Chapter Text
“Does that feel good, darlin’?”
Reaper’s rumbling purr fills the bathroom, echoing off the tiles of the shower as Luke strokes their cock. Or as close as they get to one.
Luke has stretched their flesh around his own hard cock and wrapped his hand over both. Their other tendrils are curled around him from behind, under Reaper’s control, stroking over Luke’s chest and abs, pinching and tugging on his nipples.
Their head is hooked over his shoulder in one of their favorite positions, nipping and licking and sucking at Luke’s neck as he jerks them off.
You feel good, Luke.
There’s something about hearing Reaper tell him that he’s good that feels like an absolution. Luke needs it. The words turn his knees to jello.
He sags back against the wall to support his weight and spreads his legs further, reaching between his thighs to play with his balls. The touch on his cock is muted through the layer of symbiote but he doesn’t need it because Reaper has already proven that they can make him come just by teasing his nipples.
Sharp alien teeth scrap across the top of his shoulder and Luke’s head drops back on the tile with a groan.
“You gonna bite me today?”
Their tongue curls under his jaw, tracing the boundary where his beard meets his neck, and a warm string of saliva trickles down his throat before getting lost in the shower spray. Luke’s balls are tight in his hand and he knows he’s close. Just from their touch on this chest. Just from their words. Just from the feeling of them wrapped around him.
Do you want us to bite you?
The question is punctuated by another sharp drag of their teeth along his neck. His heart pounds, blood roaring through his veins, while Reaper licks hard against the pulse under the hinge of his jaw, feeling the thud of it against their tongue.
“I’m not opposed to it,” he groans as tendrils drip down his spine before curving over his ass and kneading the muscle.
You want us to mark you.
It’s a statement, not a question, as Reaper’s tongue slicks down to trace his collarbones and a tendril slips between his ass cheeks to rub at the hole between.
You want to see what you mean to us written on your skin.
They must know. They must be inside his head. They must see that he’s trying not to think about how much he’s leaking, coating their skin with his precome, marking Reaper as his. Trying not to think about what it will feel like to be marked as theirs on the outside as much as he is on the inside.
But the thoughts come anyway, pushing Luke closer to the edge, pleasure coiling in from his limbs, leaving them tingling in its wake, to pool hot and liquid in his belly and between his thighs.
Teeth scrape across the front of his throat and the cocks in his hand jerk at the sensation. Luke knows his cock is red and throbbing and sticky with precome and the barely there sensation of his stroking hand is making him ache.
You want everyone to know that you are ours.
“I am yours,” Luke murmurs, toes curling into the hard basin of the tub as his orgasm bears down on him.
You are, Reaper purrs inside his head, their tendrils tightening around his torso and winding over his thighs and targeting every part of him that’s shaking and sensitive. And we are yours.
Luke thought he had time. His orgasm hadn’t seemed that close but suddenly it's upon him, all teeth and claws, tearing into him and pulling him apart. Not just metaphorical teeth and claws, either. He feels Reaper’s dagger-sharp teeth bite into the muscle of his shoulder as their hands tighten on him, claws sinking into the grooves of his hips.
The pain explodes inside of him, blooming into something exquisite, prolonging his orgasm, racing through his body and tunneling into the knot in his chest, yanking it loose and filling the empty space with his symbiote. His Other.
He groans and jerks in Reaper’s hold, painting the inside of their flesh with his cum as his legs give out on him and they have to lower him gently to the floor of the bathtub.
His eyes drift shut as he tries to catch his breath, the tepid water spattering against his head. He can feel Reaper’s enjoyment and satisfaction washing over him as they’re flooded with the chemicals his body is releasing.
Luke feels something else, too. The tether strung between them humming pleasantly. A promise that Luke will never be alone. Neither of them will ever be alone. Maybe it’s not really there, maybe it's all in his mind, but it’s a reminder anyway. A reminder that he finally has somewhere he belongs. Always.
“Fuuuuck,” he huffs as he glares at the unchanging white ceiling in the bathroom. “Darlin’, I swear to God, one of these days you’re gonna make me cum hard enough to burst an artery.”
Who is to say you have not already?
“You got me there,” Luke huffs as Reaper reaches out of his shoulder and switches off the water. “Maybe you actually killed me already and just keep reanimating my dead corpse.”
A tendril winds up his arm and squeezes around his bicep.
Do not joke, Luke.
“Ah, darlin’.” Luke reaches up behind him and runs his fingers over the pliable ridge on the top of Reaper’s head. “You know I’d never leave you if I had the choice. Not again.”
“We will hold you to it,” Reaper murmurs into his skin as they nuzzle his neck. “Even if we do have to keep reanimating your dead corpse.”
Luke gasps, fake offended. “I thought we couldn’t joke about it.”
“We said that you could not joke about it.”
Their voice is deep and steeped in amusement and it makes Luke sigh contentedly all the way down to his toes. Reaper tells Luke that he is perfect all the time but Luke thinks that it’s the other way around; that Reaper is actually the perfect one. Sweet enough to lure Luke out of the dark pit that his thoughts have existed in for years and stern enough to keep him from falling back in.
Plus, they fuck him like they were made for it.
Maybe they were. Maybe this is fate. Aliens actually exist, after all, so who is he to question the intricate workings of the universe?
“Come on, bossy,” Luke says, turning to press a kiss to Reaper’s cheek before pushing himself to his feet and groping for a towel. “We don’t want to be late for your supervised Dad visit.”
Reaper’s low growl vibrates against the side of Luke’s neck and he laughs. The visits with Venom usually don’t end well even when they end quickly.
“They are insufferable,” Reaper bitches as Luke dries himself off.
“Pretty sure they said that about you last time,” Luke teases as he pulls on board shorts and a t-shirt, hangs up his towel, and starts fussing over his hair and beard.
“Might makes right,” they grumble as they push Luke’s hands away, threading tendrils through his hair to style it while they coat two more tendrils with beard oil and start working them through the coarse hair on his face. “It’s a miracle they’ve survived on Earth this long.”
“Reap.” No response. Their tendrils work through Luke’s beard and he can feel them still grumbling inside his head. “Reaper.” No response. “Darlin’.” The tendrils go still against his face. “Come out here.”
Reaper bleeds all the way out of Luke forming a neck, shoulders, arms, torso, hands under their head like they’re a separate entity and standing right in from of him. Even their alien face manages to show just how disgruntled they are. Eddie calls them “custody visits” and Reaper hates them. Mostly.
“Hey.” Luke reaches up and cups their jaw in his hand, gazing into their silver eyes as tendrils split from their chest and twine around his forearms. “I know this isn’t your favorite thing but I have a plan to keep you entertained.”
“What?” Reaper manages to growl and pout at the same time.
Fucking cute as shit murder alien.
Luke pushes up on his toes and tugs Reaper’s head down so he can press a kiss to the corner of their mouth. As he does, he sends his idea through their mental link and leans back to watch the smile curl across their face, splitting the purple into a grinning shark’s maw.
“That is devious, Luke.” A big hand lands on Luke’s lower back and tugs him closer until his chest is sealed to Reaper’s. They lean down to run a tongue along his neck, flicking the tip just under the collar of his shirt in a way that makes his groin tighten. Kisses pepper along his jaw to the cadence of the words they speak into his head. Our brave. Beautiful. Clever. Scheming Other. Are you sure we cannot entice you to simply stay home with us?
Reaper’s hand slips under the hem of Luke’s shirt, long fingers stroking up his spine, as their kisses blaze a path toward Luke’s lips. Fuck. He wants that but his dick isn’t in charge today. Or any more today. It takes all of his willpower to clap a hand over their industrious mouth and lean away, especially with his cock perking back up between them.
“Nice try, darlin’. You almost got me,” Luke says as he meets their eyes over the top of his hand. “But we’re not missing Father/Son time.”
Reaper snarls loudly and then dives back under Luke’s skin while he laughs.
He finds his phone on the kitchen counter and shoots off a text before tucking it into the pocket of the hoodie he pulled on and heading for the door.
LUKE: on our way
Eddie is bouncing from foot to foot next to Luke, shaking his arms out like he’s getting ready to fight someone. Luke can’t help but notice that Eddie’s feet are already black-clawed in the sand. Reaper’s right, it’s a miracle that Eddie and Venom survived this long without being caught because it’s obvious that both of them are impulsive as hell.
Impulsive, Reaper sneers inside Luke’s head.
His symbiote is usually calm and non-reactive but there’s something about being around Venom that turns them into a snarling sourpuss. Luke kind of likes it. He likes that he’s not the only one with messy ass emotions. Or daddy issues. But he would never say that last part to Reaper’s face.
That’s a dig a hole to the very basement of your psyche, shove it in a fireproof safe, wrap chains around it, lock it three times, pour concrete over it, and rebury it kind of thought.
“How’s Elise?” Eddie asks as he rocks his head side to side.
“Good,” Luke responds, shrugging out of his hoodie and tossing it over one of the driftwood logs. “Made the boat. Heading to France next.”
Luke and Reaper had met Elise for breakfast this morning before she caught the early boat back to the mainland. She'd ended up staying on the island for two weeks, catching up with Eddie and getting to know Luke and Reaper better.
She hadn’t brought up the three of them playing together again but, as Luke hugged her goodbye on the dock, she slipped her phone number into his pocket and told him, with a suggestive lilt to her voice, that she likes video calls because there’s just so much to see and do. It was largely for show since Luke already had her number programmed into his phone but game recognizes game and he had waved her off with a smile on his face and Reaper purring happily in the back of his head.
“Like Paris?”
“No. Some place called Hossegor? She’s meeting up with some friends for a pro event, I think.” Luke doesn’t think, he knows, but he doesn’t need Eddie busting his balls about his (and Reaper’s) interest in the curvy surfer. “Said she’ll be back next year.”
Eddie laughs. “Bet the two of you are looking forward to that.”
Luke rolls his shoulders but keeps his eyes out on the ocean. “You gonna keep talkin'? Or are we gonna do this?”
Eddie laughs harder as black bleeds out of him, wrapping him up from feet to head, until Venom is glaring at Luke with narrowed moon-white eyes. He can feel Reaper snarling in the back of his head but they don’t come out. They don’t take over without Luke’s permission anymore. And he wants to see if he can throw one more taunt at the other symbiote before they start.
“Of course, we are ready.” Venom leans down putting their finger-length teeth in Luke’s face. “We will prove once and for all who is the better hunter.”
Luke smiles because he had huge alien teeth sunk into his shoulder while he came buckets this morning and that makes these ones much less scary.
“I guess we will,” he says with a wink before he strips off his t-shirt and takes off at a dead run for the ocean, enraged snarls echoing behind him.
They hated that, Reaper purrs in amusement in Luke’s head as they swamp his body and take over most of the nervous system controls.
Just a little psychological warfare. Makes this a whole lot easier.
We would beat them anyway.
And then the two of them are diving under the waves together.
“YOU CHEATED!”
Luke huffs out a laugh as he trudges up the beach, Venom stomping behind him, and flops into the sand on his back.
The “custody visits” have quickly devolved into increasingly elaborate displays of superiority between the two symbiotes. Pissing contest, they frequently hiss at each other as Eddie and Luke try not to laugh. Turns out, Venom and Reaper are fairly evenly matched in most things, much to the aliens’ chagrin.
Except for one game.
Reaper and Luke have won every version of who can catch the most sea creatures in a given time period? that the two symbiotes have played. Honestly, it’s not even close and Venom gets more and more enraged at each loss which Luke knows that Reaper quite enjoys.
But the wins aren’t just because of Reaper, they’re because of Luke. Which is why, before Luke can even reply to Venom’s accusation, Reaper extends out of his chest with a snarl.
“It is not our fault that your host isn’t as smart as ours.”
Luke crosses his arms behind his head and tilts his head to the side, catching Eddie’s gaze past the writhing mass of his symbiote where the other man is struggling to keep Venom from taking over again. Eddie notices the look and rolls his eyes while he hauls his symbiote up the beach.
Luke laughs.
“EDDIE IS VERY SMART!”
“Look,” Luke says, watching Venom stop fighting and wind around Eddie protectively, “it’s not your fault that we’re just better at it.”
Venom roars and a flood of golden happiness washes through Luke’s head. Reaper thought that was very funny even if Venom didn’t. But it isn’t Luke’s job to care about what Venom thinks and the sunshiney joy of his symbiote is almost enough for him to live on.
Eddie finally makes it all the way up the beach, unbothered by the trash talk, and crashes to his back in the sand next to Luke. Venom is still snarling and spitting on the end of a neck tendril stretching out of Eddie’s chest, glaring at where Luke is relaxing a few feet away.
“It’s not exactly fair, you know,” Eddie turns his head and gestures at where Reaper is curled over Luke’s chest. “Reaper has spikes that they can just shoot out there like fishing spears.”
“We can have spikes, Eddie,” Venom pouts.
Reaper opens one silver eye to look at Venom, an interrupted and disgruntled cat, before closing it again and melting a little further into Luke.
“The problem is not the spikes,” they purr lazily. “It is that you will not let your host work with you.”
Oh shit. Shots fired.
Luke has to bite his tongue against the laugh that wants to burst out as Venom pops up higher out of Eddie’s chest like a meerkat, sputtering in disbelief.
“WE WORK WITH EDDIE.”
Reaper doesn’t move, just hums show them into Luke’s mind.
He’s not sure if he wants to get in the middle of this but watching Venom get worked up is kind of fun so…
Luke extends a small tendril of Reaper’s flesh out of his forearm, stretching it across the driftwood behind him. The path it takes is slower and more circuitous than it would have been for Reaper but controlling their tendrils this way is coming easier and easier for Luke. The tendril reaches his t-shirt and hoodie where he tossed them over a far log and gathers them up, bringing the clothes back and draping them over the log behind his head before sliding back under his skin.
“Holy shit, did you do that?”
“NO!” Venom snarls.
Luke shrugs, ignoring the symbiote and answering his friend. “It’s just something we figured out.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Eddie rolls up to sitting, Venom twisting to drape around his shoulders instead, and crisscrosses his legs in front of him. “You can control their tendrils?”
He’s digging in his shorts, searching for his cell phone, and Luke watches, only half interested, as Eddie pulls up his notes app.
Once a reporter…
“How did you figure out you could do that?”
“I don’t know. We just played around with it one day.”
Luke doesn’t mention that it was a celebration of the reprieve he earned when the first potential host fell through. He tries not to think about how much better the memory would be if it wasn’t clouded by his certainty that he had to let Reaper go. Reaper squeezes a tendril around his wrist where their cuff usually sits and nuzzles up into the hollow of his neck to ease his distress.
Fuck. He’s lucky they came back.
“How does it work? What does it feel like? How do you do it?” Eddie’s questions come rapid-fire, excitement drowning out his usual journalistic calm.
“Eddie. We can do this, Eddie. They are not special. We are special.”
Eddie swats Venom away where they’re trying to get between him and his notes app and Luke can’t help himself. In fact, he’s pretty sure Reaper is nudging him in their shared mind space.
“Looks like someone’s a little jealous,” Luke stage whispers, causing Venom’s face to snap up to his with all their teeth bared.
“V. Babe.” Eddie reaches up with his empty hand and cups Venom’s jaw, tugging their hand back down until their chin is hooked over his shoulder again and he can brush his lips across their temple. “This isn’t a competition. This is research. Knowledge. Reaper and Luke are the only pair that aren’t trying to kill us. Think about all the things we could learn.”
Venom’s face twists into what looks like irritation and they grumble out something that Luke can’t make out.
They are well-matched.
Yeah. They are.
Like us.
Luke smiles softly. Yeah. Like us.
“So…” Venom grumbles some more and Eddie ignores it. “How does it work, Luke?”
Eddie’s questions are thorough but Luke realizes pretty quickly that, one, a lot of his answers are “I don’t know, I just did it” and, two, Eddie and Venom’s shared brain space works differently than his and Reaper’s.
It also marks the longest amount of time that the four of them have been able to spend together mostly because the symbiotes are draped around their hosts and more or less ignoring each other. Like putting two cats in the same room, sometimes the most you can hope for is that they pretend the other one just isn’t there.
“Eddie,” Venom finally interrupts after Eddie has asked Luke to describe the first time he moved Reaper’s tendril for the third time. “We can do that, we do not need that one’s help.”
Luke isn’t sure if by that one Venom means him or Reaper but the tone is none too complimentary.
“You act like it’s not one hundred percent your fault that we’re here like this at all,” Luke drawls, arms crossed behind his head and eyes closed, basking in the sun.
It’s still cold as shit but Reaper is keeping him warm and the sun on his skin feels good. This feels good. Like the tumultuous seas that have followed Luke his whole life have started to settle. Like he’s started to settle. Like he has an anchor to keep him from getting tossed around.
He smoothes his hand down Reaper’s neck tendril where they’re pooled across his bare chest and feels his heart thump hard underneath them.
“We did not do anything wrong,” Venom growls, puffing up on Eddie’s chest again.
Like a peacock, Reaper observes inside Luke’s skull as their tendril squeezes around his wrist.
He snorts. Bet I can make them puff up even bigger.
Reaper doesn’t respond but their anticipation is a tangible thing so Luke pokes at the one weak spot that he knows for certain will get a rise out of Venom.
“You know…” he says, turning to Eddie. “We could have avoided all this if you had just come home with me that first night.”
Eddie huffs out a choked sound and Venom pushes their head up higher with a growl.
See?
Reaper leans into Luke and pushes their smile against his neck, all hard teeth and sharp edges. His heart squeezes and thumps hard again.
“First,” Eddie retorts, “you don’t bring people home. I’ve had to sit through enough of your post-mortems to know that.”
“They were educational.”
Luke isn’t going to let Eddie get away with pretending for even a second that Luke’s conquest stories didn’t benefit him. Venom practically dragged Eddie home by his hair to try things after Luke was done talking.
“Second,” Eddie ignores him, “Venom would have eaten your brain.”
“And it wouldn’t have happened then either so I rest my case,” Luke points out.
“Do not pretend that you do not like this outcome, Luke,” Venom rasps. They’ve settled back over Eddie’s chest but are still puffed up a little. “We saw you were lonely and we fixed it and you have not thanked us once.”
Luke snorts again, then laughs, and keeps laughing until tears are streaming down his face and Reaper has had to tighten around his sides to keep from sliding off his vibrating torso.
“Is that why you did it?”
“Yes.”
“Not because you’re jealously possessive of Eddie and I have a huge dick and know how to use it?”
“You are a huge dick,” Venom snarls which forces a bark of laughter out of Eddie.
Luke rolls to his side, feeling Reaper slide around him until they're draped around his neck and hooked over his shoulder, and props himself up on his elbow.
“You’re not innocent in any of this either,” Luke accuses, pointing a finger at Eddie.
“What did I do wrong?”
“I still haven’t forgiven you for that shit you pulled with Elise.”
“Lies!” Eddie shouts. “You should be worshipping the ground I walk on for saving you from yourself.”
“He is right,” Reaper rumbles along Luke’s back.
“EDDIE IS RIGHT!” Venom crows.
“I am right,” Eddie repeats. “So… where’s my thank you?”
“Fuck off, Eddie,” Luke gruffs. “You’d still be panicking about ruining things with your best friend if it wasn’t for me.”
Luke’s eyes meet Eddie’s for a second and then they both burst out laughing and collapse back onto the sand.
Silence falls between them except for the cry of gulls wheeling through the sky, the crash of the waves on the shore, and the low, thrumming purr of two aliens.
“Thank you, though,” Luke finally says. “I don’t necessarily agree with how you two did it but…” he swallows, his throat thick, not sure what to say.
How do you thank someone for giving you something you didn’t even know that you needed?
“If you hadn’t gave them to me, if you hadn’t kept me from pushing them away… I don’t know if I could have lived without them.”
Reaper’s tendril tightens around his forearm again, then the feeling slides down over the inside of Luke’s wrist and long, many-jointed fingers are threading between his own.
You could have survived without us. You are strong, our Luke.
I could have but this is much better.
When Luke glances back over, Eddie is looking at him slyly, eyes dipping to where his and Reaper’s fingers are woven together and back up to his face.
“What?” Luke scowls.
Eddie shrugs but the corner of his mouth twitches up in a smirk.
“Come on. Say whatever you’re going to say or fuck off.”
“I was just remembering…” Eddie starts out slowly, “…that day we went to lunch and I told you about getting off with my best friend.” He pauses, the dramatic little shit. “Do you remember what you said to me after I spilled my heart out?”
“No.”
“You said ‘I can see your problem. You two assholes are in love with each other.’” Eddie’s gaze darts back down to where Luke’s fingers are tightening around Reaper’s. “I didn’t get how you saw it but… I see it.”
Luke swallows and his heart thumps and he can feel Reaper wrapped around it as it does.
“It’s the kind of thing that’s easier to see from the outside. Sometimes.”
Luke hadn’t allowed himself to think about it or look for it but he knows that it's been buried inside of him, sparking through his nervous system and burrowing in his brain right along his symbiote. But now that Eddie has said it out loud maybe—
“What about our thank you?” Venom’s voice interrupts Luke’s thoughts. Impeccable timing as always.
He rolls his eyes at the other symbiote. “You can keep waiting.”
Do you think they will be able to do it?
Reaper is wrapped around Luke’s chest under his t-shirt and hoodie, their cuff firmly back in place on his arm, as he takes a right out of the beach trailhead to take the long way back to town. He’s not in a hurry to get home. Today was… it was perfect.
“Who knows with those two,” Luke answers, stuffing his hands into his hoodie pockets.
Venom seemed much more optimistic about Eddie’s ability to control their tendrils than Eddie did. They’d been together long enough that Luke thought if they were going to figure it out that they would have already, but you never know.
Maybe Eddie and Venom could stop butting heads eventually. Maybe they'd learn to lean on each other a little bit more. Although, Luke doubts it.
He doesn’t really want to talk or think about Eddie and Venom right now anyway.
“Today was fun,” he says noncommittally as he rounds the top of the bluff and the wind picks up.
It was manageable.
“Still don’t like them, huh?”
They are our sire. It is not in our nature to like them. There’s a considering pause and then: Although we do like it when they lose to us.
Luke laughs and bows his head into the wind, it ruffles at his hair and cold fingers of it slip through the hair of his beard and try to chill his jaw. He must be thinking about it a little too hard because a tendril slides up the side of his neck and tugs on the coarse hair.
We do not think our dislike of Venom is what is bothering you, our Luke.
“Nothing is bothering me.”
He pulls a hand out of the pocket of his hoodie and rubs it over the center of his chest. It’s tight and his heart is thudding non-stop now.
You are nervous.
“Stop reading my emotions,” he huffs.
Luke. Reaper bleeds out of his chest until their head is level with his and two hands can clasp Luke’s jaw, long fingers curling around to meet at the back of his head. He stops walking and rests a hand on the thick waist they’ve created. Having them exposed like this worries him but he trusts them enough to know they would have scanned the area for eye witnesses before coming out like this. “You are practically shoving your nerves into our consciousness. Tell us what is wrong and we will kill it.”
It’s a joke. Luke can feel the warmth and humor of it bleeding from Reaper into him where they’re still connecting to his torso. He looks into their silver eyes, narrowed and crinkled at the edges with their amusement, and he wonders if he’s ever seen anything more beautiful.
The thought echoes and doubles inside of Luke and he knows that they’re thinking it too. That Reaper is thinking that Luke is the most beautiful thing they’ve ever seen.
“I’m not beautiful,” he rasps out.
“Neither are we.”
His stomach flutters as one of their fingertips traces along his thick eyebrow and temple, following the shape of his ear. All the feelings that Luke has been suppressing since Reaper returned, maybe even since the first time they ran awed and curious tendrils over his skin, expand inside of him.
“You’re right.” Luke wraps his hand around their wrist and tugs it from his jaw, turning to press a kiss into the center of their palm. “You’re more than beautiful, darlin’. You’re… everything.”
The last word is sighed into Reaper’s mouth as they lean forward and lick the tip of their tongue over Luke’s upper lip. He lets them explore his mouth, caressing every part of it with their rough, insatiable tongue as he loops his arms over their shoulders and threads his fingers between the pliable spikes along the back of their head.
Do you know why we are called Reaper?
They purr inside of Luke’s head as they cradle his face and twine their tongue around his. Luke moans into their mouth and shakes his head, too lost in them to even try forming words in his own mind.
Reapers harvest the dead, Luke. They hold his head still in their hands as they pull away, scraping his bottom lip with their teeth before leaning back and meeting his eyes. “The things they touch die. They are seen as evil and destructive. Maybe they are. But Reapers make room for new things, too. They clear the way for things to grow and flourish. We saw what you thought you were. And we saw what you could become.”
Luke sniffles, tears pouring freely down his cheeks to soak into his beard. Reaper leans forward and licks them from his skin.
“You dick,” he huffs. “That’s the most romantic fucking thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“We have always been yours, Luke” they purr as they nuzzle into his neck. “Even when we named ourself.”
He had been so nervous, so worried, so scared. But it ended up being so easy to just feel it. To say it. So he did.
“I love you, Reaper.”
“We know.”
They speak the words into Luke’s skin even as he laughs because of course he's in love with a sweet, smart-mouthed, clever, sexy symbiote that understands his Star War references.