Work Text:
Even when I'm sleeping I got one eye open
You cannot police me, so get off my areola
Get off my areola
janelle monae - yoga
***
When Rue grins, she’s terrifying. Her joy seems like a separate beast she keeps tethered to her side.
She holds up the syringe. She checks the pressure, taps the needle and makes sure there’s no air bubble.
That would defeat the point.
Rue bends down.
“Ever had one of those sexy nurse fantasies?”
Nate tries to swallow but it feels like there’s gravel at the back of his throat. He is groggy, unfocused, barely lucid. His body feels warm and listless. Relaxed. That sets his teeth on edge. He’s never relaxed, it’s not in his nature. His muscles are dormant. He can barely raise his arm. He wants to touch her, but he can’t reach.
“R-Rue…”
“Yeah, this ain’t one of those,” she says, grabbing his jaw and pushing his head to the side. She sticks the needle in his aorta.
Nate issues a muffled scream. It peters out into a croak. A spell has been cast, all noise subsides, all movement too.
He’s rendered static. He becomes an object. His eyelids flutter on the cusp of slumber. But she’s made sure the dosage is just right so that he’s still remotely awake.
Rue examines him with a clinical eye.
“Damn, you’re a giant. Occupy too much space. Someone should cut you up into smaller pieces. Make you fit into a body bag.”
Nate hears her from afar. He can see a strange, sky-blue halo behind her head.
She is, he thinks, shockingly beautiful.
It always leaves him empty. Every time he happens to see her, really see her (because she’s always hiding her face, her body), he feels a deep pit in his belly. The fear that he might like something which does not correspond with his preferences.
Rue is not as hairless as he’d like. Not nearly as groomed. Never really groomed, actually. She uses makeup as a tragedy mask. She wears boy shorts and baggy shirts. She stomps like a man, but has the grace of a chain-smoking widow. She is self-destructive, does not care about health and self-maintenance.
She is slovenly and appalling, a contagious staphylococcus that doesn’t leave you without antibiotics, without burning the organic.
And isn’t that beauty worming its way through you?
Unlike Jules, who is an intrepid angel girl, an ingénue with a heart of gold, Rue does not care about the principle of the thing. Rue has been here before. She feels ancient and vindictive. She does not mind getting her hands dirty.
Rue really is going to fuck him up.
She runs blunt nails down his bare chest. It’s not a tease. It grates, like chalk on a blackboard.
He shivers. Her touch causes ripples, above and below.
Rue takes a nipple between thumb and forefinger. “Let’s test your pain tolerance. On a scale from 1 to 10…”
Nate arches his back. He opens his mouth in a silent scream. His throat is thick and corded, dilated, like a dying animal’s.
“T-two…” he mumbles hoarsely.
Rue smiles her Antigone smile.
“Trying to look tough, huh? I’m flattered.”
Nate sees her mouth lowering, teeth bared. He falls back against the pillow.
She’s on top of him. Her skinny legs knock against his lap, make his cock twitch.
“Now,” she says conversationally, blowing hot air on his nipple, “this would be the part where I take it in my mouth and swirl my tongue around it, and tug and tease until you’re leaking pre-cum from that pathetic thing between your legs.”
Nate exhales. As a rule, he doesn’t face the women he fucks. He doesn’t like to look people in the eye. Besides, the back of someone’s body is cleaner, smoother, less female and complicated.
But he looks her in the eye. He absorbs her face.
Yeah, yes, fuck, that’s what he wants.
She can see it in the shine of his wet pupils.
Her smile is glacial.
“Say goodbye to your little friend.”
Nate sees the rupture before he feels it. Teeth splattered in blood.
Red gushing out of him.
He is still hard.
He leaks.
Like the Cheshire Cat, her face disappears before her smile.
He wakes up with a jolt.
He’s shivering violently.
Nate folds his arms protectively around himself.
He feels weak.
He’s made a ghastly mess in his underwear.
He is going to scrub himself red.
He clambers out of bed and nearly loses his footing. His hand goes up to his chest, checking for a wound. He doesn’t find it. Everything is seamless, flesh unbroken.
He breathes out, almost disappointed.
He still feels like he lost blood. He drags himself like an invalid to the shower.
Nate stands under the cold spray, eyes screwed shut, blocking the nightmare.
But it doesn’t take long to feel her behind him.
Rue’s locks tickle the back of his neck.
He can’t turn around to catch her. If he does, she’ll disappear.
She’s tall, taller than him, as she rests her head in the crook of his shoulder and whispers in his ear. “I’ll destroy your life, pretty boy. I’ll fucking burn your whole shit to the ground.”
Her hands come around his waist and her nails scrape his taut belly.
Nate groans, a gutter-like sound. He has to hold a hand against the wall to steady himself.
He wants to push her up against this wall, face-to-face, always looking in her eyes. He’s dying to see that grin.
He focuses on how it would feel. How it would taste.
But he can’t picture it.
Can’t picture fucking her, even as his other hand moves to stroke his cock.
It’s like she denies his rudimentary fantasies. Gets inside his head and locks that secret drawer. Then slips away.
He can’t fuck her. Only she can fuck him.
He feels like the girls. The girls whose faces he pressed into the mattress.
Rue laughs into his shoulder.
“I don’t give a fuck how you feel. I’m going to bleed you out. Every last drop.”
Nate believes her.
He’s shoved into the wall, face crushed against the tiles.
He feels her intrusion.
"This how your Daddy does it?" she drawls playfully.
He shuts his eyes.
She's got a big dick. It's everywhere.
The strength of her grip on the back of his neck - at the juncture of spine and medulla oblongata - is incredible.
Fuck, it’s glorious to be the victim.
"Say it, pretty boy. This your Daddy's move?"
He clenches his fists, beats them against the tiles.
"Yes. Yes."
Minutes later, he realizes he’s bleeding from his nipple.
The blood turns pink in the water.
He cry-laughs, brings his hands to his face. He feels guiltier than when he watches his father’s stash.
Nate lets himself bleed, until it’s only a trickle.
He hopes wherever she is, she’s watching.