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Marc will never get over how different his two alters - headmates - lovers? - are. He knows they’re not the same person, just as much as he isn’t them. But damn, sometimes the similarities are spooky, and other times the differences are so diametrically opposed as to seem parody, or impossible for one body to keep such conflicting needs, thoughts and behaviours under one roof.
Steven is all about touch. His sense of ‘self’ is always wanting to brush fingers against him; wrap arms around his waist and breathe in his scent; brush hair back from his face and linger on his cheek. He’s constantly sliding fingers beneath shirts, soaking in heat and comfort, or cleaving to him like they really are two bodies and one mind, instead of all just some weird mental… thing.
Yeah. Marc didn’t get the word-good-thing in the mental divorce, and he knows it.
But that’s Steven for you: snuggly, cuddly, chatty and adoring. He’d fart cotton candy and sneeze out rainbow taffy or whatever the British equivalent is if you let him. He’d hold your hand and link arms and lean on your shoulder and sit between your knees and lean back into your chest and just… be.
Jake, though?
Jake barely lets Marc close. If Marc thought he was stand-offish, Jake is that to the nth degree.
Where Steven offers in abundance, Jake denies. Where Steven smothers him with attention and affection that he craves but can’t ask… Jake teases, implies, flaunts, denies.
He’s unapproachable and unassailable, a pristine tower of lean muscle and sinew wrapped in leather, webbing, steel and waxed cotton. He exudes all that masculine refusal to yield, that authority that makes Marc’s mouth water and fill with bile in equal measure.
Steven isn’t ‘feminine’. Not really. Not in the real world, where Marc knows things are more complicated than just two bathrooms and two colours and two sets of behaviours and two kinds of professions and two ways to fit moulds.
It’s more nuanced, but Steven is… Steven leans into the things Marc fears, and Jake into the things Marc was sold. He can’t resolve it properly, he just knows it’s fucked up and he’s glad no one can really see inside his mind but these two, because they’d have a field day and write papers about him.
Work Out Your Problems By Having Weird Sex With Yourself, by Marc Spector, ft. Steven Grant and Jake Lockley.
Do the others really enjoy this as much as him? Are - are they getting different things from this, or are they all in some freaky-ass Mobius-strip loop where they give-get at the same time?
Does anyone else jerk off to be jerking-and-jerked at the same time, or is he really just that weird?
Not something you can easily ask.
He hopes they enjoy it as much, hopes it soothes rough edges and drags up against those electrified fences in their minds. He hopes he’s not just a convenient place to place their kinks and frustrations and…
…now he’s worrying again. Worrying that he’s denying Steven the real affection from someone genuine that the man truly deserves. Worrying that he’s just using Jake to fit some niche fetishistic drives, that it’s objectifying and dehumanising and…
It’s hard to say no.
When Steven spoons up against him. When he purrs affectionately, dripping reassurance into his ears like a honey he wouldn’t even eat.
When Jake refuses to touch him with anything other than gloves. When he drags that barrier over Marc’s bare skin, reminding him of the distance between them. When he offers nothing but orders or the occasional reminder of Marc’s own filthy, deviant needs.
Marc wishes Jake would touch him. He tries to find the glimmer of skin between cuff and glove, tries to kiss at his wrist and taste his pulse. He tries to find his neck and throat, only to be dragged away by hands in his hair or - when he’s at his worst - a leather collar that distances them still further.
Steven should be enough to make up for it and more. They’re the ‘same’, even if they’re not. One set of identical arms should feel as comforting and reassuring as another, but it isn’t the same. Steven is Steven; Jake is Jake.
Marc is left craving, and seeing the occasional flicker of guilt in Steven’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, love.”
No matter how many times he tells him. “You don’t need to be.”
Marc can feel the whisper of his thoughts, though. I’m not enough. I’m not him. I’m not giving you what you need.
But he is. He is. Marc needs both. He needs the comfort, and the distance. It wouldn’t be right if Jake wrapped him in his arms and called him his good boy. That’s the point. He needs to be denied, as much as indulged. Steven doesn’t get it, and Marc doesn’t know how to explain.
How can you explain the desire to be denied? It makes no logical sense. To want to watch and be barred from touching. To see Jake and Steven exchange heated kisses and only taste Jake in echoes and whispers on Steven’s tongue. To beg to be fucked, or jerked off, or sucked, or suck… and instead receive only a splattered echo of the intimacy he craves… He’d take Jake anywhere: down his throat, between his thighs, between his pecs, into his fist, into his hole…
Sometimes Jake will let him, but more often than not he orders Steven to do it instead. Orders Steven, then uses Steven himself: who gladly basks in all that attention as Marc is cuckolded by his own mind.
Marc has to watch that delicious cock be denied him, only occasionally given the gift of its presence, and usually with a barrier in place.
There’s no need for it, no sexually tramsitted diseases exist in his mind other than the ability to go fuck himself. It’s there simply to punish him further, and - fuck - fuck but does he love it. The artificial smell and the slightly chafing squeak. The way Jake seems to find the thickest ones he can, which mean he can go longer each time: gloves bruising diffuse marks into his hips and the dull ache of not-enough stretch. His knees ache from how long he’s on them, which shouldn’t be real when the world isn’t, but it is.
Jake will stuff fingers into his mouth to make him suck them clean. He’ll fuck Steven and gather up the remnants, then force successive loads into Marc’s ass, only to plug them away.
He’ll slap at his balls, twist Marc’s nipples, all but choke him with his grip… and Marc will love every last minute.
Steven often watches, and Marc doesn’t know what he thinks. Not really. Not when he’s in bars that spread him wide as a hand reaches so deep inside him that he thinks Jake’s found his heart itself.
Steven watches, eyes hungry and worried and loving and needing. He’ll beg Jake to let Marc come, and regularly be fucked like mad right next to Marc’s twitching body. Not that he’ll object to the pleasure, but it’s just another sign of dominance and denial. Even his own… subconscious? Whatever you call this? Even that won’t let him be fully satisfied, and Marc will fight not to finish when he’s untouched and not permitted.
Tied down and refused even the vaguest contact from the two fornicating alongside him. Denied kisses, denied cocks, denied even punishment. He’ll beg to be spanked, slapped, stomped all over. He’ll beg to be punished and made pure again, left stuck in the murky wallows of his mind. He’ll crave the slaps and the pinches and the pulls, and thank him when - if - he does get them.
He knows it’s not anything like normal, and he has no idea if it’s the unhealthiest thing anyone ever did. He’s hurting no one but himselves, so maybe there’s that, but…
Oh, when Jake scissors him with Steven’s come, but won’t do more than that. When he pushes only his fly down to get his cock out, and won’t let Marc close enough to lick or taste. When he gives Marc a facial from them both in order, and Marc’s not released past the cage he’s in for a week…
It better suit Jake’s needs.
It certainly suits his.