Title: Datura
Author: teagrl83
Pairing: Riddick/Kyra (Jack)
Rating: M (Explicit), PWP, proceed at your own risk
Notes: Submission to trope bingo. Previous version had technical difficulties.
It is as bad as any predicament to be in. He would say the worst, but experience has taught him there is always worse.
"I've done this before," Kyra says nonchalantly, like it's fixing the fuel gauge, like stabbing someone in the throat. "Fucked friends while someone else watched."
Riddick doesn't want to know that.
"The key is to focus on each other while you're giving them what they want. You'd be surprised how easy you get out of it." Her eyes grow distant.
The job seemed easy enough at first. There was plenty to take from the Lupus Five Pleasure Quarters. That is, up until their contact sold them out and, presto, Perseos found himself with the infamous convict, Richard B. Riddick, and his accomplice, practically gift wrapped on his doorstep. The lowlife could sell them off to any number of prisons to get enough credits to buy a small moon, terraformers included, but Perseos didn't need any more money.
Bodies for entertainment, however, were always in high demand.
Riddick had expected eyes on him, but Kyra had overshadowed him. If that piece of ass was good enough for an animal like Riddick, Perseos' logic went, he needed to see just how good she was under the dirt and soot. For business. The guards had a gun stabbed up against her jaw, so Riddick didn't argue.
"It won't be so bad." Kyra sits lazily slumped back on a chair in the dining area, bare feet propped up on the table. The dusty pants and oil-stained shirt clash against the opulence of the setting, but then, they got caught mid-break in after all. In any case, their quarters were nicer than any Riddick remembers. Too nice for slaves. Someone had said that happy whores fuck better. Happy sex slaves. Only the best for the richest of Lupus Five.
"I know how these places work. You're novelty material. They'll stud you out once maybe twice. Then it'll be too risky, or you'll kill someone, and they'll shoot you." She leans forward to grab a flower from the vase at the center of the table. "Not me. If I'm good, I can move up." She snapped the flower from the stem. "Most of the time they test the hookers out with a show." Kyra tore off a petal. "Want to see if they can handle being looked at." She tore off another. "If the hooker's really gifted the manager can't help himself." And another. "He'll want to have her next."
Riddick thinks he left the kid to be taken care of and the next thing he knows, she's hooked up and sold out by mercs. If he squints though, Riddick tells himself, he can still see Jack.
Kyra makes a fist, crushing what remained of the flower. "I can be a really gifted hooker."
It's been a year since they busted out of Crematoria. He meant to take Kyra to the nearest civilized planet, somewhere with a pretty view and under-regulation pollution. He'd set her up nice, then meant to be the fuck out. Twice as far, now that she was a fugitive. Only thing that stopped him was they had no credits. And the cost of nice was credits. Lots of them. So he let her think they'd partnered up, while saving his pennies and making sure the bounties stayed on his head. It seemed to be working out. Until it wasn't.
Lupus Five's two suns set already when she emerges from her shower, smelling like lavender. The bathrobe is high enough to hide the detonator collar around her neck.
He imagines Perseos' blood spilling over the ceramic tiles of the reception area. It's a happier thought than raping Kyra for an audience. One day before showtime, that asshole had said, wash up and rest. Don't mind the magnetized collars with a detonation device on them. Only go boom if you misbehave.
Not his. Riddick had dug out explosives out of his skin before. Getting rid of this one shouldn't be any harder. And if it went boom, then what the hell, he'd pushed his luck enough. But there was Kyra, all black looks and no sense.
He fucking hated partnering up.
She's smiling. "You're so serious! It's just fucking, Riddick."
"Not you," he snaps. "It shouldn't have to be you." Saying it out loud doesn't help. He feels as if he's picking on a scab, waiting for it to tear and bleed.
Kyra's face grows stormy and she goes from zero to sixty. "What, not innocent enough for you?"
Just the opposite, he thinks, but says, "They slaved you out."
"I'm not fourteen. I don't break like that anymore." He thinks she's going to leave the room, but she just stays there, looking at him like she can see through him. "Would you want me to? It would make you feel better, wouldn't it?"
It's irritating and he hits back. "No, I just wouldn't think you liked it."
The color splotches up her face and he thinks she's going look to for the nearest sharp object. But her eyes simply narrow. "Fuck you, Riddick. I'm trying to stay alive. Maybe you should have asked them for someone else."
"Maybe."
In retrospect, he'll think that he should have seen it coming. She's always been good at exit lines.
"I'll give you a tip, Riddick. If you fuck me from behind, you won't have to see my face when I come."
The guards come to get them on the hour.
He's trying not to stare at her too much. The bodystocking is nothing short of ridiculous, made up of a shimmery near-translucent fabric that clings like second skin to her small breasts and lithe frame. The intricate designs on the torso and abdomen cover as much as they reveal. She scratches at her neck where the top catches just under the collar.
The ludicrous outfit leaves her back bare. There's a similar intricate design in the clothing over her ass. As far as clothing goes, the whole thing is absurd. Riddick clamps down on the part of him that gives precisely no fucks about that. The part that just wants to rip off the portion between her legs and slam into her until she's hoarse from screaming. The animal part.
"Showtime," she whispers as the guards escort her.
He's trying to think about Jack. Poor kid was over her head, wore her fear on her sleeve. Riddick tries to think about how it was to hope things could be different. He's spent so long telling himself regret is bullshit. And yet, this is his magnum opus of failure. Where there was Jack, there's only Kyra, could only be Kyra-all bruises and sharp edges. But he owes Jack.
Maybe he can pretend that Jack is dead. It'd be easier. He's fucking halfway there already.
They are led to a room whose front wall is a mirror.
"Classy." Kyra laughs. There's a bed in the center of the room, but it's otherwise bare. The guards that brought them there leave them in the room and leave quickly. "Probably taping the whole thing," Kyra says matter-of-factly. She goes to the bed and sits down.
Riddick rubs at the collar around his neck, wishing he could rip it off. Impotent anger coils in the pit of his stomach. The collars, Perseos had said, don't come off unless we're satisfied. There has to be some way out. Something he hasn't thought of.
Kyra pulls at his arm insistently. He sits next to her, still going through every inch of the room. Anything that could be used as an escape.
She leans over and ends up on his lap, thighs at either side of him and all of her. For a second her weight, the smell of her skin, the feel of her hair against his temple blocks out everything. Then the image of that gangly kid back in M6-117 comes back to him.
"Hey," she whispers. "Stay with me."
"Can't," he murmurs.
"Would it make things better if I told you that I've been wanting to fuck you for years."
He recoils at the line and she must feel it because she hisses, "We're not dying because you can't fuck me," and kisses him.
It's not much of a kiss, so much as a crash of teeth and Kyra's tongue in his mouth. She's shifting her hips against him, slipping her hands down his pants and around his cock. She's single-minded, eyes locked on him, reading and cataloguing his reactions. That intensity should put him off, should remind him of what she's not, but he's got little mind for that with the rhythm that she's building.
"How do you want it?" she says low. "Want me to suck you off. Fuck my face?"
Riddick pulls her hands away, up and over her, pushing her back on the bed. He can't resist sinking his head into the curve of her neck, to where her real scent lies underneath the lavender. He snakes his own hand between her legs, and can't assimilate how wet she is. She lets out a moan and grinds against his hand, back arching. The cloth gives at the barest pull and he's sliding two fingers easily into her, thumb circling over her clit. "I want to see you come."
She's flushed and panting, hands clutching the sheets and he stops for a second. "What did I say?" It matters for some reason.
Kyra whimpers, hips twitching, but he's put some distance between his hand and her. He watches as she comes back to herself. "You—you're going to make me come."
"Not what I said."
She blinks, the green of her eyes a small fringe over the dark pupil. "You want to see me come."
"Yes," he curls his fingers as he presses in and Kyra arches back with a cry.
When she comes it is like someone else, because he can't think straight. It's all he can do to get rid of the pants. Kyra's still shuddering when he turns her over and enters her, her body open and yielding. He anchors himself through her hip, the gauzy fabric rubbing against his hipbone with every thrust, tension growing keener. He realizes she's touching herself and he lets the rush overtake him.
He's back to himself when the door opens and rearranges his clothes. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Kyra clean herself with the sheet, mindless of the guards that walk in. He should be concerned about the second leg of Kyra's plan, but all he can think about is that Jack is gone.
"Gorgeous," Perseos' voice rings from above. "Kyra."
She smiles, coy mask firmly in place. "Any chance I could get a private audience?"
"Most certainly, the guards in fact are here to escort you."
He's not at all surprised when the floor shakes and he hears what seem like alarms outside. The door snaps open and Kyra's face and body is blood-spattered and rapturous. She raises a hand and the collar on his neck unclips and falls of its own accord. It lands with a clang at his feet.
They have to lay low for a while. Now that they've bled the city's fattest cow, the suits have to make a point. As always, the mercs are all too happy to help. He hasn't checked yet, but he's sure his bounty just went up by a couple million token. A prison in the middle of nowhere doesn't ruffle as many feathers as pissing on someone's bottom line. Going underground it is.
Kyra's taking it well this time around. She gets stir crazy, when they spend too much time in one place. She's cut her hair, cropped it close to the skull, but she's not fooling anyone anymore.
She snickers when he tells her. "Not the point, Riddick," she replies. "There's just better things to do than wash someone's brains off my hair."
That may be the case, but there's more than that. He finds out when he goes up to check on the bounty, trying to get a read of when to make it off-planet. Bounties go up just after a crime or an escape, with time they tend to lower, people forget quick. Unless there's some incentive not to. The suits only care about getting their man, so anything that spreads the word is all right with them. The Guild of Lupus Five publicizes the bounties daily. Riddick doesn't even have to check his name, just logs in anonymously to the Mercenary Guild's terminal and there it is: Mass murder and level 3 explosives in the Pleasure Quarters.
But there's video. It's grainy, but enough to make out the target of the bounty. It's like a punch to the gut. The computer rolls out the stats below the image:
Height 5'8
Aprox weight: 138
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Brown, curly, long
Sex: F
Markings/Tattoos: N/A
History: Escaped from Crematoria
Accomplice: Richard B. Riddick
Bounty: 1.5 million credits
He leaves it at that, tightening the cloak around him. He takes a different path back to the hideout, pulse pounding in his ears. She's sharpening one of her knives- doesn't even look up when he slams the door.
Riddick grabs one of her wrists and squeezes. It's the first time he's touched her since the job. She looks up and the knife drops.
"You didn't disable their cameras."
"Whoops."
He lets her go roughly. "Congratulations. They'll be chasing you forever."
Kyra shrugs. "I'm a fugitive anyway."
He wants to shake her. "Not like this. Nobody gives a fuck about a prison in some backwoods planet, triple max or not, but this shit they won't forget."
"Good. They'll think twice now about recruiting happy whores, won't they?"
"Stupid," he snaps. "This is the second time you've pissed away any chance you ever had."
"Spare me." He pushes her back. Her back is flat against the wall, his hand against her shoulder. He ignores the subtle change in her scent. "You could just ask."
"I could just dump you at some of the Sisters of the Unfortunate, see how much trouble you get into there."
"Like it'd be hard for me to get out, Riddick," she leans forward to whisper. "And be back chasing your shadow before you can think."
"Get strung up by Mercs."
She lets her head fall back lightly against the concrete behind her, expression blasé, but her eyes are still on him, razor sharp. "Get slaved again, get sent to a slam. Somewhere along the way you'll save my ass. Rinse and fucking repeat."
"I'm not going to waste my time saving your ass." He lets her go, but she stays in the same spot.
"Come on, you don't even believe that."
"I came back for Jack."
Her expression changes, becomes more guarded, less defiant. "Right." Then the spark is back in her eyes, like she's caught a second wind. "And Jack's not here, but I am."
She's not a new animal at all he thinks. He jumped the gun. She's more like a composite, Jack-and-something-else. Something poisoned. Twisted. He should know.
Kyra brushes past him and goes back to her knife. His eyes trace the curve of her neck as she leans over it and he tries not to think of her skin. She lifts her head and catches his eye. There's the barest glint of a smile on her lips.