Philia

L is for Leaving Marks

Cell likes showing off the marks Freeza leaves on him.  Sometimes they’re merely a subtle scratch on his carapace, other times, they’re a stark purple bruise contrasting on the white of his skin.

Perhaps it is because their relationship only exists in the whispered exchanges between their subordinates that Cell likes giving validity to these rumors.  Freeza has chided him more than once on this vanity before, but he knows the warlord is secretly pleased that he feels no shame in publicly bearing his marks, and neither of them do anything to lessen the damage during their trysts, anyways.  However, Cell does not dare try to leave his own marks on Freeza.

He’s tried, once, only to have his arm twisted so far and so suddenly out of its socket that Freeza almost ripped it off. 

“I’ve gone without intercourse for decades,” the smaller tyrant had outright snarled at him.  “Do you really think another century would bother me?  Try that again, and you’ll lose this arm.  I have no obligations to you, my dear Cell.”

While the loss of a limb did not necessarily concern him, Freeza’s moods did not grow back as easily, and Cell did so hate to cut the festivities short.

Cooler thinks Cell is lucky that he walked away from that incident at all.  He knows his brother’s killed previous bedmates for less than whatever stunt Cell had decided to pull, and informed Cell of this as soon as he was aware of the nature of his brother’s relationship with the android.

“Freeza is not an easy partner to please,” the warlord's older brother had coolly told him one day after casually noting what looked like a freshly-weeping row of claw marks cutting across Cell’s cheek.  “You have your work cut out for you.”

But that wasn't necessarily true.  In the scheme of things, Cell did relatively little to please his bedmate, and the marks were merely resultant collateral damage.  Sometimes, if he’s feeling particularly fired-up, Cell will ask for the marks...and Freeza is far too happy to oblige.  And when he does, very often he will find Freeza’s nails digging into the skin between his armored plates, just because the galactic emperor knows Cell will have to work that much harder to show them off the next day.

Not all of the marks are purposely inflicted, though, and Cell likes those the best—a physical representation that he had caused Freeza’s carefully crafted mask of self-control to crack and slip away.  To such heights he had brought Freeza, once, that the warlord had born down upon the other’s eyes, claws digging into the skin dangerously close to Cell’s tear ducts. It was then, and only then, had Cell taken control of the situation, grabbing Freeza’s wrists in one hand and pinning them roughly above the tyrant’s head in order to keep his eyeballs from being gouged out.

Freeza tore his throat out with his teeth as he came, instead.

So it is when, during a training session the next day, Recoome points out the particularly large bruise that had practically blossomed overnight on the right column of the android’s throat, does Cell merely shrug and smugly reply that it was “a gift from an overenthusiastic lover.”

Recoome wisely never asked about the bruises again.