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The contrast was driving him wild- golden skin, his own, sun-kissed, against that whiteness that was so white it was silver. He sweat like a man did, the heat of it ran down his back and arms in waves, a musk-scent, that sexual man-ness that made the humans quiver and melt. Underneath him, though, that other skin with its blinding silver-whiteness, it did not sweat at all, fuck, he couldn't even find any pores from which to do it, that skin felt like silk so soft it very nearly wasn't there. Nothing at all for the pad of a finger to catch upon, no scars, no blemishes. No hair save where it was obvious.
The Corinthian was a nightmare with a few layers, psycho-Freudian. A bad wet dream. A fear of intimacy, a fear of the closeness that would turn sharp. Designed to be handsome, attractive, irresistible even, before the glasses came off like any decent mask and screams replaced invitations in the minds of his companions.
(After you’ve already given up your body in desire you cannot protest when other parts of you are taken away. Blood and other fluid left on the blade, or staining up the ends of his fingers, a slick hand reaching forth before their world went dark completely…what a relief the humans surely felt upon waking, opening their eyes to their little lives and finding they could see just fine. Drenched in a cold sweat he would like to lick from their bodies, but never could.)
That didn't mean, of course, that he had to fuck before the nightmare turned sour. But he did like to. Liked to visit the young people, the beautiful people, men and women but men a little more. Men were so much quicker to give in to their more perverse desires…
…but this wasn't a man. Male, perhaps, or at least mostly, but not a man. A man would sweat, a man would stink, make the room reek with sex and bitter fluid. The only scent on the air was the Corinthian’s own, and maybe- if he strained his senses as hard as he could- something like petrichor, like the air after spring rain.
So, this was what it was like to fuck a dream.
The Corinthian clasped his jaw and tilted his head up and he was allowed to do this, allowed to take that soft mouth in deep, claiming kisses. He was allowed to grip that narrow waist, to run his fingers through the divots left by arching ribs, wonder, did he really have any bones at all, or was it an illusion? Acres of skin so smooth he wanted to bruise it, to dig in and wreck it. There were scratches on his own back, he could feel them, glassy nails sharpened ever so slightly into claws on the hand he had before knelt to kiss, my lord, my liege. He had to get inside, had to take him. He had to leave something or else he would go mad. Had to prove that, of all those who had been here before, he was something special.
When he kissed and bit sloppily at those moon-white thighs they parted for him, every move lazy and imperial, and that was pissing him off. He was desperate for it, all molten heat inside, so hard it hurt. He had probably been aching for this since he had been created, he just hadn't known it, fuck, all those pretty boys he visited while they slept. Not one had satisfied him completely because what he had really wanted, really needed, was this.
He forced his way inside, hoping it would hurt. His reward was a shock to the senses- even in here, nothing about him was warm; his insides were cool like a shallow spring stream. A sharp thrust in, he had to be buried in it, he had to go as deep as he could. A cold little laugh reached his ears, amused by his ardor. A groan forced itself from his throat.
The worst thing- maybe, the best thing- was that he knew he was far from the first. Humans dreamt all the time of fucking. Good dreams, sure, and nightmares too, he knew that first-hand. In dreams the very deepest of hidden desires could come to light. The sorts of things that would make a person squirm in real life, that would leave a sour taste in the mouth- all of it could be done without any blame in sleep. And done it was. Shamelessly. Countless denizens of the Dreaming had been fucked by their King, and countless more had fucked him. The Corinthian held him down and thrust as deep as he could go and tried to suck a hickey into his brilliant white throat but he wasn't sure if he could bring a bruise to that skin if he tried. Wasn't sure there was blood in there to raise. He had blood, under his own golden-tan surface, he felt it rising, stinging, as cuts in the form of curleques were etched into his shoulder blades by cold, wandering fingers.
He didn't want to come yet. Didn't want to come for a long time. Wanted to monopolize the hour- let everyone who fell asleep tonight dream of what was happening here, be it a sweet dream or a nightmare.
The Corinthian gave up on the hickey for the time being and licked a stripe up to Dream’s cruel mouth, swallowing the indolent smile that lingered there. If he fucked him hard enough maybe he could make him warm, and that would be something, wouldn't it- surely he would be the only one to do that. The loudest sounds in the room- in wherever they were, it seemed like the center of a thunderhead- were his own punched-out groans and possessive growls, the messy wet joining, damn him, his majesty was too quiet. The only noise the Corinthian had drawn from him yet was that unkind laugh, and the occasional colourless sigh.
The Corinthian pulled himself up, unmelding their bodies to see where the sweat of his chest had been left, glimmering, upon the eerie pallor of the King. Pulled away from the kiss to see that all his sucking and biting had left not even the faintest hint of pink on a bloodless lower lip. Dream cocked his head like the arrogant bird he was, triumphant and spoiled on the dark sheets, he really was just allowing it, wasn't he, allowing himself to be worshiped in the way the Corinthian knew to worship him. Conceited little slut.
And his eyes. Lord, his eyes, your eyes. Something like blue, only a blue so pale it really wasn't any colour at all, and in the pit of them the Corinthian saw a star. Human pupils were dark, the little black keyhole that led to their souls, but Dream’s were made of light- a window to another world, another galaxy- no shuttered little room in there, no, no dusty cabinets full of locked-away hopes and hidden fears. These eyes opened into something else entirely, something the Corinthian had never seen before. A vastness, a space entirely ancient, stretching on forever- Endless- it was hollow in there, it was practically empty, no, it couldn't, it couldn't just be nothing- it was nothing- a nothing that went on and on and on and in it he was nothing himself, an ant at the foot of a giant, Lord, a candle in the shadow of an unliving obsidian star-!
The Corinthian looked away, buried his face in that white throat, hid himself with a shudder. His hips had stilled their hungry movements; for a moment there, he had been afraid. He really had been afraid.
“Is something the matter?” murmured Dream- no, murmured Nightmare, and it wasn't caring how he said it, only distantly curious. Cold fingers carded through blonde hair, the faintest scrape of claws on his scalp. It was enough to remind him of what he was doing, to twitch a hardness back into his cock, still buried in silky flesh.
“You wouldn't let me take your eyes, would you?” The Corinthian asked instead of answering, the words pressed against the cool place where a heart would have beat on a human.
“No,” the King replied. “You couldn't if you tried.”
“That's what I thought.”
The Corinthian kissed him again, started thrusting again, more leisurely this time; as though either of them cared about being considerate. Chilled by what he had seen he wanted the ache of restraint, the slow-blooming pressure. The passion he reserved to kissing and he kissed like he was trying to drag something out, a soul maybe, the one thing he knew he wouldn't find. Dream took it all like it was nothing, like it was easy, like he was only half-there. The Corinthian hated him, suddenly, and with every fiber of his being. Hated him just as much as he wanted him, hated because what he wanted he would surely never have.
Warm fingers found shadow-black hair, soft like feathers, tangled in it and gripped at it and then pulled. He couldn't have guessed that this would do it, he had only reached out on a whim, but then- so shockingly the Corinthian almost didn't believe it was real- the King moaned.
Hardly more than a sigh, still, but there was a tone to it, the Corinthian had heard. He thrust and pulled and a cold hand came up around his wrist, not quite asking him to let go and not quite egging him on either, and the Corinthian felt his own lips spread in a grin as those white ones parted in pleasure. A reward. He had forgotten already what he had seen in those eyes. They had gone soft about the edges, and as he did not dare look back into those white-light pupils he looked instead at the half-mast lids, the feathering fan of black eyelashes. He felt all the mouths in his own head water. A predator animal before an expanse of succulent prey. The thrill of it was almost enough to make him spill over then and there. It was enough to make him forget himself.
“Yeah, you like that, don't you, baby?”
The words made it out before he even knew what shape they would take.
A languorous blink. The Corinthian tugged at his hair and watched something bloom, slow-growing, in those glassy blue eyes. Indignance. Now, that was a kind of heat.
“You dare…”
The Corinthian fucked him harder, panting, biting on a grin, bending a long leg back with one hand and tugging at black hair with the other.
“I do,” he said breathlessly. He could feel his own charm bleeding through his skin, the spell that made all the humans melt before him turned on full-blast like the air-conditioner in a car on a burning summer’s day. It was self-preservation, now. “Yeah, I do. You want it. You like it this way. Baby.”
The last word was hissed out in the shell of a silver-white ear and for a moment- for a whole burning, glorious moment- the Corinthian thought he would actually get away with it.
A pale hand came up to his mouth, a gentle touch, cold fingers resting there on his lower lip. The Corinthian smiled a winning smile- well, he thought he had won something- and then there came the pain.
His head jerked back but there was no stopping it. A silver needle hovered in mid air, trailing a tail of black leather thread, and it had already pierced his upper lip and was penetrating the lower before he even knew what it was. In, out, it looped around again- the tugging of the thread through his skin was agony- he tried to reach a hand up to stop it but Dream caught him, Nightmare caught him, entwining their fingers in a grip that might have looked loving.
A scream aborted in his throat; the pain was sharp enough to lance down his spine and he was panting through his nose, his teeth chattering in his head, and as quickly as it had come the needle finished its bloody work and vanished. Dissolved to sand. His mouth was sewn shut.
"Better," Dream whispered, his upper lip twitched faintly into a sneer. Then with a twist their positions were reversed, blonde hair strewn out on the pillow and the black haloed by a light that came from nowhere. Blood trickled down the back of the Corinthian's throat from his own wounds and damnit, he was still hard. The King sank himself down, eyelashes fluttering lazily, taking pleasure in the ride now. His white hands were splayed out on the Corinthian's chest and they felt utterly weightless. It was too much. Like this, anyone could see it- why some mortals called him an 'angel'.
The tight stitches tore at his mouth, excruciating, and the tight muscle worked around his cock which was bliss and the Corinthian found his hands wrapping his King's slim waist again. Trying to take back some control, failing, trying to fuck back into him to show whose agency was at hand, but he could tell he was losing himself, and when the King began to come he did, helplessly, also. Not a cunning predator but a beast of burden, ridden to completion.
In the aftermath he found himself only slowly, found his skin burning against the King who was still cold. He heard that faint laugh again, perhaps a fraction warmer than it had been before, almost fond. The fondness one has for a misbehaving pet.
It was small consolation to know he had spent himself inside. He had no doubt his seed had already dissolved to sand in there, leaving no more of an impression than anything else.
Later, when dawn was breaking and the King long gone, the Corinthian stood before a mirror in the Dreaming and cut the stitches from his mouth one by one. Each scrap of thread, when pulled loose, made his whole body ache. When he was done his lips were so swollen he could not even spit away the remaining blood.
The Corinthian stood before a mirror in the Dreaming, and there he contemplated treason.