The door slams shut behind Kurt, and the kiss feels like a punch in the gut, like a stab to the heart, wet and deep and twisting and tearing. Axl laughs at him and Kurt growls, clawing at his clothes, nails digging into Axl's skin like he wants to peel it off his bones. These days, he's mostly skin and bones.

"Anger is bad for you, you know" Axl taunts, lifting his arms to let Kurt pull off his shirt. Kurt growls again, apparently beyond words or maybe afraid of what words might reveal. The sound is scratchy and deep, but sounds like the purring of a drenched kitten to Axl.

And he is drenched, in from the heavy rain like he didn't care it's pouring outside. When Axl manages to peel it off and let it fall, his drenched sweater hits the hardwood floor with a sickening noise like a body dropping to the floor. His boots are muddy and his jeans are splattered with sludge, he's all splattered with sludge, like he didn't skirt around any puddle on his way here. Or maybe he got dirty on purpose, so that he could sully Axl's floors besides his bed with sweat and cum and his body with marks and scratches.

Everything Kurt does to and for him feels like a castigation, from the insults and punches to the biting kisses and the angry fucks, like Kurt has taken it upon himself to be his own personal instant karma, there to set the balance right by punishing him for all the wrongs of his existence. Or at least the wrongs Kurt knows about, both real and imaginary.

Axl doesn't mind. In truth, he's been the pathetic victim so many times that being the bad guy in someone's eyes, specially eyes burning with such raw, undisguised righteous anger as Kurt's, feels like a breath of fresh air after holding his head under water for too long.

Kurt rids himself of his shirt and presses them flush together. Axl is warm and dry and Kurt is cold and wet, and the moment feels like something of a metaphor Axl would be able to capture if he weren't so drunk on sheer sensation.

"Come on. Move" Kurt growls, digging careless nails to his forearms and muscling him to the nearest flat surface without putting an inch of drenched space between them.

"What's the magic word?" Axl gasps into his mouth as he's shoved down to the couch, but he breaks off in a groan when Kurt settles between his thighs and grinds.

"Shut up" he says with a warning note in his voice like Axl's done wrong again, clashing their mouths together and effectively shutting him up, and Axl wishes he had a video camera, because here is Mr. Nice Guy, pinning him to his couch and muddying up his floors and kissing him like this bitter feeling, this hatred between them is precisely what people should feel in these situations.

“That’s two words” Axl says against Kurt’s mouth, unable to stop himself, but doesn’t get a answer.

There are times when, yes, Axl really is the bad guy.

Not in the sense of ‘despotic psychopath’ bad guy which has been pinned to him more than once. Not in the sense of how the band sees him, power hungry, back stabbing with little care for anyone other than himself. The way the band sees him is partly true, but despite what they think, Axl hasn’t ruined anyone’s life, and especially not theirs. You can't ruin something that's already fucked up beyond belief.

Axl is not quite the pantomime villain everyone wants him to be, but there are times when he really could be the big bad wolf.

Like now for instance.

He knows, in a purely objective, logical way, that Kurt doesn't want to do this. He knows that it goes against every single one of Kurt's personal beliefs and his very will, his ideas of the world and what he thinks is right and blah, blah, blah.

He knows this. He also knows that, were he a better man, he would push Kurt away and kick him out of his house, stop him from doing something that'll make him hate himself later.

But he's not the better man, is he? That's what everyone keeps reminding him of.

Instead of doing the proverbial Right Thing, he shoves his hand down the front of Kurt's jeans and grabs a hold of him, squeezing almost too tight to make his breath stutter, biting at plush lips hard enough to draw blood and loving the slap he gets for it. It's fun being the bad guy.

"You fucking bitch" Mr. Thou-Shalt-Never-Demean-Another-Soul growls, nostrils flaring. His lips are red with his own blood so Axl licks them clean as he strokes him slowly.

"Language" he whispers chidingly. It's so easy to stay calm when he's with Kurt. He'd never met anyone who was even worse at handling his anger than he is before.

"Fucker--" Kurt snaps, but he breaks off in gasps.

His skin is flushed pink now, warming up, even if his hair is dripping cold water on Axl's face and chest, droplets like brands of ice. He forgets, it seems, for a few seconds, that he came here for a fix, of sorts, and closes his eyes, breathing raggedly with his face hovering inches away from Axl's. Sometimes Axl wishes he weren't so damn pretty, because then maybe he could convince himself this is not something that he desperately wants.

He feels it again, the tug of a part of him that urges him to do the right thing, to push Kurt away and be done with this sick thing they're doing, but he ignores it.

"That cunt of yours not keeping you satisfied?" he asks, allowing the exact amount of sneering disgust filter into his words to make Kurt open his eyes and anger be there again.

"Don't you fucking talk about her" Kurt snarls, and now the anger is mixed with guilt and that's even better, because sex with Kurt tends to be greatly improved when in addition to punishing Axl he's trying to punish himself ". Shut the fuck up"

"Make me" Axl dares, grin edging on wild and he can still taste Kurt's blood on his tongue.

Kurt slaps Axl's hands away from him and pins them above his head, grinding down on his crotch painfully hard. Before he can jeer at him again, he's flipping Axl over onto his front, face-down into the couch with his pants pulled down enough that his ass is in the air.

"Finally grew a pair there, Cobain?" Axl taunts, unable to help himself even as he pants and shivers and aches.

"I told you to shut the fuck up" Kurt says through gritted teeth, punctuated by the sound of a packet being ripped open and Kurt's fingers aren't gentle as they thrust inside him as if searching for something, but they are effective in making words die at the tip of his tongue, his whole body shivering with this strange need he can never quite pinpoint or quench.

He wonders if Kurt hates him for doing this to him, for turning him into someone he despises, someone who does things like fucking people out of spite and leaving marks like the scratches of a wild thing on their skin. He hopes Kurt does, and he doesn't even mind if that makes him a bad person.

That's what Kurt thinks of him, and that's why he pulls at Axl's hair, hard. Why his teeth are biting against the skin of his neck as he thrusts inside without much preamble and sets a punishing pace. He fucks him hard and fast, his forearms and cheek burning against the coarse white fabric of the couch and he'll have to find a way to explain the burns away to Stephanie, a way to explain the bruises and the scratches, but later. Right now, he doesn't care so long as Kurt never stops fucking him.

Kurt fucks him like Axl's done him some great personal wrong, like the fundamental basis of Axl’s existence offends him, like what he wants from Axl, what he wants to do to him is something he can’t even bear the thought of.

This is not the first time a man's done this to him, has felt that about him, and blamed their own sexual urges on him. It certainly is what his stepfather always told him. That it was his fault for being too tempting, that he was evil for it. That he was bad.

But Kurt is different. Kurt doesn't resent Axl because he's a man. He resents Axl because he's him. It's refreshing, in a way, to be hated for exactly what you are.

Kurt's hair drips cold rain water on his back, and he's burning up so he imagines it sizzling and evaporating as soon as it touches his skin. Kurt's hand is on the back of his neck, holding him in place, and Axl knows he's the only person Kurt allows himself to be like this with.

He doesn't know if this is something Kurt keeps under lock, or if maybe it's just his natural response when dealing with Axl, but he doesn't care, not when every few weeks he opens his door to find Kurt and his biting kisses, Kurt and his anger, Kurt and the way he manages to steal the breath from Axl's lung with every thrust, every smothered gasp and moan.

It doesn't last long, because it never does, and Axl smothers his moans biting into the cushions, jacking himself through it with desperate pulls.

"Oh, fuck--" Kurt groans, then pulls out and comes all over his ass, like he needs to dirty Axl somehow every time they fuck, and this is just a continuation of all the mud on his hard wood floors. Axl will mind in a few minutes, but not yet. Right now, he’s coming, and there’s with noise bubbling in his head like fluttering butterflies.

Kurt moves away silently after a few minutes of being pressed against Axl's back, his presence disappearing from behind Axl, completely and irretrievably gone.

Even though he hears Kurt move around he doesn't hear the front door open and close. Axl doesn't care, Kurt could set the house on fire right now and he wouldn't care. Used up and thoroughly fucked out, there's peace in his head for the first time in days. He doesn't like reading too much into that, not when he aches and hurts and the pain feels better than any pleasure he’s felt in months. He feels cleansed, in a way, like he’s found absolutions for sins he didn’t know he’d committed.

There's silence, and Axl thinks maybe Kurt left and he just didn't hear the door, but when he finally gathers enough strength of will to rise to a sitting position, he sees Kurt standing there in his living room, fully clothed in his still wet attire and dripping on his floor, staring at him with his lips parted and his eyes bright like he’s waiting for something. Maybe he’s waiting for the same peace Axl feels right now, the one that drove him to make his way all the way up to Axl’s house to punish them both.

He looks pathetic, like the fight's been sucked out of him and there's nothing left, just a brittle shell, because the fight was all that there was to begin with. Axl stares back at him, and wonders if he should do something.

He feels the pull to do the right thing, but he doesn’t know what that is. He knows what he could do. He could throw a smart remark and watch those eyes narrow in anger and the front door slam shut, the balance of the world once again perfect, or he could--well, he could make him stay.

Make him stay.

His throat goes dry at the thought, mainly because its a new thought. One that’s never even crossed his mind. One he can’t even wrap his head around.

In the end, he does neither, and the moment passes, the pull that made him want to spring into action dying down like it gave up. Kurt drops his eyes and his shoulders sag, and the front door shuts without a self righteous slam but with a click, and outside it rains and rains and rains.

There’s mud all over the floor and rain water seeping into every crack, and Axl contemplates getting up to clean it, but he doesn’t feel like moving. He’s dirty himself, too, with his own cum in his hand and Kurt's cum on his back and Kurt's blood on his lips and his touch llike a ghost all over his skin, but he won’t get up to shower either.

The white couch is stained with mud in patches from Kurt’s boots and jeans. Without a second thought, he wipes his hand clean on it. You can't ruin something that's already fucked.