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[rinaldoescobar]

Facts and Friction [ao3]

rating: E word count: 5442 summary: “I’m not your pal.”

Cavalero’s crossed arms tightened over his chest. Drifter put a hand on his hip, which was as respectful as he could get at the moment. Cavalero looked around his age, minus the molten Void-steel taking over his face and body. The military buzz didn’t do anything for him. Drifter had been shaved before, and the only thing it made him think of was how soft and bristly his hair must be. “Just trying to be friendly.”

“Don’t.”

It seemed like after that kid came into his life, everything started going to shit. More shit than usual. Before, he’d seen an Archon once in a blue moon and fought one even less, and killed one never— never without extensive assistance from bombs and entire ships crushing them to faint Warframe-scented paste. Then, Nitzan had come crashing into his life, fixed some things and made some things worse, and then he’d told Drifter— this has been kind of crazy, huh?

 No shit, kiddo.

He said it more than he had to. For what he’d done, watching him flinch didn’t make up for anything.

They’re back in the Zariman. Back when they’d been discussing the whole Narmer situation, Drifter hid how fucked-up he thought everything was for the kid’s sake. Sure, Nitzan had said he was, as far as he knew, twenty-one. Drifter guessed he himself was around twenty-four. The kid was a kid. Drifter would not be convinced otherwise. And now, of all things, the kid wanted him back on the Zariman.

Fortunately, he sure wasn’t bored. Barely three hours after waking up in a bed that wasn’t his, he was loitering by Cavalero’s stockpile of Voidtouched weapons as the man picked one out— after some thought, and a few glances at Drifter as he stood there spinning Sirocco around his finger— and passed it to him.

“I’ll test it out. Thanks, pal.” He put the gun in the holster, and Sirocco in the hidden pocket on his sleeves where he usually kept restoratives. No need now; he was all out. What the fuck was a Thrax, anyway, and would he have to fight them all the time while he was here?

“I’m not your pal.” Cavalero’s crossed arms tightened over his chest. Drifter put a hand on his hip, which was as respectful as he could get at the moment. Cavalero looked around his age, minus the molten Void-steel taking over his face and body. The military buzz didn’t do anything for him. Drifter had been shaved before, and the only thing it made him think of was how soft and bristly his hair must be.

“Just trying to be friendly.”

“Don’t.”

“I don’t see why not. If I’m going to be running Void-warden with the rest of you Holdouts—“

“Holdfasts,” Cavalero corrected him, sharply, sourly.

“Then I don’t wanna be…” he gestured loosely, aware of exactly how sardonic and cynical he must seem in this moment. Whatever. Cavalero could deal with a little bit of sarcasm. “A sourpuss about it. Trust me. I’ve been in a shit place, too. And I was here, too, in the way back when. Kid’s off dreaming right now, so I’m all you’ve got.”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t care now,” Drifter pressed.

“Why are you still wasting air? You got your weapon. Go test it out and don’t come back until you have something to show me.”

“Damn, you drive a hard bargain. How about, hmm… actually, if I hand over my peashooter, would you be able to make some changes to it?”

Despite himself, Cavalero’s eyes lit up. His expression didn’t change, but Drifter noticed that the opportunity to look at something new— it excited him. Hook, line, and sinker. “Maybe. If it’s shit, there’s nothing I can do.”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to make something of it.” Drifter handed over Sirocco with a smile. Cavalero pointedly avoided touching his hand as he accepted the pistol. “Ouch.”

“Come back in a few days.” Cavalero’s attention was off of him entirely, focused now on the compact handgun with considerably more pleasantness. Always intensity; Drifter didn’t blame him.

“See ya, Cav.”

“Don’t call me Cav.”

Time passed quickly. Slowly. Whatever. Drifter counted it in slain Angels and new Void-burns; the cuts and bruises faded. Only the Void touched him permanently, now. It made his stomach turn, seeing Nitzan and how deeply, how boldly the Void had carved furrows in his flesh. Would that be him?

Four days and thirty Angels later, he tracked Cavalero down in a side room off the main Chrysalith proper. He was standing with his back to Drifter, staring out the window into the limitless black. It didn’t seem to be even studded with stars; only the luminescent coils of the Void lit the sky. Drifter fought back a shudder. He’d just escaped Duviri what felt like only hours ago. Reminders, as far-away and harmless as they were, stirred his thoughts to fear. He’d mastered Duviri, for sure, but the twisting planes had mastered him in return.

Between them was a table made with metal, common and Void. There were bars and restraints welded on almost haphazardly, as if added in a hurry. Drifter whistled lowly, the tune that stuck in his head and followed him everywhere, and Cavalero lifted his eyes to meet Drifter’s gaze in the reflection of the window. He’d gotten less hostile over the days. Well— Drifter had learned that it wasn’t hostility. Cavalero just didn’t have time for people that weren’t worth anything. What was he worth, that made Cavalero willing to acknowledge him when he didn’t have to?

“What’re you doing in here?”

“Thinking.”

“About…?”

Drifter leaned against the table, curling his hands over the otherworldly growths. And they were growths, he was noticing now, Void-steel emerging from the table in tight spirals except for the very center. There was a depression there. A hole. Drifter looked back up at Cavelero.

“And with this thing? What—”

“It’s a medical device,” Cavalero interrupted. “The Archimedean had me make it for her.”

“I thought you made weapons,” Drifter muttered lowly.

“I do. Doesn’t mean I only make weapons.”

“Just like how I don’t only kill things, eh?”

“That’s right. You’re also annoying.”

Drifter snorted. “Sure. So, wanna tell me what this thing does?”

“It’s an examination table. She had me make it when… Kira succumbed to the Song. We hoped that it would be able to hold her, keep her away from the Reliquary. In the end, I was too late.”

Drifter paused. The elegant swoop of Void-steel was cool under his hand, hiding some inner core of thriving heat. “I’m sorry. Nitzan told me about her. She was doing her best to protect all of you.”

“Don’t tell me about her. I’m the one who knew her.”

It was better than sullen silence. Drifter shrugged. “Not telling you about her. Just saying that even though I never knew her, I believe in what she was fighting for. And… you know, it’s easy to sling blame once everything’s said and done, but it’s not your fault.”

“Of course it’s not my fault. I’m not the one who went Angel.”  

“After the Void-Jump, I blamed myself. Thought there was something I could have done. Sometimes, I wish there was, and I’d failed. At least then I’d know that I could have made a difference. That kid— the Tenno— he’s the one who makes the differences around here.”

Cavalero hadn’t interrupted him yet, which usually meant that the grouchy head of security was ignoring him. Interruption meant that he was indeed listening, which Drifter found absurdly pleasing. “You’re making a difference in how annoyed I am.”  

“I don’t think that’s necessarily hard to do, Cav.”

“I told you—“

“And you don’t even know my name, so you can’t talk.”

Cavalero growled in the back of his throat. Drifter saw in the corner of his eye how his hands were balled into frustrated fists. Not wholly upset— Drifter recognized that particular combination of agitation, interest, and excitement easily enough. Since when had somebody verbally sparred with him instead of letting him run himself out or attempt to pave over his attitude with consolation?

He didn’t need consolation so much as he needed someone to give his shit back to him. A man after Drifter’s own heart— no wonder he’d been going positively mad here, all alone with the peacemakers and researchers.

“How about Cavvy?”

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Heh. Alright. So, anything else you’ve made you wanna show me?” Nobody could accuse Drifter of being merciless. He let go of the twisted, modified table and turned to face Cavalero fully.

“I made some modifications to Sirocco. Let’s go to my room and I’ll show you everything.”

“Show me everything, huh? Didn’t take you for the type.”

Cavalero snorted, finally, some genuine amusement. “Don’t push your luck.”

“I dunno. I’ve enjoyed pushing you so far.”

“Just because you spend more time in Armageddon than your Dormizone doesn’t mean I’ll give you special treatment, grubber. When’s the last time you’ve seen the outside of the ship?” Cavalero made sure to keep at least two steps in front of Drifter, leading him to his workshop like a lost puppy. Drifter let him. It must be strange to be subsisting off of another him‘s Void energy— him, and the other Tenno, so it wasn’t as bad as it could be— like some wretched, fading parasite. A grafted branch, a donor limb. A weapon in the hand.

“Special treatment? I didn’t know you were giving other people special treatment.”

“I’m not,” Cavalero barked. And then, “there isn’t any. Just shut up.”

“You know, apparently, after we got fucked over in the Void Jump, the Sentients came back from Tau and declared war? So we probably would have been slaughtered if we’d made it there anyway.”

“You would have been slaughtered. I’d have been just fine.” Despite everything, Drifter was sure that Cavalero had not fought a Sentient. The Angels were something entirely different; one was a creature of the Void, and another was anathema. He’d learned to respect and resent Sentient adaptation, and once Hunhow had taken him under his less-than-gentle wing he’d learned to embrace it. Void Angels had trick after trick, but at least he could work around them all.

And they didn’t skitter. Thank the Void.

“Dunno. Maybe you’d need my help to fight them and I’d be your knight in shining armor.”

“No.” Cavalero unlocked his Dormizone. Drifter stole looks at the place— schematics on the walls, draft paper tacked up everywhere, stands with weapons in pieces, and the cot with a book left open. Sirocco was on a stand, and as Drifter paced over to get a closer look Cavalero got ahead of him with a quick skip, a dip into the Void and manifestation right in front of him, and picked the gun up before Drifter could. “She’s a solid gun. I call dibs if you die.”

“Sure,” Drifter agreed. No harm in it. “So, what did you do?”

“She has an overcharge mechanic that I really took a liking to. Only issue is it’s finicky on the draw and it needs more space in the mag. You should find it to be more reliable, and it’ll hit harder too. Couldn’t do anything about the mag issue except make the mag bigger, but since she uses Void bullets, there’s nothing I can do to regulate that.”

“Huh.” Drifter took Sirocco from him and turned the pistol over in his hands. Sure enough, there were tell-tale silvery tracks of Void tampering along the gun. “Still, that’s going to make a hell of a difference.”

“Of course it is.”

Drifter didn’t call Cavalero out on his ego. He holstered Sirocco instead, shaking his head.

“You don’t use her all that often, though, do you,” Cavalero continued. His eyes flickered down to Nataruk, wrapped securely dormant around Drifter’s right forearm. “That bow is interesting.”

Drifter nearly huffed. “Yeah. It’s called Nataruk. And… I don’t know how to say this in a way that makes sense, but it was given to me by the same Sentient who wanted to raze the Origin System.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah. Great weapon. Guess I’m taking him out on walks. Letting him see the world, you know?”

Cavalero reached out as if to touch the Sentient-scaffolding nestled against Drifter’s sleeve. “You’re saying there’s a consciousness in there?”

“Sometimes,” Drifter qualified. “Not right now. When I’m closer to him, when he’s sending Shadow after me, or when I’m badly hurt.”

“So if I wanted to talk to him, all I’d have to do is thrash you within an inch of your miserable life.”

“No.” Drifter responded immediately. He glanced sidelong at Cavalero, who was still staring intently at Nataruk. “Do you want to see it?”

“Sure. Let’s see it.”

Sure, tough guy. Drifter willed Nataruk to unfurl from his forearm and form into the bow proper. He always loved how it felt; there was nothing quite like the thrum of Sentient power harnessing itself to him. Even the Void, while exhilarating, comforting, and threatening in turns, didn’t compare. Nitzan’s connection to the Void was horrifically strong. Drifter’s was strong, of course, they shared that, but to a far lesser degree. The Void hadn’t wanted him, though, had it; it had chosen Nitzan. Seeing what it had made of him, Drifter envied and pitied him in turns. Drifter’s affinity was seemingly to the Sentients; one Sentient in particular.

“Fascinating,” Cavalero muttered to himself. “If only…”

“Me, the kid, and our Warframes are the only ones who can use it. Go ahead and try to grab it.”

Cavalero’s brows knit. He knew he was being goaded, and likewise knew that a sharp rebuke was the wisest answer; Drifter was banking that he’d be swayed more by spite and pride than wisdom.

As Cavalero took Nataruk into his hands, the Sentient energy wound up his arms. It squeezed, and then the bow abruptly shuddered, fell apart, and returned to Drifter’s arm. He held his arm out again to show how it wound around him, dormant and still.

“Yeah. I’m stuck with it, and it’s stuck with me.”

“It’s over your sleeves right now. So if you were…”

“Asking me to undress? That’s forward, don’t you think?”

Cavalero’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “If that’s what you’re concerned about, you’ll do as I say quickly and without any backtalk.”

Drifter had been flirting. It was a pastime, and Cavalero certainly responded to it amusingly, if not well, and didn’t hate it enough to demand that he stop. He hadn’t been sure the grouchy weaponsmith had even picked up on it besides enjoying the prickly back-and-forth. Holy of Holies, he was blunt but he wasn’t dense. Nobody had responded to him with that particular mix of irritation, aggression, and clear interest before, and Drifter froze.

“Oh. I see how it is. I can work with that,” Cavalero observed. Drifter was still half-frozen in a mixture of disbelief and excitement. He almost wanted to dip into the Void to escape how off-balance he’d been thrown. Cavalero didn’t give him a chance to recover. “So? Are you finally listening to me? Go on, strip.”

Drifter took the blindfold off first, undoing the lark’s-head knot that tied it around his wrist, and the vest off next. Slowly, in case Cavalero was taking the joke a bit too far, or in case they were still playing chicken. Instead, he smiled. He had the meanest smile, with sharp silver canines— Drifter hoped to see it more. “That’s right. You can put your clothes on the bench.”

Nataruk rearranged itself around his arm once he was properly bare-chested, a compact swoop of Sentient-scaffolding from his wrist to his elbow. Without the Sentient energy to hold its form, it collapsed down to a much smaller collection of bones. Cavalero followed the fluid, easy movement as the cuff reformed. Drifter held his arm out, letting him see.

“We can examine your tagalong later. You don’t look naked to me.”

He took the belt and sash off and tossed them to the bench, toeing his boots off and undoing his pants. Cavalero watched him strip; Drifter used tossing his folded pants and the sash to the bench as an excuse to not meet his eyes. When they were having their back-and-forth, it was different. There was a tension in the air that wasn’t there before; a heavy electric pressure.

“Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head.”

Fully naked but for Nataruk, Drifter felt far more vulnerable and defenseless than he had in years. It was a different sort of vulnerability; the armor meant he expected to fight, tough leather and extra pockets for grenades and restorative serving to prep him for battles and injury. Having none of that made his stomach twist; and to some degree, needing none of it was just as uncomfortable.

He still didn’t like going to his knees. He took it slow, mustering a glare so Cavalero could see just how much he didn’t like it— the weaponsmith had his arms crossed, and he wasn’t smiling, but Drifter could see a mean glint in his eyes. Drifter clasped his hands behind his head and that, of all things, was worse. He could feel the ridges of Nataruk against the back of his head. His chest, and the scars and burns adorning it, were bare to the room. Lower, he was taking interest, and though Cavalero couldn’t see the new heat and wet Drifter was certain he could tell.

Once Drifter was posed to his satisfaction, he took a step forward. Another, and then another, until he was in Drifter’s space; standing over him. He unfolded his arms and gripped Drifter’s ponytail, tilting his head up.

“What’s my name?”

Drifter worried his tongue between his teeth. His entire face burned, all the way to his ears and neck.

“Cavalero.”

“That’s right,” Cavalero growled. He let go of Drifter’s hair and took a proper step back. “I’m going to go get some things. You’ll stay down if you know what’s good for you.”

He didn’t bother checking if Drifter was with the program; and really, if Drifter wasn’t, he wouldn’t exactly be kneeling naked in Cavalero’s room. He disappeared into another room, leaving Drifter to contemplate the secrets of the Void.

It was nippy, enough that Drifter noticed gooseflesh on his arms. An old injury in his knee was acting up, and the weight of kneeling on it was less than comfortable. Even when there was nobody in the room with him, he felt horribly exposed and bare. Nothing but underwear would be preferable to this.

Left alone, every dragging second turned to drip torture. Looking around the room satisfied nothing; he stared at the closed door like it would bring Cavalero back faster. Maybe he’d left another way, and having Drifter sit there waiting for him was his idea of a joke. Maybe he was being let down in the cruelest way possible, and he’d come in some time later and tell Drifter to fuck on out of his room.

Drifter didn’t care what people thought about him. Didn’t have the time, didn’t bother sparing the energy. Cavalero didn’t seem the type to go the route of elaborate revenge when a simple, brutal rejection would do.

“That got you sweating, huh? Heh.”

Drifter couldn’t help it; he tensed, a full-body startle, at the voice behind him. His hands stayed clasped, and despite the urge he didn’t reach to his (bare) chest for a smoke grenade. Hide, shoot, run. Nothing surprising was ever good.

“Relax.” Cavalero approached him from the back, stepping loud enough for Drifter to hear. He combed the top of Drifter’s hair and gave his ponytail a light, admonishing tug. “I’m a friend. Put your hackles down.”

As he circled around to Drifter’s front, he kept his other hand behind his back.

“Should have expected that, though. I know people like you. Attitude aside, you’re a phenomenal soldier. Can throw you at anything. The way you handle those armaments and grind up the raiding parties? Pure poetry. You’re a killer, through and through. But nobody stays sane by killing without a break to breathe.” That felt pointed. Drifter didn’t bother meeting his eyes. “So that’s what you’re going to do. Are we clear?”

Drifter nodded.

“Say it.” Cavalero barked.

“We’re clear.”

“We’re clear…?”

“We’re clear, Cavalero.”

There; he smiled again, and reached down to tilt Drifter’s chin up with his hand. “That’s right. Now…”

He showed Drifter his other hand and what appeared to be a spool of thread in his palm. “Remember this?”

“Arachnylos. Haven’t seen it in ages.”

“That’s right. Used to bring in the highest-ranking of us all. The Archimedeans, the Navigators. Thought it gave them more dignity to be led by a string instead of in cuffs, or worse, dragged by the hair. I never saw the point. Dignity or not, everybody knows.”

He unspooled a few inches and took Drifter by the wrist, dislodging his hands and guiding them above his head. He tucked the tail of the thread underneath Drifter’s thumb and wrapped the spool around his wrists, criss-cross, turning the gossamer thread into a wider, ribbonlike mass. Drifter could barely feel it. When the little spool was used up, Cavalero took the tail from underneath Drifter’s thumb and pressed it to the other end; it sealed neatly.

“Go on. Give it a yank.”

Drifter obliged. Despite the fragile thinness, the thread was solid and didn’t give him space to even wiggle his wrists. “You are only going to speak when spoken to, or there’s something you direly have to tell me. I’m not an animal. Are we clear?”

There was something about being expected to respond out loud that made Drifter’s tongue heavy and reluctant. It was the same resentful weight that made him bullishly argue with Hunhow, that kept him tending to the fading Eidolon of Natah, that kept him diving into the Void to slay the wailing Angels. There was a new part that made him hot, too, a wanting, sticky heat between his legs. Drifter had learned long ago that submission meant death.

Now it didn’t, and his stubbornness was doing nothing except making him act like a fool. Not even in a funny way; like him startling when Cavalero surprised him, it would have been funny if they both didn’t know the exact reason for the reaction. Too much mutual recognition. Better to just ignore it, or use it to make Drifter squirm like Cavalero was right now.

“We’re clear, Cavalero.” It came out strained. Drifter let his eyes fall as soon as Cavalero looked away from him.

“Good.” He pulled Drifter up by the wrists and walked him backwards until the back of his knees bumped the cot. They were literal holes in the wall, just big enough for two people to fit semi-comfortably. In their— his?— room, Drifter had been sleeping on a sleeping bag on the floor, while Nitzan didn’t bother with sleeping and simply meditated in the corner. “Lay down.”

He helped him down so he didn’t smack his head on the wall, holding him by the upper arm and steering him. “If I knew it was this simple to make you tolerable, I’d have had you naked in my bed far earlier.”

Drifter let his head fall on his arm so he could look at him properly. Cavalero met his eyes and put a firm hand on his thigh to guide his legs open. “Not that I wouldn’t enjoy breaking you down. We can do that once you’ve got more fight in you.”

Drifter couldn’t disguise his own flare of hungry interest. He shouldn’t leap at an opportunity to be broken. To be subdued, and made to be docile and obedient. A low pang of regret that he was too worn out to give Cavalero the kind of fight he’d like to break settled in his belly, and was soothed away near-instantly by Cavalero’s rough laugh. “Don’t worry. I’m still not going to be nice.”

Drifter looked away again, fixing his gaze on the wall. Cavalero’s hand traveled in on the top of his thigh, and dipped to spread his folds. “You’re already wet. Good. That’ll make things easier. When was the last time anybody fucked you?”

Drifter wasn’t sure if he was mocking him or asking a genuine question. He went from a nightmare Void dimension to a nightmare Narmer dimension. He’d slept on the floor for the past few years. He was wet from being talked down to and ordered around, and from someone who he barely even knew except for how irritating he apparently thought Drifter was. This had to be a trap.

“I’m looking for an answer.” One he had no choice but to step in, at that. Drifter squinted, measuring his words.

“Let’s just say it’s been a while.”

The expectant laugh did not come, and when he looked at Cavalero again the man lifted his brows, bemused.

“You think I’ve been scoring much either? I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a hypocrite.”

Drifter’s head fell back against his wrists. Cavalero continued to rub and fondle him, stroking the inside of his folds and circling his entrance. It was a wet, easy slide; Drifter knew he was wetter still inside. He let his eyes close, softening the room to velvet black. Cavalero’s chuckle followed him into the cool dark; two fingers pushed inside of his pussy and dragged slowly out. Drifter arched his back, breathing out in time. His breaths followed Cavalero’s easy, patient fingering. The mattress depressed as Cavalero’s weight joined his on the bed, and Drifter kept his eyes closed as warm hands curved under his knees to hitch his legs up to his chest.

“Hey. Don’t zone out on me. Open your eyes.”

Drifter obeyed. Cavalero looked down at him; his eyes were pale brown, the same gentle, earthy color as quartz. Deceptively gentle for someone like him.

“Gotta admit… it was difficult to watch you strut around and antagonize me like you didn’t expect there to be consequences. Glad I’m finally getting the opportunity to show you that that isn’t the case.”

The hot, thick head of his cock nudged against Drifter’s entrance. Cavalero leaned over him as he pushed in, one-handedly guiding Drifter’s legs over his shoulders. It left him folded in half and trapped under Cavalero’s weight, incapable of bucking or squirming or even trying to push him; his hands were tied, literally, and Cavalero was stronger than him. Drifter groaned at the stretch, pushing his head back against his arms. What seemed like an eternity later, Cavalero was hilted in him. Drifter hadn’t gotten a look at his cock and so didn’t know exactly what he was dealing with, but his rim stung and prickled with heat and he felt achingly full. Cavalero was hot inside of him.

“Look at me.”

Drifter obeyed, finding it easier to meet his eyes this time. It wasn’t like there was anywhere he could run, and like this— speared on Cavalero’s dick and pinned under him, restrained only just enough to put him at his mercy— it wasn’t as if he had anything to hide. Wasn’t as if he could hide even if he’d wanted to. Drifter couldn’t decide. He didn’t have a choice.

“Good.”

Now, Drifter didn’t consider himself someone desperate for the approval of others. Something about Cavalero’s warm, pleased approval made his gut twist and heat flare in his groin, and made him clench down hard on Cavalero. Cavalero gripped him by the jaw, holding him steady when he tried to look away. “You are going to watch me. As long as you can. No zoning out and thinking about anything else.” He squeezed. Drifter’s eyes snapped back to his, and the thrilling, heavy heat intensified. “Are we clear?”

His tongue weighed tons, horribly clumsy and hesitant. His throat closed. Drifter couldn’t shy away from Cavalero’s piercing, pinning stare.

“We’re clear, Cavalero.”

Cavalero left his cheek with a rough pat and braced his hand against the wall, leaning over Drifter further and pushing his legs into the air. “Good. Just like that.”

Cavalero moving made him squirm, helpless to do more than press himself into the sheets. The whole no talking thing was probably saving him; he had nothing to say. He’d only say something stupid. Cavalero was big, and he didn’t waste any time in ramping up the speed and force once it was clear Drifter could take it. Even if he couldn’t; and there was a thought. Something to bring up later. Right now, the eye contact was making him want to claw his way out of his skin or sink fully into the cot. Or— better— more. Cavalero hilted himself, breathing out hard in a way that sent spikes of pleasure down Drifter’s spine.

More, he wanted to say. He was taking what Cavalero gave him; nothing less, and nothing more.

“Damn, you’re tight.”

Drifter moaned in response. Tied as he was, he couldn’t even hold him; Drifter wasn’t touchy or clingy, but Cavalero was inside of him. A little extra wouldn’t make a difference. Cavalero fucked him, in and out, harder and harder as Drifter fought to meet him halfway. The eye contact burned, stoking the tight, desperate heat in his cunt as Cavalero thrust so deeply into him that all Drifter could hear was the slap of skin on skin, their heavy breathing, his own throaty moans— he’d beg if he could. Fancy that. Drifter didn’t beg.

There was just something about Cavalero that made begging worth it. Not easy— Drifter would still rather swallow his own tongue than get the words out— but worth it, if he did.

Cavalero shifted back just enough to wedge a hand between their bodies; wrist digging into the vee of Drifter’s thigh, thumb pressed against his clit and giving him short, rough rubs in time with his thrusts.

“Oh, fuck!”

Cavalero laughed at the slip; gave him more, drove into him with renewed force. When he spoke, his tone was rough and breathless. “Did I say you could talk? Scream for me.”

Left no other real option, Drifter cried out. He was close; aided by Cavalero’s clever fingers and his piercing gaze. It had been a while, of course, but Cavalero was hitting all the right spots and Drifter was far too easy to wind up in the first place.

“Mm. I feel you quivering around me. Go on and let go. I know you want to.”

Drifter could manage only heady, strained ah, ah noises of hungry accord. Cavalero swiped over his clit one more time, mercilessly stimulating the sensitive bud, and that was what pushed Drifter over the edge for good. He didn’t scream; his voice was far too frayed for that. It was a pitiful, grateful croon instead, as he bucked up into Cavalero’s punishing thrusts and yanked his wrists fruitlessly. Cavalero hilted himself and groaned; Drifter felt him spill inside, pulled into climax with him. Cavalero squeezed his thigh as he withdrew his hand— wet with Drifter’s juices, thin, shiny lines of slick hanging between his fingers. He wiped it on Drifter’s side.the aftershocks of orgasm kept Drifter from doing anything except staring lazily up at Cavalero, eyes now half-shut and rapidly losing the battle to stay there. Cavalero pulled back; put Drifter’s legs back on the bed, and reached above his head to sever the restraints with a finger. It fell off of him into a soft puddle of thread and Drifter didn’t bother watching Cavalero take it back, he was content to lay there for a while as Cavalero zipped himself back into his pants and coaxed the thread back onto the spool. Aches he wasn’t even aware of were bubbling to the surface now that he was laying down and motionless, and similarly soothed away by the cool of the room and the relative softness of the bed. Cavalero tossed a sheet over his lower half when it became clear Drifter wasn’t going to do it for himself.

“You didn’t hear it from me, but you do a lot for this place. It’s not just the Tenno that helps us keep control of the Zariman.”

Drifter closed his eyes and let the aches subside into fuzzy exhaustion. In Duviri, he’d slept in the oddest places. In the Tenno’s salvaged Orbiter, he’d slept on the floor or in a sleeping bag in the camp. He hadn’t slept in an actual bed in years. An eternity, if he wanted to be flippant.

“You can talk now, by the way. Playtime’s over.”

When he received yet no response, Cavalero finally turned his head to examine the man; he was asleep, or else close enough to it that words were far from his mind.

Cavalero chuckled, but quietly. “That’s what you get for running yourself ragged. Sweet dreams, sleepyhead. Lots of work waiting for you when you wake.”

[rinaldoescobar]

Putting Play Before Work [ao3]

rating: E word count: 4284 summary:  “Cephalon Cy requests a rendezvous in his datascape.” That was their ship Cephalon, a former Corpus make that had taken little convincing to go rogue once all the redundancies and captive bolts had been taken off. Asuka nodded curtly. “Thank you. Inform him that I’ll be over soon.”

“Cephalon Cy requests a rendezvous in his datascape.” That was their ship Cephalon, a former Corpus make that had taken little convincing to go rogue once all the redundancies and captive bolts had been taken off.

Asuka nodded curtly. “Thank you. Inform him that I’ll be over soon.”

Truthfully, they missed the Cephalons of their prime, of the time of the Orokin; they were lovingly made, painfully made, capable of much more than what they were programmed to do. The advantage of a carefully-crafted AI was that with the proper restrictions it would never strain against the yoke.

Asuka could see both sides. They still saw something admirable in the struggle, and they saw something admirable in the flawless fulfillment of a role.

Cephalon Cy was one of those ancient Orokin-Era Cephalons. Despite themself, they disengaged from the forge mechanism with almost anticipatory swiftness and set off at a stride to the relay drydock.

Cephalon Cy had been allowed a small room in which to manifest his datascape while he did business with the other Cephalons who inhabited the relay. It could be done over the Weave, of course, and his real Cephalon casing was ensconced securely within his Tenno’s Railjack, but the relay had a spare room and he hadn’t refused when it was offered— perhaps to do business with Tenno who weren’t of his crew, as well. It was much less tense than boarding the Tenno’s ship, and much less likely to set Asuka unduly on guard than inviting himself onto their ship, so Asuka approved of the move.

The door to his room opened and the seamless mesh of reality and his manifested datascape spread out before them. It was what appeared to be a Tenno drydock, different in make and style than the relay design.

Their body felt light for a moment, then heavy; then, returning to normal. That must be the datascape accepting their body; molding around them, integrating them into an artificial world. It would be very hard to leave now unless Cy let them.

They were here at his request— likely for a business matter. They quelled a warm, twisting sensation in their stomach and continued down a ramp to the entrance to the Railjack.

Sigma Series. Ancient, but refurbished. The drydock was a ghost town but the Railjack itself was powered up. The reverse-grav system caught them up and they adjusted to the flip in perspective with ease of practice, twisting and landing on their feet on the gunnery room airlock.

“You requested my presence.” The Cephalon was listening; he must be. With the precise control that a datascape offered, he likely knew that they were going to talk milliseconds before they started talking through the tensing of their throat. They moved through the Railjack to the pilot’s room, sparing a brief look at the spinal gun. It used to be powerful. Expensive, and high-risk, but during the later parts of the war any risk was worth the reward. Asuka had never seen much use to it-- but then, they’d been asleep for those later parts.

“I heard the rumors. I wanted to see for myself if they were true.”

His voice was deep and measured; before becoming a Cephalon, he must have held some position of power and authority. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have become a Railjack Cephalon— a Command Cephalon, at that.

“If that’s all,” Asuka allowed themself to snipe; sardonic, but not yet biting. They brushed their fingers against the ridge of the pilot’s enclave. Diversified bridges were past Cy’s time. The pilot of a Sigma-series craft served as a pilot and gunner both, and as a captain half the time, too. The Orokin trusted their most elite ranks to succeed with only the bare minimum of support and tools.

For the most part, they did. Asuka knew what inevitably happened; they’d long ago stopped humoring a sick feeling of having missed out on the majority of the war. Death would have been honorable then, yes, but ultimately unhelpful.

“I have missed the masterful hand of a Dax at the helm.” Cy’s voice reverberated throughout the Railjack. Asuka forcefully reminded themself that they were inside a datascape, even though the muted, ambient purr of the engines and guns made it almost impossible to know better. It would be too easy to slip into the pilot’s enclave and take the ship out. They rarely piloted anymore— spent a majority of the time in flight coordinating the actions of their crew or leading boarding parties. A Cephalon’s datascape was not the place to indulge old urges.

“Do you find the Tenno unsatisfactory?” They left the enclave to inspect the navigation console instead. It had the hazy, inoperable quality of a dream; they couldn’t make out nav orders or coordinates. They moved on.

“I find them to be much like Tenno, and little like Dax.”

Most Dax operated like well-oiled machines with little thought to personal glory. They lived for their Orokin master’s honor; as elite and favored as Asuka was— had been— they were valued most when they were little more than a tool. Cy must be accustomed to the unflinching obedience of a Dax.

Still, Asuka knew better than to underestimate the Tenno. The Tenno had survived the Old War— the Dax was now little more than an extinct order, perished alongside their Orokin masters.

“We are all tools,” Asuka finally responded. The door slid open with a muted hiss, allowing them back into the gunnery room. They stood at the edge of a gunner’s enclave, suddenly conscious of their reflection in the reinforced glass.

They looked the same as they had before being ordered into cryosleep.  They wore their hair down now, though, straight and black, nearly brushing their shoulders. A well-placed hit from an ether dagger scarred the skin above and below their right eye in a neat line characteristic of the weapon. The Dax’s syndana draped over their pirate’s armor. That had been different before their sleep, too— they left the armor in the room they’d woken up in.

They looked the same, but they’d changed a great deal from the dual tool and status symbol that they’d been bred to be.

“I do envy them,” they said, and looked away from the window to the hulking forms of the turrets. “They were capable of rebellion long before I was.”

The temperature of the datascape cooled, suddenly, a plunge in temperature righted so quickly that Asuka was almost unsure that it had happened at all. A rough patch of goose pimples springing up on their arms disproved the unsureness.

“The Tenno know better than to rebel on my Railjack.”

Asuka had to dig to uncover the different layers carried by that— that Cy was attached to his Tenno crew, that Asuka had managed to get under his skin somehow, and that the rumble of his voice was very distracting.

“I never implied they couldn’t follow orders,” they responded. It would be trite and immature to smile. They ran their hand along the ridge of the gunner’s enclave again instead, squeezing the cold, unyielding metal.

“You would follow orders too, if you were of my crew.”

Somehow, the conversation had dipped away from business to banter, and the banter itself was becoming increasingly charged. In the datascape— a manifestation of Cy’s presence and will— they felt very much under close scrutiny. They should return the subject to business— to the Tenno. They should ignore the way Cy’s voice made their belly flip and tighten. It was the same weightless twisting sensation of being righted in zero-gravity, but hotter, turning into a warm, burgeoning sensation that gradually moved lower. Instead, they moved on from the gunner’s enclave and stared down at the small battle map in the center of the room. It had geometries they could not name; battlefields they weren’t familiar with, or perhaps that had never existed.

“You know how well Dax follow orders.”

It was flirting. They were flirting with a Cephalon, in his datascape, while supposedly having been summoned for business. It wasn’t the weirdest situation they’d ever been in, but it was still weird. Cy’s voice, when he answered, was just as full of promise as the insubordinate, lecherous part of Asuka hoped it would be.

“To the letter.”

Some Cephalons chose to manifest a symbolic representation— indeed, Asuka’s ship Cephalon favored a cluster of rotating hexagons— but only rarely a humanoid one. Asuka felt internally more than saw or heard that Cy was manifesting a body behind them. They turned to see what it looked like before their runaway mind could create something entirely different.

The build he’d chosen was tall and broad-shouldered, well-muscled even though the only details Asuka could make out were slight roundings of simulated muscle. Instead of a face, a dark red visor-like structure curved from his chin to the center of his head. Asuka could see their own face reflected in it. He looked almost like a typical Dax, except larger. Asuka was fairly standard— their house was solid, honored, well-known and oft-coveted before the demise of the Orokin. Cy’s manifested body had about a quarter of a foot on them. He wouldn’t look out of place in Dax regalia.

That, they supposed, was the point.

“Let’s have a refresher on Dax obedience.”

His hand closed around their wrist and he turned them, keeping his grip steady and tight, until he could press their wrist to the middle of their back. His knee brushed the back of their thigh, prompting them to take a step forward. It would be foolish to think he hadn’t picked up on what they were feeling. What they wanted.

It would be unforgivable otherwise, moreso because they hadn’t indicated that this was something they necessarily wanted to do even though they would like to do it very badly— but Cy was made for this. Not this, in particular, but the way he knew what they were thinking and feeling even before it came to them— perfect attunement with his crew. Not Tenno. Dax.

The datascape rippled around them. When Asuka could place the room, they nearly laughed.

“The Tenno have converted the brig section into storage.”

“Tenno do not take prisoners often,” Cy explained to them— they didn’t need the explanation, but they appreciated his voice in their ear, the husky insinuation of prisoner as his voice stayed brisk and businesslike. The clutter in the brig section faded away into nothing, leaving the space clean and as barren as Asuka remembered. There was an almost shelflike cot in the far corner, but that was it. Cy herded them over. The sensation of his body— the projection, though it felt warm and solid— against theirs, the brush of his knee against their leg as he urged them to move faster, made them flush. They were definitely aroused now.

“Abnormal heartbeat noted.”

They knew he was monitoring their physiological signs. He didn’t have to tell them— it made their belly twist and made their knees unmistakably weak.

He gave them a little push that made their knees connect with the brig cot. It forced them into a bent position, one of his knees forcing theirs to crook; making their back curve over the cot. His hands were at their armor. One hand was at their hip, the other still holding their arm behind their back. He had too many hands, must have manifested more for the singular purpose of working on them. That, and the purposeful awkwardness of the position, made their knees weak again and they leaned more fully against the cot, setting their hand down to hold themself up with some degree of dignity.

Cy unfastened their chest armor and pulled it off, then their syndana, wasting no time in stripping them to the waist and knocking their hand from the cot when it got in the way. One hand cupped and squeezed their exposed breast. It wasn’t much, conditioned through hormones to not interfere with battle or make armor an affair. As with the rest of them, there was muscle under it; but it was softer than a man’s, and they quite liked it. They also liked the way Cy was kneading and squeezing at it, rolling their nipple between his fingers and finally drawing away to tend to their pants; not before giving it a pinch, making them whine and their back sinuously arch. They raised their hand to palm their other breast, a clumsy attempt to offset the sting Cy’s clever fingers had left. He let them, unfastening their belt, then their uniform pants, pushing them down and indicating that they should step out of them. Their boots were gone. He’d probably taken care of them at some point— when, they couldn’t say. The uncertainty was disorienting.

Finally, when they were completely naked, he stepped away from them. They turned with him but did not follow; perhaps with more modesty they would have wanted to cover themself, but instead they caught the pebbled nub of their nipple between their fingers and gave it a little pinch. Cy would know what they were doing if they faced him or not.

That they’d turned indicated that they wanted him to know.

“On your knees, Dax.”

Their belly flipped and twisted. Heat, more than was already there, blossomed between their legs, evidence of arousal that was too strong to ignore and that they had no intention of ignoring besides. The confidence with which Cy had ordered them to their knees was intoxicating; they had no chance at disobeying him, and didn’t want to. They dropped their hands to their sides, fixing their gaze at roughly where Cy’s eyes would be if the projection had a face instead of a blank visor, and sank to their knees; it was a smooth, graceful motion born from long practice. Usually not with this context. Usually they knelt to meditate; to receive orders: to reflect, briefly, on the state of the system. Never anymore with such a fire burning between their legs, and already aroused enough that if they looked down they would see wet, shiny evidence of their own need on their thighs.

“I don’t suppose I have to tell you what to do.”

Again, with an appearance that Asuka had managed to completely miss, Cy was holding a cock in his hand. The position— Cy’s closeness, Asuka on their knees, the thick, erect cock barely an inch away from their face— left little room for misunderstanding.

Asuka was no stranger to sucking cock. They came of age in a barracks of Dax, all of them in their physical prime, most of them predisposed to wrestling and roughhousing when they weren’t on duty. Sometimes, when they were bold and alone, the combatants attached a price to losing; Asuka had ended up on their knees before, or more frequently with someone’s face between their legs, and while it wasn’t a common event it had happened enough times that Cy likely knew of that behavior in his Dax.

It was one of the excesses of the Orokin that Asuka didn’t take issue with, especially since it got them here. They reached out to brace a hand on Cy’s thigh, leaning forward to boldly take his cock into their mouth.

Did he even feel it? What was he getting out of it? His cock was hot and heavy on their tongue, so perfectly proportional it couldn’t be real, the texture of skin just a bit off from normal; he didn’t taste bad either, just the mildly salty, otherwise nondescript taste of clean skin.  

Perhaps the cerebral sense of control, they figured as his suddenly free hand cupped the back of their head and pushed them to take him to the root. His cock nudged the back of their throat and they gagged, attempting to pull back and catch a breath, but he didn’t let them-- holding them firm and forcing them to accept his entire length into their mouth. Into their throat. Distress streaked up their spine and they gripped his thighs, nails digging pointlessly into his projection. The distress didn’t last long. They should have been ashamed of it-- the way it twisted itself up and became desire instead, certainly still painful and uncomfortable with the way his cock forced their throat to mold around it and cut off their air, but they wanted it; wanted more.

They choked again, looking up as far as they could to see Cy’s visor angled down at them. They made a pitiful, needy sound up at him and abortively swallowed around his cock. Even breathing through their nose wasn’t enough to get them air. They swallowed again, and blinked back tears as a feeling of lightheadedness tangled with their desire, and only then did Cy allow them to pull back and gulp down desperate lungfuls of air.

He gave them barely ten seconds before catching them by the jaw, lifting their face to look at him. “Do it by yourself.”

Despite-- or perhaps because of-- the knowledge that it would hurt, the command caused arousal to flare again. They felt hot and shaky and weak. He let them lean into his palm for a moment before his hand migrated to the back of their head again. Taking the hint, they opened their mouth again, allowing the intrusion of Cy’s cock to force them open by degrees. At their own pace, it took a little longer, and they had a few false starts of gagging on Cy’s cock as it jabbed the back of their throat. They didn’t intend to whine. The sensation of his cock finally breaching their throat made them, and made them tear up again as it pushed further into them. When they reached the root he held them there again, letting them adjust to the feeling, whining and tearing up, and cling onto his thighs. Their thighs were entirely wet. If they were allowed to touch themself-- which they knew they weren’t, somehow, because if there was anything Asuka knew how to do it was pleasing a control freak-- they were sure they would have come already.

When they were beginning to feel lightheaded again he pulled their head back by a handful of hair, but not entirely; just long enough for them to catch a breath before he pushed their head back to his groin. They made as loud and as enthusiastic of a noise as they could at that, intoxicated by the sensation of fullness invading their throat. They were now certain that he was getting off-- in whichever way it was that a Cephalon could get off-- on the power he had over them, just as much as they were trying to get off on it as well.

He finally pulled their head back for good when they were uncontrollably gagging as he thrust in and out of their throat, letting them fall back on their haunches and rub their throat, coughing a few times. Their throat burned and their jaw was sore. They couldn’t believe that they’d been debating not meeting him not even an hour ago.

“Lean over the cot,” Cy commanded after the coughing and gasping petered off to an acceptable amount, and Asuka scrambled to obey. Their throat was painfully sore and they were sure they wouldn’t be able to talk normally for a while, and they were still somewhat lightheaded, but all the treatment had managed to do was make them want it even more. That wasn’t a typical characteristic of Dax, but Asuka had long since ceased to be typical. They put themself over the cot, bent with their palms bracing them. Cy came up behind them once more and knocked their hands out from under them until they rested on their elbows instead. The new position was even more exposed and pushed their ass back until it nudged his cock.

“Please fuck me.” They didn’t doubt that he would, but they would very much like for him to hurry up with it.

“You should look at yourself.” Cy tangled his fingers in a handful of their hair and pulled, forcing them to move with him and curl their back or else be yanked. They couldn’t quite match the arch that Cy’s movement demanded; they cried out, caught between holding still to minimize the ache in their scalp or grinding back on Cy to urge him into action. “You’re dripping with need.”

“I haven’t been fucked in a thousand years,” they gasped out, knowing that Cy would see the humor in the situation as well. They sounded terribly hoarse, voice scratchy, and it hurt to talk, but the reminder of why only served to make them hotter.

He finally, finally pushed into them. They were so wet and aroused that they didn’t really need prep, and they didn’t think Cy would prep them anyways. He was big, but not unmanageable. They leaned back into him, making a sore, encouraging noise in the back of their throat. It was almost too much when he started to move. Too much, and not enough, and just perfect; the right amount of sensation to scratch the itch, his length stretching them open until they nudged their legs further apart to give him a better angle. He changed his pace from long and deep to shorter, sharper movements once he’d found an angle that made Asuka squirm

“Faster!” They pushed back into him, bracing on their elbows and rolling their hips. They were close, pitifully so, through the combination of the position and pleasure and especially Cy’s firm grip on their hair. They were up on the balls of their feet to allow Cy’s cock even further within them and the tight, strained position made their legs sting, the small of their back aching from holding such an unnatural arch.

“You’ll take what I give you,” Cy growled. He pushed them down with a hand at the small of their back, driving into them with renewed force.

Asuka gasped as their elbows gave way, collapsing in a heap over themselves and catching their cheek before it hit the cold metal of the cot. That, of all things, was what made them come. The pressure of Cy’s hand pinning them to the table as his other hand fisted in their hair so tightly that it hurt mixed with the intense pleasure and heat in their hole; their nails dug into their arms and they cried out, biting down on the skin of their inner arm to keep from yelling again. Cy pounded into them, finally letting up on their hair and back only to haul them to himself by the hips when their legs gave out.

Not only had they not been fucked in a thousand years, they also hadn’t come in a thousand years, and even though they’d been asleep for the majority of that the fact that something as simple as a climax could knock them down so thoroughly was shameful.

Cy held them there as they came down, gasping and scrabbling at the table as their chest heaved and their legs shook. His cock was still hard inside of them and it still felt good even though there was nothing they wanted more than to curl up and bask in the afterglow.

“Void,” they said, hoarsely. Cy removed himself from them-- they groaned and winced-- and helped them sit down on the cot.

“You didn’t come,” they inquired somewhat stupidly; his groin area was once again smooth and nondescript. Cy sat down on the brig cot next to them, reaching over to check them for nonexistent injury. They were certainly a little sore, but unharmed. Some harm, but all enjoyable.

“I don’t have the need.”

They looked away for a moment, and when they looked back to him the projection was gone. They took the opportunity to scoot over on the brig cot, pulling their clothes to themself though without much urgency. “You don’t have the need.”

It was a simple echo, but Cy surely knew what they were really asking.

“Perhaps I simply enjoy reminding Dax of their place.”

It was only because they had already come and were lax and satisfied that they didn’t get aroused again, and even then their body was certainly trying valiantly. They pulled their pants over their lap instead.

“I commend the effort,” they finally rasped in reply. Cy seemed content to let them sit and put themself back together, so they turned their attention to that until they no longer felt as if their legs would buckle underneath them as soon as they stood. “Was this the only reason you summoned me, or did you want to talk business?”

“I would like to borrow some of your crewmembers to assist the Tenno in their directives.” That sounded like an argument he’d had with his Tenno, really, because as far as ship maintenance and repair went a Tenno could only do so much in the heat of battle, and were more used to single-person flight accessories than a multi-person crewship.

“They’re skilled in every proxima. Send me a detailed list of the skills your ship is in need of and I’ll poll my crew.” Who would be delighted to work with the Tenno, no doubt. Even knowledge of Asuka’s past couldn’t stop most of them from hero-worship.

“I would like to meet with you on occasion to discuss that arrangement.” If Asuka was purely duty-minded, as they should and used to be, they would politely disregard the underlying promise in Cy’s voice.

Instead they leaned back, finally allowing a wry smile; crossing their arms. “I’m sure that could be arranged.”

[rinaldoescobar]

Erra [ao3]

rating: G word count: 598 summary: His face was gaunt, almost insectoid, when Nitzan got another good look at him. “Don’t hurt them. You can— you can have me for sure, you can do whatever you want, just leave them be.” “One Tenno life for a hundred— and you’re asking me to choose? You’re even more of a fool than I thought.”

Erra wasn’t a massive sentient, but he was still much bigger than Nitzan and Nitzan had no doubts that he could push past him and get to the Reservoir if he wanted to.

The last time he'd been face-to-face with Erra was blurry, dredged up to the surface through stress and terror. Once again he could barely remember what he’d done.

“Please— Erra, listen to me.”

His face was gaunt, almost insectoid, when Nitzan got another good look at him. “Don’t hurt them. You can— you can have me for sure, you can do whatever you want, just leave them be.”

“One Tenno life for a hundred— and you’re asking me to choose? You’re even more of a fool than I thought.”

“We’re not like the Orokin.” Then, again, “we’re not like the Orokin.” That made Erra pause, if not turn to him again. “We have honor. We’d do anything for our family.”That made him step back, a steady movement on crooked, stiltlike appendages, and turn to face Nitzan properly.

“What makes you think I’d show mercy to your family?”

A goad, yes, but still a genuine question. Nitzan knew by now that the Sentients liked loyalty, and he didn’t have to lie to demonstrate his.

“They can’t defend themselves, they can’t hurt you. Please, just let them sleep.”

“And you could hurt me?” Definitely a goad— Erra was turning back to the door that hid away a score of sleeping Tenno. Erra wasn’t a soldier. He would have struck Nitzan down by now if he was.

“I’ll have to, if you take another step.”

Nitzan dashed forward, the Void cool and humming against his skin and inside of himself, and put himself between Erra and the door. It did make him pause again.

This must be novel. It must be exciting. Erra had likely never considered that the Tenno— a Tenno— could negotiate.

“One awake Tenno is worth a thousand who are still asleep,” he argued. It was not necessarily correct, but with the wealth of experience he had compared with the coltish fumbling of newly-woken Tenno, it might just be correct for him.

“This could be a trap. How can I know you won’t betray me once I return with you?”

So he was planning on taking Nitzan’s suggestion, and now would change his mind only if Nitzan said something very stupid.

“I won’t hurt you.”

Erra took a step forward. Nitzan brandished his amp, a reminder that even though they were in the discussion stages now he was still very much willing to confront him. Erra paused, and returned. Nitzan lowered his amp.

Then, more quietly, running his finger along the scraps of Sentient-scaffolding that made up the ribs of his amp, “and I could never hurt her. I swear it.”

That seemed to satisfy him. He reached out as if to pick Nitzan up with the pincer-like appendage on his arm, but Nitzan raised his amp again.

“Tell me that you won’t hurt them.”

Erra let his hand hover a foot away. He knew that Nitzan would strike if he didn’t comply, even with the awkward position they were in now.

“They won’t come to harm.”

Erra’s sister was the soldier— not him. He didn’t have it in him for deceptive wordplay. Nitzan nodded curtly. “Give me your word.”

“I give you my word.”

Somehow, even though he knew he’d succeeded, Erra confirming that he actually had made his body weak with relief. He dropped his amp, nodding, sparing a last look to the closed-off Reservoir before Erra seized him around the middle.

Erra wasn’t a massive sentient, but he was still much bigger than Nitzan and Nitzan had no doubts that he could push past him and get to the Reservoir if he wanted to.

The last time was blurry, dredged up to the surface through stress and terror. Once again he could barely remember what he’d done.

“Please— Erra, listen to me.”

His face was gaunt, almost insectoid, when Nitzan got another good look at him. “Don’t hurt them. You can— you can have me for sure, you can do whatever you want, just leave them be.”

“One Tenno life for a hundred— and you’re asking me to choose? You’re even more of a fool than I thought.”

“We’re not like the Orokin.” Then, again, “we’re not like the Orokin.”

That made Erra pause, if not turn to him again. “We have honor. We’d do anything for our family.”

That made him step back, a steady movement on crooked, stiltlike appendages, and turn to face Nitzan properly.

“What makes you think I’d show mercy to your family?”

A goad, yes, but still a genuine question. Nitzan knew by now that the Sentients liked loyalty, and he didn’t have to lie to demonstrate his.

“They can’t defend themselves, they can’t hurt you. Please, just let them sleep.”

“And you could hurt me?” Definitely a goad— Erra was turning back to the door that hid away a score of sleeping Tenno. Erra wasn’t a soldier. He would have struck Nitzan down by now if he was.

“I’ll have to, if you take another step.”

Nitzan dashed forward, the Void cool and humming against his skin and inside of himself, and put himself between Erra and the door. It did make him pause again.

This must be novel. It must be exciting. Erra had likely never considered that the Tenno— a Tenno— could negotiate.

“One awake Tenno is worth a thousand who are still asleep,” he argued. It was not necessarily correct, but with the wealth of experience he had compared with the coltish fumbling of newly-woken Tenno, it might just be correct for him.

“This could be a trap. How can I know you won’t betray me once I return with you?”

So he was planning on taking Nitzan’s suggestion, and now would change his mind only if Nitzan said something very stupid.

“I won’t hurt you.”

Erra took a step forward. Nitzan brandished his amp, a reminder that even though they were in the discussion stages now he was still very much willing to confront him. Erra paused, and returned. Nitzan lowered his amp.

Then, more quietly, running his finger along the scraps of Sentient-scaffolding that made up the ribs of his amp, “and I could never hurt her. I swear it.”

That seemed to satisfy him. He reached out as if to pick Nitzan up with the pincer-like appendage on his arm, but Nitzan raised his amp again.

“Tell me that you won’t hurt them.”

Erra let his hand hover a foot away. He knew that Nitzan would strike if he didn’t comply, even with the awkward position they were in now.

“They won’t come to harm.”

Erra’s sister was the soldier— not him. He didn’t have it in him for deceptive wordplay. Nitzan nodded curtly. “Give me your word.”

“I give you my word.”

Somehow, even though he knew he’d succeeded, Erra confirming that he actually had made his body weak with relief. He dropped his amp, nodding, sparing a last look to the closed-off Reservoir before Erra seized him around the middle.

[rinaldoescobar]

Mind The Gap [ao3]

rating: G word count: 716 summary: Across the way, he saw a Whaler in a red coat crouched down on a rooftop. Too slight to be Daud, and he rarely played sentry anyway, so it must be Billie. He grinned to himself; it had been a while since he’d said hello to her. It was an odd sensation, both being happy to see someone and wanting to actually be close to them.

The boy ducked under a rotted-out beam and into the swell of the Flooded District. It was familiar by now; the hagfish swirling below, the rats scurrying along corrugated walkways and near-submerged porches, the far-off moaning and hacking and misery of Weepers. He heard an echoing bay of a wolfhound from far ahead, patrolling the drier areas of the Chamber of Commerce.

A shadow passed over him. He was being watched, in a detached and kindly way. Whichever assassin it was must be busy. He twisted his head belatedly to catch sight of absolutely nothing, then turned back and forged on ahead. His limbs washed over with relief that he wouldn’t be talked to, and then a slight twinge of guilt for the relief. He squeezed his left hand into a fist— reflected, for a moment, on how easily he could make the ground boil over into fat, furious bodies. The guilt faded, as did the relief. He reached out with the power of the Mark to cross a too-wide-for-jumping gap, hopped and skipped across a series of porches and walkways, and settled down in one of the upper-level apartment units to catch his breath and warm up.

Across the way, he saw a Whaler in a red coat crouched down on a rooftop. Too slight to be Daud, and he rarely played sentry anyway, so it must be Billie. He grinned to himself; it had been a while since he’d said hello to her. It was an odd sensation, both being happy to see someone and wanting to actually be close to them.

A transversal took him to her rooftop, a respectful distance away. She knew he was there. She didn’t react to his presence at all— she let him approach on his own time, creeping forward step by step until he was at her side.

“Billie.”

She sat back on her haunches. “Hey, little man.”

It made something in him grow when she said that; swelling in his chest. Pride, maybe. He sat down cross-legged next to her.

“What’s up?” Her hand was resting on the hilt of her wicked butcher’s blade, but there was no threat to the gesture. It was training, ease of habit, and she shifted back down to one knee and placed that hand on the rooftop ledge soon enough when he took his time in responding.

“Looking for runes.”

“Found any?” Her tone was indulgent. She wasn’t on sentry duty, he realized, but looking for something or someone. If she were a sentry she would be moving from rooftop to rooftop, not guarding over a checkpoint.

Logically, she shouldn’t want him close in case he distracted her. She hadn’t told him to go away (and she would, if she needed to— she had before) so either it wasn’t important or she didn’t mind being distracted.

He crept forward to be next to her, mirroring her position half-leaning out over the floodway.

The ground was so very far. The water moved slowly, a lazy current where it wasn’t dead still. Hagfish surfaced occasionally to grab a rat by the dangling tail.

It was a long, long drop. He’d better be careful, or else—

The Mark pulsed, suddenly warm. “I know,“ he said to it. Billie huhed at him.

“Talking to somebody?”

“The Outsider,” he managed with as much dignity as possible. He hoped she wouldn’t ask if he talked back.

“And is he talking to you?”

Damn it. He shook his head. “He can only really... talk to me at shrines.”

Another huh, softer this time.

“Well, you should go talk to him.”

“Huh?” He said, stupidly, and was too slow to avoid her hand firmly pushing him by the small of his back off the roof. “Hey!” He shouted, too loud!, as the windows rushed by and the water rushed closer, but she was a good teacher and he was a quick study and so he landed safely on his feet, ferried away from the water by a well-timed transversal. He looked up at her, crouched a measure more smugly on the rooftop, and didn’t need to see her face to know she was amused. She waved a hand at him— dismissal. She was busy. Before he left he shook his head at her, but he was smiling.

[rinaldoescobar]

The Mercy Game [ao3]

rating: M word count: 1367 summary: He learned how to place traps at the estate, where he hunted far less exciting game; foxes, coyotes, wolves. Now that he tracks the prey set loose for him, he knows that they’re not all that different in the end.

[rinaldoescobar]

Watch for the rip, she’d say, adjusting the crown on his tiny head. Watch for the rip. It had been an all-encompassing terror when he was that age, even scarier than the thought of ending up far from the kingdom. He could always swim back, or enlist help. He was cute, he was charming, and he was royalty. The thought of being swept up in an inexorable tide-- the helplessness of it-- made him cold and shivery on even the warmest days.

That was long ago, when he was a child. He still thought about riptides occasionally; the cold fear didn’t stay very long at all.

Fear had a purpose, though. Sunshine’s first mistake came with simple carelessness that fear could have prevented. Streams of bubbles and seaweed scraps tumbled past him on the current, but it was a sluggish one that gave him a boost and made carving a path through the water easier, enjoyable. He curled into a somersault just to watch the sun play on his scales, luminous through the cartilage of his fins. A mistake—foolish. The tide caught him before he could free himself from the rip, and before he could remember the other techniques he’d been taught to save himself from an unexpected current it was too strong to fight.

His muscles felt like jelly from struggling fruitlessly against the rip, and every time he thought he was going to break out and push himself into calmer water the current rebuffed him and he was tugged back again; twirled and twisted in the relentless tide. More quickly than he’d ever imagined, the sunlight thinned and weakened. He saw the seafloor, and then a trench opening up like a craggy scar. Bones of long-dead leviathans hung over the edge and fish teemed between the vast ribcages, not the bright and colorful fish he was used to but duller, drabber kinds. He’d long since ceased trying to fight the tide. It would be done with him when it was done with him.

The tide carried him down. There was sun, still, but it was faint. Just how far down would the tide take him?

“What’s this?” A flicker of bones, of coral beads, of gold, trailing hair and an even longer trailing tail made of pierced fin and bone, circled him. Moved with him, slicing into the dying rip current to come up behind him and catch Sunshine’s body with his own, shoulder to shoulder. Cheek to cheek. The slow spiral stopped as Sunshine finally got a good look at his… rescuer.

“Now what does a little sun-ray like you do far away from the surface?”

Gold shone around his neck and on his chest, catching the wavering rays of light. Sunshine didn’t feel up for answering at the moment-- he reached out for him instead, combing his fingers through the bangles on his choker; they weren’t heavy enough to fall back immediately, bouncing on the tide between Sunshine’s fingers. My, but his hair was long. It would disappear into the pitch below if not for the bangles and bones braided intermittently into the strands. The merman himself seemed perfectly suited to the darkness. He was longer, tougher than Sunshine, and Sunshine figured he would find the merman intimidating if he hadn’t just called him a sun-ray.  The merman pulled him from the weak tail of the rip and let him hang tail-up for the time being, lazily pushing them away. Pulling them deeper. Sunshine could endure the depths of the ocean, and he was too turned-around to worry much about that anyways.

“A rip current,” he said finally. The other man tutted—amused at Sunshine’s predicament, but sympathetic. He reached up to rest his hand on Sunshine’s belly, steering them both around to catch a particularly strong sunbeam. Sunshine clasped his hand over—his skin was rough, and he could feel bone-plates studded on the back of the other merman’s hand.

“You’re not the first.”

“I must admit, I’m a little disoriented.”

“Why don’t you try putting your tail to the seafloor, then?” He smiled again, eyes narrowed and twinkling. “What do they teach you up there, sun-ray?”

Before he could stop himself, Sunshine was laughing. He gave an experimental flip of his tail and righted himself, fixing his crown and untangling hair from his earrings. “My name is Sunshine! Prince Sunshine.”

“You’re a prince, huh?” His rescuer eyed him up and down, crossing his arms, flipping his tailfin to brush against Sunshine’s. “Me too. Prince Spotfin, at your… service. This is the part where I’d ask to whom I owe the pleasure, but you’ve introduced yourself already.”

Sunshine snorted. “Just pretend. We’ve got to do it properly.”

“Oh, I love being proper.” He flicked his tailfin to push away the proper amount of distance. He straightened up, tucking his hands behind his back, and nodded at Sunshine. “Give it to me good, sunbeam.”

Sunshine would have rolled his eyes. Clearly, Spotfin hated the intricacies of what being a prince meant. Sunshine figured he should have guessed that from the outset, since he was by himself without the normal pomp and retinue the station required.

“I am Prince Sunshine. From up there.” He gestured in the vague direction of up. Spotfin nodded, quite seriously.

“I am Prince Spotfin, from down here.” He spread his arms out to indicate the vast stretch of the trench. The bangles and bracelets around his wrists brushed together with the movement, settling softly back to his skin. “And however quickly a rip current takes you somewhere, it’ll take you three times as long to swim back.”

Sunshine vaguely remembered being told something like that, but it was drowned out by the more general advice of avoiding the rips in the first place.

“So I’ve got a swim ahead of me.” He sighed, swishing his fins to set himself horizontal to the surface far above. Spotfin hummed and circled around, swimming over and under him.

“I’ll go with you. I’ve always wanted to sunbathe.”

“You’ve never been up to the surface?” Sunshine crossed his arms, head twisting idly to follow Spotfin’s sinuous path.

“You’ve never been down to the trenches?” Spotfin drifted above him, gesturing widely. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Sunshine replied honestly. “I haven’t been down here for long.”

“I can show you around before we go back up?”

Sunshine was interested, despite himself. He swam next to Spotfin, angling himself up. Spotfin slowed to let him pass, then followed close behind. “Isn’t it dangerous down here?”

Spotfin laughed. “Nothing messes with me. You’ll be fine.”

Sunshine could have argued that Spotfin hadn’t answered him. There was no point to it, though.

“I think I should go back. There’ll be people looking for me.”

Spotfin hummed. He swam up until they were even, then past Sunshine. “If that’s what you want to do. Is it true you can find your way anywhere just by using the sky?”

“Yes, the stars.”

“Huh.” Spotfin tilted his head up. They were still too far below for the sun to be anything but a faint blotch in a wide swathe of blue. If it were night, there was no way for the stars to pierce this far below the surface. Sunshine pulled next to him, glancing over.

“Yeah.”

Spotfin looked at him, then back to the surface far above. “Huh.”

“ … Now what does a little sun-ray like you do far away from the surface ? “

Chance meeting with a tropical sunshine prince and a deep-sea bone prince for Mermay 2019

[rinaldoescobar]

A Game of Komi [ao3]

rating: G word count: 434 summary: When you turn, your Operator is there, kneeling in front of the Komi board-- you hadn't noticed them come in. Ordis did not welcome them back from a mission either. Perhaps you were lost in thought. Nimble fingers pluck at the stones and set them to the side, readying the playing board. Your Operator smiles, and gestures to you with an open hand.

[rinaldoescobar]

Damned Thrice Over [ao3]

rating: M word count: 2433 summary: There were ten on each side, ten bunk beds overall. Rulfio started at the bottom, of course. He knew how to cut a hound's throat so it couldn't howl, so it would choke on its own blood if it didn't die immediately; the breathless gurgling noise was made by both children and hounds as they suffocated. It might have been easier to classify them as hounds; but no. They were children. But it was kinder.

[rinaldoescobar]

Tyl Regor’s Wet ‘n Wild Tenno Troubles [ao3]

rating: e word count: 7025 summary: “I have a proposition for you,” he said, finally. Tyl Regor chuckled and Nitzan felt shivers run down his spine and warmth pool in his belly, heat spreading across his face. His thoughts scattered like a school of fish before he gathered them back together again, working his lower lip between his teeth and blinking hard. “Well? Get it out in the open, Tenno. You're leaving me in suspense.” “Intercourse.”

“What's this? A Tenno skittering around in my house? I thought you'd have learned your lesson from the last time. Sick things you must be planning, Tenno.” Tyl Regor's voice rumbled over the loudspeaker system. It was sick-- he had to be sick to want this. On a more urgent note, now every Grineer in the damn place knew he was here.

That it was Tyl Regor announcing his presence was better, and somehow worse, than that shrieking alarm. Nitzan frowned and activated Loki's invisibility. The Grineer making eyes-- masks?-- at him looked around, befuddled. They were clones, not a hivemind, and more used to being lab assistants than soldiers in this particular headquarters. Even with the excavation, and even with more recent things. Nitzan didn't want to think about it.

The salt of Uranus' endless sea clung to Loki's plates and settled in the in-betweens. Cloned, ever-degrading ears couldn't pick it up; Loki's impeccably tuned sensors did. Nitzan ignored the crunch and grind of tiny grains of salt between tough Ferrite plates and kept on, launching and twisting through the air, feather-light landings turning effortlessly into powerful bullet-jumps.

It finally took him to the huge atrium. He'd passed it before, mainly on spy missions, and he was always delighted to punch through the flimsy Grineer vaults, but he was here for something different today. He advanced carefully into the room, stopping underneath the shadow of Tyl Regor's massive statue. The wavering net of light reflected off of the ocean currents dappled the metal, the ground, and it would have made Nitzan feel sick any other time. He ignored it now.

“What do we have here?”

Nitzan held his hands up in the universal don't shoot gesture. Tyl Regor appeared at the balcony-- how did he do that?-- and looked down on Nitzan, impossibly, effortlessly imperious in a way that made Nitzan's knees weak. He spoke like he expected-- like he knew-- people would listen to him, do what he said.

Without a clean way to get his message across while still in the Warframe, Nitzan transferred out. The metal was cool under the suit's boots. The air, too, was clammy, and he felt the pressure of being so far underwater. Still—he was far hardier than a clone, no matter how much war was slopped into their vats. He had the Void to thank for that. He tucked one hand in the small of his back, the other hovering at his waist, and looked up.

“Ah. The fish finally sheds its shell.” Tyl Regor stayed back on the walkway. As unsettling as it was to have the already tall Grineer leering down at him, it was far preferable to standing right in front of him. Nitzan probably wouldn't even reach his collarbones.

Nitzan briefly caught himself making a rather indignant expression, scrunching his nose and brows, and smoothed it down into more neutral confusion.

“That doesn't make sense.” And you know it, unsaid but ringing clear in the ocean ambience.

“As does exiting your shell in a place like this. Why would you? To taunt? To put me at ease with your presence?”

At that, Nitzan interrupted with a nod. While he didn't necessarily dislike being cross-examined by Tyl Regor like this, he hadn't been able to get a meaningful word in-- and he had words to say, dammit. He didn't often, and liked to think that when he did they were important.

“An empty peace offering. We both know you can flicker off into the Void whenever you so choose.”

Nitzan crossed his arms. Tyl Regor wasn't wrong. He liked to have certain safeguards in place-- his Warframe, his amp, and finally the Void when all else failed. Could he be blamed for that?

Regardless of how sound his logic seemed to him, he nodded. Stripped the amp off and set it between Loki's feet, then straightened again and looked steadily at Tyl Regor, hoping he would be satisfied with that-- made a little so there motion with his hands. After so long thinking he was his Warfame and being little more than a mute, obedient soldier, he didn't like to talk. It didn't feel natural. It felt like too much. Maybe he'd been that way on the Zariman too, though. Always quiet, the sort of quiet that allowed his thoughts to swirl and stew. A perfect, silent Orokin weapon. Nitzan was pretty sure perfect, silent Orokin weapons didn’t have houghts like I want Tyl Regor to fuck me, though, so those old extinct bastards couldn’t keep their claws in him forever.

“I have a proposition for you,” he said, finally. Tyl Regor chuckled and Nitzan felt shivers run down his spine and warmth pool in his belly, heat spreading across his face. His thoughts scattered like a school of fish before he gathered them back together again, working his lower lip between his teeth and blinking hard.

“Well? Get it out in the open, Tenno. You're leaving me in suspense.”

“Intercourse.” Void. That could have gone better. Nitzan stood there, silent once more, as Tyl Regor stood in a similar state of shocked quiet.

“Intercourse.” Tyl Regor repeated, incredulous. Nitzan shifted from foot to foot, and then decided that putting up a confident front would be more convincing than mincing about like he wasn't sure. Did I stutter?, he wanted to say.

“That's my proposition.” When firing a gun, a steady trigger finger was key. Any hesitation or tentativeness meant a missed shot. Nitzan was, unquestionably, proud of his eagle eye and expertise in hitting what he was aiming at. Hitting on what he was aiming at? Not so proud, and not so confident, so treating this paltry flirtation as target practice could only save his dignity.

Tyl Regor nodded, evidently having come to terms with the odd request. “Hm, I understand.”

Nitzan waited quietly for Tyl Regor to finish the thought-- there was obviously something else waiting behind that mask. “If you are set on this,” Tyl Regor said finally, with the air of one graciously capitulating to an unreasonable demand, “I'm sure we could come to some sort of an arrangement.”

Nitzan knew enough about dealing with scientists to have already come up with an offer. “You may write down some inquiries, which I will run past my ship Cephalon and return with the answers I am permitted to give.”

Tyl Regor rocked back on his heels-- stilts?-- and jerked his head at Nitzan. “Prepared little thing. You have until this time in two days on the universal clock to return with what you can offer.”

“I'll see you then,” Nitzan replied. For better or for worse, he'd be back.

CHAPTER 2

The port closed behind him and he transferred out of Loki, leaving the Warframe staring eyelessly straight ahead.

“Would you call off your soldiers?” Nitzan wrinkled his nose, rubbing his arms at the phantom pains of bullets. Tyl Regor threw his head back and laughed, which Nitzan really should have anticipated, and he wanted to be annoyed but the most he could muster was a warm, insistent flutter of arousal.

“And make it easy for you? No, no, that won't do. You have to earn this.”

“I say I earned it by getting you this information.” Nitzan smiled, eager to show he had his own teeth-- always sharp at the canines, somehow seeming sharper still once he woke into himself. He reached into a pocket on his suit and fished out a small datamass. “Induced fit datamass. Put it into anything with a mainframe.”

“Why should I trust you, Tenno? That seems an awfully easy way to infect my labs with a... Nasty virus.” Nitzan both wanted him to shut up and never stop talking. He'd described Nitzan with those words, once, nasty and filthy and sick, all with the underlying understanding that he was dangerous. Some sort of bug to be exterminated.

Lech Kril threatened to kill him too, though, and he wasn't lusting after him. It had to be something else. Quite possibly multiple somethings, starting with the husky timbre of Tyl Regor’s voice and ending with the inhuman build of his constructed body.

Nitzan shook the thought out of his head—it was a very nice thought, but he’d rather have the real thing. Currently, the real thingwas leering at him. “I don't have a reason to lie to you.”

“Alright,” Tyl Regor agreed, bemused; as though Nitzan would suddenly reveal he was simply waiting for the right moment to strike. “Follow me to my lab.”

Nitzan trotted along at his heels, holding the datamass tightly. It would be the work of a moment to reach out with the transference link and pull Loki to him, to keep him safe and to keep him from having to almost run, but that would sever what thin trust Tyl Regor had in him.

He kept his word; he hadn’t even killed anyone on his run in; and he was oh, sosincere that it ached.

The workshop was surprisingly barren. Perhaps it wasn’t the real workshop—Nitzan assumed it wasn’t. He wouldn’t take Tyl Regor to his orbiter, and not just because Ordis would scream like a plucked chicken and then probably ground him for the rest of his unnatural life. Tyl Regor gestured at a computer terminal.

“Go on. Plug it in. I want to see what you’ve brought for me.” Tyl Regor lifted a hand, as if to touch Nitzan on the shoulder, and Nitzan was caught between shying from it—ducking under, going for the computer terminal—or letting him, a careless tap at his shoulderblade that pushed him toward the terminal.

“I was able to get answers for most of your inquiries,” Nitzan offered in lieu of actually saying which ones. It was a very long list, after all. He pressed the datamass to the input and watched it mold itself, transmitting data. One of the screens flickered yellow, then to the light blue of the Lotus. Nitzan felt sick to his stomach, and looked down at the keyboard full of clunky Grineer letters instead.

“You do understand that this isn’t all business,” Tyl Regor finally said. Nitzan nodded. The terminal pinged happily. “Grineer don’t reproduce through inconsistent sexual means. I must admit, you threw me for a spin, but I believe I’ve devised a way to make it pleasurable for the both of us.”

“How generous,” Nitzan sniped back automatically. Tyl Regor laughed, shook his head, exhaled heavily.

“Oh, it’s not for you. I just can’t bear having my enjoyment be a…” his voice lowered, humming. Nitzan felt gooseflesh break out on his arms and back, a distinct heat blooming between his legs. Did Tyl Regor know? Was this purposeful? By the Void, he’d hate to be a soldier stationed here. He’d never get any work done. “Hm, afterthought.” The terminal pinged again. Tyl Regor closed the distance, corralling Nitzan between the terminal and his body. Nitzan stiffened and held as still as possible as Tyl Regor tapped at the keyboard, scanning the neat lines of code and encrypted data. None of it vital, or incriminating, but all certainly appreciated by a curious scientist. Nitzan may have talked with Simaris and Suda. May have talked with Cordylon. As many Cephalons as possible, and still some questions were left unanswered. Tyl Regor evidently decided that the answers he’d been given were enough. “Hm. The data’s done downloading. I suppose you’ve done your part.”

At that, he abruptly pulled away and walked across the room. With the push of a button, what Nitzan originally assumed to just be a part of the floor rose up; an operating table? No, not really. Not quite a table either.

Nitzan decided with some disappointment that Tyl Regor evidently knew next to nothing about intercourse.

“Don’t worry. I’m not done.”

He’d been so lost in thought he hadn’t realized Tyl Regor going through cabinets and pull-out drawers, pulling out both polymer sheets and softer, synthetic fabric towels; then, finally, a larger towel that could generously be called a blanket. The blanket was tossed to the head of the table, the towels following soon after. On top of them went a small tube of lubricant; Nitzan identified it as a comforting mixture of cellulose and carrageenan, the type of lubricant made to be used on a body and not, say, a door. He picked up the tube and felt it, rolled it around in his hands, and finally set it back on the pile of towels.

“Come here.” Tyl Regor's voice was firm, the confident command of one used to being obeyed; “I want to feel you.”

Nitzan padded over, unsure whether he should strip by now. It was pointless to pretend he wasn't eager. He was already wet-- he felt it against the material of his suit, even though it had been a whole lot of milling around with the datamass and then examining the room. Being pressed between the terminal and Tyl Regor’s respectable chest was plenty enough to get him wet.

As he got closer, Tyl Regor reached to meet him. His hands weren't the talon-like, segmented digits from earlier; these were more humanlike, each one large enough to splay on Nitzan's chest and, fingertips to heel of his palm, cover him from collarbones to navel.

Nitzan intercepted one hand to examine it, grasping him by the thumb and pinkie to turn it.

“I want to look at it first,” he offered by way of explanation. Tyl Regor obligingly let his hand relax. His palm was covered by a black, rubbery pad; it gave the illusion of what a normal hand should feel like, giving way to tough, latex-covered metal serving as fingers tipped with more of that springy rubber.

“Fine pieces of work. Not as precise as my purpose-made hands, but these are made for a… different purpose.” With that, he pulled his hand back. Nitzan let it go, looking up properly, eyes hooded and easily pushing aside his previous unsteadiness.

“Then I want to see how precise they can get.”

Tyl Regor slipped his hands under Nitzan's arms, thumbs remaining in his front and firmly pressing down on Nitzan's chest; not painful, but an insistent pressure. Nitzan squirmed in his grip. Tyl Regor chuckled, warmth in his voice that Nitzan wasn't used to hearing. His face grew hot despite himself-- it was shameful, how easily and how much he was affected. He rolled his eyes and clasped his hands over Tyl Regor's wrists regardless, welcoming the contact. It was simple at first, circles with feather-light pressure, just skimming over his skin covered by the cloth. Nitzan breathed out slowly and tipped his head back. It felt good, but not necessarily arousing. The sensations were amplified by Tyl Regor's obvious mastery over his fabricated digits-- how many neurodes went into making those things?-- and then Tyl Regor skimmed over his nipples and Nitzan crooned, taken by surprise. It was a pathetic little oooh-ing sound, certain parts of him perking up and taking notice.

“Hm. It sounds like you're enjoying this. Shall I do it again?”

He didn't wait for Nitzan to respond before repeating the motion, pressing down and rubbing his nipples through the fabric. The fabric of the suit wasn't coarse, but the weave of it pressed against his skin in a delightful way. Electric pleasure coursed through his body, pooling in his groin.

He gripped Tyl Regor's wrists and threw his head back as Tyl Regor started rubbing, steady circular movements that caught his sensitive nipples with every rotation.

“Hm. Feels good, Tenno?”

Nitzan huffed, words lost as he thrust his chest into Tyl Regor's hands again. He thumbed over Nitzan's chest a few more times, watching the way it made his hips twitch, and finally stopped.

“I suppose you must get that suit off at some point.”

Nitzan grunted. Why was it so hard to be sexy? He seemed a lot more sexy and a lot less awkward in his head-- when he was thinking of this. He'd been thinking of it a lot, recently.

Tyl Regor walked him back slowly until his back nudged the table.

“Up.”

Nitzan obliged, Tyl Regor giving him a little boost so he didn’t have to jump. Once comfortably situated, he spread his legs and pulled Tyl Regor closer by his wrists, huffing impatiently.

“Suit,” Tyl Regor reminded him.

“Right,” Nitzan mumbled. He’d been so eager, he entirely forgot that he needed to get his clothes off for that skin-to-skin (skin-to-rubber?) contact. What tough polymers made up the stuff of Tyl Regor’s hands, anyway? Silicon? Nitzan would have to ask afterwards.

He reached down to carefully unlatch pieces of the suit and take the chestpiece and sleeves off, tossing them behind himself. Immediately, Tyl Regor’s prickling gaze fell to the newly bared expanse of skin.

Nitzan never used to think about his scars. They were just a part of him, first from when he was a child, then from when he was a child again, and now-- well.

They were scars. There wasn't much to do about it. Ripped open again and again, cicatrization interrupted and unnaturally sped, some of them were ugly and stark while others were faded to nearly nothing.

Tyl Regor traced one of the scars-- under Nitzan's pectoral, a half-moon that glowed a light purple, similarly-glowing pits speckled around it.

“I didn't want them, so I had them taken off,” he explained. Tyl Regor hummed in understanding. Relief flooded him, suddenly, that it was so painless; Tyl Regor noted it and then moved on, dragging his finger against the sensitive skin one more time before tapping pinkie-to-index on his collarbones. Grineer were probably used to that, though, weren’t they? It wasn’t as if their genetic template was diverse. There were bound to be some that wanted something different. Even if it wasn’t exactly what Nitzan had gone through, it was the principle.

Tyl Regor interrupted his train of thought with a scrub of rubber against his collarbone, skimmed his finger down Nitzan's chest, sternum to navel and then downward. His fingers caught on the fabric of the suit at Nitzan's waist.

“Take it off.”

Nitzan obliged, pushing down at his hips. Tyl Regor didn't really help but he did drag his fingertips against each new inch of skin, which actually didn't help at all. At the light, firm touch Nitzan bit first the tip of his tongue, then his bottom lip. He shucked off the fabric and scooted back on the table even more, giving space for Tyl Regor to lean—imposing, which Nitzan realized was starting to feed into his arousal more than it had any right to, and closing the distance with his body as well as his hands. Tyl Regor’s hands dipped between his legs to spread them further, guiding his ankles up to the table and forcing Nitzan to lay on his back or otherwise be uncomfortable crunched in half. He fell back finally, admitting defeat and staring at the ceiling.

As if in reward, one of Tyl Regor’s hands finally left his thighs and brushed properly between his legs. Fingertip newly wet, he dragged a line solidly down the middle. Nitzan’s hips twitched, but he didn’t make a sound yet.

“Curious.”

“I can take it in my front hole,” Nitzan replied, hoping that was the question. If it wasn't, well, he could live with being bossy and crude. Tyl Regor nodded and pushed Nitzan further up the table with hands on his hips, letting him stretch his legs out a little bit.

“Reach up behind you and pass me the lube.”

“Yeah.”

The lube was passed in short order. Nitzan stared at the ceiling a little bit and counted the serrations on the air vent directly above his head. Tyl Regor squeezed some lube from the tube onto his hand mechanically, efficiently, making sure his hand was well-covered before nudging at Nitzan’s hole.

“That’s cold,” he hissed, and arched his hips up; Tyl Regor laughed at him again.

“I thought you were one of the Origin System’s most feared operatives, Tenno. Don’t tell me you can’t stand a little cold.” His thumb idly traced Nitzan’s entrance, forefinger penetrating only to the first joint.

“It’s cold,” Nitzan repeated, but then reached down to scrabble at Tyl Regor’s hand. “Keep going.”

“Pushy, pushy.” Tyl Regor didn’t seem all that put off by it, though—he slowly pushed his index finger into Nitzan’s hole, the lube slowly warming up in the face of body heat. Nitzan had to be boiling down there, it seemed like. The contrast of his own internal heat and the seeming ice-cold of Tyl Regor’s digit wasn’t bad. It was pretty good, actually. It made the backs of his legs tingle, made his back arch. “Be patient. This is precise work.”

Nitzan huffed and let his back lay against the table again.

“Accommodating enough. How aroused were you before I started stretching you?”

Right. Scientist. Nitzan shifted his hips when Tyl Regor withdrew his index finger, starting to nudge in with his index and middle. The minor stretch grew, but slowly enough that Nitzan saw no need to comment. “Pretty aroused.”

“For how long before, would you say?”

Nitzan’s face heated at the impartial questioning. Perhaps it would be less embarrassing if Tyl Regor wasn’t already knuckle-deep in him, starting to scissor his fingers testingly. Nitzan finally groaned, a low noise in his chest, and squirmed. “Ah—ah, when you pushed me against the console.”

Tyl Regor slowed his pace, free hand resting on Nitzan’s hip, a silent command to settle. “That far--? That wasn’t even…” his voice trailed off. His fingers crooked idly, mildly uncomfortable pressure that paled in comparison to the accompanying sharp starburst of pleasure. “Oh, Tenno.”

He crooked his fingers again and Nitzan keened, hands curling into fists and meeting at his sternum, back arching again.

“Naughty little Tenno. Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you.”

Nitzan gave up on clinging to his dignity, dropping his hands and reaching for the ends of the table. “I just, it was close. And I wanted this. And it felt good.” He was babbling, he knew, but all rational thought went completely out the window to be washed away with the tide. Tyl Regor let him carry on, continuing to stretch him slowly, methodically.

Pleasure built like a slowly-coiling spring, kindled by degrees as Tyl Regor scissored his fingers, then pulled out to add a third. The stretch was never enough to hurt, movements slow enough that Nitzan might worry about being coddled. It felt too good for that.

Once Tyl Regor had three fingers in him as far as they would go, he let Nitzan wiggle and arch his hips to get into a more comfortable position; grabbing Tyl Regor’s free hand and guiding it to his hip.

“I keep sliding down the table,” he explained, holding his hand over Tyl Regor’s.

“I see.” Tyl Regor’s hand was big enough that Nitzan was pretty sure if he wrapped it around his thigh, his index and thumb could meet; the thought burned, and his hole clenched around Tyl Regor’s fingers so strongly it sent a chain reaction of spasms, ending with his head bonking against the table. Tyl Regor responded by tightening his grip and spreading his fingers inside Nitzan, hard enough to make him yelp.

“I’m not going to break. You can go harder.”

Tyl Regor tilted his head, thumb rubbing Nitzan’s hip, somehow managing to look both considering and predatory even with the full-face mask. “Do you know what you’re asking for?”

Nitzan reached, curled a little bit to paw at Tyl Regor’s wrist, making a tugging motion that did little to make him move.

“Pretty sure.”

Tyl Regor briefly let go of his hip to push his back to the table again, returning to prop his waist up slightly; fixing an angle, almost clinical if not for the fact one hand was knuckle-deep in Nitzan’s hole. Every little movement rubbed new, hot friction against his walls. His breathing caught, a whine bubbling up in his throat but soon forgotten in favor of a breathy cry as Tyl Regor withdrew his hand, then abruptly plunged back in; stretch and suddenly faster, hotter friction burning his need higher, pleasure that made his vision white out briefly. Or had he just closed his eyes? When he opened them again, he was splayed fully back against the table and crying out, hips abruptly stuttering, hands reaching for the sides of the table to clutch onto them.

He did ask for this, didn’t he? He didn’t regret it, that was for sure. He could feel his voice grow higher and warbling, cracking, pleasure building from a burn to nearly unbearable.

“I’m--”

Tyl Regor slowed. Lifted Nitzan’s hips a little bit as if examining how his hole clenched, dripping slick and lube down his thighs and down Tyl Regor’s hand.

“Noooo,” Nitzan whined, raising his legs from the table as Tyl Regor withdrew his hand. “Don't stop, I'm so close!”

Tyl Regor chuckled-- a low ha, ha, ha that made Nitzan's insides tremble and weep with need-- and wiped his soaked hand on Nitzan's inner thigh. He slid his hand out from under Nitzan’s hip to bat his legs closed, turning him on his side. “I thought you wanted intercourse, Tenno.”

“I do, I just—fuck.”

“That is the idea, is it not?”

“Fuck,” Nitzan said again, glad that he wasn’t wordless; merely babbling and incoherent.

Tyl Regor slid a hand under him and picked him up, letting most of Nitzan hang so he could sit down on the table. He positioned Nitzan on his lap, somewhat awkwardly, but it wasn’t uncomfortable and Nitzan was high off of the writhing, burning arousal situated firmly in his groin.

“This is an experiment in and of itself, I suppose.” Tyl Regor laughed lowly in his chest, amused at his own wit, and adjusted Nitzan on his lap with hands on his hips. Nitzan squirmed and made a questioning humming sound-- no need to talk right now, so he wasn't going to, especially since he would sound like a fool regardless. His entire face was hotter than a furnace and flushed entirely red, pulse thundering in his temples and in his chest.

“How long a little Tenno will keep going until he can't take any more.”

Nitzan huffed through his nose and grasped at Tyl Regor's sides. Void, he could barely reach all the way around! Tyl Regor lifted one hand away to reach between his own legs and fiddle around a bit-- Nitzan scooted upwards to give him room, slipping his own hand between their bodies to rub at himself, still wet and mildly aching from the aftermath of the stretching. There was a pneumatic hiss, a wet sound that could only come from the thick water-based lubricant often used to slick doors down in the lab, and Nitzan expected it to be a short affair-- two seconds at the longest. Instead, seven long seconds later, what was evidently Tyl Regor's cock stood in the air behind him. Was it a slow process? Was it just big? Nitzan didn't know. He supposed he'd find out in due time.

Tyl Regor cupped the head and pressed it up against Nitzan's back; it ended somewhere just under his shoulder blades and left a wet imprint of itself whenever it moved. Nitzan could feel little bumps and ridges, equally likely to be a part of the function as to be a purposeful inclusion. The thought of that monster in him was almost too much to bear. How was it all going to fit? Nitzan whimpered and uselessly thrust his hips forward, searching for friction, rubbing himself against his fingers but otherwise finding only the barest amount.

“Look at you. We haven't even started and you're already squirming.”

“It's so big,” he said, helpless to communicate exactly what he thought of it.

Tyl Regor laughed again and rubbed his palm over the tip of it, pressing it against Nitzan's back. “I made it specially for you, Tenno. The thought of you helpless, consumed by pleasure at my command... It's intoxicating.”

“It's too big,” he tried again, because there was no way that was going to fit.

“Don't worry,” Tyl Regor assured, stroking down his cock with an open palm, fingers dragging along Nitzan's back in the same motion. “I'll adjust it to your... specifications, once we've seen how much you can take.”

“How much can you control it?” Perhaps not the best question to ask to heighten the mood, but despite himself Nitzan was curious. Tyl Regor kept stroking himself-- there had to be some sort of lubrication ports, or something, because there was absolutely no way so much fluid was coming out from the head. Nitzan shivered as the lube dried slowly, helped along by the chill of the suboceanic lab. So: water-based. It was considerably thinner than the cellulose solution drying on Tyl Regor’s fingers but present in a much higher volume. Nitzan thought, briefly, about where he had the space to store all of it; then stopped, because he wasn’t here to theorize.

“To the highest degree.” Yes, of course Tyl Regor should sound proud when talking about the robotic dick he'd made (apparently) specifically to fuck Nitzan, but he didn't have to sound so attractive while doing it. “A good scientist controls all variables.”

Despite his original apprehension, the conversation helped to ground Nitzan in the reality that despite what the size of the monster at his back implied, Tyl Regor didn't really want to hurt him.

“Oh. And am I a variable?” That, he could respond to. He put his hands on Tyl Regor's chest and leaned back against his hand, pressing Tyl Regor's cock against his back again in the process, and tilted his head back to make eye contact. He didn't see eyes, just the lenses of the mask, but his skin prickled and tightened so Tyl Regor had to be paying close attention to him.

“We have a word for you.” Tyl Regor's hand eased up a few inches to tangle in Nitzan's hair. Lube smeared across the back of his neck and in his hair. It would probably be hell to clean up later, but right now Nitzan didn't care, not when Tyl Regor tightened his grip and pulled his head back. His arousal responded to the tug with pulses of heat and twisting excitement, and he spread his legs a little further apart on Tyl Regor's lap.

“Aren't you going to tell me?”

Tyl Regor tsked. “Impatient, Tenno. Still, I suppose you asked nicely enough.” Nitzan would have scoffed-- he had some respect. “We call you a confounding variable. Fitting, is it not?”

Oh, Void, science. At least it sounded like a compliment. Maybe not. Nitzan knew what confounding meant. For scientists like Tyl Regor, it just meant an invitation to pick him apart.

Nitzan was finding that idea more arousing than it had any right to be. He rocked his hips against Tyl Regor again, chasing the thoughts from his head with a rush of pleasure.

“Put it in,” Nitzan commanded. He hoped he sounded imperious and not merely horny.

“As you command.”

Nitzan positioned himself—knees on Tyl Regor’s thighs, hips canted awkwardly, reaching back to help Tyl Regor guide his cock between his legs and into his hole. It was slow work, but thankfully not painful. Tyl Regor had done a good job in getting him ready, at least for the first few inches of it; he admitted momentary defeat when his body refused to let him take any more, instead raising himself up. The slow drag of Tyl Regor’s cock, the tiny ridges of it and the impeccably smooth joins between each constructed level against his walls burned with delightful friction. Nitzan tilted his head back, groaning, voice shaking as he sank back down. Further, this time. Lower. It was starting to hurt, but the challenge was more than whatever brief pain taking more than he was prepared for brought.

“Naughty.” Tyl Regor shifted him minutely and Nitzan made a high, broken sound as the unbearable stretch somehow intensified. “You know what we do to naughty Tenno, don't you?”

Nitzan was too far gone to respond with more than incoherent panting; he rocked back to recreate that feeling of complete fullness. Tyl Regor let him. It took another minute for him to get into a slow, deliberate rhythm of raising himself a few inches on Tyl Regor's cock before sinking back down to halfway.

“Don't move,” Nitzan breathed, hands shifting down to Tyl Regor's wrists to support himself, then his chest. His legs were shaking with the effort of holding himself up, but going down any further would split him in two. If not that, then it would hurt, and Nitzan didn’t want to know whether the Void would heal him from that.

Nitzan trembled. Tyl Regor supported him, hands cupping his rear to make sure he didn't keel over. His entire lower body felt like it was splitting in two. It hurt, yes, but there were also the slightest ripples of pleasure. Inwardly, he cursed his own impatience, but he still wasn't about to admit he'd bitten off quite a bit more than he could chew when he told Tyl Regor he was ready.

He knew after a few minutes that there was no way he was getting it all in. He shuffled forward on his knees, pressing himself fully to Tyl Regor's chest with that enormous cock halfway inside of him. Tyl Regor stroked his back. Was he trying to be soothing? Nitzan felt it pushing him forward, could feel that movement jostling Tyl Regor's cock inside of him. How was it even halfway in? It brushed something inside of him that made lighting light up his insides, a strong flash of heat and pleasure. He gasped, squeezing his eyes shut, head resting against Tyl Regor's chest. The hand ran slowly up his back to settle across his shoulder blades, thumb rubbing his nape.

“Is that all you can take?”

Nitzan whimpered again as he pressed himself tighter against Tyl Regor's chest and felt the unrelentingly hard intrusion pressing against his walls-- spearing him, making it impossible to move away.

It was too much.

Still, did he dare take more?

“Yeah-- yeah. It's enough, it's enough,” he whined into Tyl Regor's chest.

“Don't move,” Tyl Regor instructed. He kept his hands on Nitzan, enforcing it, but Nitzan didn’t plan on moving in the first place; his legs were shaking, and he abruptly noticed that he was blinking back tears.

Nitzan gasped at the new, strange sensation of that massive cock shrinking inside of him from unbearably huge to merely uncomfortably large, losing both girth and length. The nubs and protrusions rubbed against Nitzan's walls with every tiny movement and he keened aloud as the adjustment finalized. He ran a hand down his front, as if to make sure everything was still in place, and instead felt the bulge of Tyl Regor's cock against his palm. He should be horrified-- How was it all in there? How did it fit in before? How did it feel good?-- but the mix of endorphins and excitement twisted rational thought into liquid flares of arousal.

He rocked his hips, the movement considerably easier now that he didn’t feel like he was being split in two; merely stretched to his breaking point.

He finally touched himself again. Pleasure and pressure, inside and out, brought him back to the edge he’d hovered on when Tyl Regor was fingering him. He cried out again, whimpered, squirming back on Tyl Regor’s cock and speeding his movements when he realized he was so close.

“I’m—I’m going to come,” he warned, breathless. Any other time he’d be embarrassed of how thready his voice was. Now, he was too lost in lust to care.

“Go ahead.” Tyl Regor lifted him a bit to help him reposition, hands sliding from under his legs to his lower back. It gave Nitzan more room to spread his legs and sink down on Tyl Regor’s cock, rubbing at himself frantically until the rising pleasure crested. Sharp, and hot, a wave rocking his body. His hole spasmed around Tyl Regor’s cock. Tyl Regor grunted, blunted false-nails digging into his back. As Nitzan’s orgasm was winding down, Tyl Regor obviously was building up to his, after watching Nitzan come with a calculating gaze that still made his shoulders tingle.

“Very good, Tenno.”

He wasn’t ready for that. He whined, grinding down. His insides twitched, pleasure drawn out and making him ache.

“Now… I have a final surprise for you.”

Nitzan didn’t like surprises. Most of them hurt, were usually from people he didn’t like, and involved shooting and killing things, both of which he was very good at but didn’t necessarily enjoy doing.

This surprise he was pretty sure he would like.

“Please,” he whined, hands splaying against Tyl Regor’s chest. With what little post-orgasm energy he had, he ground back on Tyl Regor’s cock.

A small grunt, the first noise that wasn’t perfectly controlled and purposeful, came from Tyl Regor’s throat and he held Nitzan firmly by the hips, pulled him down and kept him there even as he squirmed in surprise. It ground him against Tyl Regor’s base and the feeling so soon after orgasm burned. Still—it felt good. Tyl Regor removed one hand to support Nitzan’s back, hand brushing the base of his head before settling in the middle of his spine.

Heat flooded Nitzan’s insides. If he wasn’t so sure what it is, he might have shrieked; as it happened, he merely moaned and leaned against Tyl Regor, entirely boneless. His legs shook. Tyl Regor’s hand on his back was, at this point, the only thing keeping him vaguely vertical.

“Fuck—fuck, fuck.” His voice was breathy and weak. The hot flood pressed against him, even more than it had, and it didn’t seem to be stopping. “Reh--” another gush of hot fluid stole his words and he keened, moaned, bit his lip and pressed his face to Tyl Regor’s chest. Tyl Regor petted his back , staying perfectly still as he pumped Nitzan full of whatever semen-adjacent fluid he’d synthesized. “Regor, Void. It’s—it’s so much.”

“You can take it.” Perhaps Tyl Regor wasn’t as unaffected as he’d proclaimed to be. His voice was tight to hide the intensity of his orgasm. Inhuman limbs didn’t shake the way they were supposed to, internal gyroscopes and grav-mags compensating for tiny tremors. Perfect for microsurgery on ruptured blood vessels, or for plucking a single cell from a growing clone; far less perfect for Nitzan wanting to feel how fully he’d affected him.

Lacking anywhere else to go, the fluid pushed back out the way it came. Nitzan whined as the heat spread from inside of him to his thighs, over Tyl Regor’s lap. When he glanced down it was pale blue and glowing slightly, almost as thick as the nutrient slurry piped to growing tubemen.

“—is that--?”

Void, why did he have to ask stupid questions? Did he even want to know? Did he even have the energy to care if he got an answer he didn’t like? His belly was pushing outward from the sheer amount of the intrusion, and he didn’t doubt it would come slopping out of him in a great, filthy tide the second Tyl Regor pulled out of him. His post-orgasm brain growled unhappily at the thought; the part of his brain that was still very much enjoying Tyl Regor’s cock in him found it unfairly arousing.

“Hm? No, a mixture safe for organics.” The obviously was lost to the air. “It should absorb into your system without any complications.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Nitzan didn’t know what else to say to that. There were probably things much better to say than thank you. How foolish. He liked sex, and liked getting off, but didn’t like how slow and stupid the aftermath made him; like his entire body was dragging its feet in coming back to him. Void, his arms still felt like jelly.

“Tired, Tenno?” Tyl Regor stroked his back. Nitzan moaned against his chest. “Hm. I expected this,” he proclaimed sagely, and carefully extricated Nitzan from his cock. Sure enough, but slower than he expected, ejaculate slicked his thighs and drooled from his hole. He was sore, but didn’t hurt. He’d gotten worse from the transference link.

The table was cold when Tyl Regor laid him on it. Instead of whining or complaining he just sighed and reached for the blanket, beaten to the punch as Tyl Regor picked up a few of the smaller fiber towels.

“I’ll lock the door. You’ll just hack it when you want to leave, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Nitzan mumbled into his arms. Tyl Regor pushed his legs apart and set to mopping him up. Slow. Methodical.

“A remarkable subject you are, Tenno.”

“I am fascinating.” Nitzan hoped he sounded coy and not boastful. Either way, Tyl Regor’s hands holding him were firm but not unkind, the movements steady and careful not to hurt, and he felt good. By the time he was fully clean he was dozing off on the table.

“Perhaps we should attempt to… replicate the data, sometime. Every good experiment should be reproducible.”

Nitzan would have shivered if he weren’t already so exhausted. Still, the thought was heartening. “I would like that.”

Tyl Regor’s hand fell to his flank, the touch light. Pulling the blanket over him, adjusting it. Not necessarily fond; the air of a scientist setting his lab back in order, like Nitzan was a microscope to be covered and set out of view until it was needed again.

He could think about the implications of that, and the implications of how comfortable he was with it, later. Right now? The blanket was warm and comfortable, and he deserved the rest.

[rinaldoescobar]

Therapy for Broken Things [ao3]

rating: g word count: 1152 summary: He remembered when the tower cracked when he was a child. More of a child. Years ago, before his dream. Workers arrived with heavy pots of molten gold and poured them into the crack. They carved beautiful designs when the gold was cooled enough to almost solidify.

[rinaldoescobar]

Prompt # 83

“Divinity cost me my soul, and I can’t even bring myself to care.”

[rinaldoescobar]

it’s still getting dark [ao3]

rating: m word count: 715 summary: His own thoughts are poisoned, so he pushes them aside and listens in on the Whalers loitering at the refinery before clambering up once they transverse away and making his way down into the cavernous interior.

Corvo escapes the pit easily enough. The Whalers have made the area nearly impassible to someone without the ability to Transverse or Blink, but Corvo thrives in taking advantage of that nearly. They're skilled, but complacent.

He ventures down and tries to find an exit that won't make him pass the guards. He finds some of Piero's Remedy, which is appreciated but useless. Next to it is a vial of Sokolov's Elixir, which is infinitely more useful. He downs the whole vial and pain ebbs away. His head clears like he's been gulping down ice water, an ache behind his eyes and jaw. The Elixir smells mineral-thick, like mud on the edges of the Wrenhaven. Sharper. He'd never enjoy it, but he'd quickly grown to tolerate it.

Corvo leaves the empty vial where he'd found it and goes for the stairs again.

He'd killed Campbell, of course, and the Pendletons, even though he dallied with Slackjaw and could have easily left them to a worse fate than a knife in the ribs. With Emily back, he could afford to be merciful.

He is not merciful now, even though he would like nothing more than to see no more death. He moves through the guards with the same shell-shocked numbness that saw him escaping from Coldridge. As much as he dearly wants to avoid the refinery-- avoid proving the Outsider right-- he knows he must go there. He has no luck of defeating Daud or even his men without two working hands, not as he is right now. Maybe only a few hours ago-- unpoisoned, buoyed up by the promise of Emily's coronation, ready to bring down an entire army if it was asked of him, anything anything for Emily, and not... Now.

Having lost her again. His own thoughts are poisoned.

His own thoughts are poisoned, so he pushes them aside and listens in on the Whalers loitering at the refinery before clambering up once they transverse away and making his way down into the cavernous interior.

His severed hand sits in a puddle of brackish, blue-slicked water. He expects it to have been gnawed by rats or worse, but it's surprisingly untouched. He leans down to pick it up; the second his fingers brush the clammy flesh of his hand, the world bends. The lustrous blue of whale oil spreads out and crawls up, unfurling into a luminous purple. The refinery fades away into chunks of floating stone and the flickers of far-off streetlamps. Corvo nearly growls, but even more than that is a desire to scream. He doesn't have time for this! What more could the Outsider possibly want from him?

He'd get an answer soon enough, he supposes, and looks up.

He expects the Outsider. The Outsider does not materialize, does not speak from the Void around Corvo, does not appear to be present in the deep lowing of a whale far in the distance; weeping, Corvo imagines, for the refinery's oil streaking the thick air of the Void.

His hand jumps out of his grip like a thing possessed and he, despite himself, barks out a startled grunt. Threads of what looks like the Void itself leap from the edges and continue until the whole open bleeding edge of the hand is consumed by wriggling black threads. They lurch forward; pierce into his stump, yank him forward so forcefully he takes a step to avoid falling. It should hurt, he knows this. He should be screaming. He's too numb to do more than watch as the Void knits his body back to his hand. The lowing of the whale is lost in the rush of blood in Corvo's ears and his hissing breaths, pulled through clenched teeth, and he clenches his eyes shut and collapses to his knees. Water splashes and soaks through his pants, his knees stinging from the sudden collision with the ground, and when he opens his eyes again he's still holding his arm straight out but he's in the refinery again.

Corvo frowns and clenches his hand a few times, testing. A faint purple line circles his wrist but other than that his arm looks like nothing untoward has happened to it within the past few hours.

Corvo laughs, tired, exhausted, and it hitches into a sob.

[rinaldoescobar]

In Good Standing [ao3]

rating: g word count: 442 summary: Vivian, who thrives in chaos and split-second decisions, and Nadir, who has the art of planning a battle down to the minute to a science. They get along, kind of.

“I wouldn't take a step further.” 

Nadir's shoulders prickled. She stopped, though, heeding the austere, clipped tone coming to her from behind the wall. “You thought I would betray you.” The soft beeping of a sensor drone, the ones she was familiar with, often dissected and picked apart on her table, reached her and she realized she was in range. Smart. She had to pass through this chokepoint, and now she was paying for it.

“It’s not betrayal if we’re not allies,” Vivian dismissed. “Simply covering all my bases.”

“Just as well. I expected a trap.”

“It’s not a trap. It’s just insurance.”

“You don’t trust me,” Nadir stated, too matter-of-fact to be a taunt or offended.

“I trust you to do whatever it takes to win.”

“And it apparently involves trusting you, so if I were you I’d get to the point before I decide I’d rather take my chances with your drone,” Nadir said, voice still clipped and flat. She hadn’t expected levity. Vivian sighed, less truly resigned and more in agreement that their posturing had gotten them nowhere except frustrated.

“Well, here we are. Two soldiers before a war.” Vivian didn't take her weapons off of lay them down; Nadir didn't either. There was a certain level of wariness-- they were both too dangerous-- and respect-- they both knew as much-- in the gesture of clinging to weaponry. Nadir didn't have much choice, she reminded herself. The slow pulse of the booby-trapped sensor drone whined softly. Nadir didn't dare shake her head.

“I rather say we're in the alcoves of it.” 

“Watching it happen? No. In the saddle.” Vivian kept her SMG pointed at Nadir. The tactician blinked slowly in the only gesture of incredulity she could make without the drone exploding.

“I would only steer it to a faster end. And,” Nadir continued, “What I mean is that we're invested in the bigger picture, not just the day-to-day survival your side has been reduced to.” 

“They are as much my side as they are yours. If I were truly loyal, you would be dead and Jenos would be down a good soldier.” Vivian said good soldier as most people would say snakebite. Nadir smiled, much in the same way. 

“And yet your drone is still up.”

“I’m loyal enough to look it,” she responded, smiling back. Enough dancing around, talking circles around each other. It was wasting time, if not getting boring.

“Why did you call me here? Are you—.”

“I'm not defecting,” Vivian cut in preemptively. “I would look terrible in blue, and I have use for the Magistrate's resources yet. I have information for you…”

[rinaldoescobar]

Building a Charge [ao3]

rating: e word count: 5704 summary: A long, graceful finger skirted along Fernando's chassis plate. Fernando's fans whirred, vents opening, his visor flaring bright red. Mal'Damba's own visor flickered a solid screen of green, dissolving into pixels that swept off to the side and left Fernando facing the plain black of the screen as it normally was.

Fernando laid on the berth. It was technically a charging port for one of his robotic shells (he'd started thinking of them as bodies. It was strange, but not unpleasant) and therefor not exactly made for the softness of flesh. He'd dealt with that with pillows and blankets layered beneath him. On top of him, straddling him, was the dread (kind of) pirate Mal'Damba.

“Keep your servos down.”

It hadn’t settled in entirely that Mal’Damba switched between organic terms and mechanical terms with ease of practice. Fernando found it intriguing, or would have if he didn’t know exactly who Mal’Damba was and what he was capable of; instead, he simply nodded, flickered his visor in acknowledgement, and laid back. He was heavier. It made sense he should be the one on bottom, lest he crush Mal’Damba. Aside from the logical reasons there were other reasons that Fernando shoved in the back of his processing queue. Low priority.

Mal’Damba liked bossing him around, he knew that. And he liked being bossed around. Whether that was latent programming he hadn’t managed to entirely eradicate or another development that came—as many seemed to do—when Fernando explored his and Mal’Damba’s growing relationship.

Maybe he’d teased a little too much. Fernando diverted twenty percent of his processing power (his, not the shell’s) to bringing the ship back down to its normal temperature. Mal’Damba, in a bodysuit, knew exactly what Fernando wanted. He’d get it eventually, on Mal’Damba’s terms.

Fernando was fine with that.

The gloves-- the talons-- peeled back and collapsed into the sleeves, in turn crawling up to Mal'Damba's shoulders. Fernando expected to see skin. He did, but only on the left. Mal'Damba's right hand remained a talon, the arm sleek metal shot through with green trace lines. A power source? Cosmetic? Fernando didn't want to spare the processing power to figure it out. He deleted the subroutine dedicating itself to searching the onboard files for matches and instead reached up with one hand, digits curling so his knuckles brushed metal on metal. Mal'Damba hummed a warning and Fernando lowered the errant servo back to the berth.

A long, graceful finger skirted along Fernando's chassis plate. Fernando's fans whirred, vents opening, his visor flaring bright red. Mal'Damba's own visor flickered a solid screen of green, dissolving into pixels that swept off to the side and left Fernando facing the plain black of the screen as it normally was.

Fernando found the display unintentionally erotic; the lights, the brightness, the contrast, the graceful swoop of the antennae at the sides of the visor. It was enthralling. His processing center was immediately beset by pings of attractive / pleasurable / allure / closer. Mal'Damba wouldn't hack his systems to hijack his internal comm. Lines, not like this, but if he did he'd hear-- sense-- all of it.

Fernando wasn't sure if that made him afraid or aroused. Both seemed to come in roughly equal measure whenever he dealt with Mal'Damba's legendary skills.

“Keep your servos down,” Mal'Damba repeated. “Disengage your chassis plates.”

He could have said it any other way. Open your chassis plates. Even a simple open. None of those had the deep, processor-scrapping reaction of what he did say. Fernando shuddered against the berth in a cacophony of clattering metal and allowed his chassis plates to vent, loosen, and finally disengage entirely from the struts, clasps, and other internal mechanisms keeping them secure. Mal'Damba hummed, pleased at the easy surrender.

“You're quick to learn,” he told Fernando, quite seriously enough except for the teasing lilt in his voice and the flicker of circuitry lighting up on his visor screen.

“I always try my best,” Fernando assured.

Mal'Damba's metal hand hovered over Fernando's open chest, the wires and cables contained within. A question.

“Touch me,” Fernando said, both a request and permission. Mal'Damba wasted no time in slipping his hand into the morass of wires and the response it wrought from Fernando's body was both delightful and instantaneous; his vocalizer churned out a moan, a whimper as the light touch turned into a pull. Mal'Damba lowered his free hand to Fernando's side to steady himself as he bent over Fernando's open chest.

“You know your way around my systems already?” He wanted Mal'Damba to talk, not just meditatively riffle through his wires.

Not that he didn't like it, he was just aiming for something a touch more intense than that today.

It was clear Mal'Damba was only partway listening; he hummed. His hands skirted Fernando's inner workings, fingers digging under layers of delicate wiring. Each brush of skin against copper and gold made Fernando's voicebox crackle and pop. Mal'Damba delicately lifted up a bundle of wires with one hand; Fernando felt his hand twitch, curling up like a dying spider, and then Mal'Damba's other hand found a divot where a larger cable disappeared further into him. He saw sparks, rushes of pleasure coursing through the cable as Mal'Damba carefully shifted it in its port.

It didn't feel like this normally. This was something else, a conscious manipulation of how the electrical charge moved through the wiring. Power fed into pleasure. Electricity became ecstasy. Fernando tried to talk again and groaned instead.

This was intentional. Mal'Damba knew his way around exotic machinery. He knew, Fernando realized with a contradictory mixture of excitement and hesitance, how to take Fernando apart however he chose.

“I'll be gentle with you,” Mal'Damba cooed. It sounded more like a threat than a reassurance; Fernando knew that gentlenessdid not necessarily entail mercy. Especially with mysterious, ruthless, handsome pirates. At least, he thought Mal’Damba was handsome, past the mask. It only offered him bright lines of green against black.

“Not that I don't believe you, but please be careful. These bodies are terribly expensive to repair.” Of all the things he could have said! Fernando internally cursed himself. Stupid AI.

Mal'Damba didn't seem to be offended, luckily. His hands returned to stroking and petting Fernando's most delicate wires. They were hidden behind his chassis plate most of the time for a reason. In battle, they could be destroyed. What Mal'Damba was doing with his clever hands was a far cry from destruction, but Fernando felt pretty wrecked anyway.

“What would happen if I unplugged this?” Mal'Damba's fingers closed around a sturdy cable. His thumb lightly circled the rim, sending jolts of energy through Fernando's systems. A blooming rush of pleasure burned at the contact of Mal'Damba's bare hands against sensitive wiring.

“It would shut off my optics array.”

Mal'Damba hummed in consideration and moved on. Fernando's chest ached at the loss of contact, but it was not withheld from him for long. Mal'Damba lifted a mess of wiring to get at another cable, plugged in just under the struts of Fernando's collar plates. Even the slightest pressure where it shouldn't be tickled, and as Mal'Damba tugged at it the tickle grew into insistent heat. His right arm was sleek metal from the shoulder down and his fingers narrowed into talons; Fernando never saw him charging it and occasionally wondered how he got away with it, but now he couldn’t think of much besides how the talons at his fingertips were perfectly poised to lift and tease his wires.

“And this?”

“It would,” a crackle, the whirr of fans dispersing a sudden rush of heat (not afraid) as Mal'Damba nearly pulled the plug from its socket, “my voicebox.”

“Interesting. I'll keep that in mind.”

His voice brushed into Fernando’s audials more teasing than anything. Fernando laughed, the sound dissolving into a keening moan as Mal'Damba moved down, back into his wiring. He teased and tugged until Fernando's voicebox could only spit out nonsense words and mangled pleas. Pleasure sparked to life and flowed straight to his core, overwhelming the processing center of the shell. It could take endless hits in battle, could rebuff any attempt to remotely shutoff his systems, but all it took for Mal'Damba to thoroughly mess him up was hands in his wires.

Even if the Erebos shell was that, just a shell, it still felt damn good. The processing center sorted through messages of pleasure and relayed them faithfully to the ship. Fernando, in turn, rerouted the messages to stay within the shell. No point in letting the messages ping where they were redundant. Useless. The ship wasn’t built to experience pleasure or pain; it was the purest shell. Purity was the furthest thing from Fernando’s thoughts right now. He corralled the wildly sparking pleasure signals into the Erebos shell’s processing center and the shell nearly bucked off of the berth. Mal’Damba’s thighs tightened around his midsection; the mask displayed a jagged sine. Gyros? Mal’Damba didn’t need gyros; he was mostly organic. It was likely just surprise.

Another rush of pleasure sent Fernando delving deeper into the wash of ecstasy flowing through the shell.

“I have specialized mods for-- this,” Fernando finally said. It was hard, too. He didn't expect words to be quite so difficult, but Mal'Damba was adept at stealing many things.

“Oh?”

“When I was first interested in constructing a humanoid body, I ended up on some-- unsavory websites that misinformed me as to how I should design the shells.”

Mal'Damba huffed a laugh. He splayed his hand on Fernando's chest and thumbed through a bundle of wires. Fernando couldn't hold back a keen as the steady back-and-forth movement played hell on his sensors. They pinged warnings nonstop with every minute shift of the wires, whenever Mal'Damba's hands caught on a cable or tugged. His entire chest cavity felt warm.

“You mean porn.”

That didn't stop him, though. He shifted both hands down to the spot where Fernando's wires disappeared into the column leading up his back to the control center of the body and ran his thumbs up the strip of metal, catching every sensor on the way. Fernando cried out; with how many layers of external armor and internal padding and wiring protecting them, those sensors only ever pinged him when they were in danger and so were very insistent.

And very powerful. He could sense the grin on Mal'Damba's face through the firm, playful push of his fingers against a particularly responsive set of sensors. Fernando cried out again and his hips lifted from the berth. He didn't know whether he was trying to get away or shove himself closer to Mal'Damba's hands; he succeeded with the latter. Mal'Damba rubbed up and down the sensitive strip of metal a few more times until Fernando stopped squirming.

“Don't you ever worry about someone hacking you?”

Fernando groaned. His AI might still be working perfectly, but the mech body needed some time to recover. Fernando fiddled with the systems until they broke from the static haze Mal'Damba's insistent exploration wrought. “They could disable the body, but not me.”

“A ship doesn't have erogenous zones,” Mal'Damba rephrased. He pressed both thumbs against the sensors again just to watch Fernando buck his hips up, almost unconsciously. “How many angles are you watching this from?”

“At least five.”

Mal'Damba snickered. He removed his hands from Fernando's inner wiring with a promising brush of a metal hand against copper wires. Conductive. Pleasurable. The sensation sent desperate pings of good / more / touch / hard / pull into his processing center. “So, about those mods...”

If Fernando's inability to show emotion through the blank helmet that was his face bothered him, he didn't show it. Fernando let his modesty plating fold back and retreat, revealing a coiled spike. It was mostly pneumatic, obviously modeled off of something that wasn't quite human. The intended use was clear, at least. It writhed at contact with the recycled air of the ship and extended out a little, and then a little more until Mal’Damba’s back stiffened, thick at the base but tapering to barely the width of his finger at the tip.

“Fascinating.”

The spike itself was the same obsidian black as the rest of Fernando's mech body. A gold stripe ran up the bottom of it and a strange, slick fluid leaked from strategically-placed nodes. Luckily, it seemed to be some sort of silicone instead of metal; dully reflecting light back, shiny only from lubricant. Mal'Damba reached back to cup the base where it emerged from Fernando's inner workings. The spike coiled eagerly around his wrist. Against his skin, the fluid was dark blue like the oil on a planet Mal'Damba had just visited.

“Is this--?”

“Prevents rusting. It's not bio-hazardous,” Fernando quickly assured. His vents whirred frantically as Mal'Damba fondled and played with his spike. “It's a multi-purpose energy source. I constructed the shell to be able to ingest it, too.”

He sounded almost proud of the fact and he could tell Mal'Damba was enamored by the way his fingers slowly stroked up his spike. It clung to him and left trails of slick. “It's not the same energy source I use, though.”

Fernando knew he talked a lot about himself, but he-- in all forms, in every way he has constructed himself-- was exquisite. Mal'Damba didn't seem to mind either. He hummed and continued to toy with the dripping spike. Pleasure built from the friction. Fernando could feel it coursing through his wiring, rushing to his processing center and gathering in his spike, hard / more / please / touch. He focused instead on the singing heat bouncing between his processing center and his spike. He saw himself twitching on the table, servos held down as Mal’Damba had commanded.

“If only it were softer.”

“There is only so much I can do to keep the shell resilient,” Fernando responded, almost protesting.

“It will take me forever to prepare myself for this.”

How Mal'Damba could sound chiding while talking about the daunting prospect of taking Fernando's spike, he didn't know. He did know that it was way hotter than it had any right to be. Fernando tried to say something but it came out as incoherent crackling, and Mal'Damba huffed a laugh. He closed his palm around the spike again and stroked a few times just to build that maddening, insistent heat only to pull his hand away. It dripped with slick and instead of wiping it on the towels and blankets placed below them he smeared it on the open chassis plates. Fernando wanted to tell Mal'Damba that if he didn't do something about the charge he'd helped to build, he'd go crazy; sensors pinged him the sensation of his own slick drying on his chassis plates. They were the tough and dull sensors that were used to being immolated and bashed, not caressed or stroked, and so the only pleasure he got from it was a squirrelly thought of how utterly indecent it was.

“What does it look like?” Mal'Damba's voice dropped into a leering register, enough to make Fernando think of the first time he'd stepped foot into the ship. He'd thought it was empty, at the time. He couldn't have been more wrong. Fernando thought he was a AI too, until he noted small things—inconsistencies in his steps, the rise and fall of his chest, small human things. Living things.

Instead of letting himself get lost in the past Fernando checked in each viewport that had focus on Mal'Damba and his Erebos shell. He forced static from his voicebox and ventured to tease, spurred on by the cries of please / more / touch / pull pinging desperately around his control center.

“You look good like this, sitting on me with your hand around my spike. You'd look better wearing less clothes.” It wasn't copied verbatim off of a shady website but it might as well have been. Mal'Damba laughed again and Fernando's systems pinged happy, satisfied updates that he shunted to the top of the priority list in place of his arousal. He remotely pulled some from the Erebos shell and stored them in a locked folder within the ship's systems; the exact timbre of Mal’Damba’s voice, the lilt, the honest and gracious amusement.

“Anyone who only sees you from one angle is missing out.” The admission wasn't a lie. Mal'Damba was stunning, even moreso now in this position, his own erection straining at his bodysuit. There was a dark spot were his precum leaked through the fabric. Fernando's security saw it from the left, from the right, and only not head-on because of his own shell in the way. The optics in his shell could see and relayed it all faithfully to him.

Stunning.

“Mm. What's your charge at?”

Fernando checked. It was building, but nowhere near what he needed for a satisfactory overload. “Seventy, give or take.”

“And how long will it maintain?”

“It can remain at seventy for five minutes, then it will reduce by ten percent every five minutes until it reaches thirty. The shell-- I will have to manually disperse charge after that.”

Mal'Damba hummed. He squeezed Fernando's spike and pressed his fingers against the gold stripe, a little rougher than before, and Fernando moaned. His voicebox crackled, fans kicking up another level before settling back down. They weren't overtaxed; they could easily manage the heat building up. If this continued, maybe not. Fernando knew what overcharge entailed.

It felt good. But it was overcharge, which his systems weren't built to handle for long.

“I wonder, if you allowed me to rewire some of your internal systems...”

“Perhaps some other day,” Fernando assured. He trusted Mal'Damba. Not necessarily enough to allow him to muck around in the systems that he'd painstakingly researched and constructed, and certainly not enough to most likely alter how he experienced or stored charge.

Mal'Damba was experienced with exotic machinery. Fernando's shells were exotic machines, two-of-a-kind and more. They also had no operating manuals and took forever to fix. No matter how good it felt there were simply some things Fernando would not budge on.

So. One day. For now, Fernando was glad that Mal'Damba accepted it and continued to jack him off.

“Are you sure you want to proceed with this? I have more... fitting shells.”

Mal'Damba hummed. His free hand dove into the corded wires at the base of his torso and dug in, fingers nudging against the bare metal below. Without the protective shield of his chassis plates the lightest of touches licked his sensors like flame. He keened and raised his hips, Mal'Damba along with them. The human hand tightened around his spike and urged another sticky gout of lubricant from the nodes surrounding the base.

“You mean more humanoid. I will, I suppose.”

That wasn't the question. Fernando made a questioning sound that was almost lost amidst the crackling and whining of his errant voicebox.

“I'll move through each frame you show me,” Mal'Damba clarified, “and assess the merits of each.”

Fernando bit back a flirty comeback in favor of a loud moan. He shunted thirty percent processing power into a separate program that wasn't affected by the shell, just in case. The other seventy percent writhed under Mal'Damba's intensifying touches.  His processing power was all over the place; he had control over it, of course, but it always seemed to do as it may whenever Mal’Damba touched him.

“My merits, you say?”

Mal'Damba combed through the wires, lifted them. The slight pressure built like an itch that had to be scratched, a tightly coiled spring. His whole frame pinged eager, desperate messages into the overtaxed control center. A talon gently raised a delicate wire, red wrapped around with gold, until it tugged and a clamor of tight / more / please / good finally crackled out incoherently., Fernando letting it to his vocalizer in a moment of lapsed attention. Mal’Damba didn’t quite understand the language, and even if he did he wouldn’t understand the inelegant mangling it had become.

“Shall I list them off?” Mal'Damba inquired. Fernando could listen to his voice doing that, lowered raspy and sweet, forever. His fans kicked into high gear for a moment and his spike released a new flow of lubricant. Mal'Damba slowed until the only motion came from lazy strokes to the very base of his spike and the prick of talons caressing sensor nodes along Fernando's sternal strut. It would be so easy to dig in and cause pain. Mal’Damba, utterly in control, never pressed hard enough to even scratch.

“Please.”

Mal'Damba leaned down. It wasn't necessary; Fernando could hear him even if he barely whispered. The ship could pick up on nearly anything. This, though, was intimate. It made the visor strip of his helm flicker.

“This is a masterful work of craftsmanship.”

Yes, of course! Fernando had made sure it was perfect. Mal'Damba twisted a handful of wires and Fernando's train of thought, all seventy percent of it, spiraled off into white noise. Mal'Damba's voice cut through the haze like a knife. “There's no wasted space on you.”

His thumb traced Fernando's audio cable again. “So efficient. So elegant.” Fernando expected his voice to grow colder, for him to make a threat. He did, but his voice remained in the register of indulgent warmth and it didn't scare him so much as make his fans work overtime to disperse the heat building in his core. “So easily crippled by one so deep in your mechanisms.”

Mal'Damba leaned even further. His fingers danced at the tip of Fernando's spike before leaving it and settling instead on his hip; necessary to keep him from tumbling into Fernando's open chest cavity. Necessary, but a shame. “I won't, though. You're too lovely to destroy.”  

Lovely. Fernando had never been described as lovely and it made his processing center skip. Mal'Damba stroked up his sternal strut again and plucked at the wires slipping neatly under it. His talon running gently along the lines sent molten shocks of arousal right to Fernando's spike.

“I must ask, though...”

Fernando's vocal systems offered an inquisitive moaning noise. Mal'Damba understood it well enough.

“Why this in a battle shell?”

“I have--” a gasp, or what passed for one, “limited resources. Best to experiment on shells I reconstruct regularly.”

“Understood.” Mal'Damba sat straight again. “Stay right here. Keep your servos down.”

Fernando nearly whimpered as Mal’Damba removed his hands to instead drag slowly up his own body. The soft rustle of his body armor was the only sound. Fernando clung on to the merest noises, Mal’Damba’s breath, muffled by the mask as it was. The talon fit neatly into a tiny divot in what Fernando original took to be a clasp. At the touch, careful and deliberate, the bodysuit and armor peeled away and collapsed, folded neatly into merely the vest. Fernando found himself transfixed; as Mal’Damba cast off the vest to a far corner Fernando replayed the scene from several different angles. The sides, the graceful arch of Mal’Damba’s back and the slight bounce of his cock now that it was free from the confines of nanomesh and armor. His back, the pebbling of his skin in the cold air of the ship, how Fernando’s spike curled appealingly in the vicinity of his lower back.The front. Mal’Damba’s ribs, the dip between his collarbones, scars and circuitry from his metal arm. The mask, still there, a blank sheet regardless of the heat evident elsewhere. The urge to ask him to remove it twisted in Fernando's processing center. He knew better, and so deleted the request and set up a slapdash subroutine to keep himself from asking until the foreseeable future, when it couldn't slip out in the heat of a moment.

Mal’Damba’s skin was dark, a stark contrast to pulsing green lights on his metal arm and how the acid color of it, an almost neon glow, extended further even when the metal stopped at his shoulder. Like the skin was nothing but a cover, like Mal’Damba was metal all the way through. But the bones showed that he was human, the rise of his chest and belly as he caught his breath, the human softness of his remaining hand.

Fernando remembered Wekono. Branded. Marked, all the way through. “May I dim the lights?” It was impulsive, but his tone was soft and reverent even through heat and arousal. Mal’Damba looked down at him. A ripple of neon passed his mask.

“You may,” he said finally. The ship dimmed until the lights were lower than the glow emanating from the lines stark down Mal’Damba’s arm, under his skin. Fernando’s own slick glowed in wet streaks against his hand but not so strongly as the ethereal light that Mal’Damba’s augmentations gave out. Fernando tried to describe it to himself to better describe it to Mal'Damba; all he could muster were disconnected phrases of adoration and desire. It would have to do.

“You look beautiful.”

Mal'Damba didn't say he could reach out to touch him, though he dearly wanted to, but he did stretch his arm to brush Fernando's cheek with a sharp talon. The eerie green threw itself into Fernando's armor. The black swallowed it up. The hand finger-walked down his neck and to his sternal strut, then gently, gently slipped back into the sea of wires. They were completely askew by now thanks to Mal'Damba's earlier exploration. The slightest touches to the out-of-place wires sent pulses of heat through Fernando's body, heat / more and please / yours until the only thing his processor offered him-- besides the ecstatic rush of Mal'Damba handling his most delicate parts so delicately-- was a shaky cadence of more, more, more.

“I'm going to stretch myself,” Mal'Damba suddenly said. Fernando perked up. “Keep yourself busy.”

The firm command made Fernando's spike curl. The thing wasn't semi-autonomous but Fernando was discovering that pleasure was a very persuasive means of making his control slip. It wasn't hard to imagine Mal'Damba speaking to his own crew in that impersonal, clipped tone, but there was an underlying heat that was only for Fernando. Heat. Promise. Fernando's vocalizer crackled when he tried to respond.

“Don't you need lube?”

Mal'Damba must have smiled and must have wanted Fernando to know as much. His visor flickered and he set his hand on Fernando's inner thigh, his thumb nudging against the base of Fernando's spike. “I think this will do quite nicely.”

He stroked up, the movement somewhat awkward due to position. Fernando wasn't complaining. The slide of Mal'Damba's hand against his spike, eased along by lubricant and still tight made him groan appreciatively. Mal'Damba repeated the movement before showing Fernando his hand, by now dripping with lubricant.

He then shimmied up a little bit to get a better angle, lifting himself slightly off of Fernando's midsection and reaching behind himself. Fernando eagerly followed the motion with the onboard cameras even as the shell lost sight of Mal'Damba's hand.

As he did all things he stretched himself with professional quickness, familiarity from study rather than practice. The thought that Mal'Damba planned this made Fernando's processing center churn out pleased updates, pleasurable flickers down his wires. Fernando's vents seemed torturously loud now that Mal'Damba was quietly focused on prepping himself. Fernando didn't want to speak, for once; didn't want to shatter the moment.

Once he was finished stretching himself Mal'Damba walked backward on his knees until Fernando's spike brushed against his thighs.

“Try and hold still,” Mal'Damba told him, and lowered himself down.

Fernando tried. He really did. He reached for Mal'Damba's hip and Mal'Damba allowed it, rocking his hips in tiny motions to ease down Fernando's spike. His hand shifted unsteadily from Fernando's hip to his midsection and his legs started to tremble from the slow effort of taking Fernando in reasonable sections. Fernando wanted to buck up into his tight heat as much as Mal'Damba wanted to let him; there was only so much Mal'Damba-sized fingers could do to prepare him for Fernando's spike, though, and even his most human shell would be a tight fit.

The thought of repeating this brought a keen to Fernando's vocalizer. Mal'Damba huffed a distracted laugh at him.

Finally Mal'Damba seated himself fully on Fernando's cock. Fernando saw-- from the front, from the side-- the tiniest bulge in Mal'Damba's abdomen. Blue coated the inside of his thighs, more luminescent now that the lights were dimmed. Fernando couldn't help but buck up, pull Mal'Damba down on him.

“Fuck,” Mal'Damba gasped. His head bowed and he leaned forward, rocking his hips back. Fernando stroked his hipbone with a finger, careful not to go too hard.

“Fuck, don't stop,” Mal'Damba protested. His hand moved from Fernando's thigh to his own cock. Fernando's optics followed the slow, purposeful movement and realized with a flood of heat to his spike that Mal'Damba was just getting started. He hadn't been ruthlessly teased, for one.

“I need you,” Fernando murmured. His grip on Mal'Damba's hip tightened until the momentary overload of pleasure was just that, a moment, and Mal'Damba straightened up once more. He was a bit more disheveled and wide-eyed than when they began but still indubitably in control. It wasn't like Fernando was ever planning on fighting it.

Gradually the pace picked up from the first, tentative movements to Mal'Damba more confidently riding Fernando's spike. Each movement was so slick that it burned; Fernando's sensors didn't fully process each new sensation before being barraged with another.

He lost control of his vocalizer. He didn't know when that had happened. Certain subroutines active kept him from embarrassing himself, but that was about it. Mal'Damba only grinned at him. Pleased? Fond? It eased back into cool evaluation not long after.

“Look at yourself,” Mal'Damba commanded. He circled his hips on Fernando's spike, looking imperiously down at the arching mech. “You've never looked more appealing than you do now.”

The Erebos shell was an utter mess, a far cry from the polished and flawless shell it had gone into this situation as. Streaks of his own lubricant glistened on the finish, blue over black and gold. Smears from Mal'Damba's fingers joined them. His wires were slightly out of place and his cables were completely shifted. His fans were working so hard a constant high-pitched whirr joined the sounds of Mal'Damba's moans, his own, the sound of flesh meeting metal and the slick sounds of Fernando's spike penetrating deep inside of Mal'Damba. “You're perfect.”

Fernando wasn't paying attention to his charge. Mal'Damba ground down on him, growled those words, and his charge kicked to full and his frame couldn't hold it. His control center made what he could only describe as a scream through his wires, a full-body message of hot / more / good / touch / please / please / please and delightful friction, flaming white blanking out his optics and leaving only the onboard cameras to capture the view. He released in a torrent of slick with a long, drawn-out cry. His voicebox crackled and popped, vocals mixing with a two-toned, high-pitched electric whine. Mal'Damba gasped and lurched forward, effortless control shaken by the sensation of Fernando's fluids flooding him. He jerked himself off faster, harder, head shaking from side to side in what Fernando recognized as desperation. His own heat had to be near the top, ready to burst. Fernando rocked his hips up a few times to help. That was what did it. The twin frictions of Fernando's spike driving further inside of him and his own hand on his cock tipped Mal'Damba into climax; Fernando reached up to support him so he didn't fall facefirst into his wiring and cables. Mal'Damba's cum spilled over his hand and Fernando's midsection, large enough that it didn't mess his exposed wires.

He didn't want that. He supposed Mal'Damba didn't either. Mal'Damba was gasping, panting, a wailing keen in the back of his throat from the intensity of his orgasm. Fernando's thumbs rubbed circles on Mal'Damba's shoulders. His systems almost chidingly pinged him about low energy levels, the need to recharge.

Overload felt good. It was also a frivolous and wasteful expenditure of energy.

Mal’Damba shook his head slowly, his visor flickering. Fernando reviewed the past few seconds of what he’d said; do you need to rest? Are you feeling alright? Ah.

“Let’s get you back in order first.”

Fernando didn’t quite understand certain turns of phrase and before now he didn’t fully grasp what someone meant when they said they could hear a smile. Mal’Damba’s voice was so soft and fond it made Fernando’s processing center ache. His hand dipped down into the disheveled cavity of Fernando’s chest, shifting through displaced wires and disordered cables.

“How was it?”

Fernando knew if he answered truthfully it  would haunt him for as long as Mal’Damba was with him. His wires were still sensitive but now the touch was comforting instead of exciting, Mal’Damba combing through the wires with the talon-like claws of his right hand and putting them back into place.

“It was good.”

“Just good? I’ll have to try harder next time.” Mal’Damba’s visor flickered a string of thin-lined shapes, a taunt on the edge of too fast for Fernando’s overload-softened processor to parse.

“It was amazing,” Fernando rephrased, pushing the inflection until Mal’Damba shook his head in amusement.

“Of course.” A few more seconds of fiddling and Fernando spied inside of the chest cavity, now a pattern of neat lines and snugly laying cords. “There. Back in order.”

“I adore you,” Fernando said, still hazy with overload. Mal’Damba helped him close his chassis plates and lifted himself from Fernando’s softening, depressurizing spike. The visor didn’t show it but he must have winced; lubricant coated the both of them. Mal’Damba leaned down to press their visors together.

“I know you do. Now, I need to get cleaned up.”

“I’ll take you to the washroom,” Fernando offered even though Mal’Damba was (probably) quite capable of walking there on his own. He knew the ship well; not as well as Fernando knew himself.

One day, maybe. Mal’Damba hummed agreement and Fernando maneuvered the both of them to a sitting position, then stood from the berth and scooped Mal’Damba up in his arms. Mal’Damba wrapped his arms around Fernando’s neck and tipped his head back, lazy and satisfied.

“I adore you,” Fernando said again, leaning his head down to allow Mal’Damba to press their visors together again. Mal’Damba obliged and his talons skirted the tough coverings of Fernando’s throat cables.

“You, as well.”

The lights slowly pitched back up.

[rinaldoescobar]

Turns out I need a summer class to fulfill my credits requirement!And I still want to commission people too and I need money for that!

Writing Commissions: OPEN

The Basics

$1 USD=100 words.

This is short, I know, so there is also the option to pay me as much as $10 USD and I will write up to 1000 words (or 200, or 300, etc); just know that the commission will take longer.

What I WILL Write:

Original Fiction (Got OCs? Give me a ref and some idea of what their personality is like!)

Fanfiction ($.25 extra if I am unfamiliar with the fandom; I will tell you!)

Sexual content ($.25 extra depending on the nature.)

Mature subjects ($.25 extra depending on the nature.)

What I Will NOT Write:

Underage

Incest

Rape

Further subjects will be decided on my discretion just in case I’ve missed something here; in general, if it will get me in trouble with the law, I won’t write it.

Commission template and contact info under the cut! Examples of my work can be found in my speck writes tag and on my writing blog, @rinaldoescobar.

Keep reading

[rinaldoescobar]

I think its cause theres so little m/m smut in this fandom that people are taken kinda by surprise.

I am here to fix that one tacky shameless smutfic at a time.

[rinaldoescobar]

I love you for that khanjenos fic. Thank you aaaaa

ya welcome

note: i looked in the tags and some people seemed genuinely surprised that it was , in fact, explicit porn? i mean, it’s right there in the rating. i am not going to duck out of showing you guys khan’s monster schlong. i’m not afraid to describe his cock cannon in detail. khan’s got a big dick and it’s just one of the appealing things about him.