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Smoking after sex was a temptation Susie tried not to give into. She was doing her best to keep a tight hold on the reins to her nicotine addiction, and not only because Kris complained about the smell and taste when they kissed her. Sometimes, though, she couldn’t help herself.
It’d be easy to blame Kris for it, that hanging around them was influencing Susie to give into forbidden desires. Susie knew better, though. Besides, she didn’t feel like blaming Kris for anything when they were currently lying with their head in her lap, their cheek pillowed against her thigh, as if they’d fallen asleep. Susie reserved one hand to nurse her cigarette, using the other to run her fingers through Kris’ hair, gently scritching at their scalp with her claws. She picked out any stray grass or debris she collected as she did, tossing it back to the forest floor where it belonged.
Kris barely reacted. They never minded it when Susie fussed over their hair, but they were especially docile after getting down and dirty—in both the literal and the figurative sense. It added to the dream-like serenity of the moment: just the two of them hanging out in a quiet and rarely-trodden clearing in the forest, doing little else but basking in each other’s presence while the sweat under their clothes dried.
Susie idly tapped ash from her cigarette, careful not to flick it anywhere near Kris. When she stuck the cigarette back between her teeth and returned her attention to them, they’d moved their head to gaze up at her lazily. Their eyes were half-lidded, but behind their long lashes, the glimmer of their red irises told Susie they were focused on her. Interested.
Still, she wasn’t exactly expecting it when they finally spoke up, murmuring, “You ever tried putting that out on yourself before?”
Susie blanked a moment. Another thing she’d learned from having sex with Kris: their post-orgasmic haze made them say things almost as weird as when they were drunk. “Why is that the first thing you ask me after I piledrove you into the dirt, man?” she asked, somewhat tokenly.
Kris was unfazed. “Just curious.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re so morbid,” she muttered, shaking her head a little. But then again, she was the one indulging them, so she supposed she wasn’t much better. “Okay, so, maybe I did try it once. No plans on doing it ever again, though.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Yeah, like a bitch. When’s the last time you burned yourself while cooking? It was like that, but a million times worse.” Susie wondered if she should even be telling this to Kris, when she knew they cut themself…but the alternative was them trying to swipe a cigarette off her to try it out in practice, which, no.
Kris scrunched their brows in thought. “Last time I burned myself while cooking…I accidentally grabbed the handle of the cast iron pan with my bare hand after I’d been frying stuff in it.” They lifted their right hand. Susie peered at it, though she didn’t see any evidence they’d been burned; it’d likely long since healed over. All she saw was little calluses, the tiny crescent marks from where Kris kept digging their nails into their palms. “Spent the rest of the day with one arm under the cold tap.”
Susie winced. As a dragon with tough scales, she was more resistant to heat than people with skin or fur. She couldn’t imagine how painful it’d been for Kris, with their fragile human flesh. “Yeah, so. Just take that feeling and, like, shrink it down to this size—” she pointed to the cigarette still held between her teeth “—and you’ll probably get the idea.”
Kris lowered their hand. “You got a scar?”
Susie answered by way of hooking a finger into her coat sleeve and tugging it up her wrist, indicating a darker little mark on the top side of her forearm. Kris lifted their head to peer at it like she had their hand. “Can’t really see it any more,” Susie admitted, “from all the shedding I’ve done since.”
Kris prodded at it with their finger, testing the scales using gentle pressure. “Doesn’t feel much different,” they noted.
“Nah; it’s too old, now.” As much as Susie would otherwise like Kris to keep touching her with their lithe and nimble fingers, she batted their hand away and pulled her sleeve back over her forearm. “Shoulda seen it when it was fresh.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“Dunno. Don’t really remember, now.” That was a lie; Susie did remember. It’d been one of the few times—outside of bashing herself against a wall, anyway—she’d tried directly hurting herself, instead of goading her father or someone else into it. But she didn’t want to give Kris any weird ideas. Speaking of which… “What’s with the interest, anyway?”
Kris shrugged. “Just curious,” they repeated. It sounded lame, though, and Kris’ expression betrayed they realized that.
“Uh-huh.” Knowing them, Susie doubted it was only mere curiosity. “Is this what you did in your spare time before we became friends? Think about different ways to torture yourself?”
“Kinda, yeah,” Kris admitted, sheepishly turning their gaze away from her to stare up at the sky. “Didn’t have much better to do.”
Susie sighed. She wanted to scoff at that—mutter once again that Kris was a masochist and a freak, knowing the insults would bounce harmlessly off their thick skull—but instead, her chest knotted. She took a drag of her cigarette to disguise her weakness. At least, she knew Kris didn’t do anything more than cut themself; they only had cutting scars visible on their naked body, another thing Susie had learned from sex with them. But the idea Kris regularly thought about other methods as well worried her at the same time it agitated her.
She breathed out a cloud of smoke high into the air, then smirked down at Kris. “Well, good thing you’ve got me ‘round. Now you can have fun riding me rather than getting off alone in the woods like a loser.”
Kris huffed a laugh, though their mirth was quick to fade. “I don’t do it to get off. S’not that kind of fantasy.”
Susie returned to chewing on the end of her cigarette, while she idly fiddled with a longer lock of Kris’ hair. It was almost as dark brown as mud. “Yeah? What kinda stuff d’you fantasize about, then?”
“Just…” Kris began, then trailed off, nibbling on their lower lip. They laced their hands over their stomach, flexing and curling their interlocked fingers into their palms. “Different ways to die, mostly,” they eventually finished.
Susie wondered if it was a good idea to humor this line of thought. No, well—Kris would do it either way, right? So, maybe it was better if they got it off their chest to her, instead of leaving it to fester in their head. “Like what?”
Kris’ eyes drifted shut, long lashes tickling their freckled cheeks. “Y’know. Stuff like…cutting myself deep enough that I bleed out. Slitting my own throat. Throwing myself off one of the cliffs ‘round here…” They lifted their legs from the ground and folded them upright, knees to the sky. “My birth parents left me out here to die, y’know, so…sometimes I think about making it come full circle.”
Susie’s hand gradually drifted from Kris’ hair to stroking her knuckles across their warm, soft cheek, still flushed a faint reddish-pink from their earlier exertion. “What else?” she asked, volume soft, voice a little husky from smoking.
“Sometimes…sometimes I think about getting kidnapped,” Kris went on, mumbling slowly, almost shyly. “Like, by a serial killer or a trafficker or whatever. Getting locked in their basement or something, where they do all sorts of terrible things to me…and then they get rid of me when they’re done.”
“You’ve been watching too many of your brother’s snuff films,” Susie commented. She wanted it to be a joke, but it came out too weighty, words heavy on her tongue and tasting as bitter as her cigarette.
Still, it got the corner of Kris’ mouth to twitch upward, if only for a moment. “Maybe. Maybe Noelle’s shown me too many horror movies.”
“Those, too.” Susie couldn’t help scoffing a little. Noelle was one of the nicest, sweetest people she’d met, who couldn’t even bring herself to hurt a fly…so, of course, she had some weird horror fetish going on. Well, if Susie was honest, she did think that was kind of cool. “Speaking of—how come your brother’s a wuss who can’t stand a horror movie, but he’s got a porn folder full of snuff and gore?”
Kris shrugged again. “Beats me.”
Susie sighed. “But, like…yeah. You’ve, uh—really thought about this, haven’t you?”
Kris hummed non-committally. “Just what I deserve.”
“For…what?”
“For being a bad person,” Kris said, like it was an inarguable truth of the universe.
Susie wanted to snap at them. What the fuck are you talking about, dumbass? You’re not a bad person. Noelle might’ve been the nicest person she’d met, but Kris was…Kris was nothing sort of amazing. Except, Susie immediately knew saying that wouldn’t achieve anything. It wouldn’t change Kris’ mind; wouldn’t stop them from cutting themself, or starving, or drinking, or any of those things. Instead, she gently traced the all-too-prominent line of their cheekbone with the pad of her thumb while trying to ignore the hollow pit widening inside her stomach.
“Yeah, well,” she murmured. “Guess that makes two of us.”
Kris cracked open one eye to stare up at her, again. “S’why you burned yourself, isn’t it?”
“…Yeah,” Susie admitted, at last. “Yeah, I just—I’d gotten out of a fight with a friend, and I…I guess I wanted something to distract myself from how bad I felt about it all.”
Kris smiled, at that: small and empty, but knowing.
Susie swept out their bangs with her fingers. Their lashes barely fluttered at her motions. “Though, usually, I fantasize about tearing out other peoples’ guts or ripping them limb from limb, rather than punishing myself.” It was her turn to shrug, this time. “Well, I am a dragon and all, so. Guess it’s to be expected,” she noted bitterly.
Kris regarded her solemnly, both eyes now open and fixed on her. “Did you think it about me, too?”
The question was quiet and soft-spoken, but they may as well have punctured her heart with a needle. Susie retreated into another drag on her cigarette to ease the aching in her chest.
“Sometimes,” she mumbled, after ejecting the smoke from her body. “Not these days, though.” She moved her hand over Kris’ scalp to ruffle their hair. “I usually just think about drilling you into a mattress or against a wall, instead.”
Kris yipped a little laugh. Susie couldn’t help herself; she barked with them.
“That’s fine,” Kris said, patting Susie on the back of her hand in their hair. They had a devilish smirk on their face. “Don’t mind being your personal seed depository.”
“Don’t put it like that, you moron,” Susie grumbled. “You’re still my friend, y’know.”
Kris rested their hand atop hers. “That why you don’t wanna maul me any more?”
“Obviously,” Susie huffed. She checked her cigarette; it was nearly down to the filter. She stubbed it out on a patch of bare earth beside her, finally freeing up both hands. She put them to good use, lifting Kris from her lap so she could wrap them up in her arms. “We can’t hang out like this or do fun stuff together if you’re missing your face.”
The more time Susie spent with Kris, the more she got to know them, the worse she felt about bullying them in the past. She wanted to grab her past self by the shoulders and shake her, demand to know what the hell she’d been thinking. Wanted to punch her for every time she’d injured Kris, left them with bruises or a bleeding nose and everything in between.
Kris didn’t protest to cuddling; instead, they flattened their hands over Susie’s chest and nuzzled their head into the crook of her neck. “Guess not,” they admitted.
Susie rested her chin atop their head, in the bed of their soft, apple-scented hair. “Nobody else gets to hurt you, either,” she murmured. “‘Cos if they do, I’ll kill ‘em.”
She wasn’t lying, either. Thinking about times in the dark worlds when Kris had been in danger, whether it was King crushing them in his hand or the whole ordeal with that sleazy salesman…even Berdly was on thin fucking ice after he’d tried blasting Kris off the rollercoaster with his wind magic, all while mocking them loud and clear. The memories didn’t only fill Susie with rage, but a strange feeling akin to the instinct to defend her territory. You don’t get to hurt them. I was here first! Susie still didn’t know what to feel about it. Shame, probably, that she was thinking of Kris like a possession, and not a person.
Whatever reaction she was expecting Kris to give her, it wasn’t them chuckling and saying, breath warm against her scales, “That’s really hot, you know.”
“Oh, shut the hell up,” Susie snapped, cheeks heating. “Why does everything gotta be about sex with you?”
Kris’ smile was sly. “Can’t help it. I’m just freaky like that.”
Susie rolled her eyes. “Well, at least you’re a freak with good taste,” she muttered.
Kris one-upped her with a kiss on the cheek: a gentle peck that left Susie’s skin tingling from the contact. “I know,” Kris murmured.
Two could play at that game. Susie lifted Kris’ chin with a hand and pressed her lips against theirs. Kris responded eagerly, their fingers digging into her chest through her shirt as they clung to her for support.
As soon as they both parted for breath, though, Kris grumbled, “You still taste bad.” If they meant to be insulting, it was undercut by the renewed blush coloring their pale cheeks.
“Hasn’t stopped you yet,” Susie pointed out, smirking.
She suspected Kris only kissed her again right after because they had no good counterargument to follow up with.
Neither of them were exactly in the mood for round two of fucking around, though, so this time, all they did was kiss. They both ended up laid out on the forest floor a second time, though, Kris on top of Susie and pressing against her without leaving the slightest gap between their bodies. Susie kept them in place with her arms still wrapped around them. They were both in the shade of the trees, but they may as well have been basking in direct sunlight, for all the heady warmth filling them from head to toe.
After minutes neither bothered keeping track of, they grew tired of making out, and returned to lounging. Susie resigned herself to knowing she’d likely gotten leaves and grass in her hair, now, and she’d have to brush it all out later. Never mind launder her clothes—and Kris’, too—to clean up all the dirt and dust smeared across them, before Toriel noticed and questioned what they’d both been doing.
“So?” she asked Kris, who was resting their chin on her chest. “Feel less like doing anything stupid, now?”
Kris’ smile was somewhere between mischievous and a more sincere emotion. “Li’l bit, yeah.”
“Only a little?” Susie asked, faux-offended. “Damn. I need to step up my game, clearly.”
That got another chuckle of Kris. Susie’s chest filled with warmth to hear it, to see them smile. It was—Kris was cute when they were happy. If only they could be like that more often…
“It’s fine, though,” Kris murmured. “I can’t…can’t die yet, anyway.” They licked their lips, bright pink from the kissing. “Something I gotta do, first.”
“Guess you’re not referring to conquering the big bad dragon?” Susie joked.
“Nah. Something else.” Kris’ smile fell away, again, and their gaze turned distant. “Something…important.”
Susie hesitated. “Like what?”
Kris met her eyes. “Secret,” they said. Neither their expression nor their tone revealed anything useful.
“For real? You goddamn tease.” Still, Susie was willing to back off, if it was as important to Kris as they were hinting at. She was grateful enough for everything they already shared with her.
Kris’ smirk returned, but there was something else lurking behind their expression. Susie couldn’t tell what. “I’ll tell you,” they murmured. “One day.”
She nodded. “I’ll hold you to that, y’know.”
“Mm.” Kris turned their head to rest their cheek against her, as if listening to her heart beating inside her chest. Or maybe they were planning on another nap. “You would.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Susie asked huffily.
Kris didn’t entertain her with an answer, and Susie reluctantly gave up when she realized they wouldn’t give her one. That was fine, though. She didn’t need Kris to tell her everything. Being able to hold them like this, touch them, kiss them, share their secrets, keep them anchored…it was already more than Susie could ask for.
She ran her hand along Kris’ spine while they rested atop her, and she quietly watched clouds drift across the autumn afternoon sky.