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He paces through the room, a roving point of grand highblooded violet. She shifts a little in the ropes, straining to keep him in her perception, but when the rope cuts into her neck she can't breathe at all, can't smell, and the world goes dark and hot and close all around her.
"You can't escape," he says curtly, and she shivers a little, torn between anger and delight. Such charming disrespect! She tests the ropes again. Forward and she can take some of the burning strain off her ankles, and the soft wicked length of the noose around her neck closes her windpipe neatly as a twisted tap. Backward, up on to her shaking toes, and she can breathe, difficult shallow gasps that paint her mind up so bright with giddy whirling colors.
She's wet already, soaking through her hose and dripping steadily into the pail between her numbing toes, tap, tap, tap, a metronome of depravity. A common interrogation technique, one she's more than familiar with: present someone with a good hard biological imperative and watch them squirm, their higher faculties shutting down piece by piece as death looms and their last chance any sort of immortality just sits right where it can never be ignored, waiting for them to give in, slick and shining and begging to be filled--
She hasn't familiarized herself with this side of the trick before.
A regrettable oversight.
"You can't escape," her captor says again, and he sounds pleased. He paces around her in a circle, his fingers just brushing her: the vulnerable red band of one horn, the rumpled hang of her legislacerator's tabard, the tautly straining angles of her bound fists. How has she miscalculated? Where has she erred? An ankle spasms out of control and she slips sideways, strangling, spiraling down into a hot fuzzy desperate numbness.
He pushes her gently back, his fingers five hard points against her sternum and she gasps and gasps. He's so close, black and gray and rich velvety purple and this heady teasing pulse of red under the skin and she is confused, for a long sweltering moment, and then she grins like a shark.
"Impersonating a highblood is punishable by--"
He snorts, almost fondly, lets her swing. "I'll be doing the prosecutioning here, Redglare."
She lets her tongue loll out of her mouth, feels the world sharpen just a little.
"What are my charges?" she rasps out, spending her breath decadently beyond her means. "The terrible crime of being abducted, Mister Fakey Highblood Candypants? Am I being a bad hostage?"
"The worst," he says, almost ruefully. He steps close, pushes his thumb up against her mouth, pressing her lower lip softly against her teeth. She can taste the salt of his skin, and when she sucks the tip of it she can taste his desire for her, sharp and electric.
"The charges?" she murmurs, the thinnest skin of sound.
"Never fucking shut up, do you?" he says, a little hoarsely. "That-- that's one of them."
She nips his finger, draws a sharp hiss and a bright bead of blood to dash across her tongue, an explosion of color and flavor after so many strained and struggling breaths. It paints the whole world red, swamping her with it, drowning her in sweet cherry and iron roses. She nearly moans with delight.
"Assault," her captor says unsteadily, and clears his throat, drawing back. "Aiding and abetting the oppression of the, the warmblood proletariat--"
"You mean gutterblood peasants," she sniffs.
"I mean shut the fuck up, Novice!" He slaps her, at that, actually slaps her, a white star of pain that leaves her reeling. "I-- shit, I could do this alphabetically, couldn't I? Blackmail. Corruption. Extortion. Forgery--"
"Skipped a letter, Candypants," she says. Bares her teeth. She can't feel her feet. "Skipped Deviant Sexual Practices--"
He slaps her again. The faintest whine bubbles up from her throat, and he huffs out a low wry chuckle and hits her another time, then another, sharp painful smacks that shatter her and send her spinning down into the hungry sucking blackness. She is lost, she is losing. The pail between her legs rattles and splashes, and for an instant she would do anything--
He pushes her back, and she breathes.
"It's true," she whispers, finally. Air is a dragon in her chest, clawing it to pieces, burning her up.
"What's true, Redglare?"
"What they say about lowblood stamina." She rolls her tongue over her teeth, a red-stained parody of a smile. "You hit like a wriggler."
"I don't think you're taking your fucking position seriously enough, you blueblooded bitch," he snarls, and kicks the pail forward, four endless inches. Her fluid drips on to the floor and she gasps from shock, this time, shock and a helpless wondering horror. She can taste his surprise, too, his hesitation. This has gone beyond interrogation, beyond children's games and black flirtation and on into torture.
"No!" she hisses, straining forward, "no, give it back--" and it is the exact wrong thing to say. He stalks up to her all fire and fury once again, pushes her all the way back up on to her very toes where she can catch some tiny fraction of her breath and fight back desperate tears. Her fluid runs down her leg, at this angle, hot and useless, and it is this that very nearly sends her over the screaming edge of panic.
"You don't get to ask, Redglare," he says tightly. "You get to beg."
She snaps her teeth at his nose. Control-- she forces herself into some semblance of control, pushes herself the very farthest back she can go. She's shaking all over, so very terribly close to falling apart.
"Fuck you," she says, and her voice is a raw and ugly thing, flayed down to the furious bones.
He kisses her, and slides lowblood-hot fingers between her legs. He's unbelievably warm, and she can feel his blood nearly humming, beneath his skin, burning off his life fast as a firework, squandering a hundred heartbeats a minute. He'll have used himself up before she ever even hits her prime, she thinks savagely, and kisses him back, all teeth and cruelty.
He eats into her regardless, faster even than the asphyxiating darkness, he knows how to kiss and he wields the skill like a scalpel, paring neatly away at her until she's leaning into him of her own accord, trading the her hoarded air mindlessly for another taste of his tongue, that redhot heat and the way he strokes, so incredibly gently, between her legs. She'd be breathless even without the noose around her neck.
"Beg," he says gently, a puff of warm air against her cheek. "Cry mercy, Redglare. Appeal."
"I'm always appealing," she says, and rolls her hips up against his fingers. He laughs at that, shocked with delight, and rewards her with another hungry kiss. She's limp and leaning, utterly careless when he pulls back, and she growls when he removes his hand. He laughs again, flicks his sopping fingers casually off to the side. The sound of her fluid hitting the bare floor rattles her down to her bones: a gunshot to the gut would have been kinder, and she cries out helplessly.
"No, no, don't," she demands, "get the fuck back here--" and he snorts. He goes over and toes the pail with an obscene casualness, a sharp ringing awful noise that sets the inch or two of teal sloshing horribly up against the sides.
"Ask me nicely," he says lightly. "I could tip this right the fuck over, you know. Might as well. Look, here I go--"
"Please," she says, shuddering, the word like poison across her tongue, "please, no, don't."
She has been betrayed, has betrayed herself, and none of it matters when he slides the pail back between her legs. She can reach it again, just barely, if she strains herself out to the limit of the rope, her throat crushing mercilessly closed.
"Please," she mouths into the darkness. "More, please-- a little farther--"
"It's far enough," he says. "Here's a case for you, Neophyte: do you think you can come before you die?"
She can't, no, not like this, bound and untouched, burning and lost and needy, she wants but it doesn't translate. He knows it, and circles her like a hungry wolfbeast, watching her hang herself from her unbearable weakness, watching her fill up to the brim with need and hate.
"God, you're pretty," he says softly, and strokes those warm fingers so lightly across the curve of her cheek.
It's enough, and she releases herself to it, spilling everything down into the pail: her fluid and her mind and her very soul, her blind eyes rolling back in her head as she sinks down into the merciless grip of the nose. Lost, she is bound and damned and convicted, tried by her own hand and found so very wanting.
"Terezi--" a voice calls, but she is gone, so far gone.
She wakes to warm arms around her shoulders, a chin resting between her horns. Her breath comes easily in and out of her body, sore and thick enough to bite down her swollen throat and such a relief. Her ruined hose has been stripped off, leaving her legs cool against the cold floor and tingling-bare. She aches with a muddled, fuzzy contentment.
"There you are," Karkat growls. "Thought you'd be out all night." He digs his jaw sharply into her scalp, an admonishment. He's gruff, but she can feel the way his hands press against her skin, feeling the slow steady roil of her blood. She'd scared him.
She'd scared herself.
"Get that awful cape off," she says, instead of apologizing. "It doesn't suit you."
"Oh?" He goes tense, and this close she can feel the hurt pulse through him. "I'm not worth it?"
"You're better than it. And sour grapes clash so terribly with your cherry licorice." She sticks her tongue out, a coy grimace. "Next time wear a red cape."
He eases. "You think I'm going to be able to bag the infamous Neophite Redglare twice?"
She twists around and kisses him, soft and sweet on his torn-up lips, a little spark of pain and pleasure for the both of them. "I think if you can show a girl a good time like that you can just about count on it, Candypants."
He hides a smile against her cheek, where no one could see it.
"Well, then," he says. "Well."