our lane, it rains

as i understand it, theres a popular dynamic people accept of adbell (especially for masc!bell), which is the toxic yaoi dynamic, where the common kinks/tropes seen are stuff like petplay, objectification (e.g. human ashtray, human furniture, being called a dog, etc), abuse of authority from adler's end, non-consensual or dubiously consensual sexual acts, etc. it's OKAY to indulge in kinks with fictional characters...but do it with proper tagging and spoilering/hiding.

my biggest qualm with this is that there are inevitably minors in the bocw/bo6 fandom. i feel very uncomfortable having these posts out in the open or for minors to actually openly posts these things. i'm not trying to sound like a puritan, but knowing that these are very hard kinks and these can be a bit problematic for a vulnerable, underdeveloped adolescent mind, it doesn't sit right me that anyone can just scroll the bocw/bo6/adbell tag and see these posts.

it's fun to engage in sexual content, especially between adults, regarding a character you find attractive. but it's an issue, even between adults, if you don't properly mark your work with content warnings for things especially like these 'hard' kinks and fetishising. not all of us want to see fantasies on bell being an ashtray or whatnot 😭💔

Cold. Clammy.

The hand covers his eyes. Gloved. The somewhat coarse nature of its fabric brushes against his brow. It cups, and presses against his face like a blindfold, but through the minute cracks of the fingers he sees light. Concrete-colored light. Seeping through like the trickling of light.

Warmth presses against his back. A body. One he leans against.

Soft caresses of her breath bates down his neck, brushing against the shell of his ear as she leans in.

“I will be your eyes.”

Her other hand traces down his arm, until their fingers touch. Covering his hand, she lifts the gun. Guiding the nuzzle to point at a direction he cannot see.

“You shoot when I tell you to.”

He cannot see where.

All he can feel is her.

Oh the irony. He failed to be her death and yet…here she is.

Death, as her constant, unwavering companion. Death, as the sole notion of sovereignty of her fate. Death, as the very shadow he had ripped from her.

As she will rip from him.

Dig her nails into his eye sockets.

Gouge out his eyes.

He’d give her his sight and gun like a poor fool blinded with trust and faith (even if she were to shoot him dead and paint the walls with his flesh the next second).

A dead merlin. A dead doe. A dead body, a corpse-like figure lying limp in the cell. Her, her, her—

———

He wakes with a jolt. A gasp torn from his lips.

No more is the warmth of her. Just…the sticky, damp warmth of his sweat-soaked seeks and the nauseating sensation nestled deep in his throat enough to prickle his skin with dotted goosebumps, amidst the quickly cooling sheen of sweat on his arms and back.

No more is the concrete-colored light that trickles from the crevices between her fingers, but rather signs of dawn that paints his room in bluish hue.

He could still feel the touch of her fingertips, her lips that brushed against the shell of his ear, her icy yet emotionally detached voice— Oh-so vividly.

His hands tremble.

A year. A year of these nightmares haunting each of his nights. No more of Vietnam or other atrocities. Just her. And the familiar phantom touches of her cold and clammy hands (like a corpse, like a cadaver—).

Night after night of him willingly giving her his sight and guns.

Taunted by the tragic reality where he could not, he cannot do so. For she has already rejected his offer.

At least in his dreams, she takes.

And takes.

And he’d let her.

———

She shudders with the rush of fresh air.

Feeling the rush of calm and steadiness blanket her mind like the hazy fog of morning dew, she sways unsteady on the edge. Weak is her grasp. Weak are her legs.

There is a clatter of the metal on the tiles, as she falls into the water.

And it's so serene. So…so serene.

The light above on the ceiling tints frosted from the bubbles floating past her head, as her head sinks to the bottom of the tub.

Her limbs, heavy. Useless as they lay by her side at the depths of the water. Contentedly useless, that is. Water seeps into her ear, brushing her eardrums. And the sounds are muffled and all she can hear is the distant gurgle of water splashing against the sides of the bathtub and onto the bathroom floor.

But once everything settles, it’s serene. Peaceful.

There's the increasing distant panic as she's vaguely aware she's drowning. The natural, bodily instinct to thrash and pull away. But it's just all so subdued. She can push down the rising panic, the kneejerk instinct to get up. Her vision is growing dark, her chest aching and she vaguely feels the twitching in her limps as her brain's quietening, muffled screams at her to get up as she feels the energy drift from her body, her vision darkening as she slips her eyes close—

A pair of rough hands yank her out of the water.

There's spluttering. There's a loud bark of a rumbling voice, panicked and angry, but she can hardly hear it over the roaring and rushing of water and blood in her ears, as she coughs out the water in her lungs. Painful. Like a stitch. She hardly even registers her own limbs, her legs instantly failing her—

A pair of hands grabs her arms. Soon, she's tugged closer to the person, her head feeling like lead as she's forced to rest her weight against his arm, her head pressed against his as she heaves for air, blinking away tears of pain as her chest stricken with agony. Shudders rack her shoulders and limp form, her damp hair-plastered forehead pressed against a shoulder.

It’s like a small puddle beneath them. With the occasional small prick of any lingering syringes that a hand is quick to shove aside. Her clothes and hair are drenched, pathetically so, and even the person before her is half wet as well. She's curling up into a ball, cold and body aching from the twitching, convulsing.

He's scolding her, something like:

"...Are you crazy? Are you just insane? Trying to kill yourself now?”

He shakes her. Grabs her by the shoulders, shaking her as if it’ll do anything. All she can do is sit there, mind still swirling like the vortex swallowed by the drain.

“You’re crazy,” he mutters, and she can just about make out—through the falling strands of her hair—those judgement-filled…blue irises.

Blue like the ocean. Blue like the sky.

Blue…stricken.

Oh. What sort of Death is he? Never has she seen such vibrant color, such depths of life. Has he ripped her dear friend away from her? Replace the role of Death with a mere human…him? Can a person even be the judge of another’s life?

Does he dare?

“I’m not letting you die. Hell no. You think I can just let you die? Just when we’ve started all this?”

His hands are so warm. Alive. Her flesh feels cold and clammy.

Ah. So he does.

“I’m not letting go.”

She can’t tell if she can believe him.

———

16:15

The IV drips.

She lays on the bed, her shivering body crumpling the sheet beneath. Clumped, drenched hair seeps the water into the pillow under her head, and it further amplifies the cold air around her.

No— It shouldn’t be cold. It’s not cold. Only she is.

Even to her distant touch her own flesh feels like a taut, rough-ish layer of a cadaver. Clammy. Almost sickly so, from the sweat that covers her body in a sticky sheen. Yet underneath the frigid exterior, inside it feels as though her body is too large for her skin. Warmth bubbles and boils, almost to an unbearable degree. She claws at her clavicle, only to realise her grasp is far too weak now.

He sits on the armchair by the bed, hand gingerly checking the IV bag propped up on a stack of items she can’t quite discern. Even now, with her state being that of his patient, he still smokes; his cigarette hangs from the corner of his lips, the gentle wisps escaping from between the parting.

Tired. So…utterly tired.

There’s little she can do as her eyelids grow heavy, and body further leaden from the unmovable state it is in. She thinks she says something. It’s difficult to tell. Only that he glances at her before her vision grows dark.

———

15:51

Pushing off of him, she slumps back against the tub.

She just stares.

After a moment, he huffs, like a scoff. Reaching forward, he tries to grab her chin; to force her to look at him, he needs to know what sort of drugs she took.

She remains docile. Until his hand brushes against her chin and it’s a full-body jerk. Before she can grab her face, she throws a punch. Instinctive.

The gurney. In the Berlin safehouse. After awakening from being forcibly drugged.

Instincts.

They both nearly chip the marble sink. And somewhere during the tussle, he ends up on his back, body now drenched from the water covering the floor, hair messed up, staring at her in disbelief. Blood drips from his nose, with his shades somewhere with the pile of used needles and packaging.

Crawling, crawling, crawling, crawling, crawling—

“Hit me back.” It’s a dare—her voice, quivering with thinly veiled rage. “Why aren’t you hitting me back?”

He stares at her, in mild disdain. Never once wavering, even as she grabs him by his jaw, forcing him to look her in the eyes. Verdant, he thinks, verdant like a forest’s dark blanket of grass splattered with blood.

He’s never noticed her eyes before.

“I said, hit me.” Frustration.

God, what is she playing at? His breath leaves him in shorter, sharper sighs, and his fingers itch to coil around the sunken waist of hers, knowing he’d feel the last few rungs of her ribcage and— the taut, lean muscle shifting under her clammy skin—

Her eyes flit down to his lips.

He tastes copper. Metal. And the bitter saltiness of something inexplicably human, diluted with water, spreading and smearing onto the pale flesh and the yellowish tiles below.

You’ve gotten a taste for human flesh.

Belikov was terrified of a monster that coerced him into sucking his supplies dry like a little parasite. And rightfully so, he thinks as he stares at the frenzied speed of how her pupils blow wide. A black hole, engulfing—

Haven’t you?

—Oh he knows he’s a terrible man. His hands are soaked in the blood; his body and soul, bathed and baptised in the everflowing, evergiving river of bloodthirst and apathy. He has forsaken acres of interpersonal connections and abandoned normalcy to walk this inexpungible path of unquenching thirst, unsatiated appetite.

A shudder runs down his spine. There is a realization.

He’s not alone. Not anymore.

———

20:19

She’s been sleeping for the past 4 hours.

He hadn’t exactly been keeping track— but it’s difficult not to notice the time passing on the bedside clock while he sits there, watching her unconscious state. The IV was to flush out the drugs from her system as quickly as possible, since he doesn’t quite know what was in that syringe of street mix she injected in herself. He wonders how she even got a hold of such concoctions but dismisses the thought soon enough. It didn’t matter now. Part of him had also wondered if he should have pulled the covers for her (it should be ridiculous that he is watching over her like some parent, yet here he was), but the last he tested her temperature, she had been burning up—

Ah. He’s…fucked.

As he sits there, all he can do is clutch onto his own hands. Fuck. No matter how much he tries to wring his damn hands, he just can’t un-feel the sensation of holding onto her waist. It was amidst other things too. The goddamn punch she hurled at his face (and the remaining mild throbbing ache of his cheek) and the taste of copper in his mouth, the cooling water seeping and drenching his clothes as she straddled him, or the manic gaze in those deep green eyes that stared back into him as she grabbed his jaw.

She’s gaunt. Only a thin layer of lean muscle that separated her vital organs from the taut stretch of skin across her ribcage. He barely touched her, but he could feel the last few rungs of her ribs under his thumb as it subtly brushed against her torso. Like his fingers had crept under the epidermis, most intimately, running up her side to feel every sunken curve and hard protrusion of her ribs directly on the pads of his fingertips.

His mouth runs dry.

His hair is still wet from being forcibly shoved down onto the water-logged tile floor, and he hasn’t bothered changing out of his soaked clothes.

He doesn’t dare. Not when he needs to preserve that moment, that…

Was it a sick sense of thrill that ran through his body, down his spine when he saw a look he knew all too well in her eyes? It wasn’t fear, no— it was distinctly different from an adrenaline rush he so-knows and loves. He knows she won’t kill him in cold blood (she’s already stated she wants nothing to do with him after all).

He dreads to think about it. The type to make a grown man hesitate to even consider.

Oh but he knows it. He knows what he saw. He knows the kindred spirit in her, one of rage and a thirst for blood and vindication, even if she would not acknowledge it. Her anger when he would not reciprocate her call for a brawl, her manic-delirious state driven by a need to consume.

Does he dare?

Were he a better man, Adler would be running for the hills. Packing this joint operation up and getting someone to tie up the loose ends properly this time. He knows better than to take unnecessary, incalculable risks, and yet he can’t.

He watches her. As his cheekbone still aches from the hit, and her grasp of his jaw is seared into his skin, and all he can remember is feeling her weight on top of him as she straddled him for leverage, all he can wonder now is just how fucked he is. What is he dealing with here? What has he done? What has he gotten himself into?

For the first time, he feels…weak. Like an unnerving sensation of dread settling in the pit of his stomach.

The sinews of his heart tugs with a chest-seizing ache.

He’s fucked. So utterly fucked.

This is wrong, he thinks. So convoluted and wrong beyond morality and virtues. The very idea that he has the nerve to consider all this should be insanity but— A part of him now knows there’s little he can do. Not when his own feet will take him to her side now. Even now, he can’t budge from the armchair next to her, despite knowing he should get changed.

All he can do now is wait for her to wake up.

He just wants to drown in her.

———