꒷꒦꒷꒦( ´ཀ` )꒦꒷꒦꒷

Still, in the end, she does lend you fifty bucks and also pays for dinner, although not before criticizing your choices of food on top of the rest. It’s fair, you suppose. You get the money you need, and all it costs is any sense of self-worth you have left. Frankly, it’s probably a bargain—there isn’t much self-worth there to sell. Probably not fifty bucks’ worth, anyway.

After you’ve eaten, you slip into the bathroom to try to collect yourself enough to drive home. It’s bad enough that money’s so tight; it’s so much worse that she was the only option. You slip into a stall, lock the door, and finally, finally let yourself cry.

And over your tears and attempts to subdue your sobs, you just barely hear the sound of boots on linoleum. You sniffle, trying very hard not to make a sound. The boots stop at the door of your stall, and you freeze.

And then a head dips down. The feet are still there, but now there are also eyes, down at the level of his ankles, looking at you through the large gap under the door of the stall.

“Hi,” says the stranger. “You okay?”

You stare at this person. All you can see is eyes and hair, thick purple curls cascading a short few inches from his scalp because he’s looking at you upside-down. And for a moment, you’re snapped out of your misery, because you’re busy trying to wrap your head around how this person is bending like that. You don’t even think about the fact that a stranger is staring at you on the toilet as you’re busy being confused as to how.

“Come out,” he says then, and then the eyes disappear, and the boots take a step back. They have skeleton feet painted on them, you notice, though above them it’s just jeans. A member of the band from the dining room, you guess.

You get up, pull up your pants, flush, wipe your eyes, sniffle, and finally unlock the door.

But there’s no one there. You look around, confused, then go to wash your hands. Maybe the guy got bored and left. Maybe you were fucking hallucinating. At this point you might as well. At least it was a nice hallucination. Someone who gave a shit.

You dry your hands, and touch your pocket for the cash your mom had given you, and sigh, closing your eyes.

And then suddenly there’s something pressed up behind you, a thin, warm body. And arms wind around you. A hug, unexpected, unasked for, and you know instinctively this is the stranger, the one who shouldn’t have been looking at you.

Normally you’d stiffen at the sudden contact from a stranger. But after all that, frankly, it feels so good to be touched with any kindness. He smells sweet but strange—candy with pepper, perfume with brimstone. For a moment, that scent seems to fill your nostrils, your head. For a moment, you feel dizzy, and you lean back against him before you realize what you’re doing and straighten up.

“Sorry,” you start to say.

“Don’t be,” he says, and he turns you around. Just a guy, you think, in jeans and a black shirt, his purple fluffy hair in disarray. His smile is sweet, his sharp teeth showing.

Sharp teeth?

And then it’s not just a guy. Instead it’s something else—pointed ears, long teeth, and black horns, one a spiraled curved up from his head and the other broken down to a nub, filed to keep it smooth instead of rough-edged. His skin is purple-gray, and a tail curves up to stroke your cheek with a spaded end, because his hands are still on your arms. You can’t back away.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says softly. “She was mean to you, and you’re having a hard time, aren’t you?”

You sigh and nod, because frankly, whatever he is cannot be as frightening as calling your mom for a favor earlier tonight. “Yeah. I thought she’d behave in public, but…”

He smiles at that. “It’s okay,” he assures you.

And then he leans forward, and presses his lips to your forehead.

“Because you don’t have to deal with that again. Okay?”

“What do you mean?” you ask, and now for the first time you do feel some fear.

But then he just brings his hand up to your cheek, the same one his tail had touched. And that sweet, indefinable scent seems to fill this tiny little bathroom again, floats into your nose, into your head.

“I’m going to take much better care of you,” he says softly.

“What—?” you start, trying to shake your head to clear it.

“It’s quintessence,” he says, his voice soft, earnest. “It won’t hurt you.”

And then your head is clouded with it, and you let out a sigh. Everything smells so nice, and everything feels so much better. It’s not drowning out anything, not even your thoughts. It’s just...taking the edge off of everything. Your mother’s harshness, the fear of your dwindling bank account, the stress of how am I gonna get through next month, then the one after that, and then…? All of that is still there, in your head somewhere, but when you think about it, there’s no sharp stab of fear, no self-loathing, no dread. It’s just there.

And so is he, this strange man who isn’t a man. He smiles, looking at you, and he takes your hands.

“Come on,” he says. “Come with me.”

And you do. Of course you do. Why wouldn’t you?

He cares for you.

He promised.

And he leads you out of the bathroom, out of the diner. It’s late, you realize—much later than it should have been.

“Shh,” he tells you softly. “I don’t want the others to hear.”

You nod your acquiescence, and he smiles and quietly leads you into the bus. He moves carefully, making no sound even in his heavy boots. You can hear other sounds on the bus—people talking, and what sounds an awful lot like sex from one of the bunks—but there’s no one else visible except the driver, who just sort of nods and otherwise ignores you both.

“Phantom, is that you?” calls someone from another bunk.

“Uh, yeah!” he says.

“Good, we were about to send someone after you,” he answers, and then there’s nothing.

Phantom pushes you gently into his bunk and follows you. It’s a tiny space, and you don’t think Phantom can even sit up in it, but it doesn’t matter. He winds himself around you, legs and arms and tail, wrapping you in his scent.

“I’m going to keep you,” he whispers. “But we have to wait until the bus goes or they might not let me.”

“Okay,” you whisper back, and he kisses the back of your head, and strokes over your arm. His hand is warm, and for a moment you feel so good, so safe… “Where are we going?” you ask.

“We’re on tour,” he says. “But it’s okay. I’ll take care of you.”

A sound fills the little bunk, and you aren’t sure what it is at first, until you realize it’s a purr—a strange, echoing purr, like it comes from far away, but when Phantom presses into your back you know it’s from him. Soothing, like his presence, like this quintessence thing that’s fading but still feels like a warm blanket.

“I’m going to make sure you eat well and you’re happy and safe,” he says softly, earnestly, like he’s looking for your approval. “Okay? I promise. It’ll be great.”

You’re being kidnapped. You know this. But much like the rest, it just…doesn’t bother you. Why should it? It’s not like you have anything to go back to, not really.

Eventually you feel a different rumble—not his purr, but the bus starting up, and getting on the road. There are more voices, but Phantom doesn’t move, and he doesn’t let you go.

After a while, you shift a little, because the bunk isn’t that soft and your hip hurts. And that’s when you notice something else pressed against you.

“Phantom?” you say.

“Yeah?”

“Is this like…a sex thing for you?”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Doesn’t have to be. I just wanted a human. No,” he corrects, “not just a human. You.”

You consider that for a moment. He’s obviously not a human, and it doesn’t take a lot of work to consider that the other members of this band probably aren’t, either. You are, but that’s not a problem, not for him. He still holds you with such care, and he’s hard against your ass.

It’s nice to be wanted this much.

“Do you want it to be?” you ask then, and grind back against him. Maybe this is foolish, says some part of you, because he’s no longer filling your head with quintessence to block out every stray and upsetting thought.

But the truth you’d known under his influence is still true. So this time you dismiss those thoughts yourself, without his assistance.

And Phantom helps drown it out, not with quintessence but with a very, very soft moan. “Shh,” he says, though he was the one making noise, not you. But even so, he’s reaching forward, easing down your pants. “Do you want it?”

“Yeah,” you whisper, and moan when his hand skims over you.

“Good,” he whispers, and he fumbles with his own pants, pushing them down. He reaches down, spreading your thighs, pushing your knees forward, tucking himself in behind you until you can feel the length of him against you. “I promised I’d take care of you.” And slowly, slowly, he starts to push into you.

“I know you will,” you say.

That more than anything makes him moan again as he slides in, filling you, making you shiver. You bite your lip, trying to bite back a sound of your own. His cock is hot, burning hot, and when he thrusts it feels—strange, different, not like any human cock you’ve ever known, a ridge maybe, a curve that hits—right—right where you—

“Phantom,” you whine, fighting to keep your voice down. His fingers find the hardness between your thighs and stroke, fast, precise, strumming you like an instrument as he rolls his hips again, again. He keeps going, and you can hear his breath in your ear, hard and fast, and knowing you’re making him feel this good only adds to your own pleasure, only makes you need—want—you’re so close, so fucking close—

“Hey, Bug!” calls a voice from outside the bunk then, loud and brash. “What are you doing in there?”

Phantom freezes, still buried inside of you, his fingers on you but not moving, and you fight not to writhe in place, fight not to grind and get that last little bit to break you through that edge.

“Uh,” Phantom says, and now he puts his hand over your mouth. “Masturbating. Leave me alone.”

You start to giggle into his hand. But instead of stopping, he starts moving his fingers again between your legs. Faster. Harder. Like he’s afraid if he doesn’t finish, if you don’t finish, someone will take you away, and your giggle turns into a moan, half-buried in his palm.

“Wow,” says the other voice. “Why do you sound like two people?”

“Porn!” Phantom calls back, breathless, and keeps going, and his hips are moving, and you move back against him—

And you come, hard, crying out against his hand, clenching hard on his cock, and you feel him twitching inside of you, choking out your name that you don’t remember ever telling him as he spills a brilliant heat inside you.

And then the curtain behind him is ripped aside, and light blares in from the bus.

“Wow,” says the voice, dry and sardonic. “You got that fancy 3D porn.”

Phantom pulls out of you, and you twist to look back over your shoulder, over his shoulder, to find more people like him—odd-colored skin, pointed ears, and a lot of gleaming eyes.

All on you. You and Phantom.

For the second time this evening strangers are seeing you with your pants down, but for the first time you feel truly self-conscious and you fumble for your pants still around your ankles.

And Phantom gets away from you, turns to face his bandmates—

And crouches at the edge of his bunk to hiss.

“This is mine,” Phantom says. “You can’t take them away from me. They’re mine.”

The others all look at him, then at you. And then one of them, with branching antlers instead of horns, lets out a sigh.

“Calm down, Bug,” he says.

Phantom’s tail thrashes like an angry snake. “I took them fair and square. Other ghouls take humans all the time—”

“No one’s taking them from you,” says the antlered ghoul, holding his hands up. “Okay?”

Phantom looks at him, and then at you, and then his shoulders relax. “Okay,” he says. “Because they need me.”

“We won’t forget,” says another ghoul, who reaches out to pat his cheek. “No one will touch your human.”

“That’s right,” says Phantom, and then he rolls back into bed, jerks the curtain shut, and winds himself around you. “You’re mine,” he says again, and nuzzles his nose into the back of your head, but this time you hear a question in it.

You think of two strange eyes under the toilet stall, a creature comforting you in the bathroom after a lifetime of no one giving a shit. You think of hands making you come like it’s more important than his own pleasure. You think of him crouched hissing in front of you, like a gargoyle at the entrance of a cathedral to keep it safe from harm.

You think of now, the way he’s wound around you, the same comfort.

“I’m yours,” you promise, and his strange purr fills the bunk again.

“Can. Can you get off of me?” you say.

“No,” he says, and then he lays his head back down.

You aren’t sure what you’d expected, to be honest. Are ghouls usually biddable? If so, this one is not.

You lay your head back down and try to take stock of the situation, looking up at the coffered ceiling of your small cell. Your vows are fresh from your tongue, sworn before the Devil only a week ago. You’d been a congregant for much longer, though, ever since you’d left your old life behind, the life you try not to remember but that gnaws at you sometimes in your sleep.

You’ve seen ghouls, in your time here, but rarely interacted with them. You definitely haven’t spoken to this one.

You’d at least gotten up to pee an hour or so ago, so that isn’t desperate. He hadn’t been there at five this morning. But sometime between five and whatever time it is now, he’d made himself at home in your bed. No, not in your bed. On you.

The ghoul keeps purring. His tail swishes impatiently; it’s a strange tail, not that you know anything about ghoul tails. It almost looks like it has fins on the end, except they’re jagged and shredded and blackened, like they’d been ripped or burned.

“Ghoul?” you say again.

He looks up again, and he blinks unevenly, first one eye, then the other.

“Uh. Why are you here?”

He shrugs, or tries to, although his position lying on top of you doesn’t really allow that either. “Why not?” he says.

You aren’t sure how to answer that.

“What’s your name?” you ask the ghoul, deciding to try another tactic.

“Dewdrop,” he says, and his tail swishes again.

“So you’re a water ghoul?” you ask.

Another swish, but this one reminds you, again, of a cat—annoyance, a warning maybe. “Not anymore,” he says.

“Sorry,” you say. “I’m new here.”

“I know,” he says. “That’s why I’m here.”

“What, you’re the welcoming committee?” you ask.

He laughs then, a rough sound, and reaches up to push back some of his hair. You wonder why you’d thought his skin looked sickly. Despite the blue color, you can see a warmth in it.

“No,” he says, and reaches up to pat your cheek. “I came before anyone else could stake a claim.”

“A claim?” you repeat.

He sighs and rolls his eyes, impatient with your ignorance. “A claim,” he says again, slowly. “You’re new meat.”

You stare at him for a moment. You’ve heard stories about ghouls being dangerous, but you hadn’t believed them. What if…

“Are you going to eat me?” you ask in a small voice.

He flashes another smile—literally, because for a moment there’s a flare of brightness with it, like someone flicking a lighter on. “Only if you ask nice,” he says.

Your cheeks flush. “That’s not what I—”

“I know what you meant,” he says. Now he sits up, though he doesn’t get off of you, but moves to straddle you. Only once he gets up do you realize he’s naked, and your cheeks are burning hot now as you try to look away, up at the ceiling again.

Even so, your memory is still full of him—thin body, scrappy more than scrawny, and a thick thatch of yellow curls where his legs meet, legs that are currently on either side of you where you’re wrapped in your blankets. Beneath the curls is a glimpse of something small but thick, hard and decidedly not human in nature.

It had been a brief look, but it’s burned into you like an afterimage on a screen.

“Listen,” he says then. “I haven’t done this for a long time. My last human and I parted ways a while ago and I didn’t want a new one.”

“Your human?” you repeat, and despite your embarrassment, you look at him again.

His hands smooth down your blankets. “My human,” he repeats. “I loved him, my old human. I loved him a lot. But when I became a fire ghoul, we didn’t…fit, anymore.” He looks down, his short spiked lashes casting a shadow over his sharp cheekbones. “After I set him free, I didn’t want a new one. Not until I saw you take your vows last week.”

You stare at him. “What?”

He looks up at you, studying you for a long moment. “I saw you,” he says again. “You came here hurting, didn’t you? But you were so sincere in what you wanted. To serve our master, to serve the others, to be more than whatever you’d been before. I could see it in you. A flame,” he says, and snaps his fingers. Fire flares from his fingertips, stretching towards the ceiling, and then it fades.

No one has ever said anything like that to you.

“And I wanted it. So here I am.”

“Dewdrop,” you say, using his name as if to add gravity to what you’re saying. “What do you want from me, exactly?”

“I just said.” Any softness is gone from his tone. “You. Your sincerity. The flame in your heart.” He brings his fingers down now, touching your chest just above the edge of the blanket.

You let out a yelp, because his fingers are burning hot, little flickers of flame through your pajama shirt.

He pulls his hand away, and you yank your shirt collar down to look at the skin, but there’s no mark, no burn. Even the shirt is unmarred, you realize.

And now when you look up at him, for a moment, his skin is incandescent, the color at the heart of a fire, and you’re left blinking away pain and spots in your vision.

“Look,” he says then. “I could spend my time reassuring you, coaxing you. That’s probably what Aether would do, even though he has quintessence. But in the end? You’re mine. I claimed you. You might as well understand that without going to all the trouble.”

And then he bends, and you brace yourself for pain again.

But when his lips meet yours, they’re hot but not punishing. The kiss is hard, but not bruising. You feel his fangs nip your lip as he pulls away, but it leaves only the faintest sting that fades as quickly as it had happened.

“Dewdrop?” you repeat.

Such a cute name. Such a small ghoul. But he’s crouched over you still, fully in control. His tail thrashes, and you can see teeth and claws and him, his skinny little body one coiled muscle ready to strike if he needs to, wants to.

But he does not strike. He considers for a moment, his lids half-lowered. Your lips taste like cinnamon and wood smoke, and you run your tongue over them for a moment.

The kiss had been good.

The kiss had been very good.

And despite yourself, despite the fear in your chest and the threat of him looming over you, you find yourself thinking of what he’d said.

That he’d loved his old human, that he hadn’t wanted a new human. Not until you.

“I’m nothing special,” you find yourself saying. And now you aren’t trying to get him to leave, not as you were before. You’re trying to let him down, to explain to him that whatever he’d seen isn’t there. Or maybe some warped and wounded part of you wants to hear him disagree.

But if you’d expected a gentle reassurance, you were mistaken. Instead, he bares his teeth, and his hand comes to your chest again, and this time the flame you feel jolts through your nipple, making you cry out. As before, though, you know the skin is unharmed; there is no smell of burning, no sign of it except the memory of pain.

“You’re mine,” he tells you, sharply, firmly. “And so you’re never going to say that again.”

And now he starts to pull down the blankets, moving aside.

“I picked you out, I claimed you, I wanted you,” he says. “I don’t know what happened to you before you came here, but I saw what you are, I know what you are.”

And now he shoves up your sleep shirt, finding you bare, and he cups you, his hand not burning hot but warm, so warm, and it’s firm, pressure against you, demanding your arousal but not giving you relief.

“And what am I?” you say, a challenge as much as a question. But your face is hot, lips still tasting of him, and your nipple is still tingling, and you can feel him there.

“You know what you are,” he says, and now he starts to touch you. His hand is precise, and he finds wetness and grins. “You know what this is, too,” he says, and he brings his hand up to his mouth to lick your arousal from his fingers. “You want me to take care of you?”

“I—” You don’t know what to say, except there’s a heat between your legs that has nothing to do with fire ghoul powers and everything to do with his forked tongue slowly licking over his fingers.

“I told you that if you asked nicely, I’d eat you,” he says, but his voice is lightly mocking. “Say please.”

“Dewdrop—”

His fingers find you again, stroking sensitive skin. You can feel pleasure start to build, and you moan and let your head fall back.

Then he flicks his claw against you, you cry out from the brief snap of pain, brief but brilliant. “That’s not what I told you to say,” he tells you. “Say please.”

You let out a rough breath. The pain fades, but the arousal it leaves behind aches like a bruise, pounding in time with your racing heartbeat. “Please,” you say, and try to buck against his hands. “Please, please, please.”

That gets another grin—and more than that, him crouching again, low, his mouth on you, as hot and needy as you are. The forked tongue traces over you, making you choke, and then delves into you, and you arch so hard you almost levitate off the bed. And then he extracts his tongue from you to take your hardness into his mouth, sucking, flicking at you with that wicked, wicked tongue, and the heat he builds in you is entirely from your own body, your own desperately human body.

You scream when you come, and you think you hear him laugh.

But then when you’re done, he crawls up again, and this time when he lays on you it’s skin-to-skin. You can sort of feel his own arousal, but when you shift to reach for it he grabs your wrist firmly, pulling it away—and then kissing your palm, leaving a tickle of heat behind.

“Do you know what you are now?” he asks then, looking up at you as he had done when you’d first woken up.

You bite you lip. You think you might, but you’re afraid to say it.

“I don’t know who hurt you before you came here,” he says. “But I know no one else will ever hurt you again. Not even you, saying you aren’t special. Of course you are. Because of what you are. Say it.”

You swallow hard, but you open your mouth.

“Yours,” you say, your voice small. “I’m yours.”

He smiles. “That’s right,” he says. “And that’s why I’m here.” And when he kisses you again, he tastes like you and he tastes like fire and he tastes like a promise that you’ve never even hoped for.

This morning you woke up with Dewdrop in your bed. And as you get up, as he dresses you both and then leads you out of your cell, you know that’s the last time that’ll happen.

Because tomorrow, and every day after that, you’ll wake up with Dewdrop in his bed.