Work Text:
PRESTON
I can’t stop thinking about it.
Cold water sluices down my back, streaming down my body in rivulets. My bottom lip is mangled, chewed up, and bloody, yet I don’t even seem to notice.
We lost to the Wolves tonight, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
It was because of that fucking good-for-nothing rat Osborne. I swore he wouldn’t be able to get under my skin—even instigated some more bullshit with Dicky McDickinson—but, alas, his fragile ego wasn’t enough to get us the win. Disturbingly, I, for the first time, wasn’t enough to get us the win. And Jude and Kane, of course, but we all know who really calls the shots here. Who’s the star of the show.
And it was all because of that motherfucking wildcard Marcus Osborne.
All he did all night was pin me with that dark look, a lopsided smirk dancing on his lips, whispering—
I squeeze my eyes shut, wincing at the memory.
"You should sit on my huge cock, Armstrong. If you’re good enough, I might pay you the rate of a low-rent whore.”
I clench my jaw, clench my fist, every fiber of my muscle tightening into a live wire. First off, no one, absolutely fucking no one, talks to me like that. Second of all, me? Sit on someone’s cock? In your fucking dreams, bitch. I like my ass in one piece, thank you very-fucking-much.
But the infuriating truth of it was that, as I walked to the fucking box for the first time in my hockey career when I had a clean slate just a week prior, his words had managed to get under my skin.
I mean… what had he meant? Was he serious? About the… gay sex? How is he so unperturbed? Is he… gay? Bi?
Questions, questions.
"Will that be before or after you bounce on my cock like a good little slut?”
Aaand great, now I’m pissed off all over again.
He's absolutely fucking delusional if he ever thinks that's going to happen. I think I’ll give him the phone number of Graystone College’s counselor to help him with these delusions, since Stanton River evidently isn’t funded enough to have a psychiatrist.
I step out of the locker room’s showers. Unable to sleep, and with a new demise plan set in place for Osborne because nobody messes with my beauty sleep, I had ended up at the rink again, trying to exhaust myself to sleep.
Also, because this banging body doesn’t make itself, baby.
With only a towel slung low on my hips, I rifle around for a spare set of clothes I’m sure I keep here.
But what disturbs me the most is how he knows.
How the fuck does he know? Nobody fucking knows. I made sure of that. If he knows, who else does?
Hot, searing panic shoots up my spine and bile rises in my throat. I straighten, squeeze my eyes shut, and will myself to calm down.
No matter how much I try to block out those memories, they seem to be the one part of myself I can’t cut out. The one part of myself I can’t annihilate with sadism or pain.
The hair on my neck stands up and goosebumps run over my arms as I sense the unmistakable feeling of someone watching me. I whip around, searching for the perpetrator.
And, speak of the devil, the rodent of the hour: Marcus-fucking-Osborne.
He stands there in all his sweaty glory—that is to say, none—with his eyes locked on me.
I swear, it’s so creepy. His eyes… they’re almost… ravenous. They consume you, and from here, I can barely see the blue flecks. Only the dark gray eclipsing every other emotion, roving over me with a hungry, voracious look.
Something I can’t name roils in my stomach, hot and demanding and unfamiliar. What the fuck?
“Your momma taking me up on my offer, Osborne? Hope you told her 'bout my generosity for your new hockey equipment.”
His eyes, which had been lingering on my bare chest—my sternum, specifically, for some reason—pin me once again.
I hate to admit that, objectively, he is an attractive person. More than attractive; devastatingly handsome. His mouth tips up in a lopsided smirk, all teeth and sharp angles, and his hair, messy and damp, shifts as he tilts his head. I follow a drop of sweat that traces a path from his sharp jaw down his neck, disappearing into his compression shirt.
“Hmm. Well, what did you decide about my offer, fairy-prince?” he hums.
My eyebrow furrows. I don’t know why he calls me that. Something, something familiar niggles at the back of my brain, but I push it away.
All humor gone, I hiss at him. “Say one more word about that and I’ll gut you and use your entrails as fucking floss.”
Instead of rising to the bait, his smile just widens and he steps closer.
All of a sudden, I realize how this must look. My half-naked state, his fully-clothed one, and the entirely masculine, suffocating presence of him. I swallow, my throat dry, all of my pretenses now dismantled with just us in the room. No roaring crowd, no spotlights, just me and him and the cold, reflective tile surrounding us.
“Well, I, for one, have been.”
Another step. Two more. My body tightens, caustic and flammable and a live-wire.
I can’t seem to muster up a response, my body and mind exhausted from the game and workout as he continues, “And, as I said, you’re mine, Armstrong.”
He continues his advance, but I stay rooted in place because fuck you, bitch. Preston Armstrong belongs to no one.
“Maybe you should go to the psychiatrist and get those delusions checked out, Osborne. They seem to have gotten worse,” I counter, pushing my lower lip out in feigned concern.
His stormy gaze hones in on my lips, and coupled with his advance toward me, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what he’s thinking of.
My tone goes ice-cold. “Stay the fuck away from me, Marcus.”
He looks at me again, and a thin, humorless smile stretches over his lips. He finally stops in front of me, and it’s impossible to ignore him. I have to crane my neck to look up at him, and his presence is asphyxiating, overwhelming. Why the fuck is he so tall?
His hand comes up and tips my chin up, the pads of his fingers resting lightly on my face. The calluses on them are rough, but his grip is so gentle that it confuses me. We’re so close, mere inches separating our faces, and my breath comes out harsh, grating, as I struggle to control myself.
Why the fuck am I struggling to control myself?
I don’t fucking want this, want him. I detest him. Hate him with every bone in my body. Yet, I swallow, with visible effort, as every pore of my body is filled with piercing, searing heat, this… this unmistakable want.
Want?
“Princeling,” he murmurs, almost reverently, eyes locked on mine. I stare back, weary yet unmoving, borderline pleading.
“Don’t, Osborne.”
His head lowers, his breath coming hot and fast on my skin, which feels stretched tight, almost stifling. My eyes, against my will, flutter shut, and I try to say some scathing insult, but my mind comes up blank in the face of his touch, his gaze, his presence.
His hand slides down to my neck, cradling it gently, his thumb caressing my Adam’s apple. Shivers sweep along my skin, a soft gasp escaping my lips before I can stop it.
Fuck. Fuck. I can’t even open my eyes. I can’t look at him. What the fuck?
A low chuckle echoes around me and my skin burns hot.
No. Fuck this. I open my eyes, my senses awakened, and I bring my hands up to push him away.
“You’re pathetic, Osborne. You can’t even stop begging, like a fucking rat for scra—”
But I go silent. Quiet.
Because his lips ghost over the side of my neck, soft yet indelible, scorching and scarring and everything sinful in one. His teeth graze my pulse, rabbit-quick despite my words, and a soft laugh echoes around me.
My skin erupts in full-body shivers, and all of my senses hone in on the touch of his soft lips on my skin, the imprint they leave. I’m frozen for a moment, for two, and for some reason, I feel none of my normal disgust when a girl touches me in a way I can’t control.
Marcus’s lips reach the base of my neck, mouthing the hollow, and my skin goes hot and cold and everything feels too tight and sprung and wound. I’m disgusted, and I need to get him off me, but something anchors me, tethers me in place. It’s as if I’m unable to resist him, defenseless in his relentless force.
He bites down, hard, and a foreign sound that sounds suspiciously like a cry slips past my lips before I can bite down.
We both go still.
Holy fuck. No fucking way. No fucking way.
Something shifts inside of me, finally, and I elbow Marcus in the ribs until his god-forsaken mouth is off my neck. A weird, longing ache spreads across my skin, but I shake it off. I don’t know what the fuck that was, but no one gets close enough to shake Preston Armstrong like that. And if someone does, they are removed. Extirpated. Eviscerated.
And Marcus Osborne, with all his smirks and quips, is no exception.
“Don’t fucking come near me again, Osborne. This is your last and final warning.”
My voice is surprisingly solid, but my hand is trembling, scrabbling behind me for the small pocket knife I always have underneath my clothes in my locker.
“Or what?” Marcus still has that stupid, lopsided smile on his face, his eyes stripping me bare, that gray, unforgiving gaze leaving no part of me untouched. His hand comes up to meet my chin, and I move before I can even think it through, the pocket knife coming up in a flash of silver and piercing through his hand in one seamless move.
For a split second, the only sound filling the air is our breath; the quickness of mine, the lethargy of his. And for one vicious, forbidden heartbeat, pure exhilaration washes over me. Marcus’s blood is on my hand, and it is vivid, red-hot, intoxicating. I feel triumphant, I feel right. Unstoppable force has met immovable object, and they have created a supernova.
I have won this battle.
Marcus glances down, his eyebrows furrowing together momentarily, before a sharp, guttural laugh rumbles from him. When he looks back at me, his eyes are so dark and black that I can see myself in them, yet also bright and feverish, and his gaze bores into mine.
"Well done, my prince. Seems like you have some bite in you."
"Some bite? I have all the fucking bite, dick."
He hums, "I guess we'll see soon. Either way, princeling, you're fucked." The words hang in the air, like a death sentence, and a frisson of unease finally pierces through me. His absolute calm unnerves me, and for the first time tonight, I feel something a lot like fear. A laugh, brittle and utterly insane, rattles out of me, and I start backing away.
I, Preston Armstrong, the most depraved bastard you'll ever meet, who lives exactly as he pleases, am running away. But I don't even care. I'll deal with him tomorrow. I just can't keep up all my pretenses and wit and marvelous acting after we lost the game, and especially after I had to put up with my father's bullshit after. So, in all my dignity and flourish, I run. I run, as fast as I can, toward the locker door. Clothes and belongings be damned. I'm running blind, no plan and no destination. All I know is that I have to get out of the vicinity of the force of nature that is Marcus Osborne.
It has only been about 5 seconds before a shadow detaches itself from my periphery and an impossible weight slams into me. The air leaves my lungs, and his hand, still dripping blood, snakes around my waist. His hand meets my skin, which is sensitive and flushed and still very much bare, and a jolt of pure, undiluted heat flashes through my core, so intense it is almost dizzying. His hands, impossibly feverish and strong, tighten on my waist and flip me over against the wall so that our chests are flush, heaving.
I vehemently avoid his gaze as I come to face him. That's the part of him that disconcerts me the most. The part of him that I can't read or predict, the part that deconstructs me and puts me back together and seems to strip me bare.
I buck, twisting and snarling, and take hold of his hand as I screech, "Get off, you asshole!" My fingers scramble to find his wound, and I press down in the mess of mangled flesh and blood, hard, to make him release my waist, the germaphobe side of me completely forgotten.
He groans, low and deep, yet his wounded hand tightens on my waist while the other comes up to catch a hold of my wrists. His hips press closer to mine, and my legs are forced to spread wider, the towel around my waist slipping lower as I am disgustingly incapacitated, weak, powerless. His nose drags a slow, meandering path up the column of my neck, only stopping at my ear.
"Come on. You're killing me, baby." The brush of his lips and his feverish breath so close to my ear simultaneously paralyzes me and electrifies me with revulsion and terror and desire.
"Don't fucking call me that," I breathe, equally thrilled and disgusted by this man. This man, whose blood I have on my hands. This man, who has every right to hurt me and could.
A slow, dangerous smile stitches itself onto his lips, and he says, "I'll do whatever the fuck I want with you, baby."
And then he kisses me.
He kisses me like it's a war, like it's a conquest, his lips invading mine so wholly and thoroughly that I can't tell where I end and he begins. He tastes of sin, of alcohol, of smoke and ice and blood. I bite down hard in an attempt to regain control, copper flooding our mouths, but he only groans and kisses me harder, as though even my vitriol is something he wants.
Involuntarily, my hips jerk up against his, and I go still when I feel the hard, unmistakable weight of him ground into my thigh. A sharp, heady jolt of heat flashes through my entire body, so potent it is dizzying.
No. Absolutely fucking not.
I buck hard in an attempt to shove him off, our kiss still a stalemate of wills, but all I manage is to press us closer. A moan rumbles through our kiss, and I'm unsure whether it is mine or his. His uninjured hand leaves my wrists to anchor itself in my hair, and he yanks my head back, his mouth still bruising mine with everything he has.
Even with my hands free, I can't fight him. My hands claw at his shoulders, not to push away but to hold, and he grinds his hips against mine in a way that brushes everything right, in a way that makes me gasp into the kiss.
"You—" I bite down on my lip to keep in a whimper as his other hand trails up my chest and brushes over my nipple, soft and punishing at the same time. "This means nothing. You are nothing, Osborn. Understand?"
"Mmm," he hums. He pressed down even harder until his cock was flush against mine through the towel and fabric of his jeans, and pulls at my nipple until my vision goes white under his touch. "Seems like your body loves it, though."
My back arches against my will as his mouth leaves mine and goes to my neck, biting down like a fucking animal, and my nails rake down his back for purchase, because why, why does this feel like this? Why does it feel like this with him, this- this piece of filth, of all people?
"Your body loves it, just like a low-rent whore." My blood goes hot, and I wrench away from him, our foreheads pressed against each other, our breaths ragged. In one quick move, I slap him, humiliating and loud, and let out a broken laugh: "I fucking loathe you." And yet, despite it all, my cock throbs, every nerve sparking to life like he'd hooked me up on the strongest drug on the market.
His answer is a slow, cynical laugh, and then—
His hand snakes lower, touching my tattoos almost reverently, and grabs hold of the towel. "No—" Humiliation pervades me, and I’m not sure if it is from anticipation or trepidation. But no one has touched me like this, not since—not since—
"Touch me there and I'll fucking kill you, Marcus. I mean it." My voice rises with every word, reaching a shrill octave, and my heart is beating too fast.
"Can't wait, my prince." His hand slips under the towel, affording me some semblance of dignity, and closes over my length, stroking me slow and fast and hard and soft all at once.
A sound is wrested out of me, harsh and raw and devastating. Despite my bruising grip, a shudder rips through me, and I arch into his touch, shamefully and hungrily.
"You're no better—" I gasp, "You're no better than them. You're just a brute who lucked out, Osborn. I'll make you regr—" His mouth slams into mine again, ravenous and punishing, whispering, "Say it again,"—his thumb drags over the head of my cock, still grinding, and his rhythm turns ruthless—"and see if I prove you right, Armstrong."
He breaks away from the kiss and trails his lips down to my chest, taking a nipple into his mouth. His hand works me faster and harder, obscene friction building and precum leaking onto my stomach, our breaths coming fast, harsh, wild. The dirty locker room wall digs into my back, but I don’t even care, the pain and pleasure blurring together and forming a haze that I never want to leave. I know, I fucking know, that I am seconds, moments away from coming undone under his hands, his touch, his gaze. That fucking gaze.
A muffled, broken moan leaks into the air, and I gasp into his mouth, "stop— stop— I'm—"
"Come for me, my prince." His hand tightens, and he strokes, hard, once, twice, and my back bows, my body betraying me. I come, and it is perfect, incandescent madness, and also disgusting, nauseating shame. I come, and he strokes me through it, until I am sensitive and trembling and oh so fucking pathetic. Despite it all, my hands still grip his shoulders and my breaths still mingle with his. The shame is almost palpable, acrid, as bitter as his blood on my tongue from our kiss.
He looks at me, dark and like he's searching for something in the wreckage of me, of us. His thumb drags lazily along my jaw, smearing the shameful evidence of my arousal, his fingers prodding at the seam of my lips, coaxing them open. I'm so delirious I don't even know what I'm doing, and my mouth falls open as he stuffs it full of my cum and kisses me, soft and slow. This kiss feels different from the others, as if he's savoring it, as if he's tasting me, long and sweet and slow.
For some obscene reason, hot, blinding rage fills me, and I spit at him, the humiliating glob landing on his cheek. His gaze flicks up to me, the stormy grey enveloping me, and a mocking chuckle reverberates around me.
"You think you won? You won nothing, Osborn. You're still a rat."
He just shakes his head, and smiles a low, dark smile, as if he expected this. He lifts his hand, and I'm forced to look at the damning white evidence of my arousal on his hand, mixed with his blood.
Yikes. That cannot be sanitary. Well hello, germaphobe Preston.
"Say what you want, my prince. But your body doesn't lie."
He steps away from me, but I don't even look at him. Squeezing my eyes shut, I will myself to forget the memories from boarding school, from—from—
I shake my head and whisper, "Stay away from me, Marcus. Or you'll regret it." And as I say it, I realize I don't know which makes me feel sicker.
Him, or myself.