Work Text:
Scarab Blue
Malcolm isn't gentle, he isn't kind. He's a gunman, a rogue with a stubborn heart all striped bare from his chest, something you owns and cherish. You're the only one who can tell if it's a grin or growl he cracks when he brings you close, hands across your hips and body pressing up against your narrow bones. You like him like that, you like those nights when he gets a little messed up, lets his restraints snap and break skin and draw up bruises and bitemarks across your collar and neck while you're leaving white crescent moons across his back in turn, the look under your tipped hat snarky and smug.
You like it when he growls in your ear, hot breath ghosting across your skin and you shiver, though you'll never admit such a monstrosity. He'll whisper quick and quiet things until you're complaining rather loudly and dramatically. As a pity attempt at a distraction, you meet his lips in a downright dirty, rough kiss in an effort to silence him-only you yap that much anyways-and draw your own share of his blood. Some days he doesn't allow it, won't allow it as he holds you down and teaches you a thing or two about who's on top, a call you'll gladly answer, a challenge you'll gladly accept. Other days, he's indulging too much or he simply plays along with your little games until it's a race for more.
You love it when he's like that, the black fire in his eyes as his hands roam and you demand that he never stops as he bends you over whatever surface that's deemed fit. Sometimes, it isn't even a surface when he starts and you hiss in his ears that someone might drift by and see the unholy sight. He pretends not to hear so you bite your lips and keep it hush as he tries to drive every ounce of sound he can out of your raw throat. First, the whimpers escape, then the whines until you're howling in the back alley and he's rumbling to the sweet tunes of pain and pleasure.
You backhand him at one point in time and tell him to keep it hush after the both of you are done because someone has definitely more than just heard you when walking by the not too silent night. He drops you unceremoniously in response and gives you twenty belt buckles to your already sore backside-now it aches, you muse-but when you ask him anyways, “why twenty, hotshot?” He gives you a grin that rivals yours and growls out, “because you never told me to stop.” He then proceeds to give you five more to drive home his point and you whine and moan, writhe in his iron grip, knuckles going white. When you finally crane your head backwards and give him a piece of your mind with a kind of careless grace, a killer smile, he shut you up with a long anticipated kiss, too gentle for his nature and it leaves you silent and stunned.
It's the limp in your walk that gives away your recent activities so he carries you bridal style down the streets of Bilgewater instead, barnacle-encrusted planks going crack crack underneath his steel-toed boots. You complain about how rough, how inconsiderate he was but he just brings you close like you wanted it-and you did, you damn well still do-because he's not a man of many words like you are, and your noses touch and both your eyes close. When he nuzzles you, he smells like gunpowder and cigarettes and he tells you that you smell like leather and spices. Both of you sound and smell like drunk and both probably are.
You try to point your way home-where the heart is-but he tells you that you both have long deserted that camp in fear of persecution and running the fine lines between law and criminal minds. He brings your hand to his heart and you call him a cliché, a cheesy bastard and he retorts, asking if you really thought you weren't. When your vision blurs once more, he stumbles and the whiskey comes right back out of you and you spend the next ten minutes of your life exhaling everything you downed on the same night. He tries to stifle laughs behind your back to no avail and you swear you'll get him back where it hurts.
And in both meanings of the world you did get him where it hurts. You shattered his heart and you broke it to a thousand little pieces right in front of his face; that look, the haunting look he gives you then is a look you'll never forget. After seven years and forevermore tortured days of being locked away, he did finally forgive you when you were ready to pay in life and blood. Somehow, that compromise only furrows and festers your guilt and you still wake up screaming next to him, wondering if it were a lifeless corpse that lays to your side. He still holds you in those silent times, strong hands around your shoulders as he brings you close, muttering to you, “it's fine, everything is fine” as you taste the downpour of rain from outside.
It's those silent times that he tries to be kind with hushed words and soft kisses like you're fragile, easily breakable. There is no burning heat or passion in the air, only a kind of compromise, a delicacy of emotion that tries to heal the old scars between you and him. It's those times that his hands don't roam but stay firm around you as your head rests on his strong shoulders and tears snake down your eyes but only you can see them in the dimming light. He says he loves the rain and you do too when he carries you outside and you enjoy it, each droplet rolling off your hat and now soiled clothes. You relate to it more than he thinks, as you feel those terrible moments leave you and you find serenity.
His face is still wet when you two return to the tent. Your face is wet too when the thunder overhead brings light to the dying day. You say something not quite funny but he laughs a low chuckle so you crack a smile in return. When he tries to get you to sleep, you refuse and you hold his wrist like it's a plea. He agrees and you open the flap to the tent slowly, watching the night stars overhead, indulging in all those fleeting times, those old times when you and him were still young and stupid, careless and free and unfazed by the whispering and strangers. Some of those times brings color to your frozen cheeks and you find yourself flustered and other times you just want to hold him and tell him that “you're fine, you're going to be okay.”
When your lips meet once more, it's so warm and so passionate. A small fire flares up from within and it sears you in a way that only Sunshine Whiskey has been able to. You lean into his embrace and so does he into yours. It's the silence and rain that calms, the occasional flickers of lightning bringing up light-sparks and the unraveling mess. When he finally removes your hat like he usually never does, he stares into your otherworldly blue eyes tainted by the deal with the devil, but so bright, so fair. He tells you it's like scarab blue; those sacred beetles Shurima was so fond of and though blue ones rare, the blue ones brought back the most remembrance. “It's like scarab blue,” you whisper back, repeating those words, the sound dissolving in his mouth.
You try to ask him with a straight face, “Malcolm Graves, did you just call me a dung beetle,” but he just shrugs. You find yourself giggling like a schoolgirl as you snuggle yourself deeper into his chest as you feel the rise and fall and fall deep into sleep before you can begin to yawn. He just watches the dry patch were the camp fire still blazes outside with something like great interest, one hand tangling into your unfeeling ones. “Dung beetle,” he rasps those words under his breath when you're too tired and not lucid enough to comprehend. He snorts a laugh to himself as he lights his twelfth cigar and takes a quiet drag, watching the rain continue; it's a refreshing call against the sun-scorched earth of Shurima.
“Scarab blue,” he echoes.
“Scarab blue,” you mumble senselessly back.