#both proceed to make crazy and improbable excuses

[wield-the-mighty-pen]

The writers were so sick for this

[officialtrashbin]

Deal? Deal!

Supergiant/Maximus commission fill for @senpoiypul!

Takes place during the events of Infinity. Maximus wants to cut a deal with one of Thanos’ Dreadlords, and Supergiant isn’t against hearing him out.

AKA, Smut. Lots and lots of smut. Leave it to Maximus to bed the woman responsible for nearly killing his brother.

And look, there’s art! Beautiful, glorious art.

* * *

“Give it to me.”

She spoke like her behest outweighed his own resolve, and her barrel-forward articulation battered uselessly off Maximus’ mental barriers, which she knew from the violated mind of his dearest big brother—emphasis on dearest, subject to debate—had the stability of cards stacked into the skeleton of a tower. He was assembled incorrectly, perhaps somewhere in his questionable string of genetics, and Supergiant knew she was wasting her time on conversation. If she really wanted to, she could dismantle him like a busted particle engine, sorting through every wire that formed his memories and prying free the few bolts that held him together most days.

But he held the detonator and thus had the most bargaining power, so she was equally careful to use her words, and solely her words.

The energy from the reactors crackled through the Necropolis. Supergiant stilled herself, thinking of the storms that used to course over her planet’s surface adjacent to the weather here on Earth, but worse, more lethal, though she hadn’t been back there since Thanos culled the population; it was a distant memory, one of ill-intent. The power of it all was trivialized in the presence of Maximus Boltagon who sat slumped on the steps before her, seemingly against improbable odds, both hands wrapped firmly around the device that would blow the reactors with the most wayward wind, and Supergiant wondered if the Ebony Maw’s constant gripes about destiny were vindicated by this moment.

Maximus grinned. She felt her blood shift under her skin, crawling towards and away from him, wanting to know, wanting to know.

“How about I give you what you want”—his fingers tightened around the detonator—“if I get what I want?”

Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and she could taste on them the salt of this city’s shame, not a matter of What I did, but What I had to do that ate away at the Inhumans here like acid rain on marble. It excited her a little.

She asked him, “Which is?”

“Let’s make a deal.”

“A deal,” she echoed, feeling a familiar itch in her fingertips—the need to eat a hole through the back of his mind.

His eyes darted to the dog. Lockjaw, she heard his mental pathways speak to each other, before he turned his attention back to her, and she realized she miscalculated the amount of leeway she had in the negotiation for the device. Supergiant had learned from Corvus, years ago, about his natural sense of caution: anticipate the seen over the unseen, know what playing cards have been dealt to the table to predict what remained, and proceed carefully.

Conversely, she wanted to know what Maximus was offering, and asked him, “What could you possibly desire from me?”

“You’re a healthy woman, right? You’ve most certainly got needs—”

“What I need,” she said, “is that device.” She didn’t look at all as smug as she sounded, but instead bored, like she was gradually realizing how much time would be wasted in pursuit of this stalemate. “You Inhumans are rather dismaying in your tactics, but I have learned much about you from your brother’s mind and cannot help but ask—Why are you here? Have you erred from your ways?”

“Not quite,” he answered. The question made him visibly shift his weight from one side to the other, and she watched the subtle motion of his throat as he swallowed, the deep dip of the hard knot, sliding under the surface of his skin. Supergiant realized she had adequately touched a nerve. “Shame. You must be unfamiliar with the subtleties of romance.”

“You’re wasting my time.”

“Ah, but you haven’t given me a chance!”

Supergiant exhaled, peeved. “Though I am uncertain how I should appropriately feel about you referring to me as your kind of crazy, and for that matter, how I should consider your inauspicious, and downright pathetic, attempt at a vocal mating ritual—”

Maximus threw back his head and laughed. Laughed. Supergiant balled her hands into fists, and thought on how Corvus had been halfway wrong about predicting the cards on the table. She wasn’t sure what to do with this man at all, other than go for his throat and risk prematurely detonating the bomb.

“You’re something else,” he said when he finally reeled himself back in. “Absolutely”—he rose from the steps and Supergiant involuntarily moved back, maintaining their distance—“entirely, the strangest goddamn woman I’ve ever met. So, you know what? I’m going to take a leap of faith”—he set the device down, right there on the floor, and she was much too focused on him to bother devoting a second thought to the opportunity—“or, maybe I’m just being a total fucking nutcase—”

“As always?” she retorted, speaking as if she knew him that well, and, there was potential that she did, but possessing someone else’s memories and experiencing them were two very parallel things.

“That has to be it,” he said, advancing towards her. He was just about her height, and in fairness to her, though she’d grown shorter and thinner than the average paradigm of her species, it felt as if she was gazing into the eyes of someone a hundred feet up. “Lockjaw—”

The world blinked around them. Supergiant was pushed back by her shoulders and into a wall that hadn’t been there a moment ago; then her head tilted, the lag of teleportation, and she knew she was no longer in the Necropolis. This place was brighter, slick with cold grays and muted accents, colder, somehow. All the energy that crackled through the air, swollen with destructive anticipation, was gone.

“Deal?” he asked.

What he wanted was an unnameable thing despite its many terms. It was giving, taking—the way an ocean rushed forward to fill divots in the sand and receded, pulling glass and stone and debris into its deep, blue maw. It was a game, a matter of bait and bite. Neither knew where the lies were. Both were itching to play.

Supergiant cast her eyes up his face and couldn’t decide whether this was the correct choice, but it had been made all the same.

He said for her, “Deal.”

Maximus kissed her with lips she couldn’t trust, even though it got the point across, and it was nothing like the utilitarian practice of mating she was familiar with—kissing wasn’t something her species did, but his mouth was soft, reinforcing the discomfort that swelled in her stomach like concrete. He wasn’t inexperienced, either; she was rendered autonomous with the motion of wanting to do what they were doing, following his lead. When his hands went to her face, guiding her to an angle that allowed him to press his tongue into her mouth, she tried to touch him too, and put her own hands on the back of his head to reaffirm some semblance of control.

He allowed a gap of air between them. “Seems you liked that,” he said with a subdued grin, though it wasn’t an expression she returned. She felt unsettled, in this strange room that was foreign to her but most certainly belonged to him; it had to, no one went their lifetime without a safe place to call their own.

“Or, perhaps your technique is sorely lacking. I could be giving guidance.”

“You enjoy provoking people, don’t you?”

She wanted to bite back, to tell him, I don’t enjoy anything, but the admission was a lightning crack of harsh truth through her chest. She couldn’t afford to enjoy anything but the satisfaction she brought Thanos with her successes, and that was always enough for her, even though personal pleasantries were allowed; Maximus must have known what she didn’t say, because his fingers crested the length of her collarbone to the sharp cut of her chin, and he quirked his head, still smirking.

“You’re allowed to enjoy what you want,” he said.

She unclasped her cloak and rolled her shoulders, allowing the off-white fabric to pool at her feet. “I’d rather do this than converse,” she told him firmly, thumbing at the zipper to the front of her thermal suit. “We no longer have time for such a luxury—”

“Don’t do that.”

She furrowed her brow. “Excuse me?”

“That—” He put his fingers over hers. “I want to undress you.”

Supergiant knew if she told him no, this would be over quickly. Still, she reluctantly withdrew her hand and allowed him the momentary pleasure of undoing the teeth of her zipper, notch for notch. He was slow, deliberate, stalling this out; she couldn’t say she minded all that much, though she wasn’t sure what to do with her hands, and settled for leaving them on his waist.

He took her mouth against his again. His tongue slid up to hers, and it was much larger and rougher than the ones of her species. She pondered his potential everywhere else. Maybe she was simply being lewd, but mating hadn’t crossed her mind since before Corvus and Proxima tied the knot—she forced the memory back, and decided to do something with her hands. They skirted across the centerfold of his coat, deftly undoing the buttons, before shucking it off.

It was easy, undoing the rest of it. They met halfway. Like their agreement, she thought, piece by piece: his armor, her boots, his shirt, her suit—he slid his deceptively gentle fingers across her skin, raising it up into a swelter of bumps, and she discovered he had a soft spot on his neck, right on his pulse point, that made him groan when she bit it. And, though it was true she wasn’t allowed to enjoy anything in Thanos’ presence, Supergiant quite enjoyed this—the here and nowness of it filtered by privacy, the meticulous method of joining bodies, every deliberate motion and each little gasp she felt on her lips when he worked his tongue against her flesh.

“Ever done this with a human before?” he asked, his tone offset an octave, as if he was trying to tell a joke she certainly wasn’t going to get. “Inhuman. Terran.” There was a desperation to his touch, to the movements of his mouth over her shoulder (wanting to know, wanting to know). “Makes little difference, doesn’t it? To someone like you.”

“You ask far too many questions,” she answered flatly. After a moment a smirk reached her lips, and she slipped her thumbs into the waistline of his pants. “You could be using your mouth for more beneficial purposes.”

He laughed. How terribly contagious it was, because Supergiant found herself smiling, and quite genuinely. He crushed his lips to hers, pushing her back until her knees hit the edge of his bed, and she tumbled down, legs hooking around his waist, his mouth on her collarbone. That was better. More…normal, than his small talk. This was a matter of agreement between two different necessities of want, conjoining skin to skin, and she could enjoy it, every intimacy in every fleeting moment; maybe this was dishonest to everything she’s worked for, but it made her feel good, and gods, she didn’t want him to stop.

Maximus marked her skin with open-mouthed kisses that went down the valley of her body to the junction of her hipbone, where he found the plane of soft flesh over vulnerable nerves and sucked a bruise into it. Supergiant gasped, almost striking him in the face with her knee on pure reflex, but his arm trapped her thigh down, and in her dramatics, she realized it wasn’t exactly an unpleasant feeling. He was a pressure point away from making it hurt. Part of her wanted to ask him if he could make it hurt.

“Good?” he asked, the brevity of the question astounding her. She nodded, and his tongue darting out to traverse the slope of her crotch to the heat of her womanhood. He propped one leg over his shoulder, hand under her other knee, bending her open.

The pad of his tongue ran over her clit and upended her world. She gasped, arched her back. Her mouth fell open into a delicious oh. “Very good,” she uttered, flexing her fingers through the threadbare sheets.

Maximus smirked against her skin. His tongue worked at her with increasing pace, his nose brushing over her bud whenever he dipped low; he slid a hand away from her hip and up along the canter of her side, feeling the way her muscles flexed in and up with each corresponding stroke of his tongue against her folds, until he reached the crest of her chest. His fingertip traced her areola, raising bumps under the impression of his print.

He took her nipple between his forefinger and thumb and he rolled it over, earning a little whine, and her hips bucked against his face. She felt the crescent moon pressure of his nails in her thigh. There was that desperation about him again, forcing its way to the surface with his guard lowered in her presence. It translated into his tongue, which moved eloquently, and then slid inside her velvet warmth. She hadn’t expected that. The sound of her cry hit her ears before the pleasure did, and her legs would have reflexively closed if he hadn’t had her so firmly pinned open.

“I’m, I’m feeling—”

Maximus hummed an acknowledgement of her words. He didn’t let up, lavishing her with his mouth, fueling the fire that simmered low in her belly. It was a pleasure she hadn’t felt in this way, before: his tongue was rough, his technique violent, his hand on her breast helping her closer to the edge. Her moans had developed at some point into cries, enveloped in the absolute ecstasy of an oncoming orgasm.

“Maximus,” she warned, though she hadn’t meant to. It was much too personal, too intimate, to use someone else’s name in a situation like this—but she was so close, so close—

Her body seized up. He put his mouth fully over her clit and sucked her towards the back of his tongue and Supergiant came with a sharp wail and a terribly intense shudder that left a tingle like radio static through her nervous system, to her fingertips and along her thighs. She swore to the heavens in her native tongue, her accent made sultry in the heated depth of her orgasm. He caressed her with the flat of his tongue as she rode through the waves, bucking her hips up against his face with short, violent pulses.

As she came back down from her peak and splayed out weakly beneath him, Maximus kissed the inside of her thigh, feeling her quiver. “Take a breath, love,” he purred, looking up at her to see her chest rising and falling rapidly, and the deep indigo blush that had spread from her face to her sternum. “That’s it. We’re not done yet.”

She became acutely aware of his weight, the depth of him moving over her to eclipse the sliver of view her slotted eyelids allowed. Supergiant didn’t remember threading her fingers through his hair, but she guided his mouth to hers and tasted her arousal on his lips. He was getting progressively better at kissing her. Maybe it had been a long time for him, too.

His erection flagged against her inner thigh. He probably—most definitely, wanted to say something snarky but she was already ensuring his mouth was occupied with hers. Then, a wisp of energy. She sensed it only as it pressed against her own mental barriers, requesting access to her mind, and she knew it must have been him—Supergiant had refrained from trying to consume him, unaware of his own capabilities—and she sat up with a start. Breathing heavy, glaring daggers.

He raised a hand in surrender. “Just curious,” he said, feigning a smile. “No harm done, right?”

Supergiant narrowed her gaze. It was a diversion. He was trying to learn what he could about her, hoping to replicate the information within her head. She’d have to reproach this carefully, hand on his chest to maintain the feel of his heartbeat, mental barriers strung tight. “And you accused me of provocation?”

Maximus laid his thumb out on the pulse inside her thigh. “You’ll find I’m quite good at it,” he told her coyly. “It’s not my fault though! Well, not entirely.” There was a bitterness in his tone she didn’t miss. It was difficult to bypass details, especially the ones that were the unmistakable corollary of trauma. “I used to have more mastery over it, before they stopped my meds. Now my brother thinks he can control me by—”

“Locking you in a cage?”

He shrugged.

“Come here,” she said, not unkindly.

Maximus did as he was told and Supergiant adjusted herself beneath him. Her hand slipped between them to take his shaft, and she gave him a few, experimental strokes, languid and self-indulging. A groan meandered out of his throat and rewarded her efforts.

“Shit,” he hissed when her thumb pressed into his tip, encouraging the precum that rolled out and down along his length. One too many lonely nights, she thought, and rightfully so. “Oh, doll, you’re—ah, pretty good at this.”

“Let’s make a deal,” she said.

He opened his eyes to look at her. The smirk on his face was half-crazed, half-ecstatic. He was listening.

“Let me in, and I’ll let you in.”

He traced a circle along her stomach with his forefinger. “Thought you were going to let me in anyway?” he chided, and that earned a small laugh out of her. “But, ah—you don’t want to see inside my head.”

“Because of what they did to you?”

He opened his mouth but the words stuck firmly in his throat, his understated vulnerability transposed into her knowledge. Of course she knew about that. She had been inside Black Bolt’s mind. “Yeah,” he uttered, “that.”

Supergiant lined him up with her entrance. “Let me in,” she whispered, guiding him slowly, “and I’ll let you in, Maximus Boltagon.”

He filled her in one agonizing push. She grasped the sheets of the bed. It had been such a terribly long time since she had anything inside of her in this way, it felt like she was on fire, the burn of his length filled her full. He was so much bigger than she had anticipated, so much rougher; she was meant for the sleek and slender cocks of her own race, so his pressed on everything, and pressed on it hard. She whined, feeling him stretch her open, unforgiving in his girth.

“Good?” he asked.

She was panting, trying to catch her breath. Simply having him inside of her was almost too much. “Very,” she ushered. “I’m—please, will you—”

She’d asked. Said please.

He laughed into her neck. “You can use your words. What do you want me to do, doll?”

“Move,” she said.

He slid a deceptively gentle hand to her hip and thrusted in, jolting her up. She whined at the sensation of being forced open, all her nerves stimulated at once; a warmth spread through her, throbbing like a fresh cut. The noises she didn’t intentionally make melted into a deep moan that rumbled through her core, into her thighs, into his chest.

“Fuck,” Maximus uttered, the damp heat of his mouth against her throat feeling good, too. His fingers clutched the sheets, coiling them up into his fists, and he began to fuck her.

She forgot she wasn’t supposed to be enjoying this—pleasure should always be held separate, or she’d be in a position of complete vulnerability—but that didn’t stop her head from falling back, or her hips from thrusting up, taking him as deep as he would go and seeking the fire that built itself into a blazing heat, high in her belly. It felt good, to the point that no motion was understated. She enjoyed it.

And his mind was open. His mental barrier fell apart, allowing her to slip in; their link snapped taut. She saw everything as he fucked her hard and rough and fast, surrendered to the primal want of it: his past, his present, his ideas and desires and all the terrible, wretched things he’d done to the people who love him most. Each instance of his life struck through her mind in time with his thrusts, amplifying the pressure deep inside her, someplace low but building higher and higher.

In return he received only one of her memories, the one she allowed him to see, and he dissected it front to back like the disjointed innards of an old machine: a dead infant beside her in the crib, ushered promises of a beautiful death, the depth of the cosmos around her. There was the sociopath Thanos, telling her, with a hand on her shoulder and mouth to her ear, I will deliver you unto Death myself.

It was too much. Their intimacy heightened their sexual fever, and Supergiant threw herself fully into it, taking him as deep as he would go, right against a soft bundle of nerves that made her shake and cry out, forced towards another orgasm. His mouth on her breasts, her nails in his back, raking up skin. With their link torn open with such beautiful violence she could hear his thoughts. Come for me, Doll. I want to know how good I make you feel.

“I’m,” she tried to say, “Maximus, I’m—”

“Be a good girl,” he said against her neck. “Don’t fight it.”

The billowing heat in her stomach worked its way up, to her chest, to her arms and her head. “Yes—yes!—”

She locked up. His hand skirted between their bodies, and when the pad of his thumb found her oversensitive clit she convulsed, coming with a lightning snap down the length of her body, shuddering around him, clenching and unclenching and collapsing, falling apart beneath him. He rode through it with her. In her incoherency, she recognized the sound of him saying, “That’s it, oh, doll, you feel amazing—”

It must have been enough for him. Her quivering body, the feel of her coming undone around him, the flaring energy of their memories interlocking in their mental link—he stuttered, hips rutting desperately, and he growled into her neck as he came. Supergiant recalled him muttering her birthname in a language he could have only learned from her, that life she had left behind, but the pleasure peaked and severed their connection, and the moment passed on like a distant memory.

 * * *

 The concept was called spooning. Supergiant had to have it explained to her three or four times before Maximus finally pulled her flush against him. She didn’t know if she disliked this. It was an intimacy she wasn’t familiar with, but Maximus felt warm against her back, so she allowed it.

“That was great,” he uttered against her skin.

It was a kind of praise she didn’t think she’d ever hear. The suddenness of it made her tremble, which he mistook as enthusiasm and began to suck a bruise into the divot of her shoulder. She became aware of the slickness of their sex between her thighs. There was a moment where she thought exhaustion would get the better of her, so she forced herself over, staring him directly in the face.

“What?” he said coyly. “Not the after-sex cuddling type?”

“Why did you call me a doll?”

“It means you’re pretty. You’ve got a real cute face. But you know that, don’t you? You must. You’re too attractive not to.”

Supergiant pressed her lips together in thought. “Are you hoping to gain something by complimenting me?”

“You say that like you’ve never been complimented. People can say nice things, sometimes, just because they want to.” His hand skated over the hillock of her shoulder, down the length of her arm and to her wrist. He guided her hand to his mouth, splaying her fingers open one by one with his opposing thumb like pulling petals from a flower.

“Am I supposed to return the sentiment?”

He pressed a soft kiss against her palm, then the underside of her wrist, where he felt her pulse through his lips. “Only if you want to,” he said, “though I do have a weakness for tenderness in bed. Did you at least enjoy yourself? Actually, of course you did. I know you did. Don’t answer that.”

Lockjaw yawned across the room. Supergiant had almost forgotten about him, and bit by bit began to remember what she was supposed to be doing right now.

“You were wrong, before,” she said to Maximus, as he kissed a path along her bare shoulder. “I’m not allowed to enjoy what I want, not really.”

“Well, here you can.” He captured her mouth with his, running his tongue over the lower plush of her lips, and Supergiant hummed with approval. “See?” he said when they parted, his hand on the sharp cut of her cheek. The absurdity of it was that it felt like they had been together their whole lives.

Supergiant furrowed her brow at him. “Then… Yes, I suppose this was quite nice.”

“You can enjoy some things, sometimes. Maybe this can be more than a one night special?” He raised his eyebrows suggestively. “You, me, a little bit of romance, a sprinkle of political conquest, and if everything works out, maybe a couple of blue babies? You could be a queen.”

She thought of when Corvus had spoken of something similar in qualitative reasoning with Proxima. A pang of morose hit her stomach. Weighed it down like concrete.

“No more stalling,” she said distantly. “We had a deal.”

Maximus looked nothing short of disappointed. “Yeah, I know. Still want to go through with it, huh? I know I can’t really change your mind, but—”

“You can’t change my mind,” she interjected. “Refrain from wasting your breath. I wish to return to the Necropolis.”

Maximus frowned for a moment, perhaps a moment too long, before he kissed the back of her hand.

“Okay, Doll,” he muttered, and then rolled out of bed. They dressed slowly, a fault of his, because he kept trying to put his mouth on hers in-between reassembling clothing and she allowed it, this little luxury she knew she’d never have again.

They didn’t talk.

 * * *

 When they returned to the Necropolis, Supergiant was left standing where she had been before, as if their little deal had never happened at all. She was surprised Maximus hadn’t taken her elsewhere, especially when Lockjaw could easily drop her off anywhere else in the galaxy, and she watched him pick up the detonator. Lockjaw was closer now than before, too, studying each minute movement in both his master and his enemy for subtle hostility.

“Give me the device, Maximus.”

The words abandoned her mouth. She wished, in that moment, she could have told him anything else—take me back, take me again, tell me about your kingdom, do you really want kids?—but her devotion to the Order stuck to the front of her mind, lingered like a shadow, and put its claws around her thoughts.

Maximus sighed, not dramatically but still quite despondently. She felt her stomach twist. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Max—”

“Lockjaw.”

There was a trill of power as the device was kicked into gear, and the last thought that went through Supergiant’s mind as the dog teleported her to a planet in the far corner of the galaxy was a memory of a cold crib, its long bars arched high above her head, and the deep-set eyes of cruel, cruel death.