title: ritual
characters: lakshmi bai, rustin cohle
warnings: lakshmi stop tormenting your boyfriends, also rust is still a bitchy sub, YO, NSFW

"No, that's fucking ridiculous." His hand was on the door handle, as he reefed it open with too much strength out of his pent-up frustration.

It put a deeper laugh in her throat as she far more sedately slides into the passenger side, though she didn't close it behind her. He wanted to leave too badly to let that happen. Instead, her leg stayed hooked out the side of the car. "All things cost, Detective. Magic more than most. Why do you think no one uses it if they have a choice?"

Out to her side, corn fields stretched, lines and lines of tall green grass. How this had been such a treat, once, when she had first had it. A treat reserved for Diwali when her father saved every rupee to let her have just a mouthful of it, soaked in cream and sugar. Now here it went on and on, a new horizon of it. She kept her eye on it as she fished for her water bottle out of her bag, idly giving him a moment to think it over.

"Do you think she was lying - are you still busy believing such things are all but gone?" It's bemused, wondering perhaps, he did cling to it in many ways. It means nothing, they are not the same.

"She's... whatever that woman was - "

"Cohle, she turned both into, and from, an alligator. I do not know what else you require on that behalf. But I found no malice in her. She is merely ... old. They have a different manner, they remember the world a different way. I found the same with Sir Bors. I understand that myself. What she asks used to be the manner for much of the world."

Finally looking back at him, when the water was once again, to her lips, so he could feel safe speaking.

"Can't be worth it. Not if you've got to... do that for it." He wasn't looking at her - that was curious. Bemused, she lowered the water from her mouth, the cap in her off hand. Turning it over between her fingers.

"It's passion Rust, gladly given. It does not ask for your soul. It is all forms, mild, to some bargains I have heard of. Milder than my own, certainly." It's ventured, pressing a little. He still looked forward, that little forelock sweeping across his cheek where he'd raked his fingers through his hair. "Or are you worried about my virtue?"

He said nothing until there was a shockingly noncommital grunt for a man so otherwise eloquent. Lakshmi gently set her bottle on the dashboard. Shifting her weight so she could curl one leg under her, moving herself to look at him completely. "Is that is? Are you afraid for me? Afraid of what might come of it for a moment?"

"It's not worth it, whatever information it's going to get us - "

She doesn't give him the time to refuse it again, she uncurls, quickly as she's sat to start with, her hand against the gear stick to balance herself, the one holding the bottle cap still balance herself between his legs. Determinedly pushing into his space. "I asked, are you afraid of what might become of it?"

He wasn't good at meeting her eyes, or anyone's come to think of it, but he looked resentful when he met hers. "Who wouldn't be, some pathetic liar want you to do that with me for what? It's not right for you to have to -"

Her mouth is on his before he can finish the sentence, her head tilting where she sits at the angle from him, not much, not enough. If he stayed like that, frozen stiff in surprise, she would relent her ... request. He only needs to completely remove himself from it all, and there wasn't much she could do past refusing to let her virtue be a reason to stop. If that really was his only reason, then this should end his complaint about her willingness in the matter - which on a more rational person, begged the question if she wanted that to be the reason or not. But feet first and guns blazing, she never was good at looking back to ask those sorts of questions.

A question swiftly answered.

His hands shifted to snatch her in, hard, all at once, like a something else gripped him entirely. Or needed to grip her. Pulling her the rest of the way into his lap. His fingers pushing into her hair, yanking the knot that kept it all at bay, loosening it. The other found her hip, her rear and heaved her in close by it, fingers sunk into more than enough to hold by. Until his knee was pushing up against her, pressing them hip to hip as hard as could be. Her tongue against his teeth, his teeth on her lip. A cry that found quiet only in the form of echoing into his mouth when he pulled her hair hard enough to force her head back and his mouth found her neck instead. Arching her back up to him and her hand's gripping to pull him into her with both hands until she felt skin mar under her nails through his shirt. Crumpling in her hold.

Ugly, messy. Her nails scratched, and she felt him shudder, deeply, begging into her skin and - when her eyes opened, they were lazily keen, breathing raggedly through thinly partly lips, bruised from the force it. He looked no better. Desperate, vulnerable, holding on to what, she had not the faintest clue - did no one tell him to let go?

So she snatched, that terrible strength that was more than his even before she leaned the full weight of the blackwater into her. To take his hands from her and shove them against the car seat behind him. Pushing him, denying him, shoving him the rest of the way. Holding him down and only kissing him when he looked like he might fight back to get it - "Fuck you." is the mumble into her mouth and she laughs and laughs as her hand sinks lower, towards the belt buckle in his pants, using it to pull hard to get the leeway she needs on the leather to let it come loose and open.

The other taking him by the throat directly his face up as she finds his neck, not helping the desperate sound that works up her throat as she feels him so perfectly under her, feels him buck and groan and shift looking but not finding more of the pressure she's denying him refuses to let him have. Until her hand finds him half-hard inside his pants, the angle not quite right to do more, her fingers are mercifully smooth when they touch. Coaxing him into the palm of her hand and refusing to let him have anything else but this. None of his control. None of his need to shove back as she slides the pads of her fingers to the underside of his length.

It won't mean anything if it's not all of himself. Not all of herself. He knows what he's allowed to do now, and so she doesn't force his hands off when they find the tops of her thighs, squeezing them with needing fingers. Harder when her hand circles his tip, looser when she lets him take a breath. Hard in his hands, with the effort of her own position above him. This wasn't going to be easy - of course, it wasn't, he never made these things easy, but as she watched him, she at least knew he was slowly where she needed him. His body straining against and under her hand. Moved down, he wasn't demanding, wasn't pushing back - suddenly letting her do without resenting her for it.

Pity.

He got something of a reward for it. Once she was she sure he wouldn't push back too hard, her hand moved off his shoulder to find one of his, showing him where to reach up under the slit in her skirt sits. Letting him work out the rest with deft movements. Looks like no one had guarded his virtue is, funny that, but it's a thought for later as the first touch of his fingers slide her eyes shut and the second makes her buck and the third - so easy to this, rough shod to most things, a life time spent running more than ever standing still made her easy to the touch out of the lack of time she always had, she feels his first then second fingers press in and she expels out a heavy push of hot hair into the humid summer day. Her fingers tightening around him reciprocating, then when she hears that deep little chuckle, tighter again with a quick jerk of her wrist to shut him up.

Pity, pity, pity, he went so sharply, tensely, still, the knot so tight in his brow, his breath a rasp. The slackening in his jaw. She could push her fingers against his lips and tell him to hold them in his mouth and shudder over that too. But she needed her one free hand, holding that bottle cap precariously, shifting it so she could reach up and push her hand into her hair. To one of the long, golden pins that held it in place. Curling her fingers around to slowly slide it free, as she felt it, that build, that all her plans became a haze to the fog in her mind. That was it too - wasn't, the other price to the deal. It felt almost impossible to pay it. When she was fucking herself against his fingers when he was straining into her hand. When at long last she finally groaned out his name, it was guttural in its honesty. It had nothing to do with their price, the information, the case, she could feel it like a prickling heat in her cheeks, burning, coiling, like swamp waters this place was drowning in. Like gunpowder that the barest breath of fire would rip the land apart. His fingers beckoned to that sound, and he didn't laugh when she struggled around the shape of his name. She could feel it, every bit of it, and it wasn't her playing on things that sit behind the eyes, or him resenting every little touch. A little bit longer, and she wouldn't be able to think this through. So, so close, - just almost -

Now. The long golden pin was not sharp so much as pointed at its edges, and with enough strength, it gouged his skin to thick, red welts against the bare skin of his neck. He hissed sharply with the pain, snatching away from her all at once, startled, confused, fight or flight. He was a wounded animal and a prizefighter all at once, he'd take a pound of flesh out of her rightfully so for this. Now, the blackwater surged into her veins, replacing the heat in her blood where that sharp feeling of him pulling away drags on overtaxed nerves, begging, begging for just a bit more. But the blackwater is so cold, it feels like being thrown into ice and it hurts enough to centre her when she shoves him with a strength that isn't human. To put that bottle cap against the wound, catching the blood that beads at his neck. Red, thick, his body pumping at the rate of his heart from where she'd worked him up. Next is to take his hand - one slow thing after another for her, inhumanly fast for him - to scrape the mess of her all over his fingers against the edge.

Ugly. Messy. Sex and blood and the sweat on both their bodies. Them bound up so tightly in themselves. Them wrapped up in each other. Her legs were shaking when she pulled off him to sit back down in her side of the cab, yanking her skirt back into place. Giving her a second to let it settle, the blackwater giving her mind, and when she looked back at him, she was so unfairly composed if not for where her hair was falling everywhere

She cleared her throat, God, she could still feel his hands on her skin. Damn the Witch for this deal, she probably thought it was hilarious. "There, all done. That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"... Fuck you." He was catching his breath. He still looked high and flushed, his hands coming to rest on the steering wheel.

"Thank you for your concern over my persons. My apologies for taking your blood in such a way. I had to use part of you and part of me, if I understood it right. Seemed easier this way."

The door swung back open - she hadn't closed it, she realised. Had a car driven past in all that time? She hadn't noticed that either. Oh well, nothing for it. Her boots crunched when he jumped out. Carefully balancing the cap of blood and her - well. Enough said.