Chapter Text
The kid is twelve sweeps, four sweeps in your holy fleet, when the two of you reach the breaking point.
You know Gamzee Makara is your descendant from the moment you see him, and not just because he’s got your sign on his chest and your same curving horns. He’s got your exact color of blood and your same skinny face and rangy long limbs, and even though he’s built out of a handful of sticks and a chirpbeast’s nest masquerading as a head of hair he’s tall and strong and getting stronger. You and your church welcome him into the family with all his purple-blooded brothers and sisters from the homeworld below, and the first time he meets your eyes you know with certainty that he feels the jolt that runs through between you.
Whether he knows you as his ancestor, whether he just feels that you have a spot in your pusher that’s vulnerable to him, you don’t know. But he runs to keep up along side of you every time you come out of your throne room to be with the faithful, he sits in the front for every sermon with eyes full of salvation, for four whole sweeps he comes running at the slightest sign you need one of your brothers or sisters for the most menial of tasks and he smiles at you like you’re the beginning and end of the world. You take to him just a touch too affectionate for just a favored student, you know—you slip up once, maybe twice, and in among “brat” and “wriggler” and “motherfucker” and “brother” you call him “little one” and only notice when his ears go violet around the edge of his paint.
Three sweeps on the battleship Dark Carnival, and he makes subjugglator training. Four sweeps, and you get a moment and come down in person, and you get to make a show of some techniques of holy motherfucking inquisition.
It surprises you a little still when Gamzee stands up the second “example” comes out of your mouth. It shouldn’t, anymore, but it does.
“Ain’t nobody wants you to break them,” you’re telling the kids—only a handful or two. The class has been weeded to a sparser few, for all the church does its best to take care of its own. Everybody can’t make laughsassin, subjugglator, contorturenist—eventually the weak will out. They're all watching real keen, taking note and whispering as you get Gamzee's arm twisted up, his wrist bent back on itself, showing how you can send a troll into such terrible, terrible fear just by holding on the right way.
That’s what’s really supposed to be happening, anyway. He’s not showing any sign of the fear that usually comes on fast and strong when you get someone in a hold like this, is the thing. His breathing is coming faster, harder, but other than that he shows no sign the hold has him—must be flexible in a downright terrible way, that you’re bending his bones like this and he’s not crying out mercy. You give another littler push—
Crack
Gamzee doesn’t cry out, but he goes tense and frozen all over. You can feel it in your hands, through all your sweeps you’ve learned the feeling well—his wrist is snapped. The watchers murmur, all confusion and fear.
"Nnh," says Gamzee, formless little sound, and he actually fucking grins at you, even if it’s a little shaky, a little strange at the edges. “Oops. Fuckin’—forgot what I was about. My bad.”
“Forgot?” You repeat, and drop his arm. He winces, but doesn’t cry out—it’s strange, he ain’t reacting at all like you’re used to seeing a troll react when you snap a frond. You don’t have time to think on that, though, because you like to have a good hand on who you hurt and when. Hurting your precious little motherfuckin’ brothers and sisters in faith doesn’t stand you well when they haven’t done nothing worth hurting. You cause pain with intention. “Hark at the wriggler, all of you! Eat sopor long enough, you’ll even forget your wrist’s about to break! Miracle drug as it is, my motherfuckin’ ninja and ninjettes, you’ll let your brothers and sisters hurt you as they didn’t intend to do!” You turn back to him, bare all your teeth. He doesn’t look as happy now—you know for a motherfuckin’ fact he hates it when you throw the sopor thing back in his face, but you’re pissed as all mirthful hells and you don’t give a single gilded imperial fuck. “Listen up, little motherfucker, you let someone snap a bone like that out on a mission you’ll be as good as dead, and any of your brethren as were weighing your life with theirs, they’ll be fuckin’ dead too.”
His smile falls. “I,” he says, shakier and smaller. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, well.” You grab his wrist and hold it up so everyone can see. “Sorry don’t fix a broken body, wriggler. Get your pan-leaking ass to the doctorturer, pan-leak, and don’t you fuckin’ forget again.”
He goes.
You do the rest of the class with another who reacts in a manner much more satisfactory, wincing and yelping and begging off as soon as you get a good hold, but you remember how his bones creaked in your hands and the sharp snap and the way he smiled at you after, and you wonder. You wonder through the rest of the demonstration, you wonder through evening massacre. You wonder as you interrogate a heretic to their slow demise, wringing out of them why they been tagging hives mutant red. You wonder.
It’s with those wonderings in mind you end up heading down the corridors of your own ship in the middle of the day, no real aim or question in mind, headed to the door with the sign on it identical to your own. You don't make habit of visiting your kin in their own blocks, let alone kin so little-known and unproven, but that's a rule you've taken exception to many times already, for him. After he first arrived on-ship, and after it came to light your very own descendant was out of his pan on sopor slime. You made yourself unusually familiar, even then. No point walking it back now, and no call to knock and beg entry, King of Colors on your own ship. You step inside like you own the damn place.
The block is empty. You check his ‘coon—slime in it so thin it barely counts as sopor, and made bitter and rank even an addict like him would think a few times before putting it in his maw—but he’s not sleeping, for all it’s getting near midday. Out taking on study, maybe, or more likely shooting the shit and clowning on around with some of his kin. For all his tribulations and all the harsh rebuke you've given him over the sweeps, you have to acknowledge and admit your brother Makara is a defter hand at hatefriendly kinship than you ever were.
You’re about to go back to your throne room, maybe back to your block write up an imperial report on that heretic you inquisitioned (paperwork, more like dig your brains out with a culling fork) when you hear a low sound, and catch sight of the barest sliver of light under the doorway.
He’s in his ablution block. You stroll over, then stop at the door and frown when you hear him groan, very soft but very clear. They shouldn’t have given him any drugs while they set his wrist, not after he came to you all fucked up on sopor—he must be feeling it pretty hard.
You’re just considering on the kindness of letting him lie as he is when you hear another little groan—and this time it’s words that you hear.
“Yeah,” he pants, and you’ve been around long enough, you don’t even second-guess what you’re hearing. You been there a fair number of times over the sweeps you been alive. Wouldn’t have figured it for the first option after you gone and had your fucking wrist broken, but maybe they did give him something for it after all. Some of the drugs they give for pain down in the doctorturer bay can make you twitchy as a hard spell in heat. “Yes, fuck yes, nnh…”
You weigh what’s kind against what’s funny.
“Kind” doesn’t put up much of a fight.
You slam the door open and bellow, “HEY WRIGGLER, HAVING A GOOD MOTHERFUCKING TIME IN HERE?!” as loud as you know how to yell. He squawks like a plucked cluckbeast and flounders so hard in shock, he tears down the ablution curtain, then swears up a storm and pulls a towel over his junk and you break down laughing so hard you almost piss yourself.
“Watch your mouth!” You wheeze at him, still laughing so hard in between words you can’t hardly breathe, “Don’t wanna—shame the church now, little one, I’ll have to give you hail messiahs all through dinner!”
“Fucking hell!”
“Better than fucking yourself!” You burst out, and go back to howling laughter. He goes purple and groans at the bad joke and you ruffle his hair and laugh. He’s still shaking and turned on and now he’s frustrated as all hell too—wrigglers. Dumbass wrigglers.
“Ah go on, I'll fuck off with my bad self and let a little motherfucker finish up. I’m just messin’ with you.”
You're turning to go when you hear him shift, when you hear another faint sound--when you smell the familiar sweet-iron smell of blood in the air. You look back at him sharp and catch sight of spotted blood on the curtain he covers himself with, and you'd think little of it if he didn't at once see you looking and pull it over him. He's unpainted, and that's a nakedness more shaming and bare than his lacking clothes, but it's also mightily motherfucking instructive, how easy his face reads without holy mask. Clear and sharp, you see his guilt. Your laughter dies off.
“…You’re bleeding, little brother.”
He purples some more. “—‘M okay,” he mumbles. You look, you look hard, and see his claws stained purple, his stomach all bleeding in five little trickles from the holes where they’ve been.
“You clawed yourself up,” you say, sharp, and he winces. “What the fuck for?” a thought occurs. “What, you getting’ your pitch off in here?” He had a pitchmate once or twice, right? You don’t ever try to keep track of how the wind’s blowing for quadrants on your ship until all involved have moved up a few sweeps and stop flipping in and out of squares like it’s a goddamn race. Must not have a motherfucker to go to now though, who’d choose their own hands in an ablution block if they had a quadrant-mate? Especially at this age, goddamn.
“No,” he grumbles, all snarky and sharp, still frustrated as fuck. He can’t look up at you. That option exhausted, your pan passes to the next option as seems most likely to you.
“This about how you…forgot to tell me I was about to break you?” He doesn’t answer, and the lack tells you a lot about what he isn’t saying. You want to cuff him around the horns for being an idiot, but you got no need to beat him up more than he already has been. “You stupid-ass motherfucker,” you say, “You figure I want you punishing yourself for letting me hurt you? You got a snapped club arm already, shit-for-brains, the fuck kind of thinking is that? Make some holy offering of penance or don't, but this isn't shit.”
“Wasn’t— I was just—” he scratches at his horns and then has to snatch his towel before it can fall down. He messes with it rather than fix oculars on your face. “I just. Just my arm, it ain’t—” he stammers himself out. You stand and cross your arms and glare at him, not stepping in to finish for him, just waiting. He groans. “…Wasn’t enough,” he finishes finally, fast and shaky and quiet.
“Enough what, exactly.” You make it real clear with how you’re speakin’ that you ain’t in the mood for him blabbering nonsense at you, as is his wont (and you too, fair enough, you wax filthy-eloquent when you get your go on, but you earned the right).
He takes a breath and lets it out.
“…Pain,” he says.
You stare at him for a good few seconds. “What.”
“Pain,” he says again, yeah, you heard him right the first time apparently. Okay. “Didn’t hurt enough.”
You think you got the beginning of a pan-ache coming on, and it ain’t helped by how he kneels there all lacking of his clothes and with no paint and you can see the scars on him. See his bulge move under the cloth he got wrapped around him. See how he holds his arm to him, and remember how he let you break his wrist. And now that you recall...
He jerked his arm into your grip, didn’t he. He didn’t let you break his wrist. He broke his arm with your hand, and you’re pissed about that and in some way strung taught in an equal measure. You not ever been quite right, how it gets you to hurt another troll. You're not quite right, and neither it seems is he, but in...some other direction.
Yeah. Definitely getting a pan-ache.
“Get your clothes on,” you tell him, and turn your back on him, heading back to the door. You’re all in turmoil, you are most mightily fraught, it’s all simmering inside you waiting to blow. You need a time to yourself, to think on this. You need to pray and consider, and take him to task, and stop this before you let it find its way into your pan. You need many things, and you think your time for any of them is likely to be far less than you'd like. “…You’ll come see me as soon as you’re dressed. I’m not tolerating a wait.”
“…’ssir,” he says, real quiet, kind of shaky, and you recall how he always comes forward when you need a volunteer, how close he hangs on every word you say to him, and have to take a breath.
Your messiahs are watching and laughing, you’re sure. This most painful and hilarious joke on you...you sat too comfortable for too long, didn't you? Messiahs couldn't ever let a motherfucker sit too easy without throwing some jape and jokery in his path.
You don’t turn back, but as you step out the door you hear him shift again, and you hear the soft sound of a moan.
--
Your name is Gamzee Makara and you think you just fucked up really pretty goddamn bad this time.
You've grown to know how to read your ancestor, a little; you can tell his face, when you see him around, you can read him in your horns when his presence sings out ahead of him like a storm. But when you came right out and said it, pain, you got only the blankest mask in return. Not even like how your pitch one-day-stands did when drone season rolled around, how they looked at you all distaste and bewilderment, when the pain made you moan for them instead of fighting. He looked on you like a carved effigy, hard and cold like stone. And even so it felt so motherfucking good, the word rolled out of you like a prayer and saying it at his face was enough to put a powerful, shivering need in you.
You come in a pretty short margin once he’s gone, just imagining again how big and rough his hands are, what he could do to you, what he did do to you—with just a twitch of his hand he broke your bones, when you can barely get your own claws to pierce your own skin. He could hurt you, really hurt you, not just raise stinging purple welts on your skin and bite not quite hard enough to satisfy. Big as he is, he could crumple you up like a broken puppet and hurt you until you saw gods.
That’s the thought that has you shaking and whimpering on the floor of your ablution block—he could ruin you. Not just hurt you, but ruin you.
Things feel a whole mess clearer and more dreadful in the aftermath, as so often those slippery motherfuckers do. But you've been ordered and summoned and a brother can't but fucking obey. Your knees are weak and shaking still, and not all from nerves. Broken places ache, a sweet reminder. You paint your face neat and clean, put on the least shitty blockwear you own and head out through the quiet of the Dark Carnival, through corridors all ringing metal and hanging cloth and painted blood-murals.
Nobody about at this time of day, and if they are they keep to themselves, a quiet hum off in the tips of your horns warning where others might be walking. You wind your way up from deck to deck past chapels and nutrition blocks and prayer halls, schoolfeed block and sparring arena and you come, finally, to the core and pusher of the fleet, the great huge black doors where the old man bides his time. There's no guards to see you come up—there's never any guards. You don't put barkbeasts out to keep watch on a behemoth lair.
You've walked on to that point, but there you stop a second, fighting at yourself. You been here more times than probably most kin twice your age, with matching signs and all, and your fuckup with the sopor which you've been fully schoolfed about. You have to force a breath through your aeration sponges, today. An appetite for pain a brother might well have, but fear—fear ain’t your friend. Terrible coward, you.
You’re afraid.
But your biggest brother said at you that he didn’t want a wait. You rest your forehead against the cold doors to his throne room, take a few long, deep breaths, stand up real straight, and push inside.
The cathedral is all the glory it’s ever been, blood spattered on the walls in bright rainbow smears and drips, banners hanging ragged from the distant roof, hanging lights in lamps made out of glass of all colors. You pause as you come in like you always do, drift out of yourself a moment just staring up at how it arches overhead and the colors and motherfucking holy glory of it all. Takes some of the fear away, looking at all the brilliance and the wonder of it. Lifts up your soul and makes it sing.
And then you look down and see his Mirthful Motherfucking Majesty, Grand Highblood himself. He sits in his throne, sign like yours worked into the shape of it, and he watches you come in with grim set of his fangs and eyes narrow through his paint, and it brings you down into your own body hard.
Right. You fucked up again. Great, bitchtits, wonderful.
“Come up here,” he says, and his voice echoes down to you. Up you come, across black and blood-splattered ground, bare feet on cold metal, moving slow and in full reluctance but not quite coward enough to refuse command. He looks bigger than he has since first you saw him, slouched in his throne, painted up and menacing, lights in every spectrum color falling down on the bloody show of his throne.
It occurs this must be how they see him, the heretics, the prisoners who are brought here to meet the man who’ll kill them—and messiahs damn you but that thought makes a slow pulse of heat run through you from the soles of your feet to the tips of your horns.
He watches you walk up to the spot in front of his throne where a hundred thousand feet have worn a silver hole in the pitch-black paint coated on the floor. You kneel, like all of them have, and then straighten up, your right as a member of the caste. You keep your head bowed.
“Closer than that,” he growls at you, and your bloodpusher thunders in your ears. “Up here.”
You don’t trust yourself to speak. You nod and come forward slowly, until even with your head bowed you can see the foot of his throne, his legs thrown out in front of him. He’s barefoot too. His feet are long and grey and bony and so like yours. You stare at them like if you don’t look at his face you won’t have to deal with how bad you fucked up.
“You like pain,” he says, and it steals breath out of your thorax. You didn’t know what you expected—straight to the point, straight to the heart of you, why would you ever expect him to ease you into it? The old man loves his brothers and sisters, but he ain’t ever coddled them.
“Yessir,” you say, because that’s all you can say.
“How long has this been goin’ on?”
You think back and back, to six sweeps, scratching at your arms and legs and belly, shivering at how the sting made your skin run hot and cold. Trying your claws to yourself, over and over, harder and harder, bleeding so hard you almost passed out and still wanting more.
“...Long time.”
He makes a quiet, considering noise.
“And that was the end you used me to,” he growls, and you flinch. “I hurt when I want to hurt and I had no intention to break you like that, little Makara. I don’t take it well, being pushed to do something I don’t got any need to do.”
You didn't even think to regret on that front. Not like you shoved your bulge at a brother or sister unwanted or something—you couldn't ever force him to do shit, motherfucker his size and age and powerful esteem. But you're not pan-rotted enough you can't figure out he says you've done wrong by him. And not so dull in the horns that you can't realize he might be right.
"Sorry, brother," you say, shamed and stupid mumble through your fangs, like you're as much a wriggler as when you got conscripted. "I didn't figure—sorry."
He sighs at you, and when he speaks again he sounds a touch less cold. Still frowning though, you can hear in every word. "...You didn't get broke for the reasons I thought," he says, "So it seems I rebuked you for a backward reason. But the rebuke stands, still, motherfucker. Sorry don’t fix a thing. Repentance by mouth never saved a soul.” He pauses. “You taken scripture and liturgy yet?”
“Yessir.” You fuckin’ rock at Scripture and Liturgy. Every word locked into your pan like it was always meant to be there, filled up the holes sopor put in you, lifted you up. You're more than you ever have been, when they teach you about the gods.
“Finish that line,” he orders, “Repentance by mouth never saved a soul.”
“Spill blood and flesh in price of forgiveness,” you recite back, hardly a second’s pause, and you remember the bloody murals of the messiahs painted up on the walls of that classroom, the splattered, scarlet, glaring eyes. The schoolfeed you've been granted; they call us highblood and higher we are, and the judgment and expectation rises to match, wrigglers... Messiahs, you fucked up so bad. Shit. And worst is that spill blood and flesh burns in your spine, it throbs in your guts.
"That's the verse," you say, and shift your feet on the cold metal. He's watching you, eyes narrow and cool and chin on one fist, just watching. “But. But, in my case particular, like, ain’t any kind of…not much of a…”
“Not a punishment,” he finishes for you, and you nod. “Noted, wriggler. I'm sure other penance can be found you'll enjoy less so.”
“Yessir,” you say, helpless with the heat that takes you, at that. “Thank you.”
“Mm.”
There’s silence. Then, just as you’re about to fucking burst out of your skin, “You haven’t got nobody out there willing to hurt you like you want, then. Don't find that credible, ain’t a single person on this motherfucking fleet who doesn’t have an enemy or five.”
Fuck. Fuck but he has a gift of asking questions a motherfucker hoped he wouldn't.
You mumble something that doesn’t even form into words. He snarls at you, sharp enough it bounces off the walls, and you flinch and—fucking—fuck, great, your bulge is trying for out. You're so definitely and completely fucked, and fucked right up, and you may have holes still through your pan where some schoolfeeds should've gone, but you're not dumb enough to not get your know on of how you're in serious shit if you let on how—fuck, how fucking good that feels.
“Got someone I want to—uh.” You should just spit the whole thing out, say the whole thing instead of making him drag it out of you, but he’s right there in front of you, so motherfucking close you can hear him breathing. There are worse fates than penance and rebuke he could turn on you. There are penalties and punishments—there's a sharp and final end, if he finds what you say so truly unfunny as to spark a rage in him. You step forward one word at a time, like walking on creaking ice with great hungry seabeasts beneath. "Not interested. I think.”
“Yeah?” He sounds almost like he finds that funny, fuck if you know why. “You think, do you. Learned how to do that, then. So you asked them?”
“No.”
“You make it known to them at all?”
“Sort of tried. A bit.”
He groans. “I'm not up for playin’ matchmaker for my fleet, Makara, but goddamn, what is the worst that can fucking happen? Discredit to the fleet, pissing around pretending you don’t want to pail somebody who—”
“He could have me thrown off his ship,” you say, so fast the words all seem to flow together into one long, stupid babble. “—Kicked out of the church, declared a blasphemer and unfunny without trial and thrown off the ship to freeze airless in the great black nothing, is the worst that could happen, I’m sorry. Fuck. I’m sorry.”
There’s silence. You cover your face with one hand and wait to die. If he ain’t up for it, humiliation is all lined up to get its motherfucking kicks in. You are so dead. You are so dead.
"What you’re saying,” he says, and his voice is sharp quiet and and terrible. “…Is you got yourself feeling a mating fondness for the Grand fucking Highblood of the holiest motherfucking church.”
That is what you said, and there’s no standing on those words again now. All out in the open now, all soft spots on display—and why did you have to think about it like that, like he’s looking at where you’re vulnerable with intent to hurt, fuck…
You sort of shuffle your legs and concentrate on keeping your bulge in and not doing anything too conspicuous.
“Yeah,” you say, to his feet, “…Sure is a thing what motherfuckin’ happened.” You fidget a bit. “…And…been happenin’ for a sweep…or two…”
He breathes out hard and slow through his nose, rubs a hand at his temple like your schoolfeeders do when you give them pan-ache.
“Well,” he says, finally. “Fuckin’ sucks for you then.”
Your guts tie in a knot. It's not the end you'd hoped for—middling bullshit, no immediate cull but no satisfaction either. For some reason you never gave it a single most solitary thought that you might end up floundered in the middle between the two.
“That’s it then,” you say, half pleading, half tight with frustration. “That’s it. Not a motherfucking thing to say after that, huh? Haven’t got the slightest hint of a feeling in return?”
You're bold enough to look up at his face and he's still staring at you, frowning now, mouth tightened up in a hard line. His ears even like yours, long and finned for all one's been powerful chewed up and scarred; now they're both pinned back, jank half-fins flared out from the shell of them, making answer to your rude-ass dumb-ass tone at him. He's full-pupated, chitin skin and long, strong horns and a full, deep growl in his chest that makes you feel small and stupid and nothing—it comes to you, in the shaking place after the fear, that you don't particularly give a fuck.
“You all coming up to my fucking grubscars,” he says, a little sharper this time. “You, all lived as long as it takes me to wipe the blood off my fronds? You’re barely a fuckin’ pupa, brat!” (fuck if that doesn’t make you mad, fuck if you're not all shake and snarl now, not from upset but from sudden rage) “How many sweeps are you even, you’re nine, ten?”
“Twelve, you asshole! That shit's not even funny, don’t you even joke with me!!”
He puts up his hands, all dramatic-like and impressed. “Oh well fuckin’ A, he’s twelve whole sweeps,” he says, and you snarl at him. “Better get naked already then, come on let’s go, where’s my imperial pail.”
“Behind your throne,” you say immediately, and he glares at you. “I’m allowed to look ain’t I? Got eyes, don’t I? You just keep it out there and don’t ever use it for nothing but painting out of!”
“And you think you’re its new use? Hark at the arrogance of the brat, now!”
“I don’t need— Quadrants I don't have to get to want from you, if you’ve got none you’ll give me, I don’t give a fuck what comes out of me or where it goes, I just can’t up and keep dealing with this anymore!”
He scoffs. “You telling me you’d be satisfied, all your wanting dealt with, for me to fuck you and leave it alone. Forgive me if I don't motherfucking buy it!”
“Satisfied—‘s a strong word,” you have to admit, and come up short there. Highbloods take what they want, don't beg for scraps or mercy. But you can't take, from him, you can have only what he gives and right this moment it seems he's inclined to give motherfuck-all. Messiahs, to come so close to him and tell him what you want, finally, and be dismissed in shame, you think you'd up and fucking expire. Something would be more than nothing. Something, at least, you'd take as a treasure. “But satisfaction's not— I never, I mean. I just…”
You stop, all lost, and he looks at you and softens just a touch.
“Little one,” he calls you, and puts a hand on your head. He’s gentle with you, and you want him. Want him to hold you closer and bend and twist you into new ways, claw your flesh with his big hands until there are white-hot stars of pain behind your eyes and you can see the gods. You’re glad for your sleeping clothes and the loose dark of your pants—your bulge seeks and twists and finds nothing but your very own flesh. You can’t reach down to fix it, right at this moment, and you keep your face as hard and still as you can when your body fucks itself and shakes and tries to moan. “I’m old to you like stars and suns. How do you figure I can bring good motherfucking conscience to reconcile with making use of your flesh?”
“I don’t care!”
He frowns. “Twitch of my hand could fucking break him and he tells me I don’t care,” he mutters, and straightens up, pacing away from you, hands tight and loose and tight again by his sides. Doesn’t look angry, quite. You can’t even begin to guess whether you’ve got a chance or not. “The wriggler thinks he’s stronger than that. The wriggler thinks he’s fucking invincible.”
“I know you’re a badass motherfucker, okay,” you snap at him—and where does he get off, making this about you all young and stupid and weak? How does he even contemplate?! “You broke my frond today, I broke, I know, and I hurt so good the whole time they set it—I swear on every saint and Messiah, why do you think you caught me pailing myself stupid afterwards?! I want whatever you can give me, I can take it! Brother, break me—"
"You don't know what the fuck you ask," he says, sharp and snapping. "The hurt I could do you—"
"I could take it," you say, and he snarls, drawn up in sudden fury. It's all you can do not to fall back, cower from the look in his eyes. "I can take—"
"Don't you fucking PUSH ME!" he bellows, and in flicker so fast you can barely follow he's into your space and over you, one hand on a horn he could snap like your wrist, forcing your eyes on him. You cringe and bristle and lash inside yourself with want all together and at once. It's stupid, pan-rotted and deadly stupid to rile him like this, but you've stepped and overstepped tonight. Too far and fast and foolish to retreat now. Can't abscond, and no other choice but to aggress. "Presumptuous little rot-panned MOTHERFUCKER, you think I won't find the lie of that the minute I take knives to flesh?!"
"Draw blood then, motherfucker," you challenge, and he jerks your head like he's trying to shake sense into you. "I'll show you damn sure it's not a lie!"
"Draw blood?" he repeats, deadly-quiet, and his eyes are starting red around the edges, his fangs are white and bare and you're on fire with the fear of him, with how bad you want him to take those fangs to your throat. "I'll chain you spread on the holy altar and CUT YOUR FUCKING HEART OUT!"
And you. You, stupid and hopeless and blasphemous as you are. You see that image painted out in front of your eyes like glory itself, and you moan.
He stops. You stop.
You can see his eyes flicking over you, up and down, feel him rethinking you and judging you and making his questions new about you, and you swallow hard and try not to fall down and beg, anger and want and shame and hunger all snarled up in you.
“That’d be,” you say, shaky as a sinner in confessionihilation and so quiet you can barely hear yourself over his breathing. “That’d be the best miracle I ever had part of.”
He lets go your horn, steps back and looks at you a moment. Takes a breath as the red fades from his eyes, and his breathing's shaky too, just barely enough to hear.
"Motherfuck," he says, quiet. "You ain't lyin' to me."
“Messiahs strike me down,” you say, and you mean every word, it’s half a sigh. “If I motherfucking lie.”
He steps in and takes your face in one big hand, turning it up toward him. Regards you there a second and then starts to sink his claws in under your jaw and behind your ear, the soft places of you, and the slow, keening spread of the pain through your skin is like a bolt of white light in your mind, opening you up to something above you and making you just that little bit more whole. Your eyes roll up and back in your head and every part of you goes limp from the feeling, spreading all through you.
You whine when it stops, and he’s watching you, judging you.
“Can give me more than that,” you tell him, breathless. “Hurt me so good, brother, so good and sweet, I wouldn’t ever stop you, there’s not a pain I’ve ever felt I’d say no to—”
“I’d find one,” he says, grim and quiet and half to himself—hundreds, hundreds of sweeps of holy inquisition, interrogation, conversion of heretics most final and fatal—he knows more ways to hurt a troll than anyone in the galaxy. You lean into his claws on your face, this little tiniest of sacraments, and close your eyes. The light playing on them is all colors and you just make a tiny, whimpering sound and lean into him, you want him so fucking bad—
He doesn’t give you a single word of warning, just slides a hand in between your legs so fast and unstoppable you just about quit breathing. Your whole body shudders. It’s just the knowledge that he’s looking at your face, that you have something to prove here, that keeps you from whining and doubling over around his hand. “Ahhhhhh—!” you say, and then groan, part because of the pleasure that’s running up and down you like lightning and more because that shit is a fucking embarrassment. You were in trouble, you were denied, and now his hand is under you, almost lifting you, and your pan scrambles to keep up in your shock. “Ah—fuck— Oh messiahs, is—are you—?”
He just watches you, and hell, if he’s not going to say a word you’re taking this as what it is. You find your footing, get your balance, and grind down on his hand hard enough to send pain shooting all up and through you from your trapped bulge. His fingers twitch under you, and you chirp and grab at his arm with both hands, even your broke one, like if he decides to pull away again you could ever have a chance at stopping him.
“Motherfucking eager,” he grumbles, but he’s watching you with hungry, bright eyes now, considering it, and just the thought that you might finally get what you’ve wanted from him for so long makes you groan again. “What’s this here?” You know it's no real question even when his fingers are moving so slow and you’re giddy with laughter and it feels so good—he’s watching you with a smile almost cruel, thoughtful, pretend-innocent. His voice is all quiet, musing, soft. “What’s this little motherfucker think he’s doing to himself, in the chambers of his mother—fucking—BETTERS?”
He squeezes, just a touch for his huge hands, so his palm is sudden and heavy on your bulge and his fingers press it into your nook and you lose it, arch your back and rut on his hand and chirr. His other hand grabs your hips, keeps you still, and his hand between your legs keeps grinding too slow, brutal-hard, on the edge of fiery pain.
You want to press down harder, make it hurt. Pain fills you with frenzy—below that threshold, you squirm and writhe and pleasure wrecks you to the uttermost. It destroys you. Pain is a friend, fills you with an urgent, empty, wanting ache, but feeling good…it scares you to bits.
“You’re making a fucking disgrace of yourself,” he tells you, almost gentle-like, and you get words together to go yeah yeah yes please— “Hurt yet? Want me to stop?”
That is the worst fucking idea anybody has ever got into their rotted worm-eaten shit-hive of a pan, and you try to tell him so but it just comes out a whine and “No no no no no more please more waited so fucking long please more—”
“Messiahs, you’re a piece of work,” he says, really quiet, and then he pulls his hand away from your bulge, ignoring how that makes you scream, grabs your horn again to bare the side of your neck, and bites.
You come back to your body crumpled at his feet, shaking and jerking all over with slurry dripping down your legs and tears of pain in your eyes, and he steps back from you and just stares, watching.
“Ahh,” you tell him, shaky little disbelieving grub-sound, and then your head snaps back as he licks his lips, watching you, and everything throbs. “Oh—fuck…” Your neck is bleeding. You smear your clumsy fingers through the blood where his fangs sank into your skin like it was nothing, stare at the smudges of purple on your trembling fingertips, and then slide them into your mouth and whimper at the taste of blood and sea-salt.
--
Your name is Kurloz Makara and
Well
Fuck.
--
He settles down in front of you, bends his mighty knee and comes down to where you are. His hand takes your horn, gentle this time, and tilts you up to look at him.
“Messiahs are laughing in the heavens at me,” he tells you, and he leans down, so strangely awkward, to press his lips up against yours. Your breath stutters in your aerations sponges. Your whole body goes tight with a weird, sweet thrill. What he just did to you, it was cruel and harsh and he gloried in that, you saw it in him, but that kiss wasn’t anything but purest flush, as gentle as taking care of any of your church brothers and sisters. That change, cruel to gentle—it makes you shake. He runs his fingers through your hair and it makes you keen, it’s so sweet.
“Please,” you’re saying, before you can even find a meaning to what you’re saying, “Please, I, fuck, I can’t—”
He cocks his head to one side at you and does it again, gentle around the bases of your horns, and you take a harsh gasp of air in and shake.
“This scare you?” He asks, quiet, and keeps going, until you’re halfway to hands and knees, trembling and paralyzed. “Not how I could break you apart with two fingers, not all the pain I could do to you, it’s this…” he rubs at one horn, and your muscles go hot and liquid and weak. “Because you know what to do with hurt, don’t you? Told you, little brother, any troll can be broken. Every troll's got some penance they can't bear.”
All you can do is gasp, undone, and he chuckles down low in his chest. He pulls you forward, leaning his back up against the arm of his throne, easing you onto his lap to look at you. You’re sticky and clammy and nasty, but he doesn’t seem to care.
“There,” he tells you, and keeps teasing you with that softness until you’re panting into his shoulder, until your whole body is singing with it, your hips rolling up against him in tight little shivers, and he talks in your ear the whole time. “Gets right up under everything you do to keep a hold of yourself, doesn’t it, feeling so good? If it’s pain you go somewhere else but you ain’t hiding from me, brother, if you let me I’ll find out the very heart of you. I’ll gentle it out of you and I’ll watch you all motherfucking falling apart in my claws…and you will come apart, little one, if you give yourself up to me I'll take you to pieces—”
“Please,” you gasp, and you don’t have the slightest clue what you’re pleading for, a respite or endlessly more or to be left alone and never touched like this again, so terrible fuckin' gentle. “Please—”
“Been wanting a while, haven’t you,” he says, really soft, and then he pulls you back up against him and kisses you again, swallows the yes—! That you try to answer to him. His mouth still tastes like your blood. It’s cool there, in his arms, he could break your back like snapping a twig and you are fucking giddy that this is happening, that this is real. You’re purring so loud it echoes.
You sit there for a good while—it’s the middle of the day, who’s going to disturb you? Still an ache in you, a slick thrill of pleasure from his gentling and his voice in your ear, but you’re content, more than content, to lay against him and purr till the end of the world. He smells like you, but older. He feels like you, but stronger. Everything is bright and hazy and motherfucking—perfect.
“So what is this thing you're feeling, wriggler?”
You jump a little. He’s got his head leaned back, his eyes shut, contemplating. You pull your legs up to your chest (ew, sticky) and press your face into his neck, giddy at the presumption of it. That you're allowed to, under the very lights of the Big Top, in the throne of the Grand Highblood, with his breath against your ear and the mark of his fangs bleeding sluggish down your neck.
“…Dunno.”
“Not black.”
“Fuck no.” You know that much, anyway. Maybe you won’t ever have a pitchmate. Not unless you find one who’ll refuse you pain instead of giving it.
“Not pale.” He breathes a little, then says, almost to himself, almost singing, or slamming, almost something—“…Not pale when I want to unstring your bones off your body, little weak one, fill half your pail slurry and the other half blood…”
Your whole body seizes up all over for a second, just at the thought, and you groan into his neck as he chuckles.
“You’d let me.”
“I’d motherfucking beg you.”
“...Even to your death?” He sounds displeased at the thought, so you make a mild, un-committing noise. You don’t want to die. Shit’s scary. But what you do want done to you goes beyond what you could survive, and you don’t know you’d tell him to stop, if he wanted to do you over for good and all. He grumbles. “You need a goddamn palemate.”
“Fuck quadrants,” you start, and he nudges knee up between your thighs—your mouth snaps shut around a whine. Is he going to be punishing you like this now, gentle and warm and sweet? Messiahs, you don’t know whether you hope so or not.
“You'll not pull that bullshit on this,” he growls at you. “I can take you to pieces every single time, I could be all you ever fucking want, but that shit will fuck you up worse than sopor. You need other quadrants. And if it suits you, I’ll make try to take care of your scrawny ass in flush, like the pan-dead old corpse I am.”
Oh messiahs. Oh good and great and holy hilarity and motherfucking messiahs, fuck fuck fuck—
“What the fuck,” he says, and he takes you by one horn again, pulls your face up. You are all shaking, all tremor and breathless. “Are you crying?”
You are. You’re sniffling and hiccupping like you haven’t since your dad died, and the longer he looks at you and you look at him, the more you can’t fucking believe what he just said, what he just did, what he’s letting you be to him—
You bump your head into his neck and bawl.
“Great holy mirth,” he sighs, and pats you rough on the ass. “The fuck am I doing this for, wriggler? Twelve sweeps. Fuck.” But he doesn’t loosen his hold on you. Just lets you break down like a wriggler having a tantrum, sobbing into his shoulder.
He lets you cry out, for all the time that takes, before he says a word again. "You got schoolfeeding tomorrow," he says, when all those weird, happy sad shaking has finally died out of you, and you groan and slump on him. “Gotta get your learn on,” he pokes at you and stands up. You hold on without a second thought, grip on tight and don't let go like you used to when you tried to keep your dad from going—but he doesn't pull off and vanish, he laughs and grips around your waist with a hand. You've just made like to start relaxing, letting him carry your weight, when he sneaks a hand up your shirt and pinches a grubscar, laughing soft at your twitching and swearing.
"You squeak like a grub," he says, all amusement.
“Oh, fuckin’—! Shut. Shut up. Just.” You yawn so big your jaw-hinge cracks, and he laughs at you and then whaps you on the back of the head.
“Just so you know,” he says, like he’s pointing out a sloppy move at a griefing schoolfeed, “If you show me a single hint of disrespect in front of any other troll I’m gonna tie you to the side of the ship and take you through atmosphere.”
“Yessir,” you say, but you’re grinning again, all watery and wobbly, and he pinches your sides again to make you yelp and then lets you slide down him to the ground. Shit, your pants are all nasty and clammy.
“Back to your ‘coon now,” he orders you, and then, when you hesitate, he rolls his eyes at you and stands up, leading the way out into the silence of the ship. “Fuckin’ wriggler.”
“…Cave-robber,” you mumble, and you know he hears you because he swats you on the horns.
You walk silent back to your block, and nobody is out to see you—or if they are, they avoid you now more than ever. The Grand Highblood walks where he will on his own motherfucking ship, and nobody is stupid enough to try to stop him, not even to comment on the skinny little leaky-panned trainee running alongside, two long strides to his every step. When you reach the door, he stops, and you stop too. Everything is kind of numb and warm inside you—but aching too, a nasty sort of hollowness right inside you. That was nice, it tells you, that was sweet and cruel and what you wanted, but you can't have understood him right. You're not a troll to be taken for good, just to be picked up and dropped again, left behind. Maybe someday he'll come back to want you again, if you do right. If you're good enough. If you're faithful in your wait.
Now, stand back, and let him leave you.
“I’ll see you in, like…I’ll be in schoolfeeding tomorrow,” you say, for something to say, and give him a really shitty smile. “Tell you when it starts to hurt next time you want to use me to show something, if you’ll let me do it again, I mean—”
“Yeah sure,” he cuts you off, and he puts a hand on top of your head, looks you right in the face. “Next time,” he tells you, “We gotta talk about some shit. Like what you do if I find that pain you don’t want. You picked a really fucking busy troll, I ain’t hardly ever around, but whenever next time happens—what?”
You try to make words and nothing comes out.
“N—” you start. “I— Next time?”
He glares down at you. With the lights shining behind him he looks like a servant of the messiahs, he’s every inch a destroyer. And he looks at you. Smiles, for you, and reaches down to touch the place he marked you, the drying blood on your throat.
“I didn’t say fucktoy,” he says, voice like the ocean, voice you could drown in. “…I didn’t say one-day-stand. I said flushed, Gamzee motherfucking Makara. You do me the credit of taking me at my word.” And then he cracks half a smile at you. “You telling me you’d be satisfied, all your wanting dealt with,” he asks you, an echo of what he threw at you before, lower and softer. “For me to fuck you and leave it alone? Forgive if I don’t motherfucking buy it.”
You smile at him so big it hurts, and wider, and have nothing—nothing—you can say. He grins back, a slash of big, white teeth in the dark, ducks down and kisses you once, and then shoves you, ever so gentle, back into your dark block, and closes the door behind you.