can feel him right there against your stomach, prodding at you through the thick layers of his clothes, and you can't help but to loathe the fact that he's still wearing them. You don't want to get your hopes up, but he feels heavy, long based on how the length of his cock spans along the shape of your abdomen.

Your jaw drops when he curls his fingers and strokes them in further, and it feels so good. Each brush and crook building up a delicious euphoria that flows through you, thick and smoky. Every drag earns another noise, low and thin, but you can't keep them back. It all floods from you uninhibited, spilling like wine from a tipped over chalice. And it makes you greedy, spine bowing into a bigger arch, arms lifting as much as he'll allow to push yourself back on the stretch of his fingers. When you moan this time, it's not another insult, but his name. Spoken out on the foggy atmosphere as though it were a prayer.

"Knew you'd sound prettier like this," he hums. "Those pathetic fingers of yours just weren't cutting it, were they."

But his generosity is temporary; it always comes at a price. His fingers are gone, slipped out of you without a single warning, and the gutted sob that leaves you is pitiful. There's no chance to mourn the loss or to curse him for it. The weight of his palm connects with the swell of your ass with a sharp impact, one that leaves you reeling, nails clawing at the sofa to cling for a shred of stability.

"Six," you hiccup. The word leaves you without a single thought, as though it's become instinct. Second nature.

"Very good." Simple praise, but you're suspended on it.

The next comes just as swift, just as brutal as the previous. Except it hits lower, right there over the back of your pussy where he still has your thighs spread open. It makes your teeth clench, involuntarily writhing as the affects of it lash through you, making your eyes roll when you shudder. The grip he has on your choker keeps you centered through the barrage. The fingers he has around the cord release so that he can sweep them over the nape of your neck, reverent in its touch.

"Seven."

Anticipation draws up in the pit of your belly, it pools down between your thighs, and you want it so badly. The hurt is rapturous, the ache made from the first blow merging and growing when he delivers the final hit. It lands directly over your cunt, the splay of his fingers sparking a heat over your clit that's so intense, you swear you almost come.

You body clenches like it just might, pleasure lapping through your marrow, twisting like a hot coil in the cradle of your hips, but the release never crests. It just stays there, holding you in an awful limbo. One with no beginning or end. You're stuck, right on the precipice of ecstasy. So close that you can taste it, vivid and bright, but just outside of your reach.

"Eight," you manage. Watery from unshed tears. You don't even realize that you've started begging until you feel your voice reverberating through your throat, airy and desperate. A string of, "Please, Tamsy. Please, I wan' it."

"You do, do you?" He asks, but it's performative. Meant to humiliate you more than you already are. But you can't manage to be humiliated at all with how starved you become for it, soaked and aching. "You want me fuck you. Think you've earned it?"

You're nodding, no contemplating, no hesitation. "Yes. Yes, please. I'll be good. I swear."

It's quiet for too long, and his hands don't move. Firm around your neck, the other traces unintelligible shapes and symbols on your ass, making the tender flesh more sensitive, aggravating the nerves. You hiss at the throb, but you don't flinch. You're too focused on the moment, of the feel of him under you, the steady fluctuation of his chest rising and falling, the warmth of him. Grounding, pleasant. And yet it manages to slip your notice that his hands have shifted until it's too late.

In a disorienting blur he's shoving you further up the couch, using the gap between your bodies to lift himself out from underneath you. The material of his uniform rustles and drags over the sofa, the heavy drape of his coat framing your waist as he leans over your back. His hands are hot and rigid when they close around your hips, latching onto you with the strength of steel bands, enabling him to use the leverage to jerk them up. Guiding your spine into a pronounced arch, giving you no option but to hold yourself up on the support of your knees so that you don't completely collapse in a lust drunk sprawl.

He completely folds himself over you, nudging his head next yours, tracing the point of his nose against your temple. An action so tender that it makes you ache far more than his hand did. His cock drags against your pussy, bare and thick — when the hell did he even pull down his pants? — smearing your arousal over its length. Getting it wet and sloppy, and teasing you all at once.

"If you want it so badly," he pants. "Then take it." His teeth nip at your ear just as he lines up the tip with your pussy and sinks in until his hips are flush with the backs of your thighs. He's so much bigger than you expected, stretching you open, spreading you thin on the length of him. And then you feel it — or them, rather. The rounded points of three individual bars, smooth metal, rubbing across the tight clench of your cunt as he drives himself inside of you, so deep that it robs you of oxygen.

Piercings.

Of course he has his dick pierced.

They feel far better than they have any right to be, providing a texture that you didn't think you ever needed. He fucks himself into you in heavy strokes. Driving so deep that you frantically search for something to hold onto, a single hand blindly reaching in the dark, fingers grasping for anything to hold. When his hand finds yours, straying from the vice grip it has your waist to hold your palm, it's unexpected. Too intimate for whatever this is, but you cling to him regardless, unable to resist.

"Tamsy, I— fuck."

"Just like that, pretty girl." His voice sinks in, hypnotic, tantalizing. "Be good for me and take every inch just like a good slut should."

He fucks you like he's angry. Quick, brutal thrusts as though he's trying to carve himself inside of you. Wet sounds echo throughout the shack, loud and filthy over the howl of the wind. Filling your ears with the crude smack of skin on skin — a damp plap, plap, plap, accompanied by his panting and your unrestrained moans. All of it reverberates off of the metal walls, a ceaseless echo. It's all you can hear, all you can feel is him, inside of you, around you. You still taste the salt of his skin on your tongue, and it makes you crave more.

Your hips lift, greedy to meet the pace he's set, to bring you both pleasure. Pain flares across the tender skin of your ass each time he drives into you, the press of his body amplifying the raw heat sizzling over the inflamed flesh. But the ache of it also intensifies the pleasure. It has it twisting in your stomach, an unforgiving knot, lightning spiraling in taut loops.

You aren't going to last long. You know you aren't; you can feel it. He's worked you up so much already. Shoved you close to that delicious edge with every strike he left on your ass. The bruises that are forming, the tender skin, it all licks through you. The rawness of it hums at your clit. It's like you're being consumed. Eaten alive by the pleasure and pain that seems to douse every inch of you. He has you eclipsed inside of him, the bliss he feeds you, the curl of his body over yours. It's almost too much, but also not enough, and yet you can already feel the orgasm welling up inside of you, blazing, picking you apart piece by piece.

You try to stave it off as best as you can. You don't want it. Not yet. Not so soon, but it's persistent, pooling inside of you like molten honey pouring through your blood stream. Your fingers clench around his hand like it might save you.

"Tamsy, wait, I don't — not yet, please."

"You gonna come?" His voice curls in your ear, condescending and smooth like silk. "But we just started. So pitiful, baby."

He's so cruel, you should have expected it as soon as the hand around your waist vanished. It's back on you less than a second later, shoved directly between your thighs, fingers pressed on your clit.

"Wait," you plead. But he doesn't stop, and it's too late.

You're wound up so tight that all it takes is a few sweeps of those fingertips, the vigorous thrust of his cock splitting you open, the press of his piercings dragging over your walls. You get taken under without any time to brace for it. Abrupt and violent. Everything in you seizes as though you've been electrified, muscles bunching up viciously. Your pussy clenches around him in a vice grip, squeezing to wring out every ounce of bliss from your body, and it makes your lungs too tense to properly breathe. Stars cloud your vision, iridescent and flashing against the dark. Vibrant from how floaty your head has become, thoughts muffled.

Still, you notice through it all, that he's not stopping. He hasn't come yet.

The pleasure is dulling, and what takes its place is too tender and sharp. He's merciless, fucking you despite your hypersensitivity, relentless even when your hips writhe in an impulsive attempt to try and escape the onslaught.

"It's too much."

He lets go of your hand, prying it from your fingers and that makes you whine more than the mean way he's toying with your clit. There's no opportunity to gulp down a proper breath, to plead or beg him for reprieve. His free arm hooks around your ribs, as giving as a band of iron, to haul you up and onto your knees. Fully drawing you into the press of his chest, pinning you onto his body while he drives up into you. No where to run or move. There's not an ounce of give within his hold on you. All you can do is take it, reduced to little more than a doll for him to fuck.

His chin hooks over your shoulder, nose dragging over your cheek when the fervor behind his thrusts jostles you both. Something about the angle has him brushing a little deeper, and the head of his cock strikes that debilitating spot inside of you. The one that makes your spine bow and toes curl.

"You'll come as many times as I want you to." He angles his head lower, lips tracing over sweat-damp skin, and then his jaw is parting open. Teeth sink into flesh. The agony that rips through your split nerves is so awful that the way your pussy clenches tight around his cock almost seems like a betrayal. It shouldn't feel good. You shouldn't like how it throbs with hurt, but you do. The euphoria of it simmers in your stomach, it splashes like a galaxy behind your eyelids, and you whine liked you've been gutted open.

There's a reprimand in the strength of his bite. A claim too, unspoken and hedonistic. It feels like he's cutting his name into you, making a pact with blood and teeth. It confronts you with a reality that you hadn't bothered to ponder until now. What comes after this. How things will be when the high is over and you're both left to face the consequences of what you've done. It leaves you with the horrendous truth that you don't think you'll be able to pretend that this never happened. Now that you've had him like this, breathless in your ears, covered in a sheen of sweat, speaking words to you that you've only ever imagined, there's no way you'll be able to forget it. This. Him.

Your neck goes slack, head lolling onto his shoulder. Your arm feels shaky when you lift it, bones gone lax and useless but you don't let it stop you from raising it up to thread your fingers through his hair. It twines through your grasp like silken threads, water spilling through a tense palm. You don't think when you nudge at his head, urging him to release the pinch of his jaw from around your shoulder. Thankfully he relents, allowing you to guide his head at an angle, and you lean your own so that you can press your lips to his blood stained mouth.

He groans. A throaty noise that tapers off into what could have been a whine. He doesn't pull away like some tiny part of you, briefly ignored by your impulses, had feared. He leans into it, matching your fervent rhythm and then surpassing it, dominating the metallic kiss through an exchange of nipping teeth and the sweep of tongue. Licking into your mouth as though he wants to drink you down. It's sloppy, a little crazed. It's not the kind of kiss you would have initially expected from Tamsy. You always imagined a reverential restraint, prim and gentle, lightly teasing. But this is sybaritic and ravenous.

There's a violence to it, as though you're both trying to consume the other, sinking your teeth into the plush of the others lips. Determined to leave a mark. To stake a claim on each other's bodies. Unified by animalistic desperation. But under the frenzy of it, there is an adoration. It's worship made from the scrape of canines and the smear of spit. It's raw, unrestrained, and in the display of unrestricted lust, is true devotion.

The weight of it splits you apart from the inside. It caves your chest in, turns you vulnerable and bare. But you can't stop. Can't shy away or flee within the safety of yourself. You let it all spill over you, the piety and the affection you feel, as dangerous and startling as it is. Even if it destroys you from the inside out, eats you like a disease, you know you won't stop wanting him now.

You're not in love with him. Not yet, but you're already somewhere hazardously close to it. Balanced precariously on the fringes. One misstep or push and you'll collapse right into its unforgiving embrace.

You want him to devour you whole. You want to swallow him down until you bleed into each other.

The grip you have weaved through his hair tightens, nails clawing down his scalp enough that it must sting. He hisses into your mouth, but he doesn't pull away. If anything, he kisses you deeper, his hips drive into you harder, splitting you open on his cock like he wants to wedge himself inside of you permanently.

"Tamsy," you slur, tongue stolen by how he traces it with his own. "Please, I wanna come again. I need it, I want you to fill me up."

"Is that what you want," he murmurs against your lips, the chilled metal of his piercing a shock on your heated, bitten mouth. "But I thought you couldn't handle it. 'It's too much.'" It's a patronizing mimicry of your voice, pitched high and whiney. But you can hear it, how equally affected he is. Breathless and trembling.

It's difficult to be annoyed by his mockery, irritation dwindling into nothing when he draws his fingers around your clit in tight loops, reducing your thoughts into incomprehensible mush. You jerk, still teetering between a limbo of hypersensitivity and the need for more. More friction, more pleasure, more pain, more him.

"I know," you gasp, ribs shuddering from the full body tremble he wrangles from you, keeping you full and spread thin on his girth. The three piercings lined down his cock drag inside of you, brushing up against tender spots, places you didn't realize you had and your eyes nearly go cross from it. "I didn't mean it. I need you, need you to make me come, please." You pepper kisses along the cushion of his lips, soft and adoring, tilting your head back a little further to trail them over and past the corner of his mouth, feeling the texture of his scars. The angle is hell on your neck, straining the muscles, but you can't be bothered to care. Your voice trickles out, a hushed, shameless stream of "Please, please, please, please."

"Should have known you'd be this way. All that snark you always like to give me; you just needed to have it fucked out of you." He groans when your fingers snag at his hair, his hips twitch. "I should keep you like this all the time, pinned down on my cock. Maybe I'd even use Tokushin on you. Have you all bound up and pretty for me."

Your cunt seizes tight around him, muscles flexing while you moan. The thought of it and the persistent strum of his fingers, the roll and grind of his hips has you going dumb.

"Of course you'd like that. You'd let me do anything I wanted to you."

You nod, the movement sluggish and loose, like a bobble head.

"Go on then. Let me see how pretty you are when you come."

It tears through you then, inevitable, bigger than the previous. It engulfs you in its scope, sweeps you under, stronger than the storm raging outside. Your hips jerk, spine arching while you squirm against the band of his arm around your torso. It keeps you trapped. Forced to feel every ounce of pleasure, every inch of his cock as it fucks up into you.

You hear yourself sob from it all. A warbled cry of his name as the ecstasy shreds through you. He groans when your pussy bears down on him, locking him inside to draw out your pleasure. And he doesn't stop either, urging you through your orgasm while chasing after his own. You can hear how wrecked he is, just barely concealing his fracturing composure behind tight gasps and thin whines. Whispering in your ear to guide you through it, hushed praises of "Let yourself have it" and "Keep going. Keep fucking yourself on it, pretty girl."

His fingertips keep stroking over your clit, steady circles that have you seeing stars, making your cunt tighter and sloppy with your cum. And then his hips are lurching, pace made choppy, bouncing you up and down on his length to chase after his own end. He reaches it just as yours begins to ebb, coming deep inside of you with a guttural moan that fades in a hitched whimper. The warmth of his release pulses through you, reaching deep and settling at the seat of your stomach, pooling inside.

He grinds into you, drawing out your shared pleasure for as long as he can, keeping you both floating and intoxicated on the high of it. He stops only once it becomes uncomfortable, the blissful heat fading into something that's too much, too raw for either of you to handle. Both of his arms draw close, encircling your middle, and he drops his head to scatter open mouthed kisses over the wound on your shoulder. Apologetic, doting.

You're too exhausted to move. Panting and loose-limbed, sated with a satisfaction that's rooted in bone deep. You don't resist when he slips himself from you, though it's uncomfortable to enough to make you hiss. The combination of your cum drips from you, smearing down the inside of your thighs, wet and filthy, but you don't voice any complaints. You don't care to despite how gross it feels. You're still happy regardless, shrouded in a fine mist of your elation, body thrumming with balmy aftershocks.

You half expect for the atmosphere between you to turn stale and awkward. For him to nudge you away from him, indifferent now that he's gotten off, but he doesn't. Instead he's drawing you closer while he shifts to settle you both down, sorting out the curl of his limbs until he's able to comfortably splay them out. Carefully directing you until you're both reclined on the sofa, legs tangled, skin slick with sweat, curled into each other like you're the only things in the entire universe that matter anymore.

It's a reflex for your mind to try and take off with what happens next. How this will impact your dynamic, but you shut down that stream of thoughts before they can get out of hand. Sealing them like the tightening of a valve on a faucet. You don't want face reality yet. To stress and concern yourself with the what ifs. For now, you just want to exist. To indulge in the moment, to laze in the warmth of his body against yours, even if it won't last forever. Your neck pulses with the pain of his bite, but there's no anger over the bloodied mark, just peace. The kind of calm that comes with being claimed, accepted.

For now you can just be and bask in each other's presence, consequences be damned.

Right now, there's only you and him. The absentminded glide of his fingers tracing down the divot of your spine, the warmth of his breath caressing the crown of your head, his heart beating vigorously under your ear. Within this pocket of space you've made for yourselves, the wind outside doesn't sound so monstrous. It's no longer the wailing of a lonely animal but a song. One made just for the both of you.

When he speaks next, satin-soft, it's a salve on an open wound. The relief of water flowing down a parched throat, embodied as a hum caressing against your heated skin. "Let's stay like this for now. At least until the storm passes."

You don't argue or resist. You settle, going lax, body curving to fit with his own. You can't help but to smile, your agreement going unsaid but definitely felt by how you tuck yourself into him, turning your face into the cradle of his neck, breathing in his scent.

You can't imagine anywhere else you'd rather be right now.

 

You don't notice the unsettled chill that creeps up your spine.