The Shavings Off Your Mind are the Only Rent [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

Picture a house. Actually, picture two houses. They're (almost) identical structures that share an uneasy coexistence, tangled together on a quantum level. One of the houses is Good: bright, cheerful, full of comfortable furniture and a pervasive feeling of safety. The other house is Evil: dingy, dilapidated, and haunted by the dreamers' greatest fears.

The good news - and bad news - is that travel from one house to the other is as simple as passing through a door. All a dreamer has to do is walk through a doorway, any doorway, and they'll find themselves in whichever house they weren't in before they crossed the threshold. Perhaps they'll step out of a beautiful library and find themselves in a threatening hallway - or perhaps they'll flee a menacing kitchen and find themselves in a perfectly safe dining room. That is the nature of the houses' entanglement: every door is a portal between the two.

There are, of course, complications. Dreamers in one house can't perceive the other; if you're in the Good house and looking through a doorway, the space beyond will look as nice and inviting as the space you're in now (until you step through that doorway, of course). Dreamers also can't really perceive one another if they're in the same room, but in different houses, though they might see a flash of movement out of the corner of their eye, or think they heard something.

Perhaps the greatest complications are the houses themselves. They have rather strong personalities, and they aren't very fond of one another. Each house will want to keep you if it can (keep you safe, in the case of the Good house, or keep you for itself, in the case of the Evil one). Dreamers may attempt to cross a hall and find the door that looked open and inviting a moment ago is now barred shut, leaving them trapped in the hall - or have doors suddenly close in their faces before they can end up anywhere unpleasant. Still, there's only so much either house can do, and even a locked door can be jimmied open or busted down.

Escape from the houses is possible, but the formal gardens beyond are similarly entangled, with neatly trimmed lawns and expertly plotted flower beds becoming overgrown tangles of nettles and algae-choked reflecting pools. An archway is as good as a door, as far as the gardens are concerned, and there are plenty of arbors and arches over the paths. Of course, dreamers may find that a sound arbor in the Good garden has collapsed in the Evil one… and heaven help anyone who dares to explore the hedge maze.





[ooc: y'all know the drill. ALL characters are welcome, regardless of whether they're in the game. Characters can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion.

Also, this dream party marks the aforementioned calendar freeze. For the next three weeks, the IG date will sit on July 3rd. Posts dated July 3rd or earlier are allowed and encouraged. The calendar will resume forward motion at a 4:1 ratio on Saturday, July 26th.]

Comments

[johnny_truant]

This time Johnny's soft, restrained gasping resolves into a startled yelp, ramping up quickly and dying almost as fast, leaving him shaky and breathless, quivering under the pinch of thumb and forefinger. It is this that undoes him; he arches toward his would-be tutor in sharp surprise, his breathing ragged and his fingers digging uselessly against the immutable wall.

"Oh, god," he whispers, the words slipping carelessly out, regretting it immediately, that he's given that, that acknowledgment, that - concession. But it hardly matters. Niall's got him taken well apart by now. Knows what he craves, and that he craves it enough that now what he wants is to press forward, not pull away; or if he wants to fight back, he wants to be overcome.

[yfeltihtend]

'Mmhmmm,' he murmurs, a smugly wordless, Oh, you don't have to call me God.

Unthank can see it in Johnny's eyes, the too-late realisation of a man who's just signed a contract and not read the fine print, and there is something uniquely piquant about that. It's all well and good to force a man into something against his will, but to lead him there, to make him want his own undoing until the moment he's left scattered and ruined, that is a most particular pleasure. Of course, Johnny Truant is already more than half scattered and ruined, but even so. It's the little moments.

He keeps firm his grip on Johnny's nipple, slowly, slowly increasing the pressure, digging in with his thumbnail through the thin fabric of Johnny's t-shirt. A sharp pain, he knows, but the persistence of it will eventually make it seem not a focussed sensation, not limited to the flesh between his fingers but felt in a hot, numb throb all around it.

Craning down to put his mouth right next to Johnny's ear, he gives a little tug to his nipple to draw him closer. 'Now,' he murmurs, 'why don't you tell me about that fascinating thing I rescued you from?'

He punctuates his request, very deliberately, with a single soft, bristly kiss under Johnny's ear, wet with tongue and suction. Like he's sampling him to see if the taste is to his fancy.

[johnny_truant]

"F-ffuck," Johnny hisses, squirming now like the undignified little mess he is, every merciless twist and pull on his nipple sending jolts of arousal straight to his cock, god he had no idea he was this fucking easy, has he always been like this? - Niall draws him in with it, and Johnny finds himself so eager, desperate to do this with someone he never would have come close to considering before Gabe had awakened this curiosity in him, in ways he's always considered without ever having done. He feels vile and disgusting, but with that an intense desire to be compressed and unmade, blotted out even for a few moments. He presses willingly against the tall stranger's body, cock already hard against the cruelly tight denim of his jeans, and he whines softly when the request is made, punctuated with that mouth.

"Ah-" he groans, startled by the sting of facial hair. "It - I-"

It's not fair. How does Niall expect him to talk in this state? He rolls his hips forward, a little dare, testing the waters. How much will he be allowed? How badly does this man want his answer, and what will he do to get it?

[yfeltihtend]

Johnny tastes of fear-sweat and salt under Unthank's tongue, the pulse tangible, and it is all too easy to imagine the ozone richness of iron beneath the skin. Maybe later. For now, Johnny's squirming and hissing are quite sufficient to send heat blooming beneath his own skin, and he smiles sharply against his neck; Johnny will be able to feel the press of teeth.

He soon draws back, though, as Johnny bucks up against him, managing no more than a few stuttered syllables in answer. There's no violence about the motion, but with smooth suddenness, a moment later he's got Johnny pinned up against the wall with his hips, one thigh shoved roughly between Johnny's. His eyes on him are cold, but his voice stays mild as ever.

'Tch, impatient. I asked a question, boy, and, ah, heh. You did see what sorts of things I can do when I've a mind.'

[johnny_truant]

Of course, like clockwork, he's pushed back, pinned by Niall's hips and his leg, oh god, pressing hard between his thighs, he can't help but rub himself against it even as he shudders under the cold stare and the stern voice.

"It's part of the house," he says, syllables falling between faltering breaths. "The monstrosity of it. The monster. The part of it that wants to devour. That's all I know, and it's just a guess."

He looks up, meeting Niall's eyes, at once fearful and defiant, always a contradiction with him. He can't speak, still breathing so raw and uneven as he rocks up and down, nice and slow; but it doesn't matter, he suspects. He's breaking the rules enough without unnecessary chatter.

[yfeltihtend]

'Devour...' he repeats the word thoughtfully, like he likes the taste of it. And there is something-- intriguing, in the notion that there's something in Johnny's house, which is itself all houses, that wants to consume. The antithesis of that which a house is built to be. Unheimlich, in the words of several entertaining madmen centuries after his time.

'Tell me,' Doctor Unthank whispers, the sound hanging in the air, catching and clinging like so much cobweb, 'do you ever dream of that? Of being devoured?' He presses further against Johnny's hips, pinning him against the wall with his sheer height and bulk. 'Of being... swamped, pressed down upon and consumed. There's something visceral about it, isn't there?' His eyes flash briefly wide, sharp with appreciation. 'Nothing so... cerebral, metaphysical as an, mm, an unmaking, not simply the ceasing of existence of death, but to be smothered by the warm dark...'

He exhales a shivery little breath, and lifts a long finger to trail over Johnny's lips, parted and damp with his own unsteady breath. It catches against the skin.

'Do you ever wake up ~hard?' He drives forward and up with his thigh to punctuate the word hard, his own lips parted and eyes on Johnny in fascination.

[johnny_truant]

"Hgh-" The abortive syllable twists its way out of him when Niall presses him harder against the wall, too caught between fear and grotesque exhilaration now to struggle at all. His lips part a little wider, almost inviting, not quite tonguing at the doctor's finger. He's been so effortlessly wrecked upon this, this lighthouse of a man, how did he get here?

"I," he breathes, stuttering again, all too easily. He does, of course he does, he dreams about it obsessively, sometimes in terror, sometimes in this messed up cocktail that he's feeling now. And yes, he wakes up hard, he always does, who doesn't, but even after those dreams, even then, especially then.

"Yes," he gasps, finally, looking up, pleading, begging, who knows what for. "Yes."

[yfeltihtend]

'Mmm, good.'

The way Johnny's mouth drops open is very nearly instinct, the pink point of his tongue reaching, but not quite touching, as if he's not sure he dares. Or as if he's not sure he'll be allowed. Sweet.

Unthank takes the invitation, letting two fingers slide soft and slow into Johnny's mouth, slick with saliva over his tongue. And once there, he can't resist pressing down against it, driving Johnny's tongue into the floor of his mouth hard enough that it will feel like choking, before drawing back again, stroking an exploratory fingertip over the inside of the bottom lip, tracing the uneven townhouse row of his teeth. His fingers shine with spit when he drags them sloppily out, leaving trails down from the side of Johnny's mouth, to his jaw, his neck. Down again to his collarbone where Unthank lets his hand curl, spread across the expanse of his throat as it had earlier. The touch is curiously almost one of comfort, a supportive hand that promises, rather than threatens, I could.

He grinds his hips in a slow, luxuriant circle, taking a little pleasure himself, and against his stomach, Johnny will be able to feel that Unthank, too, is hard.

'Then,' he murmurs, sounding as if he's tasted each word before letting it through his teeth, 'I have something for you, Johnny.' Leaning down, he rumbles into Johnny's ear, 'Give me your hands.'

[johnny_truant]

Johnny moans outright, soft and hungry, when those fingers push past his lips, and his instinct is to suck them greedily but he can't, not with them pushing down like that, a sensation he's never felt, it makes him panic just a little but there's nothing he can do. He bucks helplessly against his captor, and as the fingers drag wetly down his throat he tilts up his chin, offering. Niall tastes like smoke.

The urge to move his hands comes before the order, to pull them away from their place against the wall, maybe to settle at Niall's hips and pull himself closer - but that won't be allowed, he knows that. When asked he almost finds it difficult to pull them away, but he manages, pressing his shoulder blades harder into the wall to take over the pressure, his hands moving outward, wrists extended and palms up, like a supplicant.

[yfeltihtend]

'Good lad.'

Johnny's wrists are slender, delicate, scarred; burns, he thinks, old ones. Doctor Unthank's fingers easily encircle them with room to spare, and he strokes his thumb over the pulsepoint for the space of a few heartbeats before drawing them up, one on either side of Johnny's head like a man raising his hands for a gunman. His own hands keep them there, grip gently insistent.

Unthank draws a long, slow breath, filling his lungs, and then speaks.

'Sēcaþ mec, sceadan, nihtbundren; bēoð tō mec cnapan. Bindaþ þās mago; gebindaþ his folmen ac scancan, ac beoð slīðe, forþon geearniast hit.'

He's not looking at Johnny as he speaks; his gaze rather is unfocussed, as if he's addressing something, or someone, behind him or above him. And though his voice never strays above its accustomed gravelled murmur, by the end of the invocation it seems to reverberate around the room; off the friendly beamed ceiling and papered walls.

The shadows cast by the firelight seem, for a beat, to flicker.

And then, under Unthank's hands, new shadows grow. Whether they're bleeding out from his hands or the walls is impossible to tell, but every moment they're more substantial, suffusing out like ink into water. Diffuse and soft-edged, they curl around Johnny's wrists, and at his feet is a pool of the shadow-stuff like the thickest of marsh-fogs, tracking up his legs, clinging all the way up to his thighs. The shadows hold him fast to the wall; Johnny is quite, quite pinned. And of course, the shadow-stuff casts no shadows itself, so Johnny's face and bared neck seem near luminescent, pale amid fathomless black.

Unthank's shoulders slump for a moment, and then he lets go of Johnny's wrists, pulling his hands out of the unnatural shadow that binds them to step back and assess his handiwork. He smiles.

[johnny_truant]

As usual, Johnny doesn't know what it is he's agreed to; his wrists tremble slightly in Niall's grasp, like he wants to pull away but knows he can't; he shuts his eyes when Niall's thumbs brush rough-skinned over the edges of his burns, feeling a little wave of nausea, he knows, he saw, he read what she did. This he buries back down, obedient or simply desperate for the time away from it, which subjugation and deconstruction have always afforded him. When Niall speaks his guttural language again Johnny's eyes snap open, staring up without anything to meet him; the other man's eyes aren't on him. The words reverberate heavily, deep in his ears and his chest and his bowels, and for a moment after all he can hear is his own uneven breath.

Then he feels it, coiling around his wrists and his legs, ethereal and strange, like - ink, like smoke. It shouldn't be able to hold him fast but it does, warm (as promised) and tight, pulling him flush against the wall. His own well-beaten survival instinct claws its way up on a flood of bile and adrenaline, and he gives way to panicked struggling, unable to move apart from feeble little jerks and twitches, wriggling too much like a fly on a web, in a way he knows will only make him look more like the helpless prey the doctor wants him to be. He looks up, desperate and afraid.

"Wh- what is this?" he demands, his voice broken and strangely muffled. He tries again to tug his hands free but the otherworldly shackles are unyielding, and he lets out a frustrated whine. "Let me go, let - let me go!"

The house itself seems to react. The fire suddenly erupts as though new wood had been added, crackling louder and brightening with impossible intensity, like it wants to drown out the new shadows binding Johnny to the wall. The door swings violently open and there comes a heavy draft, like it's opened onto a vacuum, trying to pull them - no, just the doctor - back out. You're not welcome here.

[yfeltihtend]

There is, perhaps for the first time, genuine fear in Johnny's eyes. Not the uneasy trepidation he'd shown before, nor the flashes of anger at Unthank's prying, but true, helpless, thoughtless terror. Human beings, he has always thought, are remarkable when they're afraid. Not the kind of fear that prompts men to do brave deeds-- or stupid ones-- but the primal fear that comes when someone thinks they're about to die. That fear clutches and consumes, reduces a man to the animal, to nothing more sophisticated than screaming and trying anything to pull away from the killing blow.

That is... magnificent.

Of course, Johnny isn't there yet, but the raw panic in him makes Unthank smile.

And then with a rush, the door slams open. He frowns, mouth pursing into an almost petulant little moue. The house-- this house-- doesn't like him much, it would seem. He can feel, in fact, how strongly it wants him to leave, the very air heavy with unwelcome. He allows a few moments to string themselves together, waiting to see if the house will do anything else, but it does not. Deliberately, Unthank crosses over to the door and firmly closes it, giving the jamb a little pat with one hand.

'Cheeky,' he admonishes. 'I am conducting business here.'

He can practically feel the room glowering at him, fire licking higher for a moment, but nothing further follows, and he subsides back into the centre of the room, a pleased smile curling the corners of his mouth. Back to the business at hand. Back to dear, defenceless Johnny.

The shadows he'd summoned are still at hand, binding Johnny in place, and Unthank pivots delicately on one heel, pacing back until he's standing within inches of the boy.

'Your dreams, I believe,' he says mildly. And then, voice dropping low and gravelled, 'You said you dreamt of being devoured.'

[johnny_truant]

Johnny whimpers softly when Niall steps away, fearing irrationally that he'll be left alone here, bound like this to the wall, or perhaps truly swallowed up in the dark. It's almost worse that he simply closes the door, defying the apparent good will of the house. Johnny resumes his fight when the doctor paces back toward him, squirming, almost writhing, and drawing shallow, frantic breaths.

"But-" What, you idiot? There's nothing he can say. This is what he asked for, what he wanted, and still wants, somewhere down in the dark pit of him. Still, reflexively, he strains against the bonds, wriggling his hips, pushing his head forward and down, like a man trying to curl up and make himself sink.

[yfeltihtend]

'Shhh,' Unthank breathes, crowding further into Johnny's space, gradual as an advancing tide, until stomach and chest and hips are lined up against him, craning down to murmur wetly against his ear. 'Don't fret. I've got you.'

The words are a parody of comfort, and his hand strokes insinuatingly up to alight, again, at Johnny's neck. The pulse is racing fit for Johnny's heart to burst, if this were his physical body, and Doctor Unthank leans further to taste the pulsepoint just under his ear, paper-thin skin and bird-bones beneath, and hums softly with the sheer, indulgent pleasure of it.

'Ask,' he says. Commands. 'Tell me what you want, hmm? Give it words, and I'll give it you, with pleasure.' Whiskers bristle against Johnny's neck as he smiles again, drawing back to brush his open mouth over Johnny's, damp skin catching for only a moment, before there's nothing more than breath between them. He looks down at him with hooded eyes.

'And if you're good... hmm, I think I'll have you suck me after.'

[johnny_truant]

Oh, oh, oh. Fuck. Johnny can't even keep up the pretense of fearful revulsion, breath shuddering and catching as Niall's hand traces back up to his throat, wet lips and needle-sharp hairs brushing over his skin. Parody or no, the words are exactly what he needs to hear, sending a warm pulse through his body, his stomach flipping over - yes, Niall's got him, cornered, possessed, this is what he asked for, what he wanted, needed. Deserves. God, he's so fucking hard, and he's pathetic and disgusting, squirming, rubbing himself against Niall's body like an animal. His chin tilts up in an automatic reflex, responding to what seems like a kiss but is barely even contact, leaving him staring, breathless, lips wet and parted, up at his captor.

"I," he breathes, and swallows hard, shivering beneath Niall's hands and the press of his body. "I want you to use me." He hears himself speak the words at some distance, or under water, looking outward at himself in horror and rage, as he so completely, desperately, hungrily surrenders.

It only gets worse. "Touch me," he whispers, his eyes fluttering shut. "Ruin me." A sob almost escapes him and he clamps it down. "Please."

[yfeltihtend]

Ohhh, he is magnificent. It's a rare thing, for a man to know so explicitly, so immediately, what degradation he needs, deserves, but Johnny Truant barely needs hesitate. Just look at him, all empty eyes and wet, parted lips, begging to be used and broken. Doctor Unthank feels his hand spasm briefly, tightening on Johnny's throat, the sheer, exquisite utterness of it for a moment overwhelming his customary restraint.

'Ohhh,' he breathes, voice so soft. 'Cry, boy, do.' He leans in again, just barely, enough to curl his tongue up and under, to catch on the upper row of Johnny's teeth and his lip. 'They say it's good for you, don't they?' he breathes, smiling a mockery of consideration, 'Your modern doctors.'

And then, just to confuse the senses, he slides his hand down between them, palming the taut, shivering plane of Johnny's belly before sliding under the waistband of his trousers. His other hand pops the button, and the pressure of his wrist is sufficient to part the teeth of the zipper, whereupon he draws his prick out without ceremony, fingers curling around the hot length of it.

The shadows he's conjured all around them are cold, unnaturally dense, and his grip will feel an unnatural-- or perhaps a too natural-- counterpoint to the clutching at Johnny's calves and arms. Pulling back enough to get a good view of Johnny's face, he twists with his wrist, starting a slow, tortuous jerk, eyes always on Johnny's face, not bothering to watch what his hand is doing. His knees and thighs are still pressed to Johnny's.

'And what will you give me, if I do?'

[johnny_truant]

"Nnh-" Johnny whimpers, his breath quickening under the sudden, short-lived press of Niall's hand. The soft incitation chills his blood. He does not obey, not for defiance but for sheer paralysis. He strains forward to meet the doctor's lips but again he is rebuffed; Niall isn't interested in kissing, but tasting.

Johnny would be lying to himself if he said that wasn't exactly what he wanted.

The hand leaves his throat then, brushing over his heaving chest and quivering stomach right to his jeans, and he can't help a nervous inhalation as Niall opens him up and takes him in hand.

He twitches and writhes against the shadowy bonds pinning him to the wall, cold and unyielding, such that Niall's grip is a grounding point of contact; and as he tugs and rubs slowly, agonizingly, Johnny can only stare up at him, silently begging, wholly destroyed.

His first several attempts at speech come out breathless and silent, until a sharper jerk draws a plaintive cry from him, breaking the spell, and he says all at once, the words tumbling out of him on a desperate moan, "Anything, anything. Anything you want." He gasps and sobs as soon as this is uttered, and softer, he tells his master "Please."