Chapter Text
The honey-glow of a coastal sunset shines through the lab’s windows, dripping warm on Christine’s skin and her equipment, coating every surface.
As workplaces go, hers truly enjoys a prime piece of real estate: smack-dab in the middle of the city with views like this one courtesy of the gateways from the sanctum’s rotunda.
For tonight, she has Belize.
It was decent of Stephen, she supposes, to put her up so comfortably. He could have tried to arrange for her to live and work in the sanctum from the start, denied her her space. Instead, she’d walked right back into her own apartment: a floor plan just the right size to accommodate her and perhaps a cat or two. She hadn’t had the chance to adopt one before taking up the worst hobby in the multiverse, and thinks that that, at least, was for the best.
What bothers her most is how normal this all feels — as if their lives are perfectly ordinary, as if Stephen didn't create a planet inside a pocket dimension for the express purpose of getting her comfortable with the inherently flawed and grossly problematic circumstances under which he is attempting to woo her.
Despite it all, she finds herself grateful. He makes her feel safe.
Because that makes perfect sense, her inner voice harps. Were it not for the matrix of wards and frequent self-checks, she would think Stephen had given up on trying to be subtle in his attempts to meddle with her mind. As it stands, any time she feels like smiling at him, or when she thinks of him fondly, she immediately attempts to combat it with a less charitable observation or two. If she can call one readily to mind, she reasons, chances are he isn’t in there.
She's a little disappointed that, in spite of everything, it’s only taken him a handful of months to get himself into her good graces. She wishes she could muster the energy to be mad about it, about not making him work harder for it, until she once again considers the futility of such an exercise.
Christine’s mouth settles into a grim line. There are things she can control, and things she cannot. She cannot control the complexity of the problem they are trying to solve: nothing less than the fate of the multiverse. She cannot control that experiments take time to develop and to carry out.
She cannot control that she needs to eat, or that eating with company is sometimes preferable to eating alone.
Likewise, she cannot control that Stephen has chosen to live as a well-connected foodie whose guiding principles seem to be “variety is the spice of life” and “if you’re going to eat, eat only what you love”. He invites her to lunches, because dinners would feel too much like a date, and talks with such earnest enthusiasm that Christine can’t help but resent him for how much she's enjoying herself.
“Did you always love food this much, or was it something that happened over time?”
He sets down his fork and thanks their waitstaff for clearing their plates. Christine can’t help but feel dumbfounded: who is this guy? Why is he so different from his variants?
“Actually,” Stephen says, taking up his glass of wine, “it was the Christine Palmer of my universe who got me interested.”
After a moment of thought, Christine asks, “What was she like?”
He doesn’t seem surprised, but his smile is sad and the circles under his eyes are tense. “She was incredible. The most amazing woman I’ve ever known.” He glances up with a smirk Christine wants to call “rakish,” but won’t. “Present company excluded,” he adds.
“You don’t have to do that,” she assures him, picking at the syrupy remains of a poached pear.
He says, ”I know,” and that’s the last word on the subject until after he’s walked her home, when the afternoon is just shy of becoming dusk.
“I meant what I said, Stephen. I don’t want you to feel like you have to diminish the role she played in your life. It’s not like I’m going to be jealous or anything.”
Stephen dares to laugh, narrowing his eyes. “I don’t know, that didn’t sound very convincing.”
Christine unlocks her door with a reluctant grin. “Uh-huh. See you at work?”
”See you tomorrow,” he agrees with an easy smile. "Goodnight, Christine."
From her street-facing window Christine watches him emerge onto the sidewalk: tailored jacket over a graphic t-shirt and a pair of expensive jeans, he’s as cookie-cutter “wealthy New Yorker” as they come. He looks both ways before j-walking across the street.
He’s a gentleman: smart, funny, kind — kinder than any Stephen Strange Christine has ever met. He’s always on time, cordial when they disagree, and despite her expectations he’s given no outward sign that he’s waiting impatiently for the day she agrees to take him to bed.
And yet…
The farther away he gets, the more his façade slips, and maybe it’s just in her imagination, but Christine cannot help but see in the roll of his shoulders and his long, languid strides, something she can’t quite put her finger on until he turns to look at a mural a few blocks down. His eyes are cold, ruthless.
Yeah, Christine decides with a shiver. There’s something about him that’s almost wild. Predatory.
Animal.
*
To Christine’s consistent amusement, the Stranges of the multiverse repeatedly fail to consider that she might know something about the mystic arts, herself, after all this time. It’s a simple matter to post rudimentary protective wards over top of the real ones — the ones Stephen can’t see. If he could, he would be grilling her on her ability to lay Vishanti sigils — within “his” sanctum, no less — without him noticing.
She gets glimpses into his thoughts now and again, when his energy and attention are spread thin. She seldom lingers there, because doing so would be the very same kind of violation she herself dreads.
… However.
The things she learns within those snippets of time are enlightening, to say the least. For one thing, it’s loud; others might be able to keep several trains of thought running at a time, but Stephen’s brain is like Grand Central Station.
For another, there’s the mirror, and the variant inside it.
It is his voice, nasal and menacing, that she hears first. “How long do you plan to keep me in here like this?”
Stephen’s voice is acerbic in a way Christine has never heard. “How long did you plan on keeping me here like this?”
The variant’s counterfeit laughter somehow makes her skin crawl, despite her being momentarily incorporeal. “Still,” he hisses, “you know you can’t keep going like you have been. I see your control slipping. I see how badly all your friends want out.” He cocks his head to one side. “I certainly hope none of them hurt our dear Christine because you were too weak to keep them in check.”
Slipping away before either has a chance to notice her, Christine returns to her body, releasing the light from her sigils into the air. Hours later, she finds herself tumbling down a new, terrifying rabbit hole:
Guntram the Six-Eyed Raven, herald of war and disaster;
Shou-Lao the Undying, an (almost) immortal dragon that guarded the power of the Iron Fist;
The Ram of Amun-Ra, contender for the title of Creator of the Universe, god of the sun and air, guardian of pharaohs;
Camazotz, Mayan god of night, death, and ritual sacrifice;
Shuma-Goroth, the many-tentacled, monocular horror.
These and hundreds more make up the sordid host of creatures Stephen has absorbed, any one of which would qualify as an alpha-level planetary catastrophe. Christine knew he was dangerous, but this..?
She shakes her head, swiftly tidying away the books and scrolls she's been referencing. Stephen is powerful enough to not only have consumed those things, but to subjugate their will to his own.
Well, she thinks, and it’s this that gives her pause: if Strange is right, maybe Stephen isn’t handling his power as well as he appears to be.
Christine gathers her bag and makes for the sanctum's door. There's a bottle of wine in her fridge that's calling her name.
*
Stephen wakes in the dead of night to a curious sensation, almost like his teeth are itching. He wanders into the kitchen with a mean craving for carrots and destroys an entire bag of them before he realizes he’s not eating them for their flavor, but for the way they snap between his teeth.
*
He hears Christine approaching the study one afternoon, and is seized upon by a sudden urge to hide. He acts upon it before it occurs to him to consider why the hell he should.
She calls out for him, and he feels his ears angle up and back, like they’ve been pricked to the tune of a snapping twig. His shoulders rise, muscles coiling as he lies in wait. He's transfixed by the long, lovely line of her neck and throat, the rise and fall of her chest. Healthy. Strong.
I wonder how fast she can run…
"Are you in here?" she calls.
His nostrils flare and he gets her scent: skin and soap and a thread of anxiety. Could he fit his teeth around her throat, if he tried?
"Stephen, what are you doing behind this door?"
“Erm,” he mumbles, shaking his head. Definitely not stalking you like a goddamn tiger. "I'm... rusty. Rusty hinge, I mean. The hinge is rusty and I’m going to fix it.”
Christine’s eyes go hard — appraising, clinical. “Are you okay?”
Stephen swallows thickly, unable to ignore the way her carotid throbs beneath her skin.
“Yeah, yes — yes, I’m fine,” he stammers, pushing down a growing wave of nausea. "I just need to lie down, I think."
*
Christine has a problem.
For several weeks after Christine first came to live in her old-new apartment, she had no problem resisting the urge masturbate. Voyeurism was a foregone conclusion as far as she was concerned; she'd thought of it as a refusal to give Strange what he wanted.
But she’s frustrated, tired, and painfully, desperately oversexed: heat pulses at the apex of her thighs when she gets an abdominal cramp that beautifully, horribly mimicks the first throb of an orgasm. A harrowing stumble out of bed leads to a visit to the en-suite that results in her thinking the words, I look like a fucking crime scene.
The worst part is, she knows precisely why.
Multiversal travel can do a lot of weird things to a person, but it’s simple human biology that screws her over, this time.
Christine had been alerted by her INDEX to the fact that her IUD needed to be replaced. It wasn't hard to find someone to do it, but before they'd gotten through the doctor-patient rigamarole, blaring sirens and flashing lights (which Christine now realizes may have been her fault) meant that they hadn't been able to replace the old device with a new one. She sees the label when she closes her eyes: side effects of discontinuation can include: cramping, nausea, fatigue, excessive bleeding, increased or decreased libido, mood swings...
Another twist of pain sees her doubled over, naked, on the toilet seat. Truly, there could not have been a worse time for the Stephen Strange shit-show to roll into town.
She’s just glad he’s been content to leave her to her own devices, lately.
*
Stephen wipes the sweat from his brow, rests his head on his forearms. A vicious craving for cantaloupe and honeydew has left his belly swollen, distended, and he loses concentration long enough for his jaw to unhinge like it's been trying to do all day. He swallows down another melon, rind and all, and worries for a moment that it's gotten caught in his throat. Luckily, the valves and muscles morph to accommodate, restoring his ability to breathe. He's left to assume that his stomach has extended to nearly the entire length of the seven-foot, scaly tail he woke up with instead of his legs; there's no other explanation for his having put away an entire case of fruit in six hours.
At least he has a better understanding of what’s happening, now.
Strange’s comment about his “friends” disturbed Stephen more than he liked to admit, especially considering that he wasn’t wrong: every god, monster, and mystic being Stephen has ever consumed longs to be free.
When his universe collapsed, the pressure under which Stephen’s body was placed resulted in the partial sublimation of the beings whose power he’s taken. Spiritually, magically, they truly are monstrous: an amalgam of eyes, muscle and sinew, scales and feathers, venom and fangs and ichorous bile.
Their nearest means of achieving freedom is through expression. It’s as if the parts of his DNA that code for eye color expressed themselves based upon whichever of the competing genes is strongest in the moment — only, instead of eye or hair color, these “genes” code for leathery wings, forked tongues, and alien appetites.
So, he surmises: these competing instincts aren’t necessarily sexual in nature — they’re usually more along the lines of ‘hunt’, ‘kill’, ‘eat’ — but fear, excitement, and arousal are all closely linked within the psyche of the human animal.
Which is why Christine's menstrual cycle is such a problem for him.
*
It takes scarcely any time for Christine’s fantasies to default to ones of Stephen. She's naturally suspicious, but none of her wards so much as hum, and she suspects that his ego wouldn't let him prime the pump with images of other lovers that came before and after him.
This is to say nothing of the fact that she hasn’t laid eyes on the man in days — which may have played a role in her decision to do this, now. As silent as the sanctum has been, she feels confident that he’s stepped out on some macabre errand or other.
It’s quite easy for Christine to explain this away as a means of potentially reducing the amount of pain she’s in. Orgasms are some of the best analgesics, after all — and, really, does it matter what she thinks about if the job gets done?
Her fingernails bite into the inside of her thigh, and she imagines they're his, instead: long fingers spreading her wide. She closes her eyes and hears him whisper all the things he loves about her, how wild she drives him, how good she feels. She imagines the nip of his teeth, his hand on her throat, just gently pressing, and she lets herself imagine the kind of sex they'll never be able to have.
Christine likes a partner she trusts enough to enjoy hearing them call her a pretty cockslut while using her mouth, knowing that it all serves no purpose other than to fan the flame of her desire. She wants her partner to lay out in graphic detail how they're planning on thoroughly fucking her without feeling more humiliated and used than she wants to.
But that kind of relationship can’t stand on a foundation of eggshells and thin ice. Having rough sex isn’t complicated, but kinks that involve power and dominance, obedience and submission, even the odd bondage date and light impact play — can’t flourish in a setting where the balance of power is so fundamentally out of whack as it is, here.
Turning onto her stomach, she bears down on the fingers inside of her and presses the heel of her palm against her clit. Her brain quietly insists upon a backstory for this imagined encounter, one that somehow makes them having sex okay — a reconciliation, some kind of catharsis —
She smirks. An alternate universe.
Turning her focus to her meta-magical dream version of Stephen, she shudders to think of him rasping in her ear, "You want it?"
"Yes," she sobs, face streaked with tears.
“Ooh, sweet thing,” he teases, smearing wetness across her cheek, “you're just a mess, aren’t you? A big, slutty mess."
"Stephen, please," she whimpers, pulling at the soft rope holding her hands above her head . "I need it."
"You ‘need’ it?" he softly wonders, dragging his hot, swollen head through her dripping heat. "Yeah, you're pretty wet."
As if to prove it, he grips himself by the base and slaps his length against her swollen lips. It's lewd and humiliating and he's so big and so hard that it imparts a not-insignificant sting. "Stephen, no," she whines, clenching her thighs, trying to twist away.
He moves her back into place, reopens her legs.
"You know how to tell me 'no'," he snarls, "and that's not it."
With a meaningful look and eye contact that lasts just a few extra seconds, Stephen drives himself into her, nearly folding her in half as she cries out, all at once beautifully, perfectly full.
*
Stephen is up at odd hours of the night, and it's only after a week of restless self-distraction that he realizes he's been reading in total darkness. His senses of smell and hearing are sharper, and he hears her at night, on the days she sleeps in the lab, in the sanctum, when she’s —
He shakes his head, closes his eyes, and prepares to meditate, starting with a big, deep breath that floods his head with the scent of her: blood, arousal, sweat. He hears the sweet, soft sounds that accompany it, the way she can’t help but murmur his name, sighing ooh, yes, yes —
He is hungry, tired, irritable, and something he can’t let himself name, because if he names it, he’ll know what to do about it, and he promised Christine, he promised he wouldn’t touch her —
But she hasn’t stopped, so neither can he.
This is hell, he thinks mildly, taking his sore, abused cock in hand. This is what hell must be like.
Stephen comes dry, the tenth time he’s jerked off today. He’s not sure how much longer he can keep this up.
*
"Fuck yes," the dream of Stephen groans, taking an appreciative handful of her ass, pushing deeper, "I love this pussy, so hot and wet and tight."
Christine bites her lip, and while she is presently incapable of forming anything more coherent than a feeble, shuddering cry, she imagines it would get her point across.
*
He shouldn’t.
*
"Yeah," her fantasy says, doubling down, "fuck, Christine, you're so good, you know that? Taste like a dream, fuck like a dream —"
Christine comes shockingly quickly and with a cry that she muffles into her pillow. She doesn't try to stop her hips from their mindless fucking down onto her hand, imagining briefly that she has simply fast-forwarded to the point where she comes and the scene fades to black.
Her hips slowly return to stillness, and she releases the breath she was holding. She lingers deliberately in the moments that follow: the sweetness of sated arousal, the ache at last relenting.
*
He knows he shouldn’t.
*
Far too soon, a moan shatters her dreamy silence as she is assailed once more by twisting, wrenching pain. She curls around her middle as if to protect it from what’s happening inside. She bites into her lip, but it fails to keep a pathetic, sniveling noise from escaping through her teeth.
*
He does it anyway.
"Come on, Strange," he steels himself quietly. "C'mon, you're here, she's there, all you have to do is..."
*
There is a knock at Christine's door.
Pain and anger sharpen her tongue. “I’m not in the mood, Stephen.”
Silence, then: “Can I come in?”
Bitter tears begin to prick at her eyes. Why can’t he just leave her the fuck alone?
”I know you’re suffering,” he says from the other side of the door. “I don’t have an ulterior motive for this, Christine. I just want to help.”
She waits, puts up a token resistance, but soon yields him entry after briefly washing her hands. If he has anything to say about the mess of pills on the side table or the box of tissues tangled in the duvet, he keeps it to himself.
Tugging the quilt up around her shoulders like a soft cocoon, she grumbles, “It’s just a bad period.”
Stephen is... softer, than the other variant, more mindful. He gives her more space. She grudgingly appreciates this as he sits a few feet away, in the chair in front of the window. He looks awful, she finds herself thinking, ashen-faced and hollow-cheeked even as his eyes shine keenly.
“I’m thinking electrolytes, caffeine, and muscle relaxers,” he says. “Is there anything else I can do? Something else that helps?”
The human mind, Christine observes, is truly a remarkable thing.
It can also be an absolute fucking nightmare.
Take Christine’s mind, for example: her first thought in response to Stephen’s query is of a donut shop — her most reliable mood-booster in times such as these. It specialized in unexpected and outlandish flavors, but they made a crème brûlée donut Christine loved so much, it was the only thing she ever got.
She doesn’t know why it’s that that does it, but her eyes instantly flood with tears. Unsure of what else to do, she gathers her legs up to her chest and tries to hide her face in her knees.
A soft, heartbroken, “Oh, Christine,” makes it to her ear despite her volume. “I’m so sorry.”
A brief pseudo-silence follows as Christine fights to get herself under control. She hears a scuff, the pillowed scrape of wood against the grain of the carpet. Stephen’s voice sounds closer than before.
”Magic, medicine, or both?”
Christine is about to tell him where he can shove his magic, but a fresh wave of wrenching pain pulls a wail out of her, instead.
”I don’t care,” she finds herself crying, “just make it stop, Stephen, please.”
Something changes: a charge in the air that wasn’t there a moment ago travels across her skin. There is an instant, perhaps a thousandth of a second, during which Christine has time to realize just what a colossal mistake she’s made.
Stephen speaks in a hypnotic baritone, with just an edge of something that might be a little menacing, if she listened more closely. If she could listen more closely.
”I thought you’d never ask.”
*
Just make it stop, Stephen, please.
For the first time since this began, Stephen feels all elements of himself align.
A prayer has been uttered, a wish made: such things are as good as doors thrown wide, and every light and shadow inside of him unites behind a common handful of goals: protect, nest, care.
The magic flows from him effortlessly: calming and analgesic, tender and curious. A thousand eager eyes take her in as she sits there, poor thing, tearful and in pain.
He reaches out, distantly aware of his own mind cautioning him against it. The warning is drowned out by voices that trill and click, some that purr and grunt and long to cage her between their limbs — his limbs, thank you — and lick the salt from her skin.
Christine sighs dreamily, sinking back down to the bed as Stephen moves, crawling over top of her. Shameless and urgent, he presses his face between her breasts and breathes her in. She’s warm, almost feverish, and his perception of her scent, her body’s readiness, is fast taking on a new dimension.
His brain is filled with a carnal chant of mine, mine, mine, as he takes in the sight of her, exactly as his counterpart once described: weak and wanting, soothed and pliant, theirs for the taking.
His mouth starts to water, and his body begins to change.
*
The lingering salt stings her cheeks, but that's all the discomfort she feels.
The pain is gone.
How is the pain gone?
The answer, of course, is "magic" — but after all this time, it's not an answer Christine is prepared to accept at face-value. But it's such a relief, a rush of contentment, of ease and quiet, that her incredulity dissolves like fragrant smoke.
Without thinking, she raises her arms and wraps them loosely around Stephen's neck.
An answering rumble starts in his chest and ends in his throat, before it has a chance to touch his tongue. Though her eyes remain closed, basking in the warm release of easing pain, Christine feels the vibrations through the wall of his chest.
She feels them quite acutely, in fact, because Christine hasn't worn a bra all week; breasts tender and swollen, she's wearing nothing but a dark, soft shirt that stops just above her knee.
So, when Stephen's chest rumbles like that, like a thunderstorm with something to prove, the first place to feel it are her hyper-sensitive nipples.
She does not act quickly enough to suppress the pitiful sound she makes in response and wonders if it's possible to die of embarrassment. Bracing for it, she forces herself to look at Stephen’s face.
"Holy shit," she whispers.
Two wide, glossy blue eyes stare down at her, vertical pupils wide and dilated. He is breathing through an open mouth Christine is reasonably certain holds more than thirty-two human teeth, and speckled across his shoulders, chest, and the edge of his jaw are small patches of shining bronze-and-black scales.
With the sound of ripping fabric, he goes stiff, arms shaking by Christine's ears as he hangs his head between his shoulders, groaning in a way that leaves her unsure whether it’s in relief or pain. Christine's hands fall to his shoulders, hovering.
Softly, carefully: "Stephen?"
His head snaps up, pupils narrowing in a way that leaves her breathless. One of his arms gives out and he catches himself on its elbow, clenching his hand into a fist. Turning her head shows Christine that his fingers have dull-tipped claws that divot the flesh of his palm.
Christine isn't sure why this is... why she's responding the way she is. A new cramp takes hold, and she braces herself, guarding against a pain that never comes. Instead, she's left with a pleasantly familiar throb that happens again, and again, until it’s coming in waves and it feels like she’s going to —
"Oh, fuck," she whines, “fuck, shit, I’m so sorry, I’m —“
Christine hasn’t come this hard in a while — and certainly not on her own. She counts herself among the unfortunate number of heterosexual women who usually require penetration to achieve orgasm, and whose preference is for partnered release.
This, though?
Christine’s body is singing, and Stephen hasn’t so much as lifted a finger.
And oh, his voice does not help: there’s a low, booming undercurrent that makes him sound like his every word comes from within the chest of something primordial.
”Did you —?” His tone is one of wonder, folded smoothly into that heavy bass.
Christine’s hands fall from his shoulders, covering her eyes with a mournful sound. “Oh my god…” she laments. “I don’t… how did you do that?”
The sound of his laughter is sex itself. It doesn’t help that there is what appears to be fire in the back of his throat, she sees when peeking through her fingers.
“I don’t know,” he purrs, “it seems like that was all you.” He turns his neck with a series of pops and cracks that seem to travel down his body, like his spine is in the process of realigning.
But that can’t be true, for two reasons.
The first reason is that such a process would invariably cause extraordinary pain, and it is definitely not pain behind the heated breath and smoldering glower with which Christine is presently growing enthralled.
The second reason is that Christine continues to hear that sequence of popping joints past the point where a human spine ordinarily stops. This would suggest that Stephen’s body is much longer, than usual.
Christine frowns. Longer?
An inch at a time, her knee cautiously climbs, looking for Stephen’s pelvis and finding… well, it is a pelvis, but there’s an entirely new group of muscles and bones attached to it. Tracing her foot along where his leg should be reveals that he does, in fact, have a gigantic, scaly, muscular tail.
Breathless and sated, warm and very nearly relaxed for the first time in over twelve hours, Christine asks him, “Are you a fucking dragon right now?”
His scales make noise when he draws back, a sort of soft clattering that is so much sexier than it has any right to be. His torso is tastelessly muscular, for a sorcerer, and she’s not sure who told him it was okay to drag his claws all over himself like that, like he’s discovering his body for the first time.
“Well,” he says, eyes hooded, tweaking his own nipple, “I would much rather be a dragon who’s fucking you, but I understand if that’s not to your taste.”
The answer must be written on her face, because he makes another of those low-pitched trills and lowers himself back down.
”I’m going to make you feel so good,” Stephen swears softly. “Can I do that for you? Will you let me?”
Things have taken on a bit of a rosy glow from where Christine is spread out beneath him. As he nuzzles into her neck, letting her feel more of his scales — smooth and warm and lovely, catching the low light of the room — she can’t help but arch into his touch, into the wide, flexible plates that cover his belly.
“You’re beautiful,” she murmurs, reaching up to trace the scales along his jaw. “I mean, you’re always —“
She expects the insufferable grin, the one that says I knew it, but instead receives a quietly awestruck look as a flush rises in his cheeks and chest.
How much trouble is she in, she wonders, that she looks up into Stephen’s face and thinks that he’s adorable?