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Sausage knows something is very wrong when Scott nearly crash-lands outside his house late at night, dark circles heavy under his eyes as he staggers towards the balcony where Sausage is currently sitting.
He drops down from the railing with minimal damage, wincing slightly as his ankles protest at hitting packed earth. His heavy cloak is tucked away inside, so when Scott stumbles over to him and half-collapses against him, he feels right away that Scott is just as cold as the mountains he lives in.
“Whoa, whoa,” he says sharply, helping pull Scott back to his feet. “What’s going on, Scott? Pretty rare for you to drop by this late even for a tryst.”
“I needed to see you,” the Elvenking whispers, wrapping his arms around Sausage’s waist. He’s gotten even thinner since the last time Sausage saw him, weak arms and bony ribs. That’s not good. Neither is the way that Scott sounds like he’s close to death. “Needed to get my mind off things. I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Well, you’re in the right place, then.” He leans up, pressing a chaste kiss to Scott’s lips. He breaks it right away, placing one hand on Scott’s chest to stop him when his friend tries to chase for more. “Are you okay, though?”
Scott snorts. “No.”
He blinks. It’s even less like Scott to be outright miserable. He knows his friend prefers to wallow in isolation and then pretend that everything is absolutely fine. So things are really not good, noted.
Still, he manages to smile, wrapping one arm around Scott’s waist and guiding him towards the door. “Come in, I’ve got a fire going inside. It’s been a while since you last stopped by, but I think I can make up for it. Let’s go warm up.”
Scott laughs slightly, a bitter and ironic thing.
It’s not until a while later, when they’re both buried in the thick covers of Sausage’s bed, half of Scott’s clothes strewn across the floor and the aforementioned elf in his lap, that he actually finds out what’s going on.
He breaks his kiss with Scott, heaving for breath and carding his fingers through Scott’s hair. Scott arches back into the touch, giving pretty little gasps every so often. He smiles despite himself, pressing his mouth to Scott’s neck. “Good boy.”
Then Scott pauses, reaching up and gently grabbing onto his shoulders. “Not tonight.”
He startles slightly. “Hmm?”
“I need…” Scott looks to the side, gripping onto him tighter. Sausage is familiar with the way Scott looks when he’s flustered and trying not to acknowledge it, but this isn’t that. This is something else entirely. “I need you to be mean to me tonight.”
“Why?”
Scott buckles forward slightly, some furious pain glittering in his eyes when he looks back. “I deserve it.”
He shakes his head. “Something’s wrong. You don’t act like this. You’re all cold, too, and you look like you’re running from someone trying to kill you. Something happened, and I’m gonna need to know what’s going on before you expect to hurt you more.”
That’s a lot firmer than he’s used to being. Sure, he loves a rough hookup with Scott, one that leaves him with claw marks down his back and arms, bruises covering him and a litter of bites over pale elven skin. But not like this. Sausage may be a little too into pain, but consent’s still important, thank you very much. Whatever Scott’s issue is, his head clearly isn’t right for something like this. Sausage has standards.
Finally, Scott speaks with something like reproach. “fWhip and Gem hate me now.”
“What? Why?”
“I completely fucked up. Gem was trying to help me with the whole… ice thing.”
He nods, trailing his fingers down Scott’s spine to encourage him to go on.
“But she just, well, pushed me, I guess. She was asking me to do stuff I couldn’t, and I was so stressed that I didn’t know what to do, and I just…” He takes a deep breath in, shuddering slightly. “I hit her. With my magic. I think I froze her. Her hair’s got a bunch of white in it and she was all cold and I ran. So, yeah, she definitely hates me. And fWhip’s gonna hate me too.”
“Ah.” He blinks, taking a minute to process that. “Pretty bad day, huh?”
Scott goes still against him. “You're not angry?”
“Oh, no, I’m definitely angry,” he says, still not moving from his spot. He feels Scott flinch slightly and keeps running soothing touches down his spine. He feels a bit sick at the thought of Gem freezing to death, a strange headache starting to pound at his temples. But still, it seems like Scott made a mistake. He knows a thing or two about those. “I’m not gonna beat you up for it, though. How’s that supposed to fix anything?”
“But—”
“Shhh.” He presses one finger against Scott’s soft lips. “It’s not happening.”
He watches something spark in Scott’s eyes and has a pretty good guess what it is. If Scott can’t get him outright, he’s going to try and goad him into a fight.
And, to be honest, Sausage really isn’t looking for that right now. He just wants Scott to look a little less haunted, for both of them to fall back into the bed like all the times before and forget the outside world exists for a bit. He wants Scott’s skin to not feel like snow to the touch. He wants things to be okay for a bit.
That starts with getting Scott to be okay.
So, he speaks firmly, nipping at Scott’s neck. “And I’m not gonna hurt you, either. I’m going to be very nice to you, in fact, and make you feel good.”
“You can’t,” Scott whispers. His grip is so tight it’s painful.
He moves his lips up Scott’s neck, a whisper of a touch. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t. Have you been secretly super cruel this whole time? Are you here to kill me? Do you have a bunch of evil secrets? Cause it sounds like you just made a mistake to me.”
“Don’t,” Scott hisses, shaking slightly as he buries the sharp ends of his nails into Sausage’s shoulders. Sausage shivers at the feeling despite himself, wondering if sometime that’s not now he could convince Scott to move that pretty hand a little higher and press it against his throat. “I need you to hate me like everyone else does, you can’t— I deserve it. You know I do.”
“And I do too,” he murmurs in reply, kissing the arch of Scott’s throat. Scott’s other hand reaches up, clenching in his hair, pulling viciously and scraping at his scalp. “I deserve it even more than you if we’re gonna compare sob stories. But here we are.”
“I can’t— I’m not like you.”
He glances upwards through his lashes, trying not to think about how beautiful Scott looks on the verge of tears. “Huh?”
Scott sucks in a deep breath, whimpering slightly when Sausage shifts him closer in his lap. “You’re… good. You make people laugh. They want you around. You have value to them. All I do is hurt. It’s… Jimmy was right, you know, what he said after I stole the crown. I’m out of control. I don’t know who else I’ll hurt next.”
He gives a chuckle that rings with familiarity. “You think I don’t know that feeling?”
“I know you do,” Scott mutters. “It’s why… why I’m here. I think you’re the only one that could understand.”
He blinks for a moment, pulling back to trace his thumbs over Scott’s cheekbones. Scott’s eyelashes flutter slightly. Something sharp and raw aches in his chest. “Oh, Scott.”
His friend’s eyes fly open. Something defiant glints in the endless ice. “Don’t pity me.”
“Hey, hey, no pity here.” He moves his hands from Scott’s face, tracing them down his chest and waist, then settling them over his hips. He hooks his fingers under Scott’s belt, then leans up slightly to kiss the side of his mouth. “I love you, though.” He pulls Scott as close as he can, pressing his mouth to pale and frozen skin. “They love you, too, yknow. You’re still good , Scott. You make mistakes but you’re still good.”
He feels Scott shake, his shoulders heaving with silent sobs. When he speaks, his voice is cracked and fragile as a broken bone. “Don’t. Please, don’t, Sausage, please—”
“You’re so good,” he repeats, pulling Scott down to where he can kiss the sensitive point of his ear. “You’ll be okay. You can fix this. I love you.”
Scott’s head sinks down between his neck and shoulder. Sausage can feel the drip of hot tears against his skin. “Why can’t you be cruel to me?”
“That’s not what you need right now.”
“It is.” Scott’s words are directly counteracted by the way his hands clench tightly around Sausage’s back, how his wings puffing up around them like a cocoon to shield them from the rest of the world, the weakness to his voice. “I need someone to make me feel pain for it. Hurt me like I hurt them.”
“Uh-uh.” He grins slightly, even though he knows Scott can’t see it. “Not when we don’t even have a safe word for tonight, mister.”
“You—” His friend makes a choked noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “You’re insufferable.”
“You love me,” he replies, letting sappy affection drip from his tone. “You love me so much. And because I’m so nice and lovable, I’’m gonna help you get things on track again so you don’t do all the stupid stuff I did.”
Scott shifts in his lap, leaning back a little bit and fisting both his hands in Sausage’s shirt. Despite himself, Sausage’s breath catches when they make eye contact. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes red-rimmed and his hair in disarray, the collar of his tunic askew and barely concealing reddened marks. Tears fall silently down his face, pearly in the moonlight, and he doesn’t even bother to scrub them away.
“You can’t do that for me,” he nearly pleads . “How can you even be near me? Knowing what I did to Gem, to fWhip, to Jimmy? You should be kicking me out and leaving me in the cold.”
Sausage shakes his head. “I’m starting to think you’re into something weird, Scott.”
The joke doesn’t land, only makes Scott flinch a bit, so he quickly changes directions and instead stops gripping Scott’s belt to cup his face with one palm. “You’re beautiful. You’re good. And okay, maybe we’re both really messed up people and maybe we’ve both hurt all the same people, but… why wouldn’t I love you, then?”
Silence, for a moment, as Scott leans into his touch.
Then, soft as spun spider silk, “You mean it?”
“Oh, I do. So much.” He moves closer, kisses the tears from Scott’s cheeks and slides his other hand into Scott’s wings, gently petting the layers of soft feathers. Scott makes a hoarse sound, collapsing against his chest and practically melting into him. Slowly, the atmosphere of the room shifts.
He feels a cool touch on his collarbone, under the fabric of his shirt. One of Scott’s nails traces a circle against the scar just under his neck. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
A heavy sigh against his shoulder. “You’re probably right.”
“There we go,” he murmurs, sliding both his hands through Scott’s primary feathers and relishing in the way his friend gasps, starting to squirm in his hold again. “Now, why don’t you just relax a little and let good old Sausage take care of you for a bit.”