#junkmetra

Satya had always imagined that love would feel so horrifically empty, but it does not feel that way at all.

In her youth, it tapped into her veins and bled her like roots. It twisted all of the emotion out of her with a slow, aching viciousness she hadn’t known could exist. She tripped over people she could not have and loved them too much and it was as if she were blazing through an entire lifetime’s worth of firewood until she was desperately trying to catch fire to curled ashes with mere splinters of flint and tinder, her fingers too bruised to strike the spark.

The emptiness in her hurt. And by all rights, it shouldn’t have, because it was not real.

It was not tangible. It was not visible. It was not corporeal in any form. It was a figment, a concept; it was an unfortunate composition of snapping synapses and misfiring neurons and a dearth of dopamine. Something so lacking should not feel like a palm pressed into her ribs, bearing down with a crushing weight that might suffocate her should she pause long enough to dare an inhale, and yet it did.

Vishkar helped in its own way, but it only gave her the ability to make something out of that terrible nothing. And even then, even with all of Vishkar’s perfect rhetoric and visionary brilliance, she could not truly make something out of nothing. Light exists even in the darkest of places, albeit in particles and scintillae—and despite the emptiness and the ache and all the things she wished she could have said, done, accomplished, the light existed in her still, still, albeit in particles and scintillae, and she wielded them with an open palm.

From broken universes between her lungs, she spun them together. She bathed in her own dying starlight and created a cosmos for the world because if fate did not see fit to assuage the tumult shrapneled through her bloodstream, then she would give until it did. The world did not need more places like Hyderabad, like Rio; the world did not need places that would leech at its children until they starved. She would see the wrongs of the world made right, even if it meant sacrifice—slash and burn what is dead and dying, as that is the price for regrowth.

Sacrifice did not make her feel any less empty.

Sacrifice did not stopper the guilt for each thing slashed and burned.

Then came the precipice: choose the path she had always walked with a future already in place, or choose something new that would guarantee nothing and no one.

Being a creature of habit and constant routine did not make the decision easier, but Satya chose, and she chose with intuition. She cast aside complacency and a choking safety net in favor of something she believed might truly make the world a better place. If Vishkar would dare to raze the world in their misguided sense of order, then she would choose to be the regrowth. She would choose to build in the ashes. She would choose to rekindle what was lost regardless of the state of her flint and tinder.

It was not Overwatch itself that was the trigger. It was neither the people nor the relationships nor the work. It might have been an amalgam of them all, in truth, but it was independence most of all.

Two months in, that tender pain stemming from beneath her breastbone began to dwindle. Six months in, it dwindled a little more. A year passed, and it felt like the phantom pains that would plague what was left of her arm: aching and unbearable and overwhelming some nights, while  others the barest of lingering stings. Each day brought its own set of challenges, and each day she would face them with conviction despite the traveling shrapnel; she grew stronger because the environment encouraged it, bolstered it, fostered it, fed it, not demanded it.

Perhaps that was the foundation. (If the foundation is askew, the building will never be structurally sound.) Healing oneself is a painstaking process, and she did not take it lightly.

He… helped. In his own way.

He was not like Vishkar. Things like corporate ladders and bureaucratic policies did not apply to him; he tore them down and set them ablaze and reveled in the freedom that no one could tell him what to do because hewas the one who decided his own fate, not some posh entourage of suited bigwigs whose only available lens was colored green.

(Not that he didn’t see green, but he saw a great many other colors, too.)

And it was a thing of strangeness, of unfamiliarity, because she had been integrated with others of her ilk for so very long that any deviation seemed like a loud, cacophonous crash. His specialty was indeed loud, cacophonous crashes, but it was also wordplay and laughter and little details no one else would think to see, and that was enough to muffle the din. He builtthings as much as he destroyed them; he breathed life into gimmicks and gizmos and gadgets made not from hard-light, not from miraculous technology bestowed upon him by a benevolent corporate giant, but from assorted pieces of disassembled and decimated things.

If you really think about it, everything’s just scrap in the end, he’d said with a grin, the red of a grenade shell poised between his thumb and forefinger. No point in letting it all go to waste. Why not build what you want? If you’ve got heaps of pieces all over the place, might as well make something of ‘em, yeah?

And so she made something of them. Slowly, gradually, she harnessed the particles and scintillae and spun their curtains inward until her foundation was flawless and her supports were adamantium and all that remained was the inevitable design that she’d thought herself so capable of creating—and it was then, she thinks, that she really began to notice.

The pressure exacting over her heart was no longer present. That insistent palm splayed over her ribs and digging between the slats did not exist. There was no consuming sensation of being made smaller, of compacting, of being pushed in, of collapsing on the vacancy within. In fact, it felt as if her heart were full, brimming, replete; it felt like it might spill out of her and run down her chin with the sheer amount of volume contained in such a small and scarred thing.

Love (for herself, for her friends, for him) was not—is not—an emptiness. It might be just as intangible, just as invisible, just as incorporeal, but it doesn’t hurt like that wretched, wrenching thing that had swallowed her heart and left her spent and aching all those years ago.

Satya sketches a line down his cheekbone. He snores beside her, stilled, dreaming.

Love is not horrific. It is not a bed of curled ash or a terrible nothing. Love is not empty.

It is real.

A modern-day, post-uni domestic AU (albeit with shinier, techier prosthetics) where Jamison and Satya have known each other for about five or six years since meeting at university.

Jamison is a mechanic at the shop across the city, and Satya works for a prestigious company. They are good friends and mesh surprisingly well. A year or two into their friendship proper, Satya had encouraged him to seek a diagnosis for ADHD after learning about his struggles in class, which had resulted in him realizing a whole lot about himself. He’d thanked her by offering her samples of his cooking, and that led to the monthly evening where they’d both show off meals from home.

(They both love spicy food. Satya tries to make him sob with hot curry. It never works.)

After being friends for so long, they become so comfortable enough with each other that when something bad happens, they simply… confide. Wholly. No questions asked. After so many late nights composed of last minute essays and projects during university where emotions ran embarrassingly high, it’s almost second nature. Jamison makes all the affronted faces he should coupled with riled up commentary, and Satya employs all of the harsh frowns and disapproving quips at the appropriate moments. They’re proper professionals.

So when Satya returns from a date that goes sour and when a complicated ex of Jamison’s reappears to stir up unnecessary drama, it isn’t even a question of what needs to be done—it’s a question of when.

He texts her: you up for bollywood night??

She replies: Absolutely.

And so the two of them go to her flat and watch cheesy Indian films with plenty of popcorn. Jamison makes pancakes (“Pikelets, actually—oh, you’re gonna love ‘em!”), because why the hell not? They’re venting, right? That’s what tonight is for.

And it feels… natural. He picks at the pancakes on the plate in his lap and mops each bite in syrup, and he offers his fork to her with a waggle of his bushy eyebrows. Amused, Satya indulges. She finds that she adores how they taste (he must add both cinnamon and vanilla, she thinks; they’re delectably sweet) and she steals more than just another bite, much to his pleasure. He cranes an arm across the couch behind her, watching the television screen with an enthused countenance, and she leans against his side, full and content.

And—it dawns on her, belatedly, that he has acted more like a significant other to her than any of her prior relationships had. His silly grins and jokes and puns are a delight, and he drops anything for her without a second thought. He listens to her complaints and he offers advice (no matter how ridiculous) if she asks for it. His company is something of a comfort, and she can’t remember the last time she’d felt this calm in someone else’s presence.

As the couple on screen begins to sing in the midst of an intricate dance, she accepts another bite of pancake and says, “You are good to me.”

He pauses, and it’s clear he’s confused because his jaw does this thing where it slants just slightly while he’s thinking. “Do you not want me to be? I could scream and call you names, if you want. I know quite a few.”

“I’m certain you do, but that won’t be necessary,” she says. Gently, she rests her head against his shoulder. “It is just an observation. That’s all.”

“Observation?” He pops another slice of pancake into his mouth. “Uh, should I be worried? I know tonight’s been rough, but that sounds a little too serious.”

“Perhaps it is.” She finds herself resisting the urge to hold his hand. “I think rough night may be an understatement. It has been more of a rough year.”

“Too right.” He offers a grin. “Might not be much, but this makes it better, yeah?”

She returns it. “A little.”

The night wears on, and it isn’t long before the two of them fall asleep on the couch watching queued films. Satya wakes curled up against him; he has his arm around her and he’s snoring against the cushion, blond hair mussed, peaceful and perfect. Her heart is traitorous and stupid and does a little skip, and all she can think is oh no because she knows exactly what that means.

She also knows she must wake him because it’s past midnight and he has work in the morning, but when she tries to move he just—he makes this soft, murmured noise of protest, and brings her closer into the heat of his body. And perhaps it’s selfish of her (it is, she knows it is), but he feels so good and warm that she doesn’t want to move.

A while longer, she tells herself, nestling against his collarbone. Just a while longer.

Eventually, she gathers both the courage and the willpower to jostle him awake. The way he mumbles her name when he shakes off shackles of sleep should not sound so intimate, and yet it does.

“I was having a good dream, too,” he says, peeling himself away.

“What about?” The drum of her heart is deafening.

He bites his lip, the corner of his mouth in a sheepish smile. “Being happy, I guess.”

Jamison gets jealous once he realizes he’s caught feelings.

He lies awake in his bed at night, staring at the ceiling in a constant state of wracking indecision. His thoughts are a tumult of I need to tell herandI can’t stand her being with anyone elseandwhat if she doesn’t think of me like that?andwhat if she thinks us being mates is only ‘cause of how I feel?

And then, alarmed: oh, fuck me—what if I tell her and she doesn’t feel comfortable anymore? What if she wants space for a while ‘cause she finds it creepy?

It’s constant, endless, and he suffers in his insomnia. This leads to him working out in the dead of night because his brain is on overdrive and he can’t stop thinking about all the what ifs: what if she feels the same, what if she doesn’t, what if, what if, what if. Every bloody possible scenario plays out in his head—the good, the bad, and the impossible—and he both loves and hates it because he gets to kiss her and see her smile but he also gets the cold shoulder and bristling glares. He barely gets any sleep; headaches dominate his mornings and he practically has an IV for coffee.

When she taps him on the shoulder one day, he about jumps out of his skin.

Satya frowns in concern. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, why?” he replies, although it sounds much more like a mashed together yeahyeah’mfinewhy with the sheer force in which it leaves his mouth—and while he supposes he should be conscious of volume (because they’re on a street corner outside his favorite tea shop and people are staring), he has precious little control over any of him right now.

“Are you sure? You are shaking considerably more than usual,” she says, and the way she looks at him implies she is not convinced. He doesn’t blame her; he wouldn’t be convinced, either.

“No, really, I’m fine,” he says, and it’s mashed together again: noreally’mfine. “It’s fine. Promise! Everything’s fine.”

Everything is not fine.

Jamison ends up trying to forget about it by throwing himself into his hobbies and his job. Nothing cheers him up like tinkering and working with chemical compounds always draws his attention, but not even that works. He’s bloody hopeless, and no matter how many dates he goes on, he can’t keep his mind away.

One night, his new date is clearly interested in escalating things in the physical department, but he is absolutely not feeling it. His brain is preoccupied with other things, things he really does not want to admit to himself, and so he makes some lame excuse because he just knows if he tries to continue this it’s going to turn out terribly for both him and said date, and surely it’s better to spare them a disappointing time, right?

That’s what he tells himself as he brushes them off and heads home, heart twisting, wondering if she’s happy.

Is it really that horrible of him to hope she won’t give the person she’s seeing a fair chance? She deserves the world and he wants nothing more than to see her happy, but god it hurts so much to see her with someone else, even if it is only holding hands, and it’s unfair because—

Becausehe wants to do that. He wants that privilege. He wants to be able to lace his fingers through hers and walk with her downtown and take her to one of her favorite shops. And it’s bloody stupid because she’s all he can think about now: her cheekbones, her nose, her chin, her mouth, all of her little beauty marks, her wide hips, her dynamite legs, and even her perfectly manicured nails. While it’s true he frequently thought about her before, it’s nowhere near how it is now, and now it’s—

God, it’s fucking constant. Always. She latches onto every thought like she’s lint from the dryer and he’s a static struck mess.

Satya’s jealousy is much more subtle, and she deals with it far better. It burns, of course, as jealousy always does, but she mashes it down and focuses on work and goes to her Bharatanatyam practices and tries to ignore the people he shows up with because if she doesn’t it will hurt.

The yoga class she attends with him twice a week is equal parts excitement and dread because she gets to see him and talk with him (and admire how he’s built) but she also gets to hear about what he’s up to, and that inevitably includes his love life because that’s how they are, that’s their friendship; it’s candidness and comfort and long nights spent idly watching Netflix and chatting about their lives because neither of them can bloody sleep.

But when they’re getting tea after the session, she just grins and bears it, and it might be terrible of her but she secretly takes pleasure in the fact that he isn’t actively pursuing commitments with anyone—not that she relishes the thought of him hooking up with randoms (because she wants him to want her for that).

(Addendum: no, she doesn’t want him to want her for meaningless hookups because that would never be enough and she knows it. She wants him to want her for more, and that somehow—hurts? She isn’t his type. That hurts, too.)

Satya goes on dates with others to keep herself busy, but they never quite feel right. Learning new people is so exhausting and going to new places is a chore, especially when she can’t always look at the menu beforehand, and so more often than not she finds herself feeling sour when she leaves her flat. Not to mention the awkward breaking-the-ice phase always lasts so bloody long; everyone makes boring smalltalk and sometimes the restaurants are too crowded and noisy (so much clamor; so many colors and bodies and things) and she can’t hear what is happening. Unfortunately for her, lipreading does not tend to go well.

She checks her messages on dating apps because trying to communicate via text is sometimes better than it is in person, but it doesn’t stop her from getting frustrated and drained because she would much rather go to a quiet place with him or have a cup of boba on a rooftop overlooking the cityscape. She leaves most invitations and cheesy pickup lines on read; they require so much more of her than she is willing to relinquish.

Oh, but when he texts her? She must stop herself from replying immediately like she hasn’t been waiting for a message from him since this morning. Patience, patience—she has other things to do. She can’t let herself revolve around him. She can’t. It’s unhealthy. He’s a friend.

But when he asks if she wants to have takeaway at his because he’s on his way home and he’s half starved, she sends, “That sounds perfect,” and jumps to get ready.

(She can’t be in love with him, but she can love him. She tells herself there’s a distinction, and she tries her best to believe it. She loves him. She is not in love with him. You can love friends.)

(She is in love.)

Satya reassures him when his mechanic job goes south. The shop is closing, he says; some big place on the other side of the city is running them out. She knows he’s upset because he’s worked there for years, for his entire time throughout uni and well afterward. She knows he has friends there and the owners might as well be family. She knows it hurts.

She texts: Why don’t you try applying to positions in your field? You are an intelligent person. I think you would make a brilliant engineer.

He replies: idk, it’s been a while since uni and if you don’t get in right away it’s a bitch to get ur foot in the door

And then: only got 1 foot anyway lol

She texts: Then you clearly have a leg up on the competition don’t you? All of them have two.

He replies: you just made me laugh in mako’s ear!! oh he’s none too pleased

And then: preciate it tho x

Later that week, after a great deal of wheedling, they end up going to a pub with the rest of their mutual friends. It starts out as a really bad night. Jamison doesn’t have any jobs lined up despite his desperate search, and Satya is dealing with intense burnout from work. Emotions are a little raw.

In the midst of her second drink, Satya asks him if he’s doing okay. His gaze darts to the bar countertop and he seems to crumple in on himself. He holds his head in his hands tells her no, he’s not; he’s between a rock and a hard place and he doesn’t even know if he’s going to be able to afford rent this upcoming month.

Jamison scrubs his cheeks with his hands and then downs a shot. He makes a scrunched face at the taste, but he looks back at her and manages a carefree smile. He says he’ll be fine. He will. It’s just not been a very good week is all. Ups and downs, you know. Right, so, what about her? What’s she been up to?

And so she vents about the management in her company and how she dislikes how they’re handling things. She talks about her misgivings concerning their approach to their client base and how she’s starting to think there may be some sort of dodgy dealings under the table, but she cannot prove anything. It frustrates her because she likes to think they’re helping the community, but she has a sneaking suspicion that isn’t the case, and she can’t do anything about it.

But at the end, she turns the conversation back to him, and says, “I can give you money for rent,” because she can. She wants to help. She will. She won’t take no for an answer.

Jamison seems rather flustered and his ears grow charmingly pink. He mumbles something about how she shouldn’t go out of her way to help him because—Christ, he can’t just hit her up for money like that, he’s got class—well, sort of. He’s not perfect.

But she says, “Let me help you. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

(Oh, that little fact shouldn’t hurt.)

He sputters at her: yes, yes, of course they’re friends! He just—he feels terrible about taking cash like that because he can’t pay her back. He can’t even help her in return! He switches topics to maybe finding a cheaper place to live, he doesn’t mind scrimping for a while, not like he hasn’t done it before, but she stops him short.

“Have you thought about a roommate?”

He blinks. “Well, yeah, but it’s a little short notice, innit? Bit weird just barging in on someone you don’t know. Mako’s got his family to worry about, so can’t stay there. Already asked.”

She bites her lip. “I was referring to me.”

(It’s going to hurt with the people he might bring home, she knows, but he’s in a tough spot and she can’t bring herself to ignore it. She doesn’t like it when he hurts.)

Jamison’s brilliant amber eyes grow very wide. His left hand toys with the shot glass. “Are you—are you serious?”

“Very,” she says, and hopes she hasn’t offended him with the offer.

“At yours, yeah?” His face lights up. No worries needed, it seems.

“Of course,” she says. “I have a spare room that has been home to nothing storage boxes for a while now. You would be more than welcome.” (He has always been welcome.)

“D’you mean it?” he asks.

“I do,” she says.

A moment passes where he stares at her, quiet and still, the ambient lights above casting a warm glow through his unruly shocks of blond and across the sharp lineaments of his face and the freckles and birthmarks that scatter him over. He catches her gaze and holds it there, and it’s as if he’s looking at a star.

Without warning, he swivels on the barstool and crushes her in a hug. “Oh, you’re a real lifesaver!”

He’s so warm. Satya nestles into the crook of his neck and shoulder, inhaling the savory spice of his cologne. She lets her hands lace around the broad plane of his back and mesh into the fabric of his shirt.

And then, as if reality had sunken in at last, Jamison wrenches back, panicked. “Oh, I need to pack! Need to ask Mako for his ute, too, ‘cause my car ain’t gonna carry all that, ‘specially not the bloody mattress. Gotta grab boxes and a hell of a lot of tape, and—”

He pauses again—his thoughts must have routed in yet another direction—and he looks to her, brow furrowed, jaw set.

“I’m gonna pay you, all right? I will. Can’t do cash right now, bit stiff at present, but I can work! I’ll tidy up, do little improvement projects, fix stuff, you name it! Let no one say Jamison Fawkes won’t carry his weight.” His grin is contagious.

“I must admit I’m a little wary about improvement projects,” she says, an eyebrow raised.

He huffs a theatrical gasp in mock-hurt. “Oi, I know my way around a spanner. I helped fix up Mako’s place when he moved in! Hard yakka, but worth it in the end. Better than hiring some dipstick who don’t know any better.”

She stifles a laugh. “And you do?”

“Too right I do! Tell you what: first week, I’ll have that leaky faucet in the kitchen fixed. That’ll be my rent ‘til I can get you some dinero.”

“There is a leaky faucet?” This is news to her.

“Uh, yes?” He taps the empty shot glass against his chin in thought. “Or was it the toilet? Can’t remember. Ah, well. I’ll fix something. Promise! Gotta prove me worth somehow, eh?”

“You don’t need to prove your worth,” she says, and her heart aches at the thought. “You are worth plenty already.”

“Sweet of you to say, darl,” he says with a simper. His ears are still pink. “Next week’s looking up already, innit?”

Satya certainly hopes so, because she wholeheartedly agrees.

Moving day is hectic. Satya drives to his flat to help with boxes only to find Jamison and Mako halfway finished loading up the truck. He greets her drenched in sweat while Mako raises a giant hand in salutation.

Jamison somehow has both more things and less things than she had imagined:

A full-size mattress, a rubbish bag’s worth of clothes, a coffee maker (she isn’t surprised), three tool boxes, a handful of dishes (mugs included), a few holiday decorations (from his mum when she was alive, he explains), miscellaneous free weights (tenners, fifteens, and a single twenty), a kettlebell, his half-finished projects, and an extra (very old, he says) prosthetic arm. There are also various art supplies (pens, pencils, faded notebooks, an entire collection of erasers), the strips of gauze and other covers for his amputated limbs, a couple bottles of nail polish (“Takes half the time, y’know! Only got one of each!”), a pair of very expensive headphones, and a shabby laptop with one of his signature smiley stickers on its lid. A signed cricket bat (“Gotta support the lads back home!”) is one of the last items to stow away save for lingering things in his fridge and pantry.

When she asks about the scant furniture, he shakes his head and gives the dilapidated sofa and recliner set a dismissive wave. “Nah. We’ll chuck it. You got better stuff, anyway.”

The first night of Jamison in her flat is… perfect? It’s bizarre.

Mako stays for Chinese takeaway (“I really owe you one, mate”) before leaving, and then it’s just the two of them, exhausted and sore, Jamison flopped on the floor while she lies on the couch.

“Oi.” He rolls onto his back and gives her foot a nudge with his prosthetic leg. “Just wanted to let you know, I really appreciate this. I know it’s sudden and all, but…” He gives his broad shoulders a shrug. “Means a lot.”

She nudges his leg back. “Think nothing of it.”

The night is finished with one of his favorite action films. He uses her shower (“Much better!”) before sprawling out on the couch with her in a set of too-small ratty pajamas, prosthetic leg removed, sleep circling like vultures beneath his eyes. Satya dozes across from him, her legs tucked just over his hip for comfort. The film’s plot and dialogue blur into indiscernible noise; the warmth of him is too good, too addicting, and it seeps into her skin. It’s selfish of her, but she wants nothing more than to bottle this moment and all its palpable contentment so that she might drink it in whenever she pleases.

A shift of movement under her legs captures her attention. Satya opens one eye to see him grinning at her from the other side of the couch, his eyes half shuttered in fatigue. He gives her a dainty wave, and she can almost hear his cheeky salutation: g’day.

This is good for her. It is.

Satya returns the wave, unable to resist a smile.

“Satya, please, lemme—”

“Shh,” she says, the black grip of her prosthetic finger against his lip. “You must be conscious of volume.”

“I—I know, I just—c’mon, please, I’m—”

“Close?”

He nods, his hips stuttering upward in a desperate attempt.

“What will you do for me?”

“I’ll—” Jamison swallows and scrunches his eyes shut. Sweat sticks to his temples. “I’ll repay the favor. I will. Double.” Biting at the smile by the corner of his mouth, he gives his middle and index fingers an indicative pump. “Promise.”

“How very generous.” Her hand slicks up the length of his cock, thumb trailing just up the underside to swirl soft circles where he’s most sensitive. “And if I refuse?”

Neurons snap at the very thought. “I could—hah, I could—dunno, maybe—”

But Satya kisses him, softly, fully, drinking his disjointed words with a gentle kind of hunger. She smells like jasmine and tastes like the chocolate biscuits he’d left her and he absolutely cannot stand the slow attention she’s lavishing him with, one casual stroke at a time. If he could find the courage to curl an arm around her, perhaps he could pull her into his lap so he might tease her in return, but he remains as still as he can, prosthetic hand coiled into leather upholstery—the conference room is the last place he’d expected a wristie.

“I won’t refuse. I wanted to see your reaction.”

Jamison struggles for composure. “Why?”

“I like the way your mind works,” she says, and treats him to a tightening upstroke. “I wanted to see if you would come up with an alternative.”

“Oh.” His thoughts scatter, bewildered. She likes his mind? Is that a compliment? “Didn’t really—hah—didn’t give me a proper chance, you know. S’not fair.”

“I’m well aware.” The sharp gold-hazel of her eyes captures his attention. “There will be plenty of time for alternatives later. That is, unless you would rather adhere to your first suggestion?”

With a pleading moan locked behind his teeth, Jamison thrusts up into her hand again. She feels so fucking good; she drives him up a wall with varying speeds and how she likes to squeeze him just at where he’s thickest before teasing the wet bead of white down his tip, sending his sparking nerves aflame. His fingers itch to steal her like she’s some cherished painting worth millions but he sucks in a ragged breath and opens his eyes and looks at her because he must commit this to memory, he must: she sits across from him, one leg crooked behind his, an amused smile cresting her countenance, the crisp angles of her uniform a stark contrast to the patches on his unbuckled trousers.

“You name it,” he says, far huskier than he’d intended, “I’ll adhere to it.”

“Very well. I look forward to it, then.” It’s hot, breathless, spoken by his ear. The sheer promise in each syllable makes him want to shout.

Satya sharpens her speed and increases her grip, and then before he can manage a gasp, she leans forward and down and slicks the head of his cock between her lips and oh fuck, she feels fantastic—her tongue draws a thick line and she begins to suck and her hand pumps him with haste, a constant, tightening throb that arcs through him in laving fire—god, he can’t take it any longer, he can’t, please, please—

He shudders as a bolt of pleasure lances through him, sweet and aching and entirely perfect, and he tries to ride it out with desperate little rolls of his hips. She works him through each trembling shock and pulse; her hand mimics his thrusts and the welcoming heat of her mouth swallows every drop.

Utterly unwound, Jamison lets his left hand splay across her shoulder. The pristine fabric of her uniform dimples beneath his palm as he watches her draw away, her tongue tending to one corner of her mouth. He knows he ought to say something, but his mind is pleasantly blank.

“Acceptable?”

He nods, dazed.

“Good.” She sidles closer, prosthetic fingers combing back a stray jet lock from her bun. “The others will be here soon. I will leave repayment to your discretion. You did say double, correct?”

“Double,” he says, testing the word. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Double.”

A moment ticks by where she seems to study him. “Will this be a continuously transactional arrangement?”

Jamison frowns. “Meaning?”

“A favor for a favor for a favor, ad infinitum.”

“Ad infinit—” He feels somehow tongue-tied, like he’s a little too drunk. “Uh, maybe? If that’s what you want. You won’t hear no complaints from me. Honestly, I’m just—”

She kisses him once more, damp fingers lined along his jaw; it drops the words right back down his throat. He finds himself leaning in, eager, ecstatic, his heartbeat a harrowing thunder ensconced beside his lungs. He slides his palm around her waist and to the small of her back, and then she’s situated between his thighs, her breath a soft flutter against his lips.

“Double it is, then,” she says.

“Double,” he agrees. “Ad infinitum?”

Satya’s aplomb fractures with a snicker. “If that is what you want. Ad infinitum.”

The glittering city of Oasis shifts into view over the plane’s right wing, sunset’s sharpness slicing over top sleek spires.

Jamison peers outside in gripping wonderment. His nose presses against the window as he drinks in the landscape below: the sweeping desert soaked in watercolor pinks and reds, spines of rolling dunes sculpted out of old thumbprints brushed upon the earth, cragged mountaintops jutting up from prism-cut sands, the scattered winding snakebacks of highways, the violet mirrored face of the lake—all eclipsed by the pristine architecture that is the city proper.

It’s… beautiful, really.

He has traveled the world several times over (his purpose equals parts criminal heists and righteous war), but it feels somehow strange, he thinks, coming here after all this time. It was something he’d dreamt about a long, long time ago, something he never would have thought to pursue, not with his background, not with his record, not with any of what he was (because Junkers are for Junkertown and Junkertown alone), and yet here he is, miraculously, flying in on the deepening palette of a Sunday evening with five days’ worth of events ahead of him.

Thanks to her, of course.

All of this is.

The interior of the plane is plush, dim, private, and courtesy of her, too. Once she slugged that dodgy corporation in the gut, other agencies were far too eager to snatch her up. While he might not be keen on any of them, she definitely earns her crust, and he must admit (albeit reluctantly) that their accommodations are first rate. Hijacking aircrafts for plunder and getaways is a thing of the past now.

With a bottle of butterflies lodged under his lungs, Jamison peels himself away from the view and turns his attention down to his left hand. Grinning, he flexes his ring finger where a broad circlet of hard-light rests (orange and blue, melded like glass, as apt as one could ever be), and watches the sun’s last rays as they refract small spectrums of color between his knuckles.

It’s beautiful, too. More so than the city, if he’s honest.

“We are almost there. Are you nervous?”

At his left, Satya shifts idly in her seat. The brilliant sapphire of one of her cherished sarees waterfalls over her legs in delicate drapes. She eyes him from behind the pages of an architectural magazine, one that features her on its cover. The mischievous curve of her smile behind a stray lock of jet hair implies she’s been watching him fidget.

“Nah, not nervous,” he says. “Just rapt, is all. Really rapt. Got so much bursting about, half of me feels like taking a dive out the window.”

“Out the window? I certainly hope not. You won’t meet anyone at all if you decide to flatten yourself into a pancake.” She lays her magazine in her lap and angles her fingers into a design he can’t quite name. A hexagonal flash of blue signals the materialization of a small squared item in the flat of her prosthetic palm. “Here, priye. For the landing.”

He accepts it without a second thought and begins to run the pads of his fingers over its edges. “So, it all starts tomorrow, eh?”

“It does, yes, but by late afternoon. We will have the morning to have breakfast and explore the city. If you’re still interested, that is.”

“Oh, I’m more than interested. Can’t even imagine what this place’s got.” He affords another curious glance out the window. “Posh, from the looks of it. You’ve been here before, yeah?”

“A few times in my youth. Its architectural achievements were used as a learning experience for us at the Academy. Of course, pieces of the city have changed since then, but it was still an enjoyable trip nonetheless. I am especially fond of how they structured their highways. Traffic systems are such a nuisance when it comes to city planning, you know.”

He wouldn’t know, actually, as roads were merely a suggestion rather than a rule for the vast majority of his life, but he nods in tacit agreement anyway because if anyone were to know anything about traffic systems (or nuisances), it would be Satya.

The plane begins to rattle as it curves into a downward turn. Everything shakes: the notebook in his lap, the luggage stashed overhead, the cerulean crystal of her earrings. It plants a curl of trepidation in the thick of his throat, but he clamps his prosthetic fingers into the armrest and trails his thumb over the hard-light square and swallows it down.

As the tight twist of vertigo sets in, his focus strays to his left hand once more. The gleaming circlet catches his eye; it reminds him of impossible dreams, of diamond clusters and chips of shimmering glass, a world of color captured in a recherché shard of shaped reality. He lets the prisms dance, but the shiver bolting through his body does not go unnoticed.

Beside him, Satya reaches over to smooth her hand over his own. The square molds into his lifelines with her fingers folded upon his knuckles: I’m here.

Another glance out the window. Distant buildings zip past as well as the grand tower looming at the city’s apex. The lake below glistens in soft lilac hues, parted by the occasional boat coasting through calm waters. Everything beyond the windowpane looks so serene, and yet there is a latent twirl of tension coiling inside of him, crawling up his windpipe on prickling pins.

“There is no need to be nervous,” she says, her voice hewn into a soft, reassuring timbre. “Your talents are estimable, and far beyond what anyone here could ever hope for. Any of the Ministries would be lucky to have you. In fact, I think I’d like to see them squabble.”

“Yeah?” He grins and gives his ring finger an indicative flex. “Jamison Vaswani-Fawkes, Minister of Engineering. Has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?”

She snickers, prosthetic hand brought by her chin. A circlet of her own graces one metal finger.

He swears her smile could put the works of the greatest architects to shame.

“A certain ring, indeed.”

vargrimar:

I got a prompt for praise kink like a year ago for my ‘warmth’ smut series and occasionally it pops into my brain from time to time because I wholeheartedly plan on writing it one of these days, but there are times where all I can think about is—

Keep reading

[insp]

Jamison wakes to someone kissing his neck.

There it is again: a shy yet steady pressure pathing from the hollow of his throat.

He isn’t dreaming. He can’t be. His dreams never happen like this. When they settle in, they yield shrouds of choking smoke and swatches of dripping ruins and sheets of glistening metal. Plumes of fire spark the way, flickering with faded echoes of forgotten things long since passed. Garbled voices find him in the dark, a constant and deafening roar, ramping and ramping and ramping until it’s as if an engine means to split his head and he can do nothing but gasp in empty paralysis. When he’s dreaming, the wasteland always rises up from beneath and swallows him like quicksand—

And yet someone is kissing him.

His neck, his shoulder, his collarbone, his cheek, his jaw. It’s soft, hesitant, in gentle patterns of twos and threes, and with a tenderness that sends pleasurable prickles down his spine. A soft weight pools over top of him, centered somewhere over his chest, an anchor to keep him from lapsing back into smoke and nightmares.

After he spends another moment blinking in blackness, he lets the rest of his senses guide him. A leg hooks around his, joining his ankle hidden amongst the sheets. The warmth of a hand presses down by his sternum while the mattress dips at his right side. Disheveled drapes of hair brush his cheek as a kiss presses to his jawline, delicate and silky and threaded with a familiar spice. The dim bleed of a crystal catches in his peripheral; the pressure shifts, and then the moon glides in to frame his face; another kiss at his chin.

Realization sculpts his thoughts, and he finds himself at a loss for words.

This feels… god, he doesn’t know. Good? It feels good? It feels so good he ought to be dreaming but he isn’t because his dreams are never like this and yet it doesn’t quite make sense to him because surely she’d ask before coming in here—but it feels good, like that tight, elated feeling he gets when he watches his creations burst, like that lilting drum on the undersides of his ribs when he gets a shred of praise. It’s all gentle strums on his heartstrings and enveloping warmth cornered inside his lungs, guided by a grounding touch that sweeps the sands away and lets him breathe.

Try as he might, he can’t remember a time anyone has cared to kiss him awake.

And that sort of… hurts, he thinks, but in a good way—because while it might not have happened before, it is happening now, and that is something he can live with.

Tentatively, he lets his left hand coast up the curve of Satya’s back. Her nightgown rumples under his thumb, but he keeps stroking in scattered patterns as she traces a trail of kisses along his clavicle. Each touch earths tiny coals in his skin.

A part of him wants to ask why she’s here. He should know better than to assume she’d want to visit like this on her own accord, especially in the dead of night. (Or morning? Is it morning? It might be. He does tend to lose track of time after the sun sets.) Perhaps shades of her own came skulking out from beneath her bed and chased her here? While he does not think of himself as a particularly effective nightmare deterrent, if she would rather spend her time with him until sunrise, he isn’t going to complain.

In fact, he could get used to this. He really could. He doesn’t sleep well and when he does manage to doze off it is often out of necessity, but waking up like this? God, it’s almost unfair. Exhaustion weighs his movements, heavy and lethargic with fatigue, but he doesn’t want to fall asleep again because he might miss her, he might miss this—and she feels so warm and comforting and he wants to do so much more than knead small circles into her back but he is so unbelievably tired, his heart a fluttering mess—

And then Satya sinks down into the pillow beside him, a kiss against his shoulder. Her right hand slides across his belly and locks with his left, and although he cannot cradle her completely without his prosthesis, he crooks his elbow inward and tries nevertheless.

Jamison nuzzles into her hair and lets his consciousness slip.

Squeezing her fingers, he hopes she’ll still be here when he wakes.

Satya reaches for her drafting pencil only to find it absent.

After a cursory glance around the workshop, she is thankful to see that it hasn’t taken a dive off of the tabletop. Instead, it appears to have rolled into a pile of eraser shavings in the next space over where Jamison scratches various designs in the faded pages of an old notebook.

“If you would be so kind as to hand that to me,” she says, “it would be greatly appreciated.”

“Hand you what? Got about a million things over here. Protractor? Measuring stick?” He peers up from his drawing, eyebrows raised, a red grenade shell between his metal thumb and forefinger. “Inspiration?”

She stifles a snicker behind her knuckles. “I just need the—no, the pencil there. The white one just by your elbow. No, no, your other elbow. Yes, that’s it. If you would?”

“Yeah, sure, sure.” Swiping it, he holds it out to her in the graphite smudged flat of his palm. “All yours.”

“Thank you, Jamie.”

It is perhaps a touch too late before Satya realizes her error.

Mortified that she would dare to call him something so personal—and out loud!—she clenches her fingers around her pencil in momentary panic. When she snaps around to apologize, she discovers that he is very still, statuesque, a strange sculpture of stark angles and blond fire crunched in his chair. A crease crinkles his brow as he regards her with what she can only hazard to be bewilderment, but it isn’t his usual deadpan display; there is a smile there, however faint.

“Jami—Jamison,” she amends. “That is what I meant. Jamison.”

Several moments of complete silence envelop the room, and Satya thinks she could melt into the floor.

And then, softly, “No one’s called me that in a real long time.”

“I… I apologize,” she says, squashing as much sincerity into her voice as she can possibly muster. “I misspoke. A simple mistake. It won’t happen again. If you are uncomfortable with—”

“You can call me that if you want.”

Whatever words she’d meant to use next must have evaporated because her throat is very empty. She scrambles for something to say, but despite her generous vocabulary cobbled of assorted languages, nothing of significance comes to her rescue.

“I won’t mind if you do,” he says. “Just old, is all. Been a while. A long, long while. I reckon it’s been years.”

Satya falters. “Years?”

“Don’t remember how many, but yeah, definitely years. It was—it was something Mum and Dad used to say. Them and the old man and his little missus from the ranch over the road. I used to go scouting with their grandkids sometimes. Y’know, before everything.”

Something compresses tightly between her lungs. “Clearly this means something to you. It seems very… personal, all things considered. Are you certain?”

“Junkrat, Fawkes, Jamison, Jamie. S’all the same, I suppose.”

Jamison scratches at his hairline, eyes averted to the tabletop, a charming flush in the height of his cheeks.

“So long as you’re the one saying it.”

Losing himself might not be such a bad thing after all, he thinks, his mouth hot on her neck.

Even as a child, it has always been difficult for Jamison to keep his thoughts straight. Everything seems to race, a constant leap from one topic to the next, prompted by swatches of conversation and pretty things that catch his eye and loud cracks of sudden noise that fissure through his chest like the thrum of thunder. His attention is a soft putty pooled in someone else’s hand; thumb and fingers mold it into a different shape every few minutes, forever driving his focus to something else, something else, something else, to insignificant things that hold no true bearing, and yet regardless of where it catches, it always boomerangs back to lovely sets of charges and bundled sticks of dynamite and bottles of chemical compounds he knows by sight and smell alone, no labels required.

He can never be certain where his thoughts will take him, but there is one thing he is certain of: everything is better when she’s near.

He doesn’t even remember when it started. It must have been a few months ago at the very least. Over the course of the past half year, her presence has gradually become a more comfortable and familiar phenomenon, one that seems to have somehow crept up while his back was turned so that it could envelop him without his cognizance. Whether it was tinkering in the workshop or slapdash dinners in the mess hall or those rare moments stolen out by the beach, she would ensnare him with quiet snickers and subtle humor and the plots of very cheesy Indian films, and then there came the times where he’d be aboard the ORCA with her in the adjacent seat and all of him seemed to suddenly settle, as if simply having her near granted him this new, superseding focus that could somehow ascend the distracting clamor of everything else.

It is perhaps one of the more remarkable things he’s experienced. Not because being consumed so utterly by something that isn’t gunpowder and grenades makes him feel all fluttery inside, but because shipping out is a delight for reasons beyond exercising his thumb upon a detonator’s switch and because returning to the watchpoint means more time spent entangling with her. Formal events are bearable, his downtime is an envious balance of production and dalliance, and assignments are barely assignments at all.

But he still loses himself, just as he always does. He loses himself in her like he loses himself in coils of wire and chemical amalgams during late nights upon the workshop floor because he must finish this set of explosives, he absolutely must—because doesn’t know when his thoughts will still long enough again for him to focus, for him to properly work, for him to put all the little pieces together without thinking about the twenty other things he should have done the other night or last week or a bloody fortnight ago.

Satya isn’t lovely sets of charges or bundled sticks of dynamite or bottles of chemical compounds, but she might as well be. The rest of the world could erupt into nuclear holocaust, and he’d never even notice.

“Please,” she says against the wall, and it is decidedly disheveled and shed of all the pleasantries such an entreaty would entail; “if you don’t stop teasing, I don’t know what I will do with you.”

“I’ve got some suggestions if you’ve got an ear.” Aching and hard, Jamison mouths yet another kiss along the column of her neck. He is flush against her back, his left hand plunged beneath the pleats of her sweeping sapphire saree petticoats. “Thought you wanted to wait ‘til we got back? You’re the star of the show, after all. Guest of honor. Probably be a bit conspicuous if she went missing. What about the monkey and the others?”

“I’m not worried. Patience is one of their virtues. They will survive not seeing me for twenty minutes.” Satya glances over her shoulder, gold-hazel eyes mirthful and alight. Loose locks of jet hair ruin her perfect bun. “What about you?”

Sparks snap in his belly. “Patience was never one of mine.”

“Then hurry.”

Jamison hates wearing suits, anyway.

His heart is his own cannonade as he thrusts in. Her saree is cumbersome and the folds flow far past his legs, but she feels exquisite and the crystal in her left palm etches the circled faces of moons into his bare back and her thick thighs around his hips lock him in. He kisses an exposed shoulder and shudders at how hot and wet she’s become, thoughts mussed, nerves exulting. Stifled noises catch in her throat with each swift movement of his hips, and he leans her back against the wall with his hands clamped on her generous rear, breathing heavy curses into her hair and against her mouth.

It’s hard to handle how inexplicably good she feels. She is at the center of everything with her gorgeous eyes and radiant skin and lilting accent, and the posh, raucous gala he’d never wanted to attend seems so impossibly far from this darkened corridor, an entire universe away, inconsequential and boring and completely pointless. He’d rather let his focus drip away, let his hands wander, let her come around his cock; he’d much rather lose himself here with her than work himself back into that stuffy suit jacket and sit around tables of their merry ragtag band of teammates and clusters of too-important VIPs, all demanding to see the bombshell sighing his name.

Satya is all consuming, even as she crumbles apart. With a helping hand between her legs, she kisses him to suppress the noise, and all he can seem to think is mine,mine,mine, a punctuation at the hilt of every thrust. Her muffled moans splinter through him like a thunderstorm and the tight heat around him feels sublime and nothing else in the world matters more than how perfect everything is in this moment, however brief—her prosthetic arm hooked around his neck, her legs squeezed around his hips, Jamison on her talented tongue.

When he comes, it’s hard and pulsing and messy and good, but she ushers him on until he’s entirely breathless and spent, a deep exertion corded in his thighs. He leans his metal arm against the wall to allow himself a moment to recover, and as he draws in long, jagged breaths, the world slowly starts to bleed back in, blot by blot: her hiked saree, his discarded gear, the slickness of their sweat, the twilit corridor, the opulent gala below, the evening’s warm air.

She presses her forehead to his, nose to nose, eyes half open. Her hair may be out of place and her petticoats may be rumpled and her saree may have come unpinned, but she is just as magnificent now as she was at the night’s inception.

Jamison kisses her, overcome, his thoughts as still as a looking glass.

Jamison has never been all that good with emotions, anyway.

Even if all she grants him is brief trips to her room in the middle of the night when the lights are dim and the waves of Gibraltar crash upon silent shores, even if ephemeral touches and frantic kisses and the far too fleeting feel of her dragging her fingers down his back are all he could ever hope to glean from this, even if she refuses to address the peculiar thing that’s somehow wrest itself from inside the husk of his heart and the equally dilapidated curls of affection she leaves in her wake, even if he could somehow find the appropriate scraps of words and assemble something out of their debris like he manages with every other aspect of his life, he knows none of it would do him any good because—

Because it isn’t what he wants.

He has always been resourceful. That’s what got him this far. Missing a limb or two, sure, but still mostly intact. He’s always made the best out of a bad situation because there’s not much more you can do than grin and bear it and light a fuse in hopes that it’ll make all the unsavory things disappear in a single, heartstopping blast.

And that’s what this is, really. Making the best out of a bad situation. Albeit without that particular blast.

It might not be what he wants, but what he wants is pointless—because even if all the stars aligned and the eclipse cast the earth in shadow, even if he’d somehow hailed from someplace proper like Sydney and all its glittering buildings instead of cutthroat Junkertown in the back of beyond, even if she’d never been scoped out by that dodgy corporation and all of its vicious bureaucratic ladders and policies, even if they’d somehow still met despite the sheer random chance the rebirth of Overwatch has given them both—it would never happen.

Perhaps it’s unfortunate. It hurts sometimes, like the rest of the old scars that mar his thigh, his forearm; like the tiny nicks and whitened lightning lines that touch choice places upon his back, his chest, his leg; but it isn’t something he can’t handle. Pain is something familiar, and regardless of the form it takes, it comes to him as a strangely helpful focus, something he can channel into his craft, his work; something he can use as a weapon.

He just—he wishes she wouldn’t talk to him like he’s something worth saving. It isn’t fair, not only because he doesn’t need to be saved, but because if he cared to save anyone at all out of the goodness of his heart (and there is some left; she made sure to dig and dig and dig until it bled out of him in all its excruciating glory), it would be her, and it would be from the jaws of those corporate bloodhounds and their entourage of greedy bigwigs because someone like her just does not belong with their unique brand of savagery.

And it is savagery. He knows bloodlust when he sees it. He knows what it tastes like and he knows what it’s capable of. It’s that rivulet of power dripping at the back of his mouth, the knowledge that everything lies in the balance of a red switch.

He could tell her she doesn’t belong with them because he knows firsthand how they grab, how they take, how they ravage, how they rob, but that wouldn’t dissuade her. She is headstrong, determined, and sees things in her own way. The way she murmurs soft things to him in their aftermath gives him small strands of stupid things like hope and longing, but for her to forsake them all would mean something drastic, something dire, something she might not be ready to relinquish.

And she isn’t ready. He knows that. He does. And still, he comes back every other night, hanging around her doorway with his mouth in a grin and his heart in his throat, pistons pounding in his chest and sweat on his brow because he isn’t ready to relinquish this just yet.

He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be ready.

He doesn’t know if he can bear the thought.

If he could go back to normal after this, whatever normal is—that strange in between of floating around, wandering from place to place, wreaking havoc on whatever he touches without something to keep him anchored, present, still—he doesn’t know how long it would last. There are only so many rhythms that can keep him on track, and one of them is here at his side, the warmh of her face buried against his chest.

Even if he could keep her like this, even if he could wake up tomorrow morning with the memories of Junkertown a blurred and pleasant nothing, even if the threat of the second Omnic Crisis were neutralized and world peace were somehow achieved, none of it would do him any good—because it isn’t what he wants.

But what he wants doesn’t really matter, now, does it?

Jamison has never been all that good with emotions, anyway.

Jamison is awake, insomnia struck, stars fissured across the windows.

Old scars bloom under shards of moonlight like pale toadstools after a heavy rain. They hurt in places he never thought to check: under his rib, between his shoulders, the back of his thigh. The phantoms that bite the missing ache somehow less than thoughts of scavenging a scrapyard with poison leeching from its metal carcass.

If he could sink into deep sleeps like Roadhog, he’d be forever grateful.

The watchpoint is nothing but humming fluorescents and dark corridors. The temperature is regulated and there are formal facilities for nearly every need, everything from a shooting range to washrooms to sleeping halls. He’s not used to this place and its host of gratuitous amenities, and it’s a very disparate place to call home.

He finds her in the rec room. His wandering should have brought him to the workshop, but the back of his head said kitchen, and so he stands awkwardly in the threshold of neither half-dressed and with memories of the omnium hung in a noose above his adam’s apple.

Satya looks… tired. Drained. Like she might have tried sleeping several hours ago but it got her nowhere far. The lights are dimmer here, muted, muffled; they cast dark shadows by her eyes, her jaws, her throat; soft hollows of midnight that curl through her hair. She rocks back and forth on the sofa, her arms crossed, her body swathed in some sort of intricate nightgown that drapes down to the muscle lined in her calves. The balls of her feet plant firmly against the floor while her heels kiss the carpet in a steady beat: one, two, three.

She acknowledges him with a slight nod. He gives her the same courtesy.

Silence trails after Jamison’s footsteps. He could talk, make conversation, force something that isn’t there, but it would be pointless. Not too many other reasons someone would be wandering around the base this late. He knows why she’s here. In a way.

When he comes to, he’s not in his bed, but upon the sofa’s armrest. His prosthetic leg rests on the floor while the other stretches across cushions and fabric. Exhausted, bleary-eyed, and settled with a prominent ache in his neck, he lifts his head to find a soft weight nestled in the dip of his back.

Twisting halfway, he blinks over his shoulder. Satya sleeps across the opposite half of the sofa, head upon the armrest, her legs tucked and lolling over top of him. Her toenails are painted, he finds; they sport a rich and vibrant blue, not unlike her cherished dress. In the fading dark of dawn, the center of her left palm glows like the setting moon under morning’s pink pall. She is serene, and shrouded in silken daybreak.

It’s jarring. Perhaps he should be unsettled, alarmed, or confused at the very least, but he isn’t.

With sleep weighing his eyes, Jamison crooks his arm and buries his nose into the bend, his forehead back against the sofa’s rest. It’s not the most convenient setup, but Satya’s presence is comforting and warm, and he’d rather not wake her just yet. She’d wandered the night for a reason, after all.

He shoulders against the sofa and allows himself to decompress. He’ll worry about everything later, he thinks. Later. Now’s not the time.

Maybe when morning comes.

The smell of blood is thick and cloying and delicious and it sears the lining of his lungs with every ragged inhale.

Everything is different. The world is distant, displaced, bleary, and the edges of Jamison’s vision stalk closer with itching darkness as if his consciousness threatened to collapse into void. Poison drips from his teeth, slavering remnants of where his jaws had clamped down, slick with mingling dark and viscous red as if the beast’s essence meant to make a second home out of him—he is the catcher of echoes, the vessel, the Hunter, and he will gladly devour any beast.

The earth beneath him feels too wet, too slippery; something spilled here. Her? His left palm clenches into the soil, claws tearing away spidering roots, and hurls him toward the heaving creature across the clearing. His nose, now elongated and at the end of a long blond muzzle, gathers the forest in a greedy breathful. No, comes his humanity; no, not her. She’s still here. He couldn’t forget her smell even if he wanted. The wet beneath him must be prey.

His teeth gnash into ripped flesh and the Old Blood reaches out for the monstrosity. He can’t control it. The power that makes him whole raises its hackles, a growling and cornered beast, and the ethereal claws from his right arm dive through its abdomen, cleaving between cages of sticky bone. Its howl lodges into his ears, primal and angry and keening and vicious and you must die, and before Jamison can lunge for its throat and close off that awful scream, something slashes down his back and laves it in fire. An unholy sting irrigates the wounds, and the next thing that ripples in among the encroaching dark is the rustling forest canopy.

If he could shout, he would. Something happened to his mouth. Welded shut by poison? Or is his voice unusable like this? His tongue writhes behind his bared teeth, canines glinting with red and rot and torn skin from his impaled quarry, and in a vain attempt to wrest control of his body, he shears sharp nails at the ground beneath, burying dirt and pebbles between the pads of his hands. He breathes in shallow gasps, as if more would make the pain that much more crippling, incapacitating, as if it might slow his heartbeat and stall the poison’s travel, but the still stable shard of him knows his fate—it’s off to the Dream with him.

Slowly, slowly, the forest bleeds back into focus. The darkness is still there, scraping, scraping at his peripheral, threatening to swallow him up, and yet the central point ushers away the fog. She stands over him, her red cloak shrouding her shoulders, black hair spun at the crown of her head and ornaments affixed through it like stars. Her posture is regal. It’s stoic, but power radiates from her entirety. The scent of her blood is somehow saccharine and peels away all other smells; the Old Blood has done nothing but dull his senses until this very meeting, nothing could ever compare, and the beast in him wonders how he could keep it, savor it, consume it, until the poison leeching through his bloodstream thrusts a spike of agony inside of him, and then the pain becomes too much, too much—come on, let him die already, let him die, no use in lingering, come on, bloody hurry up and cark it—and he supposes lying here helpless and weak is a sort of cruel justice for attacking her as he did.

Instinct, the beast reminds him. The Hunt is in all of us.

Drops of vibrant gold watch him overhead. Cool, cautious, she regards him with an air of pity. At least he thinks it’s pity. Might as well be. It’s hard to tell. His vision’s going out again; everything is shifting into the familiar. The fangs have receded, his face has reverted back to jagged shapes, and the claws have retracted into normal nails. His prosthetics are missing. God only knows where they are. Not that he needs them right now, anyhow. If he can suffer this long enough, the Dream waits for him, and he will have no need of them there.

“That was unwise of you.” Her voice is silk and drowns out the monstrosity’s death throes. Blood spatters her face. Had she struck the final blow? “I don’t know if you are brave or stupid.”

He wants to answer both and laugh, but something is wrong with his mouth, like wet cement hardened between his teeth, like his voice knotted itself down his throat and has no means of escape. How far did those wounds go? Did something else get punctured? No, it doesn’t matter. He’s a bleeding mess, pulpy and battered and shorn and watering the earth with some potent cocktail that is bound to birth mutant insects; whether he can talk should be the least of his worries.

The Vildblood cocks her head, curiosity and intrigue. “You’re a Hunter. I see no benefit in your actions. Why?”

His tongue forms the word because behind the flats of his teeth and up on the roof of his mouth, sour blood and bits of flesh lingering by salivary glands: because dying to you is a treat.

With all of her regality and poise, she continues to watch, seeming to find some sort of sport in the event of his slow, agonizing death. She could choose to end him quickly and send him hurtling into the Dream that much faster, but no blades come forth, and the blood gem in the palm of her left hand remains a quiet shimmer. A statement, he assumes. She could be merciful, but she won’t. He respects that. And deserves it.

He doesn’t know how many excruciating minutes it is until the transition finally begins, but when it does, the pain dulls, starting with his fingers, his toes, his leg, his arm, and then his abdomen; once it might have been painkillers, alchemical concoctions, but now is the healing sensation of the Old Blood. His nerves register blessed nothingness. The ground beneath him no longer feels wet, and the distinctive metallic tang in the night air becomes faint, distant, lost. As the world around him begins to wither away into a pale sunset somewhere on the cusp of twilight, she gives him a wry, cunning smile.

“You madman,” she says, and the world goes dark.