Another inktober, and another collaboration with dirtysensitive! Heavily cropped because I am really not very good at this. Below is her original! It’s strange how much a picture and its flow change with a mere shortening of facial features. So much is lost when I go and try to mimic the pose while drawing the characters in my style.
There actually is a point to why these pictures show them in a lot of skin contact, often their eyes closed. Also, Loïc is totally not a ho, despite necking around with two individuals (not that the Grove’s fae would even understand exclusive relationships the way humans do, but).
Once upon a time, on the night of the Second Contract.
---
Loïc’s eyebrow rose. He leaned forward and moved the candle closer on the table to better see the hymn on the parchment. There was a cluster of notes and symbols on the sides, the whole space a mess of red ink. Underlined and over-lined words, sentences smudged and rewritten above in Koite’s lady-ish penmanship.
“This is a faun contract.”
“Correct.”
“How did you even get your hands on this? I have yet to see them write any of their songs down.”
“Quite simply. I found someone who had heard the first part, whereas I myself had once heard the second part. Don’t look at me like that, I wasn’t taking part in the proceedings.”
“...Right, you’d be able to do that, the immunity.”
Loïc rubbed his eyes, sat down, was quiet for a while.
“This is rather. There’s a worrying risk for...uncontrollable violence.”
“I have made some modifications in it. The original is not so much of a contract as it is a breeding spell. Of course it’s a crude method, theirs are nothing but,-” Koite snorted “-it’s the one that gives you the most time. Two to three months extra in a year, less than it would usually since you’re not a female.”
“Yes, I’d rather not have a pregnancy to top this all- wait, that’s not a plausible side-effect, is it?” Loïc sounded momentarily concerned.
Koite grinned.
“...Go drown yourself.”
His answer was a low, quiet laugh. Loïc followed Koite with his eyes when the fae rounded the table and cast a shadow on Loïc with all his formidable height. His eyes gleamed in the candle light, appearing a mix of whiskey and amber.
“The first contract protects you from fatal harm. They would be the perfect pair. But this is your choice. You asked for my best solution to prevent the last time from happening again. This is it.”
“Was this the only solution you found?”
Koite was suspiciously quiet. He started to lift his hand, pulled it back.
“...You want this.” There was realisation in Loïc’s voice. Was it the violence? Sex? No, too mundane. The binding in the contract? More probable. The first contract was purely in Loïc’s favour - did Koite wish to even out the balance in power? This would bind him to Koite. The longest extra time might have been a reason, too. Most likely a mix, and a large part of something Loïc hadn’t figured out about him yet.
He wondered idly if someday this trust would crumble, and reached for Koite. Too late to worry about that now.
“Walk me through your modifications. We need to add some safeguards for you, too. I’m not waking up next morning to find you on the floor with your trachea ripped out.”.
Koite lifted him, slammed him against the wall. His naked back tried to shudder away from the cold stone, it needed skin but the grip was iron. Mountains would have been easier to move than this hold.
Loïc couldn’t remember how many times he had come, he was oversensitive to the point of pain, thighs and lower stomach sticky, and yet tears gathered in the corners of his eyes from need. He couldn’t remember how long it had been, two days perhaps, they had fallen asleep from exhaustion once hadn’t they, he thought they might have. He remembered waking up to a body covering his, already taking again.
This might actually kill them. Water, he thought dizzily, and forgot it in the next breath when Koite sunk his punishing fangs above his left nipple, drew blood. Loïc whimpered.
“Look at me. Don’t you dare look away, not any others, nowhere else, be here-”
Koite’s eyes were hazy, blown so wide that the iris was barely visible. Blood on his lips, both from Loïc biting them broken and him breaking Loïc’s skin. His nails were blunt, so instead of bleeding welts they left long, red scratches, thank the gods they had cut them-
“-I’ll bind you, keep you here, forever and ever, you can never leave and you’ll be mine, no one else can have you-”
Occasionally Koite did this, said these things, raspy mumbles, and Loïc wondered, he wondered feverishly if they were something the song had induced or if they were something Koite thought but had not voiced before. The parts about breeding had been rather alarming. He needed to remember- to ask later-
Koite pushed his leg up, folding it on his shoulder from the knee. Loïc twined the other around Koite’s back, pulled him so close that his lungs were constrained under Koite’s chest. It felt good. Loïc wondered if he could fall asleep here. Koite’s fingers didn’t wander anymore, they went straight between Loïc’s spread legs, inside where it was hot and already wet with fae seed. Loïc was so sore but it didn’t matter, not this time. All breath left him when Koite pushed inside, cock filling him.
“-you feel so good, you’re doing so well, but you’re so breakable and I can’t break you, I can’t, can’t, please just bear it-”
Loïc wanted to laugh and cry. He would bear anything, anything for this beautiful thing before him, inside him, with him.
And wasn’t fae magic that at its core? Pain and pleasure, life and death, semen and blood, a heart living through its greatest love and doomed to break. If they survived this, morning come Loïc would be bound to the grove, to the fae magic through Koite, granted with the gift of a little extra time.
---
Later Loïc looked at the parchment and couldn’t understand how he hadn’t thought to ask where those extra months would come from if not from his humanity or the grove.
