Master Apprentice Archive Purest Comfort Quick search:

Homepage: http://elektra.slashcity.tv/fanfiction.html

Archive: Yes on MA and OA. Other places ask first.

Category: Non-Q/O, Angst, BDSM, POV

Rating: NC-17, bloodletting

Warning: More Qui-Torture, told from Maul's point of view. Creative use of stickpins, ice cubes, and light torch. Serious ouchies here. Spoilers: Previous tale, "I Lay in the Darkness."

Summary: Maul reflects on Qui's first visit. Sequel to "I Lay in the Darkness."

Disclaimer: Everything you recognize belongs to GL, everything you wish you didn?t see belongs to me; poem belongs to Karin Boye. Feedback: Talk dirty to me: elekdragon@yahoo.com

Author's Note: Inspired by an angsty manipulated picture, a nice young man who showed me his scars, and a beautiful poem by Karin Boye. Text as follows.

You are my purest comfort,
my most steadfast shelter,
you are the best I have,
for nothing hurts as much as you.

No, nothing hurts as you.
You ache like ice and fire,
you cut like steel my soul -
you are the best I have.
--"You Are My Purest Comfort" by Karin Boye

You never look more beautiful than you do when you walk away. In spite of the obvious discomfort, your stride is perfectly balanced, purposeful, poised. Like a hot jungle cat sauntering away from his harem. Sated, if not a little guilty. Your hips sway as though you have a long tail to swish in defiance of my grief.

Why do you leave me?

I know you do not love me. It would be beyond reason to think a man such as yourself could ever have feelings for something like me. I am your pet, your relief, your slave. But I am not a whore. I leave your money to soil the floor, and bury my head against my drawn-up knees. The bed feels so cold without you.

I remember how this all began.

I know what you thought of me when you saw me those months ago on the dark street. I had dressed to blend in, though my distinctiveness is not easy to mask. I was cold, alone, hungry for comfort. My suffering conformed with the prostitutes and hustlers, those that had given up hope and survived off the filth and degradation of the lower levels.

You were hungry as well for something that couldn't be found in the heat and dirt down below. You were hungry for him. At the time I didn't know his name, but now it is a cursed benediction to an insanely immaculate idol you worship. Obi-Wan. He may as well be called The Impossible, for that is what he is to you. To me.

I felt your presence before I even saw you. Your soul still sings to me that same siren's call, cries out in a painful litany of fear and desire. It is what you desire that you fear. Even as your spirit and body begs to be hurt, your heart begs to be saved. So dangerous, my precious master. Your good heart and aching body makes you vulnerable, tells you to leave your weapon behind, your skills made rusty and clumsy with your desire. Had another chosen you that night, you would be dead. Or worse. Down here, there is always a Worse.

I chose you. Do you remember it that way, or has your mind remade that night as it remakes every night since? It was my hand that stopped your stride. My voice which spoke first. My apartment I brought us to. My choice.

Your desire.

You couldn't speak it aloud at first. So afraid. You stared at my table of tools beside the bed with eyes as blue as twilight and as confused as a virgin bride. Always within reach, everything I own or need or use laid out across the smooth tabletop--items you might have used in your life or imagined in your dreams but never thought you would ever see in this context. I gentled you with my voice, laid you in my bed, cradled you in my arms as you fought for the words to put your darkest thoughts to light.

Finally, I stopped talking, and you stopped trying. You closed your eyes and simply laid your hand on my cheek. Touching, just touching. It had been a long time since anyone had touched me. Slowly you moved up, your face brightening with happiness at the smoothness of my skin. Then you touched my temple horn and frowned.

His skin is smooth. Unmarked. Pale like yours. Beautiful next to my ugliness.

I wanted to laugh when you tugged on the little spike, as though it would come off. Sorry, my precious, but it belongs there. And so you felt around it, poking, nudging, caressing. With a sharp cry and jolt to my horn, you stiffened and withdrew your hand.

A crimson line oozed down your palm, like an abstract sunset painted in oils. You may not have been able to say the words, but your body knew exactly what it wanted. Needs.

I grabbed your wrist and held your hand to the weak light. Kissed it to make it better. Warm. Salty. Sweet. These words lose meaning on my tongue in the ecstasy of your pain. You suffer so well. The moment my horn pierced your skin, you grew hard against my thigh. At the taste of your blood, I fell in love.

Does he know how you taste? Probably not. He has no idea what he is missing. It makes me want to pity him, if I had any kind of emotion set aside for such a man. One who gives up a gift like you so easily deserves nothing but disgust. Obi-Wan is a fool.

"More." You spoke. Could I have denied you? Never, my love.

Your clothes, so plain on my dark floor. Had I not been a Sensitive, I would still have known you as Jedi from the beige you wore. But even Jedi come to the lower levels, lover. Even Jedi.

Your grey-streaked hair, so light against my hand. I wrapped it around my fist, yanking hard enough your neckbones moaned. Or was that you? Or was that me?

I didn't need to command you; your body told me what to do. You fell onto the bed as I threw you, your arms wide in welcome. Were you surprised I had the straps handy to bind you? Your eyes were closed, but your mind open as I thread the thick leather through the buckle, embracing your wrists with smooth skin tighter than my grip.

Would he be so prepared? Does Obi-Wan know how to please you like this?

Chink-click. Chink-click. The chains keep you tethered to the bed. A thought, and you would be free. But you don't want to think that way.

"More," you said. "More."

'Maul,' I wanted to whisper. 'My name is Maul.' That was not what you wanted to hear, so I kept my voice silent. Your game, your rules.

My choice.

I took the blue velvet box from out its place on my bedside table, its familiar weight comforting and exciting. Inside on a bed of darker blue was a line of seven needles, each as long as my middle finger and topped with a silver ball, and six smaller pins, about the length of my fingernail. Their thin metal points gleamed in the dim light of the room like stars against the unfathomable blue-black of space. The finger-long pins inside were still stained with my pain, but you didn't see them as I picked one up and held it to the light. The first danced across my fingers, deftly slicing the air with its sharp point. So many times they've been used on me; this is the first they've seen another's body. The first time I grasped them as tools to be used on another.

The silver pin found your nipple irresistible. I leaned the tip of the needle against the side of your nipple. Your breath quickened, your lifting chest pressing the metal deeper into your skin as you slowly realized what I meant to do, what I had in my grasp. I lingered there, alternatingly bearing down just a little and pulling back on the needle, keeping you unsure of when it will come or if it would at all. I waited until you relaxed, settled down. And then, I pushed hard.

It would have been pain had your cock not jumped to be touched. You didn't scream, only grunted with a low moan of pleasured pain.

It slipped through the hard point like a man mounting a virgin. I threaded the needle through until the red-pink bud was flanked on one side by the silver orb, the other a dark red liquid bead. I laved your skin clean of the evidence of your innocence. Innocent no longer.

Your face was--enraptured. Your bite-dented lips twisted in a rictus of pleasure. Your body moved as though of its own accord, separate from your mind and your pain, swaying and writhing on the sheets like a serpent. Your hips rolled, your penis half-hard and blushed. I had many more needles. You begged to feel them all.

I want to stop. I don't like hurting you, my love. Not then, not now. Not ever. But I love you too much to not give you what you need. My hungry one.

You demanded more, and I gave it to you. Do you remember how it felt as each length of steel pierced the soft skin of your flat stomach? I remember how it felt to place them inside you. I pinched the silken skin between my fingers, pulling it up and twisting. Then I pushed the pin through the bruising flesh until the tip peeked through the other side. Your body fought the invasion, and only by my strength and your desire was I able to fully pierce the flesh, forcing the long spike straight through. An inch down, and I pinched the skin hard again, crushing it between my fingers. Rolling it around, tugging, and memorizing the feel as another pin tore its way inside. I continued until a straight line of ribbed flesh crowned with silver spheres streaked down your stomach to your groin, the sharp tips glittering intermittently with tear-drop rubies and tiny pearls.

You were so hard, so hot, the tiniest spark would set you on fire.

Does your Obi-Wan know how hot the lower levels get? Does he care of the sweltering summer's heat that trickles down to us like molten rain, trapped between dead concrete streets and radiant steelcrete buildings? One would be dead in the levels if he didn't have ice on hand.

You whimpered at the touch of ice to your abused nipple. Yes, I can make the pain go away easily. I could make you feel so good. I numbed every silver spike plaiting your flesh, until the skin was pale and glistening and icy to the touch. And /then/ you screamed. Begged. Cried for more. Cried for pain.

You wanted me to hurt you. Hurt you bad. You wanted me to make you feel pain.

No, not me. Him. You want Obi-Wan. Only him.

Your body burned from the ice as my fingers trailed down the ridges of the hard metal beneath frozen flesh. You were so numb with the cold that you couldn't feel my tongue as it stroked the pins through your skin. So I warmed you up.

Such simple technology, a light torch. Like a mini-lightsaber. At high levels it would burn through blast doors. At low levels, it would only burn skin. I had set it to its lowest intensity, the short, directed sliver of light blazing a cool blue.

I just barely grazed the large tip of the middle pin with the thin lightblade, removing it quickly when you arched up into the air, moving into the pain. I waited until you fell back down, your eyes so tightly clenched tears escaped. I touched the silver orb again, lingering this time, riding your wild bucking until the metal glowed with the heat. Your blood sizzled, and the air filled with the stench of singed flesh.

"More," you cried, your head thrashing back and forth sending the tears flying down your cheeks to disappear in your sweat-slick hair.

I treated the rest of the pins to the same; alternating rhythms, locations, intensity of the heat or the length that I lingered so that you would never be able to guess where you would hurt next or just how much. You thrashed. You cried. You screamed and begged and tore at your bindings even as your cock swelled further and your body flushed with sexual excitement.

You suffer so brilliantly, my love. You are perfect in your anguish. Your voice is music in your screams. You play it out with the skills inborn and infused with grace and poise. I want to hate you for your beauty, the way you wear your suffering like fine clothing. I want to hate you for needing this, for needing me to give it to you. And yet I love you. Because you need me. Want me--want what only I can give you. For you, I have learned to love this.

I waited until the pins cooled and you settled back into the bed, then I pulled them out one by one. They ripped at your skin, adamant about remaining in the safe haven of your body. I sympathize with them, with anything that has known the joy of being inside you. The tiny holes the pins created tore open into ragged gaps of sluggishly oozing wounds once I pried the pins away. Brown stains coated the metal, covering the old marks of my own blood. I returned them all to their places in the box, wanting to preserve for now the union of our essences, the intimate bonding of our blood on the same implements of pain.

Our shared destiny to be the ones who hurt and bleed at another's hand.

You take everything I can give you, and beg for more. Your body takes the pain and turns it into pleasure. I envy you that ability. I envy your beauty.

You writhed in your bonds, blindly seeking more sensation. "M-More!" Your voice harsh and strained. "Please!" Desperate.

Perfect.

I squeezed the base of your penis hard with my thumb and two fingers, not letting up for a second. You shouted, but you didn't come. Halfway down the great length I inserted one of the short needles just through the tight-stretched skin, weaving it carefully into the strained skin so as to not nick a vein or pierce into that great swollen flesh. Once seated, I rolled the pin, pressing down with one finger to make the skin stretch and bruise against it. You howled to shake the walls. "More!" The second entered the same way, closer this time to where my hand held you steady.

"More!"

I could almost imagine it was my name you were screaming, not commands for punishment. I placed a third inside you, so near the sensitive tip, this one a little crooked so that when I pushed, it scratched across the underside of your cockhead. You shattered at the touch, and shouted an entreaty to your god. "Obi-Wan!"

His name, not mine.

Never mine. You've never bothered to ask.

I cleaned up, removing the pins as delicately as I could. I treated the wounds well, adding a small push with my Force-powers to help you to heal without pain, even though I knew you would have preferred the steady sting of the wounds to remain with you. I pulled your large body over mine, hiding from the world under your breathing blanket. Feeling safe. Loved. Beautiful. You held me close as you slowly recovered, feeding off my solidity as you fed off your pain. I burrowed under you, soaking in your strength as I had soaked up your blood.

Happiness. Tranquility. Shelter.

Abandonment. Solitude. Disgust.

You dressed quickly as I watched from the stained sheets. "Stay," I begged.

"No," you said.

I sought your eyes for some sign that you felt something. "Let me be your Obi-Wan." Please. Anything. Anyone. Just don't leave me. Don't make me hurt you. Let me love you. I can be so many things for you. Please.

"No." You left, my heart shattering. You left credits by the door.

You left me alone. And I cried.

And now, months later, my bed smells of your body still. I flick my tongue out and taste your essence on my lips and chin. I swallow it all, for it is all I have of you to keep. This is mine, and I won't give it up. No matter how much I hate it when you leave me.

Why do I let you make me hurt you? Because...I need you. I need to feel loved for those few seconds when you truly believe me to be Obi-Wan. I would rather die than to give up those moments when I can hold you to my chest and you squeeze me so close it is as though you want to slip inside my skin. I would kill anyone that took that away from me.

I would kill him if it would bring you peace. Obi-Wan.

I curse his name as I fall to sleep, my tears soaking the sheets where you had lain by me.

THE END