FountainPenguin

The AO3 chapter has code that lets you hover/tap the Galactic text to auto-translate.

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Smajor1995

Location: Pearl's unit, Simmers' Quarter, 4th Floor, 552

🖤  🖤  💚

Scott Smajor is a dragon, an allay, and a vex, and his soul is boiling him alive. Pearl can feel every pulse through the hand resting on his chest. She tries to warn him. Some itchy thing in the back of his mind knows that. His system’s overheating, so he doesn’t stop her as she separates his skin from soul. She goes right down the front. Snap. Snap. Snap. It’d be terrifying, belly-up like prey, thoroughly exposed, if it were any other anivore. But he is always safe with Pearl.

“ᔑ∴ᔑꖌᒷ?” she asks, tucking hair behind her ear. Scott squints back through bleary eyes. Even when every twitching letter and decimal in his system burns, Pearl still sees the best in him. Thinks he’s capable of answering.

The only reply he gives is breath, his chest shaking every time it puffs. Scott lifts one hand, groping for Pearl’s shoulder, to find it as electric blue as the day he spawned. The glitch eating him alive no longer feigns at subtlety. He’s never glowed so cyan. He’s never flashed so white.

“ᔑリᓭ∴ᒷ∷ ᒲᒷ,” Pearl repeats, as if she’s not also riding the line between the sober and the scorned. Sparks zigzag in lightning bolts up his arm, his fingers dripping energy. It’s openly making Pearl’s mouth water as she drinks him in. Danger, the part of him that’s still prey whispers in his head. There’s a vampire bat crouching over him, blocking the lanternlight with her hunched-up wings. Freckles spatter her pale shoulder. Her hair’s a mess, tangled and frizzy in her face. She needs to go offline, or find a phantom to straighten out her code again. She looks like a drooping jacaranda tree… The kind he’s not supposed to keep blocks of in his office, even though he can’t be stopped.

I can fix you. He snags her hair between his fingers, pulling it down into his mouth. Pearl huffs, probably in laughter, and doesn’t stop him. “ℸ ̣ 𝙹⊣ᒷℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ∷.”

She feels like snow packed against him… There’s a reason dragons tell their spawnlings to build Nether portals in the tundra. Scott sinks into her, or she sinks into him, as pixels crackle and data blurs. His system whirrs a little louder, scrounging for something that could pass as solid form.

Scott Smajor is twisting from an allay into a vex. Glitched, corrupted, and flaring up, he’s the breath between a predator and prey. When he sinks his teeth in Pearl’s arm, she bites his neck just as hard. It feels like ointment - feels like bandages - and the next time he bites, he doesn’t let go.

“ᓵᔑꖎᒲ, ᓭᓵ𝙹ℸ ̣ ℸ ̣.”

Scott twitches when he hears his name. It doesn’t stop him. He clings on until Pearl’s pixels escape between his teeth, like he’s an alligator leaping at a monkey hiding in the tree leaves. Only then does he loosen up. He opens and shuts his mouth at her. Pearl chitters some squeaky, chirpy thing, her fingers tangled in the back of his hair. Scott surges up, snapping fangs. He misses her throat on purpose, but catches hair on accident. They fumble. Pearl’s teeth hit his face as he tries to shove her back.

Pause. Panting, licking saliva from shining lips. Pearl’s hand finds his scalp and pushes hair down into his eyes, narrowly missing the sensitive center of his forehead. Scott licks his lips a second time, turning his face aside. Her hand drags across his nose before dropping to his chest, like before.

Pixels prickle. They breathe together, spit dripping from their teeth, as Scott’s system starts to settle down. That whirring noise gets a little quieter. Pearl leans in, twisting her head to fit beneath his chin. She nips his throat. Scott catches the edge of his mouth in hers, just enough to push her back, and scrapes a hand across her chest. Both adjust. Quick bites, teeth flashing- They banter until Pearl snaps her wings. She jumps back, further down the bed. Scott’s played this game a thousand times before, in ten thousand stolen memories. Not with Pearl, though.

Never with Pearl.

Pearl springs forward, scuffing with soft hand. Scott blocks it with an arm, snapping his fangs just as she snaps hers. They slap each other with their hands - never enough to cause a damage tick - while growls and teeth clacks fill the air. Pearl wiggles to her belly at some point, coming in with less force, but just as much speed. Scott shows teeth, eyes locked on her nearest arm. But when she swats him hard, he jerks up with a hiss.

Pearl tilts sideways. Doesn’t matter. He nails her throat right in the pouch, sinking in his teeth. Soul energy crackles like redstone wire. He clamps her in place… and there they sit: awkwardly bent, breathing in the dark. Loose pixels roll down her twitching skin.

Her throat feels softer than he thought it would. His tongue laps up her dry moss taste, but she lacks scratchy edges and itchy leaves. He nicks deeper, but this time, Pearl pulls back hard. He lets her twist away.

I want a turn on top. Pearl’s been greedy. Scott can’t put weight on his glitched-out hand. His skin’s sliding off where she loosened the front, exposing raw energy beneath. He butts his head to Pearl’s shoulder. This playful nipping isn’t a very ‘allay’ game. He can’t bend his injured fingers, but he crashes both arms on top of her, shoving her. Pearl flops sideways on the bed. He finds her throat easily enough and claims it in his teeth again. It’s more fun now that he can bear his weight down. Pixels smart like lightning when they mix. As he pulls his teeth off her neck, Pearl blinks up at him through wary eyes.

Scott Smajor is an allay. His wings flex without his mental input; they’ve got instincts of their own.