standbywarrior

[standbywarrior]

yeah earth sucks and humanity isn’t fun but you know what heaven DIDN’T have? hatsune miku. i’m glad to share this earth with her

[standbywarrior]

IMAGINE GETTING YOUR ASS KICKED BY A BIRD.

[standbywarrior]

can you please promise you will try having reading comprehension skills? for me 🥺

[standbywarrior]

The teasing sensation of his hot breath ghosting over the raw wound is attractively infuriating, and you hate him all the more for getting you this riled up. Then he's licking again, and it's better but not enough to tide you over the next pause in action. He doesn't leave you to simmer for too long before there's another bite, close enough to its companion that it manages to set off another sharp stab of pain in the original and the new one at the same time. It must overload what little there is left of your functioning brain, because he's already sucking hard on the marred skin by the time the stars behind your eyelids begin to dissipate.

There can't be a single bone left in your body at this point, because the overwhelming pain and pleasure have you melting into the ground into a puddle of what was once you. The wet warmth of your neck only further confirms this suspicion, and the only thing you have left that seems to confirm you still might be a person is the way that your fingers are still tensed and tangled into his roots. That is, until he begins to move in order to remind you that there's other surfaces of your body that are still intact and available for him.

"Oh my God- Treekat- Please-"

The reaction to his hand moving down is instantaneous, and the thought that he might be going for your collarbones next sends a whole new flush of heat racing across your body. For once, you wish you didn't always have such thick bulky sweaters standing between you and him. At this point you'd rather he shred the entire collar of it than have to waste more time without him giving you more- completely ignoring that the sweater didn't technically belong to you to begin with. You push back against the hand pinning your shoulder down and try to arch your upper back up again, trying to make space for him to better shove the turtleneck part down and gain access to fresh real estate.

The voice you're used to hearing, low and snide, cries out beside your ear, already pinned back in some mixture of response and instinct. It doesn't do much to break the surrounding tone, doesn't help to parse the meaning, but you don't need it. You can feel everything, hot and wanting and crushed into you, those hands pushing past your locks in a way you haven't experienced since others would coddle you; For just a moment, it takes a shot at exhausting the edges of the forest fire burning wildly out of control in your ribs, remembering how just the other night, he'd pet the same hair down in slow, sweet touches-

But then you're crashing harder when he pulls you in, turning the next pass of your tongue into a raspy pant from the sudden jarring. The same exhale bounces off his skin, humid in the small pocket you've built of his body around yours, and you're almost surprised there's no condensation before you realize he's too slick with blood to accumulate anything else. It earns another long lick, some semblance of damage control and nothing at all to do with the feeling of rapture dancing across your taste buds.

Your nose bumps against his jaw as you reorient, turning a very limited angle to land a new bite beside the second set. Just as neat, just as pretty, you're sure, if you could see a thing where you're being held hostage. With nowhere left to go, you graze the inflammation with your breath again, tonguing and tasting until you're locked back down, pinching the surrounding flesh so it bruises as you suck like you'll die without it. Maybe you will, either way. You feel like it, with his fingers in your hair, suffocating you with his sounds- Shit-

Clumsily, your higher hand tumbles down from its vigil, starting to stretch the turtleneck lower down his collar, showing more, you need more.

[standbywarrior]

The way his tongue traces over your throat this time feels much more addicting than it did before, because you can still feel the way his your the bitemark throbs to ooze more blood out with each curve of his tongue across your skin. You feel defined by the warm stickiness he’s tracing across your neck, and it’s hard to even remember that there’s anything past your collarbones until he’s shoving you back into the ground.

You’re jarred back into your senses just enough to remember that you have limbs, and you clumsily lift both hands until you’re threading your fingers through his hair on either side of his head and hoping for the best that you avoid the leaves. It feels so much better to have your fingers tangled into the roots of his hair than into the mess of blankets and clothes surrounding you, and then even better when you realize he’s moaning because of you. The way that he’s managed to overwhelm all of your thoughts and senses until there’s nothing left but him is exhilirating, and then he bites down again without any warning.

There’s no excuses for the sound that comes out of you now, because it’s unquestionably a loud high-pitched pleading whine of several words that you’ve managed to smash into an inconprehensible jumble. Your fingers tighten hard in his hair, but you rock him further into your neck rather than making any attempt to pull him away. You’re reaching a fever pitch in your delirium that has his teeth seeming like they’re meant to be embedded in your flesh, and you can’t stand the thought of being separated for even a moment more.

Talking, again, almost incoherent behind the din of your own running narration, which chalks up to some approximation of an electric reverb droning on endless loop. It peaks every time you work your mouth, like a thousand bolts of lightning in tandem, illuminating every nerve in your body while the grey matter controlling them is left utterly fried. The taste is different, from the jars, of course it is- It's warm, it's pulsing, and it's his, a totally different experience from the detachment of swiping a finger around cold glass.

There's no word for the catch of your lips beneath his mandible, for the smoothness of his texture between the snags of punctures. Licking straight from the source, the catharsis feels like acid reflux, rising like a bubble from your core. It drags you from the wounds, left cold and bleeding in your wake. You're painting his throat with the excess, drunk on the sensation of his twitching skin against every crevice of tongue, molded to him- The way he writhes against you sends you the rest of the way, eyes just barely slitted to catch the blur of rolling fabric behind the push.

As you mouth along his neck, pearly and perfect for ruin, his words land like droplets over a hot pan, and the reaction is instant. The carbonation fizzes from your chest, pouring out into a broken moan as you clutch him harder, pushing back against his best efforts. Your gaze feels misty when it catches the blurry reds drawn across his larynx, claimed in your shared hue, and the ecstasy of achievement lulls it shut again just in time to make a more permanent mark with the points of your frontal fangs.

[standbywarrior]

His teeth begin to pull out, and there’s a split second of panic that even your tamest goading went too far before you realize he hadn’t gone far at all. The pause is too short for you to even begin thinking about opening your eyes to see what’s wrong before he’s sinking back down, and you’re so back now and better than ever.

“Holy shit, I can’t believe you made- Mmm- Made me wait so long for this, you sadistic asshole.”

You can’t help but run your mouth as he works, but the breathy tone and smile still stretching across your lips removes any chance you had at sounding tough. Even if all that was somehow missed, the way your throat bobs and you momentarily lose your ability to speak as he runs his tongue across the fresh wound in the middle of your sentence would have shown that you don’t have an afterlife career as a poker player ahead of you anytime soon.

Then he’s doing it again, and you swear you can feel the blade of his tongue teasing apart each puncture as it drags over it. Your blood feels like it’s gushing out of you, and you might have recognized that it probably feels more dramatic than it is in reality…. If you had a single brain cell left to think critically.

Without that though, all you can do is focus on the way that your excitement only pumps that electric crackle through your veins even faster and how much of you he’s gulping down right now as a result. The fixation on the idea leaves you mindless, and you don’t even realize the way that your upper chest is struggling against his grip to try to push your neck into the apex of an upper body curve.

The cloud in your head seems to blow away with his gasp, alerting instantly to the sound of surprise. You almost shift back, panic stirring up when the gush of him starts to taint your gums-

But he's already talking, again, like he's lost for air, like he doesn't care if it rips him. And he's..

Your teeth loosen on the underside, unclamping to retract just far enough to read his expression, because you won't trust a tone that can't speak in one shot. By the time you're able to look, though, your upper fangs still grazing him, he's.. He's smiling at something, so short and nearly strained with the stretch that you could mistake it for bravado. Maybe it is, in some way. A troll's bite is no small blow, even with your teeth running safer than most. But he's not..

..There's a growing dampness on your lip, ebbing thick and molten into the seam of your mouth. With your teeth still parted, you're at the perfect angle to catch the rolling seep, and it's.. exactly what you know it is. It's not a deep bite, but it's severe enough to ooze this quickly, and you're quicker to fasten on, tonguing at the torn tissue before it can speckle his sweater.

His goading only tightens your hand, snagged between concern for him and your own sickly relief. Relieved that you're not in trouble, that he's either so fucking crazy or equally delirious, that he tastes so fucking good-

And there's plenty to go around, having to swallow the pool of stickiness coating your tongue until even your saliva's dyed a red tint where it bubbles at the corner of your forced open mouth. You're licking out as you take it down, hoping to better manage the flow before he goes and fucks it up again with his movement.

[standbywarrior]

He must have heard your whine groan loud and clear, because after that he doesn't take long to kick things up into high gear. It's only a few moments before he skips over all the fussy pretense and digs his teeth directly into your flesh, and that definitely manages to shock to you. There's a short little gasp for air at first, followed by you mumbling out the only word you can think of.

"Treekat..."

Everything had been so slow and gentle up until this point, but maybe he'd been just as antsy to get into it as you've been all along. If that's the case, then maybe it's time to ramp things up a notch?

You try for a smug grin despite not bothering to open your eyes, but the best you can manage in your current state is the small crooked smile of satisfaction that's closer to how you actually feel. It's always been easier to goad him with your words though, which you really should be doing anyways to make up for your pitiful whimpering display so far.

"Is that-" Trying for another obnoxious wiggle is a bad idea when his teeth are still actively embedded in your flesh, and you gasp again at the feeling of them stationary there while you flex the muscle beneath. "All you've got?"

That's an old sound, reedy and animal-like. Whining, wanting something.. that you'd been trying to put out of mind, for a while. And it'd worked pretty well, so long as you didn't touch him. Leave it to you to take one step and crumble. It's.. a bitter thought, that you're so unrestrained to have wound up literally at his throat via the smallest provocation. You weren't supposed to. You're still not sure you're supposed to, but you are.

It leaves a bad taste in your mouth, leaves you feeling like whining, too. So maybe you should busy it with something else, even as stage frightened as you're suddenly feeling.

There's no circumstance under which you should hurt your moirail. It's a protective quadrant. You've always done your best to.. protect him.

But you'd failed, hadn't you?

So th<3r<3's no point in trying to b<3 anything you'r<3 not.

When your teeth finally break skin, it's slow and purposeful; And then, you knew you were forgetting something. No sooner have you sunk in do you realize- You normally start with bruising. Ah.

[standbywarrior]

Once you feel like you've established that you don't want him pulling any punches, you let your eyes shut again so that you can focus on his touch again. His touch that... Doesn't come right away. Which is fine! It's so incredible that he feels emboldened to take things at a pace that he feels comfortable with, and you're definitely not imagining flipping him over to show him a better pace firsthand.

After an eternity, there’s finally the press of that wet warmth against your throat. It travels up, and goes on for just long enough that you’re about to complain about him dragging things out when-

You would prefer to describe the sound you make next as a high-pitched groan, even though you know Treekat would most likely rudely mislabel it as a whine if his mouth wasn’t already busy teasing you with the way he grazed his teeth so carefully across your skin without actually breaking it. Leave it to him to find a way to antagonize you by being too gentle.

You're glad you tilted him back, the way he's making you light up again. It's a lower, slower burn than before, safe from overwhelm, but fueled by anticipation. What's.. he mean by that? Ah- That you should move? The jostle of his shoulder seems to suggest as much, always impatient.

..Is what you'd say, if you hadn't been missing him all the same. As you're replacing your hand to press back on him, though, you're distracted, even using your other to keep his position locked. Looking over where you'd just been, the wetness already absorbed back out of sight, you're. Anxious all over again. Unsure exactly how you'd even gotten to this point. All sorts of.. thrashing around, yelling about wants. You're doing this because you want to, but what does it mean?

It's too late to hop back into the pile, now. With your pusher in your esophagus, there's no going back. He's too open to you, his most vulnerable self bared like a fantasy, and with his taste on your lips, you can't. Be good. You can't resist. It's a maple syrup restock, and you want it so bad. It's weighing down your tongue with pooling appetite, so heavy you barely remember dropping it back out to drag up his trachea, over the blue vein just visible beneath the surface-

And bring your teeth closer to the squishy spot just below his chin point, even with the perimeter where other gashes lay- A testing squeeze, to feel the pressure push back, and trying to remember.. how to let it burst.

[standbywarrior]

You flush deeper under his gaze, not sure what to make of the way that he's watching you. He's looking at you the way one might look at a beautiful piece of art... Or maybe closer to a delicious looking pastry. There's a sense of wonder and admiration that feels wholly unfamiliar, but an underlying hunger beneath it all that ties it all together.

You wouldn't mind if he ate you up, as long as he kept looking at you like this for just a little longer.

So when his hands slowly move up towards your face again, you watch the way he adjusts the angle of them to perfectly cup either side of your chin. It must be a miracle that the heat of his hands hasn't burned his fingerprints into your skin by now, but would you even be upset if it did? Maybe not, if the way you obediently tilt your head back is any indication.

"Mm."

A low hum of agreement with the way that he burrows back into the crook of your neck, as well as your own relish for the way that stretching the skin causes his newest scrape to sting all over again. You let your eyes flutter shut again, and you feel a few beats of where he's pressed up against the pulse in your neck before his words fully process.

"Hopefully doing more than just staying in place?"

One eye peeks back open to glance at him as you ask. It's partially a rhetorical question, but there's still a kernel of sincerity behind the inquiry. His DIY approach to cleaning up the wounds he'd given you had been nice- okay, fantastic- but it still paled in comparison to that single tentative scrape that he'd abandoned before even fully following through.

His hand is no longer pinning your shoulder down, so you give him a slight wiggle just to push your luck and remind him that you might be breakable, but you're just as easily put back together... And maybe also as a way of begging him to get on with it already, but you'd never own up to that.

The flutter of his eyes, like the cream of blossoms in the wind but twice as delicate- You swear you feel your heart stop, your jaw nearly slackening entirely if you weren't so fiercely committed to keeping your teeth safely sheathed. Has he ever said your name that sweetly before? Unless he were being sarcastic, you've never heard it like this. Not chirped like one of those little birds he loves so much, like he wasn't about to tear you to pieces a few minutes ago. The whiplash is staggering, even with the blurry period in between, and you wonder if his blood condition somehow made him more vulnerable to bloodloss than before, to have transformed into this demure little..

You'd call it false modesty, or even teasing, but the way he's bowed his snowy head, all the roughness evaporated like ice always does in the late spring, all you can see is a piece of heaven just beneath your fingertips, like he'd fallen just to land at them. That's the only reason someone suddenly so- Cute? Is he cute? Are you crazy?- He's something so far reversed from where he'd started, even moaning for you, that you want to burrow into the generosity of him and never come out.

Your hands come up to his face, mirroring the way you'd been taking turns holding each other on and off, and use it to guide his head back where it'd been, when he'd sung for you. You want to hear it again, warm and breezy and full of the summer yet to come. You.. don't have any control over this, anymore, dropping to mumble into his undamaged front.

"I want, to. Uh.. Stay here."

Feeling the pulse of his throat against you, rich and reverberating with something you're not supposed to have, but he's.. inviting you. How do you say no? If this is heaven, you ought to protect it. You should give him whatever he wants, because-

"..It feels like you want that, too?"

Looking for permission. A palemate.. keeps you in line, after all. You should listen.

[standbywarrior]

The sudden exclamation does a great job at getting your attention, because you're immediately staring back up at him. Not that looking at him makes his words any clearer, because he might as well be reciting complex math formulas at you right now. You blink a few times in slow confusion as you try to parse his stumbling words, and wonder whether you'd hit your head harder than you'd thought.

He manages to actually finish a few sentences towards the end though, and they're familiar enough sentences that they don't require much brain power to understand. You understand the act of wanting, but especially right now.

"I want..."

What don't you want would be the better question for him to ask right now. But you don't want to scare him away, not when he's looking down at you so flustered with his lips still shiny with spit. The fact that you're looking at them right now instead of having them on you feels like a crime, but you don't want to push him too far and lose all of the progress you've made this morning at finally being open with each other. And oh, maybe that's what you want above everything else.

"This is about you. I want you to start acknowledging what you want... And letting yourself have it." You pause to blink again, giving him time to let what you'd said sink in. Then you look back up at him, where the red flush of his cheeks is made pink through the filter of your pale lashes. "So what do you want, Treekat?"

Uh.

That quiet sound is still ringing in your ears like an alarm four hundred times its magnitude, and you're not entirely sure you didn't mishear it until you're hung above him to witness the effect of your 'errand' firsthand. It takes a moment, wading through the incoherent static making up your own mental state, but by the time you're back outside yourself, he's a sight to see. The pale of his skin gone rosey, saturated with a lively glow you rarely see when he's not yelling at you, and the look in his eyes almost hypnotic- Until he tears them away, some of that fogginess clearing in the motion. It takes all you've got not to force them back on you, fingers curling to keep from grabbing his chin. To keep looking at him. He's just. Like this, he's.. His attention's drifting, and you can't bear it.

He's so fucking-

"Hot!"

You blurt it out so fast you feel a bolt of confusion screw your face for just a second- But then you're quick to fumble on, stare stretched with needless emphasis.

"I just- I thought you might be getting too hot, because of the humidity, and so- You know, because I'm. So close. Like, my mouth, and all the. Wet." And your pupils might well have been blown, if you had them, where you're forced to fumble this so close to your direct handiwork. But you manage to finish, with a decisive nod. "But if you're okay, I can.. Do you want me to? What do you want? I could.. There's nothing left to clean, really, but, uh."

The hand that'd been drying him has already stopped, rested awkwardly over his collar instead, and you know you're anything but dehydrated, when he's still glistening with you, but.. you're losing a lot of the muscle flexibility you'd had for vowels and scrapes just a short while ago, so you give up saying anything else, only boring holes into him and wondering.. what more even entails.

If it'd part his lips again, untouched as any other masterpiece should be.

[standbywarrior]

You're content to just let him explore, tracing back and forth against the flesh that was once so familiar but has probably become less so after all the years you lost. The silky smoothness as he glides across your unbroken skin, then the pang as he applies gentle pressure to the wounds on your neck. His wounds on your neck. The back and forth of it might be soothing if not for the way that the electrical current that's thrumming through your veins and out into those very wounds, but he's so achingly careful to keep things soft.

Then there's just the barest scrape against your skin, and the sweet sting of it feels like just the barest hint of what you've been dreaming of for months now. The pain elicits a soft breathy moan as your head extends further back until it's fully pressing into the ground, but he doubles down on it by attaching himself to the wound and lapping up his reward.

He doesn't even grant you the time to luxuriate in the ecstasy of finally getting exactly what you'd wanted all along though, because he's just as quickly pulling away and moving upward enough that you can no longer feel the warmth of his face nuzzled up next to your neck. You'd thought that things were finally going perfectly for once, but maybe he didn't feel the same?

“Huh, why’re you- You stopped?”

The only thing you feel now is a cool stickiness from where his saliva residue is left, so it seems like it's time to figure out what's going on. You look up at him through half-lidded eyes, now glassy from the intoxicating sensory trance you’d been under until he pulled away. He's letting you look at him now as he dabs at your neck, and you can't help but deflate at the idea that he's already done. You're loath to let him see your disappointment and feel pressured to do anything else he's not comfortable with, so you try to look away from him and over towards the crumpled wall of the nest instead.

If he's still watching, you aren't, unknowingly honing in on the same senses he is. Using your mouth is almost foreign, so late in the game, and curling your tongue to trace each little sliver is far different from its other uses. It takes intention, more than you thought you had when you'd pushed forward, hardly conscious of anything but the intuition guiding you into place. There's almost no thinking at all, because how could a single concept stick to your brain when it's already at full capacity with him? His shape under you, under your every motion, losing track of the goal entirely without your sight to guide it. All you know is the curve of his neck for you, the dips and valleys of the waiting flesh before you crest his contours, numerous times, and tease closer to the corner where the worst, best things you've ever heard would normally spill out.

Right now, it's silent, but you're drowning in a new feeling. Even when you're sure you must've gone over the marks four, five times by now, growing familiar with the hardness of the scabbing and how it presses your tongue like morse code, it doesn't stop your hand from grabbing harder, like you're running out of time. He must be shining with your run-off, by now, cooling between strokes of the tongue, but you don't want it to stop. Pressing too close, you.. lose the middleman entirely, edge of a tooth grazing him before you seal your mouth down across his injury for a hard suck-

It takes the new tang of fresh blood, squeezed from the pressure, for you to realize what the hell you're doing. No sooner do you slip free of him, tongue pressed one last time to subdue the irritation, are you pulling back entirely, the red pricking at his own surface no different from your own tint.

"It's- I cleaned it up."

Always good to inform!

Hovering like that, you're already being proven a liar by the webbing of the new trickle, following the pathways of moisture laid out around it. But you work through the fluster straining your brow, forced as neutral as you can manage. With the same nonchalance, you lower your free sleeve to dry him off in gentle, dabbing motions to prevent another spout. If any darker spots begin to speckle the matching fabric, you can chalk it up to spit. Easy.

..There's a taste on your inner lip that tells of more on the other side, but you have the self control not to go fishing for it, right now. Even if.. you have to swallow a little more thickly, satiating yourself on the streaks left behind.

[standbywarrior]

You only get to see him for a split second, his eyes wide in surprise before he absconds back beyond your line of sight. Which isn't to say that the split second moment wasn't much, because you think it just flipped a switch in your brain that you hadn't even known existed. There's something to his shyness that makes it obvious that he wasn't doing this for you, but for himself. He didn't even want you to see him, he just wanted the pleasure of the moment to himself.

There goes that sappy fluttering feeling in your chest again, because the knowledge that he's finally taking something that he wants without trying to balance it with what he thinks you want is so much better than actually getting to see him. With the thrill of pushing him outside of his comfort zone and then getting the satisfaction of seeing him relish the newfound freedom, it's hard to even imagine why he was so against mixing the two quadrants in the first place when it was so much better to have both.

So you let him have the moment, tilting your head back up to give him even more space to work with and to guarantee him the knowledge that you won't intrude unless he asks you to. You let your own eyes shut- just as easily as you'd remembered- and let yourself float along on the sensation of where he's touching you. You can't help but shudder when he moves upward again and hooks just behind the corner of your jaw, but his hand pinning your shoulder down keeps you in place. Because he knows you even after all this time, and knows the only way to guarantee you'll stay in one place is to do it himself. The thought of being known and touched so intimately at the same time is electrifying, and yet you know you still want to- no, need to- stay still for him despite the energy coursing through you.

His angle changes, bumping your nose where there wasn't an edge before, and you're caught almost breaching eye contact before you finish the stroke, just managing not to overshoot your trajectory as his face closes in a centimeter or so closer. Trying to trip you up, or..?

Either way, you flush a little brighter with the skim of his attention finding yours, and you're dipping back under his chin to get more cover in the brief instance you're recovering from being watched during.. something so much more intimate than usual. There was a time where that was the whole appeal; Challenging each other with steps closer to unspoken boundaries, toeing the line and baiting boldness with faux confidences until they were made true.

..But it's the first time, in a while. The first time you're tasting him again, just barely any more than his wrist all those months ago, and while you don't remember spending much time above skin before, you think you could get used to it. At least here and now, where you play along the ridges of another raised bump, mopping up another streak. This time, as you climb the edge of his jawline, your eyes slide shut before they can catch his again. You'd.. probably be too embarrassed, if they did, wondering what the hell he even thinks of you right now.

He hasn't asked you to stop, though.

[standbywarrior]

Once he's maneuvered into position, it's another round of testing your ability to be patient. He's just resting there and staring, and it's hard not to get squirmy with the uncomfortable anxiety of it. Maybe he's having second thoughts about all of this, or maybe he just doesn't like whatever he's seeing. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But you don't have a clue what's really going on in his head right now, so you push down the anxiety and wait.

Then there's a hand on your shoulder that's more literally pushing you down into the ground, and you almost want to laugh at the absurdity of it. What, does he really think you're going to try to escape now of all times?

The humor is gone almost immediately, replaced by the sole sensation that's suddenly eclipsing all other thoughts or senses. You'd almost forgotten how warm his tongue is, even when you're already flustered to the point of feeling like you're burning up. It stings where it glides over the beginning ridges and bumps of scabs beginning to form, and the short intake of air leaves you with an o-shaped open mouth by the time his tongue reaches the end of its trail.

You tell youself that you're still being patient, even if you decide to cheat your rules a bit and tilt your head down again ever so slightly so that it's more closely aligned with his. You technically moved, sure, but... It was just so that you could see him better. And you can see at least the upper portion of his face now, so obviously that's the only reason why you had to move right away... To see his expression.

And just like that, you're there. Where you dreamed of being. Where.. it feels so strange, now. Your cheek rested atop his collarbone, almost tenderly, but staring into the marks of your own design. They've stopped leaking so readily, by now, beginning to dry loosely at the edges like the crust beneath your nails. But that's never stopped you, before.

..It doesn't feel real. The squishy fabric of his borrowed sweater, soft and springy against your face, or the beating heart so close by. The smell of him, the closeness of his skin, you could probably count the pores or whisk the peach fuzz near his nape with a single exhale. But you're too busy holding your breath with anticipation, before you make that final move. Because.. if you do, are you still moirails?

Against every odd, agonizing over what you've missed and what he's missed.. you don't want to lose what you have, either.

So when you tilt in for it, you decide.. to be careful. A free hand braces his shoulder, firm but pliant, as you poke your tongue out to the deepest scratch, still wet at its rim, and trace along the smear you'd left behind. It's just.. finishing the job Karkat had started.

[standbywarrior]

He's moving so beyond slowly that you're beginning to wonder if this is actually a sign from the fates to stop being so impatient, or maybe just to torture you. This is about encouraging him to let himself have what he wants though, and not about your own all-consuming desire to more or less fuse with him and never separate again, so you lay there and try to be patient with him.

With little else to do, you simply watch him as he slowly inches closer to you. He seems so nervous, but it's not like this is a moment where you can give him cheerful words of encouragement. All you can do is let him take this at his own pace of whatever feels comfortable for him and hope that your bright red cheeks and rapt expression is conveying even a fraction of how badly you want this right now.

And just like that, he's finally so close that you can feel the puff of his breath on your skin as his mouth hovers over it. Your mouth is dry with anticipation and seemingly every baby hair on your neck is standing on edge, and when the dull rounded edge of his horn is prodding your chin upward, he certainly doesn't have to tell you twice. You raise your chin up just high enough to make space for him, and only get slightly frustrated at your anatomy for preventing you from seeing much more than the top of his head no matter how far down you angle your gaze.

If this is going where you think it's going though, it probably won't matter anyways when you always end up shutting your eyes anyways. Or at least, you used to. Would it be the same now though? Will any of this? You don't let your anxious spiraling show though, keeping your breaths shallow but steady. No matter what, you'll both find a way to make it work in the end.

He goes lax so quickly you're convinced you said something stupid, or maybe even disappointing. It's astonishing how quickly you're willing to take it back, even after everything you've both gone through to get here, screaming and crying and grabbing each other with a fervor usually reserved for facing actual threats instead of just.. relationship drama.

But you guess you've both always been dramatic. It's proven when he finally responds, with..

..A voice that pulls your intestines taut.

You can't remember if you ever asked, before. You probably never needed to. But everything's different, now. Different and undefined, and you don't.. want to keep making mistakes. You want to ask, while it's still new- While he's sprawled out for you unquestioningly, white hair fanned out, only begging for you to start- The way he's been begging, daring you, and you can't. Wait any longer. Not when you had to humiliate yourself asking. It's best to reap the benefits before it's too late.

For his sake, at least, you don't rush in all at once. You're still figuring out where you even want to put your hands, which sort of touch you're following.. but the smell of iron is a good place to start.

As slow as a creaking branch, you ease nearer, trying to ignore his face and the way it's making you scared to fail whatever test of proof this is. Proof that you want him, like he was just doubting. It takes you leaned over him until you're practically folded there, finally moving your hands against the floor to keep from toppling when the scent's enough to dizzy you; And when you make it that far, closing the gap to his throat is as easy as nuzzling just below his turtleneck, coaching his chin up with the shift of your horn into the tender underside.

[standbywarrior]

He says only a single monosyllabic word, and yet you're hanging onto it for dear life. It hurt to imagine how much he's been bottling up for all this time, and at this point you'd do everything and anything within your powers to make whatever he wants a reality. In your intense focus on making sure you don't miss what he says, you're not even sure you breathe or blink once.

Or at least, you don't until he begins to loosen his grip on your shoulders. The fear that he might be pulling away from you in order to reject you after all goes shooting through you, and you take a panicked breath in as if you'd just jumped into icy water. But he's talking again, so you go silent again just as quickly to hear him out.

It's only when he finally finishes his sentence that you realize you'd tensed up underneath him, because your muscles go limp with relief all at once. He'd said it with such quiet tentativeness that you'd been afraid it would be some awful confession that he didn't really want you at all, but being touched? It feels like you'd spent more of your time daydreaming about the way you used to be constantly intertwined than you spent in the present focusing on the menial tasks you were performing around the forest, so the idea of it finally becoming reality feels like a fever dream. Or at least, a feverish pitch to the way that your entire body felt burning hot with desire and all-consuming need for him to follow through with that right now.

"Please," is all you manage to gasp out.

You've lost track of all the times the mood has switched, by now, bouncing between comfort, outburst, and burning want until the edges have blurred so far you can barely tell the difference. They're synchronous inside you, and you can't predict what's coming next until he leads you there with the lull of his voice, talking you down from ignition.

..It's easier than it should be to calm down, so much so that you worry you've trivialized everything you've just said. But when you look down at him, the person you wanted to beat into the ground, you realize you don't want it anymore. Just like you said- Confusing. Is it healthy, to feel so many extremes in such rapid succession?

...

Do you care?

"..I.."

You think back to all that's happened. How nice it was to wake up beside him, though the recollection is strangely angled. How warm you'd felt, how safe it was. How much you'd wanted to hurt him, to mend him, to keep him. To tell him everything, despite the work you'd put in for months to bottle it, laying all those efforts to waste in one fell swoop. But when he's laying beneath you, it doesn't feel like a regret, for once.

It still feels unfinished, though. So you find the only thing that can encompass all those feelings, to fulfill each and every want without contradicting the others, even when it's blotching your face for the millionth time.

Your hands unfurl, flattening, in case he says no.

"I want to.." Hesitation almost chokes you out, bleary eyes flitting to the sidelines. But you answer as quietly as you'd last been. It's the same degree of secrecy.

"..I want to touch you."

[standbywarrior]

You're thankful when it's his turn to speak again, because it decreases the feeling of being pinned underneath those way too intense eyes. Except then that intensity softens into watery pink tears trailing down his face, and that thankfulness dissipates with it.

The desire to reach up and wipe his tears away is immediate and all-consuming, and theoretically possible given that he's only pinning your shoulders down at this point, but... Given how violently he reacted to the thought of you trying to escape earlier, you think the risk of him thinking you're trying to escape again outweighs the reward of being able to remind him that he doesn't have to suffer alone as long as you're here with him.

So instead, you're stuck laying beneath him and trying to communicate all that and so much more with your expression as you listen to the hurt in his words. It's hard to even comprehend how all of this has been going on beneath the surface all this time and he hadn't breathed a word of it, and you're not sure whether you should be upset with him for keeping it from you or mad at yourself for apparently being the world's shittiest moirail.

"I'm sorry if I've been confusing you, I didn't mean to do that. You're not selfish for wanting things though, that's just natural, it's-" You started talking without knowing where you were going again, so it's time to switch gears to a thread of conversation that you have a slightly better grasp on. "I want you to ignore all of those thoughts about what feels possible, or selfish, or all of those things. In a hypothetical world where there was nothing limiting you, what would you want right now?"

He's so quiet for you that you fall silent in turn, only catching up on all the circulation you missed while you were busy having a heart attack between puffs of too-quick air, ragged and haggard where you've slowly sat back on your knees, just mindful enough not to crush his stomach. It forces your hands looser, dragged down to his shoulders, but he doesn't seem like he's going to be squirming, anymore, so you afford him the freedom.

There's a strange fascination in the manic glint of your stare, each stammer of his another note in a discordant symphony you want to keep hearing. It's just enough to keep you from attacking a second time, watery eyes tracking again, but you're done caving in to it. If you can't help crying, you'll do it with dignity, perched on your catch with a set to your jaw that only shakes one or two times, at most.

And then he's done talking, still repeating the same shit like you hadn't spent the last entire awakening reiterating how interested you are and how insane you feel for being interested in the first place. It doesn't help to have it held up like a measurement, blamed for not being outwardly interested enough.

He wants you, but he still tried to leave.

There's no sleeve available to wipe you, now, so you let moisture begin its trail down your chin, like a dilute imitation of Karkat's own spill. Always the fucking crybaby, bitter when you grit out the truth you both share, now.

"If I didn't feel like I do, none of this would be happening." And it hurts. You're a failure in two categories, and even when he says he wants both, you have no idea how he can handle it, handle you, after you've fucked up this many times in the span of a single interaction. It's miserable, it's.. sour. Your eyes drop, hollowed from the spiral inwards.

"Do you think I'm proud of this?" It hurts, to hurt him. To be too much, to be so lost in your own self. The tear streak finds its end, seeping down into the rim of your collar, and you've never felt so useless. "I don't- I don't know what I need. None of it feels like an option, you confuse me, I.."

You waver, caught between hating yourself or hating him for causing it, but it amounts to the same thing. The same shame, lowering your voice so that nothing else can hear.

"I want too much. I want- I want everything. I'm selfish."

[standbywarrior]

He yelled at you before for not listening, so you listen. His breath is warm on your face as he yells down at you, and you take it all in red faced and wide eyed. You try your hardest to listen despite the intensity of the way that he’s on top of you or the dull throbbing at the back of your skull, and you force yourself to listen to his entire diatribe before even thinking about opening your mouth.

You even let him pick your ragdoll-limp arms back up and slam them to the ground again and pray to God and every saint you can think of that your face didn’t get any redder than it must have already been. You can’t tell if you did really well or really shittily to have gotten this outburst of honesty out of him after all these months of awkwardly skirting around the issue, but you’re going to let him get it out of his system no matter what… And then respond when he’s ready to pause for a second because that’s how conversations ostensibly work, right.

“I want you.” The words are falling directly out of your brain without hitting any sort of filter, and you can’t seem to figure out how to stop them before even more come tumbling out. “I’ve always wanted you, I just… Didn’t know how much I was allowed to have.”

Pause. What the fuck? You can’t have possibly said that just now. You had agreed to be honest with each other, but this felt too far. Like a level of vulnerable clinginess that would only repulse him when he finally figured out how much you desperately needed him and would now be the final straw in this argument.

“I mean- I want to help, I just- You- I was trying to, like- But you said I wasn’t listening, so I-”

You cut yourself off there before you can make any more of a stuttering mess of yourself than you already have. It’s hard to take a deep breath when you’re halfway between being flustered and having a panic attack, let alone when you’re being physically pinned to the ground, but you try your hardest anyways. Now it’s time to try that again.

“I still don’t know what you need from me, and you didn’t seem especially interested… So…”

"No!"

You barely give him room to breathe after he demands out, renewing the snag of your nails as you dig at his arms- Unnecessarily so, but continuing the flurry of motion feels more effective than leaving anything squirmable. They're shoved hard into the ground, held there like he'd held you, as your terror turns to temper, every accusation he's casting squaring your shoulders further against his resistance.

"You're not- Going anywhere, so stop it!" The hiss rattles out, eyes narrowing to angry slits. "I'm actively flinging myself at you, and look who's fucking complaining! I told you I hated you! I finally fucking said it, and now you'd rather feel sorry for yourself than work with me on any conceivable level! You said you'd help!"

But he lied, just as quick to lower your walls as he was to turn them against you.

"I was honest with you! I fucking-" And there's no point to throwing him around, when you've got him right where you want him, but you have to take the betrayal out somehow, and it amounts to another thrash to his arms, lifted and slammed back by the biceps. It makes a weighty thud, and you know in your gut you need to stop, but you're so ups<3t-

"And when I don't get it right on the first go, I'm rejecting you?! Sorry I'm not perfect! I thought that's why you- Why you wanted me!" Hotness at your eyes again, cresting when your voice hitches, but you glare past the blur, bristling with the goddamn injustice of it all. "Why don't you tell me what you want, if it's so easy?!"