#ustulation

"knock. knock."

you blink upwards, bleary-eyed, as two massive fingers tap at your bottom lip.

it distorts your vision to have a hand thrown in your face. what you'd been doing rendered to no importance, diminished to the petulant child you once were. instinct rears its ugly head and irritation licks at your insides. you had always bit first. asked later.

but a simple command wrapped in a familiar inflexion—guttural, deep, a dichotomy of smoke and scratch; cocksure buried beneath layers of sleep deprivation and a penchant for one too many smokes—has taught you to stand down.

he's apathetic towards you, at most. at least, he despises your very being. wishes he'd said no when they'd tossed you to him—a clot of blood in shark-infested waters—for tutelage.

treats you like a runt from the litter of hunting dogs he breeds. picking you apart to find the smallest, most antagonizing details—the most personal of barbs—then, flays you apart again and again until you are raw, bleeding out on your threadbare mattress. unable to allow yourself the luxury of thinking about a dreamless sleep whilst you polish clean armour and hone sharp knives.

still, you comply, malleable in his unforgiving hands. saccharine; sweet enough for a toothache, never lets you live it down—'might 'ave to pluck y'r teeth out, runt. givin' mine a cavity. eye for an eye n' oll that'—

his fingers push at the seam of your lips, slow but forceful; impatience at an all-time high if you're involved. your jaw protests, lockjaw,—'need ta learn how to relax', he says as the next swing of his sword against yours is jarring enough that your teeth rattle and your ears ring, while knowing he's the source of all of your stress—you're forced to blink back a whimper of pain when your knight's digits bully into your mouth.

they're unwashed. pungent acridity, brine burns on your tasebuds as he pets your tongue with rough fingerpads. he huffs in laughter, mean, when you inevitably choke on his taste.

◦•●◉✿ 𝓑𝓮𝓪𝓾𝓽𝓲𝓯𝓾𝓵 ✿◉●•◦

◦•●◉✿ 𝓤𝓷𝓾𝓼𝓾𝓪𝓵 ✿◉●•◦

◦•●◉✿ 𝓦𝓸𝓻𝓭𝓼 ✿◉●•◦

Thranduil

You keep your position at Ghost's back, blinking at the peeling paint of his shield. The red cross stares back at you. Memento mori. A reminder; you will die. Now that you've seen what it could do—

(—ripping through skin and sinew alike. Ghost's aim spot-on as he hefts his shield in a clean arc and aims for the man's neck—Teeth bared. A mangy mutt, your knight. Unused to the attention you lavish him with. "F'r the throat, runt," he always reminds you, "Go on. Take m'breath away"—

The sound is grotesque. A sickening crunch suspended in gelid air next to the malaise pocketing itself deep in your chest.

His quarry—gargantuan Austrian oaf adorned with an executioner's hood, insipid and tactless, who'd forgone an honourable exchange of combat in favour of you, the squire—gurgles on the blood pooling within his larynx, armour-clad hand reaching for ruined flesh. Memento mori, you'd spit if bile wasn't searing the back of your throat and forcing you to roll to your hands and knees, dryheaving in the bloodied snow. A hellion, Ghost would affectionately call you in retaliation.

The shield's blunt edge does not strike true upon the first hit. Nor does it the second. But Ghost's face is well-hidden beneath his heaume, and his grimace—if there were one—is long dead and buried.

"Keep up," is all Ghost offers you instead. His behemoth figure bends down not to procure a hand but to reclaim his sword and shield, flicking gore from the blade then wiping it down with the holy mantle adorning his behemoth chest. Total desecration.)—