want (whitewulf)

06 June 2024

Under van Kleiss, he did not want. Well, he did not think that he wanted; he wound so tightly around the slippery pillar of van Kleiss' goal and the tearing scope of Abysus that he did not have space to want, could not afford to want, but now looking back at it he could see the individual writhing desires like earthworms coming to the surface of the soil after a storm. But he had kept them underfoot. He did not stop to know them.

Now - close quarters, laying low, his new master's pack whittled small - now he wanted. And it ached. He had forgotten the ache. Maybe he had always wanted this deeply, so much that it scraped at the bottom of him, and maybe he had been wanting all along but the static hollow of hunger had gone numb to him. In the beginning with van Kleiss, when the Pack had only been the two of them and a spare handful of still-nanite-high EVOs, he had edged on this yearning he never allowed to coalesce, though he could feel the shape of it, cloudy and hot, a need to be more, to be shaped to van Kleiss' will, put to his knees or further down, and maybe that had never left but only blurred. Now it had come into sharp and violent focus.

The want wasn't his to have. Of course; of course, in this small space where he did not belong, where his master still eyed him with distrust and disgust. But it burned. Hurt, nearly, in his gut, in his throat, where the nanites had taken his vocal cords and only gave him the voice to say master, master. He stood just out of eyeline and listened, like how he had done for van Kleiss, all his senses dialed in for the chance of hearing his name. Shamefully, shamelessly imagined himself when Six slipped through the door into his master's room. Crushing that slim throat under his palm and taking his place. His master now wouldn't stand for it, but this want, he could imagine being told he had done well, being touched along the jaw and the waist, baring his own throat willingly -

- he could not imagine it. It came apart in wisps when he tried to insert White Knight. The want still carved into him. He did not want. In the dim hours after, Six stepped out of the office and met his eyes and Biowulf did not even want to kill him.