Work Text:
—
There is a pulse beating just beneath his fingertips, the sensation so soft and quick it feels almost fleeting. He adjusts his fingers, skims over soft skin and poignant musculature, feels the ever-present curve of bones. Of the spine: cervical to thoracic, and then just to the side. He finds the scapula and maps the curves that sit beneath soft, warm skin hidden beneath silken shirts and thick coats lined with fur. The pulse beneath his fingers jumps, prey caught in the hands of a predator, quick and loud. His fingers press softly against muscle, then skim back upwards to find the scapula once more. His other hand, his right, rests carefully against a waist, covered by the silk material of a blouse pulled aside and unbuttoned. His fingers twitch against the fabric. He fears, perhaps, if he focuses too much on the individual sensations, they will all meld into one. Their shared pulse, their shared breath, lungs, ribs, minds, hearts, thoughts.
A famine of individual need.
Pressing his forehead against the smooth dip of a neck, Veritas Ratio inhales and smells the soft scent of cologne and sweat and skin. Salt and vanilla and something he can’t quite name, which frustrates him more than it should.
“Overwhelmed?” comes the soft voice above him, whispering and wobbling at the edges.
Veritas tightens his right hand against the gambler’s waist and blinks at the expanse of skin pressed just against his nose. “No,” he offers. He amends just a moment later. “Perhaps.”
He feels and smells and hears and sees so much. Skin and sweat and hair that is not his tickling his forehead. The curve of ribs beneath his palm, beneath fabric and skin, the soft vanilla scent that slowly disappears and fades away the more Veritas breathes, fingers resting against his own thighs, not exploring, simply resting. His legs have gone numb from the weight resting against them, the heel of his foot caught on the leg of his desk to keep steady. The gambler’s skin is warm, and the simple observation makes his own pulse riot and grow faster. His own face feels too warm.
A shift. Veritas presses his nose against the skin beneath the gambler’s clavicle and grazes it. “You?”
He hears the laugh, feels it as it vibrates within the space of the chest beneath his cheek. “Fine.” The wobble is still present. He tilts his head upwards and peers at the other, left hand sliding to cup the other’s lower back until his palm presses flat against his spine.
A finger twitches.
Like this, he can view Kakavasha so easily–not quite different from Aventurine the Stoneheart, but noticed if one peers close enough. One is an act that must always be present at every hour of the day, and the other is rawness. Scraped open skin and muscle, the very core of a being so exposed.
Not separate beings, not in the way the other so loves to claim. Different ways of thinking.
This, this soft touch and smooth skin and rapid pulse, is Kakavasha.
Beneath his cheek, Kakavasha’s pulse is quick. A fluttering of bird wings. “Do be honest.”
“Who says I’m not?”
“I believe you may not be.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I do.”
Kakavasha hums. His fingers slide from Veritas’s lap, trailing upwards until they find the collar of his shirt. Veritas leans back, pulls away from the warmth of skin, and tips his chin upwards. Fingers graze his throat and tug at small buttons, quick, efficient movements. As the fabric falls open, he allows his right hand to coast upwards, palm finding ribs and soft, sensitive skin, the curve of a shoulder, a clavicle. He dips to the scapula once more, intrigued so harshly by the curve and shape of it, and rises once more to the valley that dips from neck to shoulder. His palm rises, finds the side of Kakavasha’s neck.
The other pauses, fingers resting against Vertitas’s sternum.
Like this, Veritas presses his palm firmly against skin, feels blood pulse and muscle contract. A swallow.
The skin is sticky with sweat.
Kakavasha blinks. “Hm?”
With a strong exhale, Veritas leans close, mouth pressing in the space beneath Kakavasha’s throat, feels the thrum of a pulse grow louder. He can’t quite tell whose. He presses his lips there, quick and fluttering, and feels and hears a hitched breath. He moves, finding each new muscle, each new bone, each new spot.
Sternohyoideus.
Omohyoideus.
He drifts back towards a shoulder. Finds the trapezius.
Sternocleidomastoideus. Kiss, kiss, kiss, press,
The fingers at his collar drift upwards, one finding the lobe of his ear and following the shape of the cartilage until it rests against his cranium, finds his hair. The other skims the edge of this jaw, fingers mapping out bone. Maxilla to zygomatic to temporal to frontal. It creeps against his hairline and shifts until nails scratch against his head, and Veritas shuts his eyes and exhales. His mouth finds a chin.
He kisses.
He trails upwards. Finds lips and tongue and teeth. He pauses.
The hand in his hair has slid to the back of his head, long fingers coiled around strands of hair. The other sits against his hairline, tracing the shape again and again. Veritas tips his head back.
A pulse beneath his fingers jumps. Kakavasha smiles. “Don’t think so hard, Doc.” He leans closer, and it is simply a cocoon of the scent of vanilla and salt and it is Kakavasha, in each of his pores, his eyes, his mouth, against his tongue.
A finger prods at the corner of his mouth. Veritas turns his head and kisses it, eyes falling shut. A thumb rubs his chin, finds his bottom lip. It is pulled and pressed, gently, squished and caressed. Veritas breaths, palm warm against the side of the other’s neck, fingers curling softly against the hair he feels tickling at his cuticles.
Weight shifts.
The chair beneath them creaks.
A brushing of noses. Fingers and palms skimming ears, hands curling over cheeks.
A tentative press of lips, careful at first. The barest brush. The taste of another.
It is this small motion, so teasing and utterly calculated to be so, that he remembers. The small story pressed between tales of heroes and warriors, cunning and brave and smart, that told of a man’s disrespect to those higher than him. The killing of a son to be eaten during a feast, served as a mockery and a jest in the same easy motion. The punishment, afterwards, had been eternal starvation. Food, when placed so close to the man, would wither or go bad, sometimes move away from him, just out of reach. Water, be it a lake or a pond or a glass, would move away from his lips. He could be as fast as he’d like, and nothing would satiate him. Eternal famine, eternal starvation, eternal hunger.
This small press–Veritas opens his eyes and peers upwards.
The smile on Kakavasha’s face, the soft tilt of an eyebrow. Teasing and calculated and the picture, the very being that is Veritas Ratio’s starvation.
When their lips meet once more, it is with more force, with Kakavasha’s hands pulling him and his body giving in with such a willingness it should be terrifying. He could ask anything of Veritas in this moment, anything, and it would be done. When they met, a thing was asked, and it was done. As they continue to meet, things are asked and things are done. Wherever Kakavasha is, where he wanders, where he lives and dies and breathes, Veritas is enraptured and made and carved to follow. A willing duckling following after something so much larger than he knows, wild and clawed and blood sticking against fur or feathers or soft skin. He is made, willingly, to be intrigued and to learn and know.
He will carve and shape himself into something that continues to follow after, finding the trail that will lead to something empty or a carcass or a slowly drifting mind.
As he is that man, he is starved.
He tastes skin. Their teeth click together painfully before it his him that huffs a laugh and redirects himself, fitting their mouths together with ease. Kakavasha’s shoulders tremble with laughter, warm fingers stroking the soft skin above his ears. When they pull back, their breaths mingle together, one set of lungs.
Kakavasha laughs, squinting before leaning forward and pressing his tongue against the corner of Veritas’s lip. It’s an odd sensation. It is done once more, tentative and slow, and Veritas turns his head and smells and tastes and hears and feels. His palms are heavy with the weight, with the warmth. Fingers skim skin, muscle. Heat.
His mouth finds the side of Kakavasha’s face, his ear, his chin, his eyelid, his brow. He rests his mouth against the corner of an eye, his own fluttering shut. The pulse beneath his fingers, beneath his mouth.
He feels dizzy with it. The knowledge he is at such mercy as this. There are hands at his face, careful and dangerous and slim and warm. A mouth pressing so close to his throat, hot, damp breath at his neck. He feels his own pulse, strong and wobbly and prey-soft.
They share a pulse, a mind, a body, a moment, a mouth.
They are tongue and fingers and teeth and lips and pulse and heart and veins, enwrapped in one singular organism. Should the need arise, he will be the weaker and succumb to the stronger, feeding and feeding and bending and following.
Kakavasha’s fingers in his hair, teeth pressed against his neck. Pulse echoing throughout his body.
Veritas Ratio’s head falls back, throat bared.
His eyes fall shut. As he is that man, that man with everything within reach, that man who aches to be filled and satisfied and warm, he is starved. He aches to devour, and aches to be devoured.
As he is that man, he is only devoured by want.