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"With Eli unable to heal and Victor unable to hurt—they were finally on equal ground.
Which wasn’t equal at all.
Eli was still built like a twenty-two-year-old quarterback. Victor was a gaunt thirty-five, and dying."
They went down.
His wrist burned. Elliot pulled the blade back, and with it came blood; not enough to be an artery, but enough to be a hole in an already ripped apart arm. Pain lanced through his skull. The world threw itself violently sideways, pale light blinking in and out as Victor struggled not to lose consciousness. He could only register everything in flashes: lungs, staggered by the impact. The back of his head, aching, wet. Haverty"s corpse on its side, pooling blood in a wide arc beneath them. Was that matting the back of his head, or was it his own skull ripping? Victor knew if he tried to stand again, he’d slip thrice even without that pulsing dizziness. Fuck. The next thing he cataloged was the steel door, and the complete lack of help beyond it. Eli, radiating satisfaction. A wetness at his ears: Blood, whose? That terrible lingering chemical sweetness in the air. Strong, warm hands digging into the dip of his waist, yanking his half-limp body forward. What?
A dull thrum of fear went through Victor, quickly smothered under the pain of Eli"s stolen scalpel ghosting a small but deep line across his throat, only continuing down, tearing through fabric instead, leaving his pale chest bare. He knew each desperate pant was throwing his ribs into sharp focus, shadowy and hollow-boned. Eli drove the tip of the scalpel in the sliver of space between his false rib and the rest of his ribcage, just deep enough that it stayed stuck fast. A pin to a cushion.
And thenー and then heー
Shock ーpure, the genuine thingー filled his fuzzy lungs, his bleary cognition. He’d been expecting a pure fight. Eli was pulling those state-mandated pyjama pants off, unsurprised to find Victor bare underneath. EON staff were meticulous. Who else to know it better? His sharp gasp of surprise echoed in Victor"s pounding head. When he managed to convince his eyes to leave the LED ceiling light and drunkenly catch his, Eli shuddered.
“Cardaleー” his voice gurgled, voicebox damaged, “what the hell do you think you"re doing? ”
It was not a secret that Victor wasn’t born traditional, but he made sure not to mention it. His parents had wanted a son and they would get one, no matter what. An open secret, then. Hidden so well, apparently, that despite their shared household, Elliot had no idea. He wasn’t reacting well to it, already visibly hard in his ill-fitting pants. Victor struggled to identify the responding emotion: shock, expectation, repulsion, anticipation. Foreign sensation felt like a tawdry phrase. This was baffling, a sick fear-and-excitement worming through his throat. Watching a truck rev before it ran you over. “Get a hold of yourself,” he snapped.
Cardale was praying, damn him, mouth silently moving as he kept his gaze locked on the thatch of newly revealed rough blonde hair. It was, he realized, a genuine, fervent, gratefulness to God. Victor would spit at him, if his mouth was less dry. He tried anyway. Eli didn"t even bother to wipe the spray of blood from his face. “I knew you were unnatural,” he snarled, or tried to, his breathlessness taking the bite out of it. “But not… Oh, He understands. He always has.”
The doctor had yanked Eli’s shirt apart but not off, and it hung now around his shoulders like a terrible cape. Victor’s laugh bubbled out of him without his consent, icy and scalding. Eli bristled, using the weakness of the blood loss, or the concussion, or the sickness, to pry his legs apart, easily hauling him up by the hips. He was huge, damn him, every lingering sport he’d ever played in his life solidifying his step. He settled between his legs, adjusting Victor’s thighs across his hips. Victor rammed his heel against Eli’s back for good measure, though he was unaffected.
His deft hands dragged across his marred skin, up and up, methodical and searching. Entirely foreign. Victor"s disinterest in sex carried to his body, only ever used to propel himself to the next destination. He"d never even considered its appeal, less so as age took hold of him, from the divot between his forehead to the nonexistent layer of buccal fat beneath his cheek. Eli"s blood-slick fingers tested the waters, and he hissed under his breath when Victor"s cunt didn"t give way, dry and tight. “You"re still a…,” he said, with a distinct wonder. “This isn"t marriage, forgive me… ten years.. I was going toー either wayー sodomy as your punishment… of course. Of course. This is why. Perfect union. I should have trusted Him.”
Eli had always loved to babble nonsense.
Victor, unfortunately, always had been able to parse it. His lip curled away from his teeth. His body, traitorous, shuddered every time Eli passed over untouched, exposed, nerves. “It"s genetics and chance, you terrible excuse for a scientist. You"re out of your damn mind. Some herー” Victor broke off with a quiet noise. Eli"s fingers were thick inside his body, impossibly huge, bullying their way in. His hands were still soft, never callused, free palm nearly gentle on his hipbone as Eli watched him struggle to catch his breath through the burn. It hurt, but that in itself was far more interesting to Victor"s body than any form of pleasure would have been. Who else but Cardale to guess?
If he was prone to nostalgia, he thought this might be where he"d feel it.
“You deserve worse,” Eli said, hand straying toward the scalpel still lodged in him. The wound at his throat was shallow, already clotting. “The good doctor tested my refractory period, too, you know that? All your fault.” The real losses were the twin wounds in his arm, his ribs, his leg, a shaken brain. Victor’s stomach dropped further, entirely locked in position, unable to dodge away from his hand. If he pulled that out, he feared the shock alone would put him out. But he didn’t, only tweaking the wet skin around the penetration, eyes locked to Victor. Ache spread from his chest to his toes. His moan was a low, pained thing. Eli shuddered visibly, darkness spilling out of him. That same darkness Victor had dreamt of, once. He examined the notion of regretting it; caste it aside. The satisfaction of seeing it never changed. This was the truth, handed clean. “You deserve retribution.”
“And are you,” Victor hissed, “going to give it to me? You? ”
Cardale wasn’t listening. “If you didn’t have to die, I would’ve kept you full in the home, like a… no, you couldn’t be a wife. It’s a shame. It’s the only right path for you.”
“What fuckingー home… hah, Jesusー ”
The dull, insistent pressure of his cock burned through Victor"s nerves, inescapable, carrying on and on even as he clawed at the slick concrete of the floor, a dry almost-sob bubbling up from his mouth. Everything else hurt, but it was this that made his mouth hang slack. “Don’t blaspheme,” Eli said sourly, keeping an unfailing hold of his hips. They both noticed that blood was slicking his way at the same time, twin gasps, twin groans. The bone of Victor"s hip nudging blood down, down. Matting his trail of hair pink as it went. Something brushed against his seeking hand ー Haverty’s corpse, on the floor, pant leg within reach. With his free hand, Victor yanked at Eli’s hair, gripping tight. The blood was more his, but not from his cunt, a heavy line of red from his wounded side dripping to matt and stain the hair below. Part of Victor wanted to use the burning weapon, get Eli in the eye, but his bullet wound sang with pain.
Eli bottomed out, somehow, the foreign invasion short-circuiting Victor so terribly that he tried to stabilize himself with his bad arm, the burst pain near-instantly throwing him into that deep end of nothing.
Victor passed out. That was fine. Preferred, even. The first time Eli had dared to press his mouth against his cheekbone, his nose, his mouth, Vale had been more than half-dead, unmoving, entirely at Eli"s mercy. He held onto the memory like a drug. Liberating. The feeling of dragging a searching palm under his shirt, for a sluggish pulse, of course, too hesitant to go lower. The impossible urge to bite down on the fresh reveal of clammy skin, to let the confusion dawn later in the week; to see how he’d react. It had been the first time he"d realized how much the Godless act had almost felt like peace. It"d been the first time he"d gotten violently hard without forcing his body to react, too, the first time he"d cum with barely a single dry thrust into his fist, locked in their tiny shared bathroom, biting his tongue as the paramedics went to work on his roommate. That was the missing piece of the solution. He"d needed it again. Needed time with Victor, fragile and nearly angelic without that Devil in him lashing out. Already dead and dying. Perfect.
Maneuvering a limp body wasn’t difficult, especially not one as light as his old friend ーbut it was annoying. Eli hauled him up further, shifting his angle, purposeful ー true satisfaction only bloomed in that desperate animal state humans adopted under pleasure. It’d helped socially, to have girlfriends sing praise, but his intentions had never been entirely pure. It felt good, sure, tight heat, Vale’s battered body barely taking him in… but the only real satisfaction was Victor, the prize and the conquest. The very act of making him understand the strain Eli had gone through for seventeen years. The win.
Victor blinked awake, face blank for one beautiful moment, mouth dropping open in an innocent ‘o’. The dullness of a head wound, that brainless stupidity, was dragging him down, making him gaze up in something close to supplication. One of them shuddered. The next second, though, he sharpened, trying and failing to muster his most visceral glare. Eli savored the dull way he cataloged everything again, the way the fight came to and bled out of him in succession. His body spasmed around Eli; he dug his cock further in, grinding deeper until Victor gasped, fingers reaching up and curling around the back of his neck instead of pushing him away. His face and chest were ruddy in splotches, an abstract canvas Eli couldn’t help digging his teeth into. Hard nips, feeling each lymph node under his skin, chewing with all the force of his jaw. Like he could rip off flesh like this, swallow him down. Leaning over made Vale moan, each movement across the floor no doubt bruising his shoulders, his back, pulling on the blunt blade lodged in him. He felt his cock pulse. Eli finally, finally, gripped the blade. “Elliot,” Victor gasped ーwhined, pulling at his hair. Something like panic frenzied his movement. “I don’t know what’s ー I willー I think Iー Damn you, Cardale!”
Victor wasn’t a fool. He knew what trauma did, not limited to electrical impulses and gaping wounds. It’s still a sudden and abrupt fear of humiliation, further humiliation; a dawning and terrifying realization. Incontinence after being assaulted by electricity was one thing. Fearing that he’d piss himself on Eli Ever’s cock was a newly designed torture tactic even the best minds at EON couldn’t invent. Cardale stared at him for another beat, and then he yanked, pulling the scalpel out, thrusting forward. Victor’s body seized, white hot sparks searing from where they met, to the clench of his jaw; thoughtless ー he thought again of that space before death, where he’d sworn his body would give out and despite everything… it hadn’t. He dug his nails in, gouging into Eli’s skin, a low keening noise hanging in the air. He snapped his traitorous jaw shut, and it vanished. Eli’s breath was hot against his ear.
“You’ve never done that before,” Eli said, with some wonder, hips snapping ahead. “It’s really almost devout,” he slowed, taking in the uncontrollable aftershocks, the blood bubbling from the wound. A free hand slipped down to rub at his slippery core, and Victor gasped, pain-pleasure flickering up his spine again, Cardale’s rough groan as he clenched down. “So close to the right path. Just not enough.”
He made no fuss as he came, deep, heat warming Victor’s core, his dead eyes boring down. Victor made a sound that was far too close to a sob, and then growled to make up for it. “Bastard. Did you tell Angie that, too? Before or after you told her you loved her?”
“I loved you, too,” Eli murmured, simply, flipping the scalpel in his grip, bringing it up high. His softened cock slipped, but not entirely, almost healing itself, almost like the gash in his forehead very slowly trying to stitch itself back. “My time will come,” he said, bringing it down. “But yours is now. And this time, I’ll make sure you—”
A sound tore through the steel room, sudden and deafening. Eli’s grip faltered as a bullet tore through his back—through skin and muscle and something deeper. Victor still lay beneath him, gasping, but alive. Eli slumped over, nearly crushing him. He didn"t rise.
Sydney, at the door.
"Mitch is…” she faltered. “On his way. He can. Um, he can pick you up.”
“Okay,” Victor grit out. “Syd. Will you step outside for a moment? Please.”
She did. Eli"s eyes were glassy, his weight oppressive, but he was still inside Victor, a heavy weight all over. Pure luck, it"d been, that the bullet had missed hitting both of them. Victor pressed his mouth to a still-warm cheek, and clumsily rubbed himself the way Eli had, body working beyond him, almost there, then clenching and shivering as he came again. Dopamine eased the pains some, his palm somehow gentle across the bare slope of Eliot"s shoulder, right before he shoved him off with as much force as he could manage. Cardale"s body rolled to its side, overdue, still as thick and unmoveable as it"d been so long ago. He buttoned them both up, decent, for all the good that did, and managed to stumble onto a free crate, world spinning. Instinctively, he tried to dampen the pain; was relieved to find his powers edging toward functionality. He swallowed bile anyway. Bodies. Finicky, animalistic, predictable. His center throbbed, burning, bleeding, shivering with belated pleasure.
Sydney ducked back inside. She stopped there for a moment, before bringing up her gun and shooting twice more. Victor tried to each for her, but instantly regretted trying to hold his own weight. Eliot remained dead, both of them equally unbelieving of the fact. “You’re hurt,” she said finally, turning to him.
“Yeah. He"s dead.”
“He"s dead.”