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Heart pounding in his ears like a wardrum, Laios ducks and weaves his way behind a nearby run-down wall, dropping to all fours and crawling fast through a gap in the stones towards somewhere safe. Sweat pours down his forehead, and his lips are dry from gasping, but Laios barely notices.
The thing chasing him's infuriated snarls strike sharp through what should have been dim silence. It's fast, but the ruins that surround them were not built for monsters-- Laios is at an advantage here, and the beast knows it, if its angry noises are anything to go off of.
His hands scrabble at hard brick; skin raw and red as Laios vaults himself up and over the broken-down wall. He lands in an unceremonious crouch and springs to his feet almost in the same breath, boots he'd polished just yesterday already scuffed beyond belief.
The tallman allows himself a second, now that he cannot see it behind him, cannot hear its crashing movements, heaving desperate lungfuls of the cool night air.
The moment, of course, doesn't last long.
A growl echoes through the ruined city far too close for comfort, and Laios takes off; muscles straining to run faster, push harder, hyper-aware of everything around him.
For a second, he thinks maybe he's lost it, but then a four-legged shape comes screaming from a dented rooftop and Laios focuses back on the terrain beneath his feet; focuses on the act of putting a foot in front of the other, of getting away.
He something that is prey-- something being hunted. Laios can hear the thing's wild panting as clear as if it were right next to him; can almost feel the hot breath on his heels.
It's taunting him, he knows. It could have caught him a million times over by now. But this strange midnight creature, made of fur and teeth and a burning starry gaze, seems to enjoy the chase.
Adrenaline high, Laios thinks.
He's smiling.
They run, one gaining ground on the other before losing it again; Laios is bruised and damaged and his lungs shriek whistling agony any time he attempts to take a breath. He is bleeding, scraped raw against rock, and his stamina, however strong, is fading.
The beast can tell, can see his slowing movements. Its breaths change from single-minded pants into victorious keens, the sound of its limbs on the cobbled ground picking up tempo.
He feels a whoosh of air beside him, and turns.
It is there, the quadrupedal thing keeping pace with him as Laios runs against the night. It's not closing in just yet, relishing in the moment, submerging itself in the simple euphoria of a surely successful hunt.
His eyes lock with its, and it looks fucking ravenous.
"Oh, God," he manages, and the way he sounds, desperate and strangled and hungry, only adds fuel to the drugged-up fire of adrenaline that is his current state of mind.
Laios wonders if the monsters he killed felt like this when he hunted them down.
Laios wonders if, in their final moments, they stumbled just as he did, if the adrenaline shot out of them quick as it came, if they looked up at the hulking shape of his shadow above and welcomed the blade.
He will never know.
The tallman's foot hits a stray brick and he comes crashing down, hands just slightly too late to stop himself from faceplanting into the concrete ground. He drags one last shuddering breath from his burning lungs and, every muscle protesting, turns to face his fate.
(Laios is prey, after all.
And it had caught him fair and square.
Did he not owe it this meal?)
The creature is poised above him, stance wide; Laios' lower body is splayed underneath it and its head was cocked slightly to the side, wolf-like snout barely a foot from his own. If Laios moved back, he'd be bit, forward, stomped; side to side was out of the question.
It leans closer, and licks its chops, eyes never breaking away from his own.
Eyes, Laios thinks distantly. Its eyes look so... wanting.
Something is building in the air. Anticipation, perhaps. Fear. It's palpable, thick, heavy, cloying; it fills Laios' brain with static and reduces him to nothing more than a limp little rabbit for the big bad wolf to devour.
The beast leans in, and bites.
Laios cries out in pain, because fuck, that hurts, Christ Almighty, and Laios cries out in something that is not, and will never be, pain, because this is a slot in the food chain he has never experienced so thoroughly before, so strongly.
It keeps its jaws tight around his shoulder, effectively rendering his entire right side inoperable, and fucking lifts Laios into the air with teeth alone.
He's limp in its unforgiving agonizing grasp, blood leaking, dancing, gushing from the wounds, dangling helplessly without the support of a floor beneath him. Laios is distantly aware that the wolf-thing must be moving, but a fresh haze of pain clouds away the thought.
The thing sits back on its haunches and grabs Laios tight around the waist with one of its front two paws. For a moment, some irrational hope flashes through the tallman; maybe it will unhook its teeth and let him go.
It's a stupid thought.
It grabs him, sinks its teeth in further, and yanks, tearing at his flesh until it slid away, ripping thick fatty layers from muscle and in turn muscle from bone.
His brain blanks, dissolving under the assault of sensation. Its claws, squeezing him tight, its jaws, consuming Laios like a starved God incarnate, its tongue, lathering him in its saliva; its body, curled around his as it enjoys the tallman's taste to the full extent.
It's too much.
It's not enough.
Laios drops his head and moans, a long, loud keening plead to anything listening, and the creature intertwining itself with him's motions don't skip a beat as it snarls back its own response--
I hear you, little prey, it's saying,
and for the gift of your flesh I will in turn indulge you with mine.
They're still, half lidded stars gazing into wide frightened gold, and, and, and--
It's fast, fast enough Laios can't make heads nor tails of it, but soon what little remained of his clothes are gone-- torn by jagged razors from the mouth of this beautiful terrifying being-- and he's splayed in the palm of its clawed paw, one working arm thrown over his face, back arched and writhing as the being's sandpaper tongue wraps around the head of his cock.
It hurts, a little, but the pleasure much outweighs the pain, and even if all it did was hurt, even if he was being mauled by that sensational tongue and those dangerously sharp teeth, Laios thinks he would probably be responding exactly the same.
"So good, so good, so good," falls from his lips, desperate little panting chants of praise to a thing that can't possibly understand what he means. It takes his length impossibly deeper into its mouth anyway, insane heat merging with rough, delicious friction in a way that might just drive Laios crazy.
He doesn't know if the creature is getting anything out of this for itself, and doesn't know why he cares; it's going to eat him after this, anyway, it's just a transaction, your desire for mine; but he finds himself wanting it to, asking anyway, little whines scraping his throat as they leave it, dry tongue licking at his chapped lips as its wet one swirls around his dick.
His hips begin to stutter, he's close. The being notices, and growls softly, sending a rumbling vibration up throughout his entire body that only serves to turn the tallman into a further moaning mess.
Why does this have to be so good?
Prey to a predator, powerless, pain mixed with pleasure, it's all so fucking good. He can't think. He can't breathe. The thing bobs up, down, sucks just that little bit harder, growls against him one more time, and Laios is sobbing against the fur of the being's muzzle as he comes.
It swallows every drop, humming in satisfaction before releasing his limp body to fall, crumpled, onto the stone beneath.
Laios's brain feels like mush. His breathing is too loud and everything hurts. The creature drops down beside him and sniffs along his spine, unsettling contact sending Laios struggling away from the offending limb to no avail.
It uses another paw to pull him close again, and doesn't bother with being careful; this one pierces right through his wrist.
It's cold.
He's bleeding out, Laios realizes, and the creature knows it too; it's waiting for him to die. For it to get to eat. It thinks it's giving him mercy, that it's letting him die fulfilled.
Cruel, then.
His vision swims, colors melting into black-- Laios is almost out of time.
"Pl..."
He can't even manage a single word. It comes out sounding more like a quiet whimper.
His ears are ringing. Laios's eyes move sluggishly downwards and see a pool of red.
".....mmh."
The beast behind him shifts, fur brushing rough against his spine, licks his bloodied shoulder, and it all fizzes wetly away.