InsaneJournal

we've only reached the third day of our seven-day binge
Who: Abel & Nish.
What: Alpha asserts control over the Beta (also: Abel, I Am Your Father)
Where: The third floor.
When: Wednesday, April 19, evening

Abel found himself on the third floor more often than not these past few days, where their roamings were limited. Sometimes he imbibed in the seemingly never-emptying mead, but he much preferred to keep his wits about him while he tried to understand why he was drawn to this floor.

Mostly, his thoughts wandered back to Rafe and their little tête-à-tête a few days before. The memory gave him such pleasure that he'd stand in front of the fire, caressing his stomach or his neck as he recalled the way he'd hurt the other man. It had been too long since he'd inflicted such pain, and most of him was glad that he hadn't ended the fun permanently. Anticipation built between each meeting, enough to almost make him forget the others in the building that made him so angry.

He was nearly lost in one such reverie, standing before the immense hearth in the middle of the floor, when his ears pricked at the sound of someone entering the level via the stairwell. He did not glance to the side, though, content to wait and see if they would approach him or ran off like all the other rabbits who inhabited the building.

Nish paused halfway down the hall, the immediate sense of dread and fear stilling her movements and rooting her to the floor. Though she didn’t yet see the source of it, she knew. She clutched her mug tightly in one hand, the other pressing to her rapidly beating heart as if she could slow it by sheer force of will.

’No’ Loki said, his voice firm, confident. ’Not anymore. You’re stronger now, you can command him.’

’It didn’t work last time…’ she argued, cautious to not speak aloud.

’Things have changed,’ he said. ’You have changed.’

She sighed, took a deep centering breath, and then stepped forward, rounding the corner into the light. Her eyes met his over the roaring flames in the center of the room. “Get away from my hearth,” she commanded, already on the offensive. Already taking charge. She was the Alpha. And this place was hers.

Abel spared a curious glance in her direction, confused. Then, almost against his own will, he took a step back.

Shock colored his face, and he spared a glare in Nish's direction. "Did you piss on it? Because, as far as I'm aware, the only thing that belongs to you in this building is the unit you're paying for."

Triumph. Pure satisfaction flared inside her when she saw his movements, his shock. Encouraged, a smug smile tugged at her lips and she stepped forward, further into the circle of light coming off the hearth, towards one of the kegs. She rested her mug atop it and leant casually against it, arms crossed, eyes glinting with satisfaction. “Are you sure about that?” she asked him. “Tell me something, Abel...what do you feel when you stand in this room? What does it make you think of?”

’Careful, Nish,’ Loki warned, ’don’t provoke the wolf.’

Her brow raised just slightly at the comment, but in the darkness and firelight, it was almost imperceptible.

He forced himself into a relaxed posture, unwilling to have another's will asserted before his own; the surprise bled from his face, a stuck pig raised to drain quickly.

"Aside from wondering how much damage that keg could take versus your face? Right now, just annoyance since there's no waitstaff to keep out the riff-raff." A hand sank into a pocket, as though he were reminding himself it wasn't worth it. Except he knew it was; simply, in that moment, it wasn't wise. Eyes tracked down over her face, noting how strangely comfortable she was in his presence. Now that was a change.

"Tell me something, Nish, are you high?"

She smiled at his barbs, noting that they weren’t up to his usual standard of cutting remarks. “No,” she said in answer, her voice low, but confident. “I’m better.” She shifted around the keg, crouching just enough to fill her mug, letting some of the brew overflow onto the floor, over her hand, drinking deep and then walking to sit on the bench opposite of where he stood. She was at complete ease here, and she noted with pleasure that the fear and nervousness she usually felt when in his presence was gone. The way she felt now, she wondered how she’d ever been afraid of him.

’Thank you,’ she said to Loki, and she knew he shook his head, if such a thing could happen.

’It’s not all me.’

She held the mug in her crossed legs, staring at him through the flames. “I told you to go. This isn’t meant for you. You don’t belong here.” She had a strong sense in this room that other people were missing from around the fire, but that he shouldn’t be here at all.

He disagreed, though the sensation that the floor was dropping out from under him widened; this warmth, this hominess, did not belong to him. It never had. One comforting thought, though, was that it did not belong to her necessarily; it belonged to another, a group he had been part of and then cast out for some preposterous idea. Or at least, that's what his mind was telling him.

In defiance of her words, he moved to take a seat diagonal from her, the oppressive heat of the fire a welcome thing that he would not give up so easily. His eyes narrowed at her expression, studying it, trying to understand what had changed.

"Some might say the same of you."

She watched him sit, her eyes darkly reflecting the firelight as they followed his movements. “I come and go as I please,” she said, confident that these words were right. Nobody controlled her, nobody told her what to do, or what not to do. Not anymore. There was one who maybe could, but...he wasn’t here. Her eyes flitted to his chair and then back at him. “But dogs belong on the floor. Shall I find you a leash?”

’Too far…’ Loki warned, but she ignored him. She was bolder now, strengthened by the strong brew and her new sense of home and...security in this place. He was right, this place wasn’t exactly for her either, but she took what she wanted. She always had.

She was goading him, that much was painfully obvious. Abel settled back into his chair, refusing to rise to the bait. All the same, his brows rose and he set a not entirely amused grin to his face, willing to see how long and how far she'd drag this out before he lost his patience entirely.

"I'm fairly sure bitches in heat belong in that description, too," he replied, nails drilling into the carved wooden handle of his chair. "It's hilarious when they learn how to talk. They actually think they're people." He tilted his head, eyes flicking to the mug in her hand, then back to her gaze. More so than ever before, his mind was filled with dark images. Her lanky form rolling in the flames of the hearth, attempting to put them out with basic emergency movements. Him calmly taking her mug and pouring it over her in a twisted act of 'help.' Now that would be a fire worth sitting beside.

"Do you have something better than playful words to make me go away?"

She grinned over her mug. “I don’t need anything else,” she taunted, settling herself in more comfortably, completely at ease in his presence. She drank deep from her mug again, closing her eyes as if to show him her lack of fear. “Unless you’d prefer I find a rope to bind you with,” she said on impulse, though the words hadn’t been hers. A slight flash of blue flickered and died in her eyes as she spoke, so quick he might have missed it.

’What are you doing?’ she asked, a slight discomfort settling on her at the brief loss of control.

’Testing the waters,’ he said thoughtfully.

’I thought you said not to provoke him…’

‘I lied.

Now that prickled. Something in him growled, a deep, raw, terrifying sound that even made Abel visibly wince. He turned it into a sneer.

"Trying to imply a setting for our next sleepover? You didn't like the last one very much." It was a loose attempt at a parry; his vision was swimming as if something else was rising from dark depths to overtake his otherwise logical capacity.

She met his eyes steadily, and again, words that weren’t hers left her lips. “You won’t like what I have have in mind,” Loki said in her voice, “but then nobody would enjoy the many impossible things it would take to tie you down.” Inside, Nish frowned, not understanding those words at all, thinking that maybe Loki was slipping, making her look foolish. But she watched Abel carefully as Loki kept her eyes steady on his, wondering just what those words were supposed to mean to him, and what Loki wasn’t telling her.

Abel blinked, canting his head. Somehow, he knew it wasn't Nish speaking, and whatever it was that was saying those words rocked him to his core. The black thing inside of him was compressing tighter and tighter around his brain, making his head ache.

The thing that had been fighting to overtake him seemed to grab his vocal cords.

"You'd know much about that, wouldn't you, father?"

Shock filled the pit of her stomach, though Loki didn't seem to react beyond the slow smile he pulled across her lips. “Not nearly as much as you think I do, my son,” he replied, her eyes now a steady icy blue. Inside, Nish's confusion and surprise grew, but all she could do was watch and listen as Loki kept his hold in her. “The gods took you from me, bound you, bound me. If anyone deserves your wrath, it's them.”

"And yet you count yourself among their number," the thing inside Abel returned; his hand clenched tightly around the knobby end of his armrest, knuckles going white. "And yet you were so eager to be rid of me.

"What did you tell me? That it was fate?"

Loki nodded. “We cannot escape the paths the Norns have laid out for us, Fenrir,” he said, as if explaining a simple game to a small child. “We all have our roles to play, especially my children.” Loki’s presence flared inside her, an aura of chill air filling the space in a small radius around her, dimming the flames in the hearth slightly. “You need to learn your place, my son.”

’No...stop, what are you doing?’ Nish asked anxiously. Loki smiled and answered.

’He is my son. He cannot hurt me.’

’But what about ME?’ she asked desperately.

Abel bared his teeth, rising to his feet. He'd left nail marks in the chair without realizing it. He crossed the short distance between himself and Nish's sitting form moving faster than he likely should have been able to. An arm whipped forward, wrapping a hand around her throat. He lifted her easily and bodily from the chair, her toes scraping the floor.

"I think it's time for you to learn your place, father."

She choked, all of her weight supported by Abel’s hand around her throat and immediately cutting off her air, her face darkening. Inside, she was panicking, unable to defend herself, her body no longer under her control. Loki made no physical move to defend them, remaining still and calm in his son's hold, his internal chill swiftly and suddenly blooming onto Nish's skin. She felt like ice to his touch, and the burning cold quickly began seeping into Abel’s flesh, frost beginning to form on his fingers, his hand, biting it's way up his wrist.

Loki opened Nish's eyes and they glowed an unnatural icy blue. “Let. Her. Go,” he ground out through clenched teeth, the voice of a father disciplining a disobedient child. Fear was completely absent from his voice, and in its place was anger.

As if on command, Abel's hold released and he snatched his hand back; Nish fell, and he took no care to see where she landed. Instead, he wrapped a hand around his injured appendage's wrist, hissing. Whatever had momentarily taken control of his mind fled, and Abel was left blinking, unsure of what exactly had transpired. Nish was on the ground before him, his hand was icy cold, and nothing on this floor made sense. The only logical conclusion he could reach, if it could even be called that, was to remove himself to his apartment.

He stepped around Nish's prone form and made his way to the stairwell; already his hand seemed to be healing, and yet he could not forget that icy cold touch that had nearly blackened his fingers. He did not glance back, did not seek to leave some parting wound, instead focused only on throwing the stairwell door wide and disappearing into it, headed up to the fifth floor.

Nish collapsed to the floor, gulping down deep rasping breaths through her bruised larynx, one hand coming up to cradle the cold and tender flesh. She looked up at him through her lashes, watching the confusion play out in his face before he ran off. The fire next to her was back to its previous roaring height, and Loki had retreated back into her mind where he belonged.

’What the fuck did that accomplish?’ she demanded of him, but he was silent. Thoughtful. Slowly, she picked herself up and found her mug on the floor next to her, refilling it and settling herself back in her chair to calm herself with drink and quiet.