#k thanks i'm going to expire from exhaustion now

[idlecreature]

Damnatio ad bestias, a Aro/Caius drabble 

Nsfw! No specific trigger warnings. Just bad porn. 

Part 2

One of Caius’ questionably few charms is his dogged efficiency. He scrawls in his personal dossiers viciously, almost rabidly, with an idea to be finished as soon as possible so he can move onto the next task, and then the next -- his life organised in bullet points that look burnt onto paper. 

“Don’t you ever multitask?” Aro sighs, black cape spread over the couch in Caius’ office like an impending migraine. As usual, Aro’s timing is the worst. Why couldn’t he waltz in when Caius was checking off accounts, reading reports, puzzling over his fax machine operator’s manual?

“If that’s one of those awful modern words,” Caius says, “then, no, I don’t ‘multitask’.” 

“Oh, you should try it sometime,” Aro says with an unruffled grin that evokes for Caius an image of a starving wolf taught to use its table manners -- a grin that never means anything good. Aro stretches across the couch, languidly propping his feet up on the priceless antique. Caius looks pointedly at his papers, carefully licking a finger and flicking to the next page. 

“It means doing several things at once,” Aro explains (completely unnecessarily). Caius imagines Aro with a sock in his mouth, and the idea is....pleasing in an unexpected way. He writes the same word twice, and he rips out the whole page, it’s ruined. “Like writing and talking, or writing and talking and......what are you writing? Wait, don’t answer, let me guess. Philosophy, perhaps? No, not like you at all: contemptible, frivolous, witless, febrile. A manifesto, then?........” 

Caius stares at what he’s just written, but it may as be gobbledegook. He breathes through his nose, clenching his free hand until the bones ache. He mustn’t show weakness. 

“...you’ve written yourself into neat little labyrinths before...but what about physics? Nature’s law, smaller than an atom....” 

Aro’s enthusiastic gestures half-catch Caius’ eye, the long, pretty, colourful line of his body splayed on the couch. It is only an exercise in self-restraint that keeps Caius’ head bowed down, his eyes boring holes in his tissue-thin paper and matchstick desk. 

“....man picks over every grain of sand?” 

Caius looks up. “Oh, were you saying something?” 

“You’re teasing me,” Aro replies, rising from the couch. Dark, slender fingers curl around his dossiers and drag the bundle across the desk. 

Caius concentrates very hard on not breaking the pen in his hand. “Aren’t you clever?” 

The bones sit in Aro’s face like fine upholstery, his eyes black and plainly wanting. Wanting what, exactly, Caius isn’t sure. He side-eyes Aro’s fingers playing across the paper. He desperately wants to snatch it out of Aro’s clever hands and throw it across the room. He is aware of the window behind him letting in the wheezy air, the door to his office slightly ajar. “I think,” Aro replies, drumming his fingertips across the dossiers, “that you aren’t being entirely honest with me.” 

“What?” Caius scoffs. Aro is too close now. The air is syrup-thick, choking him. “What are you talking about? I’m perfectly fine.” The pen in his hand explodes from his too-tight grip, splattering ink across the desk. “Damn you for a pestilent little traitor,” he growls. 

“What’s got you so worked up?” The question is perfectly innocent, but everything in Aro’s expression says that it isn’t. If there’s one thing Caius hates about Aro, it’s his goddamned baited questions. As if everything isn’t okay. Isn’t hunky-dory. As if he isn’t at the top of a house of cards that a goddamned gust of air could knock over. As if wrangling the guards isn’t a full-time occupation and there’s no thanks and the only retirement is a quick fall with a sharp blade. Ceaseless, tireless progression for the last thousand years--spinning a thousand plates and the mental labour fatigues him to the bone. 

“I just want privacy for an hour---” he spits, having no way of solidifying these half-formed, hindbrain thoughts. And even the thought of having these thoughts humiliates him. He needs someone who just - instantly - gets it - no explanation needed---- 

---And he’s standing a desk-width away. The man is so damn composed, and it infuriates Caius that nothing can leave a mark on him, crack that cultivated, ironic facade. He knows that underneath there’s something wild and unforgiving, and that’s someone that Caius desperately wants to possess, wants to have pinned and writhing beneath him. 

“Well, if something so trivial drives you to nearly a tantrum,” Aro says, words peeking out from the sharp triangles between his fingers, “Then I’m concerned about your capacity to continue work as a leader of this coven. How much longer can you last before breaking down?” 

“Longer than your patience for it.” 

“Perhaps,” Aro says, wearing his smugness like a too-tight cravat. He’s ellubient, a catherine-wheel of evil intent. Caius sees the beginning of a plan hatch in his eyes, and it holds a knife. “You’re glorious when you’re so defensive. It just makes me want to--” 

Caius interrupts by vaulting across the desk. In a single fluid movement, he pulls Aro, landing hard on the couch. His hands scrabble all over Aro’s body like a rodent, shucking that dreadful robe, his blouse. “Don’t say it,” he breathes into the base of Aro’s neck, tasting heat and salt, the twitch of a half-dead jugular. “Show me what you’d do.” 

Aro trembles slightly, surprisingly pliant. He plants hard kisses wherever he can reach, mostly crown and browbone. He flinches at the touch of skin as if Caius is barbed wire. 

“You have a shockingly vivid imagination,” Aro says, a slight hitch in his voice. Caius remembers those long, clever fingers playing across the papers of his diary, except it’s the neurons of Caius’ brain he’s picking at now. He imagines a sharp little fingernail wriggling its way into a nerve, flaying him open, leaving him raw. The thought would usually fill him with loathing but right now -- it’s what he needs. What he craves. 

Aro’s fingers play lightly at the waistband of Caius’ pants. He gracefully frees himself from Caius’ embrace and folds to his knees, that knowing, smirking mouth now nibbling at Caius’ pants where his hand was seconds ago. 

Caius concentrates on Aro’s freckled shoulder, finding the sight of a man ordinarily so tight on the strings of power and control -- on his knees before him, asking for permission -- absolutely unbearable. He winds his hands through Aro’s hair, freeing it of its many silver clasps. 

He feels the shivery motion of Aro unzipping his pants with his teeth. He playfully smooches Caius’ cock and immediately takes it in his mouth. Aro’s hand snakes around Caius’ shaft, squeezing him tightly enough to make him gasp. Aro cackles, his mouth still full of cock and the sensation shocks Caius deeply, like a knife through the heart, paralytic, and he wonders what evil deeds he must have done to deserve such a man, surely worse than coercion, worse than torture, worse than murder, and when Aro begins sucking and swirling his tongue, taking Caius as deep as he can go, Caius finds it impossible to think at all. 

Suddenly, Aro stops. Caius clings to him in confusion, thrusting shallowly forward, an unbearable pressure in his stiff, leaking cock. 

Aro spits him out, his wine-red lips and chin shining with fluid. “I wasn’t being disingenuous before. I am genuinely concerned about your wellbeing.” 

Caius hisses through his teeth. “Aro---” 

“You’re shutting yourself away,” Aro says. He tugs Caius’ pants down to his knees and pushes his legs apart. He sucks on a finger, locking eyes with Caius. “But of course, that only makes people like me more curious.” 

“For god’s sake---” 

Aro slides a spit-slickened finger into Caius’s ass and simultaneously traces his tongue down his cock from tip to base. The sensation is so incredible that Caius is shamefully pushed over the edge, and he comes too swiftly to avoid Aro’s face and hair. 

“At least your couch isn’t spoiled,” Aro says, raising his eyes in bemusement. 

“Fuck. I’m sorry--” Caius says. “Let me make it up to you---that’s fair,” he continues, pawing at Aro’s robe. 

Aro slaps his hands away. “Not necessary. These things happen when you’re stressed.” He stands up, circling his arms around Caius’ waist. “Let’s take the day off work, and have a long, hot bath,” he whispers saucily. 

“You can’t just a day off whenever you feel like it--” 

“Yes, you can,” Aro says, dragging him towards the door. 

The baths are dark, sulphuric, nestlike. The deep heat of the water sinks deliciously into Caius’ muscles, which are inexplicably sore. Aro presses his chest to Caius’ back, limning his lips along the tops of Caius’ shoulders. “You’re so tense,” he says. “Relax.” 

“I can’t,” Caius breathes, just loud enough to be audible. It’s the closest he allows himself to a confession and it’s only permissible because Aro can hear the feverish, anxious timbre of his thoughts. He feels like a cornered animal and he doesn’t know why but he aches, heartsore and defeated. 

He turns to Aro, his lovely face peppered with condensation, and begins to layer him with harsh little kisses and rubs. From afar, it would appear like an albino lion chomping down on a stringy, dark carcass. The lion’s fangs grind together, working at some knotty tendon, and what appears as a rabbit’s eye peeps out from the fearsome maw.