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The air was thick. It sat heavily on the back of his tongue, greasy and foul.
Waylon hid behind a sagging bookcase, his breath coming hot and fast, camera clutched hard to his chest. The man had appeared in the slit window of a locked door, his hand pressed against the reinforced glass. The smile he’d worn had been horrible—broad and white and sick.
“Darling,” he’d said. It was an exultation. It was nearly a prayer.
He’d seen that man being dragged naked and screaming toward one of the Morphogenic Engine’s smooth, spherical pods. He’d seen him pounding on the plexiglass between the chamber and the lab, begging for help. Begging him as though Waylon had had any power at all in that moment.
They’d stuffed sterile tubes down his nose and throat to silence him. The sores that crowded over half his face had opened there, oozing raw and red as Waylon had watched.
He’d called it rape, and Waylon had believed him.
But that was then, and this was now. Though he shared the same body, Eddie Gluskin was no longer that man. He prowled after Waylon in the ruined, weirdly lovely gloom of the Vocational Block—and he was a beast, all taut sinew quivering and ready to lash out. Waylon couldn’t stand the way he talked. He couldn’t stand how it made his guts and thighs clench. He couldn’t stand the way it made his legs go shaky and boneless under him.
He talked like her. He talked like Lisa.
There were differences, of course. Where she was kittenish and welcoming and warm, he was a hot, rumbling darkness. Where she was a breath of clear spring air, he was the wintry whisper of silk and the sweet smoke of a smouldering cigar.
Waylon had decided he’d wear the gift Lisa had given him before he’d left home, the day he’d emailed Miles Upshur. It was a simple thing. A little secret, a symbol of the way she owned him. Something comforting to soothe his frayed nerves. He hadn’t counted on being caught, hadn’t counted on Murkoff’s thugs stripping him and seeing that intimate thing he shared only with his wife and the people they sometimes invited to their bed. Sheer, white stockings snapped firmly in place by a frothy garter belt. A snug gaff under a blush-coloured pair of panties with a lustre like satin. He was tucked neatly away, the masculine swell of his groin all but gone.
They’d left it all on him under the rough patient’s jumpsuit. Bastards probably thought it was funny. He wasn't ashamed, but it galled him.
“Let me fill you up.”
Filthy, filthy—sweet and soft and coloured by the sting of a razor's edge. Menacing. Plying.
She said things like that, his Lisa. She said them when the boys were away and she had his flushed chest pressed to the kitchen table, working a thick toy into him. “Gonna make you feel so full, baby,” she'd whisper, her lips plush against the back of his neck, a soft, firm hand planted between his shoulder blades. “That's what Mama’s pretty girl wants, huh?”
He shuffled his feet. The grit of the asylum had already worn holes in the soles of his stockings. The damage made him wince. He bit off a little curse.
Gluskin’s steps ground to a crunching halt.
Waylon's pulse spiked. Huh. Shit.
“Wait,” he rasped, stalling for time. “You won’t hurt me, will you? Tell me you won't.”
He could almost hear the tender smile in Gluskin’s voice. “Hurt you? Why would I do that, darling? You're being very silly.”
Waylon licked his lips. They were cracked, sticking and dry. “Everyone else has.”
“I would never. I love you. Let me love you. I only want to fix you. You’ll be perfect.”
It was almost tempting to believe him.
Eddie Gluskin was volatile, and Waylon knew exactly what he was capable of. He’d seen the headlines when he'd first been incarcerated, back before Murkoff had been more than a blip on his personal radar. More immediately, he'd seen the bodies and the sick birthing display in the other room. Gluskin had been ill even before coming to Mount Massive, even before being forced into the Morphogenic Engine. A sadist. A butcher.
He'd been lucid before, from what Waylon could see. He’d been terrified but aware. Now he was lost in a haze of delusion.
Waylon’s mouth flattened into a thin, grim line. “Alright. I’m coming out.”
He knew—everything in him screamed—that this was a terrible decision, that it could go wrong in so many ways. Stepping out from behind the bookcase, he hedged his way around the tables and desks littering the room. Gluskin stood paces away, his arms hanging harmlessly at his sides and looking thoroughly enchanted. Lisa made him feel beautiful, and so did this.
It was twisted. It was wrong. This place had done something to him, Waylon thought, feeling just a touch hysterical. He steadied himself, drawing a deep breath through his nose, and smiled wide and warm and soft. He smiled the same way for his wife.
Gluskin hesitated as though some deeply-buried part of him recognized that this was strange, that Waylon should be running. Waylon could smother that. He had a decent idea of what the Groom wanted, and he could use it.
“Hey,” he said, lifting his camera. His hands were only shaking a little. “Can I get some footage of you? I don’t want to forget this.”
Gluskin pursed his lips, shifting from one foot to the other. He looked like a schoolboy, shy and squirming. It was fantastic and absurd. “If that’s what you want, darling,” he demurred. “I can’t deny that I want it, too. Our first meeting caught on film. It’s romantic, isn’t it?” When he smiled it was a bit crooked, stiff on one side. “You think of everything. I’m so lucky.”
“Eddie,” Waylon said, approaching at a steady, sideways shuffle, his camera at eye level. “Are you lonely?”
“Without you, darling? Terribly.”
Waylon lowered the camera. “You know we’ve met before, don’t you, Eddie?” Stupid thing to point out.
Stupid, Mr. Park.
Gluskin frowned. One brow was dark and neatly arched, the other lost beneath chemical burns and rippled flesh. Waylon had to wonder if it’d ever grow back, if those wounds would ever fully close. It troubled him in the increasingly distant way everything had begun to, that the thought of pale, raised scars on Eddie’s face made his breath catch. Even the blood, the open wounds, were strangely compelling. He wanted to breathe the salt tang of them, to mop them clean—or lick.
“Only in a dream, darling,” Gluskin finally replied.
Waylon imagined he saw the shadow of a wince beneath the easy dismissal, a subtle second’s recognition of the painful, dirty, unwanted reality around them.
Then Eddie straightened like a bolt had shot down his spine, looking flustered and afraid he’d offended his would-be bride. The remaining words were a hurried, pleading tumble smudged by the faint lisp that made him seem perversely harmless, at least sometimes. “A beautiful dream. It must have been fate. We were meant to be. Can’t you see that, darling? Can you feel it, like I do?”
Eddie’s gaze flicked from the dirty floor to Waylon’s face. His eyes were a shocking blue, the scleras shot with livid red. Subjonctival hemorrhaging. Trauma. All from the machine Waylon had helped force him into. Eddie Gluskin was sick, but he deserved better than Murkoff had given him. Anybody would.
Guilt twisted vaguely in Waylon’s gut. He started when Eddie’s hands landed on his shoulders, heavy and large, and the man had the good grace to look apologetic. As they smoothed down over his arms, Waylon idly, mistily, wondered how those hands could seem so fine despite their size. A tenuous veneer of civility draped over something cagey and desperate. He smelled like blood and thinly-shaved iron, and that smell was far too sharp and far too bright. Again, Waylon licked his lips. This time Eddie watched, his focus unnerving.
“Darling,” he said, his voice soft and dark and uncomfortably intimate; purring, hungry. Then his tone shifted entirely, going genial and positively airy. It was a bit stunning how easily he could slip from one to the other, like he'd never been anything but what he was in the moment.
“You’re wearing rags. They don’t suit you. Let me give you something better? Let me make you something better. I won’t have my fiancé wearing…” His lip curled. “This.”
There was a world of disdain in that word. Waylon couldn’t help but laugh, something giddy and perhaps a bit manic rising like a bubble in his throat. Gluskin breathed a soft hiss of a sigh, his teeth clenched and his gaze flicking briefly heavenward. He was the picture of exasperated indulgence. “Beauty needs to be cultivated, darling. I’m not advocating vanity, but a woman should strive to accentuate her charms. For her husband.”
He paused, leaning in, the smile on his face a dangerous slit. It made Waylon shudder.
“You are a woman of many charms.”
He sounded like Lisa. He sounded nothing like Lisa.
Waylon flipped the screen of his camera in, pressing the little red button that would stop the feed. “I want to wear something you’ve made.” It wasn’t even a lie. He sucked thoughtfully at his lower lip, chewing skin from the corner. “I’ve seen your things around, on the mannequins.” He assumed those were Eddie's, anyway.
When he looked up, Eddie was beaming.
“You like my work? I could make you something beautiful. None of what I’ve made suits you, darling. You need something entirely your own. I’ll make you the most magnificent wedding gown. No bride will look as lovely as you. Oh, and dresses after. As many as you want. I'm afraid I'm going to spoil you, darling.”
Any slip could cost him his life, or at least disfigure him, but Waylon felt strangely removed from that very present threat. He packaged that away for later appraisal and stepped close, lightly stroking Eddie’s handmade vest. Eddie wasn’t Lisa. He might have been the kind of man Lisa would have liked to watch taking Waylon, taking him apart, if he were sane. He could—his strength, his height, his sure, deft hands and the slither of muscle under his clothes. His fingers were calloused from working a needle, his palm from gripping a blade. He was watching Waylon and the look in his eyes, while utterly smitten, was restless and starved.
“I’m lucky too,” Waylon said. And he was. He was lucky not to be dead. Lucky to be having this conversation, however deranged it happened to be. Gluskin smiled and offered his arm, and Waylon took it, and off they went. Funny how simple it was.
An idea occurred to him as they walked the winding corridors of the Vocational Block, and he stopped, letting his hand slip from Eddie’s arm. It was a moment before Gluskin realized Waylon was no longer following him, and he paused, turning to watch him. The frown that began to pucker his brow and the way his body tightened telegraphed danger, but Waylon found he still wasn’t afraid. He knew how to be a good girl.
“Eddie? I have a surprise for you.”
Gluskin’s brows shot up, his expression clearing instantly. “For me, darling?” His smile began to go lopsided. “Coming up with surprises for me. You minx. What is it?”
Waylon took in their surroundings. A filthy hallway, nothing to recommend itself. No escape routes, no notable features.
“I’d rather show you somewhere private. It’s just for us.”
Eddie’s smile went a touch wry, as though he knew what Waylon was after. “Would you?” His tone was laced with such a slippery tone of suggestion that an awkward little knot formed just south of Waylon's empty stomach. In the space of a few quick, broad steps, he had Waylon against the wall. “We’re already alone, darling. I know my own property. What kind of husband would I be, if I didn't? What kind of father—” the way he stuttered over the last word was troubling. Eddie never finished the sentence, his gaze fixing on the middle distance.
Waylon touched his face, just barely, just the whisper of his fingertips along the man’s ruined jaw.
“Eddie,” he said. “Nobody will ever treat my children like that. I’d die first.” He would die before anyone treated his sons the way Eddie had been treated. The papers, he remembered, had revelled a bit too much in the gory details of the man's history, back when he'd read them.
Gluskin gripped his hands, his gaze too bright and too immediate.
“I know, darling. You’ll be such a wonderful mother.”
Waylon worked one of his hands free and tapped Eddie’s pursed lips with the pad of a finger. He had to find a way away from this subject. “I’m supposed to be surprising you, Eddie.”
Eddie looked a touch embarrassed. “Oh. I’m ruining your surprise, aren’t I?”
Waylon laughed. “It’s alright. Just take me somewhere private? The, uh...” He looked around, trying to gauge exactly which part of Eddie’s ‘property’ this hallway was meant to represent. Suburbia, Waylon thought. Nuclear families in modest, but handsome homes. White picket fences and lush, kelly green lawns. The American dream.
“... The yard,” he ventured, “isn’t the best place for this.”
Mercifully, Gluskin seemed receptive to Waylon's off-the-cuff interpretation. “I’m so sorry, darling. Here.” He gripped Waylon’s upper arm, steering him through the peeling corridors of the Vocational Block. They stepped over more bodies on their way than Waylon cared to count. His knees were wobbling, but he kept on his feet.
Those ruined halls lead to something like a home: a family room crudely outfitted with a computer, in place of a TV; a bathroom with a dented First Aid locker and a punctured pipe for a shower; a kitchen boasting a stolen Bunsen burner; a bedroom with two stained mattresses stacked atop one another. It was impressive given what there was to work with.
Eddie paused in the living room, looking uncertain. Waylon knew better than to let the man think. He closed his hands over Eddie’s. “Just for us. This is just for us.”
Eddie seemed to take his reassurance for anxiety, which was well enough. He smiled, wrapping his arms around Waylon’s middle. He really was huge. The thought sat throbbing dimly in the pit of Waylon's belly.
“I’m safe here, Eddie. I know you'll keep me safe.”
He hugged the man’s thick waist, pressing his nose to his chest, breathing in dust and blood.
“You know you make me feel me small, right?”
Eddie’s uncertain silence was all the response he needed.
“Eddie,” he said. “I want you to make me feel small.” Eddie’s arms were tight and firm around him.
“Darling.” There was a thread of warning in his voice, like spidersilk. “I think you’re teasing me.”
Waylon grinned, extracting himself from Gluskin’s embrace. “Not yet.”
He set his camera aside and lowered the zipper of his jumpsuit with a soft rasp, letting it part and slide from his shoulders. His chest and belly were smooth; all of him was. He’d shaved before wriggling into Lisa’s gift. It'd been something of a meditation at the time. A moment of calm before the storm.
Gluskin drew a sharp hiss of a breath, his hands curling into fists. He was tight as a wire, the tension in his body an almost palpable thrum. Waylon wet his lips, letting the jumpsuit fall and land around his ankles with a sad, dusty huff. He was lean and the gaff flattened his tucked groin as much as it could, but his silhouette was hardly feminine.
Gluskin’s jaw tightened, his ruined eyes impossibly wide. He averted his gaze, looking scandalized and tugging sharply at his tie. “Darling, this is inappropriate. We aren’t married yet. I haven’t fixed you—you need to behave. Once I’ve made an honest woman of you, I promise…”
Waylon kicked his jumpsuit away. “I don’t need to be fixed.” He dipped his fingers between his thighs, drawing them up over his satiny undergarments, as though to illustrate his point—though he wagered that his definition of what might need fixing differed vastly from the Groom’s.
“Right? I’m not like the…” He winced, recalling the bodies they'd passed. “The others. See?”
Eddie paused, his gaze drifting down between Waylon’s thighs. The corner of his mouth twitched in consternation as he considered the smooth space there. He took a step toward Waylon, then hesitated, his hand hovering in the air. For a long moment, he chewed his bottom lip. Flesh split and blood welled. His expression twisted, going stormy and dark. “Darling,” he said. His voice was rough and burnt and barbed, his lips peeling back in a snarl. “Whore.” He worked the buckle of his belt, drawing it from its loops with a slow, leathery hiss.
“Come here.”
Waylon had no time to process the new and terrifying edge in Eddie’s voice. No time to ready himself for the fingers that knotted in his hair, dragging him toward a battered couch. Where the hell had he gotten a couch? He found himself splayed over Gluskin’s lap.
He was expecting it, when the belt came down—it hurt, but that was just fine. Leather cracked against skin, the sound and sensation bright as a spark. The noise he made was hardly dignified. A shout. A pitiful whine.
“Bitch,” Gluskin snapped. “Filthy slut. Tempting me like this.”
The belt struck again and again and again, and Waylon jolted under each blow. He could feel his buttocks and the backs of his thighs colouring, skin alight, coming alive. The snap of the leather made him jump and keen, every muscle in his body straining and flicking in protest. He felt like he might choke on his own tongue; there was suddenly too much in his mouth to swallow. Everything was so thick and so hot, his tongue a useless lump, beads of sweat gathering at his temples and in the hollow of his working throat. He could feel his hair sticking to his face. There was a thin ringing in his ears.
Distantly, he heard himself babbling, slurred and breathless. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! Oh, God... Show me how to be a good girl. I want to be a good girl for you. Please...”
Gluskin gripped the back of his neck. Whatever he’d made his gloves from, it was rough. Waylon could feel patches of dried blood on the fabric, flaking and stiff. He wiped his knife on them. The image shot like a jolt down Waylon’s belly and fizzled there. He wanted to get hard and rub his dripping, aching flesh against Eddie's makeshift slacks. The gaff had handily tamped him down thus far, and he pinched his legs together in the hopes of keeping it that way. Pinpoints of pain that had nothing to do with the belt skittered along the insides of his thighs. It was for the best, probably. Who knew how Gluskin would react to a stiff cock suddenly pressing into his thigh.
“You’re such a whore, darling,” Gluskin murmured, the gritty rumble of his anger receding. “Look at you, enjoying this. Don’t think I can’t tell.”
Waylon writhed. “I’m sorry! I love it. Make me behave. Please…”
“Please?” Eddie snapped the belt down again. The sound of it whipping through the air—of the thump and slap of leather on skin—aroused him almost as thoroughly as the stinging, swelling stripes each sharp crack left behind. It was rhythmic, vicious, hypnotic. It soothed him into a strange, helpless reverie. He was floating. He no longer weighed a thing.
“Please what?” His voice was cool and soft as fur. “You’ll have to speak up, darling.”
Waylon hiccupped, shuddering and dizzy, his pulse swishing in his ears. “Please. I’m sorry. I want it. Want you. I want you. Just you…”
Gluskin hummed absently, still working his way over Waylon’s thoroughly-abused backside. His focus was alarming.
Waylon breathed a fluttery, formless, utterly broken sound. He was throbbing. It was everywhere. “Let me make it better. Please. Please...” His words were slurring together, his lips slack and his tongue sluggish. He didn’t care. He could feel Eddie’s arousal pressing hotly into his belly, and it made him want to melt, a watery ripple of sensation cradled low in the bowl of his hips. “T-there’s… things… things I can do for you before we’re married. Make it good for you. Show you what a good girl I can be for you. Show you what a bad girl I can be for you...”
He lifted his battered rear, knees still together, hollowing his back in supplication. There’d be bruises soon, he knew it. Ripe, dark, bleeding up from burst veins.
Gluskin growled. He dropped the belt with a dull thump and jerked Waylon back by his hair, pressing his face to his groin. “Things like this, darling?” His voice was perilously rough. All Waylon could do was moan, popping the fastenings of the man’s fly with his teeth.
Eddie drew a hiss through his teeth. “Filthy. Just look at you.”
He was. He was. He loved it. When he finally managed to free the man from his slacks, he breathed a shuddering sigh. Gluskin was big in more ways than one, his cock drooping slightly under its own weight. He smelled of musk and salt, and it made Waylon want to drag his tongue up the bobbing length of him. So he did. He trailed sloppy kisses up its side, drawing its silky skin into the heat of his mouth. He wanted it hard and thick for him.
Eddie hummed. “Are you wet, darling? You’re so eager, sucking me like this. Could you come just from having your mouth fucked? I think you could—a slut like you.”
He could have been remarking on the weather. It was obscene how viciously genteel he sounded.
Waylon closed his mouth over the fat, slick head of that cock, breathing sharply through his nose. He rolled his tongue over its slit, lapping up clear beads of precome. He knew the working of his lips sounded lewd, wet—the soft, deliciously dirty smack and pop of each slow pull—though he was too far gone to truly hear it. He wanted to sink, to swallow. He wanted to choke and glut himself, but Gluskin held him back when he tried.
“Mm. Not so fast,” he chided. “A filthy girl like you shouldn’t get what she wants right away, should she? Be good for me.”
Waylon made a muffled sound of displeasure, suckling hungrily as though that might change the man’s mind. Eddie clicked his tongue.
“Oh, you should see yourself, darling. You’re an absolute sin.”
He slammed Waylon’s head down, forcing himself into his fluttering, protesting throat without preamble—Waylon gagged and squirmed, hot tears stinging eyes and streaking his cheeks. His head was full of fuzz. He could barely breathe. Dimly, he registered Eddie jerkily working him up and down by his hair. He heard the choked sounds that caught at the back of his own throat. He felt the thin spittle and bubbly froth that wet his lips and the thick shaft of that cock. A steady pulse throbbed against his tongue—a deep, wide, watery ache spreading him open as Eddie fucked roughly into his mouth. He let it come and come and come, flushed and dribbling and thoroughly destroyed.
“Is this what you want? It is, isn’t it? Girls like you need it hard. You need somebody to show you your place.”
His voice was feathering out into little more than a harsh whisper. He had to be close. Waylon tried and failed to hum his agreement, but all he managed was a hitching, choppy whimper. Little pinpricks of light began to spark behind the fluttering lids of his eyes, flashbulb-bright.
Eddie pulled him so far back that his cock almost popped free when he came, filling his mouth in hot, salty bursts.
“Hold it there,” he rumbled, twisting his grip on Waylon's hair to force his head up. He fitted two knuckles between Waylon's teeth and wedged them apart, gaze fixed on the wet mess in his open mouth, his expression one of pleased fascination. “You really shouldn't have made me waste it like that.”
Waylon gurgled a mostly useless reply which Eddie nonetheless seemed to enjoy.
“Swallow it, darling.”
Waylon swallowed. Seed and saliva rolled down his chin as his throat worked and clicked, his mouth held open. He slid a shaking hand up Eddie's neck, stroking the tips of his fingers along the strong line of his jaw.
The heel of his palm didn't make much of a sound at all when he cracked it sharply against the man’s temple.
Gluskin slumped uselessly, his spent, naked prick hanging heavily between his splayed thighs. Unconscious. In a fit of something like compassion, Waylon tucked him back into his trousers—he’d become too familiar with feeling exposed lately. The other patients clearly preferred to avoid Gluskin's territory, but Waylon couldn't leave a man vulnerable like that in a hellhole like this, no matter what kind of monster he happened to be.
He slid from the couch, wiping his face with the back of his hand and backing towards his camera and jumpsuit. There'd be a time and a place to take care of the ache in his groin, but it wasn't here. He wasn't that far gone yet. He scooped up the camera and shrugged into his clothes.
Waylon Park disappeared into the warren of the asylum, sucking the tang of salt from his lips.