When Blade returns to your shared bedroom from whatever errand he’d been sent on, his first words to you are: “Have you eaten?”
The question is almost stilted. It tumbles from his lips uncertain, hesitant, but his hands are warm and steady as they cup your face, rough thumbs brushing softly against the apples of your cheeks.
You’re at a loss. It’s been weeks since his sudden and inexplicable—or, at least, not explained to you—change of heart, but after years of routine it still feels horribly new.
(When Kafka had dragged you from your shared bedroom to greet him, you’d braced for the same song and dance as every other time he’d returned from a mission. But instead of tossing you over his shoulder and heading for the bedroom, he’d greeted you sweetly—a cradled face, a tender look, a kiss to your brow. Not freedom, not a change of heart, but… something so close to devotion it made your heart ache.)
Today, when you shake your head no, rather than throwing you onto the bed ass-up, he quietly reaches for your hand and turns for the door. You follow him dutifully through the dim corridor of the current safe house until it opens up into the main room, a comfortable shared space where Kafka and Silver Wolf are occupying two sides of a wide, plush sofa—Blade does not spare them a passing glance, but a helpless look from you on the way past only gets you an impish grin from Kafka and a waggle of Silver Wolf’s fingers.
You’ve long given up hope for help from them. Blade’s companions have only ever been too eager to throw you at him, a bone to a particularly vicious hound. They only seem to intervene when his gnawing risks breaking you for good.
But right now his fingers around your wrist are hardly bruising as he guides you into the kitchen. His hands remain gentle when they find your waist to lift you and place you on the counter; they linger, trailing down your thighs when he pulls away and turns to the fridge, one squeezing the meat of your calf just enough to make you twitch before his touch is gone.
The fruit that he pulls out is vibrant purple and alien. Whatever it is, he knows exactly how to handle it, setting about peeling its wrinkled skin with a paring knife, standing so close his elbow nearly brushes against your knee with each movement.
You don’t often get the chance to explore the rest of the safe house. Blade typically only slips out of the room when you’re too fucked out to follow, assured that you’ll remain exactly where he’s left you when he returns. Fingers curling over the edge of the counter, you recall the first night—when you’d dragged your exhausted body out of that much-too-small bed and to the adjoining bathroom for some semblance of tidying yourself up, only to be caught by a savage arm around the waist and manic eyes like smoldering embers in the dark.
The eyes that regard you now glow just the same yet feel anything but, heavy-lidded and aged, curtained by strands of hair that seem greyer than they were when he’d left.
Without thinking, you reach out to brush them away, the pads of your fingers grazing his forehead. His lashes flutter as he leans into your touch.
“You’re different,” you say boldly. It earns you a quirk of a brow, an expression horribly endearing for a man who once stole you from your bed in obsessive madness. “You’ve changed since you came back from Planarcadia.”
“Much happened while we were away,” is the cryptic response you receive. He pinches a slice of that fruit with thumb and forefinger, holding it out to you. Your mouth opens instinctively. Its taste is bright, the flesh nearly melting upon your tongue, and when his hand pulls away you’re left with the sweet juice upon your lips.
“And I won’t get an elaboration on that?”
“A weapon dulls and must be reforged. The craftsman and tool are tempered together, born anew as one, transformed through a thousand shatterings.”
“Right. Whatever that means.” You lift a leg to tuck your knee beneath your chin. “And does this reforged weapon no longer feel the temptation of flesh?”
The movement of Blade’s finger stills. He goes rigid, tensing in an instant, taut as a strung bow—but his eyes, quite pointedly, do not meet yours.
A complaint sits on the tip of your tongue. You will not voice your desires, not in these circumstances; you refuse to beg your captor to touch you. And yet, if he won’t let you go…
“The least you could do is satisfy me,” you sneer. “You haven’t so much as touched me in—”
He fills your open mouth with another slice of exotic fruit. It tastes tarter now, messier, the nectar spilling over your lips and down your chin as you let out a squeak of surprise. Blade closes the distance between you before you can blink, and even as you swallow the mangled flesh around his fingers they lag within your mouth, the rough pads of his index and thumb dragging along the soft plane of your tongue. You close your teeth in pitiful protest, grazing the skin of his knuckles and pretending not to notice how his eyes spark with heat.
Still, when that thumb drops to wipe the sticky juice that glistens on your chin, your mouth feels dry. He brings it to his own lips, which part to let his tongue find it, throat bobbing with a swallow. Your breath hitches, and his eyes jump to meet yours.
Then he surges forward. You nearly slam your head into the upper cabinet behind you, so startled by the sudden movement, but catch yourself with an elbow. He has you cornered now, broad chest and ashen hair crowding your vision, thick arms at either side, and there is nothing to do as his head drops and he buries his face into the crook of your neck. You can feel his breath there, hot against your skin.
And his lips, brushing just barely at your neck as he speaks, “this blade can never satisfy its hunger.”
His teeth sink into the meat of your shoulder.
