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The two of them had been wolves once. Running free in the forest, swimming in the lake, swatting away the horseflies. Then they turned eighteen and prey-like. They walked carefully, fished rather than swam, and foraged for herbs and firewood while insects drank blood from them but stole less of their essence than the townsfolk did.
Eden didn't like thinking about the town, but he had to when he was around Bailey.
They met every Saturday afternoon, a stone's throw from their old fishing spot next to the lake. Eden liked to stand among the darkened greenery, his clothes camouflaging him among it like he was more of a place than a person. Bailey was sharply contrasted against the rippling grayness of the lake, a long thin figure in black and white suit. His poker face only showed his true age if he was irritated. And he was very irritated. It was visible in the wrinkle above Bailey's brow, the tightness of his jaw, and the cigarette held between his thumb and index finger like he was clutching a tiny hand of support.
"Merchandise alright?" he asked, flickering ash off his cigarette.
Eden nodded. Yeah, this new one wasn't too bad. Fought him too much, but most of them did, because they couldn't help themselves. Luckily, neither could Eden. Somebody had to teach them the natural order of who was wolf and who was meat.
Bailey preferred to let his wards figure it out on their own. In that way, he was less cruel than the old orphanage director. He also didn't let anyone drug the orphans' food with aphrodisiacs. He knew what he asked them to give up because he had given some of that up too. His purity. His wildness. With his white shirt, black suit pants and shiny dress shoes, he also looked far more out of place in the forest than he had as a kid. Not quite meat, but not quite wolf either. Eden, with his ratty hunter's garb, looked fouler than any actual wolf living in the forest, but the sentiment remained.
"Tried to escape you yet?"
Everbody tried to escape Eden. They all hated him, eventually, even if his cabin was simply a smaller version of the world. The same rules, the same philosophies. If you behaved, you got warm meals, a nice bed, even your own clothes. If you didn't behave, you got the same fuck-all as everywhere else. Less than nothing. Eden couldn't stop himself except maybe if they maybe asked really, really nicely, but no one was ever nice to him, at least not for long. Even Bailey had escaped him, too willful and too clever, even if he slinked by sometimes to do buisness. They rarely talked like this.
"Yeah, thought so," Bailey said, taking Eden's silence as an affirmation, while Eden took his chattering as a confirmation of something else. "Usually they manage to get away from you within a few days' time. Not this time, though."
He took a final drag from his cigarette, paused, then lit another. Recreational smoker until he got stressed, just like most smokers. Why was he stressed?
"My wards usually bring in a lot of cash every week," he said after another pause.
Ah. Of course. He was stressed about money.
"I paid," Eden said, voice hoarse with disuse.
"Yeah. But I gave you a discount."
Eden hadn't asked for a discount. He paid Bailey in animal furs, precious stones and strange antiques, and in jobs that the other man wanted him to do, mostly within surveillance in the town and on the outskirts of it. In return, he got items he couldn't find out here for his cabin, his garden and his guns. And sometimes he got to look at the yearbooks from the orphanage, and once they came of age, he was allowed to choose from the premium selection.
"Do you even know what day it is, Eden?" Bailey said, voice abnormally sharp.
Maybe he was unhappy with how Eden kept on spacing out.
"Saturday." Was it Saturday? Yeah, had to be, because they rarely met if not.
Bailey ran a hair through his hair, shaking loose a few leaves that had gotten stuck in it. He looked better like that. Wilder. But his expression was growing less sharp.
"Most customers continue to pay me afterwards," he said, voice going back to the regular timbre, but with the irritation building back up fast. "Even the prison does. Imagine that."
"I'm not a prison," Eden said, not liking the comparison.
"You've sent a couple of mine to the asylum," Bailey said, looking in the direction of the cabin, and then deeper into the forest. "Never permanently, though. Not like Avery. Avery, who's getting stingy, because you just won't let this one go."
I let go of your throat that time, didn't I? Eden wanted to say as his anger grew, even if Bailey had made it clear that the past was a subject that wasn't to be mentioned. But Eden didn't like Avery being mentioned, and Bailey knew that. He'd seen the mansion, all that tacky materialism, and the bruises that came from living with the man. He'd seen the bruises from living with Bailey, too. Thinking of them made his anger worsen. Not just because they were touching his stuff, but because they acted like they were better than him. Like they weren't prisons, just like him.
Eden stepped forward, shoulders hunching, but he did not reach for his gun.
Bailey hesitated, then his face hardened and he stepped forward too.
The tension could be cracked just as easily as a twig.
In their youth, Eden had once pushed Bailey into the lake by accident due to the growing strength in his big and clumsy body. Water soaked through Bailey's outfit. They'd not been eighteen and not yet dripping with allure, but they'd been hormonal. Bailey roared and attacked while his clothes clung to his skin, exposing an angular body that was strong but not as strong as Eden's, but more striking, especially with Eden's hands around his throat. Then Eden realized what he was doing and left Bailey wheezing in the water. He saw it, though. Saw Eden's lust and understood it better than anyone else could.
They hadn't fought like that in years, but Eden would never forget the lust.
He felt it still, in shameful bursts, even if Bailey's clothes were dry and he'd grown older and ganglier.
"You really wanna do this?" Bailey asked, loosening and rolling up his shirt sleeves.
There was alcohol on his breath. Strong and simple. Most likely vodka.
"Are you drunk?" Eden asked, faltering slightly.
"No," Bailey said, throwing the chewed-up remains of his cigarette into the lake, a motion that made Eden tense back up again. "But tonight is poker night and I can't sit among those idiots without pre-gaming."
Eden's nose wrinkled at the mention. He preferred yahtzee. They'd played it more in the orphanage because all their money went to the old orphanage caretaker. But was Bailey's only interest money? Wasn't there some power in it, both in playing games with fractions of the town's elite, and in demanding back sold property?
Eden cleared his throat. He'd given up on language multiple times in his life. It was treacherous, and his voice was as ugly as the rest of him. Rough and course, sometimes with a slight crack like a broken boy shifting within the belly of a wolf.
"Why do you want them back, anyway? Planning to keep them for yourself?"
"Idiot," Bailey scoffed, but he sounded off.
"They're not her, you know. She's not coming back. She's-"
The punch to the nose fucking hurt.
And yet his instincts were well-honed that he retaliated faster than Bailey had done back in the lake. Eden kneed him in the gut. Bailey swallowed a groan but didn't go down. Eden held his balance against the attempt to kick his legs from out under him; Bailey fought with dirty tricks, but Eden knew them all because he'd helped him develop them. Eden was silent during the assault. And it was more of an assault than a fight. He had no clumsiness with intentional violence.
His nose dripped a thin layer of blood into his mouth, and it tasted right.
He grabbed the back of Bailey's neck and threw towards the greenness of his own wild and private domain rather than the watery fludity of an old friendship, broken. It took less than a minute to wrestle Bailey further down on the ground. Among the moss and grass, dewy and wet, and the ancient trees that made up the roof. Not too bad of a bed for such a bony creature. Bailey had always been cold-blooded, but was heating up fast, matching Eden's temperature.
"It's easier if you just give in," Eden said, like he had earlier that day as a punishment to a childish refusal to do the bare minimum of making him breakfast.
"Fuck off," Bailey exhaled.
He'd never been good at making Eden meals either. He'd done it, but he never even put spices in it, not trusting them to be clean. He struggled until Eden held his arms tighter and threatened to dislocate his elbow.
Finally, he seemed to go still, and Eden was surprised enough to falter.
And then Bailey twisted around and punched Eden in the crotch.
It hurt worse than his nose, also because of how hard he'd grown. It was a blow to his manhood, his virility, his sense of self.
How dare-?
His hand clamped down on Bailey's neck. He needed to break past that stone of a facial expression, and he did so in a very direct way: by shoving the fingers of his free hand into Bailey's mouth. Those sharp yellow teeth scraped at him and then locked down until Eden strangled him harder and he let go. That tongue was so small and wet, soft in comparison to the rest of him. The tight ligaments of his jaw were stretched to their limit when Eden locked his fingers around two teeth in the back of the upper left side. He gave it a few jangles that shook Bailey's entire head. Salvia pooled down his fingers. Everything was so slippery. His nails dug into the gums. Blood joined the salvia. Bailey choked, eyes going wide, before he closed them hard.
The threat was registered.
And yet Eden held on for a few seconds more.
Bailey was warmer here, deep inside, than almost anywhere else on his body.
He let go so fast Bailey fell backwards. They were both breahing hard.
Eden remained on all fours, studying the shine on his hand and wrist. It had left pinkish trails that smelled like vodka. He looked towards the source, whose lips now were reddened and parted only to spit, but not to tell him that he yielded.
He moved to pin Bailey down once more.
He had seen how the wolves reacted to subordinates who refused to yield. It was how the two of them had ended their fights sometimes, too. With the loser not only pinned down, but pressed down, buried under the crushing weight of loss.
And so Eden moved to pin Bailey down once more. He crushed him against the moss, hoping the green would stain his white shirt and make him remember. Make him remember what, exactly? Their time as young wolves?
Eden pressed down harder and became more aware of his arousal. Nostalgia washed over him. It sometimes did when he dealt with the orphans, too. Memories mixed with reality and before he knew it, he was pushing his groin towards Bailey's ass, grinding down his resistance in a way that felt deeply natural.
"Just like the old days," he whispered, lip quirking in the tiniest of smiles.
"You're never able to stop yourself," Bailey said, calmly but slurred.
"You do this to me. I can tell you need this. That you got drunk, just for me."
"Clichés."
Always so flippant. Like nothing that happened in the forest mattered, and that everything that happened between them mattered less. Had he been this rude and bossy when earning money like this regularly? No wonder people used to beat the shit out of him until he learned how to fight. Eden was included on that list, though he'd never paid Bailey to fuck him.
Wanting a reaction, Eden began to pull Bailey's suit trousers down. They were flexible except where they had built in layers of protection gear near the knees and hips, but nothing around the groin and ass. Arrogance, or lack of imagination or of care?
"Really?" Bailey drawled, but he wasn't fighting it. Not yet anyway. "Gonna hump me like a dog in heat and then give the usual excuses? I've heard them all before."
His eyes were so dark they almost looked black. It was a look specific to some of the more coveted orphans in the town. A kind of deadness, but with the spark still there, or they'd end up at the asylum or the underground brothel, or worse places. After a while, a lot of them even stopped being afraid of Eden. Some got properly submissive, while others got this world-weary look to them, which wasn't Eden's fault but that of the town. These days the orphans were raised by Bailey's goons, and it was comical to imagine such rough men and women balancing diapers and bottles and the babies themselves. Eden wondered if Bailey had them all on the sort of antidepressive drugs that killed one's libido. He'd been recommended that once and refused because of that common side-effect, because without his sexuality – and the violence in it – he was nothing.
He had hesitated for too long, and Bailey scoffed and started trying to crawl out from underneath him.
Like a predator catching the movement of a once-still prey, Eden snapped back in the regular world to take back control.
He tugged down Bailey's reinforced pants, scraping up his legs, ripping out leg hairs.
Snarling, Bailey tried to do one of his usual quick twists that would put them face to face, but Eden wouldn't let him in fear of seeing himself reflected in that black gaze. (He didn't even look down at the lake when out here fishing except when the line of his fishing rod rippled up the surface). He preferred Bailey underneath him in the moss. His body was familiar underneath Eden's large fingers. Colder than him, but also tighter in all the right ways.
"I'm not interested in that," Bailey said, voice harsh.
Eden hummed something noncommittal, because his hands were busy kneading Bailey's ass through his underwear, and he had problems conceptualizing what Bailey meant by that. The position? He'd always been more of a front to front kind of guy in terms of fighting, unlike Eden, who had no interest being watched. He had more interest in revealing Bailey's ass, thinner than it'd been in their youth, those few times he'd gotten close like this. Thin, but not ugly.
With practiced movements, Eden got out a tin of bear grease, which was more for the other's comfort than his own. He grabbed a handful and ran them over Bailey's exposed thighs, moving quickly so that nothing in the forest would catch a glimpse of this.
"Don't," Bailey said at the prod to his hole.
"Still a virgin, down here?" Eden asked, patting Bailey's ass, camaraderie-like. "I never know how you managed that."
Bailey didn't answer, but a single tremble went through him when Eden rubbed grease all over him, down his thighs, over his half-hard cock, with quick sweeping strokes.
"Alright," Eden said, as if Bailey had spoken. "Press your thighs together." Like you taught me it could be done, back in the day.
Bailey complied. He kept his face away, but Eden saw how tight his jaw was, which must've hurt after he'd nearly gotten a few teeth pulled out. Poor guy, but it was just the natural order of things, just like this result.
Eden lifted himself out of his pants, not bothering to undress more, uncaring that the waistline dug into his balls. Bailey kept his thighs pressed tightly together, muscled and nice, but there was so much grease that Eden didn't have trouble forcing himself through them. His cock was large enough to bruise and if he hadn't remembered this method, he'd easily have split Bailey's hole open by taking him without prep. He knew there were rumors that taking someone's virginity was far more arousing in the vicinity of the town than anywhere else in the world, but he wasn't so sure. But even when disoriented by lust and violence, he didn't want to ruin their friendship, or whatever tattered thing they had left.
It took a few more brutal thrusts before Bailey winced. He reached down to adjust his own testes because Eden's cock kept shoving past them. Eden wondered if Bailey wouldn't mind selling his body on the regular if it didn't interfere with his reputation, which again interfered with his other assets like the orphans themselves. As a young man, he'd been relentless at making money, expertly juggling his various reputations in order to not make less. Maybe that was the first sign he belonged to the town, where Eden belonged out here. But Eden wanted to show him that a part of him would always be free with him.
He snuck a hand around Bailey's front, only to grasp Bailey's hand clutching himself. Was he masturbating, or just shielding himself before Eden could get to him? No matter. Eden tried to wrestle control over his climax from him, but Bailey held on, even as Eden forced his hand to move up and down, moaning when his grip was made harsher.
It was an old game, seeing who would come first. Better than game with cards or dice. More fit for the animals they were deep inside, gritting their teeth and exhaling hard.
The constant and intense friction rubbed more and more of the grease away. Eden's cock was getting chafed, but Bailey was probably worse off, with bruises and friction burns on the inside of his thighs that he would feel for days afterwards. Eden liked the thought of Bailey feeling him on his skin, and his lust was too high to stop and reapply lubricant.
All the bones beneath him were trembling.
Little grunts of pain escaped Bailey at a sensation that was a burn for Eden and a most likely a fire for him
Ceasing to move at once, Eden saw a flash of an old experience, a memory of being pushed down and conquered and burned, relived through in his nightmares.
"Quit flashbacking," Bailey hissed.
"Wh-what?" Eden said, genuinely not knowing what that word meant.
"...Hurry up," Bailey said, which both surprised Eden and put him at ease, because one didn't say that towards something unwanted. That was a good sign, right? A sign to continue bowing to the natural order?
It felt natural but nothing like order when Eden wrenched Bailey's hand away from himself, causing him to cry out from pain or relief. His cock was smaller than Eden's. It also felt much better in Eden's hand. Familiar.
Bailey was the one bowing now, arms shaking too badly to hold up his chest. The moss beneath them would carry the shapes of where their bodies pressed down for a little while, and then move back up again, like if this had never happened.
"Fuck," Bailey muttered, and Eden felt a fresh wave of dizzying arousal wash over him.
"Still holding out on me?" Eden said, voice quiet, almost lulling.
And then, even quieter, breathier; "You always were the most determined among us."
Bailey inhaled shallowly, tensed, then began to shake. A sound made it out of him before he caught himself, an oh, like he remembered something nearly forgotten. Eden wondered if it was his compliment that made him come.
The thought made him smile almost innocently as he kept on milking Bailey dry, until he could press the other man's thighs together with all his strength to get the proper tightness. Bailey moaned in pleasure and discomfort, sounding more helpless in his climax than he did anywhere else, and that was what pushed Eden over the edge.
Thin ropes of semen landed on the grass, but some ran down Bailey's legs, into the pants at his ankles. Eden didn't stop until he was completely dry, and the last thrusts had a jarred disorientation to them because the sensitivity made him feel the chafing more. Wanting a final victory, Eden used his thumbs to expose Bailey's inner thighs as he kept fucking them, happy to see how red and sore the skin had gotten, even if his hole remained untouched. Bailey would get some wicked bruises. It almost satisfied the beast in him, but it required a little bit more.
"You'll feel me for a while."
Bailey's grunt ended in a squak when Eden nudged his thumb across Bailey's hole like a threat or a warning.
"Didn't even have to get up in here for you to do so, yeah?"
He leaned with all his weight on top of Bailey, ignoring the urge to howl.
"Are you done?" Bailey asked, hoarse even if he hadn't screamed.
"We're wolves, we can't help ourselves," Eden said, something he had said before that had curdled like old milk on his tongue.
"I don't feel like a mammal at all, these days," Bailey said.
It was the most personal he'd gotten in a while. Eden wanted so terribly to speak of the past, their days out here, and at the orphanage, the things that had pushed them apart. Even if Bailey seemed to understand and accept these things on a deeper level than Eden did, they had never actually spoken about them. But the language to do so remained beyond Eden, and before he knew it, Bailey had snuck out from underneath him, walking over to the lake to clean himself.
"Is there any free will at all, in this place?" Bailey asked no one in particular, staring at the mess in his hand, before crouching down by the lake to wash it away. He watched the
"There's only free will," Eden said, and the words tasted old, like they weren't true anymore. He frowned, remembering the one who had told them that, who had talked of both hope and rebelliousness in a way that they never quite understood. Among the three of them, Bailey had been the most determined and Eden the (physically) strongest, but she'd been the bravest.
Bailey looked at Eden oddly, like he was seeing a paradox.
Eden didn't see it. He did his very best at not seeing it.
"I think I brought them some time, now," Bailey mumbled, looking towards Eden's cabin. "Unless they're an idiot."
"What?" Eden asked, dazed and content. He usually got like that after an orgasm. "Who?"
"Oh, nothing. Nobody. Same time next week, right?"
Eden nodded. He was used to Bailey cutting their meetings off sharply. Especially if Eden had tried to ask about the past. But when he turned towards the lake and focusing on the horizon rather than the depths, he realized they hadn't talked about the past. Reenacted parts of it, sure, but they sometimes did that knowingly and unknowingly.
"Do you even know what day it is?" Bailey had asked earlier. In terms of what they were speaking about, the question hadn't sounded too far off. But in terms of tone and delivery, it had been too sharp, too personal, too betrayed.
"Wait," Eden said slowly, turning around. "It's her birthday today, isn't it?"
Bailey was already gone. The forest seemed deserted. The moss was still somewhat pushed down, but the imprints could've easily been of a wolf resting there for a time before another hunt. If his cock hadn't been hurting, Eden might've thought he had imagined the whole encounter. He ran a hand over himself like another person might've done through their hair.
He felt at ease with being as ugly as he was, because his surroundings didn't care about it. But it was hard to tell himself he didn't care as he picked up two cigarette butts and collected them in an old half-hidden glass jar from the times they used to fish and swim here. Even as wolves, they had been human, perhaps even more so than they were now.