☀️

He grinds up into Marc, dirty, slow sweeps, right against his prostate. The wet squelch of lube echoes gunshot loud between them, accusatory—as does Marc’s breathless little gasp. Luca keeps at it, again, again, again, so he’ll get another one of those noises, but Marc only throws his head back, puts it against his shoulder, miles of smooth, tanned skin in his bobbing throat.

Pretty, Luca thinks, a hysterical little laugh stuck behind his teeth, shaking when he runs a forcibly idle touch over Marc’s waxed, soft thighs.

“More?” He asks, careful.

Marc nods—open-mouthed, greedy—and drags him to hold his cock. Luca’s hands are calloused, bony, dry. Probably doesn’t feel that good, in retrospect. Marc bucks into his grip anyway, fucks into his slightly unsteady fist with abandon, like he’s bending a bad bike to take a tricky corner.

Luca bites into the soft insides of his cheek. Focus.

So he leaves a bite on Marc’s throat next. Mean, deep—it’s right there, after all. Presses down hard on the imprint of his teeth he left on the swell of Marc’s pec, on his nipple, on the knob of his hipbone. They’re growing dark already, a splotchy purple-red on gold, ugly, round lines.

He keens, jolts, legs falling open, hooked over Luca’s skinny knees. It’s like pressing on the keys of a baby grand at random, only to find out everything sounds fantastic. His cock twitches in his hand, leaks. Each slide is wetter and easier than the last.

Christ. Luca sucks in a breath, tucked against the corded muscle of Marc’s neck.

But Marc is allergic to breaks or something like that. Twists his head around and tugs him up by his hair. They’re looking at each other—which should technically be sobering, a cold wash of reality, but only makes Luca ache to press a kiss on the corner of his shiv-quick smile.

In a bit, maybe.

“You really are mean,” he says, winded, in this dangerous, wild delight.

Luca arches an eyebrow, immaculate through the hell press of Marc’s ass around his cock, how it rakes over him like an electric shock. “You asked me to.”

“People don’t usually—ah, shit, see—first fuck is usually a warm-up. Very polite.”

Luca debates for a split second, five lights and off they go, prying the words from the bottom of his throat. I actually get off on making people cry, just like that. Decides against it at Marc’s dark, cutting stare, his open-mouthed, shameless hunger. Too much like feeding a shark.

Makes himself grin, instead. “I’m very polite. You always say that.”

“Asshole,” he says—in Spanish. Putilla, like Luca doesn’t know what it means. And he laughs through it too, this ugly, honking laugh.

It’s not what you call someone doing a favor, sort of. Luca keeps smiling.

Squeezes Marc’s cock hard, drags his nails all the way to his flushed, wet head. Marc chokes on whatever noise he was making, scrambles to scratch him back, at his wrist, legs twitching to cover himself up on instinct.

He lets them fall limp, though. Stares wide-eyed, expectant. Challenging. Luca croons something sweet-sounding, backs off just a little. His grip is too tight, cruel, but more pleasure now, working him over in quick, rough twists of his palm.

Nothing about it is pretty, exactly—except Marc crumbling against him, Luca is at his strings. Except Marc whining, high-pitched and raw, when he shivers and comes with Luca running a nail over his slit and biting down on his nape.

Luca grunts, muffled through Marc tightening up around his cock, through the pound of blood in his ears.

It’s probably the funniest—most absurd—consequence of going to an engineer’s birthday party, he thinks, nerves in overdrive, about to giggle or moan or come, same fucking difference, heart drumming against his ribcage, thoughts hitting every corner.

Marc hisses out a thick noise, holds his arm. There’s no real strength behind it. Luca gets back on with what could be called his meanness, smears Marc’s come over his own dick. Jerks him only a fraction gentler than he was.

He isn’t crying, yet.

Not like he asked to, not like Luca wants to see.

But maybe soon, he thinks, perverse and not caring all that much about it, heat prickling under his skin, spit pooling over his tongue. Luca gives him a light nibble on his earlobe as a reward, more intent than actual pressure.

“More?” Luca breathes out, barely a whisper.

Marc blinks.

That isn't what he expected.

“What do you mean?” He asks, slow and loud.

Dr. Mir clicks his pen, Marc guesses he doesn’t deliver this kind of news too often, which explains the tone. “I mean that you are almost certainly pregnant, by the look of things.”

“I—“ Marc gapes. He tries to make his mind work, arm burning. He’s not— he’s here for emergency surgery. Dr. Mir is already dressed in the awful, washed-out toothpaste color of his scrubs. He’s about to usher Marc into pre-op. This is about his arm, all of this should be about his arm.

“Four months? That’s not possible, they would have tested me before my last surgery, it was negative. The doctors at Honda told me, they told me that it wasn’t something I would have to worry about, that I don't have enough body fat.”

Mir nods. The ringing sound fades a bit from Marc’s ears.

“False negatives are rare, but I’m afraid to say that they’re not impossible. And if you can get pregnant, there is always a possibility for conception when having penetrative sex. Have you been experiencing any symptoms? Nausea, weight gain, fatigue—“ Mir peers at him sideways, talking briskly. The shadow of anxious feet move outside the door, Álex and Jose must be pacing. “Strong emotional responses?”

Marc stares at him. Strong emotional responses. The arm that he uses to ride motorcycles is broken. This is his second surgery on it in the space of three weeks. The plate snapped this morning, three hours ago. Brno is in six days, and he will miss it, 25 points down the drain.

“No, yeah— eh. I mean, yes.” He makes himself say.

He puts his good hand to his stomach.

Four months ago. Pre-season testing in Qatar. They hadn’t used a condom, and then the world had shut down and he’d been stuck without his motorcycle until July, the longest he’s ever gone without riding competitively since he was 12 and still in school. Lately, he’s had other stuff on his mind. He’s been rehabbing his shoulder, he’s been training for the season, he’s been doing— he’s been doing motocross.

The truth is, he hasn’t noticed anything. The last few weeks, when he supposes it should have been becoming more and more obvious (four months along obvious, Jesus Christ) he’d been focused on noticing his arm, mainly, and the bike, as well— both more delicate things than he’d anticipated, and there had certainly been some strong emotional responses.

But this is.

With Vale in March, he honestly didn’t even think it was possible with the sort of life he led, and when he was 20 and his doctors all told him he didn’t have to worry about it, he’d just assumed that was the end of it. That will probably be a funny story in about ten years.

It’s not, in the moment. In the moment it just feels mystifying, terrifying— like waking up and finding out the sky had turned purple overnight, only with an additionally fucked-up impact on his life and more importantly, on his career. He bites hard at his bottom lip. A baby.

He remembers— Vale’s hands on the small of his back, hot as a brand. Vale’s hands lower. The question, knifed out between strained breaths as he thumbed slickly at where Marc was hot and wanting: Do you have one? and then Marc gripping him tighter, swallowing around the words. No, he’d wanted to say, so he had. You should just, it’s okay, and then Vale was there.

“Fuck.” He says now, with feeling. This is crazy.

His eyes dart around the sterile white of the room. When he’d come in, he’d caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the sterile little sink, and hated the way he looked. Washed out and pale, small in the bundle of his jacket, his useless arm hanging out of its sleeve, but cradled close. His eyes were drawn with pain above the material of his mask, and his shoulders were postured unevenly, warped protectively over his shoddily healed fracture. He’d thought that he looked old. He turns over the feeling. Old enough?

A baby. An actual baby.

Marc is a practical man, when he wants to be. He runs down the list.

The season is still young, and he wants to be back to win—but it’s shortened because of Covid, and with him already missing two races, he realizes, with a sinking feeling in his chest, that a ninth championship at the age of 27 is looking less and less likely.

Which means that he has an actual choice here, not just the illusion of one. The doctor, having given him a thin breath of a moment, picks up on his line of thought.

“You do have— options, Marc. We have you at around four months along.” He sighs. “The injury, if all is normal after surgery, should heal in six to eight weeks, but this is not a normal injury, it has been retraumatized, and you’ve put a lot of stress on the bone,”

You let me do that, Marc thinks but doesn’t say. It's unfair to say it out loud, he’s the one who decided to ride.

“Now, if you want, there are precautions we can take for the baby, or we can see about going another route with that. We need to decide soon, though, because I want to get you into surgery as soon as possible, and I’m sure you’re in a lot of pain.”

Marc ignores his comment about pain— pain usually goes away, eventually, and he’s good at ignoring it. In a few minutes, once he doesn’t need to think clearly, he’ll ask for painkillers that are safe. Six to eight weeks. He would be back by— god, Misano. There goes his season.

“Another route?” He croaks out.

“You are past the 14 week cutoff for an abortion in Spain, but there are a few other countries where it is less of a problem— Sweden, the Netherlands. I’m sure that I can get you in contact with some people that are, ah, discreet, once we get you through today’s procedure.”

Fabio Quartararo already has 50 points more than Marc. He considers the neat zero next to his name in the standings. What’s worse— P10 in the championship or nothing at all. What’s worse— sitting out, or, or a child.

“My arm, six to eight weeks, you said,” He confirms, and the doctor nods.

“If everything goes well.”

Including the initial break, he will have been out around eleven weeks in total by the end of the healing, but the doctors will usually give him what he wants if he looks like he can stand the pain. If he tries to come back in four weeks, instead of six— no, even then the next grand prix would be in September. It’s still half the season, no way around that, and no one can DNF for half the season and still win a title, not even him.

The baby would be six months along by September, and here by November. That would give him the full offseason to heal. A nauseous, unsteady little thrill runs up his spine.

He could be the first rider to win after giving birth.

He takes a shuddering breath. He finds, even still, that he suddenly wants to cry very badly. He doesn’t.

“But, um, this surgery— the baby will be fine?”

Mir tilts his head, like that’s not what he expected Marc to say. “There are always risks this early into pregnancy with surgery, especially after the amount of stress your body has undergone these last few weeks, but it’s not unusual. There are ways to mitigate that risk as you heal, as well.”

His brain keeps catching— back on the bike in six weeks.

His brain keeps catching— 50 points already.

If he does this, he won’t be able to ride until next season, which is undoubtedly the worst and scariest part of the whole thing. He doesn’t do well with boredom, or with waiting, and he can already feel the need bunching under his skin, that gut-wrenching want to get from wherever he is to his bike as fast as possible. Whatever can get him to the top step, he’ll do it, he’ll do it fast, and if it means pain, then well, he can bear it.

But the thing that makes him pause is, if he doesn’t do this, he might never get another chance.

And the idea of that, of losing that, is also scary— scarier than he thought it would be. There’s a part of him that thought he wouldn’t get to do this at all, and it’s reaching towards the realization of the idea with a greedy sort of hunger he hardly seems aware of. If he followed his initial plan, he wouldn’t have a family for probably another ten years, once he retired. And that is only if he finds someone to do it with. He never thought he’d get to do it now, so soon, and with— he finds that he likes the idea.

Especially not with someone that he— he makes himself stop, and a pang shoots through his stomach.

That’s a stupid, childish thought. Vale’s made himself clear, best to nip that part of the fantasy in the bud.

He reviews. 6 months off of his bike.

He reviews. 50 points already. A baby. Blue eyes and curly hair.

“Marc, I know this is sudden, and it is hard to think clearly.” No it’s not, Marc thinks, a little distantly.

“—But I also know you’re in pain, and we do need to get you into surgery, so I need to know what you want us to do.”

He looks up at Dr. Mir. He swallows. He’s never been one to avoid what scares him.

He goes with his gut.

“I’m keeping it.” He says with conviction.

Tomorrow, Marc will either stay like Andrea asked, because it’s better for him, because he isn’t strong enough to swim back to Spain yet, but soon, soon, or he won’t.

“Dovi,” he says clumsily, in his lure voice, mimicry gone from foreign language to comfortable, almost natural. “Dovi.”

Andrea catches a blur of white and orange. He freezes, flinches, blood drumming wetly in his temples, on his throat. But Marc’s tail stays there, brushing against his legs—coarse scales on fine, animal fur. It doesn’t wrap, doesn’t tug. Andrea lets out a funny noise, taut.

He can feel his pulse on the tips of his fingers.

“Are you excited?” He asks—fills the silence. His voice sounds strained.

Marc mouths along the words, stares at him unblinkingly. It can be difficult, trying to talk with him. Easier to shoot every question he can come up with, make them yes or no, than watch Marc get frustrated with himself, with language, with humans. He gets impatient fast, having to untangle what he feels.

Andrea is fishing for a new word, another question—

“Yes.” Marc nods, exaggerated, an even clumsier mimicry. Andrea shouldn’t—he absolutely shouldn’t—but he laughs, and he forgets to be afraid for half a heartbeat, this golden giddiness bubbling in his chest.

“Yeah. Me too.”

And it’s the mindfuck of Andrea’s life, same as it was a couple months ago when they met—that he gets to watch the human jolt of Marc’s expression. His twitching eyebrows, the hunch in his shoulders. He’s never gotten around discovering what it means—what he’s thinking when Andrea says home and I’ll help you and you won’t have to stay.

Sometimes—

Andrea stops dead on his tracks. For a marine biologist, he’s always been practical. Prides himself on little, but certainly that.

Marc blinks, finally. Extends his clawed hand to him. The tail petting his legs halts.

I’m going to get killed. He’s had that exact same thought every day since the carabinieri called him—sure, it was the CUFAA; he got fucking spooked anyway—and said they had a problem. Since he looked at Marc in a shitty, cramped tank and got drenched for his troubles of being civil. It rattles in his head, the stuff on Marc’s file, the stuff that he put on Marc’s file.

Mesocarnivore Hypercarnivore with a cultural preference for human flesh glares at him in stark black letters. Ambush hunter. Strict do not approach warnings through all of Spain, and twice as many since he tried to kill every single one of his handlers in Italy.

Andrea shrugs off his shirts, shimmies out of his rolled-up jeans, the cuffs damp. When he grabs Marc’s hand, the claws wrap gently around his wrist’s fragile skin. He gets a final lungful before he’s pushed down.

It’s dark, really dark, only flashes of Marc’s bright tail—the whole fucking nine-or-so feet of it—in the corners of his vision, tightening around them both, bracketing him in. The animal part of Andrea’s brain, the one that knows that it shouldn’t be underwater, is certain that he’s going to die here and now if he doesn’t break loose.

He makes himself stay in place. Even—especially—when Marc crowds against him, right there, his abyss black eyes and the wild flop of dark curls all he can see.

Then—the teeth.

Andrea hisses, precious air spilling from him. Except Marc doesn’t bite or tear him apart limb by limb. He’s smiling, Andrea realizes, with a crooning, self-satisfied relief that almost pulls a manic laugh of his dry, constricting throat. It’s smaller and more careful than what he does when he’s trying to scare people, remind them that animals show teeth for a reason.

His teeth are still very white and very sharp, of course.

Whiter and sharper the closer he gets. They’d be breathing the same air if Andrea were breathing, Marc’s nose brushing against his own, the knife-sharpness of his claws pressed against the tenderness of his nape. One slip, accident or not—

Marc is smiling.

Marc is kissing him.

Andrea stamps on the urge to make a noise, keening and thin—can’t waste the oxygen it’d take. His entire body prickles. Might be fear, might be a fishhook of sheer, red-hot want pulling on his guts. His head is spinning, feels light already.

It’s chaste—cautious, no tongue, Marc’s mouth oddly soft and docile against his own. Andrea’s chest aches, a slow-building twinge, but less than knowing he doesn’t get to keep this. Tomorrow, Marc—reckless, kept in place for too long, so fucking reckless—will probably swim off, and Andrea will understand why sailors go mad for a sea they can’t have in that many stories.

They kiss once, twice, thrice. Marc’s tail has pulled his legs together, rough-edged, unyielding like a steel band. His claws hold his jaw in place, and he’s an earnest, cruel, beautiful thing—pulling Andrea in again and again and again. He laughs, and the sound carries perfectly. Loud, honking, shameless. Mundane and ugly, rather than his usual silversweet voice.

The hurt in his chest grows teeth, bites deep. It’s a razor-edged pressure that goes nowhere, builds and builds and builds. Becomes his entire self.

Andrea tries to swim up. Marc doesn’t move an inch, lures him in for another kiss. Hungry, with the threat of teeth on his bottom lip. He can’t tell the darkness of the water from the dark spots glaring in his vision, Marc’s face smudged to a tanned blur. His eyes sting with salt.

When he insists on it, though, Marc takes them both to the surface. Faster than he could’ve done, in a single stroke.

It keeps hurting, even when he sucks in air greedily, one time, ten, more. The pain dulls like it came in—lazy waves. Marc watches him through his flailing, the artful boredom that he yielded against people shattered in the wicked gleam of his grin. Through the pound of blood in Andrea’s ears, in his half breathless delirium, he thinks pretty and doesn’t regret it.

“Dovi,” he giggles.

DoviDoviDovi, like his name is precious, a pearl.

Andrea chuckles, then can’t stop laughing. He feels scraped raw, golden, invincible, pissed off. It’s tangled, knotted in his throat. He keeps realizing those things that don’t add up. One, that Marc’s pool is deep—has to be, he’s a big, bad apex predator, needs his space, and Andrea hadn’t cared about that when he got in. Two, he isn’t swimming, not anymore, and it’s Marc keeping him above water.

Three, he’s hard, filling up against the heavy, scratchy fabric of his wet underwear.

Which—it’s funny. He laughs a lot more, until he stops. Embarrassment coils around his insides, because he shouldn’t. You don’t get hard over something that is a protected species in over 150 countries. Or—and it’s not any better, it just sounds less like Andrea is getting freaky with the aquarium sharks—you don’t get hard over someone you have total control over.

Marc is staring at him, dead-eyed, intense.

“Dovi.” He’d told Marc he didn’t need to use his name that often. He likes saying it, apparently. Andrea’s cock twitches. “I am very nice.”

He scoffs. There’s a smile twisting his lips, which is unfortunate, but he still scoffs.

“No, you aren’t.”

Marc beams at him, crashes them together. Andrea is balanced on the edge of his tail, on his silky soft fins. He flails once, manages to right himself. His raised eyebrows are pointed, serious.

“I am,” he insists, “I do not drown you.”

Andrea is halfway to really? when it crashes over him, a new, clammy wave of fear—this is Marc being uncharacteristically nice. Gentle. Hypercarnivore with a cultural preference for human flesh echoes, gunshot loud in his thoughts.

He chokes on a short cry. His legs fall open, a little, and Marc wedges himself between them. Plasters them together torso to torso. He’s hot—Andrea knows that, always knew. The sudden, actual heat makes him jolt into Marc anyway. Drags his clothed cock against the fine, soft scales of his waist, and it’s not even good, but—Christ.

“Can still eat me,” he pants. It sounds stupid, awkward.

“No, not that either.”

Andrea isn’t sure if Marc knows what being hard means—he can go without digging into the odd stretch of years he spent with Valentino, then trying his best to kill Valentino. There’s this intensity to him, though. Acute, pitiless when he fidgets against him, watching Andrea’s mouth open and close dizzily.

Also, at some point, being scared should kick in—should stop making him feel hot, and sweaty, and starved. It doesn’t.

God, alright.

This is happening. In real time. To him.

“I am nice to you.” After a beat, with Andrea shaking like he has water in his ears: “Now.”

He waits, strange, focused—the unflinching gaze of the flesh-eating monster that Andrea for some fucking reason vowed to help. Only dives under when he nods.

There are claws running along his sides, nowhere near as mean as they could be. The pain comes in flash—settles below his skin, warm, good, actually. Unfortunate for his sanity. Andrea shudders, blooms with goosebumps, freezes from the waist up. Marc flattens his palms against his stomach, his arms, everywhere he can reach to feel the raised hair, the layer of clammy sweat.

Andrea is wrong in the head, fear of death tangled with the fear of Marc stopping—his wires crossed somewhere low in his stomach, in his cock. He closes his mouth with a click of teeth, harsh, or he’ll start drooling.

He catches the glint of Marc’s eyes when he looks up—having a little too much fun with this. With him.

Marc takes his claws off his body. There’s a groan building in his throat, impatient, frustrated—it peters off to a disbelieving, dry scoff when he catches torn pieces of fabric floating in the water.

Andrea can’t tell what expression he’s making, has to reach down to feel it by hand. Marc’s eyebrows waggle over-dramatically under his touch, a face that’s no less ridiculous just because he can’t see it.

“You think you are funny,” he deadpans.

 “Yep,” Marc pops the p obnoxiously—Andrea hears it crystal-clear.

Maybe it’s in his head. Maybe it’s not. The one time Marc tried to explain the finer points of mermaid luring to him, he’d ended up pinned to the floor by a couple of interns—had been trying to drown himself, and Marc went flat against the corner of his tank, wild-eyed, snarling. Andrea knew with the certainty of a miracle he’d been a bit scared under that bristle.

By hand again he watches the serious, flat line of Marc’s lips, the frown on his forehead. He’s scheming—could be as harmless as getting his research notes wet, as gory as tearing his femoral artery open. Andrea has sweat on his hairline, his back, his chest.

He tugs on Marc’s insistently until he comes up, scowling.

“You have to be careful with me.”

Marc tilts his head to the side—like he doesn’t understand. He does. Has to. Andrea can’t describe vulnerability and fragility to a creature who has neither with his cock pulsing heavily between his legs, the urgency of dangerdangerdanger making him shake.

So he taps two fingers against the corner of Marc’s worrisome, deceptive lips. He opens sweetly, on command, and Andrea needs to breathe—needs to not linger on that. Stares at the ceiling above to calm down, the white lights burning bright outlines into his retina.

He traces the sharpness of Marc’s front teeth, the canines. He keeps the pressure light—skimming, really. The skin breaks anyway, floods Marc’s mouth with a trickle of his blood. The moment it happens skews revelatory. Marc makes this noise, inhuman, melodic. Doesn’t bother with the pretense of speech.

His hand clutches at Andrea’s wrist, keeps it in place.

“Careful,” he gasps—reminding, pleading, no difference.

Marc nods once, lets his fingers slip out. His scowl softened, but his jaw is locked in place under the pad of his thumb. Tense. Calculating. He dives again with a croon that he guesses is meant to sound comforting.

Andrea wonders—idly—if he should start praying.

And chokes on the spit overflowing inside his mouth.

It’s rougher than a human tongue. Hot—he keeps expecting for Marc to be cold for some reason, and the shock of his warmth keeps socking him on the jaw, has Andrea reeling. Rounded tip. Funny way to discover that the warnings of him having a devil’s tricks are bitter, make-believe stories.

Andrea can’t swallow a high-pitched moan.

Or how it dissolves into a whine, a flinch. It’s—freaky. Too long. Way too long. And it’s wrapping around the head of his cock, all of it, then another inch or two. Andrea keeps catching those flashes, dusky-pink. Has to stop looking, or—or—

“Uhg.” The noise is punched out of him. Eloquent as always.

He wants—absurdly—to laugh. Can’t make his body quit spasming long enough for that.

Marc starts moving his head, petting Andrea’s length. It’s slow, awkward—the pump of a fist on an odd angle. Except it’s his tongue. His fucked up, too long, animal tongue.

There are noises. Shrill, strangled—suspiciously close to evisceration instead of bliss. Andrea realizes they’re coming from him but can’t wrangle his body back into his control. His ears ring. He clings to Marc’s tail, buries his nails on the knobs of stiff scales. Solid, harsh, more real than whatever the fuck is happening to him.

He shouldn’t be hard, is the thing. The water hasn’t warmed up one bit, and Marc’s tongue is—too much, coarse like sandpaper. More pain than pleasure. But Andrea is, of course he is. Can feel his pulse on his cock. Drool drips down his chin.

Marc strokes him. It’s sluggish, unhurried—Andrea trembles to not move, thighs shaking where they’re bracketing the creature between them.

He stays there, on the head, again-again-again with short jerks of his head, scraping his tongue on the vein running on the underside of his cock until Andrea could swear that every single one of his nerve endings are there, being scraped raw.

“Marc,” he hisses. His feet twitch uselessly, kick tiny waves.

Marc hums—must be that. The vibrations have him jittery like an addict, moaning. Andrea’s arms quiver to keep him still and upright. An urgent, wordless sound froths in his mouth, but Marc’s tail surges, more of it, pressed against the small of his back and around it, keeping him straight.

In place. Pinned. If they go under—

They don’t. There’s only Marc, everywhere. Andrea goes boneless against him, needs to be held. His hands scramble hopelessly against the blur of white and orange around him, settle.

Andre lets himself sink into all of that. It’s too much, a legit out of body experience, and it hurts—the kind of pain that dulls him, halfway to meditation. His punch-drunk desperation narrows the whole world to the wet, rough, hot drag of Marc’s tongue, mean on his tip until he starts rocking into it, those tortured, helpless twitches of his hips. He becomes lax against the feeling.

Time grows liquid around him. Meaningless.

It’s—fucking intense.

He shoulders his way closer, spreads Andrea’s thighs he can fit right between them, plastered against his front, the coil on hair on his groin. And his claws—

Andrea jolts, snaps back into his head with a full-body spasm. Marc’s claws are there, right fucking there, on his balls, playing with them. He freezes, strains to not move again. When he looks, a pathetic huff knocked out of him, he meets the pitiless glint of Marc’s eyes spearing him through.

Marc keeps toying with him. Rolls his balls together, curious, and runs the tip of his black claws over the paper-thin skin there. His other hand digs into Andrea’s knee—stops him from closing his legs. He chokes on a whimper, reedy, warbled, the pounding of blood in his ears closer to hammer blows.

“Wait,” he says—tries to. “Wait, wait, wait, wait.”

There’s no waiting. Marc—apex predator, cruel to his bones—smells weakness, an opening for his ambush. He tightens his tongue right around the tip, oversensitive, sore, and pain hits him like a knife to the guts. Andrea’s vision sparks white, ears ringing, chokes on a moan that tastes an awful lot please and brine.

It's the worst orgasm of his life. The best. Agony and bliss wiping his thoughts away.

Marc put him on the edge of his pool, Andrea finds out, once the adrenaline dwindles to a dull thrum. His feet are inside, swaying to the current of his swishing tail.

He swallows. Has to do it again. His limbs are stiff, uncooperative—leaden weights, more than he can handle. Like this, Andrea isn’t sure if he’s in pain anymore. His nerves might as well be in overdrive, overheating. Sensations come back to him one by one with a delay, in the quiet of the aquarium after dark.

“You’re the worst,” he says without bite. Can’t muster any.

Marc chuckles—it takes Andrea a while to hit him on the side with a trembling leg for that smugness. It’s a weak blow, though. Only makes Marc chuckle a little more—braying, brazen.

“Dovi,” he sing-songs, the syllables familiar in their oddness.