"Shhh, pretty." The words were hissed little things, tucked into the shell of his ear. Perhaps they were supposed to be reassuring. Perhaps they were meant to be something more. Michael did not find anything in them but another cause toward terror. The instruction, well, it was a difficult one to follow.

He was dimly aware of the stroking of fingers along his jaw. The sensation was there. They were rough, and warm, and a part of him knew that the skin that they touched was sticky. A part of him knew that the insipid simpering that he wished with all of his heart would go away was actually his own. He knew that the sound was coming past his own lips, stretched as they were along the thick vinyl bar shoved harshly between his teeth. The strain on his cheeks made him feel every tremble of noise and puff of air as peculiar half sounds were torn from his throat in an involuntary fashion. These strange animal noises were of him, and yet he found that he had little ability to make them stop.

"Shhhhh, it'll be all over soon."

Pain. He'd thought he'd moved beyond it somehow. He'd thought he couldn't feel it anymore. The rest of his body was this dull muted throbbing, a constant wave of sensation from which he'd managed to find some distance. This pain was new. It was hot, and sharp, and it spiked straight to the back of his skull. Wet. Warm, the way it poured down his cheek like a steady stream of tears. Crying. He'd stopped crying so long ago. The pain kept coming. It grew more and more intense, flowering behind his right eye. He'd long since been rendered blind by the swelling of the bruises, but this.. this was a new sort of blackness.

The screaming. He wished it would stop. The raw, ragged screaming and desperate, gurgling inhales of spittle and phlegm that were only followed by more of that shrill, horrific sound. He was crying, but not. Choking as the nerve snapped suddenly, and the inside of his head was left with a peculiar lopsidedness. Someone make the screaming stop. Make it stop. Stop. Stop. And it all. Faded.

--

He woke with a jolt, forced back into consciousness despite the throbbing of his body, and this new intense pulsing at the top of his right cheek. Something had forced him back to awareness, but at least now there was silence. That was some relief, the silence. He could even live with the rasping, spittle-laced breathing that filled his ears.

"Now, now," a quiet voice permeated the darkness and jabbed through his sense of being. "It's not time to sleep yet. We're not -done- here, and it's rude to sleep when there is company."

There were the noises again. The quiet, guttural ones. They made his skin crawl, and that made him more aware of his body than he wanted to be. His voice was tattered and torn, slipping and splintering over his pain as it came in starts and stutters against the unforgiving bit that kept him from speaking. Michael barely recognized it. He barely recognized anything. He just wanted the silence back.

Itching. His cheek. He wanted to scratch it quite suddenly. He wanted it with an intensity that caused his arms to jerk against the straps that bound them in place. The tissue strained, and the bruises and welts that were already laid into his skin protested in a sudden, hot symphony that burned through his focus. His body broke, and the little gasps and gurgles and grunts turned into those cries from earlier. Soft keening wails that came over and over and over again. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

There was something warm there, though. Something warm and wet that came to ease the itching sensation. It was both hard and soft at the same time, like metal wrapped in a layer of gauze and silk. But it pulsed, and thrummed, and it was alive. Michael wanted to recoil anew, and he forced himself to be distant from the alien sensation. It was then that he became aware of the hot puffs of air across the bridge of his nose, and the keen little well of agony where his eye had been. Breath, and air, and oh God help him the owner of that voice was -licking- him.

"You taste so good, pretty. So good. Have you been a good boy today?"

There was the keening again. He sounded like a thrice-damned puppy. Michael swallowed, and choked, and he frothed around the edges of the bit. This stranger was still licking him, lapping up the dried trails of itchiness on the curve of his cheek. The realization was almost as revolting as the awareness of what had happened to his eye.

"Good enough, yes, good.. mmm, enough."

Pressure. Pressure against the pulse and throb set above his cheek. Pressure in the pain, thick and hard and not that tongue. Slick and warm and driving hard. Harder. There was the screaming again. The pressure withdrew, came at the tender spot with another hard shove. Poking against the walls of his tolerance, squeezing against his thoughts. Gone, and back, and rocking into his head over and over again. Filling the confines of the agonizing socket where his eye once lived, forcing the swelling to flare all the more. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Black, again. Black in a way beyond that of vision. It was all... gone.

--

"Nooooo, naughty."

The words were punctuated with a sharp smack of flesh. Things came back slowly this time. The pain was not first. It was the smell. Metallic, tangy. A hint of musk. Then there was the imbalance. Blood in his head, his hands.. hand. Knees near his chest, and so hard to breathe. Rasping, drawn out groans mixed with long, heady moans of delight. Another smack, and he jolted, squirmed.

"Yessss. Better. You've been naughty, sweetling. I told you. It's -rude- to sleep when you have company."

It hurt. Hurt new. Burned. Rocking, and heat. Flaring. Tearing. The pain came in one jolt at a time. Another smack, stinging at the curve of his ass and inching deeper, deeper. Up his spine, to his head, where it bumped again, again, again against something hard and unyielding. The throbbing above his cheek had not stopped, and it seemed to pulse into the crook of his neck and down to meet the waves of pain that were coming from behind his folded body.

"And we can't," there was another jolt, and the burning inside eased as something seemed to give inside of him in a profound way. Slick, hot, slipping. In and out. "Have you," the stranger's voice puffed and curled in a seizure of growing pleasure. There was no more screaming. Just the ghost of screaming, ragged in his ears. "Being rude."

Michael's insides twisted, and he jerked again against the bands holding him in place. He gasped and he panted, but the brutal thrusting of the cock into his ass was as unrelenting as the pain that had been twisting about his nerves for what seemed an eternity. Michael wasn't at all sure he could remember a time before this. A time before the pain. His thoughts turned to it though, as he struggled past the mire of his reality. He caught pictures, images.. flashing smells and feelings. Birds in the trees, smoke in the wind, silk under his fingertips.

Gone. It was gone again, and there was this shrill sound in his ears. It was quiet. Rattly. Something was wrong. Wheezing. Rasping. Filling his ears. Pain in his lungs. Pain everywhere. Everywhere. And the rocking, it wouldn't stop. In and out and out and in and bloody slicked, smacking skin, the heavy swing of balls crashing into his own. He felt it all with great clarity, the way the cock in his ass pulsed and grew. Came slamming home. Unforgiving. Smacking, smacking, hand slapping the curve of his ass again. Fucking, and fucking. The wheezing stopped. The rasping ended. There was pulsing instead, hammering in his head. Fast, frantic. Michael's body convulsed, jerked beyond the force of the body plowing into his own. The pulsing was slowing, and things were starting to blur again. Slipping.. slipping more than before. The black was murky and muddy. His body slowed, distant. Sinking.. sinking. A deep and sucking mire. The musk of sex and the stink of fear and the metallic zing of blood all grew more and more distant. Further.. further away.