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The front door creaks open, followed by soft shuffling and the switch of a lock. Nikolai’s visible eye cracks open, moonlight striking amber into fire.
Fyodor is home early tonight.
Draped across Fyodor’s bed like a carnival doll, Nikolai pulls himself onto his feet, all long legs and acrobatic grace. Lips curl into a smile as he all but glides from the bedroom, sweeping into the living room, where Fyodor is taking off his coat.
“Dos-kun,” Nikolai swoons (praises, adores, needs). “I wasn’t expecting you for another hour.”
Fyodor’s pulling off his gloves, baring his slender hands. His skin is so pale, so delicate, and all Nikolai wants to do is take his hands in his and hold on tightly.
(He wonders how much force it would take to snap those little bird bones.)
“Disappointed?” Fyodor asks. It’s a joke, it must be, so Nikolai laughs like he’s never heard anything funnier, twirls the end of his braid in his hand like a schoolgirl learning to flirt.
“You’re so funny, Dos-kun! You could never disappoint me,” Nikolai insists, grins, mania twitching his lips wider and wider.
Once Fyodor has shrugged out of his coat, Nikolai closes the distance between them, starts fussing with the thick magenta scarf around Fyodor’s neck. “You’re wearing the scarf I got you.”
“So I am,” Fyodor says, and the confirmation stirs something in Nikolai’s birdcage ribs, all molten metal and magma.
Nikolai’s fingers twirl in the fabric, and when Fyodor moves to take off the scarf, Nikolai’s fingers curl in like claws, sinking into the fabric like meat.
“Keep it on, Dos-kun,” Nikolai says, the order lowly murmured past his lips before he can stop himself. He tears his eyes up from the scarf to Fyodor’s face, where he thinks he sees a fraction of surprise. “It looks so pretty on you.”
A beat of silence as they stare each other down, Nikolai meeting Fyodor’s calm assessment with dark intent. Nikolai doesn’t realize he’s gritting his teeth until his jaw starts to ache. Don’t you want to look pretty, Dos-kun? Don’t you want to look like you’re mine?
“If you insist,” Fyodor says, and Nikolai blooms into another sunny smile that reveals too much fang.
“I do!” Nikolai chirps, the gravel in his tone replaced with cheeriness. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? Can I get you anything?”
“No,” Fyodor says, and Nikolai feels a wail of protest bubbling in his throat before his beloved continues, “I just need to rest for a minute.”
The rare confession of exhaustion sets off red flags in Nikolai’s mind. He squints, searching Fyodor’s face - which yes, is pale and weary, and that just won’t do, his Dos-kun needs to be rested! It’s not fair that Dos-kun exerts himself so much, that other people are so simple-minded that they drain him of energy, that they take up so much of Fyodor’s time.
Nikolai hates them. All of them. He’d sooner cut them into pieces and feed them to the sharks.
(He has just the set of knives for them, tucked away in an antique cabinet drawer. Silver, sharp, thin. It would be so easy.)
“Kolya,” Fyodor murmurs, and it’s the use of the nickname that pulls Nikolai from his blood red stupor. “You’re trembling.”
Nikolai blinks, looks down at his hands, which have dropped to his side, curled into tight, vibrating fists.
“Oh! It’s so sweet of you to worry, Dos-kun,” Nikolai says, leaning in to give Fyodor a peck on the cheek. His skin is cold, so cold, it’s almost a wonder that he’s alive at all. “I’m better now that you’re here.”
And it’s true. Fyodor always makes him better.
(Except when he doesn’t. Except when Fyodor inspires emotions so maddening that Nikolai feels sick, like he wants to claw off his skin, like he wants to find those pretty knives and -)
Fyodor soothes a hand down Nikolai’s back, and Nikolai arches into the touch like a cat, pleased and loved.
“You’re thinking too much,” Fyodor says, a soft reprimand with no real bite.
“Hmm? And what do you know about what I’m thinking of?” Nikolai asks, syllables purred as he snakes a hand up Fyodor’s chest until he can stroke the soft, snow white skin of his neck that isn’t covered by the scarf.
“I know it will consume you if you don’t set it free,” Fyodor says, the last word all but softly gasped as Nikolai strokes along his jawline.
Nikolai stops there, hand cupped on Fyodor’s jaw, stunned. They’re close enough that Nikolai can see the violet flecks in his eyes, can feel his warmth breath, and Nikolai’s mind bursts into fireworks, reds and blues against the twilight sky. Yes, Nikolai wants to scream. Yes, yes, that’s exactly it, Dos-kun, you always understand me.
Instead, his fingers trail down to Fyodor’s neck again, reverently caress the fragile skin (he wonders how Fyodor’s neck would bruise if he squeezed.) He sighs, equal parts adoration and confession, an affectionate flame warring with a violent instinct.
“You’re the only one who understands, Fedya,” Nikolai murmurs, leaning in to nuzzle along Fyodor’s hair. “My Fedya.”
Fyodor leans into Nikolai’s touch, an affirmation, and Nikolai is so full of volatile emotion that he wants to scream until his throat is sore. It’s perfect and terrible, this feeling of being understood, of being known. Nikolai doesn’t know how to express it, can’t begin to say it, so instead he claws a hand down Fyodor’s back and inhales deeply until he shudders.
“Say you’re mine,” comes Nikolai’s soft, desperate demand, breathed into Fyodor’s hair. “Say it. Please.”
His heart pounds in his chest, the songbird aching to be free from its cage.
It will consume you if you don’t set it free.
Nikolai will never be free. Not as long as simply standing beside Fyodor feels like an addictive intoxication.
Fyodor’s quiet, and Nikolai barely resists the urge to shake him as he feels hysteria threaten to swallow him whole.
You belong to no one else but you cannot belong to me either.
“Yours,” comes Fyodor’s quiet response at last, and Nikolai simultaneously shuts down and sparks to life as he curls around the wonderful, terrible solitary fact. He stands there for a minute, soaks in this maddening enigma, an animal with its leg caught in the most beautiful trap.
And then.
Nikolai lifts his head, gleaming amber eye peering over Fyodor’s shoulder, into the darkness.
Maybe there’s a way.
Untangling himself from Fyodor, he takes his beloved by the hand and begins to pull him toward the bedroom, the tinkling of laughter filling the dark, heavy air.
Maybe I can set us both free.
Nikolai grabs onto Fyodor’s scarf to haul him into a deep kiss, dreamy and sweet, and thinks of those sharp, little knives.