Strings Attached
Dungeon Crawler Carl Mordecai x Reader
Rating: 18+ SMUTTTTT (and a whole lot of backstory)
WC: 5kish
BOOK 2 SPOILERS!!!!
Sorry for the wait, everyone!!! I love you all thanks for the patience!!!
Blurb: Incubus Mordecai and Reader fuck. That’s it. Well, not really—I took a lot of creative liberty with this one SORRY IT’S SO LONG. I had so much fun writing Mordecai, that I genuinely couldn't stop.
Three hundred years of strings, and she never noticed they all led to the same place.
A reimagining of Mordecai reappearing after the "I was going to fuck a grandma" scene.
Mordecai was no stranger to suffering.
The dungeon had been his cause of mental and physical anguish for centuries. Every new day that passed, every new cycle that started, every new crawler that came through his door did nothing to alleviate it. And so his routine never changed: he suffered, and he drank, and he drank, and he suffered. During the off-seasons he'd mourn without the distraction of crawlers to manage. When he had crawlers, he mourned with the distraction of crawlers to manage. The addition of new ones never seemed to change the equation.
The conditions of his contract were simple enough. Help crawlers through the first three floors as a Game Guide, then get transferred to a deeper floor to run a magic guild for the remainder of the season. He had come to make friends on that deeper floor. After failing another set of crawlers, he enjoyed wallowing with them. The only things he'd managed to hold onto across all of it were his mother's ashes and the picture of him and Uzzi. His brother had been his best friend. The guilt and the grief of losing him had led him straight to the bottle and kept him there for centuries.
This was his final season. Sweet, sweet freedom —even though he knew it came with strings attached. There was never true freedom for those who were part of the crawl.
He stood in the gold-bricked entry hall, waiting for Carl and Donut to arrive for floor selection. The light bouncing off the walls gave him a mild headache. He rubbed one hand along his strong curved horn and groaned softly. This season had been unconventional. He reflected on his sorry life as he thought of his crawlers. Carl and Donut had been causing quite a stir amongst the NPCs and the general viewership. This made him nervous, but there was something satisfying about watching them stick it to the Syndicate. He just wished they'd tone it down enough for him to get out of here in one piece.
Naturally, his thoughts drifted to her.
She had been a crawler from a planet subject to Borant's control. Around the ninth floor, when most of her lupine-like species had been wiped out, she had taken a deal. There was always a choice, she'd told him once—she'd just chosen indentured servitude over the alternative of dying to entertain viewers of intergalactic television. She had chosen to be a changeling, which caused her form to shift every floor and every cycle. Like Mordecai, she always started as a game guide, then got transferred to a lower-level open air market where she specialized in selling trinkets. On her home world, she had been an antiques dealer. Of course she had. The girl found the deepest comfort in the treasures that reminded her of her past life.
She had met Mordecai on the exact first centennial anniversary of him taking his deal. He was drunk off his ass, stumbling through the market much to the chagrin of the vendors around him. On that floor, he was a tall, handsome, short-haired blonde human priest. After stepping on a humanoid mouse's tail with a heavy black dress shoe and collapsing directly onto the china tea cups the mouse was selling, the resulting squeaking and cursing snapped him out of his drunkenness.
On that floor, she was a High Elf. She had tied a scarf around her nose and mouth to protect herself against the thick red desert dust. She watched him haul himself out of the magic guild door and into the open air, hazel eyes squinting against the sun. She took pity when Kona, the mouse tea cup seller, started bitching at him. She had been on the receiving end of that annoying squeaking before.
She exited her stall and went to help the drunkard.
"Kona, stop the squeaking. Nothing you're selling here matters anyway." Kona's furry face glared at her as he began pawing at the china shards. She grabbed the priest's arm and hoisted him up. Her strength came from her race. "Come this way."
And so began an easy friendship between the two.
The market changed form every season. Sometimes it was an open air market, like the one they had met at, sometimes something resembling a mall, and even once a floating bazaar that neither of them enjoyed, but they always found each other. Mordecai's magic guild's entrance was always within the vicinity of her stall, and he enjoyed sorting through the trinkets and gadgets she collected and set up for sale. Each time they saw each other, they caught up.
And after a couple of cycles, if they happened to be compatible species—they'd fuck. The friendship had crossed into that territory the cycle the market had taken the shape of a farmers market. They had both been Sirens that season, and after a night of drinking, Mordecai had confessed that he needed her. Then. Like that.
Their physical relationship existed alongside their friendship without disturbing it. It was a separate thing, a primal thing, something they both needed and neither of them questioned. It was hard. Messy. Freaky. Often involving some degree of masochism, the pain grounding both of them to the dungeon, to reality. Sometimes, sweet and tender, where she'd often end up crying when they both came down from their highs. But together, they knew they were real.
They would often recount times they spent together when they got to see each other. These were some of their favorite highlights of their long friendship.
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Cycle 1. The Open Air Market. She is a Wood Elf. He is a Priest.
After the incident with Kona, he had started coming by on his off hours—just to look, he said. Just to see what she had. She never believed him.
He would settle himself on the small wooden stool she kept behind the counter, uninvited, and begin sorting through whatever she had laid out that cycle. He never bought anything. He rarely said anything. He would pick something up, turn it over in his small hands, and set it back down. Occasionally he'd grunt. Her germaphobe tendencies flared as she watched him grab at everything she cared for so dearly.
"You're going to smudge the inventory," she told him once.
"You sell things that are already smudged," he retorted, without looking up.
She was mildly annoyed at the exchange, but didn't argue. She went back to her book. He went back to the trinkets. The market moved around them.
He came back the next day. And the one after that.
She stopped being surprised by the third week.
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Cycle 7. The Underground Cavern Market. He is a Spider. She is a Pixie.
Her hands grasped at the paper received by all active guildmasters, courtesy of Borant Corporation. They were on a planet called Zorc, and these newsletters were distributed every few cycles, budget permitting. Her eyes ran over the page, her fluttering wings lifting her slightly off the ground.
THE BORANT CORPORATION OFFICIAL GUILDMASTER NEWSLETTER
REMINDER: Crawlers are not your friends. Emotional attachment to crawlers is strongly discouraged and any emotional damage caused by such attachments will neither be compensated nor addressed in therapy.
REMINDER: The magic guild supplies budget has been reduced by 40%. Please adjust your wallowing accordingly.
REMINDER: Borant Corporation thanks you for your continued service. Your contract has been extended. Details to follow.
UPCOMING: Season opening for next cycle has been moved. You will be notified when we feel like it. Regardless, you will know when it starts.
When his spider form crawled to her stall, she slid her copy across her stall's stone counter to him without commenting on it the cycle after it arrived. His eight eyes read it slowly. Then he read it again. He wasn't sure if the cave's dim lighting was playing tricks on his spider eyes.
"Supplies budget," he said.
"Reduced by forty percent," she confirmed. "Please adjust your wallowing."
He set it down. She watched his face do several things in quick succession. She knew how much being able to experiment helped ease his emotional pain. His pincers moved up and down as he thought.
"They're not going to tell us when the next season opens, are they," he said. It wasn't a question.
He picked it up and looked at it one more time. Then he carefully folded it and put it in his coat pocket.
"To adjusted wallowing." One of his hairy limbs raised his flask.
She raised hers.
They never mentioned it again. They didn't have to. For the next several decades, whenever Borant did something particularly egregious, one of them would just mutter something about adjusted wallowing and that was enough.
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Cycle 15. The Skyscraper Market. She is a Vampire. He is a Wraith.
It had started as an ordinary enough cycle. She had found him at the market as usual. They had caught up as usual. And then she really looked at him, and realized.
"You're incorporeal," she said.
"I noticed," Mordecai replied, flatly.
He was a translucent, smoke-colored ghost. Present in every way except in the one that would have been useful, she thought. She could see straight through him to the stall behind.
"So we can't—." He cut her off mid-sentence with a grumble. "No way."
She considered this.
"That's okay, I like just chatting with you anyways. Can you touch anything at all?"
"I walked through a wall this morning," he said, the annoyance evident in his tone. "Accidentally. Three times. Walked straight into Polar taking a shower"
She pressed her lips together very hard.
"Don't you dare." He tried his best to scowl at her.
She laughed anyway. It echoed through him and something in his translucent expression twisted.
"Next cycle," she managed to wheeze out, when she had recovered from her laughing fit.
"Next cycle," he agreed.
He sat on the stool anyway. Or rather, he hovered approximately where the stool was, which was close enough. She went back to her inventory, and he sorted through what he could.
It was, somehow, still one of the better cycles they had experienced together.
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Cycle 19. The Mall Market. She is a Feline Hybrid. He is a Skyfowl.
She had posted something in the vendor corridor outside her storefront, right after her materialization into the deeper floor. Her crawlers had died on the first floor, and she had plenty of time to kill before boredom set in. The crudely drawn poster read the following:
NOTICE TO ALL VENDORS
The individual pictured below has been observed loitering in the past market districts during business hours. He does not buy anything. He has stolen a brass compass, a handful of metal flecks, and a flask (my only good one) and has not returned any of them. He will tell you he is "just looking." He is not just looking. He has never just looked at anything in his life.
If spotted, do not engage. Do not offer him a stool. Do not let him touch the inventory. Report him straight to the appropriate authorities.
— Management, Stall 7B
A hand-drawn portrait of Mordecai's eagle-face, crossed out in red, was taped below the notice. All the vendors who walked by it commented on its extremely accurate likeness. It turns out, she is a really good artist.
He found it a couple weeks later when he finally joined her. He stood in front of it for a long moment.
"This is defamatory," he argued.
"The flask," she held out her hand.
He reached into his coat and produced it. He set it on the counter without a word. She put it back on the shelf.
He pulled up the stool and sat down.
_____________________________________________________________
She picked at her black, claw-shaped nails as she impatiently waited for selections to begin. She had tucked her silky, pin-straight black hair behind her ears, her fingers grazing the small elegant horns that curved just above her temples. Her tail twitched behind her, the barbed tip catching the light. Her dusky gray skin seemed almost luminous against the gold-bricked walls of the selection room.
One thing about being a succubus was that it was very easy to succumb to that lizard part of her brain that controlled her carnal desires. This led her mind, inevitably, to her dearest friend. She wondered what Mordecai was up to right now, imagining his annoyance at having to help more crawlers through race and class selection made her smile. Mordecai liked bossing her around, and she loved it. Sometimes he'd let her take control. She shivered as she thought back to that one time, around their fourteenth cycle, when he had let her put it up—her stream of consciousness was cut short as her crawlers barged into the selection room.
"Welcome to the third floor, crawlers," she purred. All they could do was ogle the beautiful succubus in front of them.
Which is how they found each other here now.
One of her crawlers had chosen the manager benefit. Fuck my life, she thought. After sending them off with a growl, she stepped onto the third floor herself. She had taken the form of a succubus, where she appeared as a disgustingly beautiful demonic creature in a short, tight red dress and tall black heels. In this form, she was very much the stereotypical vision of sex. Her long pointed tail twitched behind her like it had a mind of its own. Her bat-like wings were tucked neatly against her back as she made her way through the city.
It had been a long time since she had walked in heels, and she was tripping every other step. Her stilettos clacked against the poorly-laid wooden slats, the escaping steam tickling her ankles. What a shit town.
She approached the gates of the NPC village, the two guards letting her through without comment. The dense, polluted air cast a reddish glow over the medieval buildings around her. She swiveled her head as she walked, knowing exactly what she was looking for.
She still felt bad about chewing out Alyssa, her crawler who had chosen the manager benefit, and now needed a stiff drink. She found her target and sighed with relief, pushing open the heavy oak door. The bronze handle was cool under her touch. A small bell announced her arrival.
The first floor was a tavern, with a bar tucked into the corner, the rest of the space filled with a mismatched collection of wooden tables and chairs. A variety of fantastical creatures occupied those seats. A set of stairs led to what she assumed were the rooms on the second floor. A female ogre descended the rickety steps, ducking to avoid the ceiling. "Welcome! Have a seat anywhere, I'll come help ya." The succubus smiled as she watched the green woman walk behind the counter.
The seating at the bar was empty save for one patron, sitting with his back to her.
She started laughing the moment she read his description.
"Mor!"
He swiveled on his stool. His face brightened instantly.
"Oh, baby," Mordecai grinned as he saw her. "Of course I'd find you at the tavern."
Around the pub, patrons gawked at the two beautiful demons approaching each other. They embraced, Mordecai squeezing tight, the way he always did. He towered over her even in her heels, and she relaxed into his broad body completely before they pulled apart.
"Manager benefit too?" He raised an eyebrow.
"I'm pissed. Let's not talk about it." She turned to the bar. "Mishka, I'll have what he's having, please." The ogre's name tag caught the light as Mishka nodded and turned to the bottles.
They spent the next hour catching up properly, Mishka making sure their glasses never went half empty. Their laughter got loud enough that Mishka snapped Mordecai with a bar towel more than once to get him to quiet down. The alcohol moved through both of them easily, their kind particularly susceptible to its effects. And, in their current forms, it had a particular way of sharpening certain appetites. They had each gotten occasional messages from their crawlers, but they ignored them. The humans would be fine. Probably.
"Although," she said, when the laughter had settled into something quieter, "not to laugh at your misery, it's a little funny that you're here too. Your final crawl. These guys must be something."
Mordecai huffed. "I know. I was going to get the hell out of here."
"Good thing I get you for one more night, then." Her voice softened as she looked into his dark eyes.
As the night fell and the other patrons began filtering out, the energy between them shifted. It always did, eventually. They had been doing this routine for decades.
"Last call, you two," Mishka called from across the tavern as she wiped a table.
Mordecai glanced up from his glass. He licked his lips slowly as he held her gaze. "Let's go, pretty girl."
She raised an eyebrow, amusement evident. "You already got a key?"
"Mishka hooked me up earlier." He twirled the green key ring around one finger, the silver key catching the light. His eyes narrowed. "You better get moving before I rip that ridiculous dress off of you."
The breath left her lungs. Her cheeks flushed a pinkish hue that read clearly even through her gray-toned skin.
He grabbed her hand and started pulling her through the tables toward the stairs. They stumbled up the steps, making their way through the dimly lit hallway to the door matching the key. Mordecai fumbled with the key as she stood behind him, looking around the hallway. After a beat, the door creaked open.
The room that Mishka gave for them would do for tonight. It was small, but it had a bed, and that was all they needed. A twin-sized mattress covered in an itchy grey blanket. Bare beige walls. A single candle throwing unsteady light across everything. She told Mordecai to give her a second and slipped into the small bathroom off the entrance.
She splashed cold water on her face. She was hot from the alcohol, hot from his presence, hot from centuries of knowing exactly what came next.
Mordecai was her dearest friend in the dungeon. The thought arrived simply, the way true things did. Someone who understood her at her core, literally. She ran her fingers through her hair, readjusted her dress, and kicked off her heels before walking back out.
Mordecai was standing at the window, his back to her, hands in his pockets. His tail moved behind him in slow, anxious arcs. She crossed the room and stood beside him without saying anything.
The city below was ugly during the day, full of wooden slats and sulfur and creatures who didn't know they weren't real. At night it was something else. The reddish glow had softened to amber, and the smoke drifting up from the gaps in the slats curled lazily into the dark like it had nowhere better to be.
She thought about what he'd said downstairs. His final season. After centuries of this, Mordecai was almost out. But she didn't say any of it, and neither did he. They had always been good at that, holding the real things in their hands and onto the now of the dungeon, not the what will be.
His tail found hers in the dark. The barbed tips caught briefly, then settled. Neither of them moved away.
"It's oddly pretty at night here," he said, his gaze drifting over the moonlit town.
She hummed in agreement. She looked up at him. His sharp jaw was shadowed with stubble, his gaze fixed somewhere out in the amber dark. He got lost in thought like this sometimes, and had for as long as she'd known him. But then he came back, the way he always did, and turned to take her face in his hands.
His left hand cupped her cheek. She felt him bend down into the kiss. She grabbed at his face and pulled him closer, and he began walking her back toward the bed. Their tails tangled between them, moving like they had minds of their own. Her wings tucked tight against her back as her knees hit the mattress edge. Mordecai steadied her descent, then moved over her, his broad wings blocking out most of the candlelight.
He kissed her again without hesitating. Their tongues brushed together. Their teeth clashed occasionally, pulling small laughs from both of them. They had never been gentle with each other. His hands moved over her dress and raised goosebumps along her skin. She kept her hands on his chest, nails pressing through his dress shirt, and started working at the buttons. She got three undone before Mordecai sat back and brushed the hair from his face.
He settled on his knees, hands on his thighs, and looked at her. The erection pressing against his dress pants was obvious. His eyes narrowed. She shivered at his hawkish stare, her underwear already damp.
"Undress," he ordered, the firmness in his tone exciting her.
She sat up and began pulling the tight straps from her shoulders. Her bare breasts caught the candlelight, her pert nipples drawing his attention immediately. His mouth fell open slightly as she continued, unhurried. The dungeon had been generous enough to provide a black lacy thong, and that was all she had left as the dress bunched around her knees. She laid back to pull it free, and that was when Mordecai moved.
He buried his face against her underwear and inhaled deeply. "Gorgeous," he said. His tongue began tracing over the fabric, his gray skin a striking contrast against the black lace. His breath alone was too much, and he hadn't even started properly yet. He hooked her thighs over his shoulders and kept exploring, unhurried, thorough. She let out small sounds she couldn't help, her hands finding the sheets. He suckled at the fabric, her clit getting caught by his teeth through the lace.
It was all building too nicely when he dropped her thighs and ripped the underwear clean in two.
"Are you serious?!" she said, caught between shock and laughter. "I don't have a spare in my inventory!"
"Even better," he answered, with no remorse.
He didn't give her a chance to object. When Mordecai ate her out, he ate her out; usually with her thighs over his shoulders, his tongue working her with the precise movements he knew she liked—long licks alternating with slow sucks. At the same time, his hands palmed her ass. His tongue was everywhere: her clit, her entrance, everywhere in between. Even after all this time, he always knew exactly what to do.
One finger pressed at her entrance, then sank in slowly. He added a second when she made it clear she wanted it. As he worked in and out of her, one of her hands found his horn and the other threaded into his hair. The tug pulled a moan from somewhere low in his chest.
The flutter in her belly built until it was all she could feel. Her breathy sounds told him everything. Her back arched off the mattress, her grip on his hair tightening, the other hand going flat against the blanket. His fingers worked her through it, her walls pulsing around them, her whole body going tight and then loose all at once.
He drew his fingers out slowly, moved over her, and licked them clean while she watched. His wings spread as he tasted her.
Her eyes narrowed. "Not too shabby for someone who hasn't done this in a few years."
"You're leaving me reviews now? Since when?"
She kissed him hard. They worked together to get his shirt off, the fabric slipping easily through the slits cut for his wings. He stood to step out of his slacks, leaving them crumpled on the floor. He wore nothing underneath. She took a moment to look at his stance, realizing he was showing off.
"You're a fucking peacock," she laughed.
Mordecai grinned. "Take a good look, sweetheart." His tail swished behind him.
He came back to the bed and kissed her once, deep, before pulling back to look at her.
"On your knees."
She turned and lowered herself onto her forearms, her wings folding flat, her tail curling at the base of her spine. The sheets smelled like fresh laundry. She felt his hands find her hips and glanced back over her shoulder as he guided himself to her entrance.
He pressed in slowly, letting her adjust, watching her face. Both of them exhaled at the same moment. He murmured against her back as she took him, his hands moving in slow strokes along her wings and spine.
"Move," she begged. "Please."
He started to thrust, quickly finding a good pace. His grip tightened on her hips, hard enough to mark, and his pace was relentless. The sounds he made filled the room. Her hands fisted in the sheets, her nails pressing crescents into the cotton. Everything was full and overwhelming and exactly right.
He reached forward and gathered her hair, wrapping it once around his fist and drawing her up against his chest. She leaned back into him, her wings pressed flat between them, the end of her tail tickling his stomach, as his mouth found the left side of her neck. He worked from the base to her earlobe—sucking, licking, unhurried despite the pace of everything else. His horn grazed the top of her head and she moaned at the sensation of all of it happening at once.
The flutter in her belly came back, urgent. Mordecai's face told her he was getting there too.
He pulled out smoothly and laid back on the mattress, drawing her with him. She straddled him, took him in hand, and lowered herself down. Even though she'd had him moments ago she still went slowly because of his size. She threw her head back.
"Your cock is insane, Mor."
He looked up at her with a grin, his white teeth still bright in the moonlight. She took that as her cue to start moving her hips up and down, bracing her hands on his chest. His face went slack with pleasure. She found her rhythm and let herself have it, grinding slowly, taking her time.
"Come here, baby." His voice had gone low and rough. "Gonna fuck you properly now."
She leaned down to kiss him. He gripped her hips and took over from below, driving up into her with a pace that made thinking difficult. Her body was feeling too much, too fast. She broke the kiss and dropped her forehead to his shoulder, reaching down to press her fingers against her clit. The sounds she was making were past embarrassing at this point.
"Mor, I'm going to —." He shushed her gently. "Be a good girl and come for me."
Her walls clenched around him in waves. The sensation pulled him over with her, and she felt him finish, felt him fill her completely, his hands gripping her hips hard as he worked through it.
They stayed tangled together for a long moment before cleaning up, dressing, and settling back onto the narrow mattress. Mordecai lay with one hand behind his head and the other wrapped around her waist, fingers tracing slow patterns along her arm. She rested her cheek against his chest and listened to him breathe.
"Thanks for that," she said, after a while.
"Anytime."
A beat of quiet passed between them.
"Mor." Her voice came out smaller than she intended. "I'm really going to miss you. With my luck, my crawlers could be dead by tomorrow."
His hand didn't stop moving on her arm. "I will find you after you leave the dungeon." He said it matter-of-factly, like it was already decided.
"But what if we're not compatible. Out there."
"Then we figure it out." A pause. "Don't make me list the options of sex toy technology available to us. I've had centuries to research."
She laughed despite herself.
Her tail wrapped around the wrist stroking her arm, almost without her meaning it to. "Looks like we're strung together," he murmured.
She considered all the strings. The market that had brought them together. Twenty cycles of showing up for each other in whatever form the dungeon had decided on that season. Incorporeal or not. Compatible or not. 300 years of thinking of one another. It hadn't mattered much, in the end.
The dungeon had strings on both of them. It had just never occurred to her that some of those strings led to the same place.
"Have been for a while," she said.
His arm tightened around her waist. Just slightly.
"Besides," he whispered, quieter, "I like you for the company too. If I never got to touch you again, I'd manage. Because you're more than that to me."
Her eyes stung. She pressed her face into his chest and didn't answer right away.
She was about to when the bed dropped out from under her.
"Fucking hell!" She landed hard on her ass as she materialized in the safe room, Alyssa and her group staring down at her with wide eyes.
She looked up at her crawlers. They took in her disheveled appearance, her crumpled dress and knotted hair a stark contrast from how they had left their manager.
"Not a word," she growled at them.
At the same time, across the floor, Mordecai was not having a better time. "What the fuck!" he shouted, as Donut and Carl stared at him.
The incubus looked dangerously good disheveled, with his dress shirt crumpled and hastily thrown on, a black bowtie hanging loose around his neck. His trousers were still being pulled up. His saving grace was the tight black underwear he had managed to get on first.
"Mordecai," Donut lectured at the incubus, "you really must learn to control yourself. Mongo is simply appalled at seeing you in your underwear."