A/N: Sorry that it's taken so long. TLDR; I have fibromyalgia and have only recently gotten custody of my brain. 2020 hasn't been kind to anyone so I figured it was probably time to finish off this Ergo Proxy smut I started writing like forever ago. Hope it's worth the wait

Famished

Re-l woke alone. Fully dressed, hair fussed and eyes darkened she bit on her pencil a little too tight and decided to close up the journal for now. Vincent had left sometime early in the morning and the Centzen had come to a stop in her sleep. She felt jarred but unsurprised and continued the comfort of morning routine until he inevitably returned. But in this instance sitting alone in the silence, she felt especially spurned in his efforts to distance himself from her. Pino's sad flat notes were indicative that at least she was not alone in that endeavor and stood with a stretch upward. Re-l stepped out onto the deck to find Pino hanging her legs off the edge slack over the lower railing bar.

"Pino, the railing is unstable," Re-l said in a stiff way.

Pino looked up at Re-l and smiled. "Vince said it's safe now."

So she had seen him. "Did he tell you where he went?"

"Why?"

Re-l practically bit her tongue. "He left without clarifying something with me," she said coolly. Pino seemed satisfied and stood up.

"Vince found a 'junkyard' about 467 meters north of here. He had to go back to get scrap for the hull of the Rabbit and Kristieva told me to let you sleep since you had a bad nightmare last night," Pino said.

Re-l almost made the mistake of asking what she meant when the flash of thought brought a creeping heat up the back of her neck. She swallowed back some sense of dignity and her stance grew more rigid under the scrutiny of the Autoriev child. His presence was strewn about in the form of tools unused set down in formation around the anchored Centzen. Kristieva was very much attached to the charge, lucid but relaxed with darkened eyes. Pino looked up at Re-l expectantly, as if ready to follow whether she was wanted or not. Re-l pinched the bridge of her nose and an uninhibited stamp of her foot as she cursed herself silently.

"Show me where."

Pino's face broke an uncanny grin in agreement to this request and immediately jumped from the Centzen to get a head start on the path. Re-l sighed at the pace and drudged along in hopes to find some reason to send the child back to the Rabbit somehow. The path was simple enough to follow and they arrived over the ridge in view of the junkyard which spanned out wider than first perceived and Re-l stopped in shock of it at first. The junkyard under Ramdeau hardly compared, but the dome in the distance looked long decimated and weather worn. The warmth of the previous day was leaving her body the closer they approached the entrance.

Re-l paused at the gate and looked around at the mountainous almost meticulously piled metal, wood, glass trinkets, plastic toys—all practically indistinguishable from the amount of sediment, rust, dust, and wear. The mud on her boots sparkled with rust dust and glitter and the way the water gathered had a nonredeemable stench. Pino seemed to be mesmerized by the laid paths and poked her head around the corner.

"C'mon, Re-l! He went this way!"

Re-l rolled her eyes and followed onward, relaxing in spite of the oppressive air and winding paths. The sun was hidden in clouds and Re-l dreaded the threat of rain in such a place, but decided to focus on what she would even say when they turned a corner and a halt as she spotted Vincent first, back turned, wiggling a flat metal door out from between some ancient sandwiched land vehicles. The chill in the air meant for once this week he had the orange jumpsuit on normally. Re-l wasn't disappointed necessarily but found herself looking away the moment he turned his head to see them.

Pino ran up to him and jumped at his gut, which caused him to laugh and grunt a tired, "H-Hey now, hello" as his eyes drifted up to Re-l and she thought she caught a whisper of candid smugness in his welcoming smile. The magnetism in the gesture was electrifying the nerves under her skin. "What are you guys doing here?" he asked.

Re-l realized in this moment she had no real answer. But then, she didn't need to answer with Pino around. "We came to help you carry the scrap back!"

The Autoriev ran over to the pile of flat steel he must have been amassing since being back here. He absently loosened the fastens of his jumpsuit and tugged at his collar to cool down. They caught each other's side eye and held it a moment too long saying nothing at all.

Meek as he acted there was a hint of a grin in the way he flashed his teeth when he leaned over to ask, "While I appreciate the help, you're not really wearing the kind of clothes you want to ruin, are you, Re-l?"

She jerked her head in objective deflection. "It's not like they'll stain." All black had its benefits. He bravely pinched the cloth of her soft polyfiber tunic at the shoulder seam as if to remind her how thin it was. She moved out from under his touch and in the direction of Pino, who was still battling with a sheet of metal herself. Kicking through the scrap she hoisted two sizable slabs underwing and helped Pino balance out her own piece. "Or would you rather carry all this back yourself?"

"Well," Vincent said dryly, shaking his head, "I suppose now it will only be two trips instead of three or four."

"That's the spirit Vince!" Pino said, now running forward blindly the way they came from.

Trailing behind was Re-l, who paused only a moment to watch Vincent pin a couple sheets of metal under his arm. She walked ahead of him in a somewhat rushed pace. The narrow paths wouldn't let them travel hip to hip and the tension knowing his eyes had the whole of her back made her more nervous than she wanted to admit.

Vincent, on the other hand, felt altogether too much tension in the sway of her hair against her spine and the occasional look she gave him when they rounded another bend slower behind Pino who was humming some tune. The gate was more narrow than anticipated, Pino initially found it difficult to pass and had to try many maneuvers with a backwards approach seemingly most efficient. Re-l backed into him only once and found herself frozen in place at the accidental boldness. Vincent's free hand touched her waist instinctually but he realized his blunder too late and without fail a mutter of a sorry troubled his lips and breathed across her shoulder. Her spine trembled coolly as his fingers lingered on her ribs.

Pino called after them from out the gate and Re-l started forward without a hesitation. Vincent found himself trailing slightly behind. Watching Re-l climb the ridge and struggle slightly was, well, funny. She grunted in pain but resisted any helping hand and dragged the metal at times until she made it to the top of the ridge, scrambling to resist the inevitable grip of gravity. Triumphant at the top, however, a picture of grace with a flourishing flip of her hair and the barest glint of sweat as she grimaced down at him.

Pino dropped with the metal sheet once they arrived at the Rabbit. Re-l dropped hers haphazardly with the spite unfettered and Vincent naturally scooped up and tidied the loose metals into a neater pile. Kristieva approached the railing and waved at them from the deck of the Rabbit.

"Glad to see you awake, Kristieva," Vincent said almost too quickly.

"Watch Pino," Re-l blurted. Pino responded with a sour flat note.

"Of course," Kristieva obliged.

"I could use a shower and a meal," Vincent said with an innocent nod toward Re-l, adding quite coyly, "I'm famished."

Truthfully he didn't expect to make it through the doorway with her but she allowed him to be the one to enter the living quarters and he found himself in the unique position to enact a semi-regular fantasy of his of just pinning her against the door. Except he found himself doing so the moment she closed the door behind her. His fingers wrapped around her wrists and pulled them above her head. He came as close to kiss her as manageable until she laughed outright in his face.

"You smell awful."

"Well I did spend all day picking junk from the oldest junkyard I have seen in a while."

"Shower?"

Vincent released her arms and watched her slide out from under him slyly. She began slipping out of her tunic and his heart dropped somewhere lower and throbbed. He had thought for a moment he had misheard her but she seemed to be entirely serious. Vincent began undoing his own bindings and followed her into the small bathroom compartment. He could barely stop his hands from grasping her hips and pulling her against him as the straps of the bralette drifted down her arms. His heart was pounding heavier and harder and the more she unfurled for him the less he felt safe to let himself go.

Re-l began to feel him pull away and wrapped her arms around his waist in a bit of a snare. The hesitation of yesterday weighed on her mind, and she looked up into his eyes to see his glowing back at her and she remembered the night in the bathroom all over again. She gripped his hand and pulled it to her face and pressed her cheek to his palm. His thumb twitched. He winced at the thought of crushing her lips with his thumb and enjoying the delicate bruising flesh as it molds between his fingers. The thought both excited and burned him deeply. He wanted so badly to just make love to her without worrying if she would crumble in his hands.

She pulled him into the shower and the water, first ice cold then far too hot—burning—made his jumpsuit too heavy and it fell in a wet mass at his feet. Her lips found his and there was hands under his went undershirt. He could barely see through his hair and yet her hands seemed to find everything, including something he never expected her to touch and it made him jump and yelp as her hand tickled his inner thigh.

"You can touch me, Vincent," she said aloud and he finally wiped the hair from his eyes.

She stood beneath him in the stream, dripping with shower stream splatter against her lip, eyes streaming with blue and black like tears, down her collarbone between her breasts around her naval. It was far too much. She grasped his hand and pressed it to her breast and his mouth was on her mouth in an instant. Soap was added in, but this wasn't a proper shower, and when the water was off the towels were an excuse to slow down a little. Re-l didn't know the proper order of things, but Vincent couldn't relax yet. Head spinning out of control it humbled him to be able to touch her at all; but Re-l lay bare beneath him arms hooked around his neck with an impatient tug and he felt compelled to sit up and cool his head again.

This frustrated her immensely.

Re-l sat up, full-bared and prickled with heat from her ears to her shoulders, mulling the next words from her lips carefully. He seemed truthfully bothered, unsettled by the concept of giving in to his more carnal nature, and as frustrated as it made her she couldn't help but note the affect it must have had on him all these years. He didn't want to reject her again. He didn't want to reject himself anymore. But if she were to be hurt by his hand would he forgive himself…? Or worse so, would he… revel it?

He put his face in his hands and groaned outwardly. Ah, a noise she could finally answer. Her fingers curled over his shoulder, jolting him from his self-flagellation momentarily. She gave him an endearing look, one to comfort him as she grasped his hand and danced her fingers over his palm. Her eyes caught and held his, demanding his attention. "You love me?" she asked—stated really—and his dumbfounded nodding caused her to crack a bit of a smile. She brought his hands up to her cheeks and closed her eyes. "Then love me with your hands."

"What if I hurt you?" he had to ask.

Re-l pulled his hands from her face and held them between their bodies coupled together in her small deft fingers. Her heart braised itself raw against her ribcage. "Well, it doesn't have to be hands..." she revised thoughtfully. Vincent's eyes flicked between her eyes and her hands holding his in place and began to deduce her meaning.

He felt meek as his voice, somewhat shakyily, clarified, "Do you mean… to tie me up?"

"Only if you want to," she added quickly, but a regretful blush stole her pallor and he found a particular limb twitching painfully at the confirmation.

Rather than fuss with particulars, she left his side on the bedding on the floor momentarily and returned with a belt in hand. He resigned himself to being bound from behind. She watched his shoulders tense when the leather passed over his wrists and there was something electric about muzzling a beast. Although timid in application she found a spine in tightening it around his wrists. There was no hole for which to fasten it securely, but the tension of pulling it through the necessary loops held it in place. He tested the binding and his meekness began to melt altogether as the green glow of his eyes caught hers from the corner.

"Too tight?" she asked quietly.

He twisted on his legs to face her and a toothy grin creeped up. "I'd be more concerned if it's loose," he said with an unapologetic twist to his words. The darker edge to his voice always made her shudder. He still had his boxers on, wet from improperly undressing in the shower, but he was practically nude before her, bound and splayed but hardly helpless. She could already hear the strain of the leather as she inched closer to him in her methodical way, unsure as to how to proceed. Her heart would explode if he touched her now. So instead she finished peeling off her own damp underthings and sat before him utterly bare, leg hair prickling in the cool air, skin rippled with goosflesh he couldn't reach to taste.

This kind of teasing was both excruciating and necessary.

Vincent reacted stiffly to the restraints at first, but he was loosening his control with time and before long the binding felt somewhat natural as he settled into a pose to better receive her weight as she crawled up onto his lap. He wasted no time snaking past her arms trying to balance evenly atop him and caught the full brunt of her dead weight as she collapsed into the kiss. Her raw flesh burned against his as their chests touched and their heartbeats fucked in syncopate. His arms lurched to grab her only to strain, frustrating the fire in his groin and erupting in the form of bites to her neck that pulled a squeak from her lungs.

She dared not be outdone by a handicapped Vincent, however, and managed to snake out of his reach down his chest, dragging her teeth and lips to the muscled plane between his hips. He let his head fall back when he felt the twitchy nerves of the tip tug free of the boxers. The cold air and hot breath sensations were enough to come undone right there but he managed to keep himself contained enough to bare a brief glance downward as her tongue fell from her mouth and curled around the head as if she had known exactly where to start.

"Re-l—you don't have to—ah!"

She wrapped her hand around the base weakly since it throbbed so seemingly painful and attempted to take the whole of it into her mouth, only to catch slightly at the roof of her mouth causing him to jerk against his restraints again. Although she had never attempted this act before, she was well aware of what it entailed in the barest concept. Actively applying theory took a sense of trial and error but once her lips were whetted the matter become something akin to second nature. Vincent held his breath the entire time, feeling the blood leave his fingers entirely as he gripped the loose belt strap in desperation until she stopped entirely too long, her tongue still connected by the flow of clear sap as she hovered above him and her unfocused half-lidded irises found his to initiate a coy readiness as she scaled up the length of his body to find his gaping mouth receptive.

Re-l anticipated this hesitation she felt. She knew it would be a hurdle to consider. Plainly, Vincent's sex hardly fit in her mouth and now pressed against her stomach she realized she was not entirely sure if she even had space inside. Vincent, however, was viscerally famished. Even pinned he managed to maneuver her into a more direct position hip bones kissing in a brief grind that sent her eyes aflutter, allowing his teeth agency over the expanse of her throat. His bites nearly broke the skin but it was the spine bending bucking that had her clinging to him. It was a private conversation for the sexes that Re-l worried her noises might interrupt, so she naturally bit down on his shoulder and all at once he found himself frozen as her body fell right into position, arcing just so into his core. She relaxed against him and let herelf slip down onto him with a clenched hand at the back of his neck and they let their lips touch and sighed against each other as she dropped further down the length of him until she was past her comfort capacity and clenched up against him.

The shadow over Vincent's vision deepened as he felt the leather stretch against his straining wrists. She seemed to be relaxing and managed to fit a fair majority after meticulous effort but the subject of moving made her queasy until she felt him twitch internally and her own reflexive response created the necessary combustion to move a train and the rhythm found itself as she tried to keep the pace slow to keep from being outdone by Vincent's growing aggression. Needless to say, this affection was a long time coming and with every gyration a new vibration played at the strings holding his better sensibilities down. And before long he was beginning to react like a dog choked by its leash, testing the restraints on every downward dip of her hips.

And truthfully, Re-l could tell but the sound and smell of the leather that he was close. His skin seemed to be purpling in desperation and he grit his sharp teeth a bit rabidly when she slipped the tip out of her. But she made the mistake of dropping too fast, the sound of the leather snapping and the sharp pain of the head hitting her cervix made her jerk into a safer position, only aided by his newly freed hands and growing claws which gripped her ribs cold but reflooding with blood.

Vincent's hands slid up her body up over her breasts to the back of her shoulders and he pulled her in closer than ever as he pushed her onto her back and took her as raw and bare as he'd never intended to do. She couldn't hold her voice as even as before and bite his shoulder to keep from screaming what barely counted as words when he hooked her leg over his hip. Vincent seemed to lose himself in that movements, and while it was intense at first Re-l couldn't believe how long she had been going without this sensation. She knew if she kept squawking helplessly at his thrusts he might come back to his senses and her lips brushed his ear with the softest, warbled, "Don't. Stop."

Vincent's sincerity crept in for only a moment to capture her face in his claws. He felt her arc and grasp at his ribs as the pace kept her from articulating her needs but every thrust brought him closer to the edge as he kissed her mouth and eyes and grasped her throat every so briefly to bite and suck her chin and ears when at last his thumb and claw grazed and pushed on her lip as her body jerked ready for the coming spasm that pulled and sank him deeper inside her and in that closeness he gripped the bed at release and anchored himself to keep from crushing the life from her.

The final throes ended in gasping laughter from Re-l whose fingers grazed his ribs near his bursting heart, and a soft palm kissed his jaw to keep his eyes on hers. "That's what you were so afraid of?"

Vincent saw his claws receding and dropped beside her, pulling her into a spoon to keep her from escaping. She smelled like everything but a shower, but her hair was still drying and her eyes were still ringed with blue sparkles. She glanced up at him and nuzzled her head into his shoulder. The effect of release allowed them both to relax into each other for once and there was a comfort there that wasn't there before. Re-l twisted in his arms to face him and pressed her hand to his chest, feeling the tempo as she watched his eyes peel away from hers to look away almost shamefully. She moved into his vision and curled in closer.

"I think I love you too."

In a way, that confirmation is all Vincent would ever need to continue living out the rest of his days on this cursed airship. And as Re-l drifted off into a midday nap, Vincent stroked her head in the warmth of this new prospective pasttime, and although he was not yet human he had found a deeper understanding in the way she let her own guard down around him and he wouldn't trade that for the world.