Chapter Text
~
“You still haven’t said it back, you know.”
“Said what?” Javier asks. He keeps his eyes fixed to his notebook, focuses on the way his pencil scratches characters into the crisp white page—but he can feel how that body leans in, barely grazing him. It’s still enough to cause the hairs to raise on his arm.
“That you love me.”
He forces his hand to keep writing—but there’s a mistake he’ll have to fix later, where his hand stuttered on its tracks despite his best efforts.
“I do not love you.”
Warm breath against his ear, a whisper that sends shivers down his spine.
“... But you loved him.”
Javier shoves him away, glaring—then he hastily averts his gaze when they make eye contact. It only further emboldens the thing. He feels those arms wrap around him from behind, Lloyd’s arms, radiating heat, soft and alive—but Javier knows, he knows it isn’t—
“I am trying to focus,” he snaps, shifting further away—but Javier’s quickly running out of table space, and he only crowds against him once more. “You should be studying too. You’re on academic probation. If you fail any exams, then—”
“Then what?” he jeers—and that smirk, so cocky, so derisive, it’s like staring at a photograph of him. “Who cares if I graduate or not? My family’s loaded—”
“He would have—”
Javier cuts off, shutting his eyes tightly. Lloyd wouldn’t have cared. He was already squandering away every opportunity that his family spoon-fed him long before this thing took over his body. Despite knowing him since childhood, Javier can’t, for the life of him, describe a single ambition that Lloyd might have strived for.
Lloyd flunked every year, pushed ahead by his parents’ annual meeting with the principal. He skipped class more often than not—and on the rare days that he showed up, Javier’s stomach used to fill with dread, his fingers holding tight to the straps of his backpack in some pitiful attempt to comfort himself—no one else would, after all—as Lloyd’s eyes drifted to him, slitted like a shark’s, that cruel grin that would stretch his face—
He never received a suspension despite his rowdy behaviour in class, his locker—surely filled with vapes, cigarettes, illicit substances of every kind—and Javier remembers his favourite spot behind the school’s parking lot where he would deal, smoke, where he and his lackeys used to pull Javier aside and—
“Relax,” he hears, the arms around him squeezing gently, reassuringly perhaps—but it still makes him choke. “I’m just kidding. I’ll finish top of the class, I promise.”
Javier relents in his hold—only because he’s bone-tired, unable to rest properly ever since this torment began, ever since that fateful day where Javier had finally snapped and— and—
He can’t be fighting this thing every second of the day. “You will not be taking my spot.”
“I can try, smartie pants.”
A kiss on the cheek. It makes Javier want to sob.
“I’ll apply for a civil engineering program,” he muses. “It’s mundane, but interesting enough. Do you think he would have done something like that?”
Javier doesn’t know. In any way that mattered, he never knew Lloyd Frontera at all.
~
“Come on.”
Javier closes his eyes, ignores him, doesn’t respond—but he doesn’t move away, doesn’t resist as he—
“Fuck, come on, you fucking tease, hahn— Oh fuck, Javier—!”
He can’t tell if this is what Lloyd would have sounded like—breathless moans escaping his lips, high-pitched, his voice cracking, stuttering, frantic babbles of Javier’s name—those cries ringing in Javier’s head like the toll of church bells.
It surely isn’t what Lloyd would have behaved like—back arching, shameless as he throws his head back and writhes in Javier’s lap, gripping onto Javier’s shirt tightly desperately, as if it was the only thing keeping him grounded as he shakes like a leaf, rubs his face into Javier’s hair, presses open-mouthed kisses to Javier’s forehead—
—But it was Lloyd’s body, undeniably.
Muscled and tanned, a deep rosy flush that covers him from the top of his head down the bare expanse of his shoulders and chest. Finally, Javier has learned that Lloyd has a mole on his left hip bone, and every time they do this, his eyes can’t help but wander to that little dot, wondering how it would feel to trace his lips over it.
“God, can you touch me, move—! Do something, anything—!” he whines. His legs are close to giving out, trembling in that familiar way, his entire body quivering like it always does when he’s reaching his limit. “It feels like I’m fucking a corpse.”
Javier does not point out the irony of that statement.
“Hah—!” he breathes, grinning down at Javier. He drops heavy in Javier’s lap—and Javier can’t help the grunt that escapes him, his eyes fluttering— “I’m funny, aren’t I?”
Javier grits his teeth, his hands fisting the bedsheets at his sides.
“Javier,” he coos. “Fuck me nice and hard. You know you want to—”
“I do not want this,” Javier snaps— chokes, as he clenches tight around Javier, grinding into his lap with a knowing hum.
“Then tell me to stop,” he murmurs. “Tell me you hate me, that you never want to see me again—and I’ll leave. That was my promise to you, remember?”
He does. He was given that promise on that very first night, the first time that monster crawled into his arms and taunted him with Lloyd’s naked flesh—and those words haunt him every waking moment, cruelly waving the truth in Javier’s face that—
“Kiss me,” Javier whispers. He feels a tear finally escape, sliding wet down his cheek.
When those lips press against his, he lets out a pained sound—allows those hands to grip his jaw, pull him in, parts his lips and slides their tongues together, pressing close, so tightly that it feels like he’s suffocating—
He pulls back, panting against Javier’s lips, laughing softly—
“I love you, Javier,” he breathes out, so tenderly, sweetly, every word that Lloyd Frontera never was— “I love you, baby—”
Javier flips him, pins him down, shoves his hand against that mouth to stop those words from escaping as he thrusts their hips together, roughly, hard enough that a hoarse scream escapes those lips and vibrates against Javier’s palm, an almost agonised sound—
His eyes drift down to that pale expanse of Lloyd’s throat, remembers how it felt squeezed under his hands, remembers the dark bruises in the shape of his fingerprints, remembers Lloyd thrashing underneath him, panic flooding those lovely brown eyes—
What the fuck— Let me go, bitch, get the fuck off me—!
Javier doesn’t slow down as Lloyd’s body winds tight with his orgasm, keeps fucking him roughly, punishingly as he spills across his own chest, his length twitching, his cries turning shrill and helpless as he claws at Javier’s wrist, and that look, that face he makes—
It’s the same teary-eyed, desperate expression that stayed with Javier long afterwards, Lloyd’s body left lying in the field as he fled on his shaky legs to the locker room, his forearms still bleeding from those scratches as he—
“Oh baby,” he sighs, as Javier comes inside him with a groan. “I knew you’d be perfect.”
~
The day after he killed Lloyd, he prepared for the worst.
How Marbella and Arcos would look at him with such horror in their eyes, perhaps fear, maybe a trace of regret as they realised what kind of monster they’d let into their home—they would cast him out, leave him for the authorities—and he was too old for juvie, now. He’d be tried as an adult for his crimes.
He debated killing himself—not due to regret, but due to sheer apathy.
Lloyd Frontera was dead, his tormentor of so many years, the one person who looked at Javier, truly looked, his eyes filled with scorn that made Javier’s heart pound, dizzy with the attention, exhilarated by it—And what was Javier left with? He simply could not be bothered to deal with the fallout.
The fallout never comes.
There are no urgent cancellations sent out by the school, no news reports of a student’s body being found in the field, no police officers knocking at the Frontera’s front door with grim faces—
After the Frontera’s chauffeur drops him off at the front gates, he sprints to the field, his legs burning, his lungs aching from his heavy breaths as he looks ahead through his blurry vision, searching desperately among the barren grass in the distance. Lloyd wasn’t supposed to be left alone for so long, someone was supposed to find him, it was so cold last night—
Lloyd’s body is gone—but the blood stain is still there, splattered from the impact of Javier’s final strike.
He sits there, numb, stares at it for so long that his eyes dry out, reminding him to blink. He misses his first class—hears the bell ring, hears the heavy metal doors slamming open and closed as students filter outside, hears chatter in the distance, voices carried through those open windows of the classrooms.
When he finally drags himself into his next class—
Lloyd is there, sitting at his desk, chin propped on his hand as he chats with his friends, his sharp laughter cutting through the air like a knife—as if nothing was amiss, as if it had all been a dream.
“The fuck are you staring at?” he asks.
It sounds just like him—the perfect mocking edge to the question, dismissive and derisive—exactly what Lloyd would have said if he caught Javier staring at him so blatantly, with such naked panic, harried confusion, such tremendous relief that almost brings him to his knees—
But he knows, at first glace—it’s not Lloyd.
Lloyd doesn’t smile like that, not at him, not that teasing smirk, how he bites his lip slowly as he stares back at Javier with an even gaze—almost flirty—and those eyes. Lloyd’s eyes were dark brown, a boring average colour. They never had those red flecks of light, not before, as if there was a fire burning behind his irises with steady heat.
“Javier,” he calls, so sweetly, as if he was relishing in how Javier’s name rolled across his tongue. “You’re staring at me like you want to kill me.”
Then he throws his head back and laughs, laughs loudly as if he’d said the funniest thing—and Javier’s eyes drift down to his throat, unmarred, not a blemish in sight.
That night, the monster in the body of Lloyd Frontera climbs into his bed—Javier cards a hand through that hair, but there’s no crack in his skull, not even a sore spot, and despite searching every inch of his skin, Javier can’t find a single bruise remaining.
~
“Hah? I’m not selling today. Fuck off.”
“Keep your voice down,” Javier murmurs.
He huffs, throws Javier a haughty smirk as he slumps his weight against Javier’s side. He doesn’t spare his old friends a second glance as they linger, hesitant—almost lost—before finally leaving.
Initially, Javier wondered if people would ask questions about Lloyd’s recent turn-of-leaf, the way he was suddenly stuck to Javier’s side like velcro—but it was business as usual. Perhaps others thought this was another cruel game of Lloyd’s, throwing an arm over Javier as if they were friends, laughing and chattering away, snapping at his old lackeys when they got too close—
Regardless, they hadn’t cared about Javier before, and they didn’t care about him now.
“I can really do whatever the fuck I want, huh?”
“Your parents are prominent sponsors of the academy,” Javier merely answers.
“Hm.” He sends him a curious look. “They’re technically your parents too, aren’t they?”
“I am grateful your family took me in.”
It makes him scoff—then he crowds closer against Javier, shoving another forkful of food against Javier’s lips.
“Eat,” he merely says. “You’re too skinny. You’re like a beanstalk.”
It’s an appetizing smell. Javier complies, opening his mouth and allowing himself to be fed. The Frontera’s personal chef has always prepared decadent lunches for them, but before, Javier rarely had the opportunity to enjoy them—now, he enjoys the meals twice-over, as the second lunchbox would sit untouched if not for Javier finishing it too.
He’s never seen this creature eat before—at least, not like humans do.
Those eyes linger on Javier’s lips as Javier chews slowly, drift down to his throat as he swallows.
“Let’s find somewhere quiet after this,” he whispers, and under the table, Javier feels Lloyd’s feet tuck around his ankles.
“Lunch period is ending soon," Javier responds.
“We’ll be quick,” he promises, eyes lidded as he leans in. “I just want a taste.”
His hand traces across Javier’s thigh—Javier quickly grabs it before it can wander any further, sending him a scolding look. He stares back at Javier, unabashed.
“I fed you,” he states. “So now, you have to feed me.”
He takes Javier to Lloyd’s favourite spot, pins him against the hard brick wall of the school’s building and kisses him, all tongue and teeth and stealing the breath from Javier’s lungs. He rips Javier’s shirt open, his hands roaming across Javier’s bare skin.
It’s not tender at all—it’s rough, almost ravenous, and for a moment, if Javier closes his eyes—for a moment, it feels like the real Lloyd.
It feels like this is Lloyd Frontera, violent, callous, shoving him around, pushing him up against the wall and stripping him— Lloyd never crossed that line, he doubts Lloyd even liked men in that way, the mere thought must have reviled him—but this is the spitting image of how it might have happened, the start of every hidden, dark fantasy that Javier ever dreamed of.
When he goes down on his knees between Javier’s legs, Javier cries out, throws his head back, shakes down to his very core, trembling to the bone.
It feels like being eaten alive.
~
No one figures it out, not even Lloyd’s family.
“It’s so nice to see you two get along,” Marbella comments, smiling at them.
Javier nods, and pretends he doesn’t feel a sock-clad foot teasing along his pant leg. Across the dining table, Lloyd sends him a smirk—it’s the same smirk he gave earlier, on his knees, looking up at Javier with those glowing eyes as his breath fanned over Javier’s naked groin.
“Javier,” he says sweetly, “Come to my room later. I need help studying.”
Studying. Javier barrels suppresses his scoff—then he has to bite the inside of his cheek, feeling those toes slide up his leg, stroking softly against Javier’s inner calf.
“Lloyd…” Arcos says, frowning as he looks between them.
Javier freezes, withdrawing his leg and straightening up. They’re being too obvious. They already said they were studying earlier—
“We’re glad that you’ve been so focused on your schooling recently,” Arcos says, clearing his throat. He and Marbella share a glance. “But Javier needs to time for his own schoolwork, too—”
Bless their souls.
“I do not mind,” Javier assures, and he sees Lloyd lean back in his chair, visibly struggling to bite back his chuckles. That foot stretches out and nudges right up against his groin, making Javier jolt.
Hastily, Javier stands from the table and tidies his plate. “Thank you for the meal. Please excuse us, we have work to do.”
He can feel that shadow following after him as he leaves, waits until his bedroom door is firmly closed before turning around to acknowledge him—he’s already pouncing on Javier, pawing at him with a breathless laugh.
“You find this funny?” Javier asks tiredly. “What would they think if they knew their son was dead?”
“Good riddance, probably,” he responds, grinning.
Javier pushes him back with a frown. “Don’t say that.”
“Hah?” He leans in, raising an eyebrow. “You’re not one to talk, are you? Pot meets kettle.”
“He had his flaws,” Javier says, causing him to snort. “But he was loved by others, by his parents, by—” By me, despite it all. “He will never have a proper funeral. No one will be able to mourn him, honour him, so— So… don’t say those things, don’t act like he didn’t matter—”
Javier takes a ragged breath, swallowing the rest of the words—he can hear the longing in his own voice, raw emotion that he chokes on.
Lloyd Frontera may have been his bully—cruel, wicked and every word in between—but his death was a loss. Against all logic, against everything he put Javier through, it was a loss that has left Javier hollow and aching.
He missed Lloyd. The real Lloyd, the one who wouldn’t kiss him, wouldn’t touch him so gently. Every piece of affection taunted Javier, a reminder that it wasn’t real, that Lloyd Frontera would have been disgusted by Javier’s feelings, mocked him, recoiled from his touch—
“Oh baby…” Javier shuts his eyes tightly, feels those hands reach up to cradle his face, wiping at his wet cheeks as he shudders. “He didn’t deserve you.”
Javier allows those hands to pull him close. He leans into that embrace, kisses him desperately as they stumble to the bed.
Those eyes aren’t human, too bright, red flecks like flames—but those lashes are Lloyd’s, dark and long, fluttering closed as he gasps, throwing his head back as Javier thrusts into him, and the yearning slices through Javier’s chest like a knife, such an all-consuming ache—
But he doesn’t regret it.
He can’t bring himself to regret killing Lloyd, because it gave him everything he ever wanted.
—and Javier pulls that monster close, their bodies sliding together, moaning and sighing into each other’s mouths, dizzy with the realization, nauseated, sick with with it, the condemning knowledge that he mourns Lloyd, aches for him, may have even loved him—
But if he had a chance to go back to that day, he’d do it all over again.
~
It hadn’t been a matter of revenge—if it had been, Javier would have done something much worse.
There was anger in there, certainly, spiteful rage wrapped up with his dark obsession, a twisted desire for Lloyd to look at him, a terrible warped sense of lust—
Jealousy of Lloyd, for having everything that Javier didn’t—loving parents, wealth, life set up from birth with a clear path before him—and still somehow managing to waste it. Jealousy of others, for being able to clamber around Lloyd without being shoved back.
—But ultimately, it was loneliness.
That melancholic emptiness that would soak cold into his skin every time Lloyd tired of him, got bored of him and left him behind, more painful than any bruise. The anxiety that would rise up in his throat at the thought of their upcoming graduation, how Javier’s gut filled with dread, that fear of being forgotten, how Lloyd would move on in life without a glance back—
He hadn’t been careful in his spur-of-the-moment decision. He knew the body would be found as staff trickled in the next morning—briefly, he wondered if it was cold enough last night to make that body freeze, wondered if rigor mortis had managed to preserve Lloyd’s petrified expression for eternity.
There would be bruises in the shape of Javier’s hands around that neck, his blood lodged under Lloyd’s nails. The officers would simply have to ask Javier to roll up his sleeves and they would know who was responsible—who had pinned Lloyd down for ten minutes of gruelling struggle, skin scratched raw as he choked the life from those lips.
He wonders how discerning they would be—would they see it in his eyes, the hunger? Realise that Javier had spent the entirety of last night awake, wired and restless as he recalled the sensation of Lloyd’s body underneath him? They would surely search his room and find the dirty towels of his laundry basket, soiled from wiping up his blood, his sweat, his—
He hadn’t actually killed Lloyd by choking him, but he’d tried. An oversight on his part. He didn’t expect it to take so long.
He used the baseball bat.
~
“Why do you have this?”
“D-Dad gave it to me—”
“He’s not your dad, orphan bitch.” Lloyd taps the bat against the ground harshly, the hollow sound echoing loudly in Javier’s ears—even to this day, it still makes him flinch to remember it. “And you know what, I think I’m going to keep this.”
“No! I-It’s mine.” He remembers the tears, frustrated and helpless, remembers when he was young and lonely, wanting a family, a brother, just wanting someone to be close to—and cruel fate had killed his parents, left him on the street and sent him into the path of Lloyd Frontera. “He’s going to show me how to use it, so that we can all play baseball together—”
Pain, pain lancing across his face, an impact so blinding that Javier can’t breathe, can’t swallow, his eyes watering up as he falls to the ground—
“Oh, don’t worry,” Lloyd promised him, smiling. “I’ll show you how to use it.”
~
He still keeps it close to his heart, that final climactic moment.
Lloyd wheezing, gripping his throat and making pitiful attempts to crawl away from Javier, frantic like that of a wild animal—and the way he’d frozen when Javier picked up his bloodied bat from the ground, the same bat that has left countless bruises on Javier’s skin, that left him unable to lie comfortably for so many sleepless nights—
Javier remembers the dawning comprehension in his eyes, as if he finally realised all his sins were coming back to haunt him, and as Javier reared his arm back—that feeling of retribution, almost orgasmic—
Javier has defiled that memory of him more times than he can count—Lloyd cowering away from him, looking at him, eyes wild, the shaky whispers of Javier, Javier, w-wait— Such sweet, helpless calls like a serenade.
In that moment, Lloyd Frontera was the most beautiful he’d ever been.
He remembers Lloyd’s parents, resigned in their worry, talking in quiet voices that night, peering out the front windows as they waited for Lloyd to come home. It wasn’t unheard of for Lloyd to go off on his own, only returning at dawn, eyes blood-shot, foul with the smell of smoke and alcohol—Lloyd would wave away their concerns without a glance back as he stumbled to his room to sleep it off.
Have you seen him, Javier? Have you heard from him?
Javier only shrugged—and Marbella accepted the answer with a forlorn sigh.
They’d never been close, not like Lloyd’s parents had hoped for. Although the Frontera family had adopted Javier at the age of five, Lloyd and him had never been brothers, never the type to stick together or keep track of each other.
Even so, he still saw them as his parents in some limited capacity—and he felt enough affection for them, enough obligation, to never disclose the truly monstrous things that their son has done to him.
How Marbella’s heart would break—if she saw those bruises littering Javier’s skin, if she realised Javier’s scrawniness, his chronic inability to gain weight had a reason—because Lloyd threw out his lunches, beat him until he vomited, spat out vicious words that left him with no appetite, jeering at Javier about making his parents waste food, waste space on an orphan bitch like him—
Deep down, he knew it wasn’t a kindness.
If he told them about how Lloyd treated him, they would take Lloyd away from him.
—And Javier would rather kill him than let someone take him away.
~
In their final year, Lloyd starts dating Alicia Magentano.
She’s out of his league in every way—beautiful, kind, popular—the darling student council president, sweetheart heiress of an old-money family, far above the Frontera’s meagre reputation.
People were bewildered on that first day, watching them stroll the hallways—the delinquent terror, Lloyd Frontera, smiling like the Cheshire cat with an arm thrown over Alicia’s shoulders. Javier remembers the whispering of bystanders, how Alicia’s friends crowded around them with demands—since when did they ever talk? When did this happen—?
Javier knows when it happened. Javier was there.
It was after the women’s track-and-field team wrapped up their training—Alicia was the team captain, and Lloyd swaggered behind her as she walked the field and cleaned up the pylons, responding to his shameless flirtations with cutting remarks. Lloyd was laughing, undeterred as he followed like a dog at her heels, and when she finally plucked his cellphone from his hand and typed in her phone number, face flat, unamused, but with the most subtle curve of a smile—
—Lloyd grinned, did a little jump on the spot, rubbed the back of his head in an almost shy gesture, giddy like a teenage boy in love.
That was the first time Javier thought about killing Lloyd Frontera.
The second time was when—
“My parents aren’t home this weekend. Want to come over?”
Lloyd chuckled against her neck, kissed her, made her moan as his hands roamed under her shirt—
“Fuck yeah, baby,” he whispered.
—And those words had left Javier’s ears ringing, ringing like the heavy mechanical whir of a washing machine, roaring loudly, tumbling around in his head—
He lures her away after her student council meeting, a pitiful request on behalf of a teacher, one she can’t say no to—that professor is acting as one of her references for university applications, after all—draws her to the empty classroom, the same one she and Lloyd snuck away to earlier so they could—
“Lloyd is cheating on you,” he says.
Javier is his adopted brother, the one Lloyd self-reportedly dotes on—he’s very close with his family, he told Alicia—so Javier is a credible source. He knows names, times, places—he knows everything about Lloyd’s schedule, more than enough to concoct a believable lie, to dig in where he knows it will hurt.
“I… I couldn’t keep quiet, it’s not right,” he says, lowering his gaze—and he knows Alicia, righteous and wonderful student council president, even bristling with the indignity, even glowering with her rage, will not speak his name, will not tell Lloyd from whom she heard this information from.
He doesn’t think about the gravity of what he’s done, afterwards.
All he thinks about is Lloyd’s voice, sultry, how he’d grabbed Alicia and hiked her up against the wall, how his rough voice had formed around that pet name, brimming with affection, lust, desire— caressing the word like a kiss.
This girl might have changed him. This girl might have been Lloyd Frontera’s last chance of salvation, the one beautiful miracle in this world that might have made him better, but they’ll never know.
Lloyd spends that weekend at home, sulking around the house in a rotten mood—and when his parents leave the house for errands, he barges into Javier’s room, throws him to the floor—
“I know it was you,” he hisses.
He doles out all his pent-up frustrations on Javier—and Javier covers himself, keeps his head low as he waits it out, but he manages one split-second glimpse of Lloyd’s expression—teary-eyed, crumpled, his breath hitching as he roughly wipes at his face with his sleeve—
“Fuck you—!” he chokes, sniffling, before storming out of Javier’s room.
He dreams that Lloyd hadn’t stopped there—that he’d undone the fly of his jeans, gripped Javier by the hair and forced his mouth down, made Javier choke, gag—make up for all the fun he was missing out on at Alicia’s that weekend—imagines how he would have groaned, his hand tightening around Javier’s scalp as he whispered that word for Javier’s ears alone.
Baby.
~
“Not very clever of you to keep this thing around, huh?”
Javier looks over from his bed and sees him pick up the baseball bat from its hiding place in the closet, giving it an idle practice swing. It still has the blood stains dried into the wood, albeit faded.
“It has sentimental value,” Javier answers.
He snorts, sending Javier an easy look that still seems alien on that face, fond and amused. “Collecting trophies now? Want some hair from my asscrack too?”
“It’s not like that,” Javier clarifies, ignoring the rest of his words. “Arcos and Marbella gifted it to me, on the day they asked to legally adopt me. It is one of the few happy memories I have of that time.”
“Mm-hmm,” he hums, clearly disbelieving. He wags the bat in Javier’s face. “So, you don’t want a sexy roleplay where I hit you with this before you pin me down and fuck me? You can choke me while you—”
“That’s— How could you—? You are— “ Javier shuts his eyes tightly with a sigh. “You are a monster.”
“Pot meets kettle,” he sings, plopping down into Javier’s lap with the bat still in hand. “I’m hungry. Let’s fuck.”
He’s already kicking away Javier’s notebook, Javier’s stationery knocked off the bed with a clatter as he insistently crowds against him. He strips quickly and throws his clothing into the messy pile, undeterred by Javier’s exasperated huff—but Arcos and Marbella are out of the house, and it’s the best opportunity they’ll have tonight.
Javier stretches over to his bedside table, fumbling in the drawer for the bottle of lubricant. The box of condoms is still in there too, unused, something that Javier naively bought. The monster had screeched at him like a nightmare when Javier tried to put one on.
Javier barely dribbles the lube over his fingers before he’s grabbing at Javier’s wrist, urging him, practically riding Javier’s hand as he moans loudly.
“You are insatiable.”
“Only because someone keeps holding back,” he replies. His eyes are lidded, sharp as they stare through Javier. “You don’t have to pretend, you know. I like it when you’re all batshit and crazy.”
Javier’s eyes flutter shut as he sinks down on Javier’s cock—and when they open, Javier sees that he’s holding the blood-stained bat again.
“What are you doing with that?” Javier grunts, holding tight to his hips as he starts rocking in Javier’s lap. He lets out a mischievous laugh as he waves it in Javier’s face.
“Having fun,” he whispers.
He shoves it against Javier’s cheek—it still reeks of iron, the surface rough with dried blood, and Javier flinches away from it with a grimace.
“Don’t.”
“Why? Not in the mood?” he breathes—then he throws his head back and moans, grinding down and squeezing around Javier’s length. “It sure feels like you are.”
When he tries to smack Javier with it, Javier grabs him tightly by the wrist, digging his nails into that soft skin and glaring at him.
“I said stop it—!” Javier snaps, and his face lights up with glee. He tries to yank free from Javier’s grip, the bat jerking around and knocking against the wall with their struggle—he breaks away, chuckling as he continues to grind their hips together.
“What are you going to do about it, orphan bitch—”
Javier snatches the bat out of his hands, uses it to shove him down and pin him by the neck. It slots under his chin, digs into that delicate skin as he cries out—a choked-off, stuttered sound as Javier starts fucking him roughly.
His hands scramble at the baseball bat, clawing desperately at the blood-stained wood, his entire body forced into the sheets with every one of Javier’s thrusts—and when Javier finally releases that pressure, throwing the bat away with a growl—he makes a dry wheezing sound, gasping roughly, coughing hoarsely as if brought up from buried sand—
“Inside me,” he rasps, staring up at Javier with burning red eyes. “Fuck, come inside me, baby, yes, yes yes—”
His rough scream rings in Javier’s ears as he climaxes, and Javier grabs him by the throat, holds on tightly as he ruts into him, feels those nails scratch into his wrists as he chases his own orgasm, thrusting deep inside him—
Javier can feel how his own body goes limp as it washes over him, that foreign sensation that always arrives after their couplings—a drained, depleted feeling that causes his vision to blot out as he falls pliant in that monster’s hold.
“Sleep, baby,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to Javier’s hair as he pulls him close. He starts stroking Javier’s back gently. Javier will never say it out loud, but he’s grateful for it.
Ever since he killed Lloyd, he’s faced crippling insomnia—and this monster’s embrace is the only lullaby that grants him slumber.
~
“I feed on love,” he finally explained, one day.
“Love?” Javier repeats dryly, watching him wipe a finger across his mouth and lick Javier’s release clean with a soft moan, his eyes shut lightly as if in bliss. “I don’t love you.”
“You loved him,” he merely responds, then he smirks as he holds out his hand. “And it’s delicious. Want a taste?”
Javier shoves it away with a disgruntled noise—and he ducks under Javier’s arm, cuddling up against him with a contented sigh. “Tell me what you are, since you feel so forthcoming today.”
“I don’t think humans have a name for me,” he muses. “I am a demon of kinds, something closely related to an incubus—but I need a human body to possess, and sex alone isn’t enough to sustain me. I need love too.”
“... It wasn’t love,” Javier mumbles—because he’s realised it hadn’t been, not really. Javier has realised that he’s broken, fundamentally, an error in his design. He didn’t love in that pure way humans were supposed to.
“Love is supposed to be something good,” Javier says, swallowing. “Human love is supposed to make you softer, kinder, self-sacrificing—”
—And Javier’s love was the exact opposite, a selfish obsession, something that made him monstrous—even more monstrous than the being in front of him—and it was the reason why Lloyd Frontera’s eyes were now aglow as they stared back at him, red and inhuman.
He draws closer to Javier, shaking his head. “It was love,” he insists, meeting Javier’s eyes with a steady gaze. “Not the good kind, not the kind that gets you into heaven… But it was love.”
His hand reaches up to trace over Javier’s jaw, hovering—before he leans forward and presses their mouths together. Javier leans into it with a sigh, his hands wrapping around that waist and pulling him closer.
“That night, your love called to me like the apple of Eden,” he whispers between their kisses. “Rotten to the core and sweet like ice cream.”
Javier takes him from behind, wraps an arm around his chest so Javier can grip him tightly by the throat—and when they orgasm together, he turns his head and begs Javier to kiss him, sighs into his mouth as they come undone.
“Javier…” he moans softly, a pleased sound that Javier swallows. “To me, your love is the sweetest of them all.”
~
“I am being serious, I said I did not want to—”
“It’s not a sex thing,” he repeats with a groan. Then he feigns whipping the bat at Javier’s groin—so of course, Javier has difficulty believing him.
They’re walking to the baseball pitch, the same field where it happened—it’s after-school during the middle of exam week, so it’s empty, the gravel undisturbed like fresh snow as they walk across the pitcher’s mound.
“Then why have you dragged me out here, of all places?”
“We’re playing catch,” he answers, tossing Javier one of the gloves. Javier complies and pulls it onto his hand, but he’s still mostly convinced it’s a sex thing. “Psycho bitch never let Arcos teach you, right? It’s a fun mortal game, so I’ll show you myself.”
Lloyd ushers him onto the pitcher’s plate, shoving the baseball into his hand. He kisses the reluctant sigh from Javier’s lips, then runs over to the batter’s box.
“Throw it!” he shouts. He bends his knees into a squared-off stance, shuffling with the bat as he watches Javier.
Javier throws the ball. It sails past him, bounces off the wire fencing and rolls off into the gravel somewhere—he fetches it, and they repeat the process another two times.
“You are better at sex,” Javier tells him, chuckling.
“Shut up—!” he yells. “You throw like a fucking railgun.”
He chases after the ball again, picking it up and whipping it towards Javier—Javier catches it in the mitt, biting his lip.
“I see you laughing, bitch. Not one word.”
Javier takes the baseball bat from him silently, swapping him for the glove.
On his first throw, Javier sends the ball sailing off into the sky with a loud crack. It lands somewhere far in the distance, vanishing into the grass.
“Perhaps I should be teaching you.”
“Shut the fuck up,” he says, but he’s laughing too, all teeth and dimples—and it’s Lloyd’s face, but everything that Lloyd never was, an unfiltered expression of childish amusement that makes Javier stare at him for a long moment.
He charges up to Javier with a yell, his arm rearing back with the bat, his entire body winding up—then he taps the bat lightly to Javier’s arm, mimicking an explosion sound with his mouth.
“Have mercy,” Javier says flatly.
“Hah—!” he says, grinning. He leans in and pecks Javier on the lips—so quickly, so casually that Javier doesn’t expect it, blinking after him. “That’ll show you.”
Then he grabs Javier’s hand, pulling him along insistently. “Now help me find the ball, you ass.”
Javier threw it farther than he expected. They walk to the ends of the field, searching through the grass and scanning back and forth—he’s still holding Javier’s hand loosely, and when Javier squeezes his fingers, testing, he sends Javier a bright-eyed glance, still chatting away.
When they return home that night, Javier pushes that monster down on the bed, fucks him slowly as he clings to Javier’s back and moans softly, whispers that he loves Javier as he reaches his orgasm—and in that moment, he doesn’t seem monstrous at all.
~