"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
The champagne mares responds immediately, giving herself to him readily. The sudden splaying of her hind legs and the scent of her desire make his heart beat faster and his own black frame quiver with desire. Dahmer presses his dark shoulder to her more aggressively, a heated groan reverberating from deep in his throat as Ellyse speaks again and her honeyed voice nearly begs him to end their torture. Her confession is more than enough to shove him over the edge ─ he is entirely, unquestionably hers.
His injured shoulders and the dull throb within them have long been forgotten as the black beast rises onto his muscled hinds. His forelegs find a firm purchase on Ellyse's sides once he is sure that he has avoided the delicate feathers of her wings. Dahmer doesn't enter her right away (he throbs, wanting her endlessly, hating himself for teasing them both), instead presses his weight against her and finds skin with his blunt teeth, nipping at the parts of her that he can reach.
Her scent is intoxicating and he inhales deeply, groaning when finally he allows himself entrance into dat dere gushy wet wet. Dahmer's own breath catches as he sets a slow pace, sinking himself deeply into her, finding a rhythm that allows himself to grip her tight and lose his thoughts in their courtship. He had not taken his time with her the first time they had met beneath the cover of darkness, he had been selfish and quick and he had used her to console himself. The thoroughbred grunts at Ellyse's warmth and sighs in longing as he retracts, only to repeat the process over and over.
"Oh, Ellyse," he whispers to her, breathy and sensuous. He's slick with sweat by now, but the black beast does not want to part from her, does not want deprive them both from affection any longer ─ he needs her just as she needs him, and Dahmer reminds her of his own with each aggressive thrust.
I have the tendency of getting very physical, so watch your step 'cause if I do you'll need a miracle.
A soft moan escapes the tightness of her throat, where her breath catches when his weight is upon her, while the darkness of his legs wrap around her own, drawing her hips closer to him where the heat of his desire lay.
The warmth of his breath across her shoulder while his teeth press and bite gently at her golden skin causes her to gasp softly and writhe toward him, shifting beneath his weight while the desire building within her loin causes her to ache. The fullness of him elicits a deep groan and a soft whisper of his name on her pale lips, and it is nothing like the first time shared beneath a hazy, starless night, so guarded and seeking sheer pleasure to distract from loneliness. It had been a fervent but empty; a feeble attempt to bury an ache for him and for her.
The gentle caress of his lips across her quivering spine and the slow and rhythmic pace makes her tremble and press closer to him. The breathiness in each rough, husky moan whispered against her skin rouses a groan of her own from her throat as he is brought closer (deeper) with each thrust. She is lost to the moment, enveloped by the heat of his skin pressed against her own, and intoxicated by the sensation of him. With her chin tilted toward the starlit sky, as it bathed their fused bodies in a celestial glow, her hazel eye searches the darkness of his own, slow and wanton moans drawn out of her throat with deepening desire.
She does not shy away from the intimacy shared with him – keeping his gaze locked with her own, while the slow and methodical pace of his writhing hips bring her to the precarious edge of her own undoing. With each movement forward, she embraces him, clutching him closer to her. With a strangled moan of his name, she is tightening around him, while the heavy tide of her climax washes over her in thick, heavy waves, drawing her further out to a sea of his affection – anchored to him as she had never thought possible while he buries himself and his seed inside of her.
Her breath is lost to her for a moment, while each nerve-ending is lit with a flickering flame of sated desire, causing her to shiver and to shake. When the warmth of his cheek brushes across the curve of her hip as he is bound to the soil with gravity once more, her desire to feel his weight again strengthens. Languidly, her gaze is cast toward him again, with her dampened ivory forelock draped over her cheek, as her legs pivot to press closer to him. Her pale mouth touches the sharp angle of his jaw and the softness of his whiskered lips. Quietly, softly, her lips brush against his own – an intimacy never shared with him (the physical urgency of their coupling long ago had no place for affection, nor for connection – a kiss meant closeness, it meant tenderness and she had been too wary, too cautious then).
A kiss pressed where it had never been before.
She can hardly suppress the foolish smile from tugging at the corner of her mouth. Inebriated by his warmth, she is sated and yet wanting more of him, her lips trail across his jaw, savoring the feel of his rapid pulse thrumming from the sheer adrenaline and intensity of their union.
Softly, quietly, with a mirthful lilt of laughter hidden within the breathlessness, she murmurs simply, “Wow.”
You want to stay but you know very well I want you gone; you're not fit to fucking tread the ground that I am walking on.
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
They are close, so close, nearly transforming into one being as Ellyse pushes herself back into him. Dahmer groans his immense pleasure as the heat of her overtakes him, feeling himself unravel in her palms with each breathy grunt she makes, with the bold and sensual look that she throws over her winged shoulder. His own blue eyes do not move from the champagne mare's except in the instances that he cannot handle the depths of his pleasure, forcing them to flutter closed.
She is warming around him, tightening and gripping the length of him until he is greeted, hot and wet, by the product of his efforts. Dahmer groans a last time, his own climactic wave coaxed forth by Ellyse's. He breathes heavily over her shoulder, sated ─ he lingers still, letting his frantic heart calm and each of his nerve endings tingle. When finally the blue-eyed beast separates himself from her, spent, and returns his frame to the earth, Dahmer revels in the aftermath of his pleasure.
His nostrils flutter to greet Ellyse's soft muzzle as it touches his own.Their exhales mingle, both breathy and light in the midst of their gratification. The golden mare moves her kiss to the hollow of his jaw and Dahmer leans into her, a quite chuckle falling from his lips at Ellyse's one exclamatory remark.
"What have you done to Ellyse?" he jests quietly into his lover's ear, "And what have you done to me?" Dahmer lips at her mane gently and then falls into a comfortable, warm silence at her side.
Don't say I'm out of touch with this rampant chaos; your reality. I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge.
”And just like that, you’ve ruined the moment,” she exhales, though there is a glimmer of mischief hidden away within the gold lacing of her hazel eye as she quietly traces the sharp angle of his jaw before brushing the softness of her lips across it again. Her lashes close for a moment, caressing his cheek, while a low hum of satisfaction is pressed against the darkness of his skin. Her lips do not stop until placed in the crease of his neck, feeling his pulse slowly thrum to a steady rhythm, not unlike her own. Her breath still emerges in soft puffs across the column of his neck, bathing in the afterglow – lost to him, lost to the pale moonlight and the celestial sky overhead, beckoning her to be among the stars – but she does not.
He is all the starlight that she desires, in the darkening descent of evenfall – her restless and tireless mind at ease, if only for a moment, while her pale lips trace the outline of the distant shoreline across the broadness of his shoulder. Contentedly, her teeth pry and pluck bramble and brush from the dark entanglement strewn haphazardly across his neck, tasting the saltiness of perspiration trickling still down the length of his body. His question is heavy on her mind. She does not ignore it, but she does not answer him, either – at least not right away. Her cheek brushes along the rigid curve of his rib cage, feeling the way his breath and heartbeat surge with life beneath the obscure blackness of his skin.
”No one would accuse me of having decorum,” she muses softly, her gaze averted from his own, searching the churning, ravenous tide instead – wondering how it might feel against her dampened skin; how it might feel between each bristled feather. ”but I have spent .. so much time biting my tongue when I should not. Not saying what I should, when I should.” She breathes along the hollow of his hip, before resting her cheek across his lower back. ”I thought .. I might never see Smoak again; that I might never see Joplin, or Joaquin ..” (bittersweet, each name is across her tongue) ”I almost lost everything.”
And even more quietly,
”I almost lost you.”
A breath, slow and sullen, expands the empty void of her lungs.
”Whatever this is, whatever we are – it is what it is,” and then she is bristling again, recoiling, as she always had. It takes several moments of careful consideration before she can force her guard down again, before she can say what is on her mind, and when she does, she awaits the vivacity of his cerulean gaze, meeting with her own before speaking again. ”whatever this is, it makes me happy, and it’s enough for me.”
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
"Ruined?" Dahmer asks with mock offense, amusement playing at the corners of his lips as she tucks herself to him. Ellyse's muzzle is soft, gracing warm bouts of breath against his dark cheek and neck until finally she settles in the crook between them. The pair of them fade into silence, comfortable and warm, and Dahmer takes the opportunity to gaze into the humid blackness of Tephra. It's different tonight than it had been the night they were taken, chased by lava-wolves, and imprisoned by the Dark God ─ the stars (millions and millions of them) illuminate the sky tonight; the moon reflects off the roiling tide, and all thoughts of Carnage are thrust into the corner of his mind when his champagne lover coaxes his attention back to her adeptly.
Ellyse's golden frame progresses from the crook of his neck to his muscled shoulder and then his ribs, her touch light and loving and, perhaps, more vulnerable than he had seen her since the night she had birthed their son. Even in Carnage's grasp, she had never lowered that shield of hers. Had never fallen into the trope of damsel in distress. She has been, and will always be, the powerful creature that he had developed respect for the first time they had ever met. And he has grown to love her for it.
When her voice breaks the silence between them, Dahmer's ears flutter backwards to give her his utmost attention. The confession draws a lopsided grin across his face but he does not speak, wary that it will break this spell and close this rare window to her soul. Ellyse coaxes goosebumps across his raven coat as her head brushes across his hip and then, finally, comes to rest on his lower back. Dahmer leans his frame, still damp with the sweat of their joining, gently against her feathered side and hums a quiet mmm in his comfort before the acidic memories of their time with Carnage tarnish it.
Smoak could have lost both of his parents that night. Joaquin and Joplin could have lost theirs. He could have lost Ellyse. She and Scyla could have lost him. There are so many ways their lives could have been flipped upside down, and yet it's still so difficult to remind himself that they had lived the best case scenario. They had all made it back. But so had their flashbacks, their memories, and their nightmares. He thinks of Smoak, dead by his own hand, and his throat catches.
Ellyse brings him back, though, and saves him from that nightmare just as she always does. I almost lost you. He could deny it to try and make her feel better, but she wouldn't believe the hollow words anyway, and he cannot insult her intelligence like that. Instead, the thoroughbred glances over his shoulder at her, his own muzzle resting on her back as turquoise blue eyes gaze at his champagne lover. He can feel her struggle, the way her muscles grow taut as if she is fighting off the wall that threatens to grow between them.
When she finds her words, having beaten the part of her that had threatened to hide her feelings, his heart grows for her. "You owe me no explanation," he rumbles warmly as his head rests upon her golden back, "You are you, Ellyse, and that is why I love you." The confession is so casual that for a moment, even he does not realize he has voiced it. It's nothing to hide from, though, and he continues, his voice soft and warm and only for her ─ "Your happiness will always be the most important thing to me, no matter what that means for us."
Don't say I'm out of touch with this rampant chaos; your reality. I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge.
She, too, is lost to the tranquility of evenfall – to the distant churning of the ocean tide along the dark shoreline, to the rhythm of his heartbeat falling in line with her own. Her kisses are soft, tracing the curve of bone along his hip, and along the ridge of his spine, while the long, tangled tendrils of ivory follow to drape over the darkness of his skin. She is lost to the moment, quiet and thoughtful, thinking then of how strange and peculiar life can be – how unpredictable the heart can be. She had long since buried the ache of loss within her chest, though the scathing burn if left behind made her wary of vulnerability. Hesitant to unveil herself, to give any part of herself away –
But somewhere along the way, he had found his way into her heart in a way that no one else ever had. He not only held her heart, but her respect, her admiration, her loyalty. He had been a lover only one fleeting, heat-filled moment long ago, but over time he became her closest companion, a devoted father to a son born in less than desirable circumstances, and then her anchor – tethering her when she felt adrift at sea. He had seen her in her darkest moments, never spurned by her biting tongue, nor by the frigidity of her demeanor each time her heart closed off, guarded.
Slowly, but surely, he managed to break away at the fortified wall erected around her vulnerability – brick by brick, chasing away the shadow of doubt in her gaze, quieting the uncertainty that effervesced in her chest each time his lips pressed a kiss into the hollow of her throat. She thought she had known love. Had she ever known it, or had she only willed love to be where it never had been? She cannot surrender to the thought of being imprisoned in the barren wasteland that had torn her eye from its socket; she cannot give into the thought of Ledger and what had become of him. He had betrayed her, deeply, irreversibly, and though that very same devastating pang of sorrow is hidden somewhere beneath the surface, there is a part of her that is all too aware that she had betrayed him, too.
That her heart had deceived him (and her, in turn) as she fell deeper and more undeniably in love – with someone else.
Sensing him shiver beneath her touch, her kisses become more firmly pressed into the crook of his thigh, wondering how long it might take to trace every inch of him. She hoped it might take an eternity.
He does not deny her assertion, and her heart is all the more mended for it. The knowledge that she had almost lost him, that she had almost lost everything she held close to her fickle, pathetically broken heart is difficult to swallow – but the thought of burying it, of sweeping it aside and pretending it was not true felt unbearable. The potential of loss kept her heart beating. It kept her close to him, seeking his touch, desiring his closeness. It kept her open, exposed – it kept her honest.
His cheek relaxes along the curve of her hip at the end of her back, and her hazel eye searches the darkness for his, observing the silhouette of his strong features draped in ethereal light from the starlit sky. His confession is so certain, her heart does not skip a beat until he is quiet again, until the weight of what he has said to her has processed fully, filling her chest with warmth and elation and trepidation. She is quiet for a long moment, but her gaze never strays from his own, holding cerulean to jade with a certainty of her own.
”I love you too, Dahmer,” she murmurs finally, humming against the blackness of his hip. ”I think I have for a long time.”
