A Perfect Specimen
1k, F/M, Explicit, insectoid, sadism, masochism, knifeplay, non-permanent injury, sounding
God, Sasha fucking loved stilettoes.
Not the fucking shoes. He was well aware that plenty of humans had a thing for them, but it made no damn sense to him. What was the appeal in making themselves all hard and sharp at the edges like that, clipped and restricted, when they were already so goddamn gorgeous in their soft flesh and flowing curves?
Sasha had two non-negotiable conditions for his sessions with Ellie. She could do whatever she liked to him, but she had to be naked, and she had to let him watch. The rolled-up towel beneath his head strained his carapace in the opposite direction to the forced spread of his legs. It ached beautifully, and it let him appreciate the look on her face as she sat back on her heels, kneeling between his lowest legs spread painfully wide. He watched the glitter of the next knife as she twirled it absently, admiring her handiwork so far.
He resisted the urge to twitch under the scrutiny: he didn't want to distract her, and he could feel the pain approaching the threshold beyond which he would no longer be able to control his own movements. It ate at the edges of his mind, sending his thoughts skittering away as he tried to assemble them, promising a beautiful oblivion if he would only give in to it. Holding it all back made him vibrate with tension, and he just had to be grateful that it was on a frequency that Ellie couldn't hear.
Eventually she made her decision, and leant forward to position one of Sasha's two remaining free limbs. Once the angle was to her liking, she fitted the tip of the knife between the chitin plates at the first joint, and pushed.
It slid in like butter, all the way through, and anchored itself into the floorboards below. Sasha buzzed and clicked, willingly giving up all attempts at coherent speech to focus on holding still for just a little longer. The flesh around the new incision began to melt away almost immediately; he could feel it oozing out of him, feel the sudden loss of control.
Back when they'd still been getting to know each other, they'd gone out for dinner. Ellie had ordered a whole crab. Sasha had sipped at his flute of nectar in between explaining about his moulting cycles, fixated on the sight of her dismantling the thing. At one point, she'd brought a leg to her mouth and sucked the meat straight out of it, looking directly at him the whole time. He'd known then that this woman was going to be the death of him, over and over and over again.
He drifted on alternating tides of agony and numbness as she finished arranging him: all eight legs stretched out around the pair of them in a neat circle, each one pinned through the first and last joints. The ones she'd started with were fully gone by now, nothing left but thin ichor oozing out of empty chitin. Before he'd met Ellie, a full moult had meant slow, frustraing weeks of increasing discomfort and incapacity, until he finally reached the point of full sublimation. Now… hell, he looked forward to them, he was impatient, he craved. Even if he could still form words, he didn't know any to properly describe the way it felt to be laid out under Ellie's eyes, under her knives. A specimen on display.
The last of Sasha's legs gave up its connection to his core, and he shuddered throughout the length of his thorax, eyes flashing, proboscis curling. The last threads of self-control slipped from his grasp, and he clicked in helpless humiliation as a final limb unravelled from the lowest point of his abdomen.
The ovipositor coiled and flexed, driven by warring instincts of pain and pleasure. The air around them drew taut with a new tension: the legs would grow back. This wouldn't. And here it was, exposed under Ellie's predatory gaze.
Sasha could barely focus but he needed to see. His vision was going fractal: Ellie's painted mouth in a perfect Oh of mock-surprise. The supple movements of flesh in her arms, waist, thighs, as she shifted backwards to make room for it. The curl of her hand, shockingly warm, as she cupped and weighed it as if judging produce at a market. It squirmed against her, seeking some kind of entrance into that soft heat.
Ellie clicked her tongue and shook her head in disappointment. Sasha was supposed to hold still for this. But he'd failed, of course, and she'd prepared for that, of course. Sasha keened and whirred as she picked up one of the two remaining tools from her roll. This one was shaped a lot like the stilettoes, only blunted, with a fully rounded tip and a smooth, circular shaft. Its handle ended in a small, flat ring.
She held his gaze as she slid it into her own mouth and out again past pursed lips. Once, twice, three times, still holding him firmly with her other hand.
His ovipositor cringed away without his permission at the first touch of cold, slick metal to its tip. Ellie tutted at it and tightened her grip, holding it still to ease the rod inside.
That was it. Sasha was gone, lost to himself, floating in a sea of blissful agony above a body that barely belonged to him any more. It was hers, all hers, it didn't exist outside of her steady gaze watching the rod disappear slowly but surely inside him, coaxing the very last part of him into line. His freshly-shed limbs twitched as they disintegrated, his carapace rattled against the floor. It was all the movement left to him as Ellie laid his ovipositor out straight and stiff, speared right through.
The final tool in her kit was a sharpened tent peg. It anchored the rod to the floor through the ring at its hilt, leaving him stretched out on display.
Ellie sighed in satisfaction, petting her hands up and down his sides. He couldn't feel it. Bright white pain sang through him, too loud to ignore, melting what remained of him into an unthinking mass of sensation within an inert shell.
The last thing he was aware of before losing himself entirely to the moult was Ellie smiling thoughtfully, picking up her sketchbook, and starting to draw.
