for logan;

[acidified]

Sandrock.

It was supposed to be a quick stop. Refill his canteens, purchase some rations, get back on the train. The first two were easy enough tasks. He even managed to bump into an injured man and, deciding to play god, healed his injuries with the magic of nature that runs through his body.

But then the train broke down. Hearing the news had Rio hissing in displeasure, his tongue flicking out the moment he was alone. Staying at the inn wasn't an option. Wearing a cloak wasn't going to hide his long, serpentine tail from the people of the town forever. They were bound to pick up on his fangs and claws and scales; he couldn't cover himself from head to toe. And if his eyepatch came off...well, the last person who saw that eye called him a monster didn't return home that night.

The last thing he needed was for this place to think he was some kind of Geegler.

Thankfully, the desert vipers were able to lead him to a home. A cave in the desert, spacious enough to set up camp for a bit while he waited for the train to be repaired. It was a place he could take off his clothes and free his body and all of its 'monstrous' traits. With a stolen table and candles, soon the little pit a bit more bearable, lit by magical light that cooled the cave instead of making it hotter than the outside.

What Rio hadn't counted on was the sandstorms. He'd heard about them the few times he ventured into town to buy water or other supplies. He heard about the way they enraged the monsters. One moment, he'd been returning to his makeshift home, and the next he was tearing at his clothes, crying out in pain. His one human eye turned bright red as he fell to the sand, tail lashing, grunting and hissing as he tried to gain control of himself. He wasn't a monster, but the temptation to give into bestial urges brought about by the sandstorm—

They became too hard to resist the moment he caught sight of a man looking for cover.

He stalked the man for a moment, long enough to get the drop on him, but then he lunged. Fangs bared as he hissed loudly, he knocked the stranger to the ground. Claws tore at the human's clothes and a hand attempted to shove the man's face into the sand. His eyepatch stayed on, leaving one manic eye to rove over the man's body. Food? Prey? Drink? His body tensed and strained as the man struggled beneath him, ready to fight back.

"Help," Rio pleaded as he attempted to lift the stranger's body to slam him back into the hard sand. "Please."

Comments

[yakboy]

Outlaw though he may be, Logan was still Sandrock’s monster hunter — even if they didn’t know it. Every sandstorm had him patrolling the desert, dispatching of any enraged monster he could find before it made its way to Sandrock. It chafed, of course, that Pen got all the credit, but Sandrock was safe, and that was what mattered.

That being said, it was thankless work. Particularly when he was getting buffeted by sandstorm winds after taking a stray bullet from a Dive Buzzard. Luckily, Logan knew of a cave nearby that would nicely serve as a place to hunker down and wait for winds to ease. Dismounting Rambo with a stagger and a grunt, he set about looking for the cave entrance. But between the raging winds and the throb of pain in his wounded side, he didn’t hear Rambo’s bleats of warning until it was too late.

Something had knocked him to the ground, punching the winds out of him before he even realized what was happening. Mentally, Logan berated himself. He knew better than to let down his guard in the Eufaula. The biggest mistake a monster hunter could make was complacency. The creature humanoid, but nothing Logan had ever encountered before. But he wasn’t worried about the classification of a new monster — he was going to have his hands full just surviving.

And then it spoke.

The monster was a man, or at least humanoid. Whatever blood ran through this man’s veins, it seemed he felt the effects of the Eufaula’s sandstorms just as the monsters did. But the man was lucid enough to ask for help, even as he was trying to subdue Logan.

Well. He could worry about that once he got his feet back under him.

With a grunt, Logan twisted until he was facing his attacker, and his hunter’s mind noted the bright intelligence in his gaze — though it seemed half-crazed at the moment. Ignoring the pain, he grappled the other man and attempted to roll to the side in order to get the upper hand, reversing their positions.

“You got a real funny way of askin’ for help, stranger,” Logan panted, his smoky voice slightly muffled under the black bandana tied around his face. His hand blindly grasped at his belt, searching for the hilt of his dagger.

[acidified]

As soon as he manages to force out the request for help, whatever madness is consuming him only digs in deeper, past his scales. Inward. His next response came in the form of a hiss, a display of serpentine fang and forked tongue that pull the scent of his prey to his nostrils. The desire to drag his claws through his prey's skin was growing in urgency; to slash, to impale teeth into flesh, as if violence directed at everything surrounding him could clear the sandstorm from his mind.

But what his tongue pulls to him isn't only the scent of flesh and fear (no, if anything, the scent of fear is disappointingly nearly absent, how insulting). The familiar scent of blood delights and distracts, enough so that Rio quickly finds himself on his back, his eyes only widening for a fleeting second at the reversal. Even in this state of mind, there's a playfulness that brings him to smirk. How many times has he pulled a man on top of him? More than he can count, and, if only for a moment, his hips push against his prey's.

He can see the glint of metal, but he pays it no mind. A hand attempts to grab Logan's hair, but it's the part of Rio's body that the man should be least concerned about. His tail pushes away sand in an attempt to wrap around one of Logan's legs, his goal to constrict him there. More importantly, his free hand doesn't remain idle for long—his eyes pinpoint the wound and, with a sharp laugh, he thrusts his palm full force into it.

Maybe his prey will cry, will whimper for him.

[yakboy]

There’s a hiss of his own when Rio arches his hips against him, an involuntary suction of air between his teeth. Logan didn’t have the time nor the freedom to seek companionship, but he was still a man. His loins stirred with interest as Rio struggled underneath him, vibrant red hair swirling against the sand like ruby filigree. The pale blue of Logan’s eyes seemed to darken as they quickly scanned over his new opponent, cataloging his features as he tried to place Rio’s species.

His first thought, naturally, was some mutated form of Geegler. But he quickly set that aside. While they were both reptilian in nature, this man was distinctly more serpentine than lizardlike. And he’d certainly never seen one that was so… human at first glance.

But that was all he could consider before Rio lashed out again. Logan let out a loud grunt of pain when Rio's palm thrust against his wound, but the sound didn't turn into a whimper. Rather, Logan's eyes seemed to grow brighter and more focused, crinkling at the edges as the bandana hid the grin that was forming on his face. The grunt of pain quickly morphed into a hoarse, wild laugh as he instinctively kicked at the tail moving to try and coil around his leg.

"Oh, you're feisty."

The pain was dulling now as a familiar prickle of excitement crackled at the base of his spine and adrenaline flooded his veins. This was his calling, what he was born for. If creatures were causing trouble in Sandrock, it was Logan’s job to stop that trouble in its tracks. The hot feeling toiled more intensely between his legs – he always did enjoy the rush and danger of a good fight.

Rio’s hands were on his body, one coiling in his hair and the other targeting his wound. Logan grabbed both wrists and moved to pin them above the man’s head with one hand, his dagger unsheathed and ready to strike out with the other.

“Now, you gonna behave, or do you still wanna play rough?”

[acidified]

No whimpering. No sounds of bones crunching beneath the pressure of his tail. His tongue flicked out in irritation, forked and black in color. If he were a wild animal—and in this state, he almost was but not quite—he might have thrashed or slammed his head forward. But Rio, whether in this godsforsaken agitated state or not, simply believed he was incapable of losing to this man.

Logan was prey. A toy. And that laugh was oh-so-enticing. It was the kind of laugh that warranted one in return, his hand squeezing that gunshot wound harder, clawed fingers posed to deepen the wound before his hand was knocked away. Rio didn't writhe or panic. The man on top of him was certainly large and powerful, but so was he—enough so that his prey would only be able to pin one of his wrists in place.

And leaving Rio with a free hand always came with risks.

A firm hand slowly and almost gently reached for the wrist that held a dagger, but as soon as contact was made his grip tightened fiercely, the narrow slits in his eyes flashing triumphantly with another flick of his tongue. If he were in his right mind, he would be saying a lot more to this man, but as things were he could only slide his leg and lift, pressing a very firm but not painful knee right between Logan's legs. He moved it in a circle, slowly, predatorily. To the snake, the man in front of him was little more than a fly caught in a web, and he could already detect his arousal in the air.

With a soft exhale, something mixed into the air around them. Logan wouldn't be able to see it—spores are nearly invisible, after all. But even if they weren't, that Logan's eyesight would be threatening to quit on him would prevent him from seeing a lot more than that, the natural parasites in Rio's body aiming to temporarily rid his snack of his eyesight.

Fortunately for Logan, Rio, regardless of how crazed he was, wasn't nearly as impossible to defeat as he thought he was.

[yakboy]

He tensed when Rio continued to resist, didn't fall docile to his restraining hands and rumbling voice. Not that he expected him to surrender so easy -- like he said, the man was feisty. And even in pain, Logan was always up for a good tussle. The gunshot wound was little more than a twinge in the back of his mind as his tongue darted out to lick his dry lips, an unconscious mimic of Rio.

"Alright, buttercup. Let's play rough."

He twisted his wrist to disengage Rio's hand, but faltered slightly as Rio brought up a knee to press between his legs. He'd been hard before during a fight, more due to the excitement and adrenaline than anything else, but Logan's opponents usually weren't the kind of creatures to pick up on that, nor encourage it. Another hiss escaped him as his thighs clenched around Rio, simultaneously encouraging and attempting to dissuade him, and the exhale that followed morphed into a low growl as the sensation touched on the more primitive part of Logan's mind.

The bandana around Logan's face muffled his senses, but even so, their proximity let him catch a faint, split-second whiff of something cloying and sweet, with an underlying reptilian musk that Logan was all too familiar with. While he couldn't consciously pick out the rot that hid underneath, the idea of a damp, decaying earth still flashed before his eyes, just before his vision began to dim and threaten to black out completely.

Logan was a child of Sandrock. He had grown up with the sandstorms at his back, until its mask of dust and grit almost felt like a friend. To lose his vision only meant that the rest of his senses sharpened to a razor's edge, ready to make up for the loss. On instinct, he plunged his dagger down before Rio could take advantage of Logan's sudden handicap, sinking it into the meat of his shoulder as if attempting to pin him into the sand. Despite the danger Rio posed, Logan was careful not to give a mortal wound. He struck to cause pain and distract, rather than kill or seriously injure. Rio's strained call for help still lingered in his ears, and Logan found himself reluctant to resort to lethality unless he had to.

[acidified]

"Piece of shit."

His voice came back to him, low and annoyed and once more accompanied by a flick of his tongue. There was a knife in his shoulder. It wasn't the first time he'd been stabbed, it wouldn't be the last time he was stabbed...but it was the first time he had asked to be stabbed. His memories came back to him quickly thanks to the shock to his system, which immediately reminded him that he'd been pathetic in front of a stranger.

A stranger that felt a little firm beneath his knee. Well. That was to be expected.

"I normally charge for penetration, yeah? You goin' to take responsibility?"

Rio scoffed. Logan's vision would becoming back to him rapidly now that the spores that lived in his body had something better to do. His wound started to heal up instantly, slowly pushing the knife out without any effort on his part. Rio flicked his eyes to his shoulder to watch the show, flicked his eyes back to the handsome stranger to see if he was impressed.

With the heat of battle gone away with (for now?), he pulled his hands free and stretched his arms above his head, moving slightly beneath Logan in a way that was meant to seem innocent. It wasn't. Writhing beneath him only brought more friction, because Logan was still his inferior. He might not currently be prey, but the man was still an entertaining plaything...unless he proved otherwise.

"Stay still, big guy. Let me help you out."

With deliberate movements to prove a lack of ill intent, he moved his hand to Logan's hair. He trailed his fingers to his chin, tilting his face towards his before trailing lower. Claws traced over his neck and the outline of his chest before moving further still, eventually settling over the wound from before. He exhaled softly, and, unless he was shoved away or forced aside, that wound would start to close itself up just like his own had, leaving nothing more than a tiny scar.

And then he moved to stand, once more dragging his knee right against Logan's groin as he did.