Concerning Anomalies and One's Perception Thereof

(in the Journal of Irreproducible Results)

It's so simple, really. Simple, and inevitable.

The anomaly's on his back, hands cuffed to a bar behind his head, muscles in his arms straining to hold his own as I fuck him brutally, so hard it almost hurts me, with the strong bulk of his thigh bearing up against my chest. He's groaning, loud and animalistic in the back of his throat, and there's that flush to his cheeks that I love. The pinkish red of the suffusion of blood under human skin is an excellent color on him--not all over, but in moderation. It balances well with the pale tones of his skin, the black and blue of hair and eyes.

He has excellent hands, as I've often noticed as I've bound them. Strong and articulate and beautifully formed, larger than mine or our Doctor's. Emblematic of the physical power of humanity compared to us remnants of the Time Lords, I suppose, if one wanted to get maudlin. I just love watching them clench, nails digging into his palms, knuckles bone-white under his skin, as some extreme sensation or another runs through his body. I always try to make sure he doesn't have something to grip as I play with him--just that little extra bit of isolation. One less anchor.

I digress.

I've got a chain round his neck, not latched, but looped through a large ring on one end. A choke-chain, as our Doctor had observed incredulously when I'd first slipped it over his head. But that's a choke-chain, he'd said, you could kill--

He'd had the sense to stop then.

It's part of the reason for the flush on his cheeks--the anomaly's, not the Doctor's, he's not here now to protect his pet. Every once in a while, I give it a little tug, constricting; his bloodflow shifts, pounding in his ears, rolling up that pink under his skin; his breathing becomes shallow; his hands fist, hard; I feel his heartbeat increase, feel his belly clench as he fights the instinct to struggle, feel the heat rise in him as the adrenaline hits his bloodstream, smell the change in his sweat, watch that hint of fear in his eyes as neurons spark in old, old pathways, the patterns of life-terror that long predate his particular species.

He fights that, too. He must know what pleasure it gives me, so he fights to remain calm. Such is our game. He grits teeth, sucks air, meets my eyes with the challenge of a man dangling over a cliff who yet remains strong. And every time, too, he remains hard. Though I've heard it said that even a flaccid human male will become so during death by strangulation.

I give the chain another tug now; there, there is that defiance.

This time I don't let go.

His heartrate jumps by seven beats a minute when he realizes my intent. "Oh," he hisses, "you're not going to--"

I clamp a hand over his mouth. The fastest way of quieting him, and it has the added effect of holding his head still. He can't turn his face aside, and I lock eyes with him. And I also admit that I find blackened tongues distasteful.

I stop fucking him. I bury myself in him to the balls, leaving him no room for escape, and tighten the chain. Not fast enough to crack his windpipe, no; I want to watch him fade. I take the chain in my teeth and growl like a savage and laugh around it, for this is a savage thing we do.

I don't look away from his eyes. Not once. Everything I am, focused on this human dying beneath me. His eyes widen; his mind's opening, stretching, screaming for escape out of a failing body. More instincts. He's made of fear; it's beating through every fiber of his being. No, that's not it--shock? Horror, perhaps? But it's laced with something else, too. Exhilaration, I think, to be so close to that edge which divides life and death. His emotions have a strange taste to my Gallifreyan mind--emotions no other entity in the universe could have. A unique vintage; I drink deep.

I find my other hand curled over his. Peculiar urge, that. Almost like comfort. I suppose the Doctor's wearing off on me.

It takes time. Oh, does it take time. His body spasms as he struggles, a bit, ineffective, his ass clenching down on my cock--and I realize after a spasm of my own how terribly close to my own edge I am. No, no, it would do us no good if I came now. His eyes dilate, almost pure black; there's a dot or two of blood in the whites; his face is getting terribly red, sweat standing out on burning skin. He's losing strength now, legs going limp against my shoulders, hands loosening. Our fingers entwine.

I can feel his mind unraveling--no, that's not the word. Stripping down. Defenses, knowledge, memories, personality, the bulk of his identity is going to shreds, blown like ragged fabric away from the core of him, diffusing around him like a planetary nebula, fractal wisps of gas round a dying sun, blue and orange in its light. I stare into a naked human soul. And it's puzzling--it's brighter than I thought it could possibly be. So bright.

The light fades. He's losing consciousness. I pull back from his mind--dangerous to go that close to a dying man, dangerous--and keep my grip on the chain until his eyes fall closed, until all my panoply of senses tell me that it's over, light gone.

He's dead. I let the chain fall slack.

I have no wish to fuck a corpse. I stay in him, though, still motionless, heft the dead weight of his legs, finally shift my gaze to his limp hands, the deep marks on his throat where the chain digs. I loosen it, wait. His mouth is slack--can't see his tongue though. And he is, yes, still hard.

I shift the body, still buried inside him, lean over him, and fold my lips over his.

The nerves just left of my spine are tingling. The fabric of the universe is tacky around me, strange and stiff. My gut instincts are screaming like I'm falling towards a black hole, screaming danger, screaming wrong--I've almost gotten used to the background noise of him, the hair-tingling sensation of even just looking at him, but this, this is far more than that. I wonder what's happening inside him, what strange computations are working through his organs, whether his neurons are firing--after death, as they sometimes do, or before life? A saner man--no, a saner Time Lord--might flee, run in revulsion from the sheer unnatural crawl over his skin, but I stay, eyes closed as I wait, staring into him with my mind, fascinated.

Golden light--a flash of golden light on the borders of my awareness--and a strange, faint song--

--and he roars back to life, and it's deafening mortars and novas of light and galaxies colliding through my mind, a crush of primal energy that not even a Gallifreyan brain could process. His huge gasping first breath steals the air from my lungs; my vision blackens, my temples pound, and I reel, throw my head back, and come impossibly hard inside him as he screams.

I'm on all fours over him, panting, sliding from him as I soften. Centuries, and I'm not sure I've ever come quite like that. My brain's jangling. He's panting too, shaking, letting his legs fall.

"Oh," he breathes ragged, "fuck, fuck, I cannot believe you just did that..."

His tongue darts over his lips, perfectly healthy. The blood's gone from his eyes, the crawling's gone from my skin, the universe is normal.

I can't find words. I kiss him, hard, half to shut him up, half so I can feel his scream in my mouth as I grab for his cock because I have to feel him come beneath me, now, I've felt him die, I've felt him live, I have to feel him come, I'm tugging at his mind for him to come for me, right now--

He comes, burning hot human spatter on my stomach, in seventeen strokes with a ragged howl, and I suck the sound out of him and swallow it, and he gasps air as I break the kiss.

Simple. But I hadn't expected to be so...

I look away from him, ease back, my subcortex still twitching, because I haven't been so afraid since the War.