ext_265180 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
thunderwitch.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tampered2007-08-09 10:08 pm
thunderwitch.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2007-08-09 10:08 pm
Log; Complete
When; August 9th, evening
Rating; PG-13/R
Characters; Cirucci {![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thunderwitch} & Dordonii {whatanentrance}
Summary; Amongst her busy schedule, Cirucci realizes Dordonii has been far too quiet of light, therefore, she has to check, and, to help him plan his sword's resurrection. (Alternatively... Dordonii: I AM NEVER DEFEATED // Cirucci: Dude, you're covered in soup and you were like, whining two seconds ago about futility and goth boy stuff. // Dordonii: ... I SAID I AM NEVER DEFEATED.)
Log;
The City had a way of making one listless, even when one had such stunning and stellar personality as did Dordonii Alessandro del Socacchio. It had magnified the feeling of uselessness perceived in Hueco Mundo, it had intensified an awareness of futility. In debating the mechanics of restoring his blade--what should have repaired itself given time, given his attention, and Dordonii wondered if it was "death" that kept his blade apart--and the bargain he had struck with the deity, Dordonii had planned. Foolish as he behaved, it was his weakness that had necessitated forethought, but forethought had made the task terrible.
What blade would be worthy enough to let his Giralda rotate again? A blade that the deities had not yet seen? And could he bring himself to return the damned blades to the the shinigami when the bargain had finished? It left bitter, hard tastes in his mouth that not even Cirucci's niño's cooking could remove. He had thought, reflected on the few shinigami he knew of, of the suspected difference in power levels. Time passed, rolled, stampeded, had cursed days and plain days. Dordonii learned to cook, found clubs where he could tango, and, effectively, moped. Surrounded by humans, humans for whom he could stir up little respect and less interest, isolation and queer indifference found holds.
It wasn't that he had given up. Or maybe he had. Dordonii, for all his energy and zeal and enthusiasm, had limitations, had a top to his patience and a top to his ability to exaggerate and panick and rush into things, slam them with his horns, and find a place where he could stand. At some point, it had occurred to him that maybe it didn't matter--and maybe there wasn't a point, not Espada, not even, maybe, Privaron, in this place--and, for all that he continue to look and hear and move, Dordonii had settled into a legitimate funk.
His kicks just didn't feel the same, but his soup was beginning to resemble actual soup. He sat in his kitchen, a Privaron with a kitchen, poking at a slush of water, vegetables, and what looked suspiciously like (and was) extra extra hot salsa. For Dordonii, it was a terribly frequent event.
>>>
Cirucci could sympathize with him, if she knew how he was feeling. All she knew was that she hadn’t heard from Dordonii in a long while, and that was worrisome, or, as worrisome as something like that could get. To this one, that was “very”. One thing she couldn’t stand was the ticking, was being lonely. She hated it, hated feeling so alone, not being around people, and she didn’t know how anyone else could stand it.
Light footsteps brought her to the third building, to the third floor and the third room. She paused, felt his reiatsu and took a soft comfort in it before she simply grabbed the doorknob, jimmied it, and let herself in, put a coy smile on her face as she closed the door behind her, on tiptoes and leaned back against it, looking about with bright, wide, eyes.
“Dordonii?~” The Privaron called, bouncing up and down on her heels.
>>>
Moping, and it never even occurred to him how very wrong it was for Dordonii Alessandro Del Socacchio to be moping! The ticking had become so commonplace, so much a part of 'Dordonii sits at home, fails at cooking, and makes a fuss no one hears about reading human books' that it was only with its sudden, jarring absence that he realized it had been there at all--and, that he had a headache that had a steady rhythm of tock and tick.
His spoon was half-way to his mouth. A green sliver of pepper from the salsa clung to his bottom lip. Dordonii blinked, and broke into a wide, instinctive grin at the sound of his fellow Privaron's voice. Jumping out of his seat, he very nearly sloshed the soup all down his front--and did lose his spoonful to his chin, to the curl of his beard. It had less of a curl today. All in all, it was something of a pathetic sight, and he actually halted in his enthusiastic greeting, flashing eyes a little dimmer than what would have been usual, to find a napkin and mop at his beard.
"AAH," He shouted, patting his chin, "SEÑORITA!"
>>>
The Privaron waltzed over to the other, offered a quirk of her lips at his reaction and observed him. There was something lackluster about Dordonii that was surprisingly unexpected, something near disheartening.
If she had a heart.
“Dordonii, you’ve cooped yourself away from me!” Cirucci whined, complained as she held out her arms in a gesture for the taller male to offer her a more fitting greeting, observing him with a detached part of her, watching the way he moved and the way he spoke.
She knew Dordonii, probably more than any other Arrancar, any other lover, simply because as long as she had existed so had Dordonii, and as long as she had been removed to Tres Cifras, so, too, had Dordonii.
>>>
He dropped the napkin into a sad, stained heap beside the bowl, forgotten on the table. His grin stretched as wide as it always had, his teeth glinted the same, large and still white, but it still felt odd on his face. And odder still, it took a minute of him looking at her, arms outstretched, for the obvious action to click into mind. Clicking like a clock, repeated, oh yes, oh yes, that, si, si, that. Movement, energy, flare, his flare, his leg jerked in a miniature kick, as if starting up a stalling engine.
"Has he?" Dordonii asked, pulling a much grieved grimace to his face as he moved to her, his hands closing around her small waist and lifting her with ease into the air. "Has he? So neglected his favorite! Ah-ah-ah--" a tsking, without the accompanying finger, but he shook his head, tilted face just so and looked with disapproval, "But she tells him has been cooped up, willingly away from her! Never willingly, as if Dordonii-sama could be cooped!"
Though, he had been. And the honorific could have made him blanch, had he not been so taken in the upswing of his own dramatics.
>>>
Cirucci kicked her feet a bit, wrapped lithe arms around his neck and clung lightly, listened to his words but didn’t believe a one of them.
“Dordonii is upset about something.” She chastised, voice a croon, a near maternal, but certainly not quite, noise, hanging loose and small feet still kicking idly. She could read him easier than most, and she could tell, could tell in that hesitation before he’d picked her up, in that shake of the head and that half-hearted kick.
“He should tell Cirucci all about it.” The Privaron prompted with a chaste kiss to his cheek, stifling a grunt as she agitated the bruises under her dress.
>>>
Dordonii rose his eyebrows, a smooth arch on his forehead, up and almost precise, almost regular. "Dordonii-sama? Upset? And what could upset him?" He asked, his voice full of surprise and denial that should have been obvious and easy and of course he wasn't upset, as if such fickle things as displacement and humans and the City and having no meaning or purpose or worth ever evereverever--
and damn, if his eyes weren't dark and his wasn't already scowling, as Dordonii had never been very good at keeping his strongest emotions in check. A scowl became a wry, dark and awful twisting smirk, and his grip on her loosened, not quite lost.
"He would not bother the Privaron with something so --ah, ah, ah--" a sneer, hatred on his face and in his eyes "chocolate."
>>>
“Don’t bother the Privaron, then.” Cirucci snapped, irritated that he would think she wouldn’t get it, that he would deny it flat her face when she knew better, she knew.
“Bother with Cirucci.” He owed her a show of weakness anyhow, she’d been the only Arrancar she could count on to come collect her from Noitora’s, to pick her up, limp, bleeding, used, and beaten, and carry her somewhere else, to bathe her, clean her, see her through the end of that curse day, and he owed her, not a reward or comfort, no, he owed her a moment of such weakness to make hers not too bad, to make them even as she tightened her grip, afraid he would drop her, another kiss, near encouraging, against his cheek.
He smelled like soup.
>>>
It was weakness. That Dordonii had seen his fellow Privaron in weakness--more than once, to be technical, for the blow of the loss of their station had left all the once Espada in brief devasation, unallowed, not permitted, confined to the rigid lines of their bodies as Tres Cifras became their home. But having seen hers did not allow him his, his pride did not allow it, an empty pride that lacked its foundation as, after all, everything remained stewed in futility. That wasn't anything new, not really, but here, here, it stood out.
"She shouldn't separate Cirucci from Privaron," Dordonii chided, but his voice was sharp with a bitter thread. "Bothering with Cirucci is bothering with Privaron." Titles given to them, like Espada. All of it given and could be taken, so it was. He had settled, he had served, he had bowed beneath demotion, beneath dismissing disdain, beneath becoming less. Everything changed and nothing changed. Dordonii stagnated.
"He is rotting, Cirucci," Dordonii murmured, his hold tightening, his eyes looking past her. Her lips had been cool and soft on his cheek. There had been stubble to meet them. "He thinks he can smell himself rot. He is rotting like a human. He thinks it keeps pace with the clock. The clock ticks. He wonders what rotting chocolate smells like. The City, it even made him taste like it."
Dordonii laughed. It wasn't a nice sound.
>>>
Cirucci listened to every word, growing still, body hanging limp until he’d begun to laugh. With a small murmur in her throat, nearly a growl, she released him, dropped down the foot or so difference in their heights and felt the soft thump when her boots hit the floor.
Small hands tangled around on of his one, tugging insistently as she led the way to the couch in the living room, away from his stupid soup and that stupid laugh. She flopped down onto the couch and tugged at him to join her as she scrambled, with a few winces, to get comfortable, to tuck her legs beneath her and sit up, back arched in one fluid curve.
“Dordonii isn’t rotting.” The Privaron finally spoke, a firm, insistent sentence.
>>>
She dropped and he let her, his arms going limp the instant her arms had released. She took his
hand and he let her, expressionless and stupid. She pulled him to the living room and he let her, and she tugged him and he followed, sitting heavily beside her, sinking into the cushion but not sitting back. His teeth were gritted together, enamel against enamel. It wasn't comfortable but it didn't matter. Dordonii felt insane, insane in a different way than was typical and therefore not, for him, insane at all.
He was losing something, and the worst thought, the worst truth, was that it had maybe already been gone. Long gone. Never there to begin with. She spoke and he shook his head. Cirucci could sound firm. He could understand that she understood, that she more than anyone would know--Dordonii did not seek sympathy or empathy or even comfort, because when he knew something he knew it with certainty accepted it, and he accepted this, only, this gave him little motivation to hope, and without hoping for the impossible, Dordonii faced reality and reality and Dordonii did not see el ojo al ojo.
"How has she lasted so long?" He asked, voice quiet, so quiet. "How has she bore this City? If he repairs his blade, then it is repaired. And so? So what then? If he fights it cannot resolve. If he kills it returns. If he does not, it might as well be broken. What does Dordonii do with a blade whole and useless? So he thinks, there is no point, he wasted the good deity's time. But what is Dordonii without it?"
>>>
Cirucci quieted, listened again. Normally she would interrupt, make little disgusting noises, something, but she was somber. The smaller woman crept closer, tugged on his uniform, straightened his collar, his sash, the way his jacket lay. She settled in his lap, bruised thighs on either side of his hips, and put one palm on either side of his face.
“I don’t know.” She finally answered. Cool fingers, silky fabric of a white glove, traced his face, skimming the lines of distinct cheekbones, the stubble on his face, his eyebrows, over the eccentric mustache, his eyelids, full lips in a low pout.
“I don’t know how I’m still… me, when no matter how many time I kill a shinigami they still come back, when I’m dead and I don’t matter, more worthless than we ever were back in Tres Cifras, when we can’t even count on Aizen-sama, when our blades can be so broken and we can be hurt by things with weird powers and we can’t go home, and-“ The Thunderwitch murmured it all, slowly, in time with her motions and the trace of her hands.
“… Dordonii understands?”
>>>
"Dordonii understands," He whispered, a near hiss, as his hands moved up to capture her wrist, to stay the movement. A wanted comfort, wanted touch, and he would refuse it. Accepting comfort, allowing himself to bask in this attention, would be to allow himself too much. Dordonii desired nothing that he could not claim on his own merits, that did not have purpose, and purposeless himself, this, her cool fingers salves to the strain that wrung him dry, served nothing.
"If dead, he cannot return... trapped with humans and unable to change any of it. It won't matter if he restores his blade. It won't matter if he kills a shinigami or died at a shinigami's blade. Dordonii could be here and he could not and it would be the same. She writes in her journal and speaks with humans but Dordonii cannot look at the "network" without wanting to rip it apart."
It was obvious, terribly obvious: for every 'it" there lurked a he. Dordonii wouldn't matter.
>>>
At the halt of her wrist Cirucci stiffened, not just because it was an insult, but because the last time that had happened it had been Noitora and those wrists had been pinned above her head. As he spoke, her lip twisted, painted mouth into a sneer.
“Dordonii-” The Privaron spat, wrested her wrists from his grip and resoundingly slapped him across the face, the sound loud and clear, a near echo in the sudden silence that action brought.
“Stop it!” Cirucci was fairly shrieking, her voice too high-pitched, too warbling, too avian, to do anything but grate on the ears. “Stop acting so pathetic!” A hypocrite, if she ever was one, but… this is what he needed, it was what she had needed, this violence, this sudden anger and insult, because it was insulting for him to be this way, just because… just because they had no purpose anymore.
“Stop whining!” Her hands fell to fist in his jacket and haul him closer until she was gritting her words out close to his face. “The 103rd Privaron Espada Does. Not. Whine.”
>>>
A neat, crisp sound. Following the silence of his droning, his pathetic, pathetic, pathetic droning. A hard, whipping motion of his head. Dordonii's eyes widened as his cheek went red. Dordonii had never been slapped before. To say the least, he was stunned, too stunned even for his ears to be over-offended by how shrill was her voice.
Whining. A lecture from the 105th Privaron. Dordonii's eyes narrowed, the dark cloud unfurling within them different from the one of before, this angry but alive, building with it rather than dying in it. He found his face close to hers, very close, and it was a lucky position for her, as he may have reacted in swift, jerking instinct and hit her in return. His lips drew back from his mouth, teeth beared and together, gritted again. His hand lifted, but it gripped his jaw instead, fingers pawing over his raw cheek.
Dordonii glowered, and glared, and--laughed. Dordonii threw back his head and laughed, a loud, manic, rumbling laugh that shook his shoulders and wet his eyes for how hard he laughed. He laughed, pressed his other hand against her collarbone, to as if to push her away. It slid, instead, to her neck and gripped as he swung his head foreward and, in turn, gritted his words to her: "The 105th Privaron does not call the 103rd Privaron pathetic."
Laughed again, insane, maniacal, and he did push her now, giving himself the space. "Has he let himself take defeat from this City?" Dordonii swung out an arm, pointing with maddened zeal at the... ceiling light. "NEVER!"
>>>
There was a moment when she glared back at him, even and defiant, as his eyes darkened, prepared in case he should lash back out in instinctive return, but he did not, instead tolerated the heavy grip on her neck even as that reminded her of another hand there, long, bony, fingers, squeezing, squeezing, until her mouth had gasped for breath, soundless, and bruises had been left.
But this hand was large, heavy, Dordonii’s, and then he was gritting words back in return and she laughed as well, a dark, wicked noise, and moved her palms to the side of his face again, gripping and leaning that one inch closer to kiss fervently against his mouth, withdrawing after a fierce moment to smile, grin, eyes just as dark.
“The 103rd should hope she never, ever, has to~”
>>>
He licked his mouth, taking the taste of her, the intensity, her ferocity, absorbing, remembering how it went. Dordonii moved, not quite stampeded like a bull, but not quite with the dangerous, sleek grace of a panther. He wanted to break things, to remember when breaking meant meaning.
Nothing had changed with her shrieking, with her strike. It served as a jolt, but nothing had changed. He knew it, and yet, looking pathetic, being pathetic, smelling the soup in his beard--Dordonii felt sick in a new way, invigorating as it was intolerable.
"I will not go on this way, Thunderwitch." Dordonii declared, and it was without a dramatic flinging of an arm, without an added sound effect or stomping feet. He looked at her, dead-on, though his mouth's wide, tight grimace could have been a grin. "I think the humans have a phrase about logs. Dead logs? ... Dogs." He snapped his fingers in finding it.
"This old dog, he wants to learn new tricks." That mad glint, wild in his eyes. Must meaning lie in Aizen-dono's decree? Perhaps. And perhaps he would delude himself once again, to think he could find a way. Anything would be better than what he had let himself drift into. If he felt gratitude toward her, and he did, he would not speak it, admit it--it was best shown.
>>>
Her tongue darted out to lick her own in mirror, delightful warbling in the back of her throat, an encouraging, bolstering gesture. She was quite sure he wasn’t “cured”, after all, their problems, that worth, could not be so simply dismissed, what, by the slap and kiss of another Privaron, but she accepted his act because deep down, they all knew that part of what got them through such problems was the act, was putting on that pride and that violence, that dark insanity and that loud, compensating demeanor.
“Mmm, and Cirucci will help, no?~” She offered between two insistent kisses, hands trailing to his neck and hooking in his collar. “You tell her what you need, and she’ll be of assistance to make sure Dordonii learns lots of things~”
>>>
Where she warbled, he growled, a steady, harsh gravel-sound that fit the shape of his grin, that vibrated in his mouth as he kissed her in turn. Hungry, like his hands moving rough up her thighs, beneath her skirt and gripping, cool hands pressing callused over cool flesh. Dordonii wanted to hesitate--a part of him, small and pride, needed to accomplish it on his own, to thrive and change and rise as a single, on his lone merits.
Yet alone the ticking drove him to depression. Alone, he floundered in ignorance, letting disturbing, newly strong thoughts of futility have the best of him. After the moment, long and obscured by the cloud in his eyes and the pressure of a closed, wondering kiss, Dordonii snarled, his mouth a cruel, jagged curve. "Yes-- a blade of power and sharpness," he snorted, "... cupcakes.. and he sacrifices reiatsu for two days." That he would need to return the blade, well, he could leave that out.
"He thinks," pressing kisses, now, to the corner of her mouth, left, "he has taken so long--" and right, "to ... make a point, he might.. offer more--"
Dordonii, actually, had a feeling that might only irritate the deity, the excess. Yet, it was less for her, and more for himself. To prove, to collect, to struggle and obtain and have little victories, even if he would then need to sacrifice them, to swallow them and return them. To have and restore his blade--it would be a mark, a mark of refusing defeat at this City's hands, of refusing his wallowing any longer.
>>>
Cirucci shifted against him, against his hands, his hands, rough, calloused, strong on her thighs, under the short skirt, in small squirms and encouraging sighs between kisses that seemed almost desperate. Desperate to prove something, to be something, to beat something. And that was something she appreciated, that desperate desire that tainted their contact.
“Good, good…” She nodded; let her hands wonder, down his chest, over his arms, up to his face again, black nails scraping lightly. It had been too long since she’d seen him, too long since she’d touched him, someone like herself, a Privaron.
“Cirucci knows some, let’s see… a goat demon that knew Il Forte has a blade… Fakir in the Opera House has one… so do a few others there, knights…” She giggled, wriggled excitedly in his lap. “And Zaheela, her blades, ah, more than one, all that can do things.”
>>>
Soft, soft, moving just so against him, encouraging and he was encouraged--to be wanted, to receive admiration and for a breath to inhale and exhale with need for him. It was intoxicating. Desperation filled the lines of his face, curved with his mouth, trailed with it down, down as he bowed his head to kiss her neck, to nip, to kiss and inhale Privaron. It was incestuous, but never wrong. He would remember her body with his hands, find the new memory, a beginning.
"She knows so much," He praised, delight harsh and manic and preceding a grunt, one hand moving further up, skirt gathering and resisting against his arm. "So much for Dordonii--so much to choose from, they are all powerful? They are all--" He bit, not hard enough to break skin, but nearly. "Sharp?"
His other hand dropped from her thigh, arm lifting, letting him thumb over the mark on her cheek, slide back into thick, dark curls, soft, cared for texture. "He needs first--he needs a shinigami's blade, he offered it first, a good one, a sharp, powerful blade--" Could he? Could he? Dordonii beat back doubt but caution, foul caution might be needed, to ensure success.
>>>
Her head tipped back under his ministrations, baring to his mouth, soft sighs, small little moans in the back of her throat, pale and arched.
“They’re all sharp.” She promised, steadied her arms over his shoulders to support herself as she arched into the touch, into being desired, wanted, in a way quite unlike most did, in the way that they were equals, that they knew the same pains and the same disgraces.
“Zaheela’s are strongest of those mentioned,” The Privaron shivered at the hand moving farther up the skirt of the white uniform, settled further on his lap to push the skirt up in the ways she moved her long legs.
“And… shinigami… one they’ve never had before?” Cirucci pressed brief, fluttering kisses in his hair, those silly little horns of black, the top of the bone mask. “Not… Rangiku… not the 3rd seat...” She named the ones she knew had made deals, a small, insistent whine in her voice.
>>>
"Useless," He insisted, needless but insisted despite, lips moving against her neck. "Useless if they aren't." Exposed skin--he followed the line of her neck, the curve of bone and skin and tissue, not human, human shaped but not human. Arrancar, Privaron. Dry kisses, not gentle, not hard enough to bruise, interspersed with clips of teeth catching on smooth, pale, cool skin.
Zaheela, Zaheela. He would take any worthy blade, after the shinigami. He would impress the deity--find her cupcakes, as many as she liked. Dordonii would not grovel but he would deliver--had little choice, after his delay. She did not seem the patient sort. With Giralda restored--with Giralda in rotation, ah, and the cloth, the barrier of her dress, it was a frustration to his reaching hands, his questing fingers, trailing where skin stretched tight over bone, where it pulled in concave against stomach.
"Never," Dordonii affirmed, feeling a shiver at her attention to his hair, his mask. He lacked her hatred for Rangiku, having no personal quarrel--no quarrel for Dordonii was personal, but no quarrel was impersonal, either--as it was too obvious that Aizen-dono, the true Aizen-dono, had never had relations with her, had never demanded they respect her. "No, no," he repeated, but could not volunteer further--unsure of which shinigami lived within the City, unsure of who had had their blade taken, and who had not.
"She seemed displeased by the medical vice," He grunted, matter-of-fact, not petulant though, perturbed.
>>>
“Ah…” Cirucci shivered again, cold, she was cold, a sullen sort of chill in her bones, chased away by the touch of his mouth on the thin skin on her neck, a subservience that she would bare it to him, an offer, explicit without voice.
“She’s just annoying, you know?” The Privaron shuddered and squirmed again at the brush of finger pads on the flat plane of her stomach, didn’t like the constraints her uniform offered her and pulled one hand from his hair, his broad, strong shoulder, to her collar, to begin skillfully undoing the snaps and beginning to bare more skin, down to collarbone until she left it, left it for him to move, to remove, whatever he’d like, she didn’t really care as long as that warmth didn’t leave her, the soft comfort of it that she could never admit to reveling in.
“Always healing the ones I attack… keeping them from dying… from scarring…” She shrugged somewhat, not so much angry with that one besides hating her for what she was, for how useful she was to her enemies. But that wasn’t nearly as important as the next thought, whispered darkly into an ear licked slow.
“Her blade’s not been seen.”
>>>
Cold on cold--could the dead, together, produce enough heat? Both dead, both Arrancar, both Privaron, insanity wound in their minds, vicious and sharp and reflexive. This would not be tender--if, as gentle as an Arrancar ever got, chocolate Dordonii with his direct mouth and blunt touch. This would not be worship--attention, showered, appreciation, not devotion, not love. Not in the human way.
"But she has one--" Dordonii asked, though it sounded a statement. His hand slid from her hair to rest against her neck as his mouth kissed down, murmured, the growl again in his throat, making his words scrape with his teeth over the lift of her collarbone. His chin nudged against the cloth, the twist of his beard, and he thought to claw it aside, but not yet--not yet--
"She must, a shinigami without her blade is..." He snorted, disdain obvious in his tone. Not worth his time, to begin with, and most importantly, "The blade would not be sharp, not have enough power to satisfy the shards of Giralda."
Dordonii shook his head; lips stalling, fingers motionless, a halting moment as he thought of his blade, of the fury Giralda must feel, of the disappointment in the whelp who mastered her. He would satisfy her, let her ring through the air, cut through flesh and stain with blood, yes, the thought of adrenaline and blood and the racing, fury of battle, of everything or nothing--Dordonii leaned, pressed into the Privaron, face lifting to meet their mouths in a hard, open kiss.
>>>
Words scraped out against her collarbone, brushing against the open collar of her uniform, and Cirucci had shivered at the way his breath, warm breath, somehow, plied across her skin, mouth open to breath in flutters though she didn’t have to as she listened.
Her own words, response, were caught between them, muffled when he claimed her lips and she had almost been caught off guard, slinking close where he pressed into her, a breath of a moan against his mouth even as she was reminded how glad she was to still have a tongue.
She broke from him after a few moments, spoke so close that her lips still brushed against his at certain syllables, eyes half closed, lidded, her hands tangling in his hair, holding him to her, firm, demanding.
“But she has one.” The Privaron used his words from earlier, an affirmation accompanied by her bare legs stretching out on either side of him as she maneuvered closer into his lap, against his hips, kisses light and teasing, mere brushes, between words. “And it should do for the deities, to receive one not seen before.”
>>>
In the last few days, Dordonii had learned to stop taking unnecessary breath. It had been an unacknowledged part of the perceived rotting process, as if rot could truly develop to a ticking beat. Now he breathed, panted heavy, hearty breaths that were unneeded, did not assist useless lungs, but it didn't matter. It felt real enough. In the end, Aizen-dono and Hueco Mundo could not dictate how he chose to die, a death to repay a niño. The City would not dictate how he lived, how he lived in death.
She held him close and a low, desperate sound groused in his throat as her lips brushed his but did not stay, words on which he held a necessary focus. His body sought to toss away debate and yet, thrive in it, for this, the knowledge of fights to come, preparation and bloodlust mingling with fleshlust, not one in the same, no, or only for her, with her. It could not be wrong. Wrong and right for the Arrancar were not wrong and right for humans.
"Has--" he agreed, tongue dabbing out to moisten his already wet lips and brush hers. "Is it--" Dordonii grunted, shifted, hand curling again toward her hips to urge her closer still, her legs to tighten. "Powerful?" He knew of the Shinigami, that the medical shinigami were weaker than the rest in terms of battle prowess, and it left him near hollow, near disappointed to think of pursuing such a foe. Yet, a vice-captain was a vice-captain, and by status alone, it indicated strength.
>>>
A wavering breath, more at the possibility of this fighting, the idea of bloodlust, the idea of seeing dead shinigami and participating, watching, combined with the touch and feel, made her heady, made her dizzy in focus but she disregarded it to keep her mind separate for the time, for now.
“Well,” At the shift of his hands on her hips she obliged, scooted closer, as he’d urged, until she ground against him, able, since he had refused to sit back, to slip her legs around his waist and lock her ankles behind him with a small, bit back, cry when bruises pressed against his sides as muscles tightened around him.
“It has… to be powerful.” She finished her sentence against his mouth, pausing to kiss in fluttering movements of her lips. “Maybe not in battle, but in energy, to heal like that… she’s second best of them, right?” Cirucci hated to give them credit, but it was due, she supposed, considering that that vice had been the one to heal the science experiment, heal her when Grimmjow had punched a hole in her gut and left her to bleed out, healed the 10th’s whore after Noitora had finished with her…
“It must count for something.” The Privaron finished with, accompanied by a soft noise, a crooning encouragement, nails scraping against his scalp and down his neck.
>>>
Dordonii did fall prey to the mistake of underestimation. With a mindset so focused on physical strength and prowess in battle, Dordonii had utterly failed to conceive of the value in a blade that possessed a different sort of talent. His mouth did not respond to hers as he evaluated the meaning of her words, as realization tempered itself with caution--if he had not valued it, could Giralda, would the deity consider it fitting? Would the Thunderwitch's spin be too obvious, an idea unlikely from his mind? For Dordonii could underestimate others and overestimate himself, but he was no fool.
Yet he shook his head--not at her words, at the truth they held, but at his own deliberation. He would take whatever he could get, win it in fair battle. He would fight the Vice Captain for her blade, and the woman Zaheela, and whoever else possible. If they proved weak he would leave them and their blades--and if they proved strong, honor them with death at his hand. Resolve shaped itself into the darkness of his eyes, into the sharp, sauntering curve of his grin as his head tilted, back, and his hips lifted with what was nearly impatience--but his hand dropped from her hips to inner thigh, stroking closer.
Dordonii nodded to kiss each of her cheeks, each of her marks, crooned, "What would she like, the Thunderwitch...? What should Dordonii give her, for her help...?"
>>>
As he’d thought, as he’d considered, she’d done no such thing. She considered that vice capable of healing, yes, but nothing else. After all, hadn’t it been her blade that had pierced her heart? When she and Il Forte had gone out for fun and surprised her and the third’s vice, attacked and left the woman dead with the male left wounded.
At his question she breathed shallow, tilted her cheeks to each kiss and twisted her lips into a smile, benevolent on the surface, but easily read by any of their kind.
“Cirucci offered a reward.” She whispered, a small gasp of noise as his hand fell to her inner thigh, to sensitive skin, the small jerk of her body towards him, to press her petite, curved form, against his chest and hips, impatient openly as he was near almost.
“She owes you, so this is how she will pay you back.” Her words were light but her shame was not, knowing that this one had picked her up, had carried her when she couldn’t walk, couldn’t support herself on legs bruised and bloodied and stained with another’s use. But he was the only one she could have even stomached the idea of seeing her like that, because… well… he was Privaron.
>>>
"Reward," he echoed, his voice low but not hushed, gruff, now agitated with restrained want. "Owe..."
Dordonii had always been, even among the Privaron, one of the stranger Arrancar. Instinctive, wild, insane and bent on destruction though Dordonii was, he was peculiar beyond his enthusiasm. Sweet, he could call himself, could identify it in his person, for better or (as more often the case), for worse. With the Privaron in his arms that night, his touch gentle, his footsteps steady, lacking flounce or bounce or bluster--even his rage at the offense dealt her quieted for the sake of smoother passage. It had been hard for him to look at her. It had been hard, and mostly, he averted his eyes, disgusted not with her but with the breaking, the Privaron, the act-- and it had been something to forget. He tended to her and meant to forget it, an act of respect, not a debt to call in.
He might have mentioned it, could have, could have dismissed it and offered more, something else, not wanting to think of that night as a reality on which to make returns. But today had been reality--his attitude, his pathetic, whining, piteous devastation.
"He sees, señorita," Dordonii murmured, against the curve of her ear, now, pushing closer and angling his face beside hers, inhaling the scent of her hair, his arm caught between them as his hand slid along her thigh. "Dordonii understands her meaning--how far would she help him?"
And he would have preferred, above all, to act it independently, yet she knew those she had recommended, he did not. He required her aid yet further.
>>>
Small hands fell from his neck to the collar of his jacket, slipping underneath the fabric to rest on the muscles of his chest, to brace as she arched into the touch, as she shook a moment in breath and fought not to squirm too much under his fingers.
“Well…” Cirucci knew he was proud, they all were, knew doing this with her, rather, committing to an action like that with her, was something he saw as not quite right, as not so strong, and knew, to soothe ego, to bolster pride, she would involve herself as little as possible to ensure his success.
“Let Cirucci scout them out for you.” A soft nuzzle against the side of his face, murmuring her words gently, slowly, to introduce them as positive help, not handicaps. “She’ll find them, and watch where they go. Then she can tell you, and you can take it from there, ah, Dor~do~nii~?” His name was enunciated by three sharp nips against his jaw, hands slipping down his chest, teasing, stroking.
>>>
She knew her words well, as she knew her body well, its every twitch, its every shiver. Dordonii knew the Thunderwitch, not as well as he knew himself--not, at least, since this City had held her for months -- and he knew that to wonder what had been premeditated and what was genuine reaction, sincere, these were futile questions. These were, for their kind, meaningless. What did it matter if the result was the same?
Dordonii let his eyes close, a brief response, her teeth and touch producing in him a hoarse sound, like to a groan. "She will," he agreed, fierce and eager, like the hand at her neck, its hold possessive, like his finger teasing along her lips. "She will but--" His eyebrows furrowed, determination a no less maniacal glimmer in the dark depths of his eyes, the chisel of his jaw. "He will tell them--they will be ready for Dordonii, and we will fight for the ownership of the blade."
It was sound. If they lost, they hardly deserved the blade. If he did, he had no right to claim their blades for Giralda's rotation. The Thunderwitch looked soft, she felt soft, his hand dipping to cup over rising breast and follow an hourglass, the shape of her body through white. She looked becoming, a flower of a woman whose thorns dripped poison, beneath the swell of her lips, teeth that sunk. If she felt like woman and moved like woman, it was the skin of a woman stretched over devil, over predator, sleek, lethal grace--and Dordonii sought it, relished it, the paradox of Arrancar--of Privaron. His mouth found hers to taste the familiarity of the poison beneath her tongue.
>>>
She’d nodded, allowing him his stupidity, in her opinion. She would never allow her victims time like that, time to prepare, time to ready themselves for battle, but, for all that they were both Privaron, both knew the same shames, the same broken prides, they were still different. He had more honor to him where she was far less upright, more likely to stab you in the back and relish it, while he would consider such action less than something to take pride in.
Cirucci merely gave her agreement, sealed their bargain in the soft cry against his mouth, trembling when his hands brushed her breasts, pressed against bruises left from hard bites and teeth marks but she pressed into the touch despite, welcoming those flashes of pain along with the pleasurable sensation, muffling any pained noises against him, in the press of tongue and the play of lips.
There was no need to hold herself back anymore, to keep herself separate from sensation and reaction, and so she gave in to it, allowed herself the instinctual, the mingled breaths, the panting, moaning, the warmth and the friction and the fact that they were broken. They were broken, yes, but they still functioned, still moved and acted, and so she allowed herself to bask in the smell of blood, imagined, mingled with the smell of lust, real, and the faint, ever so faint, smell of soup.
Rating; PG-13/R
Characters; Cirucci {
thunderwitch} & Dordonii {whatanentrance}Summary; Amongst her busy schedule, Cirucci realizes Dordonii has been far too quiet of light, therefore, she has to check, and, to help him plan his sword's resurrection. (Alternatively... Dordonii: I AM NEVER DEFEATED // Cirucci: Dude, you're covered in soup and you were like, whining two seconds ago about futility and goth boy stuff. // Dordonii: ... I SAID I AM NEVER DEFEATED.)
Log;
The City had a way of making one listless, even when one had such stunning and stellar personality as did Dordonii Alessandro del Socacchio. It had magnified the feeling of uselessness perceived in Hueco Mundo, it had intensified an awareness of futility. In debating the mechanics of restoring his blade--what should have repaired itself given time, given his attention, and Dordonii wondered if it was "death" that kept his blade apart--and the bargain he had struck with the deity, Dordonii had planned. Foolish as he behaved, it was his weakness that had necessitated forethought, but forethought had made the task terrible.
What blade would be worthy enough to let his Giralda rotate again? A blade that the deities had not yet seen? And could he bring himself to return the damned blades to the the shinigami when the bargain had finished? It left bitter, hard tastes in his mouth that not even Cirucci's niño's cooking could remove. He had thought, reflected on the few shinigami he knew of, of the suspected difference in power levels. Time passed, rolled, stampeded, had cursed days and plain days. Dordonii learned to cook, found clubs where he could tango, and, effectively, moped. Surrounded by humans, humans for whom he could stir up little respect and less interest, isolation and queer indifference found holds.
It wasn't that he had given up. Or maybe he had. Dordonii, for all his energy and zeal and enthusiasm, had limitations, had a top to his patience and a top to his ability to exaggerate and panick and rush into things, slam them with his horns, and find a place where he could stand. At some point, it had occurred to him that maybe it didn't matter--and maybe there wasn't a point, not Espada, not even, maybe, Privaron, in this place--and, for all that he continue to look and hear and move, Dordonii had settled into a legitimate funk.
His kicks just didn't feel the same, but his soup was beginning to resemble actual soup. He sat in his kitchen, a Privaron with a kitchen, poking at a slush of water, vegetables, and what looked suspiciously like (and was) extra extra hot salsa. For Dordonii, it was a terribly frequent event.
>>>
Cirucci could sympathize with him, if she knew how he was feeling. All she knew was that she hadn’t heard from Dordonii in a long while, and that was worrisome, or, as worrisome as something like that could get. To this one, that was “very”. One thing she couldn’t stand was the ticking, was being lonely. She hated it, hated feeling so alone, not being around people, and she didn’t know how anyone else could stand it.
Light footsteps brought her to the third building, to the third floor and the third room. She paused, felt his reiatsu and took a soft comfort in it before she simply grabbed the doorknob, jimmied it, and let herself in, put a coy smile on her face as she closed the door behind her, on tiptoes and leaned back against it, looking about with bright, wide, eyes.
“Dordonii?~” The Privaron called, bouncing up and down on her heels.
>>>
Moping, and it never even occurred to him how very wrong it was for Dordonii Alessandro Del Socacchio to be moping! The ticking had become so commonplace, so much a part of 'Dordonii sits at home, fails at cooking, and makes a fuss no one hears about reading human books' that it was only with its sudden, jarring absence that he realized it had been there at all--and, that he had a headache that had a steady rhythm of tock and tick.
His spoon was half-way to his mouth. A green sliver of pepper from the salsa clung to his bottom lip. Dordonii blinked, and broke into a wide, instinctive grin at the sound of his fellow Privaron's voice. Jumping out of his seat, he very nearly sloshed the soup all down his front--and did lose his spoonful to his chin, to the curl of his beard. It had less of a curl today. All in all, it was something of a pathetic sight, and he actually halted in his enthusiastic greeting, flashing eyes a little dimmer than what would have been usual, to find a napkin and mop at his beard.
"AAH," He shouted, patting his chin, "SEÑORITA!"
>>>
The Privaron waltzed over to the other, offered a quirk of her lips at his reaction and observed him. There was something lackluster about Dordonii that was surprisingly unexpected, something near disheartening.
If she had a heart.
“Dordonii, you’ve cooped yourself away from me!” Cirucci whined, complained as she held out her arms in a gesture for the taller male to offer her a more fitting greeting, observing him with a detached part of her, watching the way he moved and the way he spoke.
She knew Dordonii, probably more than any other Arrancar, any other lover, simply because as long as she had existed so had Dordonii, and as long as she had been removed to Tres Cifras, so, too, had Dordonii.
>>>
He dropped the napkin into a sad, stained heap beside the bowl, forgotten on the table. His grin stretched as wide as it always had, his teeth glinted the same, large and still white, but it still felt odd on his face. And odder still, it took a minute of him looking at her, arms outstretched, for the obvious action to click into mind. Clicking like a clock, repeated, oh yes, oh yes, that, si, si, that. Movement, energy, flare, his flare, his leg jerked in a miniature kick, as if starting up a stalling engine.
"Has he?" Dordonii asked, pulling a much grieved grimace to his face as he moved to her, his hands closing around her small waist and lifting her with ease into the air. "Has he? So neglected his favorite! Ah-ah-ah--" a tsking, without the accompanying finger, but he shook his head, tilted face just so and looked with disapproval, "But she tells him has been cooped up, willingly away from her! Never willingly, as if Dordonii-sama could be cooped!"
Though, he had been. And the honorific could have made him blanch, had he not been so taken in the upswing of his own dramatics.
>>>
Cirucci kicked her feet a bit, wrapped lithe arms around his neck and clung lightly, listened to his words but didn’t believe a one of them.
“Dordonii is upset about something.” She chastised, voice a croon, a near maternal, but certainly not quite, noise, hanging loose and small feet still kicking idly. She could read him easier than most, and she could tell, could tell in that hesitation before he’d picked her up, in that shake of the head and that half-hearted kick.
“He should tell Cirucci all about it.” The Privaron prompted with a chaste kiss to his cheek, stifling a grunt as she agitated the bruises under her dress.
>>>
Dordonii rose his eyebrows, a smooth arch on his forehead, up and almost precise, almost regular. "Dordonii-sama? Upset? And what could upset him?" He asked, his voice full of surprise and denial that should have been obvious and easy and of course he wasn't upset, as if such fickle things as displacement and humans and the City and having no meaning or purpose or worth ever evereverever--
and damn, if his eyes weren't dark and his wasn't already scowling, as Dordonii had never been very good at keeping his strongest emotions in check. A scowl became a wry, dark and awful twisting smirk, and his grip on her loosened, not quite lost.
"He would not bother the Privaron with something so --ah, ah, ah--" a sneer, hatred on his face and in his eyes "chocolate."
>>>
“Don’t bother the Privaron, then.” Cirucci snapped, irritated that he would think she wouldn’t get it, that he would deny it flat her face when she knew better, she knew.
“Bother with Cirucci.” He owed her a show of weakness anyhow, she’d been the only Arrancar she could count on to come collect her from Noitora’s, to pick her up, limp, bleeding, used, and beaten, and carry her somewhere else, to bathe her, clean her, see her through the end of that curse day, and he owed her, not a reward or comfort, no, he owed her a moment of such weakness to make hers not too bad, to make them even as she tightened her grip, afraid he would drop her, another kiss, near encouraging, against his cheek.
He smelled like soup.
>>>
It was weakness. That Dordonii had seen his fellow Privaron in weakness--more than once, to be technical, for the blow of the loss of their station had left all the once Espada in brief devasation, unallowed, not permitted, confined to the rigid lines of their bodies as Tres Cifras became their home. But having seen hers did not allow him his, his pride did not allow it, an empty pride that lacked its foundation as, after all, everything remained stewed in futility. That wasn't anything new, not really, but here, here, it stood out.
"She shouldn't separate Cirucci from Privaron," Dordonii chided, but his voice was sharp with a bitter thread. "Bothering with Cirucci is bothering with Privaron." Titles given to them, like Espada. All of it given and could be taken, so it was. He had settled, he had served, he had bowed beneath demotion, beneath dismissing disdain, beneath becoming less. Everything changed and nothing changed. Dordonii stagnated.
"He is rotting, Cirucci," Dordonii murmured, his hold tightening, his eyes looking past her. Her lips had been cool and soft on his cheek. There had been stubble to meet them. "He thinks he can smell himself rot. He is rotting like a human. He thinks it keeps pace with the clock. The clock ticks. He wonders what rotting chocolate smells like. The City, it even made him taste like it."
Dordonii laughed. It wasn't a nice sound.
>>>
Cirucci listened to every word, growing still, body hanging limp until he’d begun to laugh. With a small murmur in her throat, nearly a growl, she released him, dropped down the foot or so difference in their heights and felt the soft thump when her boots hit the floor.
Small hands tangled around on of his one, tugging insistently as she led the way to the couch in the living room, away from his stupid soup and that stupid laugh. She flopped down onto the couch and tugged at him to join her as she scrambled, with a few winces, to get comfortable, to tuck her legs beneath her and sit up, back arched in one fluid curve.
“Dordonii isn’t rotting.” The Privaron finally spoke, a firm, insistent sentence.
>>>
She dropped and he let her, his arms going limp the instant her arms had released. She took his
hand and he let her, expressionless and stupid. She pulled him to the living room and he let her, and she tugged him and he followed, sitting heavily beside her, sinking into the cushion but not sitting back. His teeth were gritted together, enamel against enamel. It wasn't comfortable but it didn't matter. Dordonii felt insane, insane in a different way than was typical and therefore not, for him, insane at all.
He was losing something, and the worst thought, the worst truth, was that it had maybe already been gone. Long gone. Never there to begin with. She spoke and he shook his head. Cirucci could sound firm. He could understand that she understood, that she more than anyone would know--Dordonii did not seek sympathy or empathy or even comfort, because when he knew something he knew it with certainty accepted it, and he accepted this, only, this gave him little motivation to hope, and without hoping for the impossible, Dordonii faced reality and reality and Dordonii did not see el ojo al ojo.
"How has she lasted so long?" He asked, voice quiet, so quiet. "How has she bore this City? If he repairs his blade, then it is repaired. And so? So what then? If he fights it cannot resolve. If he kills it returns. If he does not, it might as well be broken. What does Dordonii do with a blade whole and useless? So he thinks, there is no point, he wasted the good deity's time. But what is Dordonii without it?"
>>>
Cirucci quieted, listened again. Normally she would interrupt, make little disgusting noises, something, but she was somber. The smaller woman crept closer, tugged on his uniform, straightened his collar, his sash, the way his jacket lay. She settled in his lap, bruised thighs on either side of his hips, and put one palm on either side of his face.
“I don’t know.” She finally answered. Cool fingers, silky fabric of a white glove, traced his face, skimming the lines of distinct cheekbones, the stubble on his face, his eyebrows, over the eccentric mustache, his eyelids, full lips in a low pout.
“I don’t know how I’m still… me, when no matter how many time I kill a shinigami they still come back, when I’m dead and I don’t matter, more worthless than we ever were back in Tres Cifras, when we can’t even count on Aizen-sama, when our blades can be so broken and we can be hurt by things with weird powers and we can’t go home, and-“ The Thunderwitch murmured it all, slowly, in time with her motions and the trace of her hands.
“… Dordonii understands?”
>>>
"Dordonii understands," He whispered, a near hiss, as his hands moved up to capture her wrist, to stay the movement. A wanted comfort, wanted touch, and he would refuse it. Accepting comfort, allowing himself to bask in this attention, would be to allow himself too much. Dordonii desired nothing that he could not claim on his own merits, that did not have purpose, and purposeless himself, this, her cool fingers salves to the strain that wrung him dry, served nothing.
"If dead, he cannot return... trapped with humans and unable to change any of it. It won't matter if he restores his blade. It won't matter if he kills a shinigami or died at a shinigami's blade. Dordonii could be here and he could not and it would be the same. She writes in her journal and speaks with humans but Dordonii cannot look at the "network" without wanting to rip it apart."
It was obvious, terribly obvious: for every 'it" there lurked a he. Dordonii wouldn't matter.
>>>
At the halt of her wrist Cirucci stiffened, not just because it was an insult, but because the last time that had happened it had been Noitora and those wrists had been pinned above her head. As he spoke, her lip twisted, painted mouth into a sneer.
“Dordonii-” The Privaron spat, wrested her wrists from his grip and resoundingly slapped him across the face, the sound loud and clear, a near echo in the sudden silence that action brought.
“Stop it!” Cirucci was fairly shrieking, her voice too high-pitched, too warbling, too avian, to do anything but grate on the ears. “Stop acting so pathetic!” A hypocrite, if she ever was one, but… this is what he needed, it was what she had needed, this violence, this sudden anger and insult, because it was insulting for him to be this way, just because… just because they had no purpose anymore.
“Stop whining!” Her hands fell to fist in his jacket and haul him closer until she was gritting her words out close to his face. “The 103rd Privaron Espada Does. Not. Whine.”
>>>
A neat, crisp sound. Following the silence of his droning, his pathetic, pathetic, pathetic droning. A hard, whipping motion of his head. Dordonii's eyes widened as his cheek went red. Dordonii had never been slapped before. To say the least, he was stunned, too stunned even for his ears to be over-offended by how shrill was her voice.
Whining. A lecture from the 105th Privaron. Dordonii's eyes narrowed, the dark cloud unfurling within them different from the one of before, this angry but alive, building with it rather than dying in it. He found his face close to hers, very close, and it was a lucky position for her, as he may have reacted in swift, jerking instinct and hit her in return. His lips drew back from his mouth, teeth beared and together, gritted again. His hand lifted, but it gripped his jaw instead, fingers pawing over his raw cheek.
Dordonii glowered, and glared, and--laughed. Dordonii threw back his head and laughed, a loud, manic, rumbling laugh that shook his shoulders and wet his eyes for how hard he laughed. He laughed, pressed his other hand against her collarbone, to as if to push her away. It slid, instead, to her neck and gripped as he swung his head foreward and, in turn, gritted his words to her: "The 105th Privaron does not call the 103rd Privaron pathetic."
Laughed again, insane, maniacal, and he did push her now, giving himself the space. "Has he let himself take defeat from this City?" Dordonii swung out an arm, pointing with maddened zeal at the... ceiling light. "NEVER!"
>>>
There was a moment when she glared back at him, even and defiant, as his eyes darkened, prepared in case he should lash back out in instinctive return, but he did not, instead tolerated the heavy grip on her neck even as that reminded her of another hand there, long, bony, fingers, squeezing, squeezing, until her mouth had gasped for breath, soundless, and bruises had been left.
But this hand was large, heavy, Dordonii’s, and then he was gritting words back in return and she laughed as well, a dark, wicked noise, and moved her palms to the side of his face again, gripping and leaning that one inch closer to kiss fervently against his mouth, withdrawing after a fierce moment to smile, grin, eyes just as dark.
“The 103rd should hope she never, ever, has to~”
>>>
He licked his mouth, taking the taste of her, the intensity, her ferocity, absorbing, remembering how it went. Dordonii moved, not quite stampeded like a bull, but not quite with the dangerous, sleek grace of a panther. He wanted to break things, to remember when breaking meant meaning.
Nothing had changed with her shrieking, with her strike. It served as a jolt, but nothing had changed. He knew it, and yet, looking pathetic, being pathetic, smelling the soup in his beard--Dordonii felt sick in a new way, invigorating as it was intolerable.
"I will not go on this way, Thunderwitch." Dordonii declared, and it was without a dramatic flinging of an arm, without an added sound effect or stomping feet. He looked at her, dead-on, though his mouth's wide, tight grimace could have been a grin. "I think the humans have a phrase about logs. Dead logs? ... Dogs." He snapped his fingers in finding it.
"This old dog, he wants to learn new tricks." That mad glint, wild in his eyes. Must meaning lie in Aizen-dono's decree? Perhaps. And perhaps he would delude himself once again, to think he could find a way. Anything would be better than what he had let himself drift into. If he felt gratitude toward her, and he did, he would not speak it, admit it--it was best shown.
>>>
Her tongue darted out to lick her own in mirror, delightful warbling in the back of her throat, an encouraging, bolstering gesture. She was quite sure he wasn’t “cured”, after all, their problems, that worth, could not be so simply dismissed, what, by the slap and kiss of another Privaron, but she accepted his act because deep down, they all knew that part of what got them through such problems was the act, was putting on that pride and that violence, that dark insanity and that loud, compensating demeanor.
“Mmm, and Cirucci will help, no?~” She offered between two insistent kisses, hands trailing to his neck and hooking in his collar. “You tell her what you need, and she’ll be of assistance to make sure Dordonii learns lots of things~”
>>>
Where she warbled, he growled, a steady, harsh gravel-sound that fit the shape of his grin, that vibrated in his mouth as he kissed her in turn. Hungry, like his hands moving rough up her thighs, beneath her skirt and gripping, cool hands pressing callused over cool flesh. Dordonii wanted to hesitate--a part of him, small and pride, needed to accomplish it on his own, to thrive and change and rise as a single, on his lone merits.
Yet alone the ticking drove him to depression. Alone, he floundered in ignorance, letting disturbing, newly strong thoughts of futility have the best of him. After the moment, long and obscured by the cloud in his eyes and the pressure of a closed, wondering kiss, Dordonii snarled, his mouth a cruel, jagged curve. "Yes-- a blade of power and sharpness," he snorted, "... cupcakes.. and he sacrifices reiatsu for two days." That he would need to return the blade, well, he could leave that out.
"He thinks," pressing kisses, now, to the corner of her mouth, left, "he has taken so long--" and right, "to ... make a point, he might.. offer more--"
Dordonii, actually, had a feeling that might only irritate the deity, the excess. Yet, it was less for her, and more for himself. To prove, to collect, to struggle and obtain and have little victories, even if he would then need to sacrifice them, to swallow them and return them. To have and restore his blade--it would be a mark, a mark of refusing defeat at this City's hands, of refusing his wallowing any longer.
>>>
Cirucci shifted against him, against his hands, his hands, rough, calloused, strong on her thighs, under the short skirt, in small squirms and encouraging sighs between kisses that seemed almost desperate. Desperate to prove something, to be something, to beat something. And that was something she appreciated, that desperate desire that tainted their contact.
“Good, good…” She nodded; let her hands wonder, down his chest, over his arms, up to his face again, black nails scraping lightly. It had been too long since she’d seen him, too long since she’d touched him, someone like herself, a Privaron.
“Cirucci knows some, let’s see… a goat demon that knew Il Forte has a blade… Fakir in the Opera House has one… so do a few others there, knights…” She giggled, wriggled excitedly in his lap. “And Zaheela, her blades, ah, more than one, all that can do things.”
>>>
Soft, soft, moving just so against him, encouraging and he was encouraged--to be wanted, to receive admiration and for a breath to inhale and exhale with need for him. It was intoxicating. Desperation filled the lines of his face, curved with his mouth, trailed with it down, down as he bowed his head to kiss her neck, to nip, to kiss and inhale Privaron. It was incestuous, but never wrong. He would remember her body with his hands, find the new memory, a beginning.
"She knows so much," He praised, delight harsh and manic and preceding a grunt, one hand moving further up, skirt gathering and resisting against his arm. "So much for Dordonii--so much to choose from, they are all powerful? They are all--" He bit, not hard enough to break skin, but nearly. "Sharp?"
His other hand dropped from her thigh, arm lifting, letting him thumb over the mark on her cheek, slide back into thick, dark curls, soft, cared for texture. "He needs first--he needs a shinigami's blade, he offered it first, a good one, a sharp, powerful blade--" Could he? Could he? Dordonii beat back doubt but caution, foul caution might be needed, to ensure success.
>>>
Her head tipped back under his ministrations, baring to his mouth, soft sighs, small little moans in the back of her throat, pale and arched.
“They’re all sharp.” She promised, steadied her arms over his shoulders to support herself as she arched into the touch, into being desired, wanted, in a way quite unlike most did, in the way that they were equals, that they knew the same pains and the same disgraces.
“Zaheela’s are strongest of those mentioned,” The Privaron shivered at the hand moving farther up the skirt of the white uniform, settled further on his lap to push the skirt up in the ways she moved her long legs.
“And… shinigami… one they’ve never had before?” Cirucci pressed brief, fluttering kisses in his hair, those silly little horns of black, the top of the bone mask. “Not… Rangiku… not the 3rd seat...” She named the ones she knew had made deals, a small, insistent whine in her voice.
>>>
"Useless," He insisted, needless but insisted despite, lips moving against her neck. "Useless if they aren't." Exposed skin--he followed the line of her neck, the curve of bone and skin and tissue, not human, human shaped but not human. Arrancar, Privaron. Dry kisses, not gentle, not hard enough to bruise, interspersed with clips of teeth catching on smooth, pale, cool skin.
Zaheela, Zaheela. He would take any worthy blade, after the shinigami. He would impress the deity--find her cupcakes, as many as she liked. Dordonii would not grovel but he would deliver--had little choice, after his delay. She did not seem the patient sort. With Giralda restored--with Giralda in rotation, ah, and the cloth, the barrier of her dress, it was a frustration to his reaching hands, his questing fingers, trailing where skin stretched tight over bone, where it pulled in concave against stomach.
"Never," Dordonii affirmed, feeling a shiver at her attention to his hair, his mask. He lacked her hatred for Rangiku, having no personal quarrel--no quarrel for Dordonii was personal, but no quarrel was impersonal, either--as it was too obvious that Aizen-dono, the true Aizen-dono, had never had relations with her, had never demanded they respect her. "No, no," he repeated, but could not volunteer further--unsure of which shinigami lived within the City, unsure of who had had their blade taken, and who had not.
"She seemed displeased by the medical vice," He grunted, matter-of-fact, not petulant though, perturbed.
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“Ah…” Cirucci shivered again, cold, she was cold, a sullen sort of chill in her bones, chased away by the touch of his mouth on the thin skin on her neck, a subservience that she would bare it to him, an offer, explicit without voice.
“She’s just annoying, you know?” The Privaron shuddered and squirmed again at the brush of finger pads on the flat plane of her stomach, didn’t like the constraints her uniform offered her and pulled one hand from his hair, his broad, strong shoulder, to her collar, to begin skillfully undoing the snaps and beginning to bare more skin, down to collarbone until she left it, left it for him to move, to remove, whatever he’d like, she didn’t really care as long as that warmth didn’t leave her, the soft comfort of it that she could never admit to reveling in.
“Always healing the ones I attack… keeping them from dying… from scarring…” She shrugged somewhat, not so much angry with that one besides hating her for what she was, for how useful she was to her enemies. But that wasn’t nearly as important as the next thought, whispered darkly into an ear licked slow.
“Her blade’s not been seen.”
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Cold on cold--could the dead, together, produce enough heat? Both dead, both Arrancar, both Privaron, insanity wound in their minds, vicious and sharp and reflexive. This would not be tender--if, as gentle as an Arrancar ever got, chocolate Dordonii with his direct mouth and blunt touch. This would not be worship--attention, showered, appreciation, not devotion, not love. Not in the human way.
"But she has one--" Dordonii asked, though it sounded a statement. His hand slid from her hair to rest against her neck as his mouth kissed down, murmured, the growl again in his throat, making his words scrape with his teeth over the lift of her collarbone. His chin nudged against the cloth, the twist of his beard, and he thought to claw it aside, but not yet--not yet--
"She must, a shinigami without her blade is..." He snorted, disdain obvious in his tone. Not worth his time, to begin with, and most importantly, "The blade would not be sharp, not have enough power to satisfy the shards of Giralda."
Dordonii shook his head; lips stalling, fingers motionless, a halting moment as he thought of his blade, of the fury Giralda must feel, of the disappointment in the whelp who mastered her. He would satisfy her, let her ring through the air, cut through flesh and stain with blood, yes, the thought of adrenaline and blood and the racing, fury of battle, of everything or nothing--Dordonii leaned, pressed into the Privaron, face lifting to meet their mouths in a hard, open kiss.
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Words scraped out against her collarbone, brushing against the open collar of her uniform, and Cirucci had shivered at the way his breath, warm breath, somehow, plied across her skin, mouth open to breath in flutters though she didn’t have to as she listened.
Her own words, response, were caught between them, muffled when he claimed her lips and she had almost been caught off guard, slinking close where he pressed into her, a breath of a moan against his mouth even as she was reminded how glad she was to still have a tongue.
She broke from him after a few moments, spoke so close that her lips still brushed against his at certain syllables, eyes half closed, lidded, her hands tangling in his hair, holding him to her, firm, demanding.
“But she has one.” The Privaron used his words from earlier, an affirmation accompanied by her bare legs stretching out on either side of him as she maneuvered closer into his lap, against his hips, kisses light and teasing, mere brushes, between words. “And it should do for the deities, to receive one not seen before.”
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In the last few days, Dordonii had learned to stop taking unnecessary breath. It had been an unacknowledged part of the perceived rotting process, as if rot could truly develop to a ticking beat. Now he breathed, panted heavy, hearty breaths that were unneeded, did not assist useless lungs, but it didn't matter. It felt real enough. In the end, Aizen-dono and Hueco Mundo could not dictate how he chose to die, a death to repay a niño. The City would not dictate how he lived, how he lived in death.
She held him close and a low, desperate sound groused in his throat as her lips brushed his but did not stay, words on which he held a necessary focus. His body sought to toss away debate and yet, thrive in it, for this, the knowledge of fights to come, preparation and bloodlust mingling with fleshlust, not one in the same, no, or only for her, with her. It could not be wrong. Wrong and right for the Arrancar were not wrong and right for humans.
"Has--" he agreed, tongue dabbing out to moisten his already wet lips and brush hers. "Is it--" Dordonii grunted, shifted, hand curling again toward her hips to urge her closer still, her legs to tighten. "Powerful?" He knew of the Shinigami, that the medical shinigami were weaker than the rest in terms of battle prowess, and it left him near hollow, near disappointed to think of pursuing such a foe. Yet, a vice-captain was a vice-captain, and by status alone, it indicated strength.
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A wavering breath, more at the possibility of this fighting, the idea of bloodlust, the idea of seeing dead shinigami and participating, watching, combined with the touch and feel, made her heady, made her dizzy in focus but she disregarded it to keep her mind separate for the time, for now.
“Well,” At the shift of his hands on her hips she obliged, scooted closer, as he’d urged, until she ground against him, able, since he had refused to sit back, to slip her legs around his waist and lock her ankles behind him with a small, bit back, cry when bruises pressed against his sides as muscles tightened around him.
“It has… to be powerful.” She finished her sentence against his mouth, pausing to kiss in fluttering movements of her lips. “Maybe not in battle, but in energy, to heal like that… she’s second best of them, right?” Cirucci hated to give them credit, but it was due, she supposed, considering that that vice had been the one to heal the science experiment, heal her when Grimmjow had punched a hole in her gut and left her to bleed out, healed the 10th’s whore after Noitora had finished with her…
“It must count for something.” The Privaron finished with, accompanied by a soft noise, a crooning encouragement, nails scraping against his scalp and down his neck.
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Dordonii did fall prey to the mistake of underestimation. With a mindset so focused on physical strength and prowess in battle, Dordonii had utterly failed to conceive of the value in a blade that possessed a different sort of talent. His mouth did not respond to hers as he evaluated the meaning of her words, as realization tempered itself with caution--if he had not valued it, could Giralda, would the deity consider it fitting? Would the Thunderwitch's spin be too obvious, an idea unlikely from his mind? For Dordonii could underestimate others and overestimate himself, but he was no fool.
Yet he shook his head--not at her words, at the truth they held, but at his own deliberation. He would take whatever he could get, win it in fair battle. He would fight the Vice Captain for her blade, and the woman Zaheela, and whoever else possible. If they proved weak he would leave them and their blades--and if they proved strong, honor them with death at his hand. Resolve shaped itself into the darkness of his eyes, into the sharp, sauntering curve of his grin as his head tilted, back, and his hips lifted with what was nearly impatience--but his hand dropped from her hips to inner thigh, stroking closer.
Dordonii nodded to kiss each of her cheeks, each of her marks, crooned, "What would she like, the Thunderwitch...? What should Dordonii give her, for her help...?"
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As he’d thought, as he’d considered, she’d done no such thing. She considered that vice capable of healing, yes, but nothing else. After all, hadn’t it been her blade that had pierced her heart? When she and Il Forte had gone out for fun and surprised her and the third’s vice, attacked and left the woman dead with the male left wounded.
At his question she breathed shallow, tilted her cheeks to each kiss and twisted her lips into a smile, benevolent on the surface, but easily read by any of their kind.
“Cirucci offered a reward.” She whispered, a small gasp of noise as his hand fell to her inner thigh, to sensitive skin, the small jerk of her body towards him, to press her petite, curved form, against his chest and hips, impatient openly as he was near almost.
“She owes you, so this is how she will pay you back.” Her words were light but her shame was not, knowing that this one had picked her up, had carried her when she couldn’t walk, couldn’t support herself on legs bruised and bloodied and stained with another’s use. But he was the only one she could have even stomached the idea of seeing her like that, because… well… he was Privaron.
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"Reward," he echoed, his voice low but not hushed, gruff, now agitated with restrained want. "Owe..."
Dordonii had always been, even among the Privaron, one of the stranger Arrancar. Instinctive, wild, insane and bent on destruction though Dordonii was, he was peculiar beyond his enthusiasm. Sweet, he could call himself, could identify it in his person, for better or (as more often the case), for worse. With the Privaron in his arms that night, his touch gentle, his footsteps steady, lacking flounce or bounce or bluster--even his rage at the offense dealt her quieted for the sake of smoother passage. It had been hard for him to look at her. It had been hard, and mostly, he averted his eyes, disgusted not with her but with the breaking, the Privaron, the act-- and it had been something to forget. He tended to her and meant to forget it, an act of respect, not a debt to call in.
He might have mentioned it, could have, could have dismissed it and offered more, something else, not wanting to think of that night as a reality on which to make returns. But today had been reality--his attitude, his pathetic, whining, piteous devastation.
"He sees, señorita," Dordonii murmured, against the curve of her ear, now, pushing closer and angling his face beside hers, inhaling the scent of her hair, his arm caught between them as his hand slid along her thigh. "Dordonii understands her meaning--how far would she help him?"
And he would have preferred, above all, to act it independently, yet she knew those she had recommended, he did not. He required her aid yet further.
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Small hands fell from his neck to the collar of his jacket, slipping underneath the fabric to rest on the muscles of his chest, to brace as she arched into the touch, as she shook a moment in breath and fought not to squirm too much under his fingers.
“Well…” Cirucci knew he was proud, they all were, knew doing this with her, rather, committing to an action like that with her, was something he saw as not quite right, as not so strong, and knew, to soothe ego, to bolster pride, she would involve herself as little as possible to ensure his success.
“Let Cirucci scout them out for you.” A soft nuzzle against the side of his face, murmuring her words gently, slowly, to introduce them as positive help, not handicaps. “She’ll find them, and watch where they go. Then she can tell you, and you can take it from there, ah, Dor~do~nii~?” His name was enunciated by three sharp nips against his jaw, hands slipping down his chest, teasing, stroking.
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She knew her words well, as she knew her body well, its every twitch, its every shiver. Dordonii knew the Thunderwitch, not as well as he knew himself--not, at least, since this City had held her for months -- and he knew that to wonder what had been premeditated and what was genuine reaction, sincere, these were futile questions. These were, for their kind, meaningless. What did it matter if the result was the same?
Dordonii let his eyes close, a brief response, her teeth and touch producing in him a hoarse sound, like to a groan. "She will," he agreed, fierce and eager, like the hand at her neck, its hold possessive, like his finger teasing along her lips. "She will but--" His eyebrows furrowed, determination a no less maniacal glimmer in the dark depths of his eyes, the chisel of his jaw. "He will tell them--they will be ready for Dordonii, and we will fight for the ownership of the blade."
It was sound. If they lost, they hardly deserved the blade. If he did, he had no right to claim their blades for Giralda's rotation. The Thunderwitch looked soft, she felt soft, his hand dipping to cup over rising breast and follow an hourglass, the shape of her body through white. She looked becoming, a flower of a woman whose thorns dripped poison, beneath the swell of her lips, teeth that sunk. If she felt like woman and moved like woman, it was the skin of a woman stretched over devil, over predator, sleek, lethal grace--and Dordonii sought it, relished it, the paradox of Arrancar--of Privaron. His mouth found hers to taste the familiarity of the poison beneath her tongue.
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She’d nodded, allowing him his stupidity, in her opinion. She would never allow her victims time like that, time to prepare, time to ready themselves for battle, but, for all that they were both Privaron, both knew the same shames, the same broken prides, they were still different. He had more honor to him where she was far less upright, more likely to stab you in the back and relish it, while he would consider such action less than something to take pride in.
Cirucci merely gave her agreement, sealed their bargain in the soft cry against his mouth, trembling when his hands brushed her breasts, pressed against bruises left from hard bites and teeth marks but she pressed into the touch despite, welcoming those flashes of pain along with the pleasurable sensation, muffling any pained noises against him, in the press of tongue and the play of lips.
There was no need to hold herself back anymore, to keep herself separate from sensation and reaction, and so she gave in to it, allowed herself the instinctual, the mingled breaths, the panting, moaning, the warmth and the friction and the fact that they were broken. They were broken, yes, but they still functioned, still moved and acted, and so she allowed herself to bask in the smell of blood, imagined, mingled with the smell of lust, real, and the faint, ever so faint, smell of soup.