WHO ARE YOU? (ABO)

( snippet )

North had never been more bewildered.

He had never been adept at finding love.

What he longer for was simple in theory, yet impossibly rare in practice: someone who would look at him as though he had hung the moon itself.

He wanted his first to be his last.

And yet, on a lonely night, he found someone.

Gentle. Sweet. Everything one could have hoped for.

But something was wrong.

Subtly, disturbingly wrong.

It was as though the person before him right now was not the same one he had been speaking to.

A quiet unease settled in his chest.

"Who are you?"

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
♡

North felt his body harshly slammed against the wall.

The impact drove the air from his lungs in a single, broken gasp. Stone bit into his shoulder blades, rough and unyielding, even through the fabric of his tunic. His skull connected a heartbeat later... not hard enough to crack, but hard enough to send splintered light across his vision, hard enough to make his teeth click together and his ears ring with a dull, persistent whine.

Tears prickled in his eyes.

Not entirely from the pain but from somewhere deeper..... From the shock of being handled like a ragdoll, from the brutal finality of the slam that pinned him in place, from the crushing weight of the body pressing him flat against the cold stone.

North's hands flew up to Johan's chest, pushing but Johan was solid as a mountain, unmovable as stone. His muscles didn't even tense against North's palms. It was like trying to shove a wall.

"Johan-" he started, but the name died on his lips when he felt it.

Johan's teeth.

Sharp and unforgiving. Sinking into the tender flesh of North's throat, right over the mating gland that pulsed there with every frantic beat of his heart.

North's eye widened.

No-

No...

NO!

Mating bites were sacred. They were vows spoken in blood and teeth, promises carved into flesh, bonds that tied two souls together until death.

You offered. You waited. You received permission.

You didn't slam someone against a wall and-

"Ahh!!"

The scream tore out of him before he could stop it.

Johan's teeth sank deeper.

North felt them grinding against the sensitive bundle of nerves beneath his skin. Felt the flood of warmth that followed, the strange, sickening sweetness of venom seeping into his bloodstream, the bond taking root even as he fought against it. His body was trembling now, uncontrollably, every muscle shaking like a leaf in a storm.

Tears flowed freely from his eyes, hot and relentless, cutting tracks down his cheeks and dripping onto Johan's hand where it gripped his jaw.

He looked up.

The motion took everything he had. His neck screamed in protest. His head pounded. The mating gland, now torn and bleeding and bound throbbed with every pulse of his heart.

Johan's eyes were closed.

Golden-brown lashes fanned against pale cheeks. His brow was furrowed in something that looked almost like pain. Like he was fighting something. His hair hung over his forehead, disheveled, sweat-damp. And his lips were pressed tight around the wound he was making, his jaw working, teeth grinding deeper, sealing the mark like a brand.

North's heart clenched.

He was marked.

Marked...

By someone he wanted.

But someone he couldn't recognize.

North's trembling fingers lifted to his throat.

They hovered there for a moment, shaking too badly to make contact. His whole arm wobbled. His breath came in short, hitching gasps. When his fingertips finally pressed against the torn flesh, the pain was distant now. Muffled. As if wrapped in cotton and buried beneath layers of shock.

The bleeding was warm and slick against his skin. His fingers came away with dark red smeared across his pale fingertips like a grotesque painting.

His vision began to narrow.

The edges of the world darkened, curling inward like paper catching fire. The torchlight shrank to pinpricks. The shadows grew teeth. And Johan's face... still so beautiful, still so wrong... shrank to a distant point of light at the center of a closing tunnel.

North tried to speak.

Tried to say something but his lips wouldn't move anymore.

His body, which had been trembling so violently, began to still. The tremors faded to shudders. The shudders faded to nothing. Then the nothing spread through his limbs like cold water, washing away sensation, washing away him.

His knees buckled.

He felt himself sliding forward. Toward the floor. Toward the darkness. Toward the blessed, merciful relief of unconsciousness.

North's eyes rolled back.

His hand fell from his throat, limp and useless. His arms dropped to his sides.

And as his body crumpled to the cold stone floor the last thing he saw was Johan's face looming above him.

Those dark eyes finally open.

Finally seeing.

Filled with a horror so vast it could swallow the world whole.

Then everything went black.