Chapter Text
Being an incubus in the modern age should be easy. It’s so straightforward: follow fashion trends, beauty tips, even sex tips, and post yourself if you have to. Hell, you can scam people online if nobody finds you attractive enough in real life! Sexual gratification can be done however much distance apart, as long as it’s caused by the incubus.
Or, if all else fails, he could pay a sex worker, or a dominatrix. Really anyone would work, and it’s as easy as having a few extra dollars in your pocket.
Except, Tord has a problem. He was born an incubus, forged in hellfire and wax making shape to his pallid body and horrid structure. He’s quite proud of his origins, as all demons are supposed to be, but perhaps his limited developmental years stunted his mental growth more than he had hoped, because he has not been able to seduce a single person since he’s arrived on the mortal plane.
It’s been months of treachery. There’s been awkward flirting, failed hookups, fleeting relationships, and yet none of them have lead anywhere at all. He can feel his power slipping, his body getting weaker, his beauty decaying, and despite all his efforts there is nothing he can do about it. Tord hasn’t been touched by a human more than the grand total of five times. It’s laughable. Humiliating. Frightening, if he allows himself to feel that way. Even with the crutch of the internet, he is failing.
He sits at his desk, computer illuminating blue light onto his dry, bloodshot eyes as he messages a girl he found on Tinder. The clock reads 4:13 AM. Not that he’s looking.
Tord: hey there gorgeous
Natalie: Hi lol
Natalie: Your pictures are amazing. What do you do for arms?
Tord: preacher curls and dead hangs
Tord: i also bench but thats a given
Tord: what are you doing tn
Natalie: Um, sleeping
Natalie: I don’t know you yet haha
Tord: dont you want to?
Natalie: Oof
Natalie: Not anymore sorry
[Natalie has blocked you.]
Tord drops his head into his hands, pressing his fingers into his eyes. It isn’t working. Nothing is. He managed to get all the way to fucking London, and he’s still dying. Even with a job and a nice computer and (human)food on the table. He’s gonna die and he hasn’t even fed properly yet. What is wrong with him? What’s wrong with humans?
He sighs. Deciding to turn in for the night and try again tomorrow, he powers off his computer and stretches out his back, the muscles of his wing connectors straining with effort.
Tord tiptoes downstairs to grab food. He managed to snag a rental with three other guys when he was desperate. It’s cheap and convenient, and the guys are actually pretty nice. Not to mention, the food is fucking awesome for Brits. He shivers as his bare feet hit the tile of the kitchen floor and rubs his arms.
There is an ache in his skin that started a little over a week ago. It almost feels like a bruise— it hurts bad when he touches it, and worse when he presses. He’s sure it has something to do with deprivation, but it’s not like there’s much more he can do about that. If the world doesn’t like him, the world doesn’t like him. He’ll shrivel up into a painful pile of goop no matter what he does. It’s sad to think about, but definitely inevitable, so he’s trying to get used to it…
As the bacon spins unceremoniously in the microwave(he doesn’t need to eat, but that doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy it), his senses hone in on someone else coming out of their room.
If the stench of alcohol has anything to say about it, it’s Tom. Tom is one of his roommates. Nothing that notable about him besides his faith, which is laughable, but Tord can’t really be one to judge in his situation. He’s about to walk past when Tom, in his happy, drunken stupor, bumps his shoulder, and fuck.
Electricity zings along his shoulder, heat sparking as if burning, and suddenly he notices how freezing he is, how much he’s really been starving. His mouth waters, his senses heighten, and his hands start shaking so hard he almost drops his plate of bacon, so he sets it very carefully on the table and braces himself. It hurts. The rest of his body hurts so fucking bad. It’s like he’s been shown a new light, a hope, on a silver platter, when he’s been in the dark for ages. The shoulder check is the sun on his skin, it’s the wax on his skeleton, the holy embers of under.
Of course he wants more. Why wouldn’t he? For the first time in his whole unbeing, he finally feels the air in his artificial lungs, he would be crazy if he just walked away.
Tom notices before anything.
“Mm, Tord?”
“Hva?” he replies almost immediately, dazed and sweating.
“Why’re you so cold?”
Tord looks at where Tom is leaned against the fridge, one hand planted on the closed freezer for balance. The flickering, gross light from the bulb on the top shelf of the refrigerator surrounds his silhouette like a dirty, yellow halo: blasphemy, he reminds himself with an imaginary slap of the face, but he can’t bring it in him to care. Tom is beautiful, Tom showed him unwilling mercy, Tom saved him when he hadn’t even know he was in danger. His mouth runs before he can think to stop it, not that he ever does.
“Want to try and warm me up?”
Tom squints at him for a moment before reaching into the fridge for a bottle of Smirnoff. Tord waits on his toes, on the serrated edge of liberation, until Tom mumbles, “you want to, like, cuddle?”
Tord could scream. He could set the room on fire, he could melt down his own skin into a puddle. But he won’t. Because this is an opportunity. A sickeningly slow, dangerous, opportunity. He puts on his best face and nods.
“Please. I’m so cold.”
Tom swirls the drink around, then takes a slow swig, Adam’s apple bobbing rather erotically, the collected moisture around his neck watching the light.
He closes the fridge behind him loud enough to make Tord jump. “Sure, I guess. My room.”
Before he knows it, Tord is standing uneasily in the middle of Tom’s room while Tom grabs an extra blanket from the closet. Its dark and quiet, something that usually comforts the demon, but as of right now it does nothing to quell his nerves.
Tom drapes the blanket over Tord and pushes him toward the bed with gentle, clumsy hands. His back stings and zips from the indirect contact, and he has no choice but to follow it, eventually landing on Tom’s warm bed with an oomf, then adjusting and getting under the blankets. Tom follows, first taking his sweats off and kicking them across the room. Tord shivers from the heat licking off of Tom’s body, and can’t control himself anymore.
He buries himself into the other‘s chest, Tom responding with a light grunt, and…
Oh god. Fuck.
It’s so good. It’s too good. He hisses in satisfaction as the glowing heat of melted iron folds into his flesh— he’s so sensitive, so deprived that even without friction, or sex, he can feel himself filling. It’s a wonder how he didn’t notice he was getting that bad. Maybe it‘s because he’d never really had that much to work with in the first place. He nearly screams when Tom drags his calloused hands up the back of Tord’s shirt. He holds it back, just barely, turning it into a sharp gasp and a desperate whine. Tom shushes him drunkenly, running his hands over his tingling skin.
It is becoming more and more obvious that Tom is someone Tord should start caring about immensely. He makes note of that and tucks it away for a time when he isn’t being overstimulated.
He finally, finally, lets himself go slack in Tom’s arms, all walls going down at once, just feeling. It’s a sickening sensation, one he can’t get enough of, that he’s helpless to whatever Tom wants to do to him, that he could do anything to him and he would end up liking it as much as this. The buzzing in his head doesn’t let up for a while. At some point, he realizes he’s been crying, which is probably why Tom has been mumbling vaguely comforting phrases into the shell of his ear the whole time. If only Tom knew where the tears were really coming from, that he was giving Tord life, that he’s offering something just short of salvation to a demon.
Tom wipes his tears with an unsteady hand, Tord leaning into the touch, then envelops him in all four limbs, flips them over, and promptly starts snoring.
Tord blinks, sniffing. Tom is asleep. Surprisingly, Tord is not long to follow.