A Triangle Has Three Sides

The first time it had started out as more a matter of routine than anything else. March had been doing the assassin bit for a very long time, long enough to be able to tell when he was onto something. And Hatter was definitely something: all he needed was a good excuse to find out what, exactly, that something was.

They met because March was tracking a guy Hatter was protecting- and tracking him was something March was finding more difficult to do than usual. A lot more difficult to do. And he was pretty sure the guy responsible for that difficulty was the skinny kid with the hat, rather than the man he was actually tracking.

So he began to play one of his games: namely, break-the-cutie.

It was a pretty simple game, all be told, as it consisted largely of finding a cutie with more than fluff in their brains, and then fucking them over in every way imaginable until they were crazier than he was.

Hatter definitely qualified to play. He was so young and fragile looking, with lips that were made for sucking and eyes that shone with how very bright he was.

You had to start out slow with that game, and fool the cutie into thinking they had a measure of control. So March approached him with an offer: Hatter would give him his body for the next few hours, and March wouldn’t turn the pair of them over for execution.

Hatter accepted, not that he was about to do otherwise with March’s hand on his neck. And it soon back apparent that he was going to be brilliant at the game. He was so tense: hand clenched into fists at his sides, tendons sticking out from his neck, and oh so very tight. He made March fight for every tiny involuntary sound of pain even as blood began to trickle down his thighs and March sunk his fingers into his hips more than hard enough to bruise. The most he got was a tiny whimper when he pulled out after finishing.

Hatter sank onto the ground when he moved away, and as March went about removing the condom from his cock he watched as Hatter turned his back to the wall and tried to find his legs again. There were scratches all over the right side of his face from where it had been pressed into the brick, moisture clinging to his eyelashes, and blooding welling up from where he’d bitten through his lip.

Beautiful.

Just when Hatter had managed to pull himself up, March pushed him back down to his knees for round two.

~*~

They played for years, and they played very, very well. Hatter was clever, determined, and inventive. Twice, he shot March in the head before they could even get properly started on their next round. Once he lured him into a pit trap, and March nearly starved to death before he managed to get out again. March took to knocking him out, disarming, disrobing, and tying him down before beginning, but even then, Hatter found ways to escape him, locking himself deep in his own mind, refusing to get hard without being dosed with Tea or very thoroughly worked on first.

And then came the sledgehammer, ripping through the belt. And then came Hatter, punching his head into so much sludge, and evidently given the rest of his body a good working over as well.

“We do hope to have your regular head remolecularized a few weeks from now,” Carpenter explained, holding up a mirror so he could see his new bunny head.

He thought about throwing a fit over it, but there were more important matters to attend to.

“How long was I gone?” March asked.

Carpenter paused, before answering, which wasn’t a good sign. “Six years,” he said, finally.

Twice as long as they’d played. Hatter probably thought he was gone for good.

“The Queen is waiting for you,” Carpenter interrupted.

March shrugged. “Let her.”

“Is that what you’d like me to tell her?” the Eggman demanded.

“Yeah, would you?” March asked.

Carpenter looked momentarily dismayed.

“Tell you what,” March offered. “I’ll go with you to see the Queen, if you get a few of your geeks to do get a room ready for me.”

“A room?” Carpenter asked wearily.

“Yeah,” March said. “I need you to reinforce it against one of the bodmod jobs.”

Carpenter nodded, and March slid of his gurney and went to the Throne Room.

~*~

He’d gone to Hatter’s shop first, just because, but as it turned out the girl the Queen wanted him to track had found her way there too. He chased the pair of them all over the country, caught the girl once, then twice, and then Hatter had come storming after her.

He rode in on a horse and started waving a sword. And they way he’d looked at her… well, this was interesting.

Then things got even more interesting, when the handcuffs had come off while they were shifting them into the honeycombs, Alice had thrown two Spades to the ground and been grappling with three of them before March finally shot a gun off. Everyone stopped struggling, and he pointed it at where Hatter had been trying to get out of the grip of an ace.

“You don’t stop kicking up such a fuss, I’m going to shoot him,” he told her.

Alice was thrown unceremoniously into a box, Jack was forced into one of his own, and March took Hatter to another for the pleasure of watching him try not to seem completely terrified. He failed miserably; he managed to keep his face straight enough, but the racing of his heart and the pallor of his skin screamed otherwise. More interestingly still, his eyes kept darting between March and Alice, involuntary and transparent. He could almost hear him scheming away, planning for the worst.

If March had a face that could move, he would have smiled. It would be a shame to let Hatter do all that thinking without testing him. Besides, he’d never played with two cuties at the same time before. He wondered what it would be like.