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you eat, too. he finds this out on the second day when you stir from stasis and croak "food" before dropping back under. so he brings you things, stolen from wanderer caches, gathered from levels where the Backrooms produce edible matter.

you eat in half-conscious handfuls, chewing with your eyes closed, and he watches your jaw work like he's witnessing a small miracle. entities don't eat. he doesn't eat. but you do. not much, not often, but the act of it fascinates him.

and you sleep. not the stasis entities use for healing (the functional shutdown, the frequency dimming to conserve power) but something deeper. with a pattern to it. your breathing slowing to a steady rhythm. your eyes moving behind closed lids. your body twitching, small involuntary movements, your hands curling and uncurling in the blankets.

your frequency doesn't go dark the way it should in stasis. it shifts. dims and brightens in waves, cycling through patterns that look, to his ancient senses, less like an entity powering down and more like a mind dreaming.

entities don't dream. entities don't have subconscious processing. entities don't curl into a ball and make small, soft sounds in their sleep and pull the blankets tighter and nuzzle into the nearest source of warmth.

you do all of these things. and on the second night, with your face pressed into his borrowed chest and your borrowed hands gripping his shirt and your frequency cycling through those strange dreaming patterns, he lies awake and wonders.

what are you?

you're entity. truly. the power in your core is real and growing and undeniable. your frequency is genuine entity frequency, born from these walls, resonating with the deep power of the Backrooms. the howlers that tore into you bled the same black. you heal through stasis. you can cross between levels. you're real.

but there's something else, too.

an undercurrent in your frequency that he's never encountered in any entity, in three thousand years of encountering them. a warmth that shouldn't exist. a moral compass that has no evolutionary purpose. an instinct to protect fragile things instead of consuming them. a human shape built with a detail and a love that goes beyond mimicry into something closer to memory. and the sleeping. the eating. the warmth. the dreaming.

you're entity, but you're something else too. and he doesn't know what the something else is and the not-knowing keeps him wondering while you sleep against his chest and chirp in frequencies he can't quite translate.

on the third morning you finally sit up. stretch. your human shape holds clean and strong. the wound is a thin line along your ribs.

you blink, looking around the nest, then look at him. at the blankets. the warm lit walls. your clicking goes rapid as the situation assembles itself in your waking mind: you're in entity 0's nest. in his blankets. wearing his scent. again.

"I need to go."

he's on his back, hands behind his head, watching you from the blankets with that half-lidded, lazy expression that makes your clicking unsteady. completely at ease. his borrowed body stretched out long and loose, one knee bent, the amber light tracing the line of his jaw and the ridge of his collarbones.

cocky even horizontal. maybe especially horizontal.

"no you don't."

you stand. start pacing the perimeter of the nest, testing the walls, checking the exits. open, all of them, you can feel the corridors beyond bending away from level 0 into the upper levels. your bare feet pad across the warm carpet anyway, your body moving with the restless, stalking energy of a caged creature.

he watches you from the blankets, his eyes tracking your movement with lazy interest, his blue gaze following you from wall to wall. never lifting his head from his hands. never moving.

"I'm healed," you begin. "I can—"

"you're at sixty percent. maybe." his eyes tracking the line on your ribs as you pace past. "your frequency is still thin at the edges. if you leave now and run into anything above a faceling, you're in trouble."

you turn at the far wall, stalk back, your jaw tight, your clicking sharp with displeasure.

"I've fought worse at lower power."

"and that's exactly how you ended up unconscious on the floor with a hole in your side." his lazy drawl goes flat. "stay. heal properly. level 0 is the safest place in the backrooms. nothing touches you here."

you bristle, stop pacing, turning to face him. he's still on his back, hands behind his head, watching you with those blue eyes. not a single muscle tensed. the picture of relaxation, and somehow the relaxation is more intimidating than any display of force would be.

"I'm not your pet," you hiss. "you can't keep me—"

"the exits are open. every single one." the grin again, his head tilting at a teasing angle. even lying down, he somehow manages the head tilt. "or we can do the other option."

you know what the other option is. he outlined it in graphic detail two days ago while pinning you to the nest on your stomach.

the hiss that leaves your throat could peel wallpaper.

"option one. under protest."

"noted," he hums playfully. "welcome home."

you throw the nearest pillow at his face. he catches it without looking, without even moving his other hand from behind his head, and you scowl.

you resume pacing and he resumes watching, visibly amused, his eyes following you back and forth across the nest with open, unhurried appreciation.

the way you move, the coiled energy in your limbs, your bare feet on his carpet. your hair still messy from three days of stasis. he could watch you pace for centuries. the frequency equivalent of a cat tracking a bird through a window.

"the wanderers," you say suddenly, stopping mid-pace. "if anything happens to them while I'm here—"

"I rearranged the corridors."

you turn toward him, staring.

"while you were healing. restructured the level 0 exit routes that feed into the upper levels. the junctions on this level that connect to 2 through 5. I can't control what happens up there but I can control how wanderers get to and from the safe zones through my territory." he examines his borrowed fingernails. still on his back. still maddeningly casual. "shortened the paths between safe rooms. sealed two howler dens that border my exits. rerouted the main junction on level 0 that feeds into corridor 3 so it bypasses the dead zone entirely." a pause. "your little humans should be able to navigate my level without getting eaten for a while."

you stare at him, searching for the trap. he stares back. his borrowed blue eyes warm and daring you to find a trick.

"why?" you whisper lastly.

the cockiness softens for a fraction of a second. "because you clearly care about them, and I care about—" he catches himself, clears his throat despite not needing to, because it's a human habit. "the corridors were inefficient anyway."

you know he's lying.

you move slowly across the nest, stalking closer, eyes fixed on his.

his breathing doesn't change and his body doesn't tense at your approach. his hands stay locked behind his head, eyes half-lidded. but his frequency shifts underneath the casual pose. going warm, going alert.

very still in the way a predator goes still when something interesting approaches.

you climb onto him, straddle his hips, still squinting at him. his hands stay behind his head but his eyes close. the picture of disinterest. a three-thousand-year-old apex predator pretending a newborn entity straddling his hips is so unremarkable it doesn't warrant opening his eyes.

you chirp. a small, curious, rising note. a question pressed directly against his frequency.

nothing. his face smooth. eyes closed. the ghost of a smirk at the corner of his mouth.

you chirp again. louder. prodding his frequency with yours. the entity equivalent of tapping someone on the shoulder. when that gets no response, you lean down and press your borrowed nose against his jawline and sniff. loudly. obnoxiously. sucking in his scent with exaggerated thoroughness.

one eye cracks open. the blue of it bright and amused. a growl rolls through his chest, low and playful, vibrating up through your thighs where they bracket his ribs. the frequency of it says: careful, little one.

you reel back, your clicking spiking with surprise, and then the grin spreads across your face, warm and delighted, because you poked the ancient thing and the ancient thing growled back playfully.

"you really did that," you say after a beat, softer, settling your weight on his hips. your head tilts, studying him. "rearranged your own territory. for them."

"for you." his eye still open. the other still closed.

you huff. "for them."

both eyes open now, his hands coming out from behind his head to rest on your thighs. his thumbs trace idle circles there. "...fine. for them. a little."

another chirp. warmer. endlessly pleased, and your body relaxes against his. you rub your cheek along his jaw shyly. scent-marking. your purr starts tentative and testing, and his hands tighten on your thighs in response, his purr answering yours. low and rolling and satisfied.

and you don't leave.

you stay for a week. then two. then the counting stops mattering. your scent woven into every blanket, your temperature shaping the air, your stolen shoes kicked off beside the entrance where he trips over them every time. you don't need them, but wanderers wear them, and so you've taken to wearing them.

the first morning you're at full strength, you eat an apple you stole from a wanderer's pack. sitting cross-legged in the nest, your teeth crunching through the skin, juice on your chin. he's propped on his elbows across the nest, watching you with curious intensity.

"does it taste like something?" he asks.

you lick the juices, humming. "it tastes like an apple."

"what does an apple taste like?"

you hold it out, your head tilting. he takes it. bites. chews. his face flips through a complicated series of expressions.

"...wet," he concludes with vague hint of disgust.

you beam. "that's one word for it."

he hands it back, watches you eat the rest with his head tilted and his purr low. juice run down your chin and you wipe it with the back of your hand, licking your wrist and his eyes track the movement of your tongue, his purr dropping an octave.

you're eating in his nest. being nourished in his space. the provider instinct hitting a chord he didn't know he had.

you start rearranging things after that. at first it's subtle. a blanket folded differently. a pillow moved three inches to the left. but it escalates into a full-scale redecoration of his nest and he watches from the corner of the room with a growing, helpless purr because you are nesting.

you're making his space yours. pulling blankets off the walls he hung them on and layering them on the floor in an order that makes sense only to you. building a raised section in the corner (your corner, claimed within days, marked with your scent) with a calculated combination of softness and warmth that makes him want to roll in it.

"that's my blanket," he drawls, watching you drag a large blue one across the nest.

"it's in the wrong place."

"it's been in that place for six hundred years."

he's lying through his teeth, but you don't need to know that.

you scoff. "and it's been wrong the whole time."

he watches you tuck it into the corner with a proprietary pat, your borrowed hands smoothing the fabric. your clicking going soft and satisfied. domestic. content. and his chest fills with a feeling he can't name. a cracking, expanding, warm feeling.

"come here," he says, propping on his elbows, watching you pad around rearranging pillows for the third time.

his body rests long and loose in the blankets, one knee bent, the warm light gilding the line of his throat, his voice gone low and drawling.

you don't go, huffing quietly under your breath. you tilt your chin, walk the other direction with your shoulders back and spine straight, strutting past his line of sight with a deliberate sway. your hips moving in a way that makes his frequency coil with want.

you don't even look at him as you pass.

his purr stutters, eyebrows climbing upwards. his eyes track your hips with an intensity that borders on physical contact.

"come here."

another huff. you perch on the far side of the nest, your back to him, and begin grooming your borrowed hair with exaggerated disinterest. tilting your head to expose the line of your throat (you know exactly what you're doing, the exposed throat is entity language for available, and showing it to him while simultaneously ignoring him is the cruellest thing you've done since you bit his ear).

a frequency rolls off you: no. busy. not interested.

his jaw tightens, his hands curling in the blankets. because you're right there. ten feet away in his nest, smelling like warmth and lightning, baring your throat at him while also pretending he doesn't exist. the combination of invitation and rejection is making his frequency pulse, hot and tight and grinding.

"you're being mean," he accuses, his voice rough.

you examine your borrowed fingernails. hum. the frequency equivalent of am I? hadn't noticed.

he laughs, fond and disbelieving.

and then he does it. the low frequency, rumbling and tonal, vibrating through the floor and up the blankets and into the base of your spine. a mating call. the real one. designed by three thousand years of predatory evolution to trigger a response in a compatible frequency.

your back goes rigid. your thighs press together, your clicking skipping. you absolutely do not turn around. you pick up a blanket and fold it with shaking hands and fold it again, and he can see you trembling, visibly, even as you try to force it back.

you grab a pillow, march to the opposite corner, and burrow under the blankets. deep. hiding from the frequency still rolling through the floor.

his laughter follows you. "playing hard to get in my own nest. you wound me."

a muffled hiss from the pile.

he sends another pulse. headier. lower. you squirm under the blankets. he finally takes pity and lets the frequency fade, but his satisfied, crooked grin doesn't.

he starts peacocking properly after that. leaning against doorframes with his borrowed body positioned at angles he's carefully studied from wanderers (the ones who attract mates: weight on one hip, arms crossed, chin tilted).

he adjusts the suit, too. sharpens the jaw by a fraction, makes the shoulders slightly broader. ruffles the sandy hair until it falls across his forehead in a way he's calculated to make your frequency spike.

"new look?" you ask dryly, walking past, deliberately unimpressed.

"just making adjustments." he turns so the light catches the adjusted jawline. "thoughts?"

you peer at him from the corner of your eye and scrunch your nose. "you look like you're trying too hard."

"is it working?" he wonders.

your eyes narrow and you say nothing, glaring.

it's working. your frequency told him that three seconds ago. your pupils told him before that. he grins and you hiss loudly in response, brushing past him while he laughs.

he finds excuses to be in your line of sight more and more as days go by.

stretched across doorframes, leaning on walls, occupying whatever surface puts him between you and wherever you're going. always casual. always with that half-lidded, lazy, I-have-all-the-time-in-the-universe expression that makes your clicking go unsteady.

he knows exactly what he's doing, and the knowing makes you want to bite him. repeatedly.

one afternoon he's sitting in the nest, reading, his borrowed back against the wall and his long legs stretched out in front of him when you find him.

the golden light catches the line of his jaw (the adjusted one, the slightly sharper one), his sandy hair falling across his forehead. his mouth parts slightly as he reads, his forearms bare where he's pushed his sleeves up and the tendons shifting when he turns a page.

you watch him from the corridor entrance for a full minute. the borrowed throat. the collarbones visible above his neckline. the scar you left, healed into a ridge of tissue he wears openly. the way his frequency hums low and content, filling the nest with his deep mineral scent.

and then you pounce.

from behind, your body hitting his back, arms locking around his neck, legs wrapping around his waist.

he drops the book and your teeth find his ear, biting down (not hard, just enough to feel the cartilage flex) and a sound leaves him that's half surprise and half something much warmer.

"you—" he starts, but you're already clinging. your face buried in the crook of his neck, your arms tight around his narrow shoulders, your legs hooked through his.

latched on like a creature that's caught its prey and intends to eat it.

he laughs, low and delighted. his hands coming up to grip your forearms where they're locked across his chest. "well. hello."

you bite his ear again. he rolls. a smooth, easy motion, twisting his borrowed body so you tumble off his back and onto the blankets. he follows you down, pinning you flat, his weight settling over you smoothly. his hands catch your wrists beside your head and his grin is wide and crooked, far too close.

you hiss, teeth bared, clicking rapidly. but the hiss is bright with play, not threat, and he can hear the difference by now. your body squirms under his, your frequency buzzing with happy energy at being caught.

you flip him. plant your foot against his hip and twist, using the momentum to reverse the pin.

your hands on his shoulders, your weight on his chest. he lets you. you can feel him letting you (the give in his muscles, the looseness in his grip, the way his body yields instead of resisting) and the letting is its own kind of intimacy.

the oldest predator alive, going soft under a newborn's hands.

you look at him, then. your face close to his, your eyes tracing his features with so much intensity, it makes his frequency flutter.

you take his chin between your thumb and forefinger. pinch. tilt his face to the left. then right. studying the human mask the way you'd study a new corridor or a new problem.

your thumb traces his brow. the ridge of bone above his eye. the crease between his eyebrows that forms when he's concentrating. the corner of his eye where he added faint lines because the wanderers he studied had them when they smiled.

"you're staring," he says, his voice pitched to tease, but softer than usual, more breath in it. "I know the suit is impressive but I didn't realise my true form was so ugly you'd be obsessed with the borrowed one."

you don't laugh like he expected you to. your thumb traces down the bridge of his nose, the line of his jaw. your expression isn't playful anymore. it's focused and open, stripped of the usual guards in place.

"your true form is beautiful," you say with quiet sincerity. "I've seen seen it, and it's—" your clicking goes soft. a warm, awed frequency. "it's the most vast thing I've ever perceived."

he goes still beneath you, the teasing draining from his face. his eyes go wide. because he's been seen by hundreds and every single one of them screamed or broke or died but you just called him beautiful with your thumb on his cheekbone and your weight on his chest.

"but this face." your fingers trace his lower lip, his upper, the cupid's bow. all done with deep concentration, like you're trying to figure something out yet it remains out of reach. "there's something about this one. the details of it. the way you built it." your thumb brushes across his brow again, smoothing the crease. "I like it."

"yeah?" barely a rumble. his voice has lost every trace of cockiness. just a raw, quiet question. his frequency open and unguarded beneath yours.

"yeah."

his eyes flutter when your fingertips trace his temple. his jaw. the soft skin behind his ear. his purr starts, low and rolling, deeply pleased, vibrating through your thighs where they bracket his ribs. his lashes brush his cheekbones as his eyes drift shut, his face tipping into your touch the way a plant tips toward light.

you lean close slowly, your mouth hovering over his. close enough to feel the cool of his breath against your lips. close enough that your noses brush. his eyes stay closed, his purr deepening, lips parting in anticipation. waiting.

you hold there. one inch. his frequency reaches for yours, warm and eager, trusting.

and you pull back.

off him, and across the nest in an instant. everything about you going brittle in a blink. you burrow into the blanket pile on the far side, pulling pillows over your head, cocooning yourself in fabric. your frequency going small and shy and rapid.

silence. a long one. his purr dying into confused, bereft silence.

and then a growl. low and playful and hungry. the sound of a predator who just had something sweet in his mouth and lost it. the blankets around you vibrate with the frequency of it. he's not upset, you realise. just very, very eager for a second attempt.

"pretty, unruly thing," he says, his voice rough. "you have no idea how dangerous you are."

muffled clicking from the blanket pile. the entity equivalent of a nervous giggle.

he doesn't chase you into the blankets. not yet. but he moves to the edge of the pile and lies on his side, putting his hand flat against the fabric where he can feel the warmth of you radiating through. his clicking goes low and patient with wanting. come out. come back. let me taste that almost-kiss.

you don't come out, but your hand finds his through the blanket, your fingers lacing through his through layers of fabric. holding on.

he holds back, his thumb tracing circles on your knuckle through the cotton. his purr restarts again slower, patient.

he can wait. he has three thousand years of patience.

but he's going to get that kiss, and both of you know it.

the flirting after that is relentless. weaponised. a slow, escalating campaign of provocation from both sides that makes the ambient temperature of level 0 climb by two degrees.

he gets strategic about proximity first.

sitting beside you in the nest so his borrowed thigh presses against yours, warm through the fabric. walking behind you through corridors close enough that you can feel his breath on the back of your neck. reaching past you for things he doesn't need, his chest brushing your shoulder, his scent flooding your senses at close range.

every contact plausibly accidental. every contact calculated to the millimetre.

you retaliate.

you begin stretching in the nest. a long, slow, spine-arching stretch that makes your borrowed shirt ride up over your stomach and his clicking stutter. you pretend not to notice. you eat a peach he brought you from level 11, the juice running down your chin and your wrist, and you lick it clean with your eyes closed, a satisfied hum vibrating in your chest. he grips the blanket beneath him so hard the fabric tears.

"you slept on my side of the nest last night."

he declares this leaning against the doorframe the following morning. that lazy drawl rich with amusement, his body angled against the frame with one shoulder, arms crossed, hair feathered messily over his forehead. the whole posture engineered to make you look.

"I don't have a side," you answer primly.

"you do now. it's my side. you were on it. I had to sleep around you."

you click your tongue, picture of disinterest. "that's your problem."

"it was the best problem I've ever had." his eyes do that slow drag down your body and back up, then, not hiding it even slightly. "you talk in your sleep, by the way."

your clicking goes rapid. "I do not."

"you do. in frequency." the grin sharpens, going dark at the edges, a little mean. "very interesting frequency. I learned a lot."

you throw a bundled up blanket at his head and stomp past him into the corridor. his laughter follows you, warm and delighted but most of all, insufferably smug.

so, you brush past him in the corridor next morning, your body pressing against his a beat longer than the hallway requires. your hand trails across his hip as you pass, and he sucks in a breath through his teeth while you keep walking, your mouth curved.

he reads to you in the nest from a stolen book that evening.

you sit in his lap with your back against his chest, your fingers tracing patterns on his forearm while his voice rumbles through your spine. his arm curled around your waist, his chin resting on your shoulder, the deep mineral scent of him surrounding you.

you turn to look at him at close range, and watch his pupils blow wide when you smile. the blue thins to a ring while his reading voice trails off mid-sentence.

"you're doing that on purpose," he accuses, strained.

you smile innocently. "doing what?"

"existing."

"I'll stop if it bothers you so much," you say, mock-wounded.

he grows, arm tightening around you. "don't you dare."

you hum, satisfied, and turn back to the book, shifting in his lap so your weight settles differently and his hips press against your ass instead. his jaw clenches, his arm tightening even further around your waist. you feel the hard line of him against your lower back and neither of you acknowledges it.

you stay in his lap for another hour while his body stays perfectly still. three thousand years of patience tested by the warmth of your borrowed body in his lap.

"you're evil," he murmurs into your hair after you finally slide off him and pad across the nest, humming.

you glance over your shoulder. "I don't know what you mean."

"you sat in my lap for an hour."

"you offered."

"I offered to read to you."

"and you did. it was very lovely. thank you." you stretch again, hands over your head, the spine-arch appearing. his clicking goes haywire behind you. "goodnight."

you curl up in your corner of the nest with your back to him and your purr low and smug.

he lies on his side of the nest staring at the ceiling with his jaw clenched and his body making its frustration extremely visible through his pants and he thinks: she is going to be the death of me. three thousand years of nothing and this is how I go. defeated by a newborn in my own nest.

you drape yourself across him the next day. your whole body on top of his, chin on his chest, bare feet kicking behind you. your warmth bleeding into his coolness. your scent pressing into his shirt.

he looks up at you, eyes wide and soft and completely unguarded.

"this is unfairly attractive," he says, his hands settling on your lower back, his thumbs tracing circles on your spine through the fabric. "you can't just lie on a person like this."

"you're not a person."

"there should be regulations for entities too."

you bite his chin in response. he groans. a low, vibrating sound that you feel through your entire chest where it's pressed against his. you bite it again. harder. his hands tighten on your lower back and his hips shift beneath yours and you feel the response, grinning against his chin and his eyes go dark.

and then you're off him. sprinting for the corridor while your laughter trails bright as bells behind you.

he's after you before his mind catches up. through corridors, around corners. you glance over your shoulder with a broad grin and slow when he falls behind. speed up when he gets close again.

these chases are different from the ones before.

before, you ran from him. now you run with him. the corridors of level 0 a playground you share, the walls bending for both of you now (that's new, that shouldn't happen, the walls only bend for him, but they're bending for you too, and he files this under terrifying and magnificent). you vault over obstacles he didn't place. you slide through gaps that should be too narrow. your newborn creativity making the chase unpredictable in a way that keeps his ancient instincts firing at full capacity.

he catches you at a junction eventually, arms around your waist from behind, spinning you. you're both laughing. tangled together, his face in your hair, clicking chirps loud from both of you.

yours high and rapid. his low and rolling.

you twist in his arms, facing him. your legs wrap around his waist, and you bite his jaw, playful, sharp. he bites back. and you gasp in outrage, delighted.

and then your mouths find each other. the kiss breathless and giddy.

"caught you," he rasps against your lips.

you scoff. "I let you."

a slight, unfairly attractive grin pulls at one corner of his mouth. "keep telling yourself that."

and then he kisses you again, deeper, making you gasp.

you chase every day after that. sometimes twice a day. burning off the excess energy of two apex predators living in close quarters.

the chases get longer as your power grows, spanning more of level 0, your stamina slowly growing to match his. your frequency keeps getting louder every week, and he has to actually work for the catches now. has to use the corridors, seal exits, herd you into dead ends that close behind you. and even then you find ways out he didn't expect. new tricks. stolen moves. your adaptability outpacing his millennia of experience.

but the chases always end the same way: wrapped together, clicking and purring, grinding against the nearest wall, dissolving from human language into one deeper, all frequency and sound.

no longer alone.

one morning you sit cross-legged in the nest, still buzzing from yesterday's chase when you declare, loudly, "teach me."

he peers at you over his shoulder. "teach you what?"

"to fight. properly. the way you fight."

the grin that spreads across his face is insufferable.

"oh." he stands slowly, rolling his narrow shoulders, cracking his neck with a sound the human body shouldn't make. "oh, you want lessons. from me."

"stop making it weird," you bite out, scowling.

"this is going to be extremely weird. and extremely fun. for me." he circles you. the suit moving with a fluid, predatory grace that makes your frequency prickle. "first things first. everything you've been doing in a fight? wrong."

you bristle. "excuse me?"

"wrong. all of it." he stops in front of you, tilts his head. "you're fast and you're powerful. your raw output is frankly terrifying for a creature your age. but you have absolutely zero technique to go along with it."

"I beat two howlers—"

"you barely beat one howler and got gutted by the second. and I killed both. the reason you got gutted is because you fight like a newborn. you throw yourself at things and hope the impact is enough." his hand snakes out and taps your shoulder. you didn't see it move. "lesson one: you telegraph your attacks three moves in advance. you lead with your frequency. I can feel you winding up from a corridor away."

you glare at him for a second before finally muttering, "so what do I do instead?"

"you mask your frequency before you strike. like this." his frequency drops to zero. vanishes. he's standing right in front of you and your senses register nothing. no presence, no power, no entity. empty air. and then he's behind you, his hand on the back of your neck and his mouth at your ear. "like that."

your clicking goes rapid. he's right there and you didn't feel him move. not even slightly. which makes you realise just how little of his true power you've ever seen.

"that's not fair," you say. "you've been doing this for three thousand years."

"which is exactly why you should be learning from me instead of improvising." he steps back, crossing his arms. "your potential is absurd. if you had even basic technique to go with the raw output you'd be—" he pauses, his expression shifting from cocky to genuinely pleased. "you'd be extraordinary."

you angle your chin away loftily. "I'm already extraordinary."

he chuckles, and taps your nose with his finger. you try to bite it, so he taps your nose again. "you're already a barely-trained wrecking ball." a pause. "that bites."

the training is daily after that. he shows you how to mask your frequency, how to feint, how to use a corridor's layouts against a larger opponent.

he's a good teacher. patient in a way that surprises you, the cockiness banking into focus when he demonstrates technique. but he's not gentle about the contact. he pins you when you leave an opening. sweeps your legs when your stance is wrong. puts you on the floor with a thud and leans over you: "again."

you snarl up at him from the floor, teeth bared, clicking vicious. "I hate you."

"I know." his eyes half-lidded, his grin crooked and warm. "you're gorgeous when you're angry. now do it again."

and the thing is, he means it. every time you hiss at him, every time you bare your teeth and your clicking goes vicious and your eyes blaze with frustration, his frequency goes hot.

your viciousness doesn't repel him. it attracts him. draws him closer. the way your borrowed lip curls when you snarl. the way your body coils before a strike, every muscle taut with contained violence. the way you look at him after he pins you, furious and breathing hard, like you want to kill him and climb him in equal measure.

"you like it when I'm mean to you," you say one afternoon, flat and accusatory, lying on the floor where he put you.

his knee digs into your back, his hand on your wrist.

"I like you," he says, his thumb tracing a circle on the inside of your wrist. "the mean is simply a bonus."

you twist free, catch his ankle, pulling. he goes down and you're on him, pinning, your hands on his shoulders and your face in his face, your clicking so rapid it sounds like static. "I could tear you apart."

"I believe you." his eyes are black at the edges, his body completely relaxed beneath yours. his voice a low, rough purr. "you're welcome to try."

and he's so infuriatingly good at this. his body moving through combat stances with thousands of years of muscle memory, every motion fluid and deadly, and the display of such easy competence is doing things to your frequency you refuse to acknowledge.

the way his forearms flex when he blocks your strike. the way his eyes go sharp and focused. the way he grins, dark and pleased, when you almost catch him. the way he pins you face-down and holds your wrists behind your back and murmurs "you're leaving your left side open, feel the gap?" and his mouth is right at your ear and you're supposed to be learning defensive positioning, and all you can think about is his weight on your back.

"you're distracted," he says, still pinning you, his voice amused.

you crack your neck trying to bite him. "I'm analysing."

"you're staring at my forearms."

"I'm analysing your forearms," you hiss. "since you use them on me. frequently."

he hums thoughtfully. "they're very effective forearms. now focus."

you execute a perfect frequency-mask on the fourth week. strike from total silence. catch his ribs with an elbow before he reads you. he staggers and the surprise on his face is genuine, as is his delight.

"you're going to be terrifying," he says fondly that evening. "you're already terrifying, and you're still growing. give it a year. give it ten."

you preen under praise, your chin on his chest. "I'll be the most powerful thing in the backrooms," you declare with utter confidence.

"second most powerful."

you elbow him in the ribs. he grunts, pulling you closer.

"... we'll see," he concedes, his nose brushing against your hair, and you feel his grin against your head.

you find them during a chase.

two corridors past the junction where he almost caught you (your shirt still warm where his fingers grazed it before you twisted free). you're running, laughing, rounding a blind corner at full speed, and you nearly collide with them.

four wanderers. huddled against the wall. a woman gripping two children. a man standing in front of them with a flashlight held like a weapon. their eyes enormous in the low light. their clothes torn. dehydrated, exhausted, the greyish pallor of humans who've been in the backrooms long enough to start losing hope.

you stop so fast your borrowed feet skid on the carpet.

and your whole body changes, the predatory coil unwinding, the playful clicking going silent.

your human shape smooths into warmth and softness and kindness, a shift so complete and so instant that he rounds the corner half a second later with a grin on his face and the grin dies because you're on your knees. talking to the children in a low, gentle voice. your borrowed hand on the woman's arm. your frequency broadcasting safe, safe, I won't hurt you in a register that humans can't hear but can undoubtedly feel.

he leans against the wall, crosses his arms with a scowl.

four. fragile. human. dripping and shaking and taking up space in his corridor. their fear-scent filling the hallway. one of the children is crying. the other is staring at him with round eyes and a trembling lip.

you check them for injuries first. the man has a gash on his forearm (something with claws, level 2 probably). the woman is dehydrated. the children are frightened but unhurt.

you produce a water bottle from somewhere (you've started stashing supplies in his corridors, another thing he pretends not to notice, another way you're colonising his territory) and hand it to the woman. help the man wrap his arm with a strip torn from your own borrowed shirt.

"there's a safe zone on level 2," you say softly. "I can get you to the junction. from there the corridor runs straight. follow the wall on your left. there's a room with a door that locks and supplies inside. stay there until another group finds you."

the woman nods, gripping your hand with a shaky nod.

you look over your shoulder at him. your eyes bright. warm. carrying a very clear message.

he scowls harder, his jaw working, his clicking low and irritable.

you look at him longer. your head tilting. the message intensifying.

"fine." he pushes off the wall, stalks over, his body radiating displeasure. the smallest child (the one with the trembling lip, maybe five, clutching a stuffed rabbit with no ears) looks up at him and the lip trembles harder.

he crouches, the scowl easing by a fraction. he looks at the child and the child stares at him. his borrowed jaw works again and then he picks her up. one arm. gentle despite the scowling, settling her on his hip with an ease that suggests he's seen wanderers handle their young before.

the girl stops trembling, her small hand gripping the collar of his borrowed shirt. she leans her head against his shoulder and her eyes close. she makes a small, exhausted, trusting sound.

his frequency does a quiet thing he's never felt before, burrowed deep.

you walk the group to the junction. him behind you, carrying the child. the other humans staying close to you, keeping as far from him as the corridor allows. they can no doubt feel what he is even through the borrowed shape, some deep mammalian instinct warning them predator, predator, predator.

you guide them to the exit that feeds into level 2. point them toward the safe room. the man thanks you. the woman hugs you. you crouch and say goodbye to the children and the girl in his arms lifts her head from his shoulder and peers up at him.

"thank you," she mumbles shyly, her small hand patting his borrowed cheek.

he grunts, sets her down gently and she toddles to her mother.

and then they're gone. shuffling into the corridor, the sound of their footsteps fading.

silence. the two of you stand in the junction. the ghost of the girl's hand is still on his cheek.

you turn to him, and your face is doing something he's never seen before. soft and bright and proud. proud of him. looking at him like he did something miraculous instead of carrying a child for ten minutes.

you cross the junction in three steps. grab his borrowed face in both hands and kiss him.

hard. thorough. your mouth on his jaw. his cheek. the bridge of his nose. his forehead. back to his mouth, lingering, your lips warm and firm, tasting of gratitude. his eyelids. the corner of his eye. his other cheek. his chin. his mouth again. a barrage of kisses pressed into every surface of his face with a warmth and an urgency that makes his frequency stutter.

"what—" he manages between kisses, his hands finding your waist on instinct.

"you helped them." kiss to his jaw. "you carried that little girl." kiss to his cheekbone. "she put her hand on your face and you let her." kiss to the corner of his mouth, slow, lingering. "you let a five-year-old human pat your cheek."

"she was—it wasn't—" his clicking goes rapid and flustered. "you were looking at me. I was just—"

"you were gentle." you kiss him full on the mouth, deep and wanting, your hands still on his face.

your body presses against his, and his hands tighten on your waist, his teeth aching. because you're being soft. open.

you, the creature that bites and hisses and snarls and runs from him, are being open with him, and the openness is so rare he has to lock every muscle in his body to keep from pinning you against the junction wall and doing things to you that would traumatise any wanderer within three level radius.

you pull back after few more moments, your thumbs tracing his cheekbones, your eyes warm.

he's vibrating. every frequency firing at once. because your mouth was on his face and your voice was fond, and you're touching him gently, your thumbs on his cheekbones. the urge to grab your wrists and spin you against the wall and hike your thigh around his hip and grind into you until you stop being soft and start being loud is so overwhelming his vision blurs.

he bites down on it. swallows the growl. keeps his hands on your waist. gentle. still.

"why?" he asks later, back in the nest. your head on his chest, his fingers in your hair. "why do you care about them so much? the humans."

your clicking goes quiet. your fingers, trace absent patterns on his stomach, still for a moment.

"I just do."

"that's not an answer."

silence. your fingers resuming their tracing. your frequency pulling inward.

"no one should die in a place like this." quiet. your voice carrying a weight that sinks through the words into something older and deeper. "no one should die cold and alone. scared in the dark. no one. not them. not anyone."

his arm tightens around you, his clicking going low and soothing. he doesn't ask. not yet. just holds you while your frequency settles and your fingers resume their tracing on his stomach.

it's during one of your chases that you stumble upon a cat.

three corridors deep in an unmapped section, laughing, listening for his footsteps. you round a corner and nearly trip over a small dark shape.

a cat. black and white, sitting neatly with its tail curled around its paws. amber eyes holding more intelligence than any animal's should.

you drop to your knees. chirp. a greeting-frequency. the cat blinks slowly and a voice enters your head. pure thought, a warm voice brushing like a cat's tail around the ankles.

you're the new one. the one he's been chasing.

your clicking goes rapid with surprise. you've heard about this entity. samantha. psychic.

he's different since you arrived. her tail flicks. quieter. less aggressive. the upper levels have noticed. they say one that is many has taken a mate.

you hiss softly. "I'm not his mate."

no? an unhurried, curious head tilt. interesting. your frequency says otherwise. the whole of level 0 smells like a mating nest. a pause. don't bristle. I think it's good for him. he was cold for a very long time.

your clicking softens. you scratch behind her ears and her purr is feline and warm. physical. you like her. her energy is easy. welcoming. familiar in a way that aches.

"you remind me of someone I used to know," you say quietly, frowning. "before."

before. samantha's eyes go distant. the psychic field shifts, touching your frequency, tasting the edges of your history. her pupils contract. her purr stops abruptly.

silence. a long, heavy one. her amber eyes filling with something you don't want to name.

oh, she murmurs sadly. oh, little one. you were... she stops herself. carefully. the psychic touch withdrawing from the worst of it, pulling back from the deepest rooms. but you can feel what she found there. the shape of it pressing against the space between you. old agony. old fear.

"don't." your clicking sharp. warning.

I won't. she presses against your knee, purring, her small body warm and grounding. I won't look any further. but little one... the things you're carrying. the weight of them. you don't have to carry them alone anymore.

"I'm fine."

you're strong. that's different from fine. her tail curls around your wrist. be gentle with yourself. and let him be gentle with you. he's clumsy about it. territorial and loud, and he'll probably threaten to kill anyone who's ever spoken to you. but he means well. the gentleness is real. trust that. even when your body tells you not to.

your throat tightens. your human shape flickering at the edges for a second before you pull it back together. you scratch behind samantha's ears one more time, pressing your forehead against the top of her small head, breathing in the simple, clean warmth of her.

"thank you," you whisper.

you stand, walking back toward the nest without looking behind you. your frequency pulls tight and quiet. your hands curled into fists at your sides.

his footsteps arrive half a minute later. he rounds the corner and finds the cat sitting alone in the corridor, tail wrapped around her paws. no sign of you.

"where did she go?" his frequency already reaching down the corridor after you.

samantha blinks up at him, her amber eyes steady and old.

home. to the nest. she's upset but she won't tell you why, and you shouldn't push.

a low rumbling growl builds in his chest. "what did you say to her?"

nothing she didn't already know. samantha's tail flicks. she stands. stretches. her small body arching with feline indifference. I looked at her, old one. the way I look at things. and what I found...

he stalks closer, and the suit coils, trying to contain him. "what. what did you find?"

samantha sits back down, tilts her head, and the psychic field presses against him. not showing him. just letting him feel the shape of it. the weight of what she saw in your frequency. heavy. scarred. older than your entity-hood. human-shaped wounds that the walls healed over but couldn't erase.

she was not always what she is now, samantha explains. and what she was before... was broken by someone who should have kept her safe. the details are hers to share. not mine. but I need you to understand what you're dealing with. this isn't a creature that fears you because you're a predator. she fears you because you're kind. because kindness is the shape the danger wore when it found her. do you understand what I'm saying?

his jaw clenches so tight the false teeth creak.

she flinches from tenderness because tenderness was the trap, samantha continues calmly. so when you reach for her and she pulls away, it's not rejection of you. it's reflex. a wound that hasn't finished closing. and if you push her, if you demand she explain before she's ready, you will lose her. permanently.

"I would never—"

I know. samantha's eyes soften. I can see what you feel for her. it's vast and genuine and slightly terrifying but I believe you mean every frequency of it. but she can't hear your sincerity yet. not fully. she hears the words and her body translates them into the language of the last being who said them and the translation is violence. a pause. be patient. be present. let her come to you. and when she tells you, do not react with rage. she doesn't need your vengeance. she needs your softness.

silence. his hands curl into fists at his sides. mirror image of yours, walking away minutes ago.

"how do you know she'll tell me?"

samantha blinks at him. those amber eyes going faintly amused by the question. old one. I know things. I have always known things. it's what I do. I look at a creature and I see the shape of what's coming. a thoughtful pause. the amusement fading into something gentler. and what I see when I look at her is this: she's in your nest. she's wearing your scent. she lets you hold her in the dark and she purrs. samantha pads toward the wall. she has never done that with anyone. the fact that she lets you close enough to hurt her is the biggest act of courage she's capable of. honour it.

she pauses at the wall, looking back at him.

she's a good one, old one. fierce and kind and carrying a wound that would have broken a lesser creature. cherish her.

and then she's gone with a flick of her tail.

he stands in the empty corridor, his chest tight and the shape of what samantha showed him pressing against his ribs. he didn't see the details. didn't need to. the weight was enough. the grief-shape. the fear-shape.

the human outline of a pain so vast it survived death and rebirth and reconstruction.

he finds you back in the nest, buried in the blankets, your frequency small, fragile. he lies down beside the pile. doesn't try to uncover you. just puts his hand on the blanket where he can feel the warmth of you through the fabric and clicks. that old, soothing frequency. safe. here. I'm here. nothing will touch you.

after a long, long time, your hand emerges, trembling, and finds his through the fabric, latching on.

you don't let go for a long time.

the quiet moments are where you lose yourselves. lying in the nest, the amber light low. borrowed mouths closing. human language falling away.

you communicate in pure frequency. clicks and trills and sub-vocal hums. you tell him about a level with piano music from nowhere. the telling gold-edged with wonder. he answers with the deep levels, below zero, where the walls thin. his frequencies old and cavernous. you shiver hearing them.

you tell him about your wanderers. he tells you about the loneliness. the frequency version. the vast empty hum.

you reach across the gap. your frequency extending like a hand. pressing against the boundary of his. I'm here now.

his response: a low harmonic that translates roughly to I know and more precisely to you are the reason I know what warmth means.

you both lie in the dark. flustered. warm. but neither of you moves.

his scent becomes a constant. old and powerful, deeply cold, the mineral musk of the oldest thing in existence. it fills your head when you're close. makes your thoughts go slow because it smells like permanence.

one evening you roll over and press your face into his throat and inhale until your lungs burn. lick a stripe from his collarbone to his jaw, nuzzling deeper, your growl low and involuntary.

"shut up." mumbled against his skin when he starts to laugh.

"you can have as much as you want." his fingers stroke over your hair, his head tipping back.

you grumble, hesitating, but press close after a moment.

"sweetest thing," he murmurs after long minutes of you licking and nuzzling. "prettiest. most vicious." his lips brush your temple. "my sweetest, prettiest, most vicious mate."

you bristle, teeth bared, hissing. "not your mate."

"my almost-mate." you feel his taunting, warm grin. "my future-mate. my very-much-in-denial mate."

you sit up, glaring down at him. "I will bite your throat again."

his brows go up, his mouth crooking. "is that a promise?"

you hiss and he grins wider, making you shove his face sideways and he laughs fully, catching your wrist. he presses a kiss to your pulse and you let him. the letting scares you more than the biting.

that night, just as you're drifting off, his voice floats over. "let me see yours. the real one. under the suit."

your whole body tenses, clicking going silent.

"no."

"I showed you mine. fair is fair."

"you didn't show me. you hunted me in full form, then lost control." you shift around, the human shape pulling tight. armour. "I don't lose control."

a low, rumbling purr, then, barely human, "I'd like to make you lose control."

you know what he's doing, trying to ease pressure. make light of it.

"you can't." your voice comes out smaller now. "the suit isn't just disguise. it's mine. I built it. it's safe. I don't take it off."

"okay." soft. "when you're ready."

"only my mate sees the real one." you look at your hands as you say it, lacing your fingers together.

"well then." his hand finds yours. squeezes. that crooked, insufferable grin again. "I suppose I'd better work on earning the title then."

the nest is warm today. full of his scent and yours, and the blended third forming between you.

you're rearranging pillows again, making thoughtful sounds while he watches from the blankets, purring. you catch his eye. "what."

"nothing. it's perfect. keep going."

you throw the pillow at him.

but you can't help and think remember how each time the chasing ends with his hips against yours and his frequency reaching for yours, something locks behind your eyes. your clicking stutters. you shove away from the wall.

the first time, he followed. the second, he reached for you. the third, he let you go.

you always come back. ten minutes. twenty. sliding into the nest, frequency smoothed out, smile perfectly in place.

the fourth time is different.

his back is against the wall of the nest, your legs around his waist. grinding, clicking, his mouth on your throat, your hands tangled in his hair. the urgency building.

and you stop. go rigid. eyes wide.

this time is different. this time you almost tipped into it. your frequency had started to lock with his, the bond-pull humming in your chest, the threshold close enough to taste. and the closeness of it cracked something open that you've been holding shut.

you don't shove him away. you press your forehead against his collarbone and your breathing goes shallow and rapid, your clicking dissolves into that thin, high, pain-frequency.

he holds still, his arms around you. not tight. loose enough that you could pull away.

"talk to me." quiet. the cockiness gone.

silence. your face presses harder against his chest.

"whatever happened before," he says, careful, gentle, each word placed with care. "before the walls. before any of this. I'm not that being. whatever hurt you. whoever hurt you. I won't do that."

and the words crack the dam.

you loosen your legs, dropping back onto the floor, your hands gripping his shirt, your voice muffled against his collarbone.

"I loved someone," you begin, so faintly they're barely words. "before. he had a name but the walls took it. I just know I loved him a lot, and... he went missing. just gone one day. everyone thought he was dead and I—" your breathing hitches. "and then there was someone else. after. and he was kind." the word kind splinters in your mouth. "he was so kind at first. patient. gentle. said all the right things."

his hand curls gently around your head, his purr soothing.

"and then he wasn't kind anymore," you whisper, barely a croak.

silence. his purr goes deeper, lulling, wrapping around your trembling frame.

"I... I don't remember all of it. the walls took the worst parts. but I remember being cold. and... and in pain. on the ground. and I remember the hum. and I wasn't cold anymore because I wasn't what I'd been." your frequency vibrates with old, grinding pain. "he used the backrooms as a place to—"

you can't finish.

but he understands. the man didn't just kill you. he disposed of you here. in the dark, hidden away from your bright world so you may never be found. and the walls caught what was left, and instead of consuming the meagre flicker of life, they remade you instead.

they did what this place has always done best, which is remember.

he pulls you closer, his mouth against your hair, his frequency pouring into yours. not words. only presence. I'm here. he can never reach you again.

you sob, curling into him, your tears hot against his cool skin. another human miracle. he holds you and doesn't let go once, his clicking never ceasing.

"I keep pulling away from you because wanting like this has never been safe," you whisper, your voice raw. "it gets big and it turns into a cage and the cage has hands and—"

"my hands don't cage." his forehead against yours, his words hushed. "my hands built you a nest with the doors open. they will always be open."

"I know," you say, a moan of pain caught in your voice. "I know that in my frequency, but my body doesn't. my body hears gentle and my body says run."

"then we go at your pace," he murmurs gently. "whatever you need."

silence. your breathing evening out against his throat.

a wet sniffle. "you sound just like him when you say that."

his brows come together. "who?"

"there's an entity on 974," you explain, muffled. "who was very kind to me before you. mr kitty. he was welcoming when I had no one. he found me when I was new and scared and everything wanted to eat me. he let me rest in his territory. he brought me food. his frequency was pleasant."

the temperature in the nest drops by three degrees.

"he brought you food." a quiet rattle fills his chest, rapidly building. "he let you rest in his territory."

"he's seven feet tall and collects hello kitty merchandise."

"those are mating overtures. food-bringing and territory-sharing are mating overtures—"

another wet sniffle. "they're called being nice, you territorial lunatic—"

"I don't care what they're called. if his pleasant frequency has been touching yours—"

"he brought me a sticker," you announce. proudly. "it had a cat on it."

"I'll kill him for the sticker."

"it had a cat on it."

"I'll kill the cat too."

and you're laughing, finally, laughing, tears mixing with laughter and the absurdity of the whole situation breaking through the grief. the oldest entity in existence, threatening murder over a hello kitty sticker, while you cry into his chest.

"maybe I should go back to 974," you suggest idly, wiping your eyes. "let him bring me more stickers. be gentle and patient with me. maybe I'd prefer—"

he pushes you into the wall, your back hitting it, his weight over you, as his eyes flood dark.

"don't," he warns, silky and dark. "I can be patient about everything else but not this. not someone else touching you. you're my mate."

you stare at him for a moment, your eyes still shining and wet, before reaching for him, your nails digging into his neck. "then prove it."

and maybe it's something in your expression, or in the way you said those words, in the naked need ringing through you voice, but his composure unravels in an instant.

he pulls you into him. your chest against his chest, his mouth crushing yours, and the kiss is deep and bruising, tasting of salt and rage. of three thousand years of wanting poured into a single point of contact. his hands fist in your borrowed shirt, your hands fisting in his.

both of you tearing at fabric, at skin, at the thin barrier of the suits between your bodies.

the first time is vicious because you need it to be vicious.

you claw his shirt open. rake your nails down his bare borrowed chest, leaving raised welts that bead black. he catches your wrists, pins them above your head in the blankets, and drives into you in one long stroke that punches the air from your lungs and a sound from your throat that cracks the nearest wall.

your back arches, your legs locking tight around his waist while your heels dig into his lower back and pull.

because the first thrust isn't enough, isn't deep enough, you need more, and the desperation of the wanting scares you so you channel it into violence. biting his shoulder. raking his back. snarling against his skin while he moves inside you with a force that drives your body up the blankets.

he lets you have it. lets you scratch and bite and writhe. takes the marks, his hips slamming into yours. and for a while it's what you need. rough. impersonal. just bodies.

and then he slows.

his hips grinding to a halt while he's buried to the hilt. your clicking going frantic and frustrated, your hips bucking up. but he doesn't move. just holds himself inside you, deep, his weight settled over you, his forehead dropping to yours.

"look at me." quiet, almost gentle.

"don't stop—"

"I'm not stopping," he says, "I'm looking at you. look at me."

you open your eyes and his are blue and close, stripped of everything. just an ancient, lonely being behind a borrowed face, watching you, and the nakedness of the looking is worse than the fucking.

his hips roll. one slow, grinding stroke that drags against every nerve you possess. your mouth falls open, a helpless whine building in your throat.

"feel that," he whispers, his nose brushing yours. "feel me. not just my body. my frequency. can you feel it?"

you can feel it.

pressed this close, buried this deep, his frequency is flooding into yours through every point of contact. old and vast, pouring into you like water filling a vessel. and the sensation of it (being filled by him in both ways, his body and his frequency, the physical and the metaphysical at once) is so overwhelming your vision blurs, your clicking dissolving into a thin, continuous keen.

"there you go," he breathes, his lips brushing your cheekbone. "hello, my little love."

he fucks you slow after that. each stroke a complete sentence. his borrowed hips pressing flush to yours at the deepest point, staying, grinding, letting you feel the full weight of him before pulling back and sliding home again.

his mouth presses kisses to your eyelids. your temple. the bridge of your nose. the corner of your mouth. gentle. barely a brush of lips while his hips drive into you with a force that contradicts every tenderness he's pressing into your skin with his mouth.

"so pretty love," he murmurs against your cheekbone, his hips snapping forward roughly and you cry out, clawing at him. "so pretty when you stop fighting me." another thrust, deep enough to make your spine arches with a pop of bones. a kiss to your jaw, featherlight, loving. "my pretty girl. my vicious, beautiful, terrified girl." his rigged cock hits a spot that whites your vision, and a kiss ghosts over the wet corner of your eye at the same moment. "crying and coming at the same time. look at you."

the gentleness of his mouth and the brutality of his thrusts dissolves your senses into gauzy, liquid sensation of pleasure. his lips whisper praise against your temple while his cock splits you open with strokes so deep your body shakes with each one. tender and brutal, loving and claiming.

"you're safe," kiss to your forehead, "you're mine," a wet thrust that makes your vision spark, "you're home," breathing the word against your lips while his hips grind and rut you into the blankets.

the first orgasm rips through you like lightning, his release flooding you, copious beyond human scale. the warmth and the fullness of it makes your eyes roll back.

he doesn't pull out. instead he stays buried, grinding through the aftershocks. his mouth still pressing gentle kisses to your face while his hips work his release deeper with unhurried, wet squelches.

"more." your hands grip his ass, pulling him closer into you, your voice raspy. "more. don't stop."

the mating cycle runs four days. neither of you rests. neither of you eats. because your borrowed bodies run hot with want, the nest filling with pheromones so thick the air shimmers.

one position flowing into the next while he stays inside you, tangled together with him buried deep, your frequency synced, both purring gently.

he shifts you onto your side without pulling free, spoons against your back, his mouth on your nape as he holds you close. his hips grind slow and lazy while his hands trace your ribs and you drowse against him briefly, half-conscious, clicking softly.

then the heat builds, one wave after another, and his grip tightens. his hips pick up pace, and you're back in it.

so much of him in you. each release adding to the last. the excess spilling down your thighs, soaking the blankets. his eyes go dark watching it leak from where he's still buried inside you, and he only presses deeper, pushing it back in.

you ride him and his hands press flat against your stomach and you both feel him inside you when you do. his fingers trace the outline of himself inside you and you press your hand over his, feel him move.

"look at that," he breathes, his thumb tracing the swell. "look at how much of me you're holding."

your walls clench so hard around his cock that he gasps, his head dropping backwards. the oldest entity alive, completely helplessly overwhelmed.

your borrowed bodies start failing around the second day. his spine pops and lengthens, your hips click and widen. joints bending at new degrees. bones restructuring. the suits stretching, thinning, the true forms pressing through at the seams.

your real tongues uncurl, his sliding down your throat, cool and impossibly long. yours sliding down his, hot and twisting. tangling at a depth that makes your eyes water. tasting each other from the inside out. both sighingaround the intrusion, clicking. the pleasure so intense you grip his shoulders and your claws tear through borrowed skin to the dark underneath.

you pull apart gasping. strings of mixed saliva connecting you. his eyes black, yours burning.

he tries to coax your true form out repeatedly. kisses your jaw. nibbles behind your ear. holds your jaw gently, then less gently. foreheads pressed together. asking in a low, intimate frequency: show me. let me see you. please.

your shape flickers. for one breathless moment you almost let go.

but you lock it down last moment, burrow into his neck, keening. he doesn't push, presses a kiss to the back of your neck, and gives you more. harder. his teeth on your shoulder while you cling with your claws in his back.

the knotting begins on the third day. he swells inside you during one of the rounds, thickening at the base, and the stretch makes you gasp and twist beneath him. your walls clench around the knot, locking him in, and his release pulses in slow thick waves in response.

and your body, despite the excess, takes everything he gives.

you stay knotted for hours, his face in your throat, your arms and legs wound around him, both purring in frequencies that make the air shimmer.

you burrow under the blankets when he finally releases you from his embrace. cocooning yourself. he follows. digging through layers to find you curled at the bottom.

"found you."

you growl. "go away."

"no." low and amused. the sound of a predator that has cornered something small and is enjoying itself immensely.

he reaches into the pile, finds your ankle. pulls. you yelp. grab the blankets, clinging, your body dragging through the fabric as he reels you out by one leg. you hiss and kick and twist, grabbing a pillow and cling to it. he pulls harder. you slide across the nest floor, wrapped in blankets, clutching the pillow, snarling.

"let go—"

he grins, too many teeth on display. "come out and I'll let go."

"I don't want to come out."

"you've been hiding for twenty minutes. the hunt is over. the predator wins." he gets both hands on your hips through the blanket, pulling you against his chest. you're cocooned in fabric, only your face visible, your clicking rapid and indignant.

he wraps his arms around the whole blanket-bundle-of-you and holds.

"I hate you," you mutter peevishly, your face pressed against his collarbone through two layers of cotton.

"I know." he nuzzles the top of your head through the blanket. "you hate me so much you've been sleeping in my nest for weeks and purring on my chest every night."

you bite him through the blanket. he grunts. laughs. and you're squirming, wriggling in the cocoon, but the squirming presses you closer to him and your body is doing two things at once. the clicking says go away but your hips say closer.

your face burrows into his throat even as your mouth snarls at him. your arms wrapping around his neck through the fabric. refusing him and clinging to him in the same breath.

"make up your mind," he murmurs teasingly against your hair, his arms tightening around the bundle.

"no."

"you're biting me and hugging me at the same time."

a perfectly petulant, "so?"

he laughs, peels the blanket back from your face, cups your jaw, looking at you with those blue eyes gone soft and dark.

"come here," he says quietly, the cockiness stripped back to bare fondness.

and you soften, following the pulse of heat between you, your face pressing into his throat. your whole body wraps around him, holding on with a fierceness that has nothing to do with mating and everything to do with the terrified, wordless, bone-deep need to be held by the safest thing you've ever known.

he holds you to him, clicks the comfort frequency into your hair, pulling the blankets over both of you and settling you both deep into the nest.

and the darkness changes things.

in the dark, where neither of you can see the borrowed faces, the pretence of humanity falls away.

the suits thin to almost nothing. his true form pressing through, expanding, and you can feel him around you now. not just the body. the real one. dark and angular and vast, filling the blanket-cave with a presence so dense it has physical weight. limbs that aren't limbs finding your body. too many joints. too many fingers. wrapping around your thighs, your waist, your shoulders. surrounding you, spreading you open like a feast.

his mouth still presses kisses to your face. soft. lips tracing your jaw, your cheekbone, the closed lid of your eye. but beneath the kissing, the true form is gripping your hips and spreading your thighs, positioning you with a strength that reminds you what he is.

the apex predator of the backrooms. three thousand years of unchallenged dominance. and right now every ounce of that power is focused on holding you open and fucking you raw.

he pushes into you and the sound you make vibrates below hearing. his mouth on your cheek, whispering. his true body driving into yours with a force that shakes through the blankets and into the floor.

"my pretty little mate." whispered against your temple in a voice that's barely human anymore. deep, but tender. his lips pressing a light kiss to your brow while his hips slam forward hard enough to drive your body into the dark. "so small. so warm. do you feel how deep I am? deeper than the suit can reach. the real one goes so much further."

the angle is different in the dark.

the true form bending his body in ways the suit can't replicate, folding over you, curling around you. driving into you from an angle that hits places nothing has ever touched.

your mouth opens on a silent scream, your hands finding appendages that aren't arms, gripping, clawing. tearing through surfaces that heal as fast as you damage them.

"there," he breathes against your ear. a kiss to the lobe, his hips grinding in a slow circle. "right there. feel me. all of me. not just the face." his true form tightens. every point of contact pressing closer. the overbearing weight of him. the vastness. the crushing age of the thing buried inside you. "this is what wants you. this is what claims you. three thousand years of this."

and his true form is everywhere. touching you at a dozen points the human shape can't reach. tendrils of dark matter tracing your ribs, your spine, the backs of your knees. his borrowed mouth on your temple, gentle and careful. and his real body filling you from an angle that makes your frequency stutter, break and then rebuild, and break again.

too much. too deep. too vast. and every time you buck against the sensation, every time your body tries to escape the intensity, his true form pins you tighter. holds you open. takes what it needs.

he flips you onto your stomach in the dark. his weight settling across your back. his borrowed chest against your shoulder blades, his true form pressing you flat into the blankets from every other direction. your face in the fabric. your hands fisted in the cotton. and he drives into you from behind with a force that has nothing human left in it.

just the ancient, grinding, relentless rhythm of an apex predator claiming a mate.

"shh. shh." whispering against the back of your damp neck between thrusts that rattle your teeth. each word a tenderness. each thrust a punishment. "I know. I know it's a lot. you're taking it so well. my brave little love. so good for me."

your frequency has stopped forming words, stopped forming clicks. reduced now only to raw, unstructured harmonics. pleasure so intense it's indistinguishable from being taken apart molecule by molecule and put back together wrong. better. his.

"you were made for this," he murmurs against your nape. his hips driving deep, staying, grinding. "made for me. I knew it the first time I tasted your frequency. you tasted like mine. and now look at you." a kiss to the curve of your ear. his tongue (the real one, long and cool) tracing the shell, curving around your throat. "face down in my nest. full of me. can't even speak. just frequency and tears and those beautiful little sounds."

you sob into the blankets. your body clenching around him in rhythmic, helpless pulses. pleasure crests into something that isn't an orgasm. it's bigger than that.

your entire frequency restructuring around his, the bond-thread thickening, and the sensation is like being rewritten from the inside out while his weight pins you flat and his borrowed mouth whispers praise into the knobs of your spine.

the mating frenzy burning through you. encoded in the frequency of the backrooms itself. the cycle reaching peak intensity.

in the dark the sounds you both make aren't sounds. raw and sub-vocal, clashing against each other. his frequency wrapping around yours, pressing in, penetrating at the metaphysical level while his body penetrates at the physical. filled in both dimensions.

the intimacy so total you can't tell where your frequency ends and his begins.

the frenzy strips everything civil from both of you. you claw his back open to the true form underneath and he snarls and pins your wrists and drives into you so deep the borrowed body you wear crack and reset and crack again.

your bodies clicking and popping and restructuring mid-thrust. his spine elongating. your hips widening. the suits splitting at the seams, dark matter leaking through, and for stretches of minutes at a time you're both more true form than borrowed flesh. two vast, dark, angular things locked together in the blankets, coupling with a force that cracks the walls of level 0 and sends frequency-shocks rippling through the upper levels.

and through all of it. through the frenzy and the restructuring and the raw animal claiming. his mouth finds your face in the dark. presses kisses to your brow. your cheek. the corner of your eye. soft. always soft. the borrowed mouth remembering tenderness even when the rest of him has forgotten everything but take, claim, fill, mine.

the orgasm hits so hard your true form blazes through the suit for three full seconds. your body convulsing around his, the knot forming and locking and his release flooding you while his teeth clamp on your nape and his true form crushes you close.

claimed. wrapped in blankets and each other. his true form slowly retracts. condensing. folding back into the suit until it's just arms and hands in your hair and the heartbeat he constructed pressing against your cheek.

the frenzy catches again an hour later. you ride him in the dark and he flips you and takes you from behind again, and you cling to the blankets, screaming into the fabric.

four days until the cycle finally burns itself out. leaving both of you lying in a destroyed nest. shredded blankets. cracked walls. frequencies pulsing in tandem.

he lies on his side and you curl against his chest, your face in his throat. your fingers trace the scar you left weeks ago, clicking gentle and satisfied. comfort frequency.

he runs his fingers stroke your back, the amber light warm on your face. your eyes closed, lips parted, your body loose against his, still flushed, still full of him.

"I've never been this happy," he tells you quietly. "in three thousand years."

you nuzzle closer, your purr warm against his collarbone.

silence. comfortable. his hand on your head. your frequency synced to his. the bond-thread humming between you, fragile and new.

"stay," he says, a fragile word placed into the quiet between you. "not in the nest. not on this level. I mean... stay. with me. for the rest of it. however long the rest is." his thumb traces your jawline. "you don't have to be afraid anymore. I'll never let anything hurt you again."

I'll never let anything hurt you again.

the words sink into you like a blade

because you've heard them before.

in a different voice. in a different body. in a different life. a human voice. a human mouth. a man leaning over you with kind eyes and gentle hands, cupping your face the way he's cupping your face right now, saying I'll never let anything hurt you with such sincerity you believed it.

you believed it so completely you let your guard down. you let the grief go. you let his kindness become your home.

and then the kindness became a dark, pain-filled grave.

your body goes rigid.

the warmth drains from your skin, your frequency locking. your clicking stops, purr dying in your throat. the borrowed shape pulls tight around you, armour, walls slamming back up.

he feels the shift in you, pulling back to look at your face.

your eyes are open and blank, somewhere else, somewhere he can't follow. a kitchen floor in a house that doesn't exist anymore, in a world you can barely remember, with those words hanging in the air above you spoken by a mouth that smiled while it said them and then used the same mouth to do things you can't remember fully.

the walls took the worst of it. but not all of it.

"what's wrong?" alarm in his voice. "what did I—"

"you said." your voice thin. distant. "you said you'd never let anything hurt me."

"I meant—"

"he said that." barely a whisper. your eyes fixed on something between his face and the memory. "exactly that. those exact words. in that exact voice. kind and so sure. I'll never let anything hurt you. and I believed him. I did and he—"

his hand stills on your cheek.

"and then he hurt me." your jaw pulses, frequency vibrating with a pain so old it predates your entity-hood. "he said those words with his mouth on my hair and his arms around me, and I believed every syllable and then he—for weeks—and I couldn't—"

you stop, your breathing gone shallow. your shape flickers at the edges, the human suit struggling to hold against the pressure of the memory pushing through.

"I'm not him." his voice is careful, stripped of everything except the truth. "you know I'm not."

"I know." tears drip down your borrowed face. "I know that. my frequency knows it. but my body heard those words and my body went back there and I can't—I can feel the floor. the cold floor. I can feel—"

he reaches for you. slow, careful, his hands hovering near your face, not touching, waiting for permission.

"let me help," he urges, achingly soft. "let me hold you through it. I'm right here."

"I know you are." you press your face into his palm, your eyes closed. tears soak into his skin, and for a moment you lean into him. let the weight of him anchor you. his cool hand on your hot cheek. his frequency pressing against yours. old. patient. safe, safe, I'm here.

you open your eyes. look at his face. the sandy hair. the blue eyes. the crooked line of his nose. the face he built for you. the face that has been kind to you every single day since you arrived.

you cup his jaw in both hands, trace his cheekbone with your thumb.

"I'm sorry," you whisper.

his brow creases. his hands coming up to cover yours. holding your palms against his face.

"you never have to apologise to me," he says, quiet and fierce. "not for this. not for anything. you can fall apart as many times as you need to and I will be right here every single—"

you push your hand through his chest.

through false ribs and sternum, through the absence underneath where the human shape is empty. your fingers closing around his core frequency, the anchor of the seven that make him, and you pull.

the suit explodes. the sandy hair. the blue eyes. the nose you traced. the cheekbones you held. all of it shredding, peeling from the inside out as his true form erupts. vast. dark. a shriek of shock ripping through level 0.

you pull your hand free, step back. his core frequency fading from your fingertips. the bond-thread stretching between you, thin and new and aching.

"I'm sorry." you stand in the wreckage of the nest, tears running down your face. "I can't. I thought I could. I wanted to so badly, but I heard those words and I was back there and if I stay—if I let you hold me right now—I'll let you say all the right things and I'll believe them and I'm so tired of believing and being wrong."

his true form is reeling, vast and dark and stunned. your handprint still burning in his chest cavity. and even in the shock, even in the pain, the true form reaches for you. a darkness extending, trying to touch.

you step back. out of reach.

"if you follow me I'll never come back." your voice cracks. "I need you to let me go. just for now. just until I can hear those words from your mouth and not feel his hands on me. please. please let me go."

the limb retracts. slowly. a pulse of pain fills the air.

you turn and you run. through the exit he never sealed. through the corridors that bend around your grief.

the bond-thread pulls at your ribs. thin. fragile. one of seven.

you don't want it to break, and that's the part that makes you sob even harder as you run.

his violet-blue eyes meet yours, and you watch the lump in his throat work as he swallows. he nods once, the movement sure. confident.

“i’m a prince,” aerion affirms, leaning back with his hands flat to the mattress either side, exposing more of his chest and abdomen to you. his legs spread wider too. “and i’ve taken you as my bride, so there has to be a bedding ceremony.”

“a bedding ceremony?” you can’t help but smile. you fidget with the satin drawstring on your pyjama bottoms.

aerion looks you up and down, decidedly ignoring the smile spread across your pretty face. “a prince and a princess have to produce an heir, obviously.”

“obviously,” you repeat, fingers pulling apart the loose bow on the front of your pyjamas. aerion’s eyes flit down to the movement, quick like a falcon’s. and his gaze is predatory when you loop your thumbs into the waistband. you continue, “and where exactly did you get this idea? i mean, i understand bounty hunter and his target, and ceo and secretary, but this is new.”

aerion rolls his eyes. “it’s just—whatever. we don’t have to do it. you’re being—”

you pull your thumbs away from the elasticated waistband and let it snap back against your hips. “no, i want to. i really want to, aerion.”

he smiles, all wicked and vulpine in the low light of the room. “yeah?”

“yeah,” you say, then gesture towards your closet and ensuite. “should i… put on a dress?”

“maybe another time,” he tells you quietly, then gets to his feet. the mattress groans as he pushes himself from it and closes the distance between the two of you. his fingers quickly find the hem of your pyjama shirt. “you ready?”

you cock your head, challenging the boldness in his gaze. you simply raise your arms and allow him to pull your shirt from your body, your tits spilling free. you hear him groan under his breath when you make quick work of shoving your shorts down too, leaving you completely bare before him.

you kick the shorts away, fingers gently unravelling the towel around his waist. he watches you quietly, pupils swelling. you toss the towel aside, feeling the goosebumps ripple across the flesh of his abdomen as your hands trail from his hips, over the lines of his stomach.

you smile at him, teasing, fingers cupping the slight curve beneath his pectoral muscles. “and… action.”

there’s a flicker of a smile on your boyfriend’s face before it vanishes, replaced by a pure, unbridled need that sends your heartbeat straight between your thighs. his hands shift, one finding the small of your back and the other the side of your head, pulling you firmly into him.

you gasp out, hands flat against his chest. pushed against him, you feel the hardening of his cock against your bare skin, the heat of him near branding as his thumb moves to hook around your chin and pin your head in place.

“my pretty dove,” aerion mutters, eyes scanning your face. there’s a heat in his gaze that sparks embers in the ashes of your womb, and you find that it rises quickly through the base of your stomach. he coos, “look at you. bare for me—bare for your prince.”

you release a soft sound, something like a whimper that trips over the tip of your tongue. you feather your fingers across his chest—in the way you know he likes—and you delight in the purr that escapes him as your hands slide across his shoulders.

“for you,” you say in a whisper, pressing yourself closer and shifting your hips. his cock grinds up against you, flushed and hot. one hand remains on his shoulder, but the other traces down. across the lines of his abdomen, the neat line of white-blond hair, then through the patch at the base of his cock. your fingers ghost across the root of him. “please, my prince, i need—”

“i’ve waited so long,” aerion interrupts, the hand on the small of your back vanishing, only to reappear around your wrist. he pulls your hand away from his cock, slowly leading you towards the bed. “so long to have you. and now you’re here with me. where you belong.”

aerion guides you down onto the bed, and you shuffle back until your head finds pillows. you relax into them, and he chuckles, his own hand wrapping around the base of his cock. the head blushes deeply with trapped blood, the slit wet and pearling with pre-cum as he climbs up onto the mattress, resting on his knees.

“i am to be king one day, you know,” he tells you then, and you watch with your heart clattering against your ribs as he lowers himself between your spread legs. he lies on his stomach, hands finding the fat of your thighs as he continues. “everything will be mine. this country, this land, this castle—” he leans forward then, placing a gentle kiss to your clit. “—this pussy. you.”

you squirm, fisting the sheets. heat blossoms molten in your veins, flushing hot through your core as he presses another tender kiss to your clit, before trailing a line of small kisses down through your folds. you arch, mewling softly, the pleasure sending a series of electric shocks straight to the base of your spine.

“and because i’ll be king, i’ll need an heir,” he mutters, lips moving against your core. he spreads them wide, tongue unfurling like a serpent’s, and he drags it through your folds until he can swipe it flat across your hole. he hums, pleased, when your thighs clench either side of his head and a breathy moan of his name falls from your mouth. “but first, this pretty girl has been waiting for her prince long enough, hasn’t she?”

his tongue presses deep, bullying past the tight ring of muscle and splitting you apart. you’re slick and silken and warm against him, his face burying deeper between your legs as he grips the flesh of your thighs. you moan, the sound reaching the ceiling, as aerion takes you apart with his mouth. the sounds are loud and wet too, and you notice—but don’t address—the way his ears burn red as he works below you.

he parts from your pussy for a moment, staring up at you with glistening eyes. “fuck, she’s noisy, isn’t she? pretty baby’s wet and fussy—she’ll take me so well, i just know it.”

then, he’s sliding back in, his mouth hot against you. you moan loudly, a lilting and slightly breathy “my prince, please” as he fucks his tongue into you. he acknowledges you with a squeeze of his fingers against your thighs, but his movements don’t relent, and as he slowly grinds his hips against the mattress and the bunching sheets, he curls and flicks his tongue inside you.

you swelter where you lay stretched for him. your chest heaves, rising and falling in rapid succession as his nose ruts against the swollen pearl of your clit. the warmth kindled low in your belly fans through your womb, and there’s a steel-hot pressure building at the base of your spine. it makes you cant your hips, grinding your cunt deeper against his face.

“my pretty girl,” aerion murmurs directly into your cunt, and despite the throb of your heartbeat and the low buzz of pleasure in your blood, you know he’s not talking to you in that moment. his eyes are transfixed on your pussy, and he whispers to it between ruts of his tongue inside you. “being so good for me—” licking in, out, then a kiss to your folds, “—being so good for your prince—” a board stripe, up, then back down, “—m’gonna stuff you so full, pretty baby, i promise.”

he moves his tongue back inside you, curling and thrusting with as much tactility as his fingers would. it has you writhing into the sheets, pressure thick in the base of your spine, and you can feel the heat in your womb drawing hotter and hotter. molten.

“my prince,” you gasp out, something contracting low in your belly. your thighs pull tight, starting to spasm either side of his head. you whine, “please, i need—i’m so close.”

aerion says nothing, just continues to lick you towards your release. but his hand does snake inwards from your thigh, and you feel the firm press of a thumb on your clit. the added pressure tears a yowl from your throat, and you bear down into the contact as your body shakes, sweat building along your spine. you call his name, and his title, again and again, before the pressure in your back gives way and you tumble into your orgasm with twitching limbs and another loud moan of his name.

aerion takes you through it, rubbing his name across your puffy clit as he draws the slick from your pussy with long, serpentine curls of his tongue. a few beats pass, your heart knocking against your sternum, before the prince detaches from you, a string of slick and saliva connecting his mouth to your pussy. it snaps when he licks his lips, his lower face wet, and he stares up at you with glazed eyes and pink cheeks.

“oh, she’s so ready for me,” aerion mutters, eyes finding your cunt one last time and pressing a tender kiss over your hole.

he kisses your folds, then your clit, then up and over your mound. he follows the curve of your lower belly, over your navel, and soon you’re moaning softly as he trails surprisingly gentle kisses over your sternum and between the valley of your breasts. he takes time to take nips at the skin on either one though, but he quickly slides his wet face into the column of your throat so he can kiss up and around your neck. when he finds the junction of your jaw, he licks over your pulse point.

his cock rests hot and heavy against your thigh, and as you blink away the haze of your first orgasm, you feel the heat of another, a promise, collecting inside you again.

“the first cock you’ll ever have, and it’s mine,” aerion utters, nosing your pulse and inhaling deeply, as if committing your smell to memory. he groans, and his cock jumps where it sits against the plush of your thigh. “fuck, sweet girl, y’r gonna take it like an absolute dream, aren’t you?”

you nod, delirious and far to high-strung across your pleasure to form a proper sentence. blood sits hot in your core as the prince shifts his hips, sliding the head of his cock through your folds. it’s messy as he ruts blindly, groaning into your neck as he wets his cock with small, jerking movements that make the mattress shake.

he spends a moment like this, panting and whining with his body pressing you into the bed. you wonder then, as heat traps between you and the ache in your pelvis festers bruise-like beneath the weight of your pulse, if this is the prince, or if it’s your boyfriend.

“my prince,” you call to him, hand finding his shoulder and trailing down his back. his skin is slightly clammy with sweat and remnants of his shower. “please, aerion.”

coaxed by your soft calls, aerion picks himself out of your neck and sits back on his haunches. he settles there, between your parted legs, and takes one hand around his cock to guide it up and down through your slick folds. you suck in a breath, and he taps the tip heavily against your puffy clit, a cunning smile splitting across his handsome face. his features appear softer in the golden lamplight.

“easy, sweet girl, easy,” he coos, his other hand finding the back of your knee. he drags one leg up, angling it against his body as he bends slightly. his cock notches, swallowed by the soft clutch of your pussy. he grins wide when you moan, speaking through a groan of his own. “oh, look at her. so ready to take her prince, isn’t she?”

the way he pushes in, with a shallow furrow in his brow and a slight parting of his lips, is less than ceremonious. it’s a deep, rolling thrust that slides his cock into you in one movement—it’s more of the aerion you know, than the prince you’ve met—and the feeling of him bottoming out has you choking on a sob.

but still, the prince settles. he holds one of your legs against him, practically hooking it over his shoulder. the width of him stretches you apart, and you flutter around him, pussy wet and thrumming with your pulse. heat sits stagnant in your belly as his cock plugs you full, his balls resting snug against the curve of your arse.

“here it is, that’s my good girl,” aerion mutters as his eyes flick from where you struggle to look at him, to where his cock splits your cunt apart. his fingers skim over your folds, feeling around where you take him. the sensation makes you mewl, and he shushes you, hand finding your other leg next. “i know, i know.”

“deep,” you say simply, gasping when he gets both of your legs near his shoulders and bends even more. you feel some air leave your lungs as he presses your legs back towards you. “y’so deep—m’so full.”

aerion pulls out, then shunts back in. it’s a breathtaking movement that sends you reeling: you arch, spine curling, sheets bunching beneath you as he pries you open on the thick of his cock. he thrusts again, and again still, and he grunts with each rolling stroke of his cock near the plug of your cervix.

“i know, i know,” the prince repeats, practically folding you in half as he fucks you. your pussy drools around him, eliciting a wet string of plap-plap-plap as he moves into a solid, rhythmic pace. “you feel your prince right up in your tummy, baby? is that right? never felt that before, huh?”

you nod, nails pressing little red indents into his shoulders as he thrusts into you. your head tips and you moan out his name, tits bouncing, tummy squished as he folds you. he pants loudly, sweat glistening high on his forehead. it catches like glitter in the ichor of the lamplight, and if you were to blur your eyes enough, it may have appeared like a crown.

“taking me so well,” he praises you, eyes threatening to close as he already begins to lose himself. your cunt clenches tight around him, and the little whimpers that fall from your mouth have his cock jerking inside you. he groans, “holy fuck, baby, you’re so good.”

that sounded like aerion.

you loop him back into the fantasy, drawing him even closer, sucking him in even deeper—both physically and mentally. one hand trails over the nape of his neck, then you thread your fingers through the short hair at the back of his head. you tug lightly, but focus on scratching the tips of your nails across his scalp.

“my prince,” you whine out, the syllables stretched poorly across a wanton moan. the pressure in your lower back has returned, and the promise of another orgasm has materialised, growing hot in your stomach. you whisper to him, “let me give you an heir.”

he groans. it’s loud and almost pained as it fights it’s way from the depths of his chest. his body presses tighter to yours, pinning your legs, the angle driving him even deeper into you. you moan loudly, something clenching in the base of your belly, as his cock pulls you apart.

“i’ll give it to you,” aerion grits out, the muscles in his jaw jumping as he holds back from spilling right then and there. his balls twitch heavy against your arse, and the tension in his pelvis bleeds like ink into the marrow of his bones. “i’ll come—i’ll spill inside you, pretty dove. i’ll fill this pretty pussy so good, i promise.”

you whine, urging his head down. and he relents briefly, sliding his mouth to yours and licking a couple of sweet-tasting whimpers from your tongue and teeth. when he pulls back, he huffs, rutting his hips against yours even faster now. the stretch of his cock pulls the pressure inside you apart, tearing it from your limbs, until it coagulates deep in the pit of your womb and you succumb to the heat.

you come with a gush around him, the feeling drawing a loud, pornographic moan from you. “aerion” slips out into the evening silence of your room, and you clutch him tightly as your body shakes and quivers. your pussy flutters tightly around the thick of his cock too, slick dribbling out with each desperate thrust.

a thin white ring builds around the base of his cock as he fucks you through it, the sounds of your cunt taking him—schlick-schlick-schlick—making his ears burn hot and his balls tug tight against your arse. composure evades him, evaporating into the golden-hued shadows, as his own orgasm builds, and builds, and builds.

“you’re going to give me an heir,” the prince groans, rambling mostly. “i’m gonna fill you—fill this pussy, fuck you nice and full, yeah? i want—i want you round with my child, baby. i—fuck, just—just need to breed this pretty little—”

he doesn’t last long, sentence sliced by the point of his pleasure. it’s sharp, taking him brutally while he moans out your name. it’s wanton and desperate as he buries himself into you, a sword into a scabbard, and comes. you mewl softly, still trembling, when he spills right up against the plug of your womb, your legs still bent against your stomach as he leans into you. his cock twitches as he empties inside you, and a small whimper of your name falls from his lips, feeling your pussy milk him dry.

you both pant like you’ve run non-stop. sweat clings to you both, and you’re tacky with it as he extracts your legs from his chest and gently lowers them either side of him. his cock is still buried inside you, plugging in his cum, as he gently shifts so you can both lie comfortably against the mussed sheets. he buries his face between the swell of your tits and you stroke his hair tenderly, heartbeats syncing.

“and…scene,” you whisper, playful but tired. you draw circles across the back of his head when he grunts into your chest, too pleasure-lax to be amused. you smile. “are you okay, my prince?”

he doesn’t want to admit how much he enjoyed that. he also doesn’t want to show you how red his face is, burning from the fact he liked it so much.

so instead, he grunts and mouths at your sternum. you smile, taking that for your answer.

———

Pale stubble covers Aerion's jaw, his chin, the hollow under his full lower lip. It catches the light like frost on a blade.

You've never seen it before. He shaves religiously, almost compulsively, chin always smooth and clean. You always assumed it was pride thing. Now, looking at him with two days of growth softening the mean line of his jaw, you realise it might also be armour. Something he puts on before he lets you see him. Something he maintains because it keeps him looking like the version of himself he's decided you deserve.

This version, the unshaved version, the filthy and sweating and caught-off-guard version, is something you were never supposed to see.

You want to eat him alive.

You get out of the car. The site is mostly empty, just Aerion and one other guy finishing up for the day. He hears the door slam and turns toward the sound, and the look on his face when he spots you, the split second of pure, unguarded shock before he catches it, is worth the five and a half hours of congested highway.

"Stark."

"Targaryen."

He recovers fast. Leans against the porch railing, arms folded, the posture of a man who is not remotely surprised even though you can see his pulse hammering at the base of his throat.

"You're early."

"I'm early."

His eyes track down your body and back up. You're still in what you wore to campus. Nothing special. Jeans, a thin sweater, hair unstyled. But the way he looks at you makes it feel like you're wearing nothing at all, and the way you're looking at him is making his jaw pulse.

"Well," he drawls, and his voice has that lazy, mean edge, the one he uses when he's off balance and covering it. "You gonna stand there gaping or you gonna come say hello?"

You cross the dirt between your car and the porch. He doesn't move. Just watches you come to him, filthy and sweating, sawdust in his hair and concrete on his hands and that pale stubble catching the light.

"Careful, princess." The smirk is back. Defence mechanism, fully deployed. "Gonna get your nice clothes all dirty."

You don't answer. You reach up and grab his jaw.

Aerion's mouth snaps shut. Your fingers press into the stubble, rough against your fingertips, scraping against your skin in a way that sends heat pooling low in your stomach.

You turn his face, tilting it into the light. Run your thumb along the grain of it, from his ear to his chin, feeling the coarse drag under the pad of your finger.

He's gone still under your hand, his eyes fixed on your face with flaying intensity.

"You gonna tell me to shave?" he mocks, and his voice is different now. Low, rough, stripped of the lazy performance. "Get all nice and presentable before i'm allowed to touch you?"

You gaze at his mouth. At the pale stubble framing it. The smear of dirt on his cheekbone and the sweat drying on his throat, and his filthy hands hanging at his sides because he hasn't dared touch you yet, not like this, not covered in a day's worth of labour and grime.

You kiss him.

You yank his face down to yours by the jaw and lick into his mouth and the stubble scrapes against your chin, your cheeks, and the friction of it, the raw rough drag of him unpolished and unshaved and tasting like dust and salt, makes you groan against his teeth.

Aerion grabs you. Both hands on your hips, dragging you flush against him, and you can feel the grit and the sweat and the heat of him soaking through your sweater and you don't care, you don't care about any of it, you grab the back of his neck and bite his bottom lip and pull.

"I want to feel that," you say against his mouth. Your voice is low and your blood is too loud and your fingers are still in the stubble, scratching through it, gripping. "Between my thighs, Aerion."

His whole body tenses. Every muscle, all at once, like someone's run a current through him. His fingers dig into your hips hard enough to bruise, and his breathing goes ragged.

He palms your ass with both hands and pulls you into him, grinding you against him, and you boost yourself up onto the porch railing with his hands steadying your hips, settling between your thighs the second you're seated for better access.

"Missed me that much, huh?" He's grinning against your mouth, all teeth, sucking on your bottom lip, his dirty hands leaving prints on your jeans. Playing it cool, or trying to. Mostly failing. Because his voice is hungry, and his hands are shaking, and he's hard against your thigh already.

"Yeah." Quiet, hungry. Honest in a way you rarely let yourself be with him. You bite down on his lip, taste the salt of his sweat, pull him closer by the back of the neck until there's no space between you. "Yeah, I did."

There's a flicker across his face.

The smirk falls away and what's underneath is naked, starving, and so desperately... happy.

He kisses you like he's trying to climb inside you, one hand rough in your hair and the other gripping the back of your thigh, and you wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him in and the stubble drags against your jaw, your neck, the soft skin under your ear. You shiver, full-body, and he feels it and makes a sound against your throat that isn't a word, isn't a name, is just need, raw and thick, bubbling.

"Inside," you manage. Your fingers are tangled in his hair, pulling, and his mouth is on your pulse, the stubble burning against your throat. "Now."

"Truck's closer."

"I don't care."

He pulls you off the railing, your legs unwinding from his waist, and grabs your hand.

His grip is filthy and calloused, too tight, and he's half-dragging you across the site to his truck. You're keeping pace, stumbling over dirt and gravel, laughing against his shoulder because this is insane, this is broad daylight, and he gets the back door open and you climb in first, pulling him after you by his belt. He follows, pulling the door shut behind him, and the cab smells like sawdust, his cigarettes, and sweat.

You pull your sweater off. Aerion doesn't wait for you to finish, just pushes the fabric up and gets his mouth on your stomach, your ribs, dragging that stubble across every inch of skin he uncovers.

The scrape of it is electric. Burning and rough, so different from his usual smooth jaw that your back arches off the seat, and your hands fist in his hair with a throaty groan.

"Fuck," he mutters against your skin. He sounds breathless. His mouth drags lower, stubble rasping against the soft plane below your navel, and his fingers work your jeans open with the practised speed. You've done this a dozen times in this truck and will do it a dozen more. "You drove five hours for this."

"Five and a half," you correct, breathless.

"Crazy bitch," he says with a huffing laugh and with his mouth pressed to your hip, the stubble burning, and it sounds like i love you.

Aerion's fingers hook into your jeans and your underwear, pulling them down your legs in one motion and then he's there, settling between your thighs immediately. He glances up at you from between your knees with those pale eyes and that filthy face, that stubble catching the fading light through the truck windows.

"This what you want?"

Not a taunt for once.

"Yes."

He lowers his mouth to you and the stubble drags against the inside of your thigh, your whole body jerking at the sensation.

His hands pin your hips, thumbs pressing into the creases of your thighs, and he licks a long, flat, greedy stripe through you. The sound you make bounces off the roof of the cab. The stubble is everywhere. Scraping the tender skin of your inner thighs, rough against the crease where your leg meets your hip, dragging against you every time he moves his jaw.

It's almost too much. Yet it's perfect. It's the friction of him unpolished, unperformed, the raw physical fact of a man who worked all day and hasn't cleaned up, and is eating you out in the back of his truck like it's the last meal he'll ever have.

Your thighs close around Aerion's head. Your fingers twist in his hair, pulling him closer, grinding against his face because you can't help it, because the stubble and his tongue and the filthy wet sounds he's making are short-circuiting every nerve in your body. He groans against you, the vibration shooting straight through your navel, and his grip on your hips tightens.

He sucks on you, tongue twisting against you clit, and your vision whites out at the edges.

"Aerion." Breathless. Broken. Your heels dig into his back. "Don't stop, don't, please..."

He doesn't stop. He doesn't stop until your thighs are shaking and your voice has gone rough. You come so hard your spine lifts off the seat and your fingers nearly rip his hair out. He works you through it with his tongue, lapping at your swollen folds, and his stubble-rough jaw pressed flush against you, panting into you, his own hips grinding against the seat beneath him because he's so turned on he can barely stand it.

After the haze finally fades, Aerion crawls up your body. His face is wet, his eyes glazed and his chin slick with you, the stubble glistening. He looks ruined.

He looks like every dirty, gorgeous, impossible thing you've ever wanted.

You grab his jaw again. Feel the stubble, damp now with your release. Pull him down and kiss your own taste off his mouth and his whole body shudders against yours.

"Don't shave," you murmur against his lips.

His laugh is breathless, almost boyish. "Yeah? You like like me a little rough, princess?"

You answer by pulling his belt open with one hand, pushing his jeans down his hips.

He chuckles, settling between your thighs and you can feel the heat of him against you, the blunt thick press of him between your swollen folds, and your breath catches because it's been three weeks and your body remembers him before your brain catches up.

He pushes inside you and your eyes lock.

His are so blue.

Bright, pale, burning blue, close enough that you can see the darker ring around the iris, can see yourself reflected back in them, and the sound you both make is hungry and relieved.

Because that's what it is. Relief. Like a joint clicking back into socket, like a limb waking up after going numb. He's hot and rough and thick yet so familiar your body opens for him like it was built for this. Just this. Just him filling you up, and the stretch of it after weeks apart makes your nails bite into the back of his damp neck.

"Fuck, Stark." He rolls his hips, grinding deep into you, and his voice has that mean, lazy edge he puts on when he's trying to stay in control. "Three weeks and you're this tight? What, none of those pretty college boys keeping you warmed up for me?"

He's performing. You can hear it. Because the alternative is admitting he's been counting the days till you're back.

"Bet you thought about this every night." Another thrust. Harder. His hand slams flat against the roof of the cab, bracing, the sound of his palm hitting metal ringing through the truck. "In your little dorm bed. Touching yourself. Pretending your fingers felt anything like this."

You bare your teeth. "Shut up and fuck me."

"I am fucking you." His mouth finds yours, kissing you mean, all teeth and pressure. The stubble scrapes raw against your chin. "I'm fucking you in my truck in broad daylight because you couldn't even make it to the trailer, you desperate little..."

He trails off. His hips stutter. Because your nails have dug deeper, crescent moons in his skin, and you've clenched around him, and Aerion's composure is cracking down the middle. The words die on his tongue and what replaces it is just his breathing, rough and uneven against your mouth.

You suck his bottom lip between your teeth and bite down. Mean. You feel the skin split, taste the copper bloom of blood on your tongue, and Aerion's whole body jerks in response. His fist hits the car ceiling again, harder this time, knuckles white.

"Fuck." Hissed through his teeth, his lip bleeding into the kiss, and he licks the blood off your mouth and you lick it off his, and the taste of it, hot and metallic and shared, snaps something loose in both of you.

He drops his forehead to yours and it's there again, that thing between you, the undertow, the gravity, two halves of the same organism slotting back together after too long apart.

Your bodies remember each other. The rhythm finds itself without effort, without thought, his hips and yours moving together like breathing, rutting and rolling into each other. The performance is gone. The mean-mouthed, cool, unbothered version of him has burned away and what's left is just this. Your aerion, raw, pressing his bleeding mouth to yours, his hand cupping the back of your skull as he fucks into you.

"Need you." Growled against your lips. Low, furious, like the admission is being torn out of him by force. He's already inside you. He already has you, but it doesn't seem to matter. "Need you, wolf."

His arms brace on either side of your head and the stubble scrapes your cheek with every thrust. You hold his face in both hands and breathe him in, sawdust and sweat and salt and blood and the fading heat of a workday, and think: this. this. this is what I drove five and a half hours for.

Your nails rake down the back of his neck, his shoulders, leaving welts through the sweat and grime, and Aerion shudders, his hips snapping harder. Your back arches and your mouth finds his and you're kissing and fucking and clinging to each other with the desperate, consuming intensity.

Two people who've been starving for three weeks and are finally, finally being fed.

He comes inside you.

You feel the coil snap in him. The hot, pulsing flood of him, the way Aerion's whole body locks up and then breaks, his hips grinding deep and staying there, buried. The groan that tears out of him is guttural and animal and all yours.

Your legs tighten around his waist and you moan, actually moan, long and drawn out, holding onto him with your nails still buried in his shoulders and your face pressed against his jaw, the stubble rough against your cheek.

"Yeah, fuck," he breathes against your ear. His voice is choked, rough-spoken, barely words now. "Yeah, I got you, wolf. There you go." His hips pulse again, grinding into you, giving you everything as his cum floods you deep. "Feel all of me."

You do. You feel all of him. Hot and shaking and pressed so deep inside you there's no space between where he ends and you begin. Your arms wrap around his neck and you hold on and he holds on and neither of you moves for a long time.

He collapses on top of you. Still inside you, still trembling, face buried in your neck. You can feel the stubble against your collarbone, rough and prickly. His breathing has gone ragged and warm against your skin.

Your fingers trace the line of his jaw. The grain of the stubble, root to tip, rough one way and soft the other. He turns his face into your palm and you feel his mouth move against your hand but you can't make out the words and you don't ask.

The truck ticks in the cooling air. The light through the windows has gone amber and low.

"Five and a half hours," he mumbles into your neck.

"Shut up."

"Crazy." His arms tighten around you. His voice is muffled and something else that makes him sound unlike himself. "Absolutely fucking crazy."

You close your eyes. Hold him tighter.

"you have a nest. on another entity's level. a tall, powerful entity's level."

you tilt your head back to look up at him better, his borrowed jaw is clenched. his borrowed eyes dark. his clicking has gone silent, which is worse than sound. silent means processing and processing is dangerous.

"it's not a nest," you rebuke smoothly. "it's a bed."

"a bed. with a pillow. and a blanket. in a designated space. that another entity built for you. specifically. in his territory. where you sleep." a pause, and the borrowed jaw pulses rapidly. "that's a nest. that's a mating nest. he built you a mating nest."

"it's a bed. there's a difference."

a growl vibrates in his chest. "there's no difference. a designated sleeping space built by another entity for your specific use in their territory is a nest and you have one and it belongs to a seven-foot faceless entity who collects pink things and I am going to—"

you burst out laughing. you can't help it. his frequency is vibrating with such outsized territorial fury that the blankets are trembling and a pillow is vibrating in your peripheral.

he flips you. your back in the blankets, his weight over you while his hands settle on your shoulders, pinning you flat. his borrowed face close, expression tight and dark with outraged. his hips press you into the nest, his body covering yours completely, and the possessiveness of the position is making his frequency do mine, under me, staying here signals.

"you are not going to other nests."

"it's a bed—"

"you are not going to other beds. you are not resting in other entities' territories." his hand slides from your shoulder to your hip. gripping. pulling you tighter against him. "especially not the territory of a seven-foot entity with a pleasant frequency who builds you furniture."

"they're very nice pillows though."

"I will get you better pillows." his other hand finds your jaw, tilting your face toward him. his borrowed mouth close to yours, his eyes dark and hot. "I will get you the pinkest pillows in the entire backrooms. you are not sleeping in his bed."

"they're pink."

"I will strip every pink surface from every level and build you a pillow fort so aggressively pink it's visible from the deep levels." his thumb pushes into the soft skin under your jaw, his hips grinding against yours with a possessive roll that makes your clicking stutter. "you're sleeping here. under me. in my nest. are we clear?"

you're laughing so hard your borrowed ribs ache. your body squirms under his, wriggling, and every wiggle makes his grip tighten, his hand flat on your hip, pulling you flush against him. his body is hard and jealousy is bleeding into arousal so thoroughly he can't tell which is which anymore.

you nip his chin. his jaw. his nose. quick, playful bites between giggles.

"so jealous," you coo, your borrowed hands finding his face, squishing his borrowed cheeks. "so jealous. my poor old man. so threatened by a pink pillow and a tall man."

"he's not a man he's a—and I am not threatened—"

"the oldest entity in the backrooms." you peck his forehead. "the apex predator." peck to his cheek. "three thousand years of unmatched power." peck to the bridge of his nose. "losing his mind because a seven-foot entity gave me a pillow."

"he's seven feet tall." his hand tightens on your hip, his mouth dropping to your throat. biting the soft skin there, sucking, scent-marking you while he argues, talking against your pulse. "he's tall and powerful and he lives alone and he built you a bed and those are mating behaviours. territory-sharing. nest-building. gift-giving. he's courting you—"

"he's being nice—"

"nobody is that nice without an agenda." he bites your throat again. harder. his borrowed teeth pressing possessive marks into your skin. "especially not a seven-foot entity with his own level."

"but he made me tea once."

silence, then, "how does a seven-foot faceless entity make tea?"

you hum sagely. "he's very dexterous, and the tea was lovely."

a snarl so loud your insides clench.

"i'm going to destroy level 974."

"no you're not."

"i'm going to destroy it and build a new level. level 974-b. with pink pillows, and tea, and no seven-foot faceless entities who build beds for other people's mates."

you stop squirming, look up at him. his borrowed face flushed and furious and so earnest it makes your chest warm.

you reach up, wrap your arms around his neck, pulling him down. he resists for a second (still bristling, still radiating territorial outrage) and then his borrowed body gives and he sinks into you. your legs hooking around his waist. your arms tight around his shoulders. you pull him close and bury your face in his throat and breathe in his scent (old, cold, mineral, home) and hum.

low and warm and sure. your frequency pressing against his, calming the bristle, smoothing the agitation.

"this is home," you murmur against his throat. "this nest. your nest. you."

his clicking stutters, goes quiet, restarts in a different register. lower. softer.

"the bed on 974 is nice. the pillow is nice. the blanket is very soft and very pink and mr kitty is kind and his tea is good." you press a kiss to the scar on his throat. your scar. "but I don't burrow into his blankets when i'm cold. I don't press my face into his side of the nest to smell him, and I don't fall asleep listening to his purr."

his arms come around you. tight. his face dropping into your hair.

"this is home," you say again, quiet but final. your frequency wrapping around his tightly, making him growl, a pleased, deep sound. "you're home."

silence. his chest expands with a breath he doesn't need.

"... i'm still getting you pink pillows," he mumbles into your hair.

"okay."

"and the blanket on 974 is getting confiscated."

"absolutely not."

"fine, negotiable. except the bed. the bed is being destroyed."

"the bed is mr kitty's property—"

"the bed is a hostile territorial claim and I will be addressing it with him directly."

"you are not going to level 974 to fight about a bed."

"watch me."

you bite his ear. he growls. you bite it again and wrap yourself tighter around him and purr into his throat. his growl softens into a rumble and the rumble softens into a purr and both of you lie there in the nest (his nest, your nest, home) wrapped around each other while his borrowed hands grip the back of your shirt and his frequency slowly, grudgingly, settles.