[ very casually asking: are the nights still as bad as that one? did you only think about needing me or do you not need me at all?
other people. he resists the urge to respond with who? ]
You can say that if it's true. Or even if it's not true. I still like to hear it. Good. I liked watching you sleep. Even if you mumbled my name 20 times and made it super weird.
okay one good night gets me through a couple not so good ones y’know
[ sleep debt and stuff, except he’s taking out loans. or advances, maybe. clocking a full 10 with embry and managing scant hours in the subsequent days. letting bucky stay over, a white wolf curled in his bed. and leveraging that to waste twilight rethinking and overthinking. had to go and pick a fight with the old avengers. still not brave enough to let armand peel back the shadowy scar tissue of your memory and set yourself right, for everyone’s sakes. unable to see through a kiss requested and owed, on account of thinking it might be unwanted in the light of day.
round and round and round, we go. ]
okay 20 is crazy i’ll give you four you were talking of course i was thinking about you like i was thinking about you the last time true
I think I know. I used to hate the parts of night that were quiet. I was obviously busy getting my hands on other like-minded individuals, but when I wasn't... when everything wore off, those were the parts I hated.
[ the time where he'd pick apart every bad decision, absolutely no fucking shortage of them. when his demons dropped in for their nightly chat.
but that was years ago. he is, obviously, better now. ]
You were dreaming about me? [ a flurry of typing for a good minute, which only yields an obnoxious string of the kissing emoji. ] I was sure you'd be dreaming about Hamlet bitching about his dead father.
[ easy enough to leave it at that, but he hesitates. lingers on the thought — or perhaps the memory of his empty bed night after night, abilene in the next room, ash and greer a world away from the sting of his betrayal. ]
What did they look like? Your typical nights. Before you volunteered for your thing. And then after.
[ oh. a warmth he doesn't deserve. embry doesn't make things nicer. he makes them worse, by virtue of existing. ]
It was nice for me too. You should ask me again. If you want.
[ because bob doesn't really make first moves, unless embry tells him to, and then it doesn't count anymore. (not always true, because bob came to find him in the woods, and that was arguably a bigger move than anything embry has ever done for him.) ]
[ bob doesn’t really make moves, full stop. a passive creature. you learn to keep to yourself when yourself is the problem. never sure whether speaking up or staying quiet will be the thing that fucks you on a given day. ]
i want to i think about asking you a lot which isn’t the same as asking, i know
[ isn’t good enough, when he’s the one who asked embry to see him in the daylight. that would be safer, surely, in accordance with the rules of nightmares. the darkness recedes then, even if it never vanishes. ]
but i also don’t know what i’m asking for
[ he liked embry just being there. he liked what they did at the commune. he liked having somebody to call, and say i fucked up again to, who could probably say well, i fucked up more right back.
embry’s life here has the potential to be perfect, though, away from the death of the games and loss lurking back home.
that perfect version doesn’t have room for somebody like bob. the last time he tried to help embry, he only made things worse. (except embry had been up then and is up now, has been sleepwalking into danger and staring at photos of his own corpse, so he seems as fucked up about everything as bob is, when everyone else keeps telling him get over it, all while he’s bleeding out —) ]
before my thing? i was back on morphine so different vibe
[ that makes him smile, unexpected. the thought of bob thinking of him and doing nothing about it is so — understandable. didn't he spend the first three years of knowing ash doing exactly that? that, and rubbing his dick raw over it. ]
It's not the same, but I also like when you think about me. You don't have to do anything, Bobby. What you're doing is enough. Well, I do have a list of things that you shouldn't do, but you haven't hit any of them yet.
[ because he also doesn't know what he's asking for, what he wants, what any of this is. he only knows that he'll feel its loss when he loses it. when bob sees him for what he really is. some people have already caught on. ani. jem. danny fucking johnson. someone like bob doesn't deserve to be a casualty in the catastrophe he's made of his life — not like he's made ash. ]
Why morphine?
[ it feels invasive to ask, when he knows people don't get hooked on morphine for much other than pain. an easy vice to find in the military, when corpses have no use for the auto-injectors in the first aid kits they carry. none of this stops him from wanting to know. ]
[ when he figures himself out. when it’s safer for embry to be around him. when the thought of that distraught, repulsed expression on embry’s face at the pound no longer chokes out his every desire. ]
oh it’s what fucked me in the first place i wasn’t like fourteen and running with the wrong crowd or whatever it was just a car accident i don’t know if they gave me too much at the hospital or if i’m just wired that way
[ if it was the first time he started to feel better at home. ]
ironically it’s still big in malaysia opiates i guess so it was easy to go back
[ an uneasy disquiet, followed by miserable anticipation, impossible to carve out now that it's there, now that bob has said it. i want. is he supposed to say no? put the wounded disappointment back on his face? put him further and further away from being invited back into the circle of unexplained trust that allowed him to ever touch bob in the first place? ]
I want you to. I didn't mean that you shouldn't do anything. It's just what you want doesn't have to be perfect. If you ask, I'm going to want it anyway.
[ i'll never be perfect for you. not when he's made for insufficiency, for regret. but it doesn't stop him from wanting. ]
Just a car accident? That's fucked up. I can name twelve people off the bat that deserved that more than you.
[ imagining bob already in the hell his dad created for him, then this. what was embry doing at fourteen? fucking around at boarding school, discovering how much he liked the feel of a warm body on his. his anger burns, pointed at nothing tangible. still, he wants to know everything — even if the idea of bob uncovering the same for him makes him want to pull back. nothing fair about the exchange. does he really have to give to get? bob might give him what he asks for nothing in return. and what kind of man would that make you? ]
So are you immune to hard drugs now or is it the opposite? One hit and you can fly?
okay i’ll keep that in mind but i still wanna do it right
[ no matter how easy embry says he is.
a beat, then, in which he thinks no fourteen year old deserves that. or any adult, for that matter. but he knows what embry means by it. the roundabout way he expresses care, sometimes. wanting to hold his hand and knock his dad’s lights out at the same time. ]
1. i can already fly 2. dunno haven’t uh tried anything obviously alcohol barely hits though plus me jake and adrian figured out i gotta do like quadruple of those horny candies for me to keep up so
[ yes, he is describing a frat hazing situation (positive). ]
[ combating his tenderness with horniness, because one of them is easier to take. because the idea that bob would spend more than a moment thinking about what embry might want puts a strange pressure in his throat. ]
Is there anything you can't do? You're the perfect amount of horny already. I mean, unless you really wanted to be jetting your rainbow sperm everywhere (on Jake and Adrian). In that case, you should've taken pictures for posterity.
[ not jealousy, per se. he's happy that bob has no shortage of friends here. more like — a little sting, if only for the reminder that he shouldn't be within a hundred feet of jake seresin, as an extension of ani (as opposed to being his own person, which he may or may not be). ]
Well, since you mentioned it, you could be hornier. Do you want me to spank you again?
[ ok, fucking great. bob wants to talk talk, and unfortunately he hasn't figured out how to begrudge him anything yet. ]
I like sex and I like parties. I'm a recreational dabbler of drugs, too.
[ as in he loves to be blitzed out of his mind to stop the unbearable want in his chest that ash put there years ago. then — ]
I don't know why I got in the ring. It was stupid. If you hadn't gotten me out I would've just let it happen, and that would've hurt Ash and Greer. So I owe you, for sparing them that. I want to make it up to you, but I feel like I fucked things up with you, too.
yeah i thought it was pretty obvious i was into that
[ from coming all over himself, crying a little (positive), and kissing embry like 50 times after. ]
the ring’s a way to feel something, right? i know you think you deserve whatever bad stuff happens to you bucky’s the same i don’t think it’s crazy even though it was pretty stupid
[ bob has been doing stupid things his entire life. no judgment. ]
you didn’t fuck it up i mean i don’t think either of us did great but most of it is because i have to figure out how to handle this stuff while we’re stuck here bucky’s gonna start training me if you wanna watch
[ thinking about the first half of this conversation and adjusting. ]
[ thinking. he thought maybe all of that was just a byproduct of the emotions running high at the commune, something to be left where it was no matter how many times he personally revisited the memory himself. sure, bob came like a shot, fucking gorgeous all reddened and writhing and apple-sweet, but it was — reckless. dangerously so. worse, because it'd been embry's hands he'd trusted his pain to. ]
That was fucked up. It was too rough. I should've talked to you first. Before you were already in front of me. Looking like that.
[ bob came to him, so needy and wanting. never mind that embry told him to. ]
I could have just jerked off twenty times to feel something.
[ is that why ash fell for bucky? because they're both damaged? he has to push the thought away, knowing it will go nowhere. ]
Sounds like you're asking me out, Bobby. I'm sure that won't be weird at all. To watch you and Bucky together.
I do want to see you. All the parts of you. You have to let me clean you up after, though.
[ bob thinks, we were both out of it, even if embry’s role gave him the power. i came to you twice, baiting him on the phone and showing up halfway-wrecked at his door. i liked it rough, especially knowing that it should be impossible, now that he’s something more than human. i would have let you do worse.
instead, ]
like what?
[ why not take a page out of embry’s book and choose the horny option, for once. ]
sure might help with what happened [ at the pound, on both sides. ] might give you something to jerk off to twenty times
[ either works.
the messages that follow, though — whew. all the parts of him, when his supposed best made embry shatter. when his worst held down the alpha they were all so afraid of and made him beholden to the dark. ]
i don’t even bruise anymore, embry but you can double check
Like you were the one who'd jerked off twenty times knowing you couldn't come. Like you were asking for something even though I was the one who was supposed to punish you and you shouldn't have wanted anything from me. Like you'd never felt pain before that didn't hurt you the way your dad did. You were just looking at me. I wanted to make you mine, but I couldn't, so I just gave you what I could instead. Which we've already established was fucked up, but you were so Good at it.
[ holy fuck he wishes the floor would open up and swallow him alive so he could just die. ]
Well, the idea is that I would blow you in the shower. But if you really want to play doctor, we can do that too.
jesus yeah that that’s how it felt. you were in my head, man. i was asking for it. dreaming about it. i would have bothered you until you gave in, if you hadn’t told me i could come to you. nobody else was gonna take care of me. even if they tried, it wouldn’t have been right.
[ because it’s true. because his connections with others seem to twist embry up a little. ]
i hated being a tender for everybody else. i wanted to be yours. and i was so worried i’d want you less after, or when we left. but i didn’t. i don’t.
[ they created that fucked up encounter together, the same as the mess of the pound. supposedly never to be repeated, and yet — ]
blow me in the shower next time. can i come see you? we can pretend it’s like it was before or is that too fucked up? we can do something different i just really want to kiss you now
[ message after message of bob reeling him in and embry struggling to find reasons to say no. well — he has reasons, enough to fill the goddamn pacific, but none that bob will listen to. he's like ash. doesn't fucking listen when embry tries to tell him he's bad, this is bad, they shouldn't. i wanted to be yours. yours yours yours. every possessive cell in embry's body flares at that.
he doesn't even bruise. they can't. it's different, everything is different, bob is different. they can't pretend at anything. but bob wanted to keep wanting him, and still does want him, and fuck if that doesn't tear a hole in everything he's trying to keep together. ]
Yes. Do you trust me? Actually, don't answer that. The door's open.
[ this isn't how he'd intended his late night inquiry about greer to end up, but it feels like far longer than the scant few weeks since he's touched bob, suddenly wondering how long he realistically could have expected to hold out. the moment he hears the snick of the door, he's shutting it tight behind him and pushing bob against it, both hands cradling his face as he kisses him long and hard, breathing in his sun-drenched skin and licking his eager lips before tonguing into his mouth. he knocks bob's legs open with his knee, giving him one hard grind before he's pulling back completely, slowly putting distance between them, corralling his wildly beating heart.
his eyes flicker over bob, his dark eyes — still bob — his wet mouth, the rise and fall of his chest. he points to the space in front of him. ]
Come here. [ softly commanding. his lungs pool with lust, crawling up his throat with every breath. ] Take off your clothes.
Edited (wait i needed a proper subject) 2025-12-06 19:14 (UTC)
[ no answer, when bob has already slipped through his door and into the dark of the hall. a quick and purposeful stride to the room he knows to be embry’s — his familiar heartbeat behind the wood, a tempo bob now has memorised like a favourite song. he waits a singular, agonising beat before opening the door, conscious of the strength coiled in his arm when he twists the handle. you have to be careful with him, you have to, you can’t hurt him, not again —
— gone with a burst of static, seconds lost to the bliss of embry flush against him. wanting him, just as badly as bob wants and wants and wants. hands flying to his hair, hips hitching to meet that grind. he looses a gasp into embry’s mouth. nips his lower lip when he tries to pull away. gives in, then, with his head tipped back against the wood, throat bared. letting embry look and wondering what he sees, with his perception tinted rosy by attraction. unable to spot the darkness encroaching on bob’s person, but all too aware of the other side of the coin, catching the light.
his mouth hooks to one side, even so. tongue pressing into his cheek in a final moment of consideration. ]
You taking yours off this time?
[ a question, not a demand, when bob tends to match whatever tone his partner sets. he tugs his sweatshirt overhead, hair hopelessly ruffled in the aftermath of the motion, then thumbs the waistband of his flannel pyjama pants. unable to stop himself from sneaking a look at embry as he steps into his space. dragging up his dishevelled person. checking in more than performing. whatever he sees answers the question embry thought better of asking. a decision made. i trust you.
and even without the euphoria that chased any act of obedience in the commune, bob feels his pulse stutter and skip. heat blooming on bare skin, a flush that starts at his heart-centre and daggers upward. always a little strange, to display the body he has now, which people seem so enamoured with, when it was carved in a lab. not quite his own, sometimes as foreign as the power bottled in his bloodstream.
but it runs like a dream, right? without the haze of the morphine or the commune. no ache in his knees on the floor, no bruises or bites from anyone he’s been with for embry to see. he cards a hand back through his hair to clear it from his face, head tipped into his shoulder, peering up at embry on an angle. ]
[ it’s gratifying to watch him undress, completely unmarked, hot by any sense of the word. exactly embry’s type, which happens to be both gorgeous and willing and not much else. he’s also so fucking cute it’s disgusting, wide eyes gleaming in the dim light, the perpetual tousle of his hair almost artful. the handsome, sweet boy in every fairytale, mistreated and all the more heroic for it. ]
If you want to see me naked so bad.
[ a huff of laughter, even if it feels like more than just baring his body. it would feel like nothing if it was only that. he pulls his white t-shirt over his head, his dark hair curling across his forehead, free of its usual polished styling. his gray sweats go next — nothing underneath. his body is lithely muscled, graceful, the body of someone used to being admired and worshipped by his many lovers, though there are stories there too — a nasty scar at his shoulder clearly from a gunshot wound, another at his calf. a newer one, in comparison, is the rough line across his throat, typically hidden by his needlessly expensive shirts and ties. a small A sits branded at the cut of his hip, and his wedding ring glints on one finger.
he grips bob’s chin lightly, tilting his face toward him, studying the bottomless look in his eyes, deep enough to get lost in. no traces of gold there, though he wouldn’t stop if there were. the memory of bob’s overwhelming power, of choking on his cock, still makes him shiver.
drawing him in, he kisses him again, this time slowly, searchingly, one hand trailing down the planes of his body until he brushes his cock, long fingers wrapping around him in lazy, teasing strokes. ]
Get on the bed. Kneel on the bed, like you would at Mass. [ he brushes his nose, looking at bob through the fringe of his dark lashes. ] And put your hands behind your back.
[ it’s everything and nothing at all, to finally see all of embry. as beautiful as he expected, built like he rowed crew or played lacrosse or any number of rich guy sports available to him. in the army, once, where he met ash, and still keeping himself in shape. he assumes the gunshot is from that time before, like the bullet wounds that litter yelena and bucky’s forms. a part of their lives bob has yet to understand — always a loner, never a soldier — but that he might, in time. the neck scar, he glimpsed at the commune in their second tryst, no ties or collars to hide behind in the woods. the memory of embry explaining it, after the fact, still makes his gut twist unpleasantly. heat of another kind, molten and dangerous. it would take one, long look to turn the force of a million suns on another person and ensure there was no body to resurrect.
(nevermind that the A stirs something curious and uneasy within him, when bob hated the marks he bore for so long. how they told nurses and teachers and particularly clever classmates exactly what had happened to him. it seems ten times more fucked in the head than it is romantic, but that tracks pretty neatly, for embry. more relevantly, the brand and the ring serve as reminders there’s somebody else involved here, who somehow knows less about what’s happened than his own teammate-turned-question-mark and that’s — old bob reynolds messy. risky stuff, too, for someone whose emotional state can impact the entire house.)
all secondary to the fact that bob thinks he would be enamoured with embry regardless of whether he looked like that. it helps that embry knows what do with someone who can’t ask for anything he needs, let alone what he wants (maybe because they share that struggle). being a tender had cut him open and made those things bleed out of him. easier then, with a need so great and all-consuming it physically pained him to deny it. now, he slows only because embry does. ever reactive and reflective, trying and failing not to rock into embry’s hand. with a palm cupping the pulse in his throat (safe, alive, here) and fingers tentative on his bare hip, skimming his thigh. wanting to feel the places he’s yet to touch before embry tells him where to put his hands. ]
You are really overestimating my religious experiences.
[ chuckle low, as he stands. his family was a classic, agonistic suburban situation. he can’t even imagine reynolds senior in the confessional booth.
a roll of his shoulders before he passes embry, a parting squeeze to the swell of his hip. hands up, then. no touching, got it. unfortunately, kneeling for embry is as hot as it was last time. no additives fucking required. he positions himself just so, upright, hands behind his back, glancing over his shoulder — ]
Down?
[ maybe not quite so pliable as he was at the commune, with the amused glint in his eye. ]
[ he almost wishes he could see the inner workings of bob’s mind as he looks him over, not for reasons as vain as wondering at the level of attraction he feels — a lot, if he’s here — but because he wants to know everything else bob thinks about him. if he’s been forgiven, for the last time they were together. if there was anyone else he could have called on or if it had to be embry. if it’s strange, looking at the ring he spent almost twenty years wishing and wishing and wishing for. the brand at his hip brings him no joy whatsoever, although it’s at least easy to allow the obvious assumption to stand as the truth. the real truth is that it happened during that terrible month that none of them were themselves, after he tried to kill ani, after ash had hauled him away, bloody and sobbing, and branded his punishment onto his skin. a for ash. a for anora. he never told him which.
if bob really looked, really fucking saw him down to his marrow — he wouldn’t stay. he wouldn’t be here at all. ]
Ash is religious. I’m not. [ his mouth curls upwards, turning to open a drawer. ] I just went because his ass looks good when he kneels in tight pants.
[ with a dark length of satiny fabric tucked into one hand, he walks over to the bed to admire bob’s (absolutely fucking perfect) naked body. propped up on his knees. hands obediently behind his back, which embry doesn’t touch. there would be no point in restraints, not now. but embry always found it far worse to be told keep your hands still and then be responsible for doing it. ropes were preferable to exhibiting self control, which he admittedly has very little of.
he doesn’t bother telling bob the rules. truthfully, he’s making up the game as he goes, because he doesn’t know what might feel good and what might feel like nothing to bob’s science experiment body. ]
No. Stay up. [ he smiles again, leaning down to run his hand through bob’s hair, curling his fingers at his nape. ] Now look at where you are. Door’s there. You’re here. Your clothes are on the floor. There’s a book on the nightstand. I’m reading Of Mice and Men, because Greer allegedly hates Steinbeck. Beyond the bathroom is Parisa’s room. Okay? But you’re here, with me.
[ stated firmly, a fact. some people lose themselves, when they lose their sense of sight — disoriented, unmoored, panicking the longer it goes on. bob, he thinks, has enough reasons lurking in the dark to be afraid to lose anything. and yet he’s here, after everything.
the bed dips as embry presses one knee behind bob, unfurling the blindfold. he brings it neatly over his eyes, tugging his hair out of the way for a neat fit, before he knots it behind his head. ]
No cheating. [ embry’s mouth touches the shell of his ear, his breath warm. he presses against him from behind, bob’s hands pinned between them, and reaches around to take his cock in hand for several rough strokes. ] I can’t see your eyes. So if you want to do anything freaky, then you have to tell me.
[ he presses a kiss to his jaw, then withdraws, climbing off the bed and leaving bob there. opens another drawer to pick out some things — lube, some choice toys — all the while keeping one eye on bob, to gauge his reaction. good or bad. if he wants this or not. if it’s bad and he still wants it. ]
[ bob is quietly observant, in his way. and more motivated than ever to look, catching whatever interested-complicated-curious expression flits across embry’s features. swiftly replaced by that golden smile, the shape of ash’s name in his mouth (and maybe bob is overthinking it, maybe he just isn’t worth mentioning to the others the way bucky is; that tracks, too). he watches the dip in embry’s back as he bends, the ripple of the muscles that he hasn’t touched but wants to. his mouth feels dry. anticipation skids down his spine. swallowing, he adjusts the lay of his hands behind his back, one hand clasping the opposite wrist. self-control is the name of the game, he figures, when no restraint could bind him. a small price to pay for embry to smile again, like the sun on the horizon.
that slip of fabric in his hand is known but unknown. and so bob follows embry’s words with his gaze, lingering on each point in the room. always flicking back to his hand. his head and heart on a string. he doesn’t know where this is going, beyond the obvious, with the soft fabric tickling his lashes, nestled so carefully in his hair by embry’s attentive hands. he doesn’t think to ask. happy to follow embry where he leads, as long as it means hewing close behind him. ]
Oh. [ in acknowledgement of the dark before him, endless as the void. (thick as the shadow that dripped from adam in the woods.) the illusion broken only by embry pushing close enough that bob can feel his cock nudge the cleft of his ass. caught between the desire to lean back into embry’s arms, so impossibly warm and bare against him for the first time, and to rock into his jerking hand. breath catching, ] I think you’re the freaky one.
[ emphasis in all the wrong places, keenly aware of his lashes brushing the silk when they stutter, the creak and give beneath his knees, embry’s cologne and heartbeat and hands. the well of his power, lapping at his insides. he could look too long and burn a hole through the blindfold into the nearest wall. embry, as he points out, won’t see the change. the warning glow of a nuclear reaction. because he's decided to trust bob the way bob trusts him. bad idea.
he likes it less when embry goes. when he’s alone in the dark (like always). a shivery sensation starts at his pelvis and radiates outward. the line of his shoulders and arms pulls taut. it occurs to him that now is the time to say, i’m not sure about this. but it’s so early to disappoint, isn’t it? and he can — he can hear embry, not just the rustling in the drawer. if he concentrates, he can pick out the faint shifts in the air. a strand of falling into his face. you can feel him, too, if he reaches through the dark with intent, gauging the molecular difference where air meets solid matter. but you shouldn’t be doing that.
so he heaves a sigh, like a disappointed dog. unable to slump as he usually would, with nerves straightening his back. aware that every part of him is just there — visible, available, vulnerable. not vulnerable, now that he’s — but it feels like it, with the cooler air nipping at his skin, goosebumps climbing his arms. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
somebody told me i should
[ you. dumbass. ]
not with greer
sometimes with other people
but i can say you, if that's what we're doing, prince charming
i liked the note
no subject
[ very casually asking: are the nights still as bad as that one? did you only think about needing me or do you not need me at all?
other people. he resists the urge to respond with who? ]
You can say that if it's true.
Or even if it's not true. I still like to hear it.
Good. I liked watching you sleep. Even if you mumbled my name 20 times and made it super weird.
[ what is the truth ]
no subject
one good night gets me through a couple not so good ones y’know
[ sleep debt and stuff, except he’s taking out loans. or advances, maybe. clocking a full 10 with embry and managing scant hours in the subsequent days. letting bucky stay over, a white wolf curled in his bed. and leveraging that to waste twilight rethinking and overthinking. had to go and pick a fight with the old avengers. still not brave enough to let armand peel back the shadowy scar tissue of your memory and set yourself right, for everyone’s sakes. unable to see through a kiss requested and owed, on account of thinking it might be unwanted in the light of day.
round and round and round, we go. ]
okay 20 is crazy
i’ll give you four
you were talking of course i was thinking about you
like i was thinking about you the last time
true
[ not false. happy? ]
no subject
I used to hate the parts of night that were quiet. I was obviously busy getting my hands on other like-minded individuals, but when I wasn't... when everything wore off, those were the parts I hated.
[ the time where he'd pick apart every bad decision, absolutely no fucking shortage of them. when his demons dropped in for their nightly chat.
but that was years ago. he is, obviously, better now. ]
You were dreaming about me? [ a flurry of typing for a good minute, which only yields an obnoxious string of the kissing emoji. ] I was sure you'd be dreaming about Hamlet bitching about his dead father.
You were dead asleep. You couldn't hear me.
no subject
yeah i think it’s similar for me
feeling it more alone i mean
[ less the guilt over seeking connection, which is one of the only things he doesn’t regret. ]
don’t really remember what it was about
i just know you were there
so it was nice
[ like the two things are connected, cause and effect. it was nice because you were there. ]
no subject
What did they look like?
Your typical nights. Before you volunteered for your thing.
And then after.
[ oh. a warmth he doesn't deserve. embry doesn't make things nicer. he makes them worse, by virtue of existing. ]
It was nice for me too.
You should ask me again. If you want.
[ because bob doesn't really make first moves, unless embry tells him to, and then it doesn't count anymore. (not always true, because bob came to find him in the woods, and that was arguably a bigger move than anything embry has ever done for him.) ]
cw refs to drug use, addiction
i want to
i think about asking you a lot
which isn’t the same as asking, i know
[ isn’t good enough, when he’s the one who asked embry to see him in the daylight. that would be safer, surely, in accordance with the rules of nightmares. the darkness recedes then, even if it never vanishes. ]
but i also don’t know what i’m asking for
[ he liked embry just being there. he liked what they did at the commune. he liked having somebody to call, and say i fucked up again to, who could probably say well, i fucked up more right back.
embry’s life here has the potential to be perfect, though, away from the death of the games and loss lurking back home.
that perfect version doesn’t have room for somebody like bob. the last time he tried to help embry, he only made things worse. (except embry had been up then and is up now, has been sleepwalking into danger and staring at photos of his own corpse, so he seems as fucked up about everything as bob is, when everyone else keeps telling him get over it, all while he’s bleeding out —) ]
before my thing?
i was back on morphine
so
different vibe
no subject
It's not the same, but I also like when you think about me.
You don't have to do anything, Bobby. What you're doing is enough.
Well, I do have a list of things that you shouldn't do, but you haven't hit any of them yet.
[ because he also doesn't know what he's asking for, what he wants, what any of this is. he only knows that he'll feel its loss when he loses it. when bob sees him for what he really is. some people have already caught on. ani. jem. danny fucking johnson. someone like bob doesn't deserve to be a casualty in the catastrophe he's made of his life — not like he's made ash. ]
Why morphine?
[ it feels invasive to ask, when he knows people don't get hooked on morphine for much other than pain. an easy vice to find in the military, when corpses have no use for the auto-injectors in the first aid kits they carry. none of this stops him from wanting to know. ]
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i want to though
[ when he figures himself out. when it’s safer for embry to be around him. when the thought of that distraught, repulsed expression on embry’s face at the pound no longer chokes out his every desire. ]
oh
it’s what fucked me in the first place
i wasn’t like fourteen and running with the wrong crowd or whatever
it was just a car accident
i don’t know if they gave me too much at the hospital or if i’m just wired that way
[ if it was the first time he started to feel better at home. ]
ironically it’s still big in malaysia
opiates i guess
so it was easy to go back
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I want you to. I didn't mean that you shouldn't do anything.
It's just what you want doesn't have to be perfect. If you ask, I'm going to want it anyway.
[ i'll never be perfect for you. not when he's made for insufficiency, for regret. but it doesn't stop him from wanting. ]
Just a car accident? That's fucked up.
I can name twelve people off the bat that deserved that more than you.
[ imagining bob already in the hell his dad created for him, then this. what was embry doing at fourteen? fucking around at boarding school, discovering how much he liked the feel of a warm body on his. his anger burns, pointed at nothing tangible. still, he wants to know everything — even if the idea of bob uncovering the same for him makes him want to pull back. nothing fair about the exchange. does he really have to give to get? bob might give him what he asks for nothing in return. and what kind of man would that make you? ]
So are you immune to hard drugs now or is it the opposite? One hit and you can fly?
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i’ll keep that in mind
but i still wanna do it right
[ no matter how easy embry says he is.
a beat, then, in which he thinks no fourteen year old deserves that. or any adult, for that matter. but he knows what embry means by it. the roundabout way he expresses care, sometimes. wanting to hold his hand and knock his dad’s lights out at the same time. ]
1. i can already fly
2. dunno
haven’t uh
tried anything
obviously
alcohol barely hits though
plus me jake and adrian figured out i gotta do like quadruple of those horny candies for me to keep up
so
[ yes, he is describing a frat hazing situation (positive). ]
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Have you been thinking about that?
[ combating his tenderness with horniness, because one of them is easier to take. because the idea that bob would spend more than a moment thinking about what embry might want puts a strange pressure in his throat. ]
Is there anything you can't do?
You're the perfect amount of horny already. I mean, unless you really wanted to be jetting your rainbow sperm everywhere (on Jake and Adrian).
In that case, you should've taken pictures for posterity.
[ not jealousy, per se. he's happy that bob has no shortage of friends here. more like — a little sting, if only for the reminder that he shouldn't be within a hundred feet of jake seresin, as an extension of ani (as opposed to being his own person, which he may or may not be). ]
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that too
[ dumbass. ]
i feel like you have definitely said you think i should be hornier
do you like all that stuff?
the sex parties they throw here i mean
the drugs they push
i only saw you at the pound
[ which we are brave enough to revisit via text. ]
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Well, since you mentioned it, you could be hornier. Do you want me to spank you again?
[ ok, fucking great. bob wants to talk talk, and unfortunately he hasn't figured out how to begrudge him anything yet. ]
I like sex and I like parties. I'm a recreational dabbler of drugs, too.
[ as in he loves to be blitzed out of his mind to stop the unbearable want in his chest that ash put there years ago. then — ]
I don't know why I got in the ring. It was stupid.
If you hadn't gotten me out I would've just let it happen, and that would've hurt Ash and Greer. So I owe you, for sparing them that.
I want to make it up to you, but I feel like I fucked things up with you, too.
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i thought it was pretty obvious i was into that
[ from coming all over himself, crying a little (positive), and kissing embry like 50 times after. ]
the ring’s a way to feel something, right?
i know you think you deserve whatever bad stuff happens to you
bucky’s the same
i don’t think it’s crazy
even though it was pretty stupid
[ bob has been doing stupid things his entire life. no judgment. ]
you didn’t fuck it up
i mean i don’t think either of us did great
but most of it is because i have to figure out how to handle this stuff while we’re stuck here
bucky’s gonna start training me
if you wanna watch
[ thinking about the first half of this conversation and adjusting. ]
i want you to come watch some time i mean
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That was fucked up. It was too rough.
I should've talked to you first. Before you were already in front of me. Looking like that.
[ bob came to him, so needy and wanting. never mind that embry told him to. ]
I could have just jerked off twenty times to feel something.
[ is that why ash fell for bucky? because they're both damaged? he has to push the thought away, knowing it will go nowhere. ]
Sounds like you're asking me out, Bobby.
I'm sure that won't be weird at all. To watch you and Bucky together.
I do want to see you. All the parts of you.
You have to let me clean you up after, though.
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instead, ]
like what?
[ why not take a page out of embry’s book and choose the horny option, for once. ]
sure
might help with what happened [ at the pound, on both sides. ]
might give you something to jerk off to twenty times
[ either works.
the messages that follow, though — whew. all the parts of him, when his supposed best made embry shatter. when his worst held down the alpha they were all so afraid of and made him beholden to the dark. ]
i don’t even bruise anymore, embry
but you can double check
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Like you were the one who'd jerked off twenty times knowing you couldn't come. Like you were asking for something even though I was the one who was supposed to punish you and you shouldn't have wanted anything from me. Like you'd never felt pain before that didn't hurt you the way your dad did.
You were just looking at me. I wanted to make you mine, but I couldn't, so I just gave you what I could instead.
Which we've already established was fucked up, but you were so
Good at it.
[ holy fuck he wishes the floor would open up and swallow him alive so he could just die. ]
Well, the idea is that I would blow you in the shower. But if you really want to play doctor, we can do that too.
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jesus
yeah
that
that’s how it felt.
you were in my head, man. i was asking for it. dreaming about it. i would have bothered you until you gave in, if you hadn’t told me i could come to you. nobody else was gonna take care of me. even if they tried, it wouldn’t have been right.
[ because it’s true. because his connections with others seem to twist embry up a little. ]
i hated being a tender for everybody else. i wanted to be yours.
and i was so worried i’d want you less after, or when we left.
but i didn’t. i don’t.
[ they created that fucked up encounter together, the same as the mess of the pound. supposedly never to be repeated, and yet — ]
blow me in the shower next time.
can i come see you?
we can pretend it’s like it was before
or is that too fucked up?
we can do something different
i just really want to kiss you now
→ action.
he doesn't even bruise. they can't. it's different, everything is different, bob is different. they can't pretend at anything. but bob wanted to keep wanting him, and still does want him, and fuck if that doesn't tear a hole in everything he's trying to keep together. ]
Yes.
Do you trust me?
Actually, don't answer that. The door's open.
[ this isn't how he'd intended his late night inquiry about greer to end up, but it feels like far longer than the scant few weeks since he's touched bob, suddenly wondering how long he realistically could have expected to hold out. the moment he hears the snick of the door, he's shutting it tight behind him and pushing bob against it, both hands cradling his face as he kisses him long and hard, breathing in his sun-drenched skin and licking his eager lips before tonguing into his mouth. he knocks bob's legs open with his knee, giving him one hard grind before he's pulling back completely, slowly putting distance between them, corralling his wildly beating heart.
his eyes flicker over bob, his dark eyes — still bob — his wet mouth, the rise and fall of his chest. he points to the space in front of him. ]
Come here. [ softly commanding. his lungs pool with lust, crawling up his throat with every breath. ] Take off your clothes.
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— gone with a burst of static, seconds lost to the bliss of embry flush against him. wanting him, just as badly as bob wants and wants and wants. hands flying to his hair, hips hitching to meet that grind. he looses a gasp into embry’s mouth. nips his lower lip when he tries to pull away. gives in, then, with his head tipped back against the wood, throat bared. letting embry look and wondering what he sees, with his perception tinted rosy by attraction. unable to spot the darkness encroaching on bob’s person, but all too aware of the other side of the coin, catching the light.
his mouth hooks to one side, even so. tongue pressing into his cheek in a final moment of consideration. ]
You taking yours off this time?
[ a question, not a demand, when bob tends to match whatever tone his partner sets. he tugs his sweatshirt overhead, hair hopelessly ruffled in the aftermath of the motion, then thumbs the waistband of his flannel pyjama pants. unable to stop himself from sneaking a look at embry as he steps into his space. dragging up his dishevelled person. checking in more than performing. whatever he sees answers the question embry thought better of asking. a decision made. i trust you.
and even without the euphoria that chased any act of obedience in the commune, bob feels his pulse stutter and skip. heat blooming on bare skin, a flush that starts at his heart-centre and daggers upward. always a little strange, to display the body he has now, which people seem so enamoured with, when it was carved in a lab. not quite his own, sometimes as foreign as the power bottled in his bloodstream.
but it runs like a dream, right? without the haze of the morphine or the commune. no ache in his knees on the floor, no bruises or bites from anyone he’s been with for embry to see. he cards a hand back through his hair to clear it from his face, head tipped into his shoulder, peering up at embry on an angle. ]
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If you want to see me naked so bad.
[ a huff of laughter, even if it feels like more than just baring his body. it would feel like nothing if it was only that. he pulls his white t-shirt over his head, his dark hair curling across his forehead, free of its usual polished styling. his gray sweats go next — nothing underneath. his body is lithely muscled, graceful, the body of someone used to being admired and worshipped by his many lovers, though there are stories there too — a nasty scar at his shoulder clearly from a gunshot wound, another at his calf. a newer one, in comparison, is the rough line across his throat, typically hidden by his needlessly expensive shirts and ties. a small A sits branded at the cut of his hip, and his wedding ring glints on one finger.
he grips bob’s chin lightly, tilting his face toward him, studying the bottomless look in his eyes, deep enough to get lost in. no traces of gold there, though he wouldn’t stop if there were. the memory of bob’s overwhelming power, of choking on his cock, still makes him shiver.
drawing him in, he kisses him again, this time slowly, searchingly, one hand trailing down the planes of his body until he brushes his cock, long fingers wrapping around him in lazy, teasing strokes. ]
Get on the bed. Kneel on the bed, like you would at Mass. [ he brushes his nose, looking at bob through the fringe of his dark lashes. ] And put your hands behind your back.
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(nevermind that the A stirs something curious and uneasy within him, when bob hated the marks he bore for so long. how they told nurses and teachers and particularly clever classmates exactly what had happened to him. it seems ten times more fucked in the head than it is romantic, but that tracks pretty neatly, for embry. more relevantly, the brand and the ring serve as reminders there’s somebody else involved here, who somehow knows less about what’s happened than his own teammate-turned-question-mark and that’s — old bob reynolds messy. risky stuff, too, for someone whose emotional state can impact the entire house.)
all secondary to the fact that bob thinks he would be enamoured with embry regardless of whether he looked like that. it helps that embry knows what do with someone who can’t ask for anything he needs, let alone what he wants (maybe because they share that struggle). being a tender had cut him open and made those things bleed out of him. easier then, with a need so great and all-consuming it physically pained him to deny it. now, he slows only because embry does. ever reactive and reflective, trying and failing not to rock into embry’s hand. with a palm cupping the pulse in his throat (safe, alive, here) and fingers tentative on his bare hip, skimming his thigh. wanting to feel the places he’s yet to touch before embry tells him where to put his hands. ]
You are really overestimating my religious experiences.
[ chuckle low, as he stands. his family was a classic, agonistic suburban situation. he can’t even imagine reynolds senior in the confessional booth.
a roll of his shoulders before he passes embry, a parting squeeze to the swell of his hip. hands up, then. no touching, got it. unfortunately, kneeling for embry is as hot as it was last time. no additives fucking required. he positions himself just so, upright, hands behind his back, glancing over his shoulder — ]
Down?
[ maybe not quite so pliable as he was at the commune, with the amused glint in his eye. ]
cw mentions of assault
if bob really looked, really fucking saw him down to his marrow — he wouldn’t stay. he wouldn’t be here at all. ]
Ash is religious. I’m not. [ his mouth curls upwards, turning to open a drawer. ] I just went because his ass looks good when he kneels in tight pants.
[ with a dark length of satiny fabric tucked into one hand, he walks over to the bed to admire bob’s (absolutely fucking perfect) naked body. propped up on his knees. hands obediently behind his back, which embry doesn’t touch. there would be no point in restraints, not now. but embry always found it far worse to be told keep your hands still and then be responsible for doing it. ropes were preferable to exhibiting self control, which he admittedly has very little of.
he doesn’t bother telling bob the rules. truthfully, he’s making up the game as he goes, because he doesn’t know what might feel good and what might feel like nothing to bob’s science experiment body. ]
No. Stay up. [ he smiles again, leaning down to run his hand through bob’s hair, curling his fingers at his nape. ] Now look at where you are. Door’s there. You’re here. Your clothes are on the floor. There’s a book on the nightstand. I’m reading Of Mice and Men, because Greer allegedly hates Steinbeck. Beyond the bathroom is Parisa’s room. Okay? But you’re here, with me.
[ stated firmly, a fact. some people lose themselves, when they lose their sense of sight — disoriented, unmoored, panicking the longer it goes on. bob, he thinks, has enough reasons lurking in the dark to be afraid to lose anything. and yet he’s here, after everything.
the bed dips as embry presses one knee behind bob, unfurling the blindfold. he brings it neatly over his eyes, tugging his hair out of the way for a neat fit, before he knots it behind his head. ]
No cheating. [ embry’s mouth touches the shell of his ear, his breath warm. he presses against him from behind, bob’s hands pinned between them, and reaches around to take his cock in hand for several rough strokes. ] I can’t see your eyes. So if you want to do anything freaky, then you have to tell me.
[ he presses a kiss to his jaw, then withdraws, climbing off the bed and leaving bob there. opens another drawer to pick out some things — lube, some choice toys — all the while keeping one eye on bob, to gauge his reaction. good or bad. if he wants this or not. if it’s bad and he still wants it. ]
nsfw (lol)
that slip of fabric in his hand is known but unknown. and so bob follows embry’s words with his gaze, lingering on each point in the room. always flicking back to his hand. his head and heart on a string. he doesn’t know where this is going, beyond the obvious, with the soft fabric tickling his lashes, nestled so carefully in his hair by embry’s attentive hands. he doesn’t think to ask. happy to follow embry where he leads, as long as it means hewing close behind him. ]
Oh. [ in acknowledgement of the dark before him, endless as the void. (thick as the shadow that dripped from adam in the woods.) the illusion broken only by embry pushing close enough that bob can feel his cock nudge the cleft of his ass. caught between the desire to lean back into embry’s arms, so impossibly warm and bare against him for the first time, and to rock into his jerking hand. breath catching, ] I think you’re the freaky one.
[ emphasis in all the wrong places, keenly aware of his lashes brushing the silk when they stutter, the creak and give beneath his knees, embry’s cologne and heartbeat and hands. the well of his power, lapping at his insides. he could look too long and burn a hole through the blindfold into the nearest wall. embry, as he points out, won’t see the change. the warning glow of a nuclear reaction. because he's decided to trust bob the way bob trusts him. bad idea.
he likes it less when embry goes. when he’s alone in the dark (like always). a shivery sensation starts at his pelvis and radiates outward. the line of his shoulders and arms pulls taut. it occurs to him that now is the time to say, i’m not sure about this. but it’s so early to disappoint, isn’t it? and he can — he can hear embry, not just the rustling in the drawer. if he concentrates, he can pick out the faint shifts in the air. a strand of falling into his face. you can feel him, too, if he reaches through the dark with intent, gauging the molecular difference where air meets solid matter. but you shouldn’t be doing that.
so he heaves a sigh, like a disappointed dog. unable to slump as he usually would, with nerves straightening his back. aware that every part of him is just there — visible, available, vulnerable. not vulnerable, now that he’s — but it feels like it, with the cooler air nipping at his skin, goosebumps climbing his arms. ]
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cw refs to drug abuse, sex under the influence
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