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“Are you sure, Captain?”
Mithrun tries not to be frustrated with Lycion. This is a terrible thing for Mithrun to ask, terribly vulnerable and terribly cruel. He has no right to be upset when Lycion looks at him with concern.
Frankly, it’s a miracle he doesn’t reject Mithrun outright or find him disgusting for the mere thought of it.
Mithrun is still frustrated being treated like broken glass to be waltzed around. Lycion doesn’t mean it, but this is the image — a fractured reflection of himself in Lycion's eyes that is dodged instead of delved into. Maybe Mithrun wants (he wants, isn’t that good enough?) to be delved into.
He asked Lycion to rape him. It’s not like this is an easy decision for either of them.
“I’m sure,” says Mithrun.
“When?” asks Lycion.
And here Mithrun says the cruelest thing: “Spring it on me.”
—
They don’t do it that night. Lycion needs time to prepare for his performance. There’s a level of realism expected here, one that the caricature of a fairytale villain can’t achieve. If he’s going to rape Mithrun — and make no mistake, that is what this is — he needs to be real.
He needs to want Mithrun so badly he doesn’t care what Mithrun wants (he wants, Lycion reminds himself). He needs to want Mithrun so badly, so entirely, as to eat him alive.
Lycion has, perhaps, never wanted anyone that wholly. Any thing, yes of course, his entire life, but a person. A person is different.
He decides he can’t do it the way Mithrun asked. There’s too much pressure, too much performance anxiety, too much. Mithrun nearly looks ashamed of himself, and there’s a pit in Lycion’s stomach that won’t go away.
“Don’t do it out of pity,” says Mithrun one evening. “Do it because you want to.” Want to, want to, what Lycion wants is for Mithrun to be happy and safe. This is too much pressure — he nearly backs out, apologizing profusely — he doesn’t say anything. He stares at Mithrun’s naked body and tries to salivate.
—
Mithrun is probably broken. He can’t get it off his mind. All his dreams, plagued with this amalgamation of a thing that’s half-cruelty and half-comfort. It doesn’t even look like the demon anymore, it’s just fur and eyes and fingers. Hands that slide up his body and, most horrifically, leave him waking up alone.
Lycion is taking a long time to decide, and Mithrun can’t push him or he’ll risk actually being horrible. He wants the facade to be real but not real.
No wonder Lycion refuses to give him a straight answer. He’s all contradictions and sharp edges. He’d avoid himself too — Lycion’s not avoiding him. He’s taking his time, he’s thinking about it, and they’re continuing their everyday in the meantime.
He still wakes up alone, so he crawls into Lycion’s bed and is welcomed with open arms and a warm, toothy smile.
—
He is not hard enough on the Captain. Lycion is soft, a doting dog with his head in Mithrun’s lap, neither what he needs nor what he wants.
Lycion bares his teeth in the mirror. He can snarl, wrinkle his muzzle and growl, but — his eyes are too soft, it’s unconvincing, Mithrun will never believe it. Mithrun will never be scared. Does Lycion want to scare him? Maybe a little, enough to where he doesn’t ask for this again. Enough to where he doesn’t want it anymore.
What a terrible thought. That’s not what he wants. He wants Mithrun’s trust, his… (Selfishly, his stomach twists in knots.) If he does this, will Mithrun love him? Will he finally have done enough to deserve it?
Lycion lifts his upper lip to stare at his own canines. He opens his mouth to look at his tongue. Bites down and snarls. If he keeps in mind that terrible thought, it’s easy. It reaches his eyes.
He can be real. A real demon, real scary. If that’s what Mithrun wants.
—
The dreams get more frequent, and Mithrun is more often sleeping in Lycion’s bed than alone. He grips his chest in the middle of the night, praying for some weight to be there that he knows won’t be. Lycion is endlessly patient and endlessly kind. Lycion will not rape him, because rape is a thing only demons do, and Lycion, for all his trying, is not a demon.
The one thing Mithrun hopes for is that Lycion is a liar.
—
Lycion springs it on him. It’s only fair and it’s what he wants.
He cages Mithrun in one night when he comes to bed and kisses him. Warm and soft at first, if only to ease himself into it. Mithrun is surprised, but leans into it obediently. When Lycion asks for Mithrun’s mouth to open, it does. When Lycion slides his hands up Mithrun’s body — his hips, his chest, finally pinning his shoulders to the creaking bed — Mithrun allows it to happen.
Does he even know what’s happening? What Lycion’s about to do to him?
Lycion spreads Mithrun’s legs with his knee. Mithrun utters Lycion’s name quietly and Lycion ignores it. Why respond to a name that doesn’t belong to the character? – he really doesn’t know. It dawns on him, Mithrun doesn’t know.
Lycion doesn’t stop. Hanging in the silence is a better night for both of them, a prospect Lycion destroys when he lets himself slip, his fingers cracking into shape, teeth sharpening and tongue elongating. Mithrun squeaks, a sound Lycion’s never heard from him before. His claws dig into Mithrun’s thin shoulders.
“Ly–”
Lycion growls. It comes easy with a rumble in his chest. He nuzzles into Mithrun’s cheek, against his ear. He licks him. Mithrun freezes.
He must realize, now, there’s a monster lumbering over him with sharp teeth who wants to eat him whole. At least, this is the image — a hazy reflection in Mithrun’s unseeing eye, of a beast much worse than Lycion ever could be.
He’s still rigid when Lycion presses his wet nose to his neck, to the crook of his collarbone, to his chest through his thin nightgown. He smells like warmth and safety. He smells vaguely, now, like fear.
Mithrun finds his voice when Lycion goes lower and nudges the hem of his gown with his muzzle. “No,” he whispers (Lycion almost believes him). Lycion breathes warm on Mithrun’s stomach and feels the muscles work. He presses his broad tongue to the soft flesh there and Mithrun begins to hyperventilate.
Lycion is a demon now, so he doesn’t care. Even as Mithrun hisses, “No, no,” — even as his stomach rises and falls with every heaving breath, the pulse in his aorta rapid. Lycion doesn’t care, he wants Mithrun, see, this is the image. Lycion’s breath rumbles in his throat as he licks up the length of Mithrun’s stomach. Mithrun’s hands fling to Lycion's head, right below his ears, and for a second Lycion expects to be teleported away, but there’s a hesitance to Mithrun’s movement even with how immediate it is. He wasn’t lying. He wants this.
Lycion can tell because Mithrun is hard. His cock is stiff against Lycion’s chest, twitching with nearly every gasp that’s wrung out of him. And he’s clearly trying to keep quiet, trying to keep the others from waking. Lycion nibbles at his stomach and Mithrun claws at him so hard it hurts. Every breath out of him seems a struggle, like he’s being tortured — he is being tortured, and he loves it.
He could do this until Mithrun comes, he thinks. Lycion knows he would. But all the noise, the smells, the tight grip on his thick fur, beckon to him. Lycion can’t literally eat Mithrun, but he can fuck him.
Lycion rakes his tongue over Mithrun one last time and pulls away from the shaking body beneath him. He looks into Mithrun’s eye for the first time — it’s wild and wide, all white and a flash of silver. He’s very still, but Lycion can tell he’s cognizant, if only because his eye is fixated on his every movement. As Lycion leans up, so does Mithrun’s head tilt. He's trembling and gasping for air but oh-so-awake, so silently pleading with Lycion for more.
Lycion spreads Mithrun’s legs and Mithrun reflexively closes them around Lycion’s hips. Lycion presses into the shape of his body. Mithrun whines.
When Lycion lines up with Mithrun’s hole, the scent of fear comes rolling off Mithrun in waves. It’s delicious, truly, like nothing else. Mithrun’s neck is so tense, but it’s where the smell is strongest. Lycion wants to latch his teeth around it and feel the pulse. He settles for a lick up Mithrun’s trachea, drawing a shuddering breath out of him.
He sinks into Mithrun with a groan and suddenly that breath stops — “Fuck–” hisses Mithrun, a wounded noise over any sort of pleasure. Lycion hums, chews on the crook between neck and shoulder, and fucks him hard.
Mithrun is beginning to unravel. Another litany of curses spills out of his mouth, becoming less and less word-like as it progresses; a chant in another tongue, all strained and tight. Lycion takes it as a compliment, an invitation to topple him into incoherence. It’s easy to do. Just grab at that spot on his stomach and listen to his sympathetic nervous system go into overdrive.
The demon likes this and wants it more than anything. He wants the fear, the tension in Mithrun’s small body, the way his breathing is so harsh it has a tune to it. The demon wants Mithrun so badly and so entirely he —
He’s drooling for real. Instinctively goes to wipe his mouth, but Mithrun must interpret it as him moving away because he grabs the coarse fur of Lycion’s arm and trembles, “Stay.”
This melts Lycion and he can’t show it. The demon would stay, not because Mithrun asked, but because there was still more of him to take. Until he’s nothing, the demon would stay. Lycion bears down on Mithrun and takes. Mithrun constricts him, cages him in, keeps him steady with the most beautiful sounds on his lips. Lycion’s breath comes out shaky. The tightness in his own body is too much to bear.
Out of habit, he almost announces himself when he comes — “I– Cap–” He bites his own tongue and stifles himself until Mithrun gives him permission not to, a nod and trembling “come in me,” that breaks Lycion down entirely — “Oh, fuck, Captain…”
Like that, he ends it. Embarrassing and unceremonious, the pretense is over. Lycion leans back, looks Mithrun in the burning eye.
He looks in bad shape. Lycion sees it now, a shuddering scrap clinging to what remains of his dignity. “Thank you,” Mithrun chokes. “I can’t breathe.”
Lycion pulls out of him and sits him up, and Mithrun takes heaving breaths that look too big for his ribcage. Lycion doesn’t know if he needs space or not until Mithrun clings to him and burrows into his fur. He’s been hyperventilating this whole time and it’s wearing on him. “Shh,” says Lycion, stroking Mithrun’s hair.
“I’m sorry,” says Mithrun.
“Don’t be. Don’t be.”
“I’m sorry,” says Mithrun, quieter, curling up in Lycion’s arms.
“You’re okay.”
Lycion takes slow and soft breaths, willing Mithrun to follow along. He hopes Mithrun knows he’s still whole, that he hasn’t been reduced to nothing — not by Lycion, not by the demon. He gets the impression Mithrun does know all of that, at least in his mind. His heart just has to play catch-up. That’s fine. They have all the time in the world.